Just Between Us (25 page)

‘Hi, I’m going for a quick drink with Aaron and the team. I won’t be long. Bye.’

As she hung up, Tara thought back to the days before she’d met Finn; when going out with the team was the focal point of her social life. They’d had some wild nights back then when anyone going home before one in the morning was considered a party pooper. Clearly, the gang thought that love and marriage had turned Tara into the ultimate party pooper. She, the girl who’d taught them the tequila forfeit game; who could clear a dance floor with her hysterical River Dance impersonation. After nine months of marriage, she still hadn’t made it back to the tequila game. Finn, as they all guessed, was the answer. Ralph regularly teased
her about Finn’s resemblance to Brad Pitt and never lost an opportunity to enquire about what he called ‘the love of the century’.

Tara, used to constant ribbing and aware that Ralph’s bark was worse than his bite, rarely bothered replying. She was intuitive enough to realise that Ralph’s remarks stemmed from jealousy: to him, she and Finn must have looked like a sickeningly perfect couple.

But…well…it wasn’t perfect, not quite perfect.

Determined not to give in to introspection, she applied her signature bright scarlet lipstick without needing a mirror. Tara knew the contours of her mouth well enough without having to actually look at it. Bright lipstick was the ultimate mask: enough Ruby Woo and she looked sparky and happy. She dumped her briefcase in her car and walked across the carpark and over the road to Browns, the
National Hospital
local. In the pub, the TV people had divided into two very separate teams. Near the door sat a group of actors, all looking different from their soap personas. Even though she’d worked in TV for years, Tara was still astonished at how actors could transform themselves. The woman who played Staff Nurse Mo was virtually unrecognisable in real life. Mo wore buttoned-up-to-the-neck uniforms and looked permanently stern, while the actress floated around with rippling blonde hair, a rosebud pout and flowing skirts.

The actors nodded at Tara and she smiled back as she walked towards the group of writers who were plonked in the darkest section of the pub.

‘We’re going for the body in the canal,’ yelled Tommy.

Tara grinned ruefully. ‘As long as I don’t have to write it.’

‘Drink?’ asked Lisa.

‘Mineral water,’ Tara said tightly.

‘Have a real drink and get a taxi home,’ urged Tommy. ‘Let your hair down.’

Tara shook her head and took her water.

‘Right, now spill the beans,’ said Lisa, pulling her stool
up beside Tara’s so they could have a quiet conversation. ‘What’s the exact story with this film script?’

‘It’s supposed to be confidential for a start,’ Tara pointed out with a grin, ‘so don’t tell everyone. Basically, I’ve been asked to look at this script with a view to polishing it, that’s all. And I want to know where you found out about it?’

Lisa grinned. ‘Now that would be telling.’

The apartment was silent when Tara got home at nine, carrying her briefcase and the bag of groceries she’d picked up at the supermarket on the corner.

‘Finn!’ she called, dropping her briefcase beside the spindly-legged hall table. Her voice echoed in the silence of the wooden-floored hall. Tara liked the idea of wooden floors but they certainly magnified noise.

Tara didn’t bother calling out to her husband twice. He must still be out. So much for her cosy chat over a Chinese takeaway. She was too hungry to wait for Finn, so she put some fresh pasta on to cook and went into the bedroom to strip off her work clothes.

Within two minutes, she was back in the kitchen, barefoot and dressed in a sloppy black sweater and jeans.

She stirred some supermarket sauce onto the pasta, took half from the saucepan, and went into the living room with her plate.

The late-night news was almost over when she heard Finn at the door. He never fumbled with his key, no matter what time he got home. Tara couldn’t understand it. She wondered did he practise when she wasn’t there: eyes closed or even eyes crossed as he slid the key in the lock, again and again to make sure he was perfect at it.

‘Hiya, honey,’ he called. ‘How’s my baby?’

