Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [28]
A face appeared at the kitchen window and she jumped guiltily out of her skin. Until she realized it was Beryl, her green eyes contemptuous and condemnatory in her black little face. Tara stuck two fingers up at her, then turned her head from the window and back to her toast. Until she went to put on two more pieces and found there was no bread left.
Oh, God! She’d finished the sliced pan! Thomas would notice, he’d wonder where it had all gone. She had a moment of panicky fear before she calmed down. What’s the problem? she asked herself. You’re being silly. You can simply go out and buy another, under the guise of buying the Sunday papers. If the Pakistani grocery wasn’t open yet – although she’d never known it not to be, day or night, as they slaved to make a living – then she’d go to the twenty-four-hour garage. She quietly got dressed, desperate not to wake Thomas, then went out into the damp misty morning, watched suspiciously by Beryl. She wouldn’t put it past that bloody cat to tell on her.
The grocery shop wasn’t open so Tara went to the garage and bought bread and newspapers. She also found herself buying three doughnuts – a chocolate one and two custard ones, how she loved custard – which she ate on the deliberately slow walk back, disposing of the wrapping in a dustbin in someone else’s front garden. Vigorously brushing telltale crumbs away, running her tongue around her teeth to dispose of any lingering evidence, she braced herself for a return to the flat.
Thomas still wasn’t up, which meant she was free to eat more if she wanted. But the frenzy had passed. I’m only eating like this because of my hangover, Tara soothed herself, lighting a cigarette. I’ll be starting the diet proper tomorrow, but I’m going to try hard for the rest of today also. She sat at the kitchen table, smoking and trying to read the paper. Wasn’t it dreadful to wake up too early on a cold, damp Sunday morning in October? she asked herself. She supposed she could go back to bed with the paper, but she was afraid of waking Thomas. With that she finally let herself see what was in the sack of doom on her back. It was what he’d said to her last night.
Instantly she felt another pang, of something like hunger trying to fight its way through the food and emerging as nausea.
With a firmness born of terrible fear, she spoke common sense to herself. So what if he didn’t want her to get pregnant? She didn’t want to get pregnant either – the mere thought! She and Thomas had had a meaningless, hypothetical discussion. Big banana.
This was nothing like the Alasdair situation. She was living with Thomas. And it was he, not she, who’d suggested she move in with him. Proof positive that he loved her – even if she’d suspected his eyes had lit up with pound signs rather than the light of love.
She’d played it so safe for the past two years, never putting pressure on Thomas, never even mentioning marriage, that things couldn’t fall apart, the way they had with Alasdair. If she continued to play the waiting game as well as she already had, it would all come right in the end. There was no need for her to be worried, he loved her and this one would work. Lightning didn’t strike twice.
She rang her mother because she wanted to talk to someone who loved her, but instead she got her father.
‘Your mother isn’t in,’ he said, grumpy as ever.
‘Where is she at this hour of the morning?’ Tara asked.
‘Where do you think, you pagan?’ he replied.
Still desperate for comfort, she rang Katherine. No fear she’d be at Mass. ‘Sorry,’ she apologized. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Katherine. ‘I’ve to go to work anyway.’
‘On a Sunday? You advertising whizz-kids.’
‘End-of-year accounts, it wouldn’t usually happen.’
‘I feel terrible,’ Tara said.
‘Vitamin C and a bracing walk.’
‘I’m eating Disprin like they’re Smarties, in fact I wish they were Smarties. But anyway, I’m not talking about my hangover, mammoth though it is.’
‘What is it, so?’
‘Not now, I don’t want to make you late for work.