Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes Read Free Book Online Page B

seven and he’d found his mother in the hall with a suitcase. When, in surprise, he’d asked where she was going, she’d laughed and said, ‘Don’t talk daft. You know.’ He’d protested that he didn’t, so she’d said bitterly, ‘We’re splitting up, me and your dad.’ It was the first Thomas had known about it and he told Tara that even now, twenty-five years later, it still pained him that his mother had been about to leave without saying goodbye to him.
    ‘Don’t come if you don’t want.’ Thomas looked wounded. ‘But seeing as I took trouble to book…?’
    ‘I want to come,’ she assured him. ‘Honestly, I do. Thanks for doing it. Who wants to see Robert Redford with his oldface hanging off him, anyway?’ She noticed the bag of peanuts that Thomas was practically lying on. ‘Yummy.’
    ‘Oi!’ He slapped her hand away.
    ‘Aw, it’s my birthday.’
    ‘I – am – your – conscience,’ he boomed. ‘You’ll thank me for this.’
    ‘I suppose I will,’ she said sadly.
    ‘Cheer up, Tara.’ He chided. ‘It’s for your own good.’
    ‘You’re right.’ She rummaged in her bag. ‘Oh, no, I’m out of fags. How did that happen? Have you any?’
    There was an infinitesimal hesitation before he tossed her his packet of cigarettes. As he leant over with his lighter, he said, ‘We have to give up, Tara.’
    ‘We really must.’
    ‘They cost a bludeh fortune.’
    ‘They do.’
    ‘Three quid a day, Tara. Each.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘That’s twenty-one quid a week. Each.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘That’s eighty quid a month. Each.’
    ‘I know.’
    That’s a thousand quid a year. Each. Think what we could buy with that, Tara
, Tara said in her head.
    ‘That’s a thousand quid a year. Each.’ Thomas said. ‘Think what we could buy with that, Tara.’
And it’s OK for you. You’re a computer analyst. You earn twice as much as me
.
    ‘And it’s OK for me,’ she said, cheekily. ‘I’m a computer analyst. I earn twice as much as you.’
    There was a moment’s edgy pause, then Thomas grinned ruefully.
    In a sombre documentary voiceover, Tara intoned, ‘He was the meanest man I had ever met.’
    ‘Like I’ve any bludeh choice!’ Thomas declared hotly.
    All his friends from college had landed fabulously well-paid jobs, where their quarterly bonuses were often more than Thomas’s annual salary. But as Thomas was too blunt to charm prospective employers in industry, he’d ended up becoming a geography teacher in a west London comprehensive. He worked very hard, got paid a pittance and his bitterness was legendary. But not as legendary as his stinginess. ‘I should get paid as much as a government minister because teaching kids is one of the most valuable jobs anyone can do,’ he often said. (‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten my wallet, you’ll have to pay,’ was another regular.) People spoke of him as having short arms and deep pockets, of him having a padlock on his wallet, of him being first out of the taxi and last to the bar, of him pinching a penny till it begged for mercy.
    But he didn’t do himself any favours. Instead of at least pretending to be generous, he compounded his reputation as a tight-fisted leech by not letting his change rattle around in his trouser pockets like normal people did. Instead he kept it in a purse. A little brown plastic old-ladies’ purse that snapped closed at the top. Katherine had once wrestled it out of his hand and managed to open it before Thomas tore it back from her. She’d
insisted
that a moth had flown out.
    ‘I hate us being skint, Tara,’ Thomas whined. ‘You won’t stop spending and I’ve nowt to spend. The fags’ll have to go.’
    ‘The start of the month is always the best time to quit smoking,’ Tara humoured him.
    ‘Happen you’re right.’
    ‘And we’ve missed the start of October. So we’ll both give up on the first of November.’
    ‘You’re on!’
    Then they both promptly forgot about it.
    ‘Time for bed.’