To the untrained ear, Finn’s voice sounded light-hearted and perhaps a bit tired. A normal ‘I’ve-had-a-hard-day-at-the-office’ sort of voice.

But Tara knew exactly what her husband’s precise tone of voice signified: drunk. Honestly, she thought angrily. That
job was killing him. He’d have a liver like a prune soon. This had to stop.

‘Hello.’ Finn appeared, still immaculate, his tie as perfectly tied as it had been that morning. Tara wondered how he did that, too. When she drank too much, she ended up looking dishevelled, with her hair in that dragged-through-a-bush-backwards state.

‘Sorry I’m late. Work. Have you eaten?’ Finn leaned over to brush his lips against her cheek and Tara caught the familiar sweet smell of alcohol. ‘I shared chicken wings and chips with the guys,’ Finn continued.

‘Finn, why didn’t you tell me if you had to go out tonight?’

Finn’s face slipped into its beguiling hangdog look. ‘Sorry babe, I couldn’t get out of it and when I got your message on my phone, I knew you’d be out late and it was all right.’

‘It wasn’t all right,’ she protested. ‘I came home early and had to spend another bloody evening alone. You’re married to your damn job.’

‘Oh, honey.’ He flopped onto the seat beside her and rested his head on her shoulder, almost childlike. ‘Don’t be cross,’ he wheedled. ‘You know how tough things are for the company right now. We’re way off target for this quarter; we’re in serious trouble. You know I didn’t want to go out but I’ve got to back up Derry. As the boss, he carries the can. I just couldn’t let him down.’

Tara sighed. ‘You’re lucky that I’m such a softie,’ she said. ‘I bet the other guys’ wives don’t let them off as easily.’

‘No, but you’re a wonderful, understanding person,’ said Finn, burrowing in close to her. He kissed her neck softly.

‘Go away you big boozy pig,’ said Tara, but he knew she was joking.

‘I think I’ll get some milk, might settle my stomach,’ Finn said off-handedly.

‘OK,’ said Tara, ‘get me some too. And then bed, right?’

‘Yes, mistress,’ he teased.

In the kitchen, Finn went about his regular routine. He noisily opened the fridge and took out a carton of milk. Pouring half a glass, he listened carefully in case Tara decided to come into the kitchen. The wooden floors were wonderful for hearing her approach. When he was satisfied that she was still watching the television, he opened the drinks cupboard quietly and reached carefully into the back. Hidden behind a half-empty gin bottle, the usual selection of mixers and two boxes of unopened brandy (Finn felt that having unopened drink fooled everyone), was the bottle of diet tonic water. Or at least, the label said it was diet tonic. It was vodka, topped up by Finn every few days with a bottle bought specially. The vodka bottle was then hidden in his briefcase ready to be dumped somewhere else. The moment his fingers touched the tonic bottle, he felt a sudden giddy relief. He snatched it quickly and poured a shot into the trendy chrome measure someone had bought them as part of a chrome cocktail shaker set. In one swift move, he downed the spirit, not even gagging as the raw liquid hit his throat. One more, for the road, he decided. He downed another shot. Maybe he could do with some more in his milk. Just in case. He didn’t want to get into bed and suddenly need another drink when he couldn’t nip out and get one. Finn didn’t like going to bed without a decent hit inside him. At night, he really wanted to be someplace else, somewhere there were no feelings. He wanted to be perfectly numb. Only then, when his brain was nicely fuzzy, did he actually like himself. Not that anyone else ever guessed about the howling loneliness inside. He hid it too well. The real Finn was useless, ineffectual, unlovable. If Tara ever knew what sort of a person he really was, she couldn’t love him.

