Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [60]
But this night was different. Tara bulldozed through the aisles, like an Iraqi tank invading Kuwait, hidebound by none of her usual reticence. Instead it was Access All Areas. With one sweeping gesture she tipped a large part of a shelf of crisps into her trolley. Without an atom of guilt she threw in a couple of fat-bastard sandwiches for the journey home.
But it was hard not to make a start on what she was flinging into the trolley. Eventually, hoping not too many people were looking, she broke open a bag of Monster Munch. Then another. Then a pork pie. And then she reached the biscuits.
Unable to stop herself, she picked up a packet of Boasters and looked at it. Maybe I shouldn’t, she thought. But an evil little voice suggested, Says who?
She hovered on the brink, trembling with desire and possibility. Then, with a rumbling in her ears, a tidal wave of adrenaline whooshed through her, carrying along everything in its path, and she was tearing open the packet with shaking fingers.
It was like a dogfight, the hand-to-mouth action a blur, as crumbs, chocolate chips, stray nuts and the torn wrapper went flying. She was transported, almost ecstatic, though she barely tasted anything she put in her mouth – it wasn’t there long enough for her taste-buds to get a grip on it. Strictly through-traffic only.
But, so quickly, it was all over. Sanity returned, and with it came shame. Although her acute anxiety and hunger had been sated, she felt wretched. She slunk to the checkout, horribly ashamed of the empty packaging in her trolley, mortified as the girl bipped it over the electronic reader. But if she’d tried to dispose of the evidence by hiding the wrappers, she might have been done for shoplifting. She was just the type who’d be caught.
What had she been thinking of? she wondered miserably. Had she gone mad? A whole day’s attempted starvation wiped out in a ten-minute frenzy. Look at the amount of saturated fat she’d just consumed. What about her diet? What about her good intentions? All her hard work? Hadn’t she nearly gone to a step class that day, and was all that effort to come to naught?
She found the young man staring at her again, and she no longer thought he fancied her. Then she remembered Thomas. And terror arrived.
She’d shouted at Thomas, and she’d broken her diet. She was not just fat, but a termagant as well. What had she done? Things were way too delicate to chance telling Thomas he looked like a goldfish. Shaking with fear and sugar-overload, Tara drove home. She had so many additives in her bloodstream that if she’d gone apeshit with a shotgun in a public place there wasn’t a jury in the land who’d have convicted her.
Thomas was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking heavily, Beryl crouching beside him in her basket. He looked up with anxiety as Tara came in. ‘Hello,’ he said, with a sweet, nervous little smile.
‘I’m sorry I shouted at you.’ She prostrated herself, so conditioned to him having all the power that when it fell into her hands she assumed it was a mistake and returned it immediately to its rightful owner, as if it was a wallet she’d found in the street. ‘If you’re furious with me I don’t blame you. I’m extremely sorry, and you have my word that I’m starting a very strict diet tomorrow.’
With each contrite word, Thomas’s subdued air evaporated and his swaggery arrogance returned. His chest visibly expanded, and his meek, hangdog face became just a distant memory. By the time Tara told him about Fintan’s kiwi-neck, Thomas was once more sure enough of himself to say, ‘With all his carry-on, he’s lucky it’s just his neck that’s giving him grief.’
22
Lorcan Larkin was an actor. It was what he purported to do for a living, as well as how he conducted his private life.
In his twenties and early thirties he’d been extremely successful in Ireland, the equivalent to a superstar. He’d set the stage ablaze in The Playboy of the Western World and Juno