Heart and Soul Read Online Free

to realize that he really did have to go. And so he went.
    “Cinta? Darling?”
    “That you, Alan?”
    “How many other men call you Cinta and address you as darling?” His laugh was tinny. “What did she say?”
    “Nothing.”
    “She must have said something.”
    “No, she didn't.”
    “You didn't go.”
    “I
did
go.” He was stung by the injustice of it. “She can't have said nothing.”
    “She said, ‘Get out.’”
    “And you did?”
    “Love, it doesn't make any difference.”
    “It does to me,” Cinta said.
    Clara had always been a great believer in putting worries out of your mind. Years back they had a wonderful professor of general medicine who had managed to inspire them all. He was Dr. Morrissey, her friend Dervla's father.
    “Never underestimate the curative powers of being busy,” he had advised them. He said that most of their patients would benefit from having more rather than less to do. He had achieved a near legendary reputation for curing insomnia simply by advising people to get up and sort out their tape collection or iron their table napkins. What would he say now? Kind Dr. Morrissey who had been more of a father to Clara than her own remote, withdrawn father ever had been.
    Dr. Morrissey would say, “Tackle something that will absorb you. Something that will put That Bastard Alan and his divorce and his infantile girlfriend way out of mind.” Clara poured a glass of wine and went upstairs. She would fill every corner of her mind with this bloody center that she had signed on to run.
    In Quentins Adi was watching her sister with disapproval. Linda was twining her long blond hair around her fingers and smiling at a man across the room.
    “Stop it, Linda,” Adi hissed.
    “Stop what?” Linda's eyes were big, blue and innocent.
    “Stop attracting his attention.”
    “He smiled. I smiled back. Is this now a hanging offense?”
    “It could end up being complicated. Will you
stop
smiling, Linda!”
    “All right, prune face. Whatever happened to being pleasant?” Linda asked sulkily.
    At that moment a waiter bristling with disapproval came to their table. “Mr. Young's compliments and would the young ladies like to choose a digestif with his compliments.”
    “Can you please tell Mr. Young no, thank you very much,” Adi said.
    “Please tell Mr. Young that I'd love an Irish coffee,” Linda said.
    The waiter looked helplessly from one to the other. Mr. Young, from across the room, had seen the situation and materialized at their table. A tall man in his late forties, in a well-cut suit and with the appearance of being a person who could manage most situations.
    “I was just thinking about how life is so short and how sad it is to have to spend it talking business with men in suits,” he said, a practiced smile on his suntanned face.
    “Oh, I do agree,” Linda simpered.
    “So do I,” Adi said. “But we are the wrong people to waste the rest of your life on. Mr. Young, my sister here is a twenty-one-year-old student and I am a twenty-three-year-old teacher. We're probably not much older than your own children. Our father has paid for us to have a nice dinner here while he tells our mother that he wants a divorce. So you see it's a fraught time. And really you would probably find it more fun with the suits.”
    “Such passion and strength in one so young and beautiful.” Mr. Young looked at the elder girl with admiration.
    Linda didn't like that at all.
    “Adi's right, we
do
have to go home,” she said and the waiter's shoulders relaxed. Problems didn't always sort themselves out so easily.
    “And you just actually got out because she said ‘Get out’?” Cinta was disbelieving.
    “God, Cinta, what did you expect me to do? Take her by the throat?”
    “You said you'd ask her for the divorce.”
    “And I did … I did. We'll get it eventually. It's the law.”
    “But not before the baby is born.”
    “Does it matter when we get it? We'll both be here for the baby.