Page 45 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
Which was the real Max? And did I still want to marry him? Did I still, come to that, want to have any sort of relationship with him?
I wouldn’t know until I saw him again, and then either the world would swing back to its familiar orbit, and hewould tell me that he loved me and at last we could be together for ever … or it wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t.
And maybe either wayIwouldn’t?
Later, while Jane was off soaking her carcass in coffret-scented water, I phoned Orla and told her all about Rosemary’s message from Beyond.
She registered all the right, reassuring emotions, which is what friends are for, after all: a true friend lines up firmly on your side, whether you are right or wrong.
Then, lowering my voice, I told her about Jane and Clint.
‘Lucky cow! What’s she gotthat I haven’t?’ she demanded enviously.
‘A husband, for one thing,’ I pointed out. ‘And she expects me to cover for her while she decides which one to choose!’
‘If she’d handled it better she might have had her cake and eaten it. What’s her husband like? Is he tasty?’
‘Gerald? Small, chubby, and pleasant.’
‘Not quite what I’m looking for then, even on the used market,’ she said, summarilydismissing him. ‘By the way, I looked Dante Chase up on the internet, and I’ve printed out some articles for you about the hostage thing. It was Colombia – they seem to kidnap each other at random there, all the time. He was freed in a military raid, but another hostage was accidentally shot.’
‘That was a friend of his, so it hit him pretty hard when he was killed,’ I told her, trying to pretendI wasn’t absolutely dying to see the printouts.
I knew I hadn’t really fooled her, though.
