Around mid-February news reached them that Thomas had a new girlfriend. She was Marcy, the woman who’d told Tara at Eddie’s birthday party that she was trying to get pregnant from a sperm bank.
‘It figures,’ Tara said, bravely. ‘She must be really desperate.’ Though everyone rallied round it was a major setback for her. ‘The jealousy is killing me,’ she admitted, taut and pale. ‘All I can think of is how nice he used to be to me.’
‘He was never nice to you.’ Katherine attempted to cheer her up.
‘Yes, he was, Katherine. He was lovely in the beginning. He was mad about me and he acted like I was gorgeous. Why else would I have got off with him? And why else did I stay with him for so long?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Because I was trying to get back to the way it was in the beginning. I know I’m well out of it, but I still feel he’s mine. And now he’s being lovely to her instead of me.’
‘He’ll make her life a misery.’
‘That’s no comfort. It should be
my
life he’s making a misery.’ Tara put her head in her hands and moaned, ‘I’m just so tired of feeling this way. And what makes it twenty times worse is that she’s so bloody skinny.’
‘Have you looked in a mirror lately?’ Katherine eyed Tara’s starved and Stairmastered body.
‘She’s permanently skinny,’ Tara whispered. ‘She’s a real skinny person. I’m only an impostor and I’ll be fat again soon.’ Then she rallied, courageously. ‘This is just another hurdle.
Once I’m over this I’ll be much better. It just means,’ she added sadly, ‘that now there really is no going back.’
‘But you weren’t going to go back.’ Sandro was shocked.
‘No, but… It’s a new level of “over” when your ex meets someone new.’ She smiled weakly. ‘It’s a shock. And it’s not pleasant to think of him getting on with his life without me.’
‘But you’re getting on with your life without him,’ Liv consoled.
‘Ah, I’m not really. I haven’t met someone else. It really pisses me off that it always takes men no time whatsoever to hook up with someone new. Three months is all it took him. It’s very unfair.’
‘You could hook up with someone if you were really desperate,’ Fintan pointed out. ‘You’ve managed to sleep with two men in the last month.’
Tara shuddered. ‘Blind-drunk one-night stands with two of the most hideous men in the northern hemisphere. Elephant Man and Elephant Man’s ugly brother. I only slept with them to get some affection.’
‘Them’s the rules.’ Fintan was jolly. ‘Women have sex with men for affection, men are affectionate to women to have sex with them.’
‘One-night stands make me feel even worse. They’re really not worth it,’ Tara insisted.
‘How’s that sweetheart Ravi?’ Fintan asked, innocently.
‘Ravi? The Ravi who I work with? The Ravi who’s three years younger than me? The Ravi who stays up all night playing Nintendo? The Ravi who thought
Die Hard
was a documentary?
That
Ravi? He’s fine, Fintan, why do you ask?’
‘Only being polite.’ He smirked. ‘Is he still going out with Danielle?’
‘No, they split up at Christmas.’
‘Is that right?’ Fintan and Sandro nudged each other in delight. ‘Is – that – right? So he’s on the loose. You could do worse than consider him.’
Tara looked darkly at Fintan. ‘If I ever even think about it, somebody shoot me.’
The next day, Tara bumped into Amy in the entrance hall at work.
‘Hi.’ Amy beamed. ‘How are you? I haven’t seen you in ages. Not since before Christmas.’
‘Oh, cripes.’ Tara put her face in her hands. ‘I’ve just remembered. I met you that awful day when I was plastered and throwing up. Oh, the shame.’
‘Don’t worry. I got alcohol poisoning that night, and had to get an injection in my bum to stop me vomiting.’
Tara laughed in relief. She was in awe of Amy’s pre-Raphaelite beauty and it was nice to know she was human.
‘We really must go out one night,’ Amy went on. ‘Unless you’ve got back with your bloke?’
Tara shook her head heavily.
‘I don’t know if you remember, but I told you that my boyfriend has a lovely friend called Benjy, and I bet you two would really like each other. So why don’t we all go out?’