The following morning, Finn lay in bed, willing the fog in his head to disappear and hoping that the nausea wouldn’t be too bad when he sat up. Some mornings, he was unable to get up for ages because one wrong move, and he’d have
to rush for the toilet bowl and heave his guts up. This morning, he lay quietly, listening to the sounds of Tara in the ensuite shower. He could tell exactly where she was in her morning routine just by listening carefully. Once she was out of the shower, he had perhaps ten minutes’ grace before she’d open the bathroom door, made up and still in her dressing gown, ready to run the hairdryer over her short hair before she got dressed That precious ten minutes meant he could rush into the other bathroom and puke, if necessary, without her knowing. He could also have his first painkiller cocktail of the day, two painkillers fizzing in a glass of orange juice to slake the murderous hangover.

Finn knew other people who liked a drink and who didn’t get hangovers, but he wasn’t one of them.

Today, he tested himself by sitting gingerly up in the bed. Not too bad. Not puking time, definitely. Hey, it was almost like not having a hangover at all, he congratulated himself. He must have been very restrained the night before.

He made it to the kitchen, popped his painkillers in a glass and put the coffee on, which was his sole gesture towards breakfast. By the time he got back to the bedroom, Tara was drying her hair in front of the mirror so conversation wasn’t required. Great.

Finn leapt in the shower and did his best to scrub away the scent of last night’s bender. One of the lads in work insisted that people could smell the drink off a person when they’d been drinking heavily the night before, but Finn was convinced that this notion was wrong. With enough Eternity for Men, he smelled irresistible, he was sure of it.

Tara was finishing both the paper and her toast and coffee when Finn finally emerged, shaved, sweet-smelling and clad in a very sharp grey suit. Despite her uneasy feeling that something was going badly wrong, Tara smiled in appreciation of her handsome husband. He had that effect on her. She loved his strong face with the boyish smile, she adored running her fingers through the fair hair that he tried to keep cut short to stop it flopping over his forehead. She liked the
way his eyes appeared intensely blue when his skin was faintly tanned. He still had the last vestiges of his skiing tan and it suited him.

Tara thought of all the things she’d planned to say the night before, and decided that now wasn’t the time or the place. ‘Hi, lazybones,’ she said. ‘I am going to buy you the loudest alarm clock I can find; you are hopeless at getting out of bed.’

‘Lucky you’re such a hard worker,’ Finn teased in return. He felt relief flood through him. In the mornings, he always wondered how drunk he’d appeared the night before. He didn’t want Tara to know, he didn’t want to hurt her. She mightn’t understand that he just liked a drink now and then. Not everyone did but he did. It didn’t mean anything. So he watched carefully for any sign that she was worried about his drinking. Today, things were fine. Phew. They were out to a party tonight and he decided he’d go easy on the booze. He wouldn’t drink, not a single glass. That would impress her.

Tara shut the dishwasher door and it slammed.

Finn winced. The tablets didn’t work as well as they used to.

She leaned over and kissed him goodbye. ‘Watch out for strange women,’ she said, as she always did.

‘I’m married to the strangest one around,’ he replied happily.

When she was gone, Finn relaxed. He finished his coffee and poured another one. With another cup, he’d be able to face the day.

Snow White. Now
there
was a stepmother from hell, thought Stella idly that same morning as she switched on her computer. It was ten to eight, and the office was mercifully quiet. That was the way Stella liked it, the time when she could work without the phone ringing off the hook.

No, Stella decided as she clicked on her computer desktop calendar, stepmothers still on her mind, Cinderella’s stepmother was more relevant to her personal story. At least she hadn’t tried to murder her stepdaughter like Snow White’s evil stepmom. Although Cinderella’s mother by marriage was definitely a candidate for charges of child abuse.
Your Honour, the defendant wilfully differentiated between her two daughters, the Ugly Sisters, and her husband’s daughter, poor Cinders. He could do nothing to help, being, as he was, blinded by his second wife’s sexual power!

Stella grinned wryly at the thought of Nick being blinded by her sexual power. He was crazy about her, she knew that. But blinded? Not quite.

