Barefoot Over Stones Read Online Free Page B

not easily be changed.
    Throughout the week a small part of her hoped Alison would change her mind and come home for the weekend. She was not ready to think of her stint in Dublin as anything other than a temporary arrangement. Alison phoned on the usual days and her form was very good. Cathy managed not to ask her to change her mind. ‘It will be good for her, help her to find her feet,’ she told a very dubious Richard. If she said it often enough she might just convince them both, she hoped.
    Cathy held it together until the following Saturday, comforted by the routine at the surgery. All the regulars, of whom the practice had scores, dragging in their dead legs and arthritic joints on a weekly basis, enquired after Alison. How was she doing in Dublin? Was she living far from the college? Cathy found herself delivering confident assertions that Alison was doing just fine. She had moved in with a lovely girl, Ciara, from Tipperary, and was doing well at her course. All true, she reminded herself if her certainty wavered even for a moment.
    She and Richard shared a bottle of red wine on the Friday night and when he admitted that he too was missing Alison that made Cathy feel less pathetic.
    ‘Maybe we could visit her in Dublin some weekend, see the den of vice and squalor she has landed herself in?’
    ‘Ah, show a bit of faith, Richard! I’m sure Alison found a grand flat and to be honest I wasn’t as keen as you were on Bea Duggan. She seemed terribly sour.’
    ‘You see, Cathy, that’s exactly what I liked about her. She looked stubborn, looked like she wouldn’t tolerate any late hours or bad company. Sour can be a good trait in a landlady.’
    ‘God, you can sound like a right old misery guts when you want to.’
    ‘I’m entitled to be miserable when I have had Tadhg Lovett’s septic toe presented to me onthree separate occasions this week, only one of which happened in the privacy of my surgery. Honestly, I am dreading the moment and the hour when he discovers a boil on his backside, because I won’t be able to get a drink in this town without offering to lance it first.’
    Cathy collapsed in fits of laughter at the unbearable mental image and felt light-hearted for the first time in days. It could be the wine gone to her head but she didn’t really care. Midnight came and went while they chatted and cuddled together in front of the open fire, still alive with the vivid colours of the shrinking turf.
    Saturday was shaping up well enough too. She had planned to see an art exhibition in the Jenkin Gallery in Cork with Rena Lalor. Cathy knew in her heart that Rena would humour her with about ten minutes at the gallery before her insatiable thirst for the city boutiques and department stores would overcome her and have to be quenched by an empowering excursion down Patrick Street. And so it was. Rena smooched with the gallery owner while gasping in a seemingly new-found appreciation of the artist’s vision. She was particularly taken by the red planet at the bottom of a painting of warring lovers. It was, she thought (aloud, naturally), symbolic of their love transcending this world. Neither Cathy nor the gallery owner pointed out to her that it was just a sticker marking the painting sold. Cathy didn’t because she couldn’t bear to burst her friend’s exuberance and the gallery owner refrained because he was already mentally lodging the cheque from what he expected was a certain sale. When Rena found out that her warring lovers were sold she picked out another close to it which Cathy was sure she had not even given a second glance. With the painting bought and promptly forgotten Rena was ready to move on to her sartorial prey.
    Being in Rena’s company was like being in a tidal wave of consumerism. She always needed an outfit for a forthcoming occasion. She and Hugh were on a continual round of race meetings, charity socials and fund-raising dinner dances. The Lalor legal practice was thriving and was