‘OK,’Tara said, a slow burn of excitement beginning. Maybe he’d be half decent. ‘When?’
‘Saturday night?’
‘Can’t. The Saturday after?’
‘Done.’
‘And he’s nice, this Barney?’
‘Benjy. He’s lovely.’
‘Well, if he’s anything like your boyfriend he’s bound to be gorgeous,’ Tara praised. She turned away too soon to see alarm zigzag across Amy’s porcelain face.
‘For the thirty-first year running, the award for Best Collection of Molecules goes to Katherine Casey.’ Joe smiled down at Katherine, who was sprawled naked and languid on his bed. ‘And that’s not just on planet Earth, you know,’ he added, knowledgeably. ‘That’s universe-wide.’
‘We have to get up for work,’ she said, without much conviction.
‘You’re going nowhere, young lady.’ Joe was stern. ‘Not until the doctor has examined you.’
Katherine giggled, but her heart squeezed a slow thump of excitement. This game was even better if you were wearing clothes to start with, but what harm?
‘Now what appears to be the problem?’ Joe’s expression was severe.
‘It hurts.’
‘Where?’
She wavered, then pointed to her abdomen. ‘Here.’
‘Show me,’ he ordered, strictly. ‘I’m a busy man, show me exactly where.’
‘Here.’ She touched herself lightly and squirmed with embarrassment and arousal.
Joe placed a cool, doctorly hand on her pubic bone and, with his thumb, began to stroke in an idle fashion. ‘Here?’
‘Lower down.’
‘Ms Casey, you must show me exactly where!’
Her eyes closed, she took his hand and moved it.
‘Here?’ he demanded.
‘In more,’ she gasped.
‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
Some time later Katherine’s muffled voice emerged from under Joe. ‘We really have to get up for work now.’
On the way for her shower she almost tripped on the collection of free weights that were gathering dust by the door. Then went into the bathroom where there was a long-dead plant on the windowsill, the only shampoo was Head ‘n’ Shoulders and there wasn’t any conditioner at all.
Joe’s flat was reassuringly that of a single man. But not for much longer. Katherine had every intention of changing it.
She darted back into the bedroom wrapped in a beige, threadbare towel. ‘I’m late. I must iron my shirt.’
Joe tried to pull the towel off her and she scolded him, ‘No. Leave me alone and have your shower or you’ll be late too.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Dejected, he trudged to the bathroom.
She was dressed when he returned and he checked her out in her slim pale-blue suit. ‘Possibly the best girlfriend in the world,’ he said softly.
‘I bet you drink Carling Black Label,’ she replied, her gaze focused on his groin. ‘Now get dressed.’
‘OK.’ He sighed.
She dried her hair, put on her make-up and rummaged in her purse.
‘Oh, Joe, I need change for my tube fare.’
‘Help yourself.’ He swept aside the jacket of his suit and angled his hip at her.
‘No,’ she giggled, ‘I’m not putting my hand into your trouser pocket.’
‘If you want your tube fare,’ he grinned, wickedly, ‘you’ll have to.’
She hesitated for an awkward moment, then slid her palm into the secret cave of his pocket, over the slippery cool lining and the jut of his hipbone and into the recess weighed down by coins. But she’d lost interest in the money because under the pocket she could feel something else. A luscious, squeezy swelling. Expanding and moving, unfurling and hardening, coming to life beneath her. Her hand began to seek and stroke, moving and…
‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘We’ll never get to work at this rate!’
She pulled out a pile of coins, selected what she needed and returned the rest, letting them fall and jangle back in.
‘Sorry.’ She was sheepish. ‘I’ll get you later.’
‘Too right.’ He smiled. ‘How about a session in the gents’ at work?’
‘No.’
‘Aw.’
‘I was saving that for your birthday. Now you’ve ruined the surprise.’
‘Were you really?’ he asked, curiously. He never really knew with Katherine, she was such a funny mix of the prudish and the raunchy.
‘You’ll have to wait until July to find out, won’t you?’ She gathered up her things. ‘Gosh, this phone weighs a ton.’
