Last Chance Saloon (30 page)

Thomas turned to Tara with shining eyes. ‘Tara,’ his voice was thick with emotion, ‘I hardly know what to say.’

‘Just say yes,’ she said, huskily.

‘In that case, yes! I’d be delighted. Honoured.’

Relief swirled around Tara in great gusts, and Beryl gave her a congratulatory smile as she stacked her Whiskas bowl in the dishwasher. But wait a minute – they didn’t have a dishwasher. And Beryl never smiled at her, she hated her. Just as Thomas exclaimed, ‘I beg your pardon, will I
marry
you? I thought you asked if I’d like all your money. An easy mistake to make.’ Tara woke up, her heart pounding.

Tara had been having nightmares, often while she was still awake. Centring around proposing to Thomas.

She blamed Fintan. And Katherine ‘Swinging Brick For A Heart’ Casey. But mostly she blamed the people she worked with. Especially Ravi. On Wednesday lunchtime, in the almost-deserted office, he brayed, ‘Cheer up. Care to lick my chocolate-mousse lid?’

‘Thanks.’ Wearily, Tara accepted the round of tinfoil, and licked it half-heartedly, while Ravi tipped his head back and shook the entire carton into his mouth, expertly guiding in any wayward lumps that strayed to his chin.

Next he tore open a honey-roast-ham bloomer sandwich. ‘Fancy smelling the paper?’ he offered deferentially.

Silently, she accepted.

Having made short work of his sandwich, he whipped out a Crunchie and declared, ‘Crunchies! Full of health-giving nutrition!’

Enviously Tara watched, as he scoffed it in two bites.

‘How’s Fintan?’ he mumbled, through a mouthful of honeycomb and milk chocolate.

Tara paused. Good question. How
was
Fintan? The knobbly swelling on his neck hadn’t reduced one bit. Nor had the nodes on his pancreas, which anyone could feel – not that they wanted to – simply by pressing hard on his left side. Should she mention how upset he’d got when he’d found out that the chemo was going to make him sterile? How the oncologist had implied that because he was gay it didn’t matter?

‘He’s getting out of hospital on Saturday,’ Tara opted for. It sounded positive.

‘So he’s on the mend. Bloody good.’

‘He’s not on the mend!’ Vinnie looked up from his work to glare managerially at Ravi. ‘It’s not like he’s broken his arm or had an ingrowing toenail removed. The chap has cancer, you don’t shake that after a few weeks in hospital. It takes months!’ He rubbed his balding scalp anxiously and returned to his screen.

They continued in quieter tones, their heads close together.

‘The MenChel pressure’s getting to Vinnie,’ Ravi observed. ‘His cock is finally on the block and he can’t handle it.’

‘Don’t mind him,’ Tara said softly. ‘And there’s always a chance Fintan
might
be on the mend. We just don’t know yet.
It could take up to nine months of treatment before we know if it’s worked.’

‘So why is he getting out of hospital?’

‘No real need for him to be there. From now on he’ll have chemo twice a month as an outpatient.’

‘Twice a month?’ Ravi sounded doubtful. ‘That can’t be enough. Jack it up. Double it. That should do the trick.’

Tara had a heavy weight in her stomach. Would that it were that simple. There was only so much chemo they could give him before they killed him.

‘Are his mother and brothers going to be here for the entire nine months?’

‘No, they’re going home on Sunday. Or at least JaneAnn and Timothy are.’

Ravi grasped Tara’s shoulders in excitement. ‘You mean…? You mean the Milo chap is staying?’

‘Not just staying,’ Tara nodded meaningfully, ‘but staying with whom?’

Ravi could barely speak. ‘Not Liv?’ he squeaked. ‘That’s superb.’

‘Just for a few extra weeks,’ Tara elaborated.

‘And what about Lars? Has she kicked him into touch yet?’

‘Oh, yes. Last night.’

‘Oooh, I wish I could have heard.’

‘You could have, actually. She put him on the speakerphone for me while she delivered the news.’

Ravi was almost speechless with disappointment. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I would have liked to be there.’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry! But I’ve had a lot on my mind. You may have noticed. Anyway, it wasn’t as much fun as it sounds because they both spoke in Swedish.’

