Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [110]
‘No, Thomas. What if I want to have a few drinks?’
‘A few drinks? But what about this?’ Thomas put his hand on Tara’s belly and pinched lots more than an inch.
‘Just for once, Thomas,’ she wheedled, miserably. ‘I’ve had such a horrible week…’
‘Just this once, then,’ he conceded, adding, ‘seeing as your mate might be dying.’
Astonished by his savagery, Tara suddenly realized she was sick, sick, sick of Thomas and his crude, roughshod ways. Of his relentless, gratuitous cruelty. Of never winning arguments. Of being insulted and hurt. All in the name of the great absolver, honesty.
‘Doesn’t it upset you?’ Her voice shook with rage and grief. ‘A young man, the same age as you, being so ill, possibly going to die?’
With a surprised, slightly gormless face, Thomas said, ‘No, it doesn’t get to me.’
Tara looked at him steadily, hoping to shame him.
‘I don’t know him well enough,’ he admitted, awkwardly, unsettled by her intensity. ‘Maybe if he was me mate, I’d be different.’
She continued to look at him. Waiting.
‘He’s not me mate,’ he protested. But without his customary crassness.
‘But you understand what I’m going through?’
Something appeared in his eyes. Not exactly compassion, just a reluctant acknowledgement that it was hard for her. It was as close as they’d been in a long time and it would have to do. He shrugged, uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry I can’t pretend to be choked up about him. I’m only being…’
‘I know,’ Tara finished, with a trace of contempt, ‘honest.’
He flicked her an uncertain look. She was in a funny mood! Just because her mate was ill. She’d want to see what it was like when your mam abandoned you!
Before they left, Tara watched Thomas put his little brown change purse into his pocket, and she was shocked at how cringy it suddenly seemed to her.
‘Lend us twenty quid, Tara,’ he coaxed.
Eddie’s new girlfriend Dawn was a skinny, sexy young thing with long, brown sinewy legs and dark, darting eyes. Tara felt like a fourteen-stone marshmallow by comparison. Anxiously she watched Thomas look from Dawn to herself and back again. Taking notes, making comparisons, finding Tara lacking. She found him staring at her bottom, spilled on either side of her like a cushion, and panic tightened her chest and sent her temperature soaring. Her earlier burst of contempt had disappeared and she was truly terrified of losing him.
She got plastered that night, so plastered that she felt better. At the club they ended up going to, she danced drunkenly with Dawn and had skittish, overblown fun. She decided she liked Dawn.
Later, as Tara and Thomas came home in the taxi, Thomas was drunk and affectionate, holding her hand and stroking her hair.
‘Why do you love me?’ Tara asked playfully.
‘Who says I love you?’ he challenged, but with a sidelong, crinkle-eyed smile that, in her drunken, hopeful state, Tara took to mean that of course he did.
‘Well, why are you with me, then?’
‘Cos you give me money, of course.’
He laughed, and she swallowed away the sting. This was nice – they were bantering, making gentle fun with each other, the way lovers did. ‘OK,’ she smiled, playing the game, ‘you’re with me because I give you money, so what does that make you?
‘A kept man,’ she elaborated, opening her eyes wide with mock horror. ‘A prostitute, even! So I must be a pimp.’
But he didn’t smile or reply with a light-hearted insult. His face went hard and thoughtful. No more repartee. Oh, God, she thought, why did it always go wrong, why did it always turn nasty? The warm, cosy mood of togetherness went into freefall.
I don’t want to do this any more, Tara thought wearily. After the terrible week, she had no more coping skills left. She was fresh out of endurance, excuses and hope.
40
‘What kind of Mass does this Father Gilligan do?’ JaneAnn asked.
Katherine went very still. What was the right answer? ‘A nice one,’ she chanced.
‘A long one?’
Was long desirable? Probably. ‘Ages. Hours.’
‘Good.’ JaneAnn gave a firm nod of her little head.
The doorbell rang and it was Sandro, in his best suit.
‘What