Still, that was the myth behind the fairy story of the stepmom. Stella thought about the two real stepmothers she knew personally. One was the stepmum to three very young children and the chief worry appeared to be making a small house expand to fit an influx of extra children every second weekend. The other had married the long-divorced father of grown-up children, many years after he and their mother had split. The stepmother had adult children of her own as well, and from a distance, it all seemed remarkably civilised
and friendly. There didn’t
appear
to be any problems there, but Stella had to admit that she’d never asked. Perhaps under the surface was a simmering cauldron of hate with the stepsiblings locked in an eternal battle with each other and with their step-parents.

And now it was her turn: Stella Miller, wicked stepmum-in-waiting.

With a desk full of legal documents in front of her and the first of the day’s skinny lattes in her hand, Stella didn’t feel she quite fell into the Cinderella/Snow White Evil Stepmum mould. For a start, she didn’t have the waspy waist that all classic fairytale evil female characters had. And her hair wasn’t coal black and sculptured but prone to frizziness. Stella was a slave to anything in the chemists’ with the words ‘sleek’ on it.

But there could be problems ahead. Stella sipped her latte absently. She and Nick had been going out for three months and she hadn’t met Nick’s kids yet. According to
The Art of Step
, this was a fatal mistake. One of many fatal mistakes, in fact, because she and Nick had apparently done everything wrong. If there was an award for Most Inept Modern Couple, they’d win it hands down because they’d fallen blindly in love and hadn’t thought of the consequences.

Nick insisted that Jenna and Sara would adore Stella. ‘They’re not babies,’ he’d said firmly. ‘They know the score.’

The score, Stella reflected, sounded reasonable to herself and Nick, but what if it didn’t make as much sense to a nineteen-year-old in her first year of college, and to a fourteen-year-old who sounded like Daddy’s pet?

She knew that her friends had found it hard to fathom how she and Nick had fallen in love so quickly. Their relationship hadn’t been a gradual slide into love: there had been this intense, instant bond and after their second date, there was really no option for them to be apart. But try explaining that to anyone else, especially teenage daughters.

Stella wasn’t an expert at teenagers. Amelia was only seven, and it felt like a zillion years since Stella herself had
experienced teenagerdom. Surely modern teenagers were much more mature and sophisticated. They’d deal with Daddy’s new girlfriend, wouldn’t they?

Unfortunately, the book hadn’t cheered her up on this point.

The first rule of stepfamilies was to gently introduce your children to the new squeeze before any life-changing decisions were made. This was vital. No,
VITAL.
In big letters. The stepfamily book didn’t discuss what would happen if you did make life-changing decisions without telling the various children first, but the implication was that serious misery would follow. Nick and Stella hadn’t planned any huge decisions. Not yet. But she suspected that everything might not be plain sailing for a while. Reading between the lines of the things Nick told her, his ex-wife, Wendy, was in denial over her divorce. She phoned Nick over every little problem, from flat tyres to trouble with the fuse box, and expected him to drop everything to rush to her aid. How would she take the news that her ex had a serious new relationship? That would be bound to hurt. Would that sense of hurt make her suddenly change her mind about an amicable split and start using her daughters as ammunition? Nick saw none of these possibilities but Stella saw them all.

She stopped scrolling through her diary for a moment. Should they slow it all down, for Jenna and Sara’s sake? What if Nick’s girls couldn’t face a new woman in his life, a woman who couldn’t imagine life without him and who was already daydreaming of the day they lived together?

‘Hi Stel, did you go home at all last night?’ asked Vicki, appearing at the door with her briefcase. ‘Or do you have a bed in there?’

‘I left at six, you slacker,’ Stella joked back.

‘That’s practically a half-day for you. I remember when you used to stay in the office until half seven on Monday nights,’ sighed Vicki. ‘But now that you have the delectable Nick to go home to…’

‘I only stayed until half seven on Mondays because that
was Amelia’s swimming lesson night,’ Stella retorted. ‘And the delectable Nick doesn’t live with me.’ He had his own key, though, she thought happily.

