Last Chance Saloon

by Marian Keyes

  To his surprise, he could hear strange sounds outside his front door, on the communal landing. Voices. In the plural. At least one of them was male, so it wasn’t just Amy talking to herself, insane with heartbreak. Then he heard a burst of static, as if a pizza-delivery person or a taxi-driver was outside. Then more voices, tinny and muffled. Very weird.

  Lorcan jumped as a very sharp ratatat-tat hammered on his front door. An officious, imperious ratatat-tat, not the apologetic knuckle-grazing of a broken woman.

  ‘Mr Larkin,’ a man’s voice commanded. ‘Can you hear me? Can you open this door?’ Another burst of static followed.

  ‘He doesn’t appear to be responding,’ the voice said.

  ‘We’d better go in,’ replied a woman’s voice. Not Amy’s.

  Lorcan was more intrigued than frightened. Not frightened at all. If they were trying to rob him they were making an awful job of the discretion that was the hallmark of a good burglar.

  ‘We’ll try to remove the lock,’ the man’s voice said.

  You will in your eye, Lorcan thought in alarm. Locks cost lots of money. He marched to the door and flung it wide.

  To their great consternation, Constable Nigel Dickson and Constable Linda Miles came face to face with a very large, very annoyed, very naked man wearing a pink towel around his head and holding tightly on to his penis.

  ‘Er, Mr Larkin, sir?’ Constable Dickson asked, when he’d recovered his aplomb.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ Lorcan replied cagily, taking in the burly twosome, the uniforms, the hats, the walkie-talkies, the hefty truncheons, the fluorescent overjackets, the black and white squares on everything.

  ‘A Mr Lorcan Larkin has been reported missing by a Ms Amy… What’s her second name?’ he asked his colleague.

  But Constable Linda Miles wasn’t really paying attention. She couldn’t take her eyes off Lorcan. She’d never seen ginger pubes before. Although, she thought, these weren’t so much ginger, as a beautiful, reddy-gold colour…

  ‘A Ms Amy Jones.’ Nigel had to consult his notebook as it became clear his colleague couldn’t tear her eyes away from Lorcan’s pubic area. ‘She was concerned when you didn’t answer her telephone calls, even though she could see lights on in your flat. She feared that you may have injured yourself, either accidentally or… deliberately.’ His voice faded away when he saw the fury on Lorcan’s face.

  ‘Where is she?’ Lorcan hissed, letting go of his willy.

  ‘In the squad car.’ Nigel swallowed anxiously. Maybe it was one of those ones that didn’t get much bigger when they were erect. ‘We said we’d radio her when we’d gained entrance.’

  ‘Before you arrest her for wasting police time,’ Lorcan menaced, ‘tell her I’ve got an audition tomorrow. If I don’t get the part, it’ll be her fault.’

  Lorcan slammed the door in their faces and Linda narrowed her eyes at Nigel. ‘You know, I suspected that woman was a time-waster.’

  ‘You fancied him,’ Nigel threw jealously at Linda.

  ‘Nige, I never!’ she exclaimed, defensively.

  ‘You did, I saw you looking at his todger. I bet you wish mine was as big as his.’

  ‘Nige, I never!’

  Constable Nigel Dickson and Constable Linda Miles had been having an affair for the previous four and a half months. This was their first row.

  ‘Anyway,’ Nigel said, a mite tearfully, ‘he’s a Paddy, probably in the IRA.’

  ‘Oooh, was he Irish, Nige?’ Linda said, in disappointment. ‘I don’t like the Irish.’

  Lorcan slammed the door and returned to bed. Not as angry as he’d pretended to be. Very relieved, actually. For one heart-stopping moment he’d thought his past had finally run him to ground and that he was going to be arrested. For one of those ridiculous crimes like having sex with a minor.

  Instead a woman had used the boys in blue in a desperate attempt to make him talk to her. It was a first and he had to admit he was flattered.

  16

  On Monday morning when Tara woke up she was starving. But she was filled with a great determination not to eat. Hunger is my friend, she repeated over and over again as she lay in bed and drank the black coffee Thomas had left for her. Hunger is my very best pal.

