Last Chance Saloon

by Marian Keyes

  ‘He mightn’t wait for you.’

  ‘I don’t care, Fintan! I don’t care!’

  ‘Marvellous, he breathed. ‘Absolutely marvellous.’

  Two and a half miles across London, a violent row was in progress. Amy was screaming at Lorcan. Worn down from several months of abuse, his outrageously flirtatious carry-on with Tara’s flatmate had been the last in a long line of straws.

  The argument had gone on late into the night and had recommenced at first light. ‘How could you humiliate me like that?’ Her beautiful face was contorted and tear-mottled.

  ‘How?’ he drawled. ‘Easy. Didn’t you notice? I just flirted publicly with another girl.’

  ‘But why?’ she screeched. ‘I don’t understand. Why are you with me if all you want to do is hurt me?’

  Because it’s so easy.

  Her voice got higher and higher, finishing with a glass-shattering shriek, ‘Why do you do what you do? What do you want from life? I mean, what do you want?’

  If he’d been asked that question once he’d been asked it a thousand times. He paused and appeared to be thoughtfully considering her inquiry.

  He opened his mouth and with a cruel smile said, ‘A cure for Aids.’ The last time he’d been asked that question – about two weeks before by a heartbroken pharmacist called Colleen – he had replied, ‘What am I after in life? How about a woman who fucks like a rabbit, then turns into a pizza at two a.m.?’

  He was running out of smart answers. Granted, the women weren’t going to be comparing, but it had always been a matter of personal pride not to use the same one twice. However, it was a smart answer too far for Amy.

  ‘Out!’ She drew herself up to her considerable height and pointed with a dead-straight arm to the door. ‘Get out.’

  Lorcan chuckled indulgently. ‘You’re beautiful when you’re angry.’ A patent lie. Amy looked like ten kinds of shit.

  ‘Out!’ she repeated.

  ‘Have you shares in British Telecom?’

  Her face was both furious and inquiring.

  ‘Because,’ he laughingly explained, ‘BT profits will go through the roof when you’ve made your usual number of phone calls begging me to come back.’

  ‘Out!’

  He lounged to the door, and just before he left stuck his head back in. ‘It’ll take me about half an hour to get home so hold off on your first call until then.’

  He ambled towards the tube, tipsy with amusement at his own slick banter. But he hadn’t gone far before a type of hangover set in. His soaring high thudded sourly back to earth, the good feelings poisoned with less pleasant emotion. This kept happening. When it came to playing the role of a baddy he’d never been able to help himself. It had always been such fun. But, as the last of his buzz trickled away, he was forced to wonder if maybe it was time to do the decent thing and let Amy go; stop tormenting her and set her free. The more he thought about it the more he became convinced that he was long overdue to move on to someone else – this time to do things right. Perhaps he’d already even met that someone else…

  The time had come to have a good, long, hard think about the life and times of Lorcan Larkin.

  ‘Hey,’ he laughed to himself, ‘I must be growing up.’

  Amy picked up the phone and dialled a number. But it wasn’t Lorcan’s.

  77

  Katherine didn’t go to work on Monday. She asked Tara to ring in for her.

  ‘Why? Are you sick?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘You don’t look sick.’

  ‘Are you going to do it or aren’t you?’

  ‘Why won’t you go in? You’ve never done this before.’

  ‘I can’t face Joe.’

  ‘Why won’t you talk to him? He cares so much about you.’

  ‘Please, Tara.’

  ‘And why won’t you leave the house? You haven’t been out since Saturday night.’

  ‘Oh, please, Tara, please,’ Katherine beseeched, with a franticness that horrified Tara.

  Tara had no idea what was happening to Katherine, but she was very, very frightened. Katherine was presenting a white, dazed face to the world but, clearly, seismic mayhem was taking place below her surface. Tara didn’t want to leave her. Anything could happen. Though she had no grounds for thinking it, she was half afraid that Katherine might try suicide. Something was very wrong. It had started on Saturday night and Joe obviously wasn’t the cause. He had been an innocent bystander.

  ‘Please, Tara.’

