Just Between Us (43 page)

She dressed in the living room, and was ready to leave in five minutes. All she needed was some water to make her feel more human after last night’s excesses. She knew why she’d drunk more champagne in Scott’s: to numb herself from what she was about to do. Well, she was paying for it now, in spades.

Scott’s fridge contained nothing but wine, beer and orange juice. Tara poured herself a glass of juice and drank it standing up by the sink.

‘Leaving so soon?’

She almost dropped the glass.

‘Yes.’

Scott stood at the bedroom door, naked and sleepy, but his expression was hard.

‘I’m sorry, Scott. I have to go.’

‘I don’t mind you going, I hate the way you’re doing it,’ he said evenly, walking towards her.

‘I shouldn’t have come here last night,’ Tara said.

‘So much for “no regrets”, huh?’ He stood beside her, close enough to touch but he didn’t and Tara was struck again by how powerfully attractive he was, even tired and unshaven. It would have been easy to put her arms around him and let herself be taken back to bed for more earth-shattering sex and intense orgasms. But she couldn’t.

Last night, she’d clicked off the switch that connected her brain with her conscience. Now, she couldn’t. It had been reconnected and Finn’s face was hovering in her head.

‘I love my husband,’ she said.

‘Don’t tell me you were drunk and didn’t know what you were doing, Tara,’ he said angrily. ‘You weren’t in the slightest bit drunk when we left the nightclub; you wanted me as much as I wanted you. What happened wasn’t a mistake, the way we were together wasn’t a mistake. You can’t fuck like that if you don’t mean it.’

Tara didn’t flinch at his words. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t mean it,’ she answered, looking him straight in the eye. ‘But I love my husband and I have to go. I made a mistake, I can’t give you what you want. We can’t have a relationship.’

She could see the hurt in his face when she said that.

‘How do you know what I want?’ he demanded.

Tara shrugged. ‘If you wanted a one-night stand, you’d be happy for me to get out of here as quickly as possible.’

‘Suddenly you know a lot about me.’ His gaze was harsh and uncompromising. ‘I don’t do one-night stands.’

‘Neither do I,’ she shot back, stung.

‘Looks like you just did,’ he said coldly.

‘Scott, I can’t do this…’ she began. ‘I’m married and I love Finn.’

‘Even though he’s destroying you?’

Tara closed her eyes. The only hazy part of the night before was when Scott had asked her about Finn and she wasn’t sure what she’d said. She must have told him enough. Too much, in fact.

‘I’m sorry, Scott,’ she said. She put her glass down and walked past him. Scott didn’t make any attempt to stop her. It was only when she was standing outside the building that it occurred to her that she should have phoned a taxi.

Her high heels weren’t the most comfortable for walking in but Tara marched briskly on, ignoring the ache in her feet. She didn’t notice the pain, all she could think about was what she was going to say to Finn.

It took at least fifteen rings before Isadora answered the phone.

‘Isadora, it’s Tara.’

‘Tara, hi,’ said Isadora blearily. ‘What time is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Did Finn phone you last night?’

‘No. Why?’ Isadora sounded awake now. Awake and suspicious.

‘I wasn’t at home last night.’

‘Scott?’

‘Inspector Poirot strikes again,’ said Tara wryly.

‘Well, the sexual tension was buzzing off the pair of you all night,’ Isadora pointed out. ‘I did speculate that you were up to something when you rushed off with a headache with Scott rushing after you.’

‘Subtle, huh?’

‘As a brick. So, I’m your alibi,’ Isadora added briskly.

‘Would you mind?’ Tara held her breath as she waited for her friend’s response.

‘Of course not.’

‘Thanks. I’m sorry to do this to you, it’s not fair,’ Tara
said. She felt close to tears. Not only had she betrayed Finn, but, in her attempts to cover it up, she was telling someone else. She thought of how hurtful this would be if he ever found out: the husband being the last to know.

‘Where are you?’

‘Somewhere in Killiney. Have you got any taxi phone numbers handy?’

‘Sure. And come here,’ Isadora suggested. ‘Alibis work best when there’s a grain of truth in them.’

‘Yeah,’ said Tara sadly.

She was grateful that her friend didn’t ask for any sordid details. With one look at Tara’s pale face, Isadora ushered her in, sat her down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and poured a cup of strong, sweet tea.

‘Do you want to shower and change into something of mine?’ asked Isadora. Her own hair was wet from the shower and she was wearing a silky dressing gown in a very un-Isadora-ish shade of feminine pink.