‘Yet,’ said Vicki, batting her eyelashes dramatically in the manner of a silent movie star, ‘he might as well move in, he’s there all the time.’

‘He isn’t,’ protested Stella.

‘Vicki grinned. ‘Give it time,’ she said with a knowing smirk. I’ll see you for lunch?’

Stella worked flat out all morning, pausing only to grab another cup of coffee after her noon meeting. She took the coffee back to her desk and decided that a five-minute break was in order.

Vicki was buried under a mountain of paperwork.

‘Sorry to interrupt, but have you still got that gift catalogue?’ Stella asked. ‘I’ve got to look for an anniversary present for Mum and Dad. The party’s in two weeks and we still haven’t got anything. Tara and Holly will kill me because I’m in charge of getting it.’

‘Hold on,’ said Vicki, delving into the drawer where she kept her supply of magazines, spare tights and tampons for emergency use.

She handed Stella a fat luxury gifts catalogue.

Back in her office, Stella flicked through the catalogue rapidly, past endless pages of murderously expensive cutlery, and several displays of sickeningly twee figurines. Who bought this stuff? she wondered as she looked at a particularly hideous carriage clock that was a disastrous fusion of Louis XIV and Liberace. She knew the answer: people desperate for fortieth anniversary presents. When there wasn’t anything the anniversary couple needed, the only option was something straight from such a catalogue.

Presents like that came complete with an unspoken: ‘
Yes, we know it’s awful but it cost lots of money and that’s the whole point, right?
’

Only this present was for her parents and Stella didn’t want to buy a soulless canteen of cutlery or an ugly clock.

She wanted to buy something special, the perfect gift that reflected her love for them—and their love for each other. These days there weren’t many couples who’d lasted forty years together. Her marriage hadn’t.

But forty years of Nick, she thought dreamily, that would be wonderful. She dragged herself back to the task in hand. Reaching the ruby anniversary was one hell of an achievement and was why Hugh and Rose Miller’s present had to be perfect. Stella turned a page and came upon a section where the Liberace/Louis XIV fusion thing had resulted in a selection of statues of Greek goddesses with lots of gilt embellishment on their flowing robes and way too much bare bosoms. Sighing, Stella threw the catalogue in her desk drawer and wished her mother had agreed to the holiday.

Stella and Tara had thought it was the best idea they’d ever had; that their combined anniversary gift would be a week in Paris.

‘No, I wouldn’t hear of it, Stella, although you’re wonderful girls and I’m so proud of you all for even thinking of it,’ Rose had said.

Dear Mum, Stella smiled. She was always thinking of other people. Rose Miller was the sort of mum who pretended she wasn’t hungry if too many people turned up for dinner and who wouldn’t dream of buying herself so much as a new pair of tights if she could possibly spend the money on any of her three daughters or her husband. Her daughters adored her. There
had
to be a perfect anniversary present out there.

Vicki stuck her head round the door. ‘Lunch?’

‘Give me one minute,’ Stella replied and began to tidy her desk. She was ready to leave when the phone rang and a sense of duty made her pick it up.

‘I hoped I’d catch you,’ Nick said. ‘They work you too hard. You never get to go to lunch on time.’

‘Pot, kettle and black,’ retorted Stella. ‘Rearrange these words into a simple sentence.’

‘Point taken,’ he said ruefully. ‘I’m going out for a sand-
wich later. This is just a quick call to say three things. One, I’m definitely cooking dinner tonight.’

Stella smiled. ‘Two lessons and you’re already an expert,’ she teased. Nick had barely known how to turn an oven on until Stella had given him a crash course in cooking. Twenty years of marriage to a brilliant cook meant he could hardly make a cup of coffee without consulting a recipe book.

‘I’m a fast learner,’ he replied. ‘Roast chicken sound OK to you?’

This time, she couldn’t stop herself laughing. Roast chicken was the only thing he could cook. She planned to teach him a couple of other menu options one day.

‘Roast chicken would be lovely. What are the two other things?’

