Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [130]
‘Righty-ho, Tara. Fintan is bonkers. Ignore him.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘I know.’ Ravi had a moment of inspiration. ‘You could lie to Fintan. Tell him you’ve left Thomas, when you haven’t.’
‘I’ve thought of it. But so has he. He said he’ll know if I’m lying. He said he’ll do spot-checks and call on Thomas’s flat unexpectedly like the TV-licensing people. He said he’ll even get a van with surveillance equipment.’
‘Bugger.’ Ravi sucked his teeth thoughtfully. ‘I know! How about if you leave Thomas, tell Fintan, wait for him to get better, then go back to Thomas?’
‘But what if Thomas didn’t wait for me?’
‘Then it wasn’t much of a love affair to begin with,’ Ravi said cheerfully. Christ, even he could see that!
Tara had a dull, ominous ache in her stomach. Ravi was saying all the wrong things. Was there no one to back her up?
‘If this was a film,’ she said wearily, ‘of course I’d leave Thomas. It’d be so clear. But it’s not clear at all. I love Fintan and I badly, badly want him to get well, and if he doesn’t… But, you see, I love Thomas too.’
‘Maybe you don’t have to leave Thomas.’ Ravi began another suggestion.
‘You’re right,’ Tara said, aggressively. ‘I don’t have to.’
‘I mean, there’s another way. Why don’t you ask him to marry you, as Fintan suggested? If Thomas says yes, then you’re home and dry.’
Tara shrugged noncommittally.
‘Just ask Thomas what his intentions are.’
But she didn’t want to. She suspected she knew what his intentions were. She had a feeling he had no intentions. Since the night after her birthday she’d had little doubt that that was the case. But until she knew for sure, then it wasn’t true.
Yet she couldn’t help feeling that a crisis was moving inexorably closer to her. That she was holding on to this relationship like someone holding on with their fingernails to the side of a cliff. It would be so easy to let go, to lose her grip, to fall. In despair she put her face in her hands. ‘I can’t leave him, Ravi,’ she whispered. ‘This has got to work.’
‘But why?’ Ravi panicked. Girlies crying alarmed him unutterably. Desperately he sought to perk her up. ‘So what if it doesn’t work?’ he consoled. ‘He makes you bloody miserable, Tara.’
As Tara peeped out an aghast face, Ravi suddenly knew the perfect thing to say. ‘Remember,’ he coaxed, ‘how happy you were with Alasdair.’
Alasdair! Alasdair. As Ravi swelled with pride at his quick-thinking, out-of-nowhere memories zoomed at Tara. She and Alasdair. Jesus Christ.
‘Alasdair was a bloody nice bloke,’ Ravi said warmly.
‘Then he did a runner and married some tart.’ Tara’s jaw was clenched.
‘He told you you were a top girl. He told me you were a top girl. I had to start avoiding him whenever he came to our work dos.’
‘Then he did a runner and married some tart,’ Tara repeated, tonelessly.
‘At least he came to our work dos. Unlike some.’
‘Then he did a runner and married some tart.’
‘You never bothered with all that diet stuff when you were going out with Alasdair.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You didn’t. You ate out all the time. Don’t you remember? Every Monday morning you tried to make me cry by telling me which famous restaurant you’d gone to with Alasdair for Sunday lunch?’
‘Then he did a runner and married some tart,’ Tara intoned.
But she was catapulted into the past. A shimmering, golden past. Her time with Alasdair seemed like a faraway field drenched in glorious sunshine, while where she stood now was shrouded in iron cloud. OK, so he did a runner and married some tart, but hadn’t they had a blast? Compared to the battlefield of living with Thomas? Alasdair would have given her anything she wanted, anything. Before he did a runner and married some tart. But that was then and this is now. A bird in the hand is worth two birds who do a runner and marry some tart. Alasdair was long gone and Thomas was still present.
‘Ravi, if you were trying to help, I’m afraid you haven’t.’
‘I’m a boy,’ he said miserably. ‘It was never going to work.’
‘Look, it’s obvious what you should do,’ an irate voice interrupted.
Tara and