Page 78 of Things We Never Said
‘Considering what?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ she says, sounding falsely disinterested. ‘I split up with Dave, that’s all.’
‘Oh, no!’ Sean says. ‘I had no idea, Mags.’
‘It’s no big deal; really it isn’t. I’m getting quite good at it these days. Hardly makes a ripple.’
‘I doubt that’s true,’ Sean says.
‘No ... no, I suppose not.’
‘What happened, Mags? I mean, if you want to talk about it ... Perhaps you’d rather not talk about it.’
‘Girls always want to talk about it, Sean,’ Maggie says, flatly. ‘Do you not know that yet?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Not wanting to talk about things is a boy thing.’
‘OK,’ Sean says, sounding dubious. ‘So what happened?’
‘He wasn’t very nice in the end. Like you said. You spotted that before I did. We were having a row the last time you called, actually.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mags. And that call ... it was ... I know I was strange. I was just having a bad day.’
‘I don’t even remember what it was about, to be honest. Whatwasit about?’
‘Nothing,’ Sean says. ‘Nothing that matters.’
‘No? Anyway, we were in the middle of a shouting match. So if I was a bit weird, I apologise, too.’
‘What about? The barney, I mean. That is, if you’re sure you want to go—’
‘Money,’ Maggie interrupts. ‘It was about money, mainly.’
‘Money?’
‘Yes. I was paying for pretty much everything. Which I honestly didn’t mind. Dave’s not, as I’m sure you spotted, very wealthy.’
‘Neither are you, are you?’
‘No. Well, quite. But we went to the pub and I paid for the food and drinks, as usual. And then I went home – I had an early start the next day, you see. Only, after I’d gone, Dave bought everyone drinks.’
‘But he didn’t buy you a drink?’
‘No, but that’s not it. That wouldn’t have bothered me. No, the thing was that he bought everyone drinks and then told the barman to put them on a tab in my name. He said that I’d pay it the next time I was in.’
‘What?’
‘I know! Because I’d gone and he couldn’t use my card, he told them to keep a tab. So the next time I went in there to meet him, there was a bar tab waiting for me. It was thirty-six pounds eighty.’
‘Jesus, Mags. What a weird thing to do.’
‘I refused to pay it, of course. Which became this big row with the barman who said he was just doing his job and what-have-you. And so I walked out and went home.’
‘Wow, I can’t think what to say to that.’
‘Dave arrived about an hour later. He’d gone to the pub to meet me, but hadn’t had his card with him, so he claimed. And the barman had told him that if he couldn’t pay, he was barred. Actually, we both were. It’s the first time I’ve ever been barred from a pub. So Dave went all shouty on me about how he’d been barred because of me, and how embarrassing that was – that’s when you phoned, bang in the middle of that – and then I told him to get out. So that was the end of that, really.’
