Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [18]
‘I know.’
That’s a thousand quid a year. Each. Think what we could buy with that, Tara, Tara said in her head.
‘That’s a thousand quid a year. Each.’ Thomas said. ‘Think what we could buy with that, Tara.’ And it’s OK for you. You’re a computer analyst. You earn twice as much as me.
‘And it’s OK for me,’ she said, cheekily. ‘I’m a computer analyst. I earn twice as much as you.’
There was a moment’s edgy pause, then Thomas grinned ruefully.
In a sombre documentary voiceover, Tara intoned, ‘He was the meanest man I had ever met.’
‘Like I’ve any bludeh choice!’ Thomas declared hotly.
All his friends from college had landed fabulously well-paid jobs, where their quarterly bonuses were often more than Thomas’s annual salary. But as Thomas was too blunt to charm prospective employers in industry, he’d ended up becoming a geography teacher in a west London comprehensive. He worked very hard, got paid a pittance and his bitterness was legendary. But not as legendary as his stinginess. ‘I should get paid as much as a government minister because teaching kids is one of the most valuable jobs anyone can do,’ he often said. (‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten my wallet, you’ll have to pay,’ was another regular.) People spoke of him as having short arms and deep pockets, of him having a padlock on his wallet, of him being first out of the taxi and last to the bar, of him pinching a penny till it begged for mercy.
But he didn’t do himself any favours. Instead of at least pretending to be generous, he compounded his reputation as a tight-fisted leech by not letting his change rattle around in his trouser pockets like normal people did. Instead he kept it in a purse. A little brown plastic old-ladies’ purse that snapped closed at the top. Katherine had once wrestled it out of his hand and managed to open it before Thomas tore it back from her. She’d insisted that a moth had flown out.
‘I hate us being skint, Tara,’ Thomas whined. ‘You won’t stop spending and I’ve nowt to spend. The fags’ll have to go.’
‘The start of the month is always the best time to quit smoking,’ Tara humoured him.
‘Happen you’re right.’
‘And we’ve missed the start of October. So we’ll both give up on the first of November.’
‘You’re on!’
Then they both promptly forgot about it.
‘Time for bed.’ Thomas heaved himself out of the couch, where he was slumped surrounded by aluminium. ‘Come on, birthday girl, I’ve a present for you.’
Tara’s face lit up. Until Thomas glanced down at his crotch. Oh, that kind of present.
Wistfully she remembered her birthday two years ago. She’d been going out with Thomas less than a month and because it was her twenty-ninth birthday he’d given her twenty-nine presents. Granted some of them had been tiny – one had just been a box of multicoloured matches. And more of them had been crap – like the jar of pink sparkly nail varnish and the earrings that infected her ears. But the time and thought and effort he’d put into buying each thing and wrapping them individually had touched her to the heart.
She sighed. The first flush couldn’t last for ever. Everyone knew that. In the darkness she wrapped her arms around him and pressed herself against his snuggly warmth, a blissful hum in her veins. She was safe and loved, in bed with her man.
7
Even though the following day was a Saturday, Katherine had to go to work. Before she left she rang her grandmother because it was her ninety-first birthday. She was reluctant to make the call. It was no reflection on the birthday girl – Katherine loved her granny. But as she dialled the number and waited for it to ring in Knockavoy, she prayed, as she always did, that her mother, Delia, wouldn’t answer the phone.
‘Hello,’ Delia’s breathless voice said.
Katherine felt the familiar surge of irritation. ‘Hello, Mam,’ she managed.
‘Katherine,’ Delia gasped. ‘As I live and breathe! I was talking about you not five minutes ago. Wasn’t I, Agnes?’
‘No,’ Katherine faintly heard her granny say. ‘Indeed’n you were not. Unless ‘twas to yourself you were talking, and if you were, it wouldn