Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [123]
‘Yeah, right!’
‘I am! You know I couldn’t.’
‘Couldn’t what? Give the glad eye to some lovely man who fancies you anyway? Try contemplating leaving a two-year relationship and being on your own at thirty-goddamn-one. That’s paralysing. Anyway, exactly why won’t you approach this Joe?’
Before Katherine got a chance to refuse to answer, Tara exhaled with unexpected fury. Suddenly she knew exactly what needed to be said. ‘I’ll be frank, Katherine,’ she heard herself saying, and fixed Katherine with a burning look. ‘I didn’t want to say it, but it needs to be said. Fintan is right about you. You’d want to get involved. With life, as well as with a man.’ She couldn’t stop herself now. Too much pent-up emotion slopped over as she took a big, risky, angry breath, ‘The way you live is ridiculous, with your knickers and your control and your clean flat and your no boyfriends. Fintan’s not off the wall at all, he’s spot on with you! He loves you and wants you to be happy!’
As Katherine’s face turned thunderous, Tara gathered speed and volume. ‘Whatever happened that time in Limerick, you can’t use that as an excuse for ever, not that I know what it was. I’m your best friend and I haven’t a clue.’
Katherine finally found her voice. ‘Me?’ she hooted, in outrage. ‘Spot on with me? You cow. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I will now. Fintan has your best interests at heart. And you know you should leave Thomas, that’s why you’re so angry with Fintan –’
‘That is not why I’m angry with him –’
‘And you say the way I live is ridiculous! What about you?’ Katherine demanded, her cheekbones liver-coloured. ‘You’d rather be with someone as awful as Thomas than be without a man. I mean, that’s so pathetic. And look at how fat you’ve got.’
Tara flinched, and so, fathoms deep, did Katherine, but she rushed on, unstoppable as a runaway train. ‘You overeat because he makes you miserable. And then you have the nerve to say Fintan’s trying to destroy your life when anyone can see he’s trying to help you, because he loves you.’
‘How could he love me?’ Torrents of rage from the past difficult weeks rushed to the surface. ‘When he’s asking me to leave the man I love.’
‘I can’t think of anything nicer than walking out on Thomas.’ Katherine radiated hot, sour bile. ‘I’m telling you I’d pay to see the expression on his clob, I really would.’
‘Why are you so mean about him?’ Tara shrieked, through clenched teeth.
‘Does he still have his little brown change purse?’ Katherine asked in contempt.
‘Why wouldn’t he?’
‘Well, that’ll do for a start.’
‘I’m going.’ Tara snatched up her car keys. ‘I’m not staying here to be called names and have my boyfriend insulted.’
‘What names did I call you?’
‘You called me a cow.’ Then Tara’s voice wobbled. ‘And you called me fat.’
‘You started it,’ Katherine shouted after her. ‘Going on about my knickers.’
But Tara was gone, swept from the pub on a tide of hatred for Katherine, while Katherine remained, shaking. What was happening? They should be pulling together at this awful time. Why were they all turning against each other? When they’d always been the best of friends?
45
Joe Roth thought he was hallucinating. On Thursday morning he’d come into work as usual and Katherine ‘Sexual Harassment’ Casey had smiled at him. Smiled. At him. And it didn’t seem to be motivated by malice either. Not as a prelude to telling him she’d lost his expenses claim or that she’d had orders from on high to calculate his redundancy package. No, she just flashed her little pearly teeth, twinkled her normally solemn grey eyes, let the look linger a fraction too long, and said – pleasantly! – ‘Good morning, Joe.’
What was going on? It was about ten days since she’d wept in front of him and told him she’d had bad news, but immediately afterwards she’d resumed her customary, distant, offhand manner. This morning’s friendliness was a bolt from the blue.
And, as she undulated to her desk, he noticed something different about the way she