Page 87 of Fling

She undressed, got into her old bed, and suddenly she was a teenager again. Shannon opened the door and came into the room.

‘Here, pet,’ she said, handing her a glass filled with a clear liquid. ‘Drink this. It’s the cure of the stomach.’

‘What is it?’ Tara asked, sitting up.

‘It’s just flat 7up,’ Shannon smiled. ‘It’ll get rid of the knot in your stomach.’

‘Thanks, Mam,’ she smiled, taking a sip.

‘You’ll be a whole new person in the morning,’ Shannon said as she turned off the light.

Before going to sleep, Tara opened Fling to see if Jack had replied to her.

Nothing. No text and no green light. But she knew he had every right to ignore her. She had stood him up twice for heaven’s sake. She typed a message in the hope he would see it next time he opened the app.

Claire: I hope you can forgive me Jack x

I need you x

Chapter 29

The next morning, Tara arose to a heavenly sound and smell of sizzling grease. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and opened Fling to see if Jack had replied. Still nothing. Give him time, she told herself. She headed into the kitchen to see her mother whipping up enough food to feed an army. There were eggs, sausages, bacon rashers, baked beans, white pudding, black pudding, fried tomato and a seemingly endless supply of toasted white bread.

‘Jesus, Mam, you didn’t need to go to this effort,’ Tara said, seeing the spread.

‘Oh will you give up, you need to eat. You’re skin and bone since the last time I saw ya,’ Shannon said, dishing the food onto Tara’s plate.

Tara sat down and reached for a slice of lightly toasted buttered white bread. She took a bite out of it and experienced pure ecstasy. Just like tea, there was something about the way mothers made toast.

‘Oh my God, Mam, you have no idea how much I needed this. I’ve been off carbs all week,’ Tara said, savouring the magnificent taste.

‘You need to stop with them fad diets, Tara. Women aren’t designed to not eat white bread. Why would you choose to suffer?’ Shannon asked rhetorically.

Tara knew she had a point. Her five days off carbs had made her an irritable mess. She wondered if she would have taken a golf club to Colin’s bike if she had eaten white bread earlier that day. Probably not.

Shannon dished out the rest of the food onto Tara’s plate. The only way to describe the meal was mountainous. She quite literally couldn’t see the plate underneath the food.

‘Mam, this is too much,’ Tara said.

‘Oh start eating, will ya!’ Shannon insisted. ‘Now, if my memory serves me well, you were about to start telling me about someone called Jack.’

Tara laughed to herself. A doctor had told Shannon several years ago she carried the gene for Alzheimer’s, but her mother seemed sharper than ever.

‘So much for that doctor saying you’d lose your memory.’ Tara smiled.

‘Oh yeah, I forgot I had Alzheimer’s,’ Shannon laughed. ‘Now, who is this Jack character?’

Tara took a deep breath. If anyone could advise her on the impossible situation she was in, it was her mother. ‘OK. Here it goes. So things haven’t been good between me and Colin since our last failed attempt at IVF. I told him I couldn’t go through it all again. But ever since then, Colin and I have been drifting away from each other. And while I was drifting from him, I started to drift towards someone else,’ Tara said.

‘Go on, who is he?’ Shannon asked.

‘So that’s where things get complicated. There’s this new app out called Fling, you probably haven’t heard about it.’

‘Of course I’ve heard about it! Everyone in the country heard Mary Muldoon on The Line. She visited me three weeks ago looking for the cure of the shame.’

‘What’s the cure of the shame?’ Tara asked, curious.

‘A vibrator.’

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