‘Boo.’

‘I’m sorry, Ravi, I truly am.’

‘Did he cry?’

Tara hesitated, then nodded.

‘Aw, boo. Did he offer to leave his wife and did she tell him it was too late?’

Tara shrank from Ravi’s accusing eyes. ‘I don’t speak Swedish but I believe so,’ she admitted.

‘Did he say he’d do anything and did she say there was nothing he could do?’

Tara hung her head in shame.

‘And it’s not even as if I can watch the omnibus edition on Sunday,’ Ravi said bitterly.

They sat in silence.

‘Have you had a falling-out with Katherine?’ Ravi asked suddenly.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because your average number of phone calls a day has gone down by seventeen point four per cent since last Friday. Teddy did a program to calculate it. What’s going on?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Tell me. I won’t understand.’

The relief of being with someone uncomplicated like Ravi! The need to talk was suddenly imperative. Tara opened her mouth and it all gushed out like water from a burst dam. In hushed, but entertaining, you’ll-never-believe-what-happened-next mode she told him about Fintan’s outrageous promise that if she didn’t leave Thomas or ask him to marry her, he’d die to spite her. About the terrible row with Katherine – though she made no mention of Katherine using the F-word. About the O’Gradys looking at her like she’d gone for Fintan with a
meat cleaver. About her own robust superstition. ‘I believe him,’ she admitted, ‘when he says he’ll die and haunt me if I don’t do what he wants.’ She finished by saying, gaily, ‘Isn’t Fintan mental?’

Ravi didn’t speak. Thought after thought passed over the landscape of his face, like scudding clouds creating light and dark on mountains.

‘All you have to do is nod, Ravi,’ Tara said anxiously.

Ravi’s smooth, boyish face was a twist of perplexity. ‘But Fintan’s your chum,’ he struggled. ‘He’s not likely to stitch you up. You’ve known him since you were fourteen, right?’

Tara nodded reluctantly.

‘And you’re now, what, twenty-eight?’

‘Thirty-one, you big thick.’

‘Golly, are you? That old?’

‘Yes, that old.’

‘OK. So when you’re friends with someone that long they’re in your corner.’ Ravi delivered a winning smile. He’d sorted things out for Tara. Funny that she still looked miserable.

‘Ravi, I don’t think you’re listening to me,’ she begged. ‘He wants me to leave Thomas. He’s sick, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Ravi said thoughtfully. ‘Once saw a documentary about a man caught in a storm, stuck on a boat for seven weeks, got frostbite on his ears, had to eat pieces of his boat, nearly bloody died! Rescued by a trawler, saw the light, changed his life. Nice to everyone, sold his business, lived life to the full. Said everyone should. Sounds like you’ve got the same problem with Fintan. Another bloke on a hijacked plane –’

‘No, Ravi, no!’ Tara was bitterly disappointed. ‘I rely on you to be a boy. Emotionally illiterate. I don’t want you having
bursts of enlightenment. You were my one dark spot in an irritatingly bright, carey-sharey world.’

‘Sorr-ee!’

‘You were supposed to tell me that Fintan was bonkers and to ignore him.’

‘Righty-ho, Tara. Fintan is bonkers. Ignore him.’

‘It’s too late.’

‘I know.’ Ravi had a moment of inspiration. ‘You could lie to Fintan. Tell him you’ve left Thomas, when you haven’t.’

‘I’ve thought of it. But so has he. He said he’ll know if I’m lying. He said he’ll do spot-checks and call on Thomas’s flat unexpectedly like the TV-licensing people. He said he’ll even get a van with surveillance equipment.’

‘Bugger.’ Ravi sucked his teeth thoughtfully. ‘I know! How about if you leave Thomas, tell Fintan, wait for him to get better, then go back to Thomas?’

‘But what if Thomas didn’t wait for me?’

‘Then it wasn’t much of a love affair to begin with,’ Ravi said cheerfully. Christ, even he could see that!

Tara had a dull, ominous ache in her stomach. Ravi was saying all the wrong things. Was there no one to back her up?

‘If this was a film,’ she said wearily, ‘of course I’d leave Thomas. It’d be so clear. But it’s not clear at all. I love Fintan and I badly,
badly
want him to get well, and if he doesn’t… But, you see, I love Thomas too.’

