Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [171]
She didn’t have the same bounce-back resilience that she used to have. She’d had her last chance and blown it.
The thought of going back to Thomas was dangerously seductive. Now that they were sundered, he didn’t seem so bad. His tetchiness didn’t look like a high price to pay for companionship. Though they’d had their squabbles, they knew each other very well. There was a huge comfort in that bickery intimacy. Better someone to disagree with than no one at all. Also, when she could bear to be honest, she admitted that though she missed Thomas, she also missed the validation of being one half of a couple. Alone, she felt naked and failed.
Yet, despite her loneliness, she had flashes of a deep-down conviction that to go back to Thomas would be wrong. Not unless he’d changed fundamentally. And she was desperate to avoid a repeat of the way she’d humiliated herself with Alasdair. Please, God, don’t let me ring Thomas, she prayed, a thousand times a day. Please, God, give me strength. Please, God, make him ring me. Make him tell me he’s a changed man.
Katherine was in the kitchen making coffee for herself and Joe. ‘Hi,’ she twinkled. She’d been getting almost no sleep but was wide, wide awake. Super-alert, apart from the odd lapse into languid dreaminess.
She looked different. Everyone noticed it. The other day at work, when a tight little bottom had wriggled past his glass office, Fred Franklin had nudged Myles and said, ‘Nice arse. If you can get it.’
Then Fred had frozen. ‘Whose arse is it? Don’t tell me it’s Icequeen’s? Oh, bloody hell, it is! How could I be polite about that?’
Back in the kitchen Tara managed a tight smile at Katherine.
‘Tara,’ Katherine said, slowly.
‘What?’
‘This.’ Katherine put her finger inside Tara’s waistband and pulled. A big gap appeared.
‘Oh.’ Tara gazed down in amazement.
‘Are you eating anything!’
‘This always happens. You split up with your fella, you can’t eat a thing, you get lovely and skinny and you meet another man. It’s Mother Nature’s consolation prize.’ Tara smiled faintly.
‘But, Tara, you must eat.’
‘I couldn’t be bothered.’
‘Don’t give in to it,’ Katherine said stoutly. ‘He wasn’t worth it.’
‘He wasn’t all bad,’ Tara said. ‘He was nice sometimes.’
‘Give me one example.’
Tara thought for a second. ‘He always filled out my forms for me. Like my car insurance and tax. He knew how much I hated doing it.’
‘It was the least he could do, seeing as you drove him everywhere. Give me another.’
‘He was gentlemanly. Opened doors for me, pulled out chairs.’
‘Old-fashioned sexist.’
Tara sighed heavily. ‘OK, he’s great with his hands. When my silver chain got all tangled up he spent hours unknotting it without breaking it. I’d never have had the patience.’
Katherine harrumphed, not quite sure how to sneer at Thomas for his handymanism.
‘And we smoked together, we tried to give up together, we failed together.’ Tara sighed wistfully. ‘He used to light my cigarettes, I used to light his. It was very companionable, and I never ran out of fags because he had some when I didn’t.’
‘You mean he let you have them for free?’
‘Obviously I had to pay.’ Tara attempted a wan smile. ‘But it still meant that I wasn’t ever deprived of them.’
‘Cheer up, you’re well shot of him. Let’s face it, it was hardly the world’s greatest love affair,’ Katherine scorned.
She was right, Tara considered. It was neither tragic nor romantic enough. But it had been her love affair. ‘Look,’ Tara bowed her head, ‘I know he was a bully and I know he was a meanie and I agree with you that I’m probably better off without him. But when people get a gangrenous limb amputated, it still itches, you know.’
Katherine was pleased that Tara had compared Thomas to a gangrenous limb. Obviously it was a terrible slight on a gangrenous limb, but it was progress.
‘Thanks for last night, by the way,’ Tara muttered.
‘It’s OK. Er, sorry I ripped the jumper.’
‘You were right to. I was only fooling myself.’
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