Thirteen Stops

by Sandra Harris

  “So she’s a bloody gold-digger,” Carl said. “Now I’ve got it.”

  “No, she isn’t.” Graeme was instantly on the defensive. “Don’t judge everyone by your own grotty standards.”

  “What d’you mean by that?” demanded Carl. “How am I judging everyone by my own ‘grotty standards’, whatever that’s supposed to mean?”

  “If the cap fits, wear it,” said Graeme piously.

  “What does that even mean?” Carl’s face was red with anger. “All you ever do is talk in fucking clichés and riddles that don’t even mean anything. I’m gonna punch you in a minute, Gray.”

  Graeme, the stronger of the two by miles, narrowed his eyes, unperturbed. “You can try.”

  “Now, now,” said Dad, frantically pouring oil on the troubled waters, “no one’s punching anyone. We’ll work this thing out together as a family, like we always do.”

  “Is Mummy a Fucking Pwozzy-Tute like Mawoon-Vicky?” Georgie asked his father.

  “Well, if the definition is a woman who takes money and presents for sex,” Carl said nastily. He could have bitten his tongue off the minute the words were out of his stupid big fat mouth, but it was too late to recall them. Wasn’t there a line in the Bible about that kind of thing, a line that said you might as well throw a sack full of feathers off the top of a high mountain in a big wind and then try to catch them all, as attempt to take back hateful words once you’d said them?

  Karen stood up and threw the remains of her wine into his face. Well, he couldn’t complain. He deserved that.

  Carl’s mother burst out laughing. She kept on laughing and laughing and laughing until her husband had to come round the table and put his arms around her and ask her if she was all right.

  “Of course I’m all right,” she choked out between laughs. “Why wouldn’t I be all right, Bernard dear? My baby boy’s marrying a hooker. With a teenage son who has a – a jailbird for a father.” She screeched with manic laughter until the tears rolled down her face, ruining her carefully applied make-up. “And my other son has grossly insulted his wife and had wine thrown in his face!”

  “I want to be a Fucking Prozzy-Tute when I grow up and get presents and money for sex,” Lauren decided.

  “Are there any more spuds?” Graeme, seemingly oblivious of the bomb he’d dropped, was chewing away happily. “These are really tasty.”

  “Georgie kicked my fucking ankle again!” complained Danny.

  “That’s because you’re a K-U-N-T,” spelled out Georgie, swinging his sturdy little legs briskly. “K-U-N-T spells ‘kunt’.”

  Lauren’s eyes widened in delight. Another new swear word! Her brothers picked up some really cool language at school. She tried on the new word for size.

  “K-U-N-T,” she said. It positively rolled off the tongue. “K-U-N-T spells kunt. Grandma, what’s a kunt?”

  Sunday Dinner – Dinner With A Capital D – was over for another week.

  Now Carl was on the Luas and it appeared to be Everyone-Trample-On-Carl-Day because everybody who passed him seemed to be stomping on his bloody feet. He missed his car, he was starving with the hunger after having to skip his lunch because of a tardy estate agent’s inability to turn up to a property viewing on time, and he was annoyed about the waste of a day. The two premises he’d viewed in Milltown hadn’t been suitable for Graeme’s new business, the one Graeme was still adamant he was setting up but now with Vicky’s help. She was going to send out invoices and final notices and suchlike, and she was even planning to take an evening course in accountancy or book-keeping or something similar so that she could eventually do the company’s books. Graeme was ridiculously excited about his new business and his equally new fiancée. He was going to pay her a proper wage to be his personal assistant so that she could quit the escort business and sign up for a night class somewhere. And he was taking his responsibilities as Andrew’s new stepfather seriously too, by googling ‘how to be a good stepdad’ online and printing off the tips that came up and studying them earnestly whenever he got a minute. He wouldn’t be meeting Andrew any time soon, because Vicky was waiting for the right time to tell her teenage son the news that she was engaged, but when they did meet, whenever that was, he was determined to be prepared. ‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ was his motto, and Graeme never failed to prepare if he could help it.

