Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'Did you believe her?'

'Totally. She's been right about everybody.' Hilary tidied up the remains of their food, and put it into a paper bag.

She was so sure and confident in everything, including the fact that this psychic had told her she wasn't fertile. This was a very strange country. 'Is she a psychic?'

'I don't know, she just knows what's going to happen.'

'Is she a medium? Does she get in touch with the dead?'

'I don't think so,' Hilary said. 'I didn't want to anyway, I only wanted to know about the living.'

'And what else did she tell you?'

'She said I'd be happily married, which is true, and that I'd live in a place with trees but that hasn't happened yet.'

Marilyn paused for a moment to think about a woman who considered herself happily married to a man who thought about nothing except interest rates and didn't believe in sex without the possibility of procreation.

'Is she still around, this woman?' Marilyn asked.

They were getting the best weather ever known for a week in July. Everyone said so. The children were sun-tanned and loving it all.

'Can we take the dinghy out, Dad?' Annie asked.

'No, Annie, it's too dangerous.'

'Why did they give it to us then?'

'They gave it to us , Princess, not to you, not to children.'

'Let them, Danny,' Bernadette said.

'No, sweetheart, they don't know about boats.'

'Well, how will they ever learn?' Bernadette asked. 'Suppose they go where we can see them, would that do?' It was a compromise that did fine. Danny looked on proudly as his son and daughter rowed the little boat along the shore.

'You're so good with them, but you're fearless. Ria would have wanted to swim along beside them like a mother duck.'

'You have to let children go free,' she said. 'They hate you otherwise.'

'I know but when we have our baby will you feel the same?' He laid his hand on her stomach and thought about the son or daughter that would be in their home, a real person, by Christmas.

'Of course!' She looked at him in surprise. 'You don't want children, free spirits, all herded into some kind of corral, do you?'

Danny realised that this was exactly what he and Ria had built and why he so badly needed to escape. He lay with his head in her lap and closed his eyes. 'Sleep on, I'll look out at the dinghy,' she said.

'Isn't that amazing?' Finola Dunne was reading them extracts from the newspaper.

'What's amazing?' Danny asked. He was still lying in the grass and Bernadette was making a series of daisy chains which she was spreading over him like threads tying him to the earth.

'Polly's is for sale! That's been the main dress-hire place in Dublin for years.'

'It's never for sale.' Danny sat up suddenly.

'Well, so it says here.'

He took the paper and read the paragraph. 'I have to make a phone call,' he said. 'Where are those goddamn children on their bloody boat, and what the hell did you let them go off for?'

'Danny, they've tied up the dinghy. You were asleep. They've gone to get ice creams. Please, please be calm. You have no idea what's going on.'

'I have a fair idea.'

'Well, what do you think it is? Do you think that if Polly's is being sold Barney's running out of money?' Bernadette asked.

'And you can sit there making daisy chains if you think that?'

'I'd prefer to make daisy chains than to have a heart attack,' Bernadette said.

'Darling darling Bernadette, the world might be about to end for us. You don't understand, you're just a child.'

'I wish you wouldn't say that, you've always known what age I am,' she said.

'I have to talk to Barney, find out what's happening.' Danny's face was white.

'I should wait until you are calmer. You won't understand anything the way you are now.'

'I won't be any calmer, not until I know. And maybe not even then. I can't believe he wouldn't tell me, we're friends. I'm like a son to him, he's said so often.'

'Then if he is in trouble maybe it was harder to tell you than anyone else.' She saw it quite simply.

'And aren't you worried, frightened?'

'Of what?'

'Of what might be ahead?'

'You mean being poor? Of course not. You've been poor before, Danny. You'll live, you did before.'

'That was then, this is now.'

'You've a lot more to live for now.'

He held both her hands in his. 'I want to give you everything. I want the sun, the moon and the stars for you and our baby.'

She smiled at him, that slow smile that always made him feel weak. She said nothing more. This was what made him feel ten feet tall.

Bernadette didn't busy herself wondering was this strategy better than that. Having urged him to be calm she was now staying out of it. She was leaving it all to him.

'Where's Dad? Annie asked. 'We got him a choc-ice?'

'He went to make a phone call,' Bernadette said.

'Will he be long do you think or should we eat it?' Brian wanted a ruling.

'I think we should eat it,' said Bernadette.

'It's Danny.'

'Didn't you get the weather! I bet it's beautiful down there.' Barney sounded pleased for him.

'Barney, what's happening?'

'You're worse than I am about not being able to cut off and take a holiday.'

'Were you looking for me? My mobile's not charged up, I'm ringing from a bar.'

'No, I wasn't looking for you, I was letting you have your holiday in peace.' He sounded very unruffled.

'I saw the paper,' Danny said

'The paper?'

'I saw Polly's is on the market.'

'That's right. Yes.'

'What does it mean, Barney?'

'It means that Polly wants a break from it, she got a good offer and we're just testing the market in case there's an even better one out there.'

'That's bullshit. Polly doesn't want a break, she's hardly ever in there anyway.'

'Well, that's what she says. You know women… unpredictable.'

Danny had heard Barney so often talking to clients like this. Or when speaking to accountants, lawyers, politicians, bank managers. Anyone who had to be kept at bay. Simple, homespun, cheerful, even a little bewildered. It had always worked in the past. But then he had never talked like that to Danny before. Suddenly he thought of something. 'Is there anyone with you as we speak?'

'No, no one at all, why?'

'Are we okay, Barney? Tell me straight out.'

'How do you mean?'

'You know what I mean. Have we our heads above water? Are we in the black?'

Barney laughed. 'Come on , Danny, has the sun softened your head? When were we ever in the black? The red is where we live.'

'I mean will we be able to climb out this time?'

'We always did before.'

'You've never had to sell Polly's before.'

'I don't have to sell it now.' There was a slightly steely sound to Barney's voice. Danny said nothing. 'So if that's all, will you get on with having a holiday, and be in good shape when you're back here on Monday.'

'I could come back now if you needed me. I'd just drive straight up, leave the others here.'

'See you Monday,' said Barney McCarthy, and hung up.

Danny bought himself a small brandy to stop the slight tremor in his hand. The barman looked at him sympathetically. 'Family life all cooped up in a small boat can get a bit ropey,' he said.

'Yes.' Danny spoke absently. His mind was far away in Barney McCarthy's office. He had been dismissed on the phone, that was not an exaggeration. He had seen Barney do it so often to other people. Now he was at the receiving end.

'How many kids?' the barman asked.

'Two, and one on the way.'

'God, it must be pure hell for you,' said the man who had seen a lot of human nature in running a lakeside pub, but had never seen a face as white and strained as this fellow's.