  She’d had a bad night’s sleep, jerking awake at some godforsaken hour, seized with terrible fear. What if Thomas stopped loving her and dumped her? What if he’d realized on Saturday night that he didn’t want to be with her any more? What would become of her? Now that she was thirty-one she really didn’t have any time left to start again. She’d thought it was bad when Alasdair gave her the slip. But at only twenty-nine, she hadn’t known how lucky she was. Single men in their thirties were like gold-dust – it could take her years to meet someone else. Then, if she ever did, she’d have to bide her time and pretend she wasn’t serious for at least twelve months. By which time she could be thirty-four or thirty-five. Oh, God! That was ancient. When Tara began to get dressed, she was glad Thomas had already left for work. Watching her struggling into clothes that were too small for her would make him cross again. Despite the cold morning, she was sweating, her hands slipping as she tried to do up the button on her skirt.

  She’d been wearing a size fourteen for some time now, but it was only ever meant to be a temporary measure, until she’d lost weight and gone back to being a size twelve. Mind you, wearing a size twelve was only meant to have been a temporary measure also, until she slimmed down and went back to her correct weight, her true size, her spiritual home of size ten. But now, with the waistband of her skirt so tight it was crushing her internal organs, she reluctantly began to face the fact that maybe she’d better buy some size sixteens. Just so she could breathe. It wouldn’t be a long-term measure, of course. Only until she’d lost a bit of weight, and then she’d be back to size fourteen.

  But size sixteen, she thought, appalled at how far she’d come. Size sixteen. After that came size eighteen, and then size twenty. Where would it all end?

  By the time she’d got her jacket buttoned, the sweat was pouring off her and she was exhausted enough to go back to bed. She hated her body, how she hated it. Having to lug all that lard around with her, she felt as though it didn’t belong to her.

  It didn’t belong to her, she reminded herself. It was simply an uninvited visitor that had overstayed its welcome. Its days were numbered.

  She forced herself to look in the mirror before she left. She looked awful, she conceded miserably. Her smart jacket was stretched and splayed across her midriff, the round ball of her belly poking out where the jacket’s two seams no longer met.

  I’m fat, she realized, in cold horror. I’m actually officially fat. I’m no longer just slightly overweight or pleasantly plump or a bit tubby. I’m fat. The real thing.

  She felt herself hurtling headlong towards utter marginalization. I won’t be able to go upstairs on buses. I’ll have to pay excess baggage on planes, just for my bottom. Small boys will throw stones at me. I’ll break people’s chairs when I go to their house for dinner. I’ll be demoted because everyone knows that fat people can’t do their job as well as skinny people. Once I’m in my car I won’t be able to get out again without a winch. People will think I’m a failure because superfluous weight is a sure sign of terrible unhappiness. I’ll have to lie and say I have trouble with my glands.

  I’m not worthy to be out in the world, she told herself. I’m so ashamed of myself.

  She caught lean, slinky, I-can-eat-what-I-want-and-never-put-on-an-ounce Beryl smirking at her and yearned to give her a kick. Then, very reluctantly, Tara left the flat. So great was her self-loathing, she half expected people to hoot their horns and shout, ‘Look at the fat cow,’ as she walked to her car. It was pouring with rain, and for that Tara gave thanks. People looked at each other less in wet weather. Tara’s car was a bright orange, noisy, backfiring, second-hand Volkswagen. It was a mobile skip, which stank of cigarette smoke and had tapes and cassette cases spilt all over the floor. The s
eats were strewn with maps, old newspapers, sweet wrappers, empty drink cans and a pair of knickers, which she used when the window steamed up.

  Her windscreen wipers were broken so at every red light she had to jump out of the car and wipe the front window with a piece of scrunched-up newspaper, at the same time as fighting off aggressive youths armed with cloths and buckets of soapy water who were intent on cleaning her windscreen and extracting a pound for their trouble. The drive from the Holloway Road to Hammersmith was a long one and by the time she got to work she was soaked and exhausted, having shouted the word, ‘No!’ twenty-eight times en route and ‘Go away, I’ve no change,’ eleven times.

  When she arrived at her small open-plan office only Ravi was there. As usual he was eating. ‘Morning, Tara,’ he brayed, in his cut-glass accent. ‘Care for some double-chocolate cheesecake? Twenty-seven grams of fat in every slice. Superb!’

  ‘How could you at this hour of the morning?’ Tara asked. She liked to pretend that she had an appetite like a normal person’s.

  ‘Up at five,’ he bellowed. ‘Rowed twenty miles. Bloody starving!’