Tara nodded. ‘What have I done, Izzy?’ she said miserably. She held onto her cup with both hands and stared into the dark brown depths.

‘You went to bed with someone you fancied. You didn’t run amok with an AK47 and murder anyone.’

‘It feels like I did.’

Isadora lit up a cigarette. ‘Tara, I know you’re not happy for some reason and I haven’t interfered and asked why. I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to but I guess something’s wrong between you and Finn. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone off with Scott. My advice, for what it’s worth, is forget about what happened with Scott and see if you can sort things out with Finn.’

‘But what if Finn finds out?’ said Tara hollowly.

‘He’s not going to find out. Have a shower, borrow some clothes and come to work with me. Then phone Finn and tell him we went clubbing and you stayed here. He’ll believe you.’

‘I’m no good at lying, Isadora.’

Isadora poured more tea into both cups. ‘I’ll teach you.’

In the shower, Tara scrubbed herself with strawberry shower gel, trying to wash away the memory of Scott’s caresses. Then she stood for ages with her eyes closed and let the water stream over her face, flattening her hair against her skull. When the water began to cool, she got out and wrapped herself in a big towel. She was clean but she still felt dirty.

‘Phone,’ yelled Isadora from outside the bathroom. ‘It’s Finn,’ she added when a white-faced Tara opened the door. ‘Just as well you came here.’

Dripping wet, Tara picked up the receiver. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘You might have phoned,’ Finn said harshly. ‘I was worried.’

‘Sorry, we went clubbing…’

‘So I believe. If you managed to get home to Isadora’s, why couldn’t you get a taxi to bring you home. Or,’ he added viciously, ‘are you trying to punish me because I went out too?’

‘No, I was drunk, that’s all. I wanted to crash out somewhere and Isadora said I could stay.’ Tara began to shiver and it wasn’t from the cold.

‘Whatever,’ he snapped.

‘I’ll see you tonight,’ Tara said but Finn had hung up.

At work, Tara and Isadora passed Scott in the corridor.

‘Hello, Scott,’ said Tara, fixing him with her clear gaze.

‘Hi,’ he said brusquely.

‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ whispered Isadora as they parted to go to their desks.

‘That was easy,’ murmured Tara, untruthfully. It had been a battle to look Scott in the eye. But what really worried her was seeing Finn. If the message of guilt in her eyes didn’t give her away, then the livid love bite on her neck might. Isadora’s camouflage make-up had hidden it for the moment. She couldn’t spend the next week hiding it.

Finn was at home when Tara reached the flat at seven that evening. Don’t rush home early, Isadora had advised. ‘That’s like proof of having done something wrong. Be your usual, bolshy self.’

Tara wondered where Isadora had picked up all these Adultery: The Easy Way tips. But she didn’t say anything. In her position, she couldn’t afford to sit on the moral high ground.

‘Hi,’ she yelled when she arrived home and plonked her briefcase on the floor. She threw her leather jacket on the overladen hall chair as usual. Acting as normal as possible was vital but why then did her every move seem like that of a particularly clumsy actress in an amateur play?

As usual, she walked into the living room where Finn was watching the news. Once, they’d have hugged when they met up at the end of the day, but lately, the frostiness in their relationship meant that the hug had bitten the dust.

Tara sat down on their only armchair, forcing herself to sink lazily into it rather than sit on the edge and wait for Finn to grill her.

‘Well?’ he said caustically. ‘Don’t I merit an explanation?’

‘I gave you one,’ said Tara, her heart thumping. ‘We were dancing and I stayed over in Isadora’s.’

‘Why not come home?’

‘
Be your usual, bolshy self
,’ Isadora’s voice echoed in her head.

‘Because I was drunk and angry and I needed a night off!’ she yelled.

‘Fine!’ he yelled back. He got to his feet and stomped from the room. The next noise she heard was of the front door slamming. Tara closed her eyes in relief. She didn’t know how long she’d have been able to keep up the normality charade.

She was a bad actress and for the first time in her life, she began to appreciate the difficulties of playing someone else. Tonight, she was playing the old Tara Miller, the pre-sleeping with a colleague version. And as far as she was concerned, every gesture and every sentence screamed ‘
Fake
’.

