Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [38]
‘An oul’ what?’
‘An oul’ eejit.’ Tara laughed.
‘So how do you manage? Contact lenses?’
‘Yip,’ said Tara.
‘How about you?’ Fintan asked Katherine. ‘How’s your eyesight?’
‘Twenty-twenty,’ she said.
Everyone erupted into laughter, even Katherine.
‘Yours would be,’ wheezed Tara. ‘Little Miss Perfect.’
‘Sometimes I even make myself sick,’ Katherine agreed, her face contorted with mirth.
‘Bumlickers Anonymous,’ Tara advised. ‘That’s where you need to be going.’
‘Ouch, ouch,’ Fintan complained, putting his hand beneath his ear. ‘Oh, damn it, ouch. My glands! I’ve an awful pain in my neck.’
‘That’s no way to talk about Sandro,’ Tara said.
‘Ah, no, it’s not funny. My neck, my stomach, I’m a crock! That bloody E-coli. I was grand all day, thought I’d shaken it.’
Katherine opened her mouth to scold, then shut it again when she saw the worried look that Sandro gave Fintan.
Fintan turned to Tara. ‘How are you this weather? What ails you today?’
‘Malnutrition,’ Tara sighed. ‘I’m at the stage where your stomach bloats up from no food. I’ve a very advanced form of the disease, where my thighs and bum and the rest of me has blown up too.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Katherine said smoothly, ‘are we ringing for pizzas?’
‘Food?’ Fintan said airily. ‘Never touch the stuff. Us fashion types never eat.’
‘But you have to have something.’
‘I couldn’t!’ Fintan shrieked, pawing his stomach. ‘I had an Anadin last Tuesday and I put on a gram. I’m almost four stone now. That’s what I have to listen to every day at work, you know,’ he said gloomily. ‘They’d make you boke. OK, give me a large Four Seasons with extra cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, pepperoni, ham…’ Everyone waited for him to say, ‘Feck it, make it two large Four Seasons, and be done with it!’ Like he always did. But he didn’t, and when Katherine reminded him, he said, ‘I’m not that hungry. One will do.’
‘A large deep-dish Quattro Formaggio for me,’ Sandro said firmly. He was one of those whippety little men who ate like a pig, and never put on weight.
‘I’m so hungry I could eat the hind leg of the Lamb of God,’ Tara said. ‘But I can’t have anything, I’m on a diet.
‘You know,’ she continued, ‘when I’m on a diet I eat as much as I usually do, the difference is that I think about food incessantly. Although I think about food incessantly, anyway. I’m always hungry. Stand on my toe and my mouth opens!’ Her voice began to increase in pitch. ‘When I’m nervous I want to eat. When I’m excited I want to eat. When I’m worried I want to eat. Even when I feel sick, the only thing that settles my stomach is food. My life is a NIGHTMARE.’ She finished on a shrill note, her words reverberating into sympathetic silence.
Then Katherine said, ‘So, the usual, then?’
‘How about some extra garlic bread with cheese?’ Tara suggested.
Katherine made the phone call, then all four of them settled down to watch The Ambassador.
‘This is great,’ Fintan observed, when the first lot of ads came on. ‘Good, clean, old-fashioned fun. Just like the old days.’
‘I really shouldn’t have ordered all that food,’ Tara interrupted, in a low voice, talking to herself. ‘I really shouldn’t.’ Her voice was getting louder. ‘I wish I hadn’t. Oh, God, I really wish I hadn’t.’
‘You don’t have to eat it,’ Katherine offered half-heartedly.
‘I have no choice,’ Tara hooted, hysteria putting in an appearance. ‘I have no bloody choice. Now that I’ve ordered it I won’t be able to stop myself from eating it. I haven’t an iota of willpower. But my entire future depends on it. Oh, my God.’ She choked. ‘What’s going to become of me?’
With that she burst into face-in-hands, shoulder-shuddering tears.
The pizza-delivery boy chose this moment to arrive, so while Tara was comforted by Katherine and Sandro, Fintan went down and dealt with pizzas and their payment. He couldn’t resist going to the gate to have one last quick look for his Viking. But Lorcan was long gone.
As soon as it had started to rain, he’d hurried home. Lorcan was always reluctant to be out when it was drizzling because, despite the beauty and silkiness