  Ravi did huge amounts of exercise. As well as belonging to a rowing team, he went to the gym at least four times a week and wouldn’t leave until he’d been told by the computerized machines that he’d burned off a thousand calories. His prodigious exercising was matched only by his prodigious eating. Not a morning passed that he didn’t arrive at the office weighed down with Marks and Spencer bags full of goodies. ‘Perhaps you’d like to keep the wrapper and lick it later?’ He waved a wedge-shaped piece of plastic, which she accepted. ‘How’s the new lipstick Fintan gave you? Do the trick?’

  ‘No, Ravi, another disappointment.’

  ‘Aw, boo. So the search continues.’

  ‘Certainly does.’

  ‘See Real TV on Friday night? Bloke goes up in a hot-air balloon, comes down through a skylight into a bathroom. Breaks his leg, nearly bloody drowns. Sooo-perb!’

  ‘Please stop. Have you updated the football-league stuff?’ Tara switched on her PC.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Ravi nodded, letting a thick lock of glossy black hair fall across his forehead. He looked like an Indian version of Elvis.

  Ravi organized a football league for the employees of GK Software. At the start of the football season each person predicted where they thought all the teams in the Premiership were going to be placed. After each weekend, Ravi updated the results, so everyone could keep an eye on their interim progress. People had been overheard saying that it was the only thing that got them out of bed on a Monday morning.

  People began to drift in. Evelyn and Teddy arrived. Evelyn and Teddy were married. They lived together, drove to work together, worked side by side, ate lunch together and went home together. ‘Morning,’ they said, simultaneously.

  ‘Have you…?’ Evelyn asked Ravi.

  ‘Of course.’ He smirked.

  Evelyn and Teddy both keyed frantically until they found the updated table.

  Vinnie, Tara’s boss, arrived, a nice man in his forties, with four young children and a receding hairline. He entertained dreams of being a dynamic businessman who barked things like, ‘I’ve put my cock on the block on this one, lads,’ but whenever he tried, everyone just laughed at him and patted his fast-disappearing hair. ‘Morning all,’ he called. ‘Good weekend?’

  ‘No,’ everyone replied automatically.

  ‘Have you updated the…?’ he anxiously asked Ravi, and when the answer was in the affirmative, raced to his terminal and switched it on.

  Despite working in a computer company, Tara’s colleagues weren’t geeks. They were normal people whose conversation in the office mostly revolved around holidays and food. Just as it should.

  Tara’s phone rang. It was Thomas. Her heart leapt, half with anxiety, half with joy. But he didn’t want to talk to her, he said, more brusquely than Tara considered necessary. He was simply reminding her to pay the cable-television bill. Don’t take it personally, she tried to soothe herself. It’s just his way.

  On Monday lunchtimes, it was traditional for everyone from Tara’s section to go to the Italian greasy-spoon caff. It was a nod to the weekend, an assumption that everyone was nursing a hangover. From ten thirty onwards, as soon as the breakfast bacon sandwiches were out of the way, people began to plan what they’d have at the greasy.

  ‘Fried bread, scrambled eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, sausages, a KitKat and a glass of Coke,’ Teddy announced, without looking up from his screen.

  ‘Chips, two fried eggs, bacon, beans, a slice of bread and butter and an Aqua Libra,’ Vinnie replied, also remaining glued to his screen.

  ‘Toast, two sausages, a cheese and onion omelette, a fudge finger and a cup of tea with three sugars,’ came slim Cheryl’s voice from behind a partition. Slim Cheryl had been on Vinnie’s team for over a year, and although she’d been moved to Jessica’s team, she never broke the link with Vinnie.

  ‘Four sausages, four fried eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon, a double portion of chips, six slices of bread and butter and a Lucozade Sport,’ Ravi said.

  At twelve thirty, regular as clockwork, everyone always surrendered to their Screensavers, put on their coats and marched as a single body to Cafolla’s. One person had to stay behind to man the help-desk and field calls from hysterical customers whose entire system had just crashed. The position rotated and this Monday Sleepy Steve was the help-desk misfortunate. (Known as Sleepy Steve for his habit of getting drunk after work, falling asleep on the train home to Watford and waking up at the end of the line in Birmingham.) Hollow-eyed, he watched the exodus, and asked in a little voice if someone would fetch him a sandwich.

  ‘Come on, Tara,’ Ravi ordered, loud as a sergeant-major. ‘Off we go!’

  ‘I don’t think I should go.’

  ‘Ah, boo,’ Ravi said, in disappointment. ‘Your bloody diet? You daft girl. OK, carry on without me, men, I’m staying behind with Tara.’