I was talking to Wendy earlier about bringing Jenna and Sara out at the weekend. It’s Jenna’s birthday on Friday and she’s having a party, but I wanted to do something with her. And,’ he hesitated, ‘I told Wendy that I wanted the girls to meet you and that I’d have a big talk with them about it tomorrow night.’

‘How did she take it?’ asked Stella anxiously.

‘Not bad, she seemed OK. She didn’t say much but that’s good, right?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Stella slowly.

‘Last but not least, my brother phoned and he and Clarisse want us to go to dinner with them next week.’

Stella grimaced. Nick’s caustic sister-in-law was definitely one of the clouds on their horizon. Howard was a sweetheart. But Clarisse was another kettle of fish.

Stella had met her only once and it had not been fun. The two couples had bumped into each other in a hotel lobby and Clarisse had looked at Stella the way an exterminator would inspect a cockroach. Stella was not used to people looking at her like that, with…with disgust, she realised in shock. Afterwards, an embarrassed Nick explained that Clarisse was very friendly with Wendy.

‘Ah,’ said Stella, suddenly understanding why Clarisse’s
face had frozen when Nick had artlessly introduced Stella by putting a protective arm around her shoulders. During the few minutes the four of them had been together, Clarisse hadn’t addressed a single word to Stella. An entire dinner with Clarisse was not something Stella looked forward to.

‘It won’t be so bad, Stella,’ Nick said, knowing exactly what she was thinking. ‘Clarisse will love you when she gets to know you.’

Stella raised her eyes to heaven. Men, they were so innocent, really. Nick hadn’t a clue when it came to personal relationships. Emotional intelligence was the key and Nick, for all his brilliance as a businessman, had none. He honestly believed that his sister-in-law would roll over like a playful kitten as soon as she got to know Stella. In his rose-tinted view, the two women would be bestest friends in months. Stella knew that they’d be sending out for gas heaters in Hell before Clarisse did anything but curl her lip at the sight of Nick’s girlfriend.

‘I didn’t set a date for dinner, mind you,’ Nick was saying, ‘I said we’d need to check your diary but Howard thinks they’re free next Thursday.’

‘Great,’ Stella said, wincing. She’d bet anything that Clarisse had organised dinner to either inspect Stella at close quarters—or to frighten her off.

‘I’ll bring the ingredients for dinner tonight and see you at half six, then?’

‘Great. Love you,’ she said.

‘Love you,’ he replied.

As she hung up, the sense of unease that had been dogging Stella all day returned. It was nothing to do with another evening of roast chicken, with Nick opening the oven door every ten minutes to ‘check if it’s done’. It was the thought of his blind innocence when it came to his sister-in-law. If he could be so sure that she’d like Stella, when Stella knew this was highly unlikely, then he could be wrong about other important things. Like how his Jenna and Sara would react
to their father’s new partner, and how their mother would react, too.

Luigi’s was jam-packed, with at least half of the tables taken up by lawyers from Lawson, Wilde & McKenna. Stella smiled at a few people and sank onto a banquette beside Vicki, who was already deep in
Hello!
and crostini smothered in garlicky tomatoes.

‘What’s up?’ Vicki asked, shutting the magazine, even though she was in the middle of a very juicy article about the Monaco royal family. ‘You haven’t had a bust-up with the love of your life?’

‘No,’ said Stella, unable to stop the moony look crossing her face. ‘He’s still fabulous. His sister-in-law is the fly in the ointment. We’re going out to dinner with her on Thursday next.’ She didn’t mention the worry about the children. It seemed disloyal to Nick to talk about this most private thing, even with her dear friend.

‘The sister-in-law? The one who looks like Gary Oldman in his ancient Dracula make-up?’

Stella erupted with laughter. ‘You’re evil, Vicki, you know that?’

‘
You
were the one who told me she had this sort of stretched face as if the plastic surgery had gone wrong,’ protested Vicki.