In the morning Katherine was anxious to get to work, keen to discreetly inspect Joe to see if there were any signs that he’d been up all night shagging Angie. But by the time she arrived at Breen Helmsford, she’d calmed herself down. He’d really seemed to be besotted with her, and she wasn’t convinced that that had entirely evaporated. Besides, he had integrity and decency – not the type to screw someone he barely knew.
And she felt no need to ponder why, if he had that much integrity and decency, she wouldn’t go out with him.
All anxiety was gone by the time she breezed into the office. When she saw Joe leaning against the wall by the coffee-machine, she couldn’t help smiling at him. Until a closer look showed him to be unshaven, dishevelled and very weary. He looked lots more than a day older.
She swept her eyes over him and noticed, in nightmarish slow-motion, that his clothes were the same ones he’d had on the day before. Could she be imagining it? She forced herself to check again. Oh, God! Exactly the same suit. Same jacket that he’d taken off yesterday afternoon. Same shirt whose sleeves he’d rolled up. Same tie that he’d loosened. A sure sign he hadn’t gone home.
A stillness settled on her. Her blood felt like it had stopped flowing, as though the shock had brought it skidding to a halt.
He didn’t return her rapidly disappearing smile. His brown eyes, which usually twinkled with warmth and puppyish good humour when he saw her, remained cold. Grimly he nodded at her, chucked his polystyrene cup in the bin and turned away.
Like a sleepwalker, Katherine took off her coat. Maybe he’d stayed with one of the lads, she told herself. It didn’t have to be Angie, small and skinny though she was.
As she switched on her computer, she had a powerful, unexpected flash of dislike for her desk. What was wrong with it? Irritably, she looked at it, trying to identify what was lacking. Then she realized: Joe wasn’t sitting on it.
All morning, as she pretended to busy herself with spreadsheets, Katherine perfected the art of looking without seeming to, discreetly checking for any signs of rapport between Joe and Angie. Neither of them approached the other but, as Katherine well knew, that meant nothing. Often when people slept with each other they ignored each other the next time they met. In fact, the more they ignored each other the more likely it was that they’d had sex.
Both Joe and Angie were at their desks, busily keying stuff into their computers, but Katherine found no comfort in this – they were probably sending each other erotic e-mails.
Katherine noticed something else disquieting. If you took away Joe Roth’s boyish, puppy-like friendliness, what were you left with? A grim, sexy man, that’s what. Rough, stubbly and in yesterday’s clothes, Katherine had never seen him looking so good.
She kept half an ear on the office banter, mostly to hear if they called Angie a name other than Angie. Something vulgar, which would mean that someone had slept with her. But nothing doing. Just a running commentary on how sick and hungover they all felt. How they were never going to drink again. How they couldn’t remember a thing past ten o’clock. How Darren had puked in a doorway. How they’d been asked to leave Burger King.
She was back to feeling bleak and weird, never in the heart of life, always hovering on the edges.
‘Excuse me, Icequeen.’ Katherine’s head shot up to find Angie standing in front of her. For a brief mad second she thought Angie was there to tell her that she hadn’t slept with Joe Roth. But just a moment…
‘What did you call me?’
‘Icequeen,’ Angie said, nicely.
At Katherine’s expression, Angie faltered. ‘Isn’t that your name?’ She was now confused. ‘But that’s what everyone calls you. I thought it was Irish. I’ve a cousin called Quiveen…’
‘My name is Katherine, and your colleagues and mine call me the Ice Queen because I happen to respect myself enough not to sleep with people I work with,’ Katherine snapped.
‘Oh, fu –’ Angie looked mortally embarrassed – and slightly ashamed. Ashamed because she hadn’t respected herself enough not to sleep with a person she worked with?
‘Now I understand – the Ice Queen. I’m sorry! I just wanted to give you my tax-free allowance for the payroll.’ She flung her tax code on the table. ‘So that I won’t be put on emergency tax.’ Then she legged it.
Katherine looked at the piece of paper in front of her. It would be so easy to make a mistake and put Angie on one of the most vicious tax codes in existence, so that her net take-home pay would be a negative figure of several thousand. Of course, it would have to be fixed the following month, but wouldn’t it be worth it just to see the look on her face?
