Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [83]
Liv could think of millions of reasons to be furious with Thomas.
‘What should I do?’ Tara asked, desperately. ‘And please leave your personal feelings out of it.’
Liv took a breath and decided to risk it, ‘I think you should leave him.’
‘HAHAHAHAHA,’ Tara roared, then quickly lit another cigarette.
‘I’m serious,’ Liv said. ‘What kind of future have you? If he says he won’t stay if you become pregnant, he’s not exactly offering a long-term relationship.’
‘I’ll just make sure I don’t get pregnant,’ Tara said grimly.
‘Don’t you want to have children. Eventually?’
‘I’ll survive.’
‘But, in any case, that’s not the point. You want more of a commitment than he wants to give. Cut your losses.’
Now, where had Tara heard that before?
‘How the hell can I leave him?’ she asked, suddenly tearful.
‘Easy, pack a bag, come and stay with me, or Katherine or Fin –’
‘I’m thirty-one.’ Tara’s voice was high and hysterical. ‘I can’t leave him, I’ll never meet anyone else. I haven’t any time left…’
‘Nonsense.’
‘… I’m losing my looks, my flesh is drooping floorwards, my childbearing days are slipping through my fingers like mercury…’
‘You just said you don’t mind if you don’t have a baby –’
‘And there’s nowhere to meet men.’ Tara ignored her. ‘That awful party I went to last night was so depressing. And, worse again, I’ve kind of gone off going to clubs.’ She paused with dreadful realization. ‘It’s a disaster, Liv. I’m in the Last Chance Saloon… and I want them to turn the music down!’
Liv despaired. Tara was so hard to help. ‘So, because you think you won’t find someone else, you will stay with a difficult, selfish man?’
‘It’s not his fault he’s like that,’ Tara insisted. ‘And, if you don’t mind, I prefer to think of him as damaged and sensitive.’
Liv didn’t think she could bear another insightful lecture on Thomas’s childhood, so she said quickly, ‘So you’ll stay with a damaged, sensitive man?’ Adding under her breath, ‘Who behaves in difficult, selfish ways?’
‘Certainly, if the alternative is no man at all.’
‘We’re modern women, millennium women…’
‘Don’t even say it,’ Tara hissed, scrabbling once more for her cigarettes.
‘What?’
‘That we don’t need a man. Need doesn’t come into it.’
‘But what about self-respect?’ Liv felt compelled to ask.
‘Self-respect doesn’t keep you warm at night.’
‘Self-respect doesn’t bring out the bins.’
‘Neither does Thomas.’
‘Actually, neither does Lars.’
A silence ensued.
‘I’m in the Last Chance Saloon also,’ Liv had the decency to say.
‘No, you’re not. Lars has said that he’ll leave his wife for you.’
‘He’s lying,’ Liv admitted.
‘Well, yes, but at least he had the decency to say it. And maybe he’ll actually do it one day.’
‘A leper can’t change his spots,’ Liv said mournfully.
‘Why are relationships so difficult?’ Tara demanded.
It was actually a rhetorical question but, according to Liv, there were explanations for everything. ‘We must look to our childhoods,’ she said pompously. ‘As I’ve told you many times. For example, Katherine has no man because of the absence of a father-figure in her life when she was growing up.’
‘If Katherine was here, she’d make you cry for saying that,’ Tara felt she’d better point out.
Liv ignored her. ‘We human beings have a design flaw in that we’re drawn to the familiar, even when it’s not pleasant. You’re with a bad-tempered man like Thomas because your father was… What’s the word? Narky?’
‘A narky pig,’ Tara supplied, helpfully. ‘So you keep telling me.’ She’d almost finished her second pint and, miraculously, felt slightly less despairing. ‘But knowing why I – allegedly – do it hasn’t stopped me from doing it,’ Tara said wryly. ‘If you want my opinion, psychotherapy is just a big cod.’
Before Liv could start into her usual trip that self-realization is no good without acting on it, Tara said quickly, ‘And how about you? Explain to me why you’re having an affair with a married man.’
‘My mother had a very long love affair with a married man,’ Liv explained.
‘Did she really?’ Tara was amazed and admiring. ‘You Swedes. Such goers. I can