From The Heart by Sheila O'Flanagan Page A

well it was a hard day,’ she said. ‘That bastard Moriarty went on and on at me.’ She rubbed the bridge of her nose. ‘I was looking forward to seeing you.’ She winced at whatever he said and then responded with, ‘I don’t mean to be.’
    He was calling her possessive. I knew. That was the rock on which Alan and I had perished and the same with Michael. And so the first time that Ian had suggested it to me I’d backed right off and now he thought that I really didn’t care where he was or who he was with. As if.
    ‘Oh, look, Tom – it doesn’t matter. No, I can’t go tomorrow evening. I have that interview, remember?’ She listened to him again. ‘No, with the computer company. I told you about it.’
    I was rapidly going off Tom. He really didn’t give a toss about her, did he? He’d broken their date and now he was asking her to go somewhere with him when he knew she already had to be somewhere else. Surely he should remember her having an interview? That was important, wasn’t it? A life-changing kind of thing.
    ‘I will not wear my blue dress to the interview!’ She sounded quite annoyed. ‘I’m wearing my suit.’
    She didn’t actually look like the kind of girl who’d even own a suit, but then I have a horrible habit of making snap judgments about people and maybe she was really Office Barbie after all.
    ‘Why don’t you pick me up afterwards? I’ll be finished by eight.’
    He clearly asked her why she wasn’t having the interview during working hours because she said, rather tersely, that it was impossible to get the time off and she’d already used a doctor’s appointment and a visit to the dentist in the last few weeks. Obviously Cheryl was desperate to change jobs. I knew the feeling. I was thinking strongly about it myself after today’s disaster.
    ‘OK, it doesn’t matter. I’ll call you after it anyway to let you know how I got on.’
    But he won’t care, I thought suddenly. He doesn’t care. He only cares about himself. I jumped as my own phone rang. It was Ian.
    ‘Hi,’ I said happily. ‘How are you?’
    ‘Guess what!’ He sounded very pleased with himself.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m going to Milan.’
    ‘Milan!’ I was suitably impressed. ‘When?’
    ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tanya was supposed to go but she’s got a flu bug or something and can’t so they’re sending me instead.’
    ‘That’s great,’ I said insincerely. ‘For how long?’
    ‘A whole week.’
    ‘I’ll miss you,’ I told him.
    ‘Oh well.’ He laughed. ‘All in the line of duty.’
    ‘Yes. I’ll see you tonight anyway,’ I said. ‘Give you a goodbye kiss. Maybe more if you’re lucky.’
    ‘Ah, well, Natalie, sorry about this but I can’t make it tonight.’
    I gritted my teeth. ‘But you said yesterday that we’d go for a drink.’
    ‘I know,’ he told me. ‘I can’t though. Sorry.’
    ‘So you broke a date with me last night and you’re standing me up tonight and you’re going to Milan tomorrow?’ I kept my voice as light as possible but he could hear my anger all the same.
    ‘Chill out, Nats,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to be in each other’s pockets all the time, do we?’
    ‘No,’ I said. I wanted to add that he just didn’t seem to care any more but I didn’t because that would make me sound pathetic.
    ‘Anyway I’ll bring you back a little something from Milan,’ he promised.
    ‘Prada?’ I suggested.
    He laughed. ‘Do they do key rings?’
    ‘Don’t you dare bring me back a key ring,’ I warned. ‘A bag or a belt at least.’
    ‘We’ll see. Look, Nats, got to go. Talk soon.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Talk soon.’
    My phone wasn’t a trendy little snap-shut one like Cheryl’s. I simply hit the red key. Then I glanced up. She was looking at me and her gaze was speculative. Clearly Cheryl had been listening in to my conversation in the same way as I’d listened in to hers. Our eyes met. She shrugged. I smiled.
    And then I did something I