I’m a professional, she reminded herself, and the madness stopped. It had been a lovely fantasy, but that’s all it was. With an inaudible sigh she started work again. She’d be OK. It might take a few days for it all to calm down, but she’d be OK.
28
Tara had a good week. Well, she had an abstemious week. Only a couple of slips. Fish and chips for lunch on Wednesday and Friday afternoon buns. (Who was she to fly in the face of tradition?) But the great thing was that her breaking out had been contained. It hadn’t unleashed an unstoppable tide of gluttony. Not only that but she’d managed to knit twenty-eight rows of Thomas’s jumper and get to the gym four times.
Even though there was no obvious reduction in her size, Thomas seemed pleased with her for trying so hard and he’d been uncommonly affectionate.
On Wednesday night he’d said, ‘C’mere, you old baggage,’ and held her hand as they watched Real Madrid versus Barcelona. On Thursday night he’d thrown his arm over her in his sleep. She’d savoured being beneath its heavy weight, lying very still, afraid to do anything that might disturb him and make him take it away again.
Then, on Friday morning, he said bluntly, ‘Your hair wants doing. Put the yellow stripes in it.’ Which sent Tara to work all aglow – she found his Northern, uncompromisingly macho ways so sexy and was touched that he took an interest in her appearance. An interest that, for once, didn’t have to do with her size.
She thanked God that the ominous anticipation which had been unleashed the previous weekend seemed to have died away. Briefly, she wondered if maybe she’d just got used to it.
She spent most of Saturday having her hair highlighted, mistakenly thinking that if you improve your hair you can improve your life. Sure enough, when she got home, Thomas was in a foul mood because Huddersfield had lost at home to Bradford.
‘Three nil,’ he roared, as she let herself in. ‘Three bludeh nil.’
‘Do you like my hair?’ she asked foolishly.
‘It looks like a load of bludeh straw,’ he thundered. ‘How much did that set you back?’
Tara was so angry she felt like crying. He’d wanted her to get it done – he’d practically ordered her. She thumped down her bags and strode from the room – she would never let herself cry in front of him. Not since he’d complained about his last girlfriend, Bella, ‘She were always bludeh sobbing.’ Bella, apparently, had been clingy, oversensitive and demanding, and Claire, the girlfriend before Bella, hadn’t been much better. When she’d seen Thomas’s contempt for them, Tara had sworn to herself that she’d be totally different. She’d please Thomas by never getting drippy and upset, by being a much better, less irritating girlfriend.
As she hyperventilated with humiliation in the bedroom, she told herself that Thomas didn’t mean to be such a prick. He was just angry with life and had to take it out on someone. She shouldn’t take it so personally.
That night Tara was under orders from Thomas to go to his friend Eddie’s birthday party. As she wasn’t exactly wild about Eddie, she rang Fintan to beg him to come and provide her with moral support, but just got his machine. So she rang his mobile and it went straight to voicemail. She hadn’t spoken to him since Monday night. They normally spoke to each other daily, but as he’d been in Brighton all week and she’d been so trembly from not eating, as well as slightly stung and
mortified by their conversation about HIV tests, she hadn’t dwelt on it.
Next she rang Katherine. She hadn’t seen her all week either.
‘Come to Eddie’s party, please,’ Tara pleaded.
‘No,’ Katherine said, gently. ‘I’m sorry, but I hate Eddie. It would choke me to wish him a happy birthday.’
Katherine regarded Eddie as simply a better-paid version of Thomas.
‘But I haven’t seen you since last Monday,’ Tara said sorrowfully. ‘I know it’s mostly my fault, spending all my evenings going to the gym, but still. So what will you do this evening? Have a quiet night in with your remote control?’
‘I was supposed to be going out with Emma but Leo’s got croup.’
‘Oh dear. I really must visit Emma…’
‘Then I was supposed to be going to a party with Dolly but she fell off her new five-inch stilettos and sprained her ankle.’
‘Cripes. If Fintan’s assistant is wearing stilettos, they really must be back in. I’d better get into training.’
