Free Tara Road by Maeve Binchy Page A

night she met a man called Colm Barry. He was single, handsome and worked in the bank. Colm had dark curly hair and dark sad eyes.
    'You don't look like a banker,' Orla said to him.
    'I don't feel like a bank clerk, I'd rather be a chef.'
    'I don't feel like being a typist in an estate agency, I'd like to be a model or a singer,' Orla said.
    'There's no reason why we shouldn't be these things, is there?' Colm asked with a smile.
    Orla didn't know whether he was making fun of her or being nice, but she didn't mind. He was going to make these meetings bearable.
    On that night when Gertie saw Jack raising the great scrubbing-brush that might have split her head, she picked up a knife and stuck it straight into his arm. They both watched helplessly and amazed as the blood poured on to the packet of fish and chips he had flung to the floor. Then she took off her engagement ring, laid it on the table, got her coat and walked out of the house. From a phone box at the corner of the road, she rang the police and told them what she had done. In the emergency ward Jack assured everyone that it had been purely domestic and that nobody was making any accusation against anyone whatsoever.
    For a very long time Gertie refused to see Jack, and then, to everyone's disappointment, she agreed to meet him just once. Jack had been put off the road for drunken driving and consequently sacked from his job. Gertie found a chastened and sober man. They talked and she remembered why she loved him. They asked two strangers to be their witnesses and they were married in a cold church at eight o'clock one morning.
    Gertie left Polly's just before Polly Callaghan sacked her. She was absent too often; it was no longer reasonable to expect them to keep her on the payroll. Jack had bouts of sobriety, never lasting very long. Gertie grew white-faced and anxious. She got a job in a launderette just round the corner from Tara Road where there was a flat upstairs. It was a living but only a bare living.
    Gertie's own mother washed her hands of the whole situation. She said that she just hoped Gertie had good friends who would tide her over when times got really bad. Gertie had one friend who tided her over a great deal: Ria Lynch.
    Hilary Moran never fully forgave Danny Lynch for not being with his wife that night. Oh, she had heard that there were explanations and confidences that had to be kept, and Ria certainly bore no grudge. But nobody else had heard the great wailing as Ria had waited for him to come to her during the long hours of labour. It made her feel even more strongly that she had got a good man in Martin. He might never reach the dizzy heights of Danny Lynch; he was certainly not as easy on the eye. But you could rely on him. He would always be there. And when Hilary had a child Martin would not be missing. She hoped that they would have children. The fortune-teller had been wrong about living amid trees. She might be wrong about them having no children as well.
    Barney McCarthy recovered from his heart attack. Everyone said that he had been so fortunate to have it come upon him when he was with quick-witted, resourceful Danny Lynch who wasted no time in getting him to hospital. He had to take things a little more easily these days.
    He had wanted to involve Danny more in his business, but met with unexpected resistance from his family. Perfectly natural resentment, Barney thought to himself. They obviously feared that Danny was getting too close to him. He would have to be more diplomatic. Show them that he was not going outside the family.
    Sometimes he felt that his daughters seemed sharper with him, less loving. Less uncritically supportive. But Barney did not allow himself the luxury of brooding about people's moods. These girls owed him everything. He had slaved long hours and years to get them their superior education and degrees. Even if they had heard something about Polly Callaghan they were unlikely to rock the boat. They knew that he