Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [177]
The following morning when Tara woke up she didn’t feel too bad. There was a faint buzzing in her head and she couldn’t really feel her feet on the floor but she was able to get up, shower, get dressed and organize her new slinky black dress and black wedge sandals for that evening’s party.
Then she drove to work, strangely disconnected from what she was doing. When she got in, she passed Mr Honeycomb on the stairs. How did he get that big cut on his chin? she wondered vaguely. Probably out on the piss and fell flat on his face. A fine example to be setting his staff.
With shrugs and smiles she deflected the torrent of concerned inquiries from everyone in her section. ‘Thanks,’ she mouthed at Ravi, grateful that for some reason guilt and shame didn’t seem to be a problem. She was mercifully numb.
Until she found that someone – probably Vinnie – had booked her in for a ten o’clock appointment with two irate punters. In fact, they were already there, hanging around and looking indeed irate, as advertised. Just as well she’d managed to come in, instead of spending the day lying in bed roaring for a basin, as one might have expected.
But just as Tara was welcoming them into the meeting room, it suddenly dawned on her that she was still very, very drunk. Not only that but she was actually slurring her words. ‘Mishter Forde, Mishter Ransome, pleashe take a seat.’
Her tongue had swollen up to mammoth proportions and she could hardly unpeel it from the roof of her mouth. She began to sweat with fear. ‘Yesh, I quite undershtand your complaints about the servish we’ve been providing,’ she said desperately.
Was this a dream? she wondered.
She couldn’t defend herself. She couldn’t think of the right things to say. Her central nervous system was broken, the signals that normally zinged from one nerve-ending in her brain to another were bogged down in some treacle-like substance.
The little room was way too hot.
And then she smelt it. An odour that wasn’t ever appropriate in the meeting room, and certainly not at ten fifteen in the morning.
Alcohol. She could smell alcohol. Warm and rank. Exuding from her fear-enlarged pores.
Enough, she decided, there and then. That’s enough. She’d had her mandatory, post-split-up, drinking and partying, self-destructive spree. But now it was time to try to stop.
67
The first thing Frank Butler always said to Tara when he collected her from Shannon airport was ‘When are you going back?’ But in a momentous break with tradition, when he picked up Tara and Katherine on the Wednesday before Christmas, it was actually the second thing. The first thing was, ‘I believe Fintan O’Grady has Aids.’
‘No, Dad, he hasn’t. He has cancer.’
‘Heh! Cancer me foot. They must take us for a right crowd of goms. Come on, the car is this way.’ Weaving through the throngs of people in the arrivals concourse, he demanded, ‘Do they think we never pick up a newspaper or turn on the telly?’
‘No, really, Mr Butler,’ Katherine interjected, with just the right combination of meekness and authority. ‘He hasn’t got Aids.’
This threw Frank. Katherine Casey wouldn’t lie. She was a good girl. Although he’d half noticed a different air about her. In fact, if he didn’t think it was so unlikely, brazen would be the word he’d use.
‘When are you going back?’ he barked at Tara.
‘New Year’s day.’
‘I suppose you’ll want a lift.’
‘You suppose correctly.’
Then Frank thought of something and cheered up immediately. He was a lot more sure of his facts on this one. ‘Well,’ he blustered, ‘I hear Milo O’Grady’s as thick as thieves with some Swiss divorcee, who’s making him sell the farm.’
‘She’s not Swiss!’
‘And she’s not divorced, Mr Butler.’
‘And she’s not making him sell the farm. He’s doing it of his own free will.’
‘But they are as thick as thieves, Mr Butler, if that’s any consolation.’
Frank marched on in dejected silence. Gloomily he threw their cases into the boot of the Cortina, then looked appraisingly at Tara. ‘You’re terrible scrawny.’
‘Thanks, Dad!’
‘Mind you,