‘Anyway, the upshot is, I’m going to the cinema.’
‘On a Saturday night? That’s a bit sad.’
‘Not as sad as Eddie’s party is going to be.’
‘Who are you going with?’
‘On my own.’
‘God,’ Tara said enviously. ‘You’re so cool.’
‘Tell me what’s up with Fintan. I can’t get hold of him.’
‘Don’t ask me, I can’t get hold of him either.’
Then Tara rang Liv.
‘Sorry,’ Liv said, ‘but Lars is returning to Sweden so I have to stand in Terminal Two and embarrass both of us by crying and begging him to leave his wife and come and live with me.’
Despite starving herself all week, getting dressed to go out was still utter torment for Tara. Being fat made her feel so much less human, shunted to life’s margins, with no outlet to indulge her femininity. She’d love to have wiggled about confidently in a short, tight, flirty little dress, but the best she could hope for was to wall-hug in a wide, baggy top which covered a multitude of sins and sent Thomas into a flinty-eyed fouler.
Cronyless, she had to endure three hours in the pub, drinking diet Coke, lasciviously eyeing the peanuts, and yearning for the day when they invented reduced-fat lager. Then they all went back to Eddie’s flat in Clapham for the party. Which, as Tara realized, surveying it in disappointment, wasn’t much of a party. There were only about twenty guests and every single one of them had been invited. There would have been a bigger turnout, except after the pub multitudes had to leave early to relieve their babysitters.
The music was on too low for anyone to want to dance. People stood and sat in little clusters, discussing the wonders of MDF, door-handles in the Conran Shop, good sofa-shops – and some of these were straight men!
Tara listened in on a conversation between Stephanie and Marcy who, from the sound of things, were trying to get pregnant. Lots of talk of folic acid and how very acceptable it was to have your first child at thirty-seven.
‘Is your partner supportive?’ Stephanie asked Marcy.
‘What partner?’
‘Er, the man, the father…?’
‘Oh.’ Marcy laughed nervously. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t met him.’
‘But I thought you said you were trying to get… pregnant?’
‘Sperm bank.’
Tara hastily made her excuses and went over to Mira, Paul’s girlfriend, who wore a short black rubber skirt – no fear she’d be talking about sofas and folic acid.
‘It’s only small,’ she sighed, blissfully, ‘but I love it.’
What was she talking about? Tara wondered. Her tattoo? A nose-ring? Paul’s penis?
‘It’s a real sun trap,’ she enthused. ‘In the summer the rhododendrons along the back wall are glorious. They thrive like wildfire…’
Jesus! Gardening. Tara was disgusted. I mean, gardening.
Aimlessly, she wandered into the kitchen, where Thomas and his circle of pals stood, necking lager and trading insults. Turning their mouths upwards to show how ‘good-natured’ it all was. Eddie laughingly belittled Thomas’s badly paid job, while Thomas retaliated by calling Eddie ‘a flash bastard’. Thomas scorned Paul for supporting a third-division football team and Paul swaggered that at least he had loyalty. Paul doubled over with mirth when he heard that Michael’s girlfriend had dumped him. Michael nearly had to be hospitalized when he heard that Eddie had totalled his car during the week.
While they clutched their beer cans and howled with hilarity, Tara retained a polite smile. Making sure Thomas wasn’t looking, she flicked a quick look at her watch. One thirty. Hopefully they could go home soon. What a let-down of a Saturday night. She’d nearly have been better off going to the pictures with Katherine.
The merriment continued. Roaring with laughter, Eddie said that Thomas’s flat was a dreadful investment and that he was bound to be in negative equity for the rest of his life. In high spirits, Thomas told everyone that Paul’s ex-girlfriend said that Paul could do with a course of Viagra. With a great display of amusement Paul grinned at Thomas: ‘At least my mother didn’t run off and abandon me.’
Tara anxiously realized that things were about to break through the maintenance-level hostility when, luckily, someone put ‘One Step Beyond’ on the tape deck. Suddenly the living-room carpet was aswarm with thirty-something men dancing for the one and only time that evening.
