Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [73]
‘How long have we been gone?’ Tara asked.
‘Forty-five minutes.’
‘S’pose we’d better go back,’ Tara said.
‘S’pose.’
After lunch, back in the office, as conversations drifted over to her, everyone seemed to be talking about food.
Vinnie described the new project to Evelyn as ‘a Marathon task’, and Tara instantly thought of peanuts, caramel and thick milk chocolate.
‘Don’t be chicken,’ Evelyn gently teased, and Tara almost fainted at the idea of a big bucket of KFC.
Ravi was on the phone to Danielle, his girlfriend. ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it,’ he advised. What kind of cake, Tara wondered dreamily. Moist, sticky banana cake? Dark, rich chocolate fudge cake? Sweet, delicious carrot cake? Dense and heavy Dundee cake?
‘Join the club,’ Ravi laughed affectionately into the mouthpiece, as Tara visualized tearing off the yellow wrapper and the gold foil and biting through the thick chocolate and the biscuit underneath. God, this was torture.
‘… cast your bread upon the waters…’ drifted over to Tara, from yet another conversation. What kind of bread? Ciabatta? Focaccia? Baguette? Batch loaf? But did anyone other than Bible-bashers talk about casting bread upon the waters? Was she hearing things? Hallucinating from hunger?
Just then a dark, elegant woman appeared at the office door. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Pearl from Technical Support. I heard I could buy an orange here.’
Everyone turned and looked at Tara.
‘You heard wrong,’ she said bluntly.
‘Sorry,’ said Pearl from Technical Support, edging back to the door. She suspected she’d put her foot in it.
‘Oranges put up too much of a fight,’ Tara explained. ‘Juice everywhere except in the orange. I can do you a satsuma, though. Far more convenient.’
After work Tara did a step class, and was delighted when she almost fainted. She had to sit on the bench for fifteen minutes before she could stand up without her knees buckling. When she got home, Thomas smacked her on the bum and said, affectionately, ‘You’re not bad, for a fat lass.’
That night, she went to bed trembling with hunger and overexertion. All in all, it had been a very good day.
26
Katherine was interested to see that the day she implied Joe was sexually harassing her he didn’t come back to work after lunch. He’d obviously gone to the pub, and she couldn’t help a slight thrill at her power to hurt him.
At work the following morning, she was mildly curious. Joe would have had time to recover from her accusation, so would he revert to being charming and familiar? Would the morning chats continue? Would the desk-sitting continue? Would the flirting and persuading continue?
Would her cruelty continue?
To her surprise, she was inclined finally to give him a break. He’d been so persistent, it was only fair. Perhaps she’d go for a drink with him – acting as though he had a gun to her head, of course.
She kept watching the door, not exactly anxious yet not quite at peace. But he didn’t appear. She turned her attention to a trial balance but by lunchtime realized there was a part of her that had been on the alert all morning for him.
Finally, at three o’clock, he arrived, Myles in tow, carrying a bottle of Lucozade. Both men looked pale and sheepish.
‘Gentlemen! Glad you could join us today,’ Fred Franklin said, sarcastically.
Joe muttered something about having been on a shoot for an ad.
‘So they shot it in your bedroom, did they?’ Fred scorned.
‘No,’ Joe said defensively. ‘In the bathroom, actually,’ he added, with a rueful, hangdog smile, and moved across the office.
Instantly, Katherine assumed her smooth, enigmatic expression. Here we go!
Joe came towards her, right up to her desk – and kept going. To the coffee-machine. Seconds later, on his return, Katherine once more poised herself. But he bypassed her completely. In fact, he didn’t even look in her direction as he went to his own desk.
Katherine gave him a few minutes to check his calls and e-mails, and expected him to come over then. But he didn’t. She waited a bit longer while he dealt with any urgent