‘Maybe you don’t have to leave Thomas.’ Ravi began another suggestion.

‘You’re right,’ Tara said, aggressively. ‘I don’t have to.’

‘I mean, there’s another way. Why don’t you ask him to marry you, as Fintan suggested? If Thomas says yes, then you’re home and dry.’

Tara shrugged noncommittally.

‘Just ask Thomas what his intentions are.’

But she didn’t want to. She suspected she knew what his intentions were. She had a feeling he had
no
intentions. Since the night after her birthday she’d had little doubt that that was the case. But until she knew for sure, then it wasn’t true.

Yet she couldn’t help feeling that a crisis was moving inexorably closer to her. That she was holding on to this relationship like someone holding on with their fingernails to the side of a cliff. It would be so easy to let go, to lose her grip, to fall. In despair she put her face in her hands. ‘I can’t leave him, Ravi,’ she whispered. ‘This has got to work.’

‘But why?’ Ravi panicked. Girlies crying alarmed him unutterably. Desperately he sought to perk her up. ‘So what if it doesn’t work?’ he consoled. ‘He makes you bloody miserable, Tara.’

As Tara peeped out an aghast face, Ravi suddenly knew the perfect thing to say. ‘Remember,’ he coaxed, ‘how happy you were with Alasdair.’

Alasdair!
Alasdair
. As Ravi swelled with pride at his quick-thinking, out-of-nowhere memories zoomed at Tara. She and Alasdair. Jesus Christ.

‘Alasdair was a bloody nice bloke,’ Ravi said warmly.

‘Then he did a runner and married some tart.’ Tara’s jaw was clenched.

‘He told you you were a top girl. He told
me
you were a top girl. I had to start avoiding him whenever he came to our work dos.’

‘Then he did a runner and married some tart,’ Tara repeated, tonelessly.

‘At least he came to our work dos. Unlike some.’

‘Then he did a runner and married some tart.’

‘You never bothered with all that diet stuff when you were going out with Alasdair.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘You didn’t. You ate out all the time. Don’t you remember? Every Monday morning you tried to make me cry by telling me which famous restaurant you’d gone to with Alasdair for Sunday lunch?’

‘Then he did a runner and married some tart,’ Tara intoned.

But she was catapulted into the past. A shimmering, golden past. Her time with Alasdair seemed like a faraway field drenched in glorious sunshine, while where she stood now was shrouded in iron cloud. OK, so he did a runner and married some tart, but hadn’t they had a blast? Compared to the battlefield of living with Thomas? Alasdair would have given her anything she wanted, anything. Before he did a runner and married some tart. But that was then and this is now. A bird in the hand is worth two birds who do a runner and marry some tart. Alasdair was long gone and Thomas was still present.

‘Ravi, if you were trying to help, I’m afraid you haven’t.’

‘I’m a boy,’ he said miserably. ‘It was never going to work.’

‘Look, it’s obvious what you should do,’ an irate voice interrupted.

Tara and Ravi looked up in surprise. It was Vinnie, who leapt to his feet, rolled up the sleeves of his unpressed suit and began pacing. ‘The way I see it is,’ Vinnie bounced a biro on his palm, in major brainstorming mode, ‘the first thing you have to do is ask Thomas to marry you.’

‘Is nothing sacred? That was a private conversation.’

‘MenChel are paying a hundred pounds an hour for my expertise,’ Vinnie replied. ‘You’re lucky you’re getting it for nothing. Now, where were we? Let’s think this project through.’
He rushed over to the office whiteboard and began scribbling a diagram with a squeaky marker. ‘The starting point is here.’ He indicated a wobbly red oblong, then drew an arrow out of it. ‘Until Thomas turns you down – and he may not – there’s no problem. So you must propose to him.’

‘Why? Will you sack me if I don’t?’

Vinnie looked startled.