  Carl had met Vicky a few days earlier, but only after Graeme had practically begged him to. He’d had to admit that she wasn’t the hard-faced little money-grubber he’d been expecting. On the contrary, she’d seemed very nice, rather shy even, and she was certainly very good-looking. Carl could imagine that she’d been extremely popular as an escort. What had struck him most about her, however, was the way he could tell that she’d had a hard life and a hard time bringing up the kid on her own while his loser of a father was behind bars, but that she’d stuck with it and was doing the best she could with it. He honestly couldn’t fault her for that. By the end of their meeting, in fact, he’d nearly wanted to take her away from her shitty life himself and turn her into the princess he thought she probably deserved to be. He could understand totally why Graeme wanted to look after her and save her from more slings and arrows. But if she hurt him, he’d decided grimly, then she’d wish she’d never met anyone in the Groves family. Graeme was his little brother, the Great Autismo, and no woman was going to take his money and break his soft, loving autistic heart. Carl would be Keeping An Eye On Things in a big way and, the minute Graeme needed him, he’d be there. Even before Graeme had his autism diagnosis, Carl Groves had always looked out for his little brother, who was a good three or four inches taller than him now and could pulverize him in an arm-wrestle. (But only because Carl hadn’t time to go to the gym these days and was a bit out of practice as a result.) But, for now, it looked as if he was going to have to stand back a bit and let Graeme make his own mistakes, if that was what this marriage to Mawoon-Vicky, as all three of his kids now persisted in calling her, was going to turn out to be. How could it not turn out to be a mistake? At the very next opportunity, however, Carl was tying Graeme to a chair and forcing him to watch a DVD of Pretty Woman from beginning to end. With any luck, he might learn a few pointers from it. Maybe he could use this awful, awful film to teach Graeme the difference between real life and the fantasy life according to a big-budget Hollywood movie. Only in Hollywod movies could there be a happy ending for the rich bloke and the escort. It never, ever happened in real life. This was the point he urgently needed to communicate to Graeme. He thought Karen might have a DVD copy somewhere. He’d ask her the next time it was his turn to have the kids. Boy, wouldn’t that give her a laugh? She’d think he was going soft in his old age.

  Please move down the tram, repeated the automated female voice everyone usually ignored. “And kindly keep out of the way,” muttered a bored Carl to himself, “while I dance the can-can naked with my knickers on my head and a rose between my teeth.” Even if she said that, there still wouldn’t be a flicker from the travel-anaesthetised public, he was sure. It took a lot to rouse people from their stupor these days. He sighed heavily.

  A woman sat down across from him and accidentally bumped off him while crossing her long legs.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she apologised, putting in her headphones and beginning to scroll down on her phone.

  “Not at all, no worries,” Carl said, studying the woman appreciatively.

  He’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even noticed the gangly schoolboys getting up to leave before this woman could take their place. She was a looker all right, but not in such a way that she was a clone of a million other women. She was tall, with impossibly long legs in tight black leggings and black suede boots. Her short dark hair was slicked back from a face with great cheekbones and her earrings were dangly and silver and reached nearly down to her shoulders. She had great style, as his mother Ivy would say. There was something oddly familiar about her too. He felt as if he’d seen her before somewhere, but no
t looking like she did now. Maybe her hair had been different or something. Longer maybe.

  He was trying to remember where he knew her from when she suddenly pulled out her earphones, leaned forward and said to him: “Excuse me, but are you Carl Groves?”

  “Yes,” he answered, bemused. “I thought we knew each other all right. I was literally just trying to figure it out. And you are . . .?”

  “Tara. Tara Robinson. We were in school together.”

  “Of course!” he said, snapping his fingers.

  Of course he remembered her now. Tara had been one of the best-looking girls in his class, with long dark hair and great breasts that she’d developed early, if he remembered correctly, and he was sure he did. Great breasts were not something a man tended to forget. She’d been sporty too, very athletic, always in a tracksuit and trainers.

  “Weren’t you in training for the Olympics at one point or something?” he asked her.