  ‘OK.’ The helplessness was killing.

  That day Tara rang Katherine almost as many times as Joe did. When she came home from work, Katherine was dressed and fully made-up.

  ‘Are you going out?’ Tara asked, desperately hoping she might be meeting Joe.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Nice of you to make such an effort for me, so.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘Ha ha yourself.’

  They spent a peculiar, tense evening, half watching telly and pretending the phone wasn’t ringing every thirty minutes with messages from Joe.

  Tara kept looking sidelong at Katherine. The tense, expectant air around her, coupled with her perfect hair and make-up, was saying something. As Panorama ended, enlightenment descended, smooth as a lift, and suddenly Tara understood. ‘You’re waiting for him, aren’t you?’

  Katherine turned a jerky head. Her eyes were frightened. ‘Hmmmm?’ she said, edgily.

  ‘You’re waiting in for Lorcan, aren’t you? That’s why you haven’t left the house. He doesn’t have your phone number, but he has your address and you’re afraid of being out when he calls.’

  Katherine said nothing and Tara knew she was right. Seeing Katherine’s craziness tore her apart. She leapt from her seat and sat right in front of her. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, with earnest sincerity. ‘Oh, please, look at me, Katherine, please.’

  Katherine slowly raised hostile eyes to her.

  ‘I’m going to talk sense to you,’ Tara said forcefully. ‘This Lorcan was your first love. We never forget the first one. You were very young and a bit innocent. And he’s exceptionally good-looking, which doesn’t help. I’m sure it was a big shock to just bump into him like that on Saturday night and of course you’re bound to feel a bit shaky and weird. It’s happened to us all. If I met Thomas now I’m sure I’d be upset, I’d be allowed to be upset. But only for a short time because life must go on. Especially for you, because you’ve got Joe.’

  Katherine’s face flickered at the mention of Joe, then resumed its sullen expression.

  ‘Come on, Katherine, it was a long time ago. So move on and get over it. It’s the right thing to do. Hey, even I got over Thomas. If I can do it, anyone can!’

  ‘You didn’t get pregnant by Thomas,’ Katherine’s lips barely moved. Tara let the words dissolve away into silence. The shock was too great. ‘And Thomas wasn’t married,’ Katherine intoned hollowly.

  ‘Are you telling me…?’ Tara stumbled, as Katherine’s words hit home. ‘You got pregnant by Lorcan? And he was married? When you were nineteen?’

  Katherine’s dead, hopeless eyes said it all.

  ‘Oh, my good God, Katherine! Why didn’t you tell us?’

  Struggling to find the words – any words – Katherine looked mutely at her. How could she put a description on the horror of being young, alone and pregnant? The living hell she’d descended into? The agony of letting Lorcan go and not contacting him?

  And the worst truth of all, which had taken a couple of days to dawn on her, that, because she was single and expecting a baby by a married man, she had become her mother. The mother that she’d spent her life trying to be as different from as she possibly could be.

  Nineteen years of piety, neatness, ironed clothes, completed homework, punctuality and clean-living had made no difference. She was almost exactly the same age, too. Her mother had been twenty.

  ‘Please tell me about it.’ Tara coaxed, with terrible anxiety. ‘I know i
t might be hard for you.’

  ‘Not as hard as it was then.’ Her back teeth were clamped tightly together. ‘You’ve no idea how much I didn’t want to be pregnant. I used to lie in bed and look down at my stomach and feel like screaming. I literally used to feel like screaming my head off, Tara.’

  ‘Why?’ Tara could hardly speak.

  ‘Because somewhere in there, so tiny that I couldn’t see it, was the ruination of my life. A little alien was growing and getting bigger inside me. I’d never felt so trapped. It was like being in prison, but inside my own body. There was no way to get out.’

  Tara nodded miserably.

  ‘I wanted to take away my stomach. I used to wish I could be the girl in the circus who gets sawn in three and who has her midriff moved in a nice wooden section out to the side. I just wanted all the offending parts to be removed.’

  She looked at Tara, desperate to be understood, then told her how she’d sometimes plucked at her skin in an impossible attempt to tear away her body, to leave just the unpregnant Katherine, the real Katherine, remaining.