When Finn came in at two in the morning, Tara closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. It was hard, lying there and not moving a muscle, but she did it. The bedside clock read a quarter to three before Finn’s breathing had evened out into the regular breaths of someone who was asleep. Only then could Tara move and stretch her cramped muscles. She turned onto her back and lay gazing up at the ceiling. If only she could turn the clock back to somewhere around eleven o’clock last night. She’d never have kissed Scott, never have allowed him into her taxi, never gone willingly to his bed. But she had done all those things and they couldn’t be undone.

The wave of Mediterranean weather that had hit the sunny south east at the beginning of May, continued into June. At Nettle Cottage, this meant that the three dogs didn’t like to leave the cool of the house and spent their days lying on the cool stone floor of the kitchen, only moving to slobber some more water up from their bowls. Rose, who adored the heat, didn’t mind how high the temperature got. Her olive skin was lightly tanned from sitting outside the cottage on a deckchair, reading her way through Freddie’s collection of novels, with bees buzzing lazily in the herbaceous border beside her. The mock-orange blossom on the other side of the garden was losing its bloom, but she could still smell the heady scent drifting around her.

At night, she left her bedroom window open and she loved the sense this gave her of being close to nature. In Meadow Lodge, her bedroom was on the first floor and she never heard the crickets singing wildly outside, or the foxes barking at night.

She’d been in Castletown for five weeks now and in some ways, it felt as if she’d never lived anywhere else. There was a restful routine to her days with Freddie. For a start, formality was not part of her aunt’s life. Freddie dressed unconventionally in clothes that looked as though she’d found them in a chest marked ‘Second World War Fashions’. When she entertained, guests had to be prepared to take pot luck. The meal could involve one of Freddie’s famous Moroccan stews or might mean phoning the takeaway if she
hadn’t had time to cook. The only definite appointments in any week were Freddie’s work with the meals on wheels people, and her poker nights. Rose was invited along to everything Freddie went to, but if she couldn’t go, Freddie never minded in the slightest.

For the first time in forty years, Rose felt as if she could do what she liked, when she liked. The sense of personal freedom was dizzying. She didn’t have to be the respectable Mrs Hugh Miller any more. She could race down the lane on Freddie’s elderly High Nellie bicycle with her skirt tucked into her knickers if she felt like it. She could throw on her oldest linen skirt and a T-shirt, slip her feet into dusty old sandals, and never bother about her appearance from morning to night. The people she met through meals on wheels were delighted to see cheery faces appearing at lunchtime; they didn’t care whether Rose had great wefts of dog hair on her skirt or hadn’t bothered with lipstick. If she didn’t feel like answering the phone, she didn’t, and if she had had the inclination to walk through Castletown at four in the morning, she could have.

This morning, she was clad in a pair of Freddie’s ancient khaki shorts and a short-sleeved blouse so she wouldn’t get too hot as she cleaned up the camp bed. Stella and Amelia were coming to stay for the weekend and, as there wasn’t much room, Freddie had hit upon the idea of dragging out the camp bed for Amelia.

‘Stella can sleep with you and there’s loads of room for the camp bed to fit in your room so Amelia can be with you and her mum,’ Freddie said enthusiastically.

Unfortunately, the camp bed was past its best. Rose had hosed it to death outside the cottage back door but it still looked grim, creaky and far too decrepit to hold even little Amelia without collapsing under the weight.

Rose gave up and went to find Freddie, who was sitting in the front garden under an sun umbrella, reading the newspaper and drinking diet lemonade.

‘It’s too far gone, Freddie,’ Rose said. ‘I’ll have to go into
town to see if I can buy a little foldaway bed of some sort.’

‘Get cakes, will you,’ asked Freddie. ‘We’ve eaten all the biscuits and I’m peckish.’

Rose had just turned to go into the house and change, when she noticed a taxi struggling up the laneway.

‘Who could that be, I wonder?’ she said out loud.

Nettle Cottage was situated on a quiet lane where there was little traffic and Freddie could accurately predict what was going on around her just by looking at the cars trundling up and down the lane.

Freddie put down the paper to have a good look. ‘We didn’t invite anyone and forget about it, did we?’ she inquired thoughtfully. ‘I can’t remember, anyhow, but you never know.’

Rose grinned at this proof of her aunt’s laissez-faire attitude to guests. Freddie was not the type for rushing round with the vacuum when people were due. She was more likely to brush Prinny’s luxuriant golden fur carefully so she’d ‘look her best for the visitors’.

The taxi pulled up outside the cottage gates and Rose watched in astonishment as Adele Miller climbed out. The taxi driver took a vast suitcase out of the boot and hauled it up to the cottage, with Adele following, taking careful steps in her low-heeled court shoes. Wearing one of her infamous knit suits with yellowing pearls at her neck, Adele looked somewhat out of place amid the relaxed bohemian atmosphere of Nettle Cottage.

