CHAPTER2
‘Mam, can we not do this right now? I’m trying to pack and I’m so behind schedule.’
Louise Walsh heard Tara’s request but as usual ignored it in favour of reminding her daughter what auseless articleher father, Christopher, was. Tara was well aware of this fact, given that she’d cut all contact with him six years ago, but Louise, full of animosity and gin, continued to rant.
‘Did you know that, when you were six years old, he bought a burger van? A bloody burger van! I said to him, Tara needs new shoes and you’ve gone and bought this monstrosity? Is she supposed to—’
‘—put burger buns on her feet? Yes, Mam, I did know that. You’ve mentioned it several thousand times.’
Tara placed her mum on speaker and continued to pack, vowing to switch her phone off after this call, in case her mother remembered any further tales of marital hell while her daughter was away for the weekend. Tara didn’t want anything to ruin this trip. She was looking forward to seeing the girls again, so much so that she got butterflies every time she imagined walking into that house and greeting the only real friends she’d ever known.
‘I heard the van went on fire and I thought, well, that’s karma. You set my life on fire, now the same has happened to you.’
Tara cringed. God, her mother could be so overly dramatic, it was mortifying. She would need nicotine if she was going to have to sit through this shit again.
‘When I won Miss Ireland—’
Oh, dear God, not this Miss Ireland anecdote. I do not have time or the energy to go back to the seventies with her.
‘—I never thought that out of all the roads that opened up for me, one of those roads would lead directly to that morally bankrupt French Canadian. Thank God I still have my looks because that man literally left me with nothing else. Not one good thing came out of that relationship.’
Not one good thing. Really, Mam? Have we met?
Tara always thought that if her mother had been born with a different, moreordinaryface, she might have actually become a decent human being. One who considered her daughter to be a blessing from her awful marriage, not an inconvenience It had always bothered Tara that she looked just like her mother. Having grown up with Louise Walsh, she understood just how damaging conceit could be. When her dad remarried someone younger, someone fresher faced, it absolutely broke her mother because youth was the one thing she couldn’t compete with.
‘Anyway, why are you packing?’ Louise asked. ‘Are you going on holiday? I haven’t had a holiday in years.’
‘Didn’t you go to Bulgaria with your cronies in March?’ Tara responded, scrambling around for her vape. It was only July now, surely she couldn’t have forgotten already.
Her mum sighed. ‘I wouldn’t consider that a holiday. It was more of a mental health emergency. It was life or death, darling.’
‘Two secs, Mam.’
Tara put the phone on mute and screamed into a couch cushion. Life or death? Her mother had stayed in a five-star Marriott hotel in Sofia! She had photos of them on the beach and wine-tasting. She even got reiki! Jesus, why couldn’t she admit to having a nice holiday, like a normal person? Her mother’s histrionics were nothing new. For as long as Tara could remember, she would turn everything (good or bad) into some kind of melodrama. She was the type of woman who would hear a song playing on the radio and swear that it could have been written by her, for her or about her.
‘OK, I’m back.’
‘I mean, I barely relaxed the entire time,’ Louise continued, ‘Far too cold to swim. I might have well just have stayed in—’
‘San Diego.’
‘Pardon?’
Tara found her vape and inhaled, producing a ridiculous amount of vapour, like a walking smoke machine. Six months cigarette-free and she still missed them. ‘You asked where I was going. I’m going to San Diego. And no, not a holiday, I’m working.’
She didn’t feel bad about lying to her mother because if Louise had even gotten as much of a whiff that her daughter was heading back to Ireland without telling her, her life would not be worth living.
Louise sniffed. ‘Must be nice. You’ve certainly done well for yourself. If it had been up to your father, you wouldn’t even have gone to university, you know. That fancy degree you have is no thanks to him.’
Fancy degree? Tara smirked. Business and economics was the least fancy degree she could think of.
‘Yes, you’re probably right.’ Tara found this blanket statement to be incredibly helpful during conversations with her mother. She used it often, along with ‘That’s really interesting’ and ‘Oh dear, my phone’s about to die.’
Tara batted away another cloud of vape and looked around the room.Laptop… check. Chargers… check. Urge to cut all contact with my mother… checkcheckcheck.
‘Anyone going with you on this little business trip?’
Tara sighed. Louise had said ‘business trip’like it was code for something far more salacious. LikeSecret Sexy LiaisonorPenis Adventure.