Katherine had unplugged the phone from the wall of her flat and taken it to Joe’s, just in case Tara had any ideas about
ringing Thomas in her absence. ‘See you at work.’ She kissed him. ‘Give me a ten-minute head start.’
‘You don’t have to tell me every morning, Katherine,’ he said, gently. ‘I know. But I wish we didn’t have to be a secret from everyone we work with. Are you ashamed of me?’ He laughed, but she realized there was real hurt in the question.
‘No,’ she blustered. ‘Of course I’m not ashamed of you. I just don’t like people knowing my business. I have to maintain an air of authority at work and if they know I’m boffing you they’ll think I’m
human
. Next thing they’ll be trying to pull fast ones with their expenses and overspend the accounts…’ She thought about it for a moment. Perhaps she was being too uptight. What the hell? ‘OK, so long as we don’t actually walk in together.’
They’d been seeing each other for almost five months now and, as far as Katherine was concerned, every day was another miracle. If only she’d known last November that they’d still be an item come April! A lesser man would have run screaming from all the drama in Katherine’s life, but Joe had just rolled up his sleeves and got on with it. He’d witnessed first hand Tara’s post-Thomas shenanigans, hadn’t balked at listening to her tales of woe and had refereed the occasional, late-night tussle where Tara tried to wrest the phone from Katherine.
More importantly he was very supportive to Katherine in her dealings with Fintan. He never complained about the amount of time she spent with him and seemed happy to devote plenty of his own time too. He didn’t even object when Fintan flirted outrageously the first time they met.
‘Thank you,’ Katherine had said, as they drove away.
‘For what?’
‘For not getting uncomfortable when he gave you the come-on.’
‘What’s to thank?’ Joe had asked. ‘A good-looking man flirts with me? I’m flattered.’
‘Well, you’d better get used to it. I think he likes you.’
The intensity of emotion and events acted like a pressure-cooker, so that Katherine and Joe had become very close very quickly. She’d never had a relationship that had lasted as long as this one. And it was a long time since she’d trusted a man as much as she trusted Joe. Not that she trusted him
much
. ‘But I trust you enough to tell you I don’t trust you.’ She laughed.
‘Thank you.’ He was utterly serious. ‘And take your time. I’m not in a hurry, plenty of people trust me.’
Though she guarded her past as though it was a precious jewel, eventually she felt that she had to stop being so cagy about her family set-up. She knew all about his, and her dead silence whenever parents were mentioned began to feel like overreaction. So one day she sat him down and spilled the beans about her mad mother and her lack of a father. ‘I thought you were going to tell me you’d murdered someone,’ he exclaimed, when, after a dramatic build-up, she finally managed to blurt it out. ‘Why do you act like it’s something to be ashamed of?’
‘You mean it isn’t?’
‘Of course not.’
‘But I’m illegitimate.’
‘You’re Katherine Casey,’ he replied.
Even though she had to go to bed for a couple of hours from the exhaustion of the revelation, Katherine began to inch her way into a fear-free life. While Joe reached a new understanding of what she was all about.
‘Something weird’s after happening,’ Tara said to Katherine.
‘What?’
‘I think I’m over Thomas.’
‘Great. Well, it was bound to ease off. As Joe says, “Time wounds all heals.” ’
‘No, I don’t just mean it’s got easier,’ Tara insisted with intensity. ‘I mean when I woke up today it was all gone.’
It wasn’t like those mornings when she woke up and had a few confused seconds during which the pain was absent, but then quickly rushed into focus, like a photograph developing, until the agony had returned in all its sharp definition.
‘It’s gone, like a puff of wind,’ Tara said. ‘My life with him seems like it belongs to someone else, and it seems so
sensible
to be over him because he just didn’t deserve me.’
‘You’re preaching to the converted.’
‘All I feel now is sorry for him.’
‘Go easy.’
‘But, Katherine, he’ll never be happy.’
‘Excellent. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’
‘No matter what I did it wouldn’t have pleased him. If I went down to five stone he’d have complained about some other aspect of me. Because I wasn’t the problem. He is.’
