Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [151]
This made her horribly uncomfortable, and she suddenly understood how Tara had felt, being told to leave Thomas.
‘But why did you ask me to, if you were only going to change your mind?’ she mumbled.
‘I’ve cancer, dear. I can do whatever I like.’ Fintan’s tone changed to weariness. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time, Katherine. It really did. I thought that if you and Tara lived life to the full, I’d be OK. Liv tells me I was going through the third phase of response to bad news – bargaining.’
‘What’s the first and second?’ Tara asked.
‘Denial and depression.’
‘And where are you now?’
‘Mired in phase four.’
‘Which is?’
‘Self-pity. Isn’t it obvious?’
‘It’s not self-pity, actually.’ Katherine, too, had been informed by Liv. ‘It’s anger.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Is there a phase five?’ Tara asked, warily. What could they expect next?
‘Yup. Acceptance, apparently. But I’ll be dead by then.’
Tara opened her mouth to begin an automatic clamour of denial, but Fintan stopped her. ‘Please don’t. Being patronized is so supremely irritating. Just look at me, still with my kiwi-neck despite superhuman, baldy-bastard doses of chemo. I’m a walking tumour, so what am I to think?’ He turned to Katherine, and said, half apologetically, ‘Oh, go on. Go out with him, have fun, enjoy yourself.’
She wavered, reluctant to admit openly that she was seeing Joe Roth because she actually wanted to. Desperate to still involve Fintan, she said, ‘If it all works out with Joe I’ll bring him to see you.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘Well, er, I’d better go,’ Katherine said. ‘If not I’ll be late.’
She made for the tube station, power-walking in her four-and-a-half-inch heels, trying to go fast enough to shake off the anger and confusion that clung to her.
Tara was left alone with Fintan. She was horribly uncomfortable with him, and so was Sandro, judging from the way he avoided coming into the front room. Once Fintan’s life had been a vessel that overflowed with sweet joy. Now it had become a small, sour, worthless thing. She was dreading him mentioning Thomas. Though he’d absolved Katherine – even if the nasty way he’d done it hadn’t seemed like absolution – Tara didn’t know whether she, too, was off the hook. Instead, perhaps everything was riding on her now and she couldn’t bring herself to ask. ‘Should you be drinking that?’ She nodded at the beer can on the table.
‘Why? Do you want it? Isn’t it a bit early in the day for you?’
‘I might ask you the same question.’
‘Ah, but I’ve cancer.’
Tara sighed inwardly. ‘All the more reason.’ She plucked up her courage to ask him, ‘Would you like us to do a visualization together?’
‘A what?’
‘A visualization. From the book. You know where we visualize you being filled with,’ at his savagely amused expression, she faltered, ‘goodness and purity and light and, ah, all that.’
‘How’s Thomas?’ he threw at her. The question she’d been dreading.
‘Um, I had a chat with him, and I suspect it’s no-go on the marriage front and I haven’t forgotten what you said about leaving him and, er, it’s on my mind, I’m thinking about what you said, you know –’
To her surprise he interrupted, repeating what he’d said to Katherine earlier. ‘Don’t bother on my account, dear.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I couldn’t give a flying fuck what you do. Spend the rest of your life with him, if you want.’
‘You don’t want me to leave him?’
‘No, Tara. I couldn’t give a fiddler’s. Marry him or don’t marry him. Stay with him, be a doormat, just like you are now. It’s your life, not mine, so do what you like with it. Waste it – that’s what everyone else does.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Life,’ Fintan said, heavily, ‘is wasted on the living.’
‘So I’m in the clear?’ Tara asked, tentatively.
‘Free to go now and all that.’
‘Well, er, that’s good, then.’ She managed a smile. ‘I didn’t know whether it was just Katherine that you’d changed your mind about. But, well… thanks, you know.’
She waited for the burden to roll away from her, she waited to feel free, soaring, liberated. Everything was all right. She could stay with Thomas. Fintan