‘Why not?’ Tara asked herself. ‘My friend has threatened to die on me if I don’t. Why should I be surprised to be threatened with the boot?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Vinnie suddenly realized the inappropriateness of his behaviour. ‘I got carried away. I shouldn’t have earwigged. But it was so interesting… such a challenge… You see, I haven’t been getting much sleep, my fourteen-month-old is teething…’

‘He’s right,’ Ravi muttered, when Vinnie had slunk back to his desk, pawing at the crown of his head. ‘I hate to say it but he has a point. Ask Thomas to marry you. You know it makes sense!’

‘But…’ How could she put words on the terrible fear that if she began to interfere, the whole house of cards would come tumbling down?

‘Time to start work again,’ Ravi announced, looking at his watch. ‘I must wash my hands.’

As soon as Ravi left the room, Tara snatched up the phone and dialled a number. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m afraid my purse was stolen, with my Visa card in it. I’d like to order a replacement.’

Liv, Sandro and the O’Gradys were pissed off with her. Tara wasn’t talking to her.
She
wasn’t talking to Tara. And, in a way, she’d already let go of Fintan. She had nobody now. What harm could it do to apologize to Joe Roth? Even if he was horrible, what did one more person matter?

A strange recklessness took hold of her. The adventurous spirit that she’d always denied, suppressed, quashed. At the end of the day she was her mother’s daughter, and it was bound to catch up with her sooner or later.

All the same, that didn’t stop her quaking with nerves on her way to work on Friday morning. She thought she’d been worried the day before? She hadn’t known she was born! With her wishy-washy smiles and handful of words, she’d delivered nothing more than a highly unconvincing dress rehearsal. But this was the genuine article. Real bullets in the guns, this time. People could get hurt.

Her fear made her dizzy.

Today Joe wore a narrow-cut suit in darkest aubergine, with a dazzlingly white shirt. He glowed with attractiveness.

Despite her nerves, Katherine wanted to get it over with as
soon as possible. Waiting was even worse than doing it. So from the moment she – finally – took off her coat, she tried to get Joe on his own so that half of Breen Helmsford wouldn’t hear what she had to say. However, that proved impossible. Joe was a busy, popular man, who went to plenty of meetings, got and made hundreds of phone calls and had lots of people dropping by his desk for a chat. Every time one person left him, Katherine made a monumental, bootstrap effort and propelled herself up out of her chair. But before she’d even straightened her legs fully, either his phone rang or a new person joined him, and all her teeth-gritted force would come to nothing and she’d have to sit down again. She spent a work-free morning on the verge of screaming with frustration, her adrenaline amped to the max.

At lunchtime he went out to meet clients, so she endured a couple of nerve-stretching hours, working hard to keep her resolve pumped. But when he came back at three o’clock, his dizzying round of visitors and calls started again.

She thought she might cry. She was fast running out of any resolve to do what Fintan wanted. All that unused adrenaline was turning on her, making her feel hopeless and depressed.

But at twenty to four, as she came back from the ladies’ she saw him standing in the little glass room that housed the binding machine. And he was
alone
. Now! Now! Breathlessly, she hurried down the corridor, which seemed as vast as the Serengeti plain, willing no one to join him. She forced all her energy on keeping him isolated. So far, so good. No one – only him. But no! She could hear a person behind her. A woman, from the sounds of her shoes. Also in a hurry. Just as Katherine reached the door to the room, she looked to see who it was. Bloody Angie, of all people, a sheaf of papers in her arms.

Joe looked at Katherine without interest. ‘Just finished.’ He indicated the machine. ‘It’s all yours.’

At the exact moment that Katherine realized that she had no sheets of paper in her hands that justified her needing to use the binder, so did Joe and Angie. And there was nothing else to do in the binding room, only bind.

They both looked at her empty hands. Their eyes seemed to loom in and she could feel her hands grow and expand, becoming bigger and bigger, the size of plates.

‘Forgot…’ Katherine said, her voice thin, ‘… forgot my report.’

Angie nodded, looking with hard suspicion at Katherine. ‘Sure.’

‘You go ahead,’ Katherine said to Angie, making for the door.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, with heavy emphasis. ‘I will. Joe, can you show me how to use this?’

When Joe returned to his desk he was miraculously undisturbed by visitors or phone calls. But Katherine didn’t bother. What’s the point? she asked herself. I’ll go to that awful effort of plucking up my courage, then someone will come along and it’ll all be wasted.