At the sound of visitors, the dogs rushed out of the house, barking wildly and dancing round both Adele and the taxi driver.

‘Adele,’ said Rose weakly. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to stay. I hope that’s all right,’ Adele said. ‘I was afraid to phone in case you put me off.’

The driver dropped the cases and headed back down to his car.

‘Thank you,’ said Freddie, seeing as no-one else was bothered with talking to the poor man. ‘Long time no see, Adele,’ she added cheerily.

‘Hello, Freddie,’ said Adele, sinking onto the seat beside Freddie and fanning herself with her hand. ‘I’m not intruding, am I?’

‘Not at all,’ said Freddie. ‘You’re welcome but you might have to sleep on the floor. We’re all out of beds.’

When Adele’s case had been dragged into the house and she’d been shown where the bathroom was, Rose boiled the kettle and went out to apologise quietly to Freddie.

‘I had no idea she was coming,’ Rose said. ‘I honestly don’t know what she’s here for.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Freddie was sanguine. ‘We can manage. We’ll have to buy two camp beds, that’s all. She can sleep with you and Stella can have one of the camp beds…’

‘No way,’ hissed Rose. ‘I’m too old to start sleeping with people I’ve never slept with before. Adele can have a camp bed or, if she doesn’t like that, we can fix her up with a room in one of the hotels.’

‘Not with this heatwave, you won’t. I doubt if there’s a hotel or a bed and breakfast round here that isn’t full to bursting.’

Rose closed her eyes briefly.

‘Don’t worry,’ Freddie repeated. ‘We’ll manage.’

‘You don’t know what Adele’s like,’ Rose whispered. ‘She’s very particular about sheets and what sort of bed she sleeps on. She’s not an easy guest.’

Freddie’s sea-green eyes twinkled. ‘We’ll soon knock that out of her.’

Rose began to make tea for Adele, her mind racing. Why had Adele come and interrupted her idyll? Rose had done her very best not to think about Hugh. She’d somehow blanked the whole painful memory of the party from her mind, and any time she thought of that awful phone call and the anguished voice of the anonymous woman, she forced herself to think of something else. And now Adele had come and brought all the pain into sharp relief.

Rose laid the tea things and a jug of water on the cast-iron table in the garden and moved the sun umbrella so that the
table was shaded. Freddie pulled her deckchair over but said no to tea; she was too hot. Rose agreed and took some iced water herself.

‘Thank you, Rose. I could do with some tea.’ Adele emerged from the house and sat down at the table. It was a very old piece of garden furniture and in Meadow Lodge, it wouldn’t have been let out in public without being sanded down and repainted every year. In Nettle Cottage, it was left to peel elegantly. Indeed, Rose had spent many a therapeutic hour peeling off strips of black paint while gazing out at the sea beyond the roofs and spires of Castletown.

She poured tea for Adele and proffered a plate of very plain biscuits.

The dogs, sensing that the new visitor would have no truck with wet, questing doggy noses, sat a respectful distance from Adele and kept their eyes peeled for titbits.

‘How are you, Freddie?’ asked Adele politely.

‘Great,’ sighed Freddie. ‘Enjoying the sun. You picked a great weekend to come, Adele. The fair’s on tonight and all day tomorrow. Tonight, the history society are re-enacting the Viking years on the village green and tomorrow, there’s a gymkhana, and the children’s fancy dress.’

‘Lovely,’ said Adele weakly. She took a biscuit and the dogs leaned forward as one.

‘Girls!’ warned Freddie.

They all leaned back again. Freddie got to her feet. ‘I’ll bring them for a quick walk and let you two talk in private. Come on, girls,’ she called. The dogs, with one longing look back at the plate of biscuits, galloped after her.

‘Does she walk far?’ asked Adele, watching Freddie stride off up the lane at a cracking pace.

‘Probably only a mile or so in this heat,’ Rose said. ‘The dogs aren’t able to walk too far when it’s hot.’ She sipped her glass of water and waited for the lecture.
Hugh needs you, people in Kinvarra are talking. Isn’t it time you came to your senses and came home?

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,’ Adele said.

‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ Rose replied politely.

‘I wanted to show my support.’

If Adele had said that she wanted to run off and join the navy, Rose couldn’t have been more surprised. ‘Why?’ she said finally.