  ‘Did you have an abortion?’ Tara, very gently, suggested.

  Abortion.

  ‘You know that I don’t – at least I didn’t – believe in it.’ Katherine couldn’t meet Tara’s eye, as she remembered how, at school, she’d always made mealy-mouthed pronouncements along with the nuns about how abortion was murder, about how no one had the right to deny life to the unborn. But all that had been swept away by the terrible terror that had possessed her. From the moment Lorcan had run out on her she’d wanted to have an abortion. She could see no other way to avoid her life falling apart. She’d known she’d burn in Hell, but she didn’t care. She was in Hell already.

  If she could only get rid of the baby she’d draw a line in the sand and from that day forth she’d be the best person who ever lived. Redoubling her efforts to live a controlled, careful life. She’d known that other single girls got pregnant, that they had their babies and loved them. But, she, Katherine Casey was different. Somewhere, not so far beneath the surface, she’d felt that pregnancy was a punishment for girls who lived profligate, promiscuous lives. Because she’d always been so well behaved she’d thought it was the last thing that could happen to her. The last thing she’d deserved.

  ‘Katherine…’ Tara’s voice crooned. ‘Come in, Katherine.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell anyone,’ she beseeched, her throat aching from the onset of tears. ‘I’d never felt so alone.’

  ‘You could have told me and Fintan.’

  ‘I couldn’t, Tara, I couldn’t. If I admitted it to you then I was admitting it to myself. I just wanted it to be over, and it was far easier to close the door on the past if I was the only one who knew about it.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s dreadful.’ Tara was snow-white. ‘So you went through it all on your own.’ Then she thought of something. ‘You could have told your mother, she wouldn’t have condemned you.’

  ‘No,’ Katherine agreed, with an attempt at being rueful. ‘She’d probably have been delighted. Would have organized a termination and might even have tried to make me a test case.’

  But Katherine would never have had the moral high ground again. It was bad enough to be the same as her mother, but for her mother to know…

  ‘So what did you do?’ Tara prompted softly, convinced that it was very important for Katherine to talk about this.

  Katherine sighed wearily and braced herself for a trip back to Hell. ‘I hadn’t a clue how to go about organizing an –’ even now she found it hard to say the word ‘– abortion. All I knew was that it was illegal in Ireland and that I’d have to go somewhere in England.’

  Tara nodded sympathetically, hoping her distress didn’t show as Katherine related the whole story. How – nauseous, tender-breasted and terrified, two hundred pounds in her bag – she’d got the train to Dublin where there was a place that could help her. How she’d hardly been able to believe the enormity of her position or what she was contemplating. How she’d tried to keep her mind fixed on the future when she’d be liberated from the nightmare.

  She’d been mortified walking into the centre, sure she’d be spotted by someone who knew her. But they were kind and gentle with her there. She was examined by a doctor who confirmed that she was eight weeks’ pregnant, then she was forced to have a chat with a counsellor who tried to point out the alternatives. ‘I don’t want to hear,’ Katherine had choked. ‘I just want… Please, I just want it gone.’

  The counsellor nodded. She’d seen it so often before, these young girls in a blind panic, so frightened about what was happening to them that they couldn’t think straight.

  ‘If you’re sure?’

  At Katherine’s nod, the counsellor had said, gently, ‘OK, there’s a clinic in Liverpool. I’ll go and make the phone call. When can you go?’

  ‘Now.’ She’d tried to stop her voice from wobbling. ‘As soon as possible.’

  The counsellor had left her alone, sitting on the edge of her chair, in the tiny room. After fifteen minutes she’d come back, with a warm smile that she knew wouldn’t melt the block of ice in Katherine’s stomach. ‘It’s arranged,’ she’d said, quietly. ‘I’ve written all the details here. There’s a ferry that leaves this evening at eight. It’ll get you in at…’

  Katherine had heard the information from far away. Trains, maps, taxi to the clinic, return trip, back-up counselling. ‘Thanks,’ her voice had said.