29
During the week, she’d gleaned a certain pleasure from feeling light and empty, enjoying the sensation of control and moral superiority. But it had started to wear thin. So when Sunday rolled around, Tara had that Friday feeling and was ripe for a major blow-out. She was keenly aware of the danger of her metabolic rate dropping through lack of food. And, of course, she’d endured five days of fruit and deprivation. She deserved a reward. She was vaguely aware that this was her usual pattern, but not aware enough to be able to break it. Washing around in the backwaters of her brain was the idea of going for a lovely, long, alcohol-sodden, six-course lunch.
And her luck was in – Thomas was going to be out for most of Sunday because he was playing football.
Tara rang around and unfortunately Katherine was working, doing the Year Start. ‘But you’ve just done the Year End!’ Tara pointed out, disappointed.
‘Yes, and with every end comes a beginning,’ Katherine said.
‘Very profound,’ Tara said. ‘And something that you’d do well to remember.’
Once more, without success, Tara tried Fintan. Perhaps he and Sandro had gone away for the weekend. But they always told her and Katherine when they were going anywhere. No matter whether it was Marrakesh or Margate, a production was made of it. So where the hell were they?
Lighting a cigarette she rang Liv who, in the wake of Lars’ departure, was game for an outing. The only downside was that Liv was utterly miserable. Although even when her life was going fantastically well, she was still utterly miserable.
In Thomas’s earshot, Tara agreed with Liv that they’d go shopping. Except Tara intended they’d keep it very brief and, as soon as possible, head for a purveyor of deep-fried potato skins. Her mind was made up, and she didn’t care that she was probably about to wipe out five days of weight loss in one sitting.
‘I’m on my way,’ Liv promised.
Liv tried to time her arrival for after Thomas’s departure, but to her distress he was still there. He nodded brusquely as she passed en route to the kitchen with Tara. Though he approved of Liv’s long blonde hair and firm golden skin, he was irritated that she had to go and ruin the whole thing by being taller than him.
Liv hated Thomas’s flat: it was so depressingly dark and stank of cat. She itched to rip off the brown hessian wallpaper and paint the walls eau-de-Nil, to tear up the carpet tiles and varnish the wood, to rip down the roller blinds and swag and drape with lilac organza. But the kitchen was the worst, she thought, looking around at the mustard Formica cup
boards. She longed to… to… burn the whole sorry mess to the ground.
Tara really should take it in hand. Didn’t she know that decorating was the new rock and roll?
Tara closed the kitchen door. ‘So Lars has gone back?’ she asked gently.
‘Yes.’ Liv nodded, her face taut with misery. ‘I’m very bad this time. Very bad.’
‘You’re always very bad,’ Tara tried to cheer her up. ‘Even if he leaves his wife and marries you, you’ll still be miserable.’
‘But I think I’m too bad to go shopping,’ Liv apologized. ‘What if I don’t find anything nice? I don’t think I could cope in my current fragile condition.’
‘Think of the joy you’ll have if you see a great pair of shoes,’ Tara encouraged. She didn’t want Liv to abandon her, because then she’d have to go and watch Thomas play football.
‘And what happens if they don’t have them in my size?’ Liv countered. ‘It could be dangerous. Jung says –’
‘Jung knows nothing about shoes,’ Tara said firmly. She refused to be browbeaten by Liv’s extensive knowledge of psychotherapy. ‘But if Jung won’t let you go shopping, what do you want to do?’
Liv stared at her, her blue eyes clear and candid. ‘I want to get pissed,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you say?’ Tara exclaimed, wreathed in smiles. ‘I just thought you wanted to leave me and go home. Come on, then! We’ll go to one of the locals, get mouldy drunk and…’ she dropped her voice just in case Thomas heard ‘… have a roast lunch.’
‘With extra roast potatoes…’ Liv whispered in excitement.
‘The whole thing drenched in gravy…’
‘Then some apple pie…’
‘With a bucket of custard…’
‘Let’s just wait for Thomas to go,’ Tara said.
Ten minutes later Thomas’s lift arrived. Tara and Liv gave him a few more minutes just to make sure he really was gone, then gleefully elbowed each other and said, ‘Come on!’
‘Shall we take a taxi?’ Liv asked, as they stood on the street.