  She pulled a wry face. “I was. Ankle injury put paid to that.” She waggled her left boot at him and he made what he hoped were suitably sympathetic clucking noises.

  “So, what do you do now then?” he asked, genuinely interested.

  Tara was a real cracker. He remembered now that they’d gone on one disastrous date together when they were in school. He’d ruined things by going for her breasts too soon into a kiss. She’d slapped his face and flounced off home, and that had been the end of that.

  “I’m a rep for a pharmaceuticals company.” She made another wry face.

  “Oh, very good,” he said politely. “That sounds interesting.”

  “It’s not at all, I can assure you.” She laughed. “I’m bored brainless with it. What about you, what do you do?”

  “I sell life insurance,” he said.

  They both burst out laughing.

  “Are you married then?” she asked him then, indicating his ring.

  “Separated.” He shrugged in a what-can-you-do kind of way. “Six months now. We have three kids. Lauren is six, Georgie is five and Danny is four. They’re like the steps on the stairs. One kid a year, three years in a row. Looks like that’s it for us now. Three’s plenty.”

  “That’s a shame. That you’re separated, I mean. Not about the kids. They sound lovely. What happened there? With you and your wife, I mean?”

  Carl shrugged again. “We were fine until we got married. Once the rings were on, we just couldn’t seem to agree on anything. We argued about literally everything, even stupid things. Especially stupid things. The stupid things caused the most bloody trouble.”

  That was true enough. The row that had proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back had been about hoover bags, of all things. Carl was supposed to pick some up but had forgotten. The ensuing squabble about his thoughtlessness had morphed into World War Three. Karen was screaming at him about how he was a selfish bastard of a husband who put himself before everyone else – he’d shouted back a bit and the next thing he knew, he was a weekend dad back living with his parents at the age of thirty-four, taking his kids to McDonald’s and a movie on Saturday afternoons and phoning them from his mobile every evening to say goodnight. He wasn’t stupid enough to blame the hoover bags for the separation, but he still gave them a dirty look when he passed them in the Homewares aisle of the supermarket where he had done his depressing shopping-for-one in the beginning. Was there anything more soul-destroying than buying a bland, tasteless dinner for one in a plastic tray? Thank God for his mother’s cooking and the fact that she’d pitied him enough to cook for him again. He’d tried to look after himself at first and be an independent single-man-about-town but he just couldn’t hack it. Maybe he simply wasn’t cut out for the single life any more.

  Now it was Tara’s turn to cluck sympathetically.

  “What about you?” Carl asked her now. “Are you married? Divorced? Other?”

  For response, she flapped her left hand at him. There was a rock on her wedding finger the size of a small cat. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed it before. He gave a low whistle.

  “That must have cost a fortune. Who are you marrying – Bill Gates?”

  “In a few weeks’ time, I’ll be Mrs. Tara Robinson-Devore.”

  “Devore?” Carl screwed up his eyes as he tried to remember where he’d heard the name before. ‘Not . . . not Ritchie Devore? From school?”

  Tara nodded. “The very same.”

  Carl remembered Ritchie as a quiet, studious guy, a decent enough skin but not terribly exciting, a bit Tim-Nice-But-Dim. His parents had been moderately wealthy so Ritchie, an only child (Ritchie Rich, the obvious nickname), had always had good clothes and shoes and nice new clean schoolbooks, instead of scribbled-on hand-me-downs with the answers already written in by previous students and such edifying mottoes as ‘AMY LUVS DARREN 4EVA’ inscribed within their pages. He hadn’t been a prick about it, though, and there’d been many occasions when he’d let a panicked Carl copy his French homework. Carl had been okay at Maths and Sciences but languages weren’t his strong suit. They were all Greek to him.

  “What’s old Ritchie doing now?” he asked, only half-interested in hearing the answer.

  “He works in his dad’s factory.”

  Was it Carl’s imagination or did talking about Ritchie cast a cloud over Tara’s expression? “Oh yeah. What was it they manufactured again?”

