Free Tara Road by Maeve Binchy Page B

would not leave Mona, that the household would continue undisturbed. He enjoyed his dealings with Danny Lynch, but for everyone's sake he just had to make sure they were less public as time went on.
    For Nora Johnson the day that her granddaughter was born was also the date that she had been told her job was over. She made a decision not to tell any of the family about it, not until she had tried to find another position at any rate. But it wasn't easy, and in the first weeks of Annie Lynch's life her grandmother was facing rejection after rejection. There were few openings for a woman of fifty-one with no qualifications.
    Wearily and without much hope she went for an interview as a carer-companion to an elderly lady who lived in a big house in Tara Road which had a purpose-built little granny cottage in the grounds. It turned out extremely well. They took to each other on sight. When it became known that Nora had a daughter living in Tara Road the old lady's family suggested that maybe the post should be a residential one. Nora could sell her own house, have a nest egg and live close to her daughter Ria.
    Ah, but what about her security and her future? Nora had wondered. Where would she live when, in the fullness of time, the old lady she was looking after had left this earth? It was arranged that she should have first refusal on buying the little house when that day came.
    Polly Callaghan remembered the night that Annie was born because it was the night she thought she was going to lose Barney for ever. She had loved him without pausing to count the cost for twelve years, since she was twenty-five years old. Not once did she stop and say that it was folly to love a man who would never be free.
    She did not weigh up the very likely possibility of finding herself a single man who would be delighted to provide her with a home and family. Polly Callaghan, glamorous, articulate and successful, would have been the object of interest to many a man.
    But the thought had not crossed her mind. She knew she had had a lucky escape that night. Barney had only just been got to Intensive Care in time, but he had agreed to change his lifestyle, give up the cigarettes and brandy. Walk more, behave like he might actually be mortal instead of invincible. Polly had been urging this for years, while his wife had provided comfort food and no such structure.
    Now at last he had got the warning that he needed to jolt him into action. Barney McCarthy was only in his forties; he had years of living ahead of him.
    Polly had been grateful to Danny Lynch for his speedy response. Grateful yet disappointed in him. He obviously had a girl with him in his office when she had called that night. Polly had heard her giggling. Polly was not one to sit in judgement on a man having an affair outside marriage. But she thought that Danny was fairly young to have started. And it was, after all, a night when you might have expected him to be with his wife who was having their first baby. Still, Polly was philosophical. That's men.
    Rosemary remembered very well the time that Annie Lynch was born. It had been something of a turning-point in her life. First there was that loutish man who had booked a hotel bedroom and had assumed that she was going to share it. And this was the time she felt unexpectedly attracted to a man called Colm Barry who worked in the bank near where she worked. He had always been helpful and encouraging about how she should handle her business. Unlike some people in that branch he had never urged caution and restraint, which was the immediate response of others in the bank. He seemed even a little disenchanted with the whole idea of the bank. He was just genuinely helpful, and seemed admiring of Rosemary's skills in expanding the business. He must be about thirty, a tall man with black curly hair which he wore a little long on his collar. The bank didn't approve, he said with some satisfaction.
    'Does it bother you what the bank thinks?'