  She’d wandered Dublin for the rest of the day but, thereafter, she couldn’t remember one thing about it. With nothing else to do she’d got to the port miles too early. Hanging around in the shed-like waiting room she’d suddenly became aware of a hot, wet feeling. Hefting up her little bag she’d run, breathlessly, to the ladies’ where she saw that she was bleeding. It was only then that she’d noticed the pain.

  The boat sailed without her and the following morning, no longer pregnant, she’d got the train back to Limerick, still feeling as though she was living in a nightmare.

  ‘So you didn’t have an abortion,’ Tara attempted to cheer.

  ‘No, but I would have,’ Katherine admitted, dully. ‘It’s as bad as if I did.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘It feels like it.’

  ‘And then you came home to Knockavoy and wouldn’t talk about it,’ Tara remembered. ‘You were so bitter. Now I can see why.’

  ‘Then I wrote to my father,’ Katherine admitted. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  ‘And what did he say?’ Tara tried to remain calm. If her father had rejected her so soon after Lorcan’s carry-on, was it any wonder that she was so uptight?

  ‘He was dead,’ she said, simply. ‘He’d died six months and six days before.’

  ‘How did you feel?’

  Katherine wavered, before finding the right words. ‘Like dying too.’

  Tara breathed out in quiet horror.

  ‘Then we moved to London and I had one disastrous relationship after another, and here we are.’ Katherine tried a watery smile.

  ‘But I’ve had one disastrous relationship after another too,’ Tara insisted.

  ‘Not the way I had.’

  Tara had to agree. ‘It must be something to do with finding out about your father so soon after the terrible stuff with Lorcan.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Thank God you’ve told me about it. Obviously Lorcan was meant to walk in here on Saturday night.’ Katherine’s eyes lit up and Tara’s heart descended. ‘Because it’s blown your past wide open,’ she said quickly. ‘Now you can get over it.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘So, am I right? You were waiting in in case he called?’

  ‘Please, Tara, try and understand. It’s never felt finished. It’s haunted me.’

  ‘What made you think he’d come?’

  ‘Instinct.’

  Tara eyed her shrewdly. ‘Desire, more like. But even if he had arrived around here, what would you have achieved by seeing
him? It’s not as if you’d consider getting off with him again?’

  She was appalled when Katherine didn’t immediately deny it.

  ‘I don’t know what I want,’ Katherine despaired, and her confusion was genuine. ‘I just don’t want to feel this way about my life and my past.’

  ‘And you thought the way to do it would be to get involved with him again? After the way he treated you, you’d have been better off being extra, super-duper horrible instead!’

  ‘But I will be.’

  Even this made Tara anxious. Lorcan was too good-looking, too charming, too sexy, too dangerous. He would always be the winner. And the fantastical way Katherine was talking, as if he really was going to arrive on their doorstep any minute, was even more alarming.

  ‘What had you planned?’

  Katherine thought about all her fantasies, and said vaguely, ‘I don’t exactly have a plan. It all depends.’

  ‘But it’s not going to happen,’ Tara said, soothingly. ‘And you can still get over everything that happened. We’ll arrange for you to get professional counselling, and you know I’ll help you and, of course, so will Joe. And, sure, Liv is a mine of information about this sort of thing. Although, when you think about it, you’re actually grand, look at how great things are with Joe –’

  The doorbell rang and they both jumped.

  ‘Who the…?’ Tara asked. ‘It’s ten to twelve.’

  Katherine’s face flooded with colour. ‘I think it’s for me,’ she said, faintly.

  ‘Who is it? Is it Joe?’

  It was Lorcan.

  78

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Tara breathed, as Katherine buzzed him in downstairs.

  The cheek of him! And Katherine hadn’t been so crazy, after all.

  Katherine opened the door. Her knees began to knock as soon as she saw him, in all his broad, hard masculinity. The appraising expression in his dark eyes propelled her back a dozen years. The arrogant toss of his leonine mane hadn’t changed one bit. ‘Come in.’ She tried to corral the desire for revenge before it all escaped in the face of his mesmerizing loveliness. She was nineteen again and dizzy with disbelief that he was actually there.