Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [201]
‘Please, Tara.’
‘OK.’ The helplessness was killing.
That day Tara rang Katherine almost as many times as Joe did. When she came home from work, Katherine was dressed and fully made-up.
‘Are you going out?’ Tara asked, desperately hoping she might be meeting Joe.
‘No.’
‘Oh. Nice of you to make such an effort for me, so.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘Ha ha yourself.’
They spent a peculiar, tense evening, half watching telly and pretending the phone wasn’t ringing every thirty minutes with messages from Joe.
Tara kept looking sidelong at Katherine. The tense, expectant air around her, coupled with her perfect hair and make-up, was saying something. As Panorama ended, enlightenment descended, smooth as a lift, and suddenly Tara understood. ‘You’re waiting for him, aren’t you?’
Katherine turned a jerky head. Her eyes were frightened. ‘Hmmmm?’ she said, edgily.
‘You’re waiting in for Lorcan, aren’t you? That’s why you haven’t left the house. He doesn’t have your phone number, but he has your address and you’re afraid of being out when he calls.’
Katherine said nothing and Tara knew she was right. Seeing Katherine’s craziness tore her apart. She leapt from her seat and sat right in front of her. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, with earnest sincerity. ‘Oh, please, look at me, Katherine, please.’
Katherine slowly raised hostile eyes to her.
‘I’m going to talk sense to you,’ Tara said forcefully. ‘This Lorcan was your first love. We never forget the first one. You were very young and a bit innocent. And he’s exceptionally good-looking, which doesn’t help. I’m sure it was a big shock to just bump into him like that on Saturday night and of course you’re bound to feel a bit shaky and weird. It’s happened to us all. If I met Thomas now I’m sure I’d be upset, I’d be allowed to be upset. But only for a short time because life must go on. Especially for you, because you’ve got Joe.’
Katherine’s face flickered at the mention of Joe, then resumed its sullen expression.
‘Come on, Katherine, it was a long time ago. So move on and get over it. It’s the right thing to do. Hey, even I got over Thomas. If I can do it, anyone can!’
‘You didn’t get pregnant by Thomas,’ Katherine’s lips barely moved. Tara let the words dissolve away into silence. The shock was too great. ‘And Thomas wasn’t married,’ Katherine intoned hollowly.
‘Are you telling me…?’ Tara stumbled, as Katherine’s words hit home. ‘You got pregnant by Lorcan? And he was married? When you were nineteen?’
Katherine’s dead, hopeless eyes said it all.
‘Oh, my good God, Katherine! Why didn’t you tell us?’
Struggling to find the words – any words – Katherine looked mutely at her. How could she put a description on the horror of being young, alone and pregnant? The living hell she’d descended into? The agony of letting Lorcan go and not contacting him?
And the worst truth of all, which had taken a couple of days to dawn on her, that, because she was single and expecting a baby by a married man, she had become her mother. The mother that she’d spent her life trying to be as different from as she possibly could be.
Nineteen years of piety, neatness, ironed clothes, completed homework, punctuality and clean-living had made no difference. She was almost exactly the same age, too. Her mother had been twenty.
‘Please tell me about it.’ Tara coaxed, with terrible anxiety. ‘I know it might be hard for you.’
‘Not as hard as it was then.’ Her back teeth were clamped tightly together. ‘You’ve no idea how much I didn’t want to be pregnant. I used to lie in bed and look down at my stomach and feel like screaming. I literally used to feel like screaming my head off, Tara.’
‘Why?’ Tara could hardly speak.
‘Because somewhere in there, so tiny that I couldn’t see it, was the ruination of my life. A little alien was growing and getting bigger inside me. I’d never felt