‘You’re not just saying this?’ Katherine asked suspiciously.
‘No! Isn’t it great? I’ve wanted to parade in front of him to
show him how skinny I’ve become, and now I don’t care if he never finds out. And I don’t give a damn about Marcy. You were absolutely right, he will make her life utter hell. And I’m sure he’s told her I was always upset, like he told me about his previous girlfriends, so that she’ll feel she can’t ever show any negative emotion, the way I did. But what do I care? Because my life isn’t a misery any more and that’s the way I like it!’
They held hands and did a little dance of delight.
‘And I’m not saying that I actually
want
to have children, but at least now I have a choice, unlike poor old Marcy. She’d have been better off with the turkey-baster,’ Tara mused. ‘Thank you, Katherine, for everything. For housing me – I’m going to start looking for my own place this very weekend – and putting up with me. But most of all thank you for not letting me ring him or visit him.’
‘It was far better for you to have no contact with him,’ Katherine agreed. ‘The other way only prolongs the agony and keeps you hoping.’
‘All the same, I can’t believe it,’ Tara said, in wonder. ‘It’s only five months since I’ve left him and I always thought that heartbreak was something that went on for years and years, basically until you met another man. That’s how it’s always worked for me before,’ she added.
‘I know.’ Katherine had witnessed Tara’s almost unbroken ten-year chain of boyfriends. ‘This is nothing short of a miracle. It was always like a relay race before. You’d hardly be finished with one fella before you’d started on the next.’
‘Was I that bad?’
‘Oh,
yes
.’
‘I’ve
wanted
a boyfriend since I left him,’ Tara admitted. ‘The
loneliness has been unspeakable. And, in fairness, I had a couple of one-night stands.’ She recoiled at the memory.
‘But at least you left them as one-night stands. You didn’t start going out with either of the men.’
‘That’s because they were eejits and I’ve wasted enough of my life on eejits. I don’t want to do it any more.’
‘But don’t you see?’ Katherine demanded in excitement. ‘You were never like that before. You’d have gone out with an eejit rather than have nobody. You’ve changed.’
‘So have you.’
‘So have we all. Liv’s different. You’re different. I suppose even I’m different. Why?’
‘It’s because of Fintan, isn’t it?’
Katherine tried to find the words. ‘It’s something to do with him being sick. And I know all that stuff about seizing the day and making the most of every second is hard to sustain constantly,’ she admitted guiltily. ‘It’s so easy at times to forget and to take it all for granted.’
‘But there are other times when I look at him,’ Tara interrupted, ‘so young and so much nearer to death than me. Then I think, That could be me, and I feel… it makes me…’ She faltered, then smiled with enlightenment. ‘It makes me want to live a better life.’
‘That’s exactly it.’ Katherine was luminous and repeated, ‘It makes me want to live a better life.’
‘And going back to Thomas wasn’t living a better life,’ Tara said. ‘And neither is going out with a gobshite. And falling in love with Joe Roth is.’
‘Excu –’
‘Sorry, that’s none of my business. You haven’t changed
completely,’ Tara said ruefully. ‘Do you want to know something else?’
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure I ever loved Thomas.’
‘Makes sense to me.’
‘And do you know why I didn’t love him?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t think I ever got over Alasdair. So I’ve been thinking and do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I’m going to give Alasdair a ring.’
Katherine’s heart sank. She’d known it was too good to be true. She’d been just about to return Tara’s mobile to her and all. Good job she hadn’t. ‘But he’s married,’ she tried. ‘It’s years since you’ve had any contact.’
‘Oh, I don’t think we’ll get back together,’ Tara said breezily. ‘I just want to lay it to rest. And what better time than when I’m a size ten?’
Katherine looked very anxious.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tara soothed. ‘Even if I was desperate for a man – which I’m not – I’m going on a date on Saturday night. That girl at work I was telling you about, her boyfriend has a friend.’
‘Weren’t you supposed to do that ages ago?’
‘Yes, but she got the flu, then she was away, then I was busy, but we’re
definitely
going out this Saturday.’