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Coffee Break Story - Unfinished Business

Catherine Daly




  Unfinished Business

  Catherine Daly

  Published by Catherine Daly

  Copyright 2012Catherine Daly

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you w

  ould like to share this book with another person, please download an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Praise for Catherine Daly's Writing

  Praise for Charlotte's Way

  Her characters are believable and her storyline is just gripping enough without being over the top.

  Watch out for Daly, she could very well be the next Maeve Binchy. (Bibliofemme)

  ...a heartwarming family tale about discovery, love, longing and friendship...(In Dublin Magazine)

  Excellent, really, really magnificent. Catherine Daly has definitely delivered a great book once again.  (Woman's Way)

  Praise for 'All Shook Up'(2004)

  Daly is a good storyteller (Irish Independent)

  Catherine Daly has a gift for capturing ‘real-life’ dialogue…one of the most enjoyable books I have read in ages, I really could not put it down. (Woman’s Way)

  …explores with great maturity the crisis facing many young couples trying to juggle kids and a career. (Evening Herald)

  An intelligent read for the modern working mum. (Sunday World)

  This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  Catherine Daly qualified and worked as a pharmacist. She started writing after the birth of her second child. She has had three novels published by Poolbeg Press: in Ireland:

  All Shook Up (2004)

  Charlotte's Way (2005)

  A French Affair (2006)

  She is the founder member of www.writeon-irishgirls.com and has her own website at www.catherinedaly.com.

  She served as a comittee member of Irish PEN for five years (chairman 2007 to 2009) and lives in Dublin with her husband and two children and a dog.

  Unfinished Business.

  The accident that was to change everything happened at half past three on a Friday afternoon in August. Most people were winding down at the end of their week, preparing for the weekend, but all Rosemary could think was that she needed to be home by half past five in case Edward thought of something else he needed for his important weekend conference. Rosemary was fairly confident she’d packed everything he could possibly need to impress his colleagues and competitors at the event, but it would be just like Edward to think of something at the last minute and then sniff and tut, in that distracted way of his, implying it was her fault for not preparing for every eventuality.

  She sat on the kerb, behind the now parked car, trying not to cry and reassuring concerned onlookers that she was all right. Which wasn’t true. She felt like she had done twelve rounds with Mike Tyson. Her ribs hurt so much that she winced with each breath; her head pounded, especially if she moved it, and she had to keep wiping blood from her eye with a soggy tissue, blood that was running down from a cut on her forehead. But worse, far worse than any physical injury was the sickening realisation that now Edward would realise where she had been all afternoon. When the young policeman asked Rosemary if he could follow her to the hospital, to take a statement about the accident, she could only nod weakly. She was at least grateful that he wouldn’t upset her husband by turning up at home in a squad car, causing the neighbours’ curtains to twitch.

  Casualty was quiet and she was seen quickly. She reassured the doctor that she had not been knocked out, and he examined the cut on her head.

  “Two stitches will sort that out for you, Mrs. Regan. It looks a lot worse than it is. There are a lot of blood vessels under the scalp, and they bleed like fury if you cut them at all. The only scar, and I promise it will be a tiny one, will be under your hairline; your face is just grazed.”

  Rosemary thanked him.

  “Right, so, I’ll just get Staff Nurse O’Reilly to clean you up, and then I’ll come back to put in the stitches. Your ribs aren’t broken you’ll be glad to hear, just badly bruised. Have the painkillers helped?” She nodded, but her doctor didn’t seem convinced, mistaking the worried look on her face for distress. “Are you sure? I can prescribe something stronger.” She tried to smile, but only managed to pull off a grimace.

  “I’m fine, honestly,” she said. “Just…Look, I’m fine, really.”

  “If you’re sure...” The doctor seemed to hesitate at the curtain screening off the cubicle, but then the lure of a far too-rare coffee break decided him and he pulled back the curtain to leave. “I’ll see you later, so. Don’t forget; if you begin to feel the slightest bit sick, or groggy, push the call button at once.’

  “Of course. But I didn’t really hit my head, just scratched it on the car as I fell.” The doctor didn’t answer, just made his escape at the same moment as a severe-looking receptionist pushed her head between the curtains.

  “Mrs. Regan, we haven’t been able to contact your husband at the number you gave us. Apparently he always takes Friday afternoons off?” The woman’s severe expression hardened, as if she was implying that Rosemary was wasting valuable health service resources by giving the receptionist misleading information.

  Rosemary tried to look as if she’d merely forgotten about Edward’s early finish on a Friday, but it was news to her. In fact she had always believed Friday afternoon to be set aside for the partners’ meetings. And Edward, more often than not, returned home late after them. More often than not smelling of wine and food, if some of the partners decided to complete their work talk over a meal.

  “Sorry, to have wasted your time,” she apologised. “But it’s not necessary to contact Edward is it? The doctor seems happy enough with me. I’ll call a taxi and make my own way home.” She felt a faint glimmer of hope.

  “I don’t think that would be wise.” The receptionist shook her head, her vast medical knowledge lending weight to her assertion. “Not wise at all. You never know with head injuries. It’s best if I keep trying to reach your husband. Does he have a mobile number I could try?” She bustled off with the information Rosemary reluctantly supplied; a woman with a mission, ready to track Mr. Regan to the ends of the Earth.

  “Now Mrs. Regan, let’s get that wound cleaned up so that Doctor…Good God, Rosie! What are you doing here?” The male nurse stopped in his tracks, and a huge grin spread across his face. His warm brown eyes danced with delight at seeing her.

  “I’d have thought that was obvious. I’ve been throwing myself under cars in every city in the country in an attempt to find you.” She felt strangely upset that she hadn’t known he had moved back home. “Staff Nurse O’Reilly I presume? Welcome back, Mark.”

  “My God Rosie, I haven’t seen you since…” He rushed forward and looked as if he was going to hug her. She flinched automatically bracing herself for pain. He stopped, and a professional expression replaced the split second of hurt she saw on his face.

  “Sorry Mark. It’s my ribs, they hurt like hell.” She tried to grin. “You can owe me that hug.”

  “You’ve certainly changed Rosie,” Mark said, smiling again.

  Changed for good or for bad, she wondered, but didn’t ask. Why should she care what an ex-boyfriend thought? She was a married woman now.

  “You look so elegant, so stylish, so…Grown up!”

  Bad then, she decided.

  “And you still look so…” A distant, wistful look came over him.
>
  Maybe not so bad. She knew he was remembering the long forgotten Rosie, in jeans and T-shirts, with wild, untamed long auburn hair. The Rosie with her heart on her sleeve and her foot in her mouth. So sure of what she wanted from life. A long way from Rosemary, in a Jaeger knitted suit, a bloodstained white blouse and pearls. Pearls! A woman who rarely voiced her opinion without checking first with Edward what her opinion should be.

  “Mrs. Regan.” He rolled the name over in his mouth, tasting it. “You got married then?”

  “Yes, Edward’s his name, an accountant. He has his own firm. Set up on his own seven years ago, just a year after we got married. He’s doing well. There’s three partners now…” Stop it, she thought, you’ll be giving out his school grades next.

  “Still married?” Mark asked. The question took her by surprise and her shocked expression made him laugh.

  “Sorry, I’m afraid I’m just an old cynic. Fifty percent of all marriages… blah, blah, blah. This might sting.” He applied some moistened gauze to her temple.

  The young policeman came in at that point, and asked her a few more questions about the accident.

  “It was my own