  Tara felt guilty. Ravi mightn’t have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he had a heart of gold. It wasn’t fair to deprive him of his mammoth fried lunch.

  Besides, she hadn’t eaten a thing since she woke up, and all she’d planned for dinner was a big plate of vegetables. And let’s not forget, she reminded herself, that you’re doing a step class after work, you’ll faint if you don’t eat something now. ‘It’s all right,’ she told Ravi. ‘I’ll come.’

  Sitting squashed into a plastic booth, before a Formica table, in a clattery, steam-filled caff, eating a plate of chips and beans, drinking strong tea from a thick white cup, always cheered Tara up. But not today. Thomas had been cold and impatient on the phone and the feeling she was carrying around was impending doom revisited.

  After the fry-up it was customary for the menfolk to retire to the pub next door for a quick pint and for the ladies to remain behind to have a bun. Mr Cafolla took the confectionery orders as he cleared away the greasy plates.

  Evelyn ordered an apple slice. ‘Apple-a slice,’ Mr Cafolla called behind the counter to his wife.

  Slim Cheryl asked for a fudge finger. ‘Fudge-a finger,’ Mr Cafolla called.

  ‘And you, hyong lie-dee,’ he asked Tara, when it looked like she wasn’t going to order anything, ‘what would-a you-a like-a? Custard-a pie?’

  She winced. Oh, the bastard. He certainly knew her weak spot. She shouldn’t. She’d never be skinny if she ate custard-a pies. But there was no way she couldn’t.

  As she gazed at the bright yellow swirl of custard, so thick it could stand by itself, an appetizing sprinkling of nutmeg peppering its glossy surface, sitting in its little circle of pastry, all supported by its tinfoil container, she knew true bliss for a moment. Seconds later, when the pie was a mere memory, guilt arrived. How she hated herself for her weakness. Briefly she thought about asking Mr Cafolla for the key to the bathroom and trying to make herself puke, but whenever she’d tried it in the past it just hadn’t been a success. Hardly worth the effort.
She had no idea how bulimics managed it. She took her hat off to them. Maybe there was some trick of the trade that she didn’t know about.

  17

  Back at work, Tara nipped into the ladies’ for a quick fag. There she bumped into Amy Jones, who worked on the floor above her, in Procurements. They’d only been on nodding terms with each other until the previous Friday lunchtime, when they’d discovered they shared a birthday. They’d both been in the pub, celebrating with their respective departments. And although the two groups hadn’t known each other well enough to merge, they’d acknowledged each other and the synchronicity of the occasion with smiles, nods and the raising of pints in each other’s direction.

  On Friday, with four gin and tonics under her belt, Tara had thought Amy seemed very nice. But now, as Tara inhaled so hard her ears almost met in the middle, she watched Amy glide a comb through her long, strawberry-blonde, ringlety hair and decided that she hated her. Maybe she was a good person, but with all that gorgeous hair and tall, slender beauty, she couldn’t have known a day’s hardship in her life, ever. How could two people who shared the same birthdate look so different? Explain that, Mystic Meg.

  ‘Nice birthday?’ Tara politely asked Amy. She thought she’d better, otherwise Amy might guess Tara hated her for being so thin and for her hair being in such even ringlets.

  ‘Um, OK,’ said Amy, with a wobbly smile. She looked very ropy, obviously had a high old time of it over the weekend, Tara reckoned. ‘The only thing was,’ Amy said, her voice becoming thin and high, ‘I… er… had a row with my boyfriend and ended up… like… getting arrested.’

  Tears began to cascade down Amy’s perfect white skin, as she spilled out the whole story of the birthday party; the huge embarrassment of her boyfriend’s non-arrival, his eventual appearance, the sandwich-eating, the order to leave, the hellish hours that followed, the myriad phonecalls, the longest Saturday and Sunday in history, the hysterical desperation, the call to the police… Tara rearranged her shocked expression and made the appropriate comforting platitudes, like ‘It was only a row,’ and ‘You know what men are like, just give him time to get over his bad mood,’ and ‘Maybe you should leave him alone for a couple of days,’ and ‘Yes, I know how hard it is to do that, really I do,’ and ‘You’ll look back on this and the pair of you will laugh,’ and ‘You know, this’ll probably make the two of you closer,’ and ‘Men, can’t live with them!’ and ‘Er, sorry for asking, but what exactly is police bail, just out of curiosity?’