Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [72]
She longed for some carbohydrate to calm it all down. Something to fill up that liquid hollowness. She felt like her stomach was a great banqueting hall, with forty-foot-high ceilings. Or an enormous conference centre that could hold three thousand delegates. Huge and echoey, cavernous and empty, empty, empty. But she was fired with willpower and wouldn’t give in. Not even when Sleepy Steve did a doughnut run to oil the wheels of the think-tank.
She rushed to the smoking room the minute the meeting was adjourned. ‘God bless these babies.’ Tara waved her pack of cigarettes at the small cluster of diehards in the tiny smoke-filled chamber. ‘Think of how huge I’d be if Nick O’Teen hadn’t kept a lid on the great hunger over the years. The fire brigade would have to cut me out of my house with a chainsaw.’
In the hour before lunch, whenever someone passed Tara’s desk, they broke off a couple of her grapes and popped them in their mouths.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ravi saw her distressed face.
‘My grapes,’ she complained. ‘Everyone thinks they’re fair game. But they’re not. They’re my lunch. I mean, I don’t go up to you and just help myself to one of your sandwiches.’
‘You do,’ he gently reminded her.
‘Well, maybe I do,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m different. Normal people don’t go around eating other people’s lunches uninvited.’
At one o’clock Ravi approached Tara. ‘How’s about you and me strolling up to Hammersmith? Doing some aimless wandering around the shops, maybe partaking of a scratch-card or two?’ he suggested suavely.
They often did this when Ravi didn’t go to the gym.
‘No, thanks.’ Tara whipped out her wool and needles. ‘I’m going to knit my hunger away!’
He stared in amazement. ‘What’s that?’
‘A jumper for Thomas.’
‘I hope he knows how lucky he is.’
‘Don’t worry. He will.’
Ravi lingered, reluctant to leave without her. ‘How about I fetch you some more fruit from the shops?’
‘Don’t bother, Ravi,’ she said. ‘The fruit is just making me hungrier. I suspect utter starvation is the only way, because if I eat a little bit the floodgates open and I want more and more.’
‘I don’t know why you do this to yourself,’ Ravi said.
Tara looked scornfully at him. ‘Blind, are you?’
‘I think you’re a top girl,’ Ravi said.
‘No you don’t. Now go away, I’ve to knit myself a happy relationship.’
‘Aw, please, Tara,’ he wheedled. ‘It’s no good going around the shops without you.’
She indicated her knitting.
‘We can stand in the newsagent’s and read the magazines,’ he tempted.
She shook her head.
‘They might have a new lipstick in Boots that really doesn’t come off,’ he said, wickedly. ‘It could be just in.’
‘Do your Elvis impersonation,’ she conceded, ‘and I’ll think about it.’
‘I’m taking requests.’
‘ “Hound Dog”.’
Ravi shook a lock of hair over his forehead, curled his lip, held up his arms and did some serious hip action. ‘ “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,” ’ he began.
‘You see!’ Tara yelled. ‘I knew you didn’t fancy me.’
Tara survived the trip to Hammersmith, with all its temptations, without breaking out. First they went into Marks and Spencer’s and half-heartedly looked around, Ravi checking to see if any new lines in cakes or buns had been introduced since that morning. Tara bought three pairs of stomach-flattening tights because she wanted to leave with something. Then they went to Boots where Ravi checked out their sandwiches and Tara looked at all the lipsticks that claimed to be virtually irremovable, but which she knew through bitter experience were very much the reverse. Unable to muster much enthusiasm she purchased some face capsules.
‘Thalidomide?’ Ravi said in alarm.
‘Biomide,’ she corrected him.
Next they went into the newsagent’s where Ravi flicked through Top Gear and Tara read Slimming. For a grand finale they bought a scratch-card each. Ravi passed her a twopence piece and they flaked away aluminium ink in companionable silence.