Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy

weapon. He backed out the door and was gone. She didn't feel outraged or insulted. She didn't even feel patronized anymore. She felt empty and foolish and ashamed that she had spent any small moment holding on to this worthless man for whatever reason.
    Tomorrow she would start the divorce process.
    What her mother, her daughters, her good friend Dervla and her new assistant, Hilary, had not been able to make her do, Alan had done himself. By his clumsy attempt to make love to her, by his casual assumption that she would welcome it, he had actually achieved what he wanted—a divorce. Or maybe didn't want. But she would never know or care. She had more important things to think about. And for the first time since she had embarked on this new job, Clara felt it was in fact the most important part of her life.
    She would put Alan totally out of her mind and think insteadabout what lay ahead tomorrow. She would be meeting the new doctor and welcoming him to the clinic. He seemed a very nice young man—good CV, red hair, a calm manner—everything, in fact, that you need for heart patients. His name was Declan Carroll, and Clara had a feeling that he was going to be very good.

Chapter Two

    It was useless trying to tell his mother that it was a run-of-the-mill posting in the heart clinic. Molly Carroll was telling everyone that her son had a huge new job as a head cardiologist. Declan gave up trying to change her take on it all. Anyway her friends and family
wanted
to think that he was a boy genius. It would be downbeat, pedantic and tedious to explain that as part of his training in becoming a GP he would need to do a stint in cardiology.
    He had already done the six months in an accident and emergency department, and the same in a children's hospital, and when this heart clinic was over he would do a further six months in geriatrics. Only then would he be considered experienced enough to join a general practice.
    He never knew whether his father understood the system. Paddy Carroll was a quiet man who went to work in the meat department of a supermarket, who had his pint every evening and his three pints on a Saturday. He always said it was a miracle that young Declan had done so well. “Your mother must have slept with a brainbox for us to get you,” he'd say admiringly.
    Declan hated it. He wished his father wouldn't put himself down so much. It would have made him much happier if his father had realized that Declan had got so far simply because he had worked so hard.
    Molly was cooking a breakfast that would kill an ox. “You never know when you might get to eat again, Declan,” she fussed. “They'll all be consulting you all day and asking your opinion.”
    “Or showing me the ropes and telling me what to do,” Declan said, looking dismayed at the huge plate of food in front of him.
    Paddy Carroll looked meaningfully at Dimples, the big sleeping dog. “You won't forget to walk that dog before you head off to work, Declan,” he said.
    Declan got the message. He wasn't to upset his mother by refusing the monstrous breakfast, but Dimples would make short work of the sausages and black pudding. His mother came round to give him a hug before she rushed off to open up the launderette.
    “I'm so proud of you, I could burst!” she said.
    “Aw, Mam, sure it's all down to you and Dad, doing overtime and saving for me.”
    “I wish I could tell everyone who comes in today that my boy is starting work as a heart specialist,” she said, her face glowing with happiness.
    Declan Carroll knew that she
would
tell everybody who came in. She might even show them all a photograph of his graduation— Declan in full gear, his freckles and ginger hair making him look like an impostor, he always thought. There were enlargements of this picture in three rooms of their little house in St. Jarlaths Crescent.
    Dimples, who was partly Labrador and partly something unspecified, was delighted with the unexpected breakfast. It was