‘I’m so angry about what Hugh has done. I knew that women liked him but I never thought he’d do anything other than flirt mildly with them. My father was the same; women loved him and it was mutual, I can tell you. But I thought that’s all it was, Rose. Flirting. I would never have believed it of my own brother. If only I’d known, I could have done something…’

‘Adele,’ sighed Rose, ‘you’re not responsible for Hugh. He’s a big boy, he makes his own mistakes.’

‘But such mistakes! I can’t forgive him, Rose, I’ve tried but I can’t. That’s why I’m here,’ Adele added hotly. ‘To show Hugh what a terrible thing he’s done and that I’m on your side!’

Rose was more touched than she could say. She knew that Adele adored Hugh. For Adele to publicly choose between them was a huge sacrifice.

She reached out and touched her sister-in-law’s arm briefly, a moving gesture between two women who were not affectionate towards each other. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘that’s lovely of you.’ She paused before asking: ‘How is he?’ It was strange to ask after Hugh as though he were a stranger. All her life it had been the other way round: Adele and everyone else asked
her
how Hugh was.

‘Sad and sorry,’ Adele replied. ‘He really is sorry but, as I told him, that’s no good now. He should have thought of that in the first place and not cry to me when the milk is spilt.’

Rose grinned to herself. Trust Adele to come up with an apt homily. If Hugh’s leg had fallen off, Adele would have had something moralising to say about being especially thankful for the one he had left.

‘Adele, I have to go shopping,’ said Rose. ‘Stella and
Amelia are coming this evening and I’ve got to purchase a couple of camp beds.’

Adele’s eyebrows arched. ‘Camp beds?’ she said in a Lady Bracknell voice.

Rose smothered a grin. Adele might have defrosted a bit but she hadn’t changed
that
much.

‘This is a two-roomed cottage, Adele, two rooms with two beds and this weekend there will be five people staying. So somebody’s going to be on a camp bed.’

Rose knew she couldn’t put Adele on a camp bed. ‘You can share with me. Stella and Amelia can have the camp beds. Or you can have a camp bed yourself. Either way, you won’t have either a room or a bathroom to yourself. And Freddie’s linen cupboard doesn’t run to changing the sheets every day, either.’

Adele sniffed. ‘I suppose that will have to do,’ she said. ‘I can rough it.’

‘Don’t let Freddie hear you saying that,’ laughed Rose.

It was still so hot that Rose decided to leave her shorts on and change her shirt into one with sleeves to protect her shoulders from the midday sun. Adele’s concession to the heat was to extract a straw sunhat from her suitcase.

‘Normally, you’d be scandalised by my wearing shorts,’ Rose commented as they got into Rose’s car.

‘You’re lucky you have the figure for shorts,’ said Adele. ‘I wish I did.’

By the time they’d found the camping shop, and bought one foldaway bed and one child’s blow-up bed, both women were tired and hungry.

‘Let’s go into Molloy’s for lunch,’ said Rose impulsively. ‘They do lovely seafood salads.’ Ordinarily, she’d have never suggested taking her sister-in-law into a pub but she had a strong sense that things were changed between her and Adele. Some ancient barrier had been broken down and the rules were different.

‘Why not?’ said Adele.

The owner of Molloy’s had styled his pub-restaurant on
the harbour restaurants of his native Sydney and in summer, the huge wooden terrace area was jammed with people wanting to enjoy gigantic plates of seafood overlooking the curving Castletown Bay. Rose and Adele nabbed one of the last seats on the furthest-out terrace and sat with the sea breeze cooling them.

‘It’s very hot,’ said Adele, watching enviously as Rose eased her bare feet out of her sandals and rested them on the lowest bar of the wooden rail surrounding the terrace.

‘Why don’t you take your cardigan off? And your tights,’ said Rose.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Adele, who never dared go without tights except when she was at home. ‘I’ve only got a camisole under this,’ she added.

‘Yes you could, Adele,’ said Rose. ‘Nobody’s watching.’

Sixty-five years of conditioning fought for supremacy in Adele’s mind. She scanned the other diners. There were families with toddlers plonked in high chairs, happily covered in tomato ketchup and waving chips. A group of twenty-something men and women were decked out in tiny T-shirts and denim cut-offs. To Rose’s left was an enormous party of tourists from hotter climes, all bronzed and looking pleased at this seventy degree Fahrenheit proof that Ireland was more than a country of mist and rain. They were all ages and sizes, yet nobody seemed worried about wearing shorts with varicose veins and chubby knees showing.