  “Cutlery,” said Tara glumly, and this time there was no mistaking the cloud.

  He took a chance. “Um, Tara, is everything okay between you and Ritchie?”

  Tara bit her lower lip. She didn’t need lipstick because her lips were full and red, like Angelina Jolie’s. She looked as if she was trying to decide something. Then she seemed to come to a decision because she leaned forward suddenly and said to him conspiratorially: “Can you keep a secret?”

  Carl nodded, feeling a frisson of excitement run through him suddenly.

  “I’m going to the Dundrum Town Centre to buy a suitcase.”

  Carl stared at her. “Wow!” he said. “That’s a doozy all right.”

  “That’s not the secret, silly,” she said with a giggle. “That’s not it at all.” Then, urgently: “Listen, Carl, where are you going?”

  “Jesus, Tara, that’s a bit existential for a tram-ride home, isn’t it? I mean, where are any of us going, when you think about it? And will we even know about it when we get there?’ To be honest, I’ve sometimes thought that we all –”

  “Dope! I meant where are you going right now? On this Luas?”

  “Oh, this very minute, you mean? Just home to Brides’ Glen. I’m back living with my folks since the separation. Karen and the kids get to keep the house, obviously. I’m supposed to be looking for a place of my own but every time I start house-hunting for real, Karen starts hinting that she might possibly be on the verge of letting me come back home. I never know if she’s serious or if it’s just another form of mental torture she’s devised for me.”

  “And do you want to go back home?”

  “Yes and no. Of course I want to be back living with my kids and sometimes I even miss Karen, God help me, but we’ve spent so much time arguing, I don’t know if I could go back to that. Life now is boring but at least there’s no constant aggro like there used to be when we lived under the same roof.”

  “Will you get off here at the Dundrum Town Centre with me?” Tara leaned forward and took both his hands in hers as the tram trundled to a halt. “I could really use someone to talk to right now, Carl.”

  He hesitated. He really shouldn’t get involved in someone else’s complications – he had enough of his own – and, besides, he was feeling worn out. But … a Thursday evening spent at home with his parents in front of the telly, watching the Nine O’Clock News and discussing the next day’s weather in tedious detail was all he was in for if he headed on home to Brides’ Glen. Tara was good-looking and fun to be with and he was separated, wasn’t he, so it wasn’t like he was committing any major crimes by going off
with her for a couple of hours. He was a grown man, wasn’t he? And she was an old schoolfriend. Plus, he didn’t need anyone’s permission to go off with a beautiful woman for a couple of hours of an evening. He made up his mind, then he nodded.

  “Great,” Tara said. “We can go for a coffee somewhere – someplace we can talk.”

  She linked her arm into his once they’d stepped off the tram.

  Things were looking up, thought Carl. “Sounds like a plan,” he said. ‘“Lead on, Macduff!’”

  Tara didn’t buy a suitcase that night. She and Carl didn’t drink any coffee either. They found a cosy little bar in a small hotel not too far from the Luas stop, and curled up in a nice private corner with two pints of Bulmers and a packet of peanuts each. Carl tried to do the thing where he threw a peanut up in the air and caught it in his mouth, but he failed dismally every time. He didn’t mind, though, because his failed attempts sent Tara into paroxysms of laughter and she looked very sexy when she was laughing.

  “So what’s this big secret, then?” he remembered to ask her, halfway through his second or third pint.

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone?” Her voice was a theatrical whisper.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  She leaned in closer to whisper in his ear. “I’ve won the Lotto.”

  “What?” Carl immediately forgot to whisper. “But that’s fantastic, Tara! Are you sure?”

  She nodded, fishing two crumpled pieces of paper out of her bag. One was a Lotto ticket and the other a newspaper cutting with the winning numbers on it, the date and the amount of the prize money. Carl checked the numbers. She was right. They matched exactly.

  “Two point four million!” He whistled through his teeth. “Congratulations, Tara! That’s fucking amazing. I’ve never met an actual Lotto millionaire before. Ritchie must be over the moon about this, is he? Or is he still in shock?”