Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [42]
‘And you,’ she shrieked, turning her attention to Benjy, who’d been sampling the remains of a tray of canapés, leave my food alone and get the fuck out!’ Benjy paused, a mini-quiche the size of a tenpence piece hovering three inches from his mouth. Should he risk it? Perhaps not, he thought, on reflection. Amy wasn’t in her right mind, there was no knowing what she might do.
‘Sure, if that’s what you want.’ Lorcan gave her a huge, white-toothed smile. He was very angry, but he was damned if he was going to show it.
‘Will we be off?’ he asked Benjy, making it sound as if he was choosing to leave. Benjy stared like a rabbit at Lorcan, not knowing the right answer. He tried a very tentative nod. Luckily that was the correct response.
‘Come on,’ said Lorcan, and marched through the room, grinding torn streamers into the carpet, kicking withered-looking balloons out of the way, Benjy scurrying behind him.
Of course, a few hours later Amy had changed her mind and when Lorcan woke up on Saturday morning his answering-machine was full of ever-more-desperate messages from her.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Please call me.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Please, please call me!’
‘Listen to this,’ he said scornfully to Benjy, who’d slept on the couch. ‘Grovel, girl, grovel!’
Benjy, who’d spent the night two feet from the phone and answering-machine, had already heard every one of Amy’s messages. ‘Are you going to call her?’ he asked, uncomfortable with the agony in Amy’s voice.
Lorcan looked as disgusted as if Benjy had just asked him to eat his own spleen. ‘Ring her? After what she did to me?’
‘It was her birthday,’ Benjy pointed out, in a small voice. ‘You were very late.’
‘Whose goddamn side are you on?’ Lorcan asked coldly, and Benjy shut up.
The messages continued over the next thirty-six hours and, on Sunday night, while Lorcan deep-conditioned his hair, Amy rang repeatedly. Sometimes she hung up and sometimes she left a message. ‘If you’re there, please pick up the phone,’ she begged, trying to tamp down her hysteria. ‘You must have got my messages by now. And if you haven’t, where are you?’
Lorcan heard the terror in her voice and he nodded in grim satisfaction. That would teach her to shout at him in front of everyone. To attack him and tell him it was over. To upset him so much that he couldn’t let Benjy go home until Sunday afternoon.
Over the weekend his anger had become even more defensive and his position as the wronged party got further and further entrenched. By the time he went to bed on Sunday night he felt like the most maligned person in the universe. Wrapped in a pink towel and a cocoon of sanctimonious self-righteousness, he slept deeply.
But now he was awake.
He looked at his alarm clock: it was ten past four. What had woken him? It certainly wasn’t the guilty whisperings of his conscience. Because he hadn’t got one.
As he lay in the dark, holding on to his penis, he was surprised to hear his doorbell ring. It was then that he realized it had already rung a few minutes before. That was what had woken him up.
Who could it be? Let’s see, he thought sarcastically, might it be Amy? Or on the other hand, of course, it might be Amy. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had arrived in person in the middle of the night, deranged and demented from him refusing to take her calls. Well, she could wait, Lorcan decided. Why should he put her out of her misery? She’d told him she never wanted to see him again. She’d hurt him.
But the doorbell rang again and Lorcan began to think about answering it. She was obviously sorry and maybe she’d suffered enough. When it rang once more he got