But she sneaked another look at him a few minutes later, and he was still alone, moodily flicking through papers.

And before she could stop herself, she was on her feet and, feeling like she was having a bad dream, moving across the floor in her weeny skirt. Then she was beside his desk. Quaking and shaking, she opened her mouth and heard herself say, ‘May I speak to you?’

With a graceful wave of his hand, Joe indicated a chair. His face was curious. Suspicious, almost. Dazed, she sat down, leant
her elbows on his desk, then realized the moment of reckoning had arrived. Oh, Christ!

‘You may remember,’ she began haltingly, ‘some time ago, I, um…’

His face was unfriendly. No helpful, white-toothed smile, no encouraging nods, no warmth in his eyes.

She changed tack. ‘A few weeks ago,’ she started, ‘you came over to my desk and I, er, said something. Something that may have given you to think that I –’ She stopped abruptly. She was getting on her own nerves. ‘I accused you of sexual harassment,’ she said baldly.

‘Less of an accusation and more of an implication.’ Joe inclined his head. ‘But, yes, I remember.’

He didn’t laugh or make a joke and she realized she’d been hoping he would. He looked grim and serious and suddenly she saw it from his point of view. People lost their jobs for less.

‘I’d like to apologize,’ she said, feeling for the first time genuinely ashamed of it. ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t true, and I should never have said it.’

His face was expressionless. ‘Apology accepted.

‘And,’ he continued, his brown eyes cool, ‘I owe you an apology. I came on too strong. I should just have taken no for an answer.’

That was the last thing she wanted to hear! ‘No, no!’ she protested. At his question-mark face, she almost lost her nerve and bottled out. Her voice emerged as a squeak, and she rushed into saying, ‘If that offer to go for a drink is still on the cards, I’d be delighted to accept.’

She squirmed in mortification. I
hate you
,
Fintan O’Grady
.

Joe looked at her, assessing her ruddy little face. She stared back, trying to read what was going on in his hard eyes, utterly
despising her vulnerability as she waited. She abhorred being at someone’s mercy. Particularly a man’s. Worse still, a man that she fancied.

Finally he spoke. He said, his watchful eyes never leaving her face, ‘I’ll think about it.’

She thought she was going to kill someone. Nodding, flushed, forcing a smile, she got up, her knees trembling. Clumsy with rage and shock, she stumbled en route to her own desk.

She had to go out. She walked around Hanover Square and up to Oxford Street, mimicking, over and over again in a namby-pamby voice, ‘I’ll think about it. I’ll think about it.’

As emotion invaded her like a virus, she swore that Fintan O’Grady would pay for this.

She went back to the office, picked up her tap-dancing gear, which hadn’t been used since Fintan got sick, and went to the gym. She never usually had any truck with the gym, but she felt the need to pound the stuffing out of a punch-bag, seeing as it was illegal to do it to Joe Roth. Or Fintan O’Grady, for that matter.

The instructor tried to tell her that she hadn’t got the right shoes, but her rage was somehow very persuasive. And when she began, her forearms were a blur, as she belted the punch-bag again and again and again. With a furiously red face, she stood in little flared shorts and patent dance-shoes with a big bow across the instep and pounded out her terrible anger at Joe and Fintan and Tara and the person who’d made her this way in the first place.

People, mostly men, came to look. Such a slight girl, with such great strength! ‘She could box for England,’ one huge, muscle-bound jock commented, in admiration. Katherine stopped for a moment. Normally a grade three (deep contempt
cut with savage antagonism) or grade four (deeper contempt cut with even more savage antagonism, often delivered with a silent snarl) would suffice, but, hell, this was no ordinary day. So she flashed him one of her grade five looks (an entrail-freezing promise of actual bodily harm), and permitted herself a smirk as he stumbled back in dazed shock. Then she started up again, pummelling away her vulnerability, the hot flush of exposure. Shunted it out of her, in the hope that she might feel like herself again.

Abruptly she stopped boxing, to the disappointment of the small crowd who’d gathered. She’d suddenly realized what she had to do. She had to leave and find someone. Someone who’d make her feel better. Someone who would make everything all right. Someone who always made everything OK, one way or another. Tara.