Just Between Us (46 page)

‘No, it’s true,’ she said. ‘I am magnetic in a bad sense. Some women have an aura that makes men swoon at their feet. I have an aura that makes drunks chase me.’

‘Come on,’ laughed Tom. ‘You’re joking. They don’t.’

‘They do,’ insisted Holly. ‘On the bus, drunk people always sit beside me. Even in work, there’s this wino called Rasher who sleeps outside the store and if the security man turns his back, Rasher rushes in and he always comes to me!’

‘That’s because he knows you’re kind and that you care,’
Tom pointed out. ‘I bet nobody else in Lee’s even knows his name.’

‘Well, no. Security know his name because they have to make him leave. I mean, all I do is talk to him when I pass him.’

‘See, you’re kind and the world’s lonely, sad people can sense that.’

Holly’s inappropriate blushing mechanism went into action.

Tom, noticing, changed the subject. ‘What are you reading?’

The blush moved from plain old crimson to an interesting shade of magenta. ‘Er…nothing,’ mumbled Holly. She didn’t want Tom to see her poring over an article on finding her ideal date via their star sign. Men thought horoscopes were daft. In fact, the only man she’d ever known who was into horoscopes was Kenny, who was more in touch with his feminine side than most men. But Tom had gently taken the magazine from her and was reading, fascinated.

‘What’s your sign?’ he asked.

‘Cancer. Because I’m crabby,’ she added jokily.

‘There are lots of words to describe you, Holly, but crabby wouldn’t be one of them.’ Tom kept reading. ‘I’m Taurus,’ he said.

‘Really?’ she said innocently.

She watched him read and it looked as if he was reading the piece on Cancerians. But he couldn’t be, unless Caroline was one too.

‘What’s Caroline’s sign?’ she asked.

‘Leo,’ he answered shortly.

Extrovert, passionate, memorable, driven to success. People noticed Leos, in Holly’s opinion. And Caroline was certainly all those things, she just wasn’t very nice. Holly wished Tom had picked a nicer Leo, a kind, genuine one. Caroline was too hard-edged for him. But then, what did she know? Holly stopped reading over Tom’s shoulder. It was nice sitting talking, almost like they used to talk before Caroline had daintily crash-landed into Holly’s life.

Tom flicked a couple of pages.

‘Oh,
Brainbox or Bimbo: Test Your Brain Power
. We’ve got to do this, Holly,’ he said enthusiastically.

Whatever she’d planned for the evening, Holly had never expected that she’d be sitting in a launderette with Tom, arguing good-humouredly over the answers in a quiz. It took them ages to finish it and there was a definite squabble over the spatial relations bit.

Then, they turned to the puzzle page, and ended up with the crossword. At intervals, they both checked their laundry. The time flew. They were still struggling with the group term for larks when Holly noticed that her tumble dryer had stopped. For the first time ever, she wished she could spend longer in the laundry.

She got up and began unloading the machine, folding everything carefully, anything to delay. When she had finished, she smiled at Tom. ‘I suppose I should go,’ she said.

‘You could wait for me, mine will be finished soon,’ he said.

Holly hesitated and glanced at her watch, more because she didn’t want to look too puppy-dog eager than for any other reason, but somehow Tom misinterpreted this gesture.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s getting late. You should go. Say hello to Vic for me.’

Holly was horrified. He thought she was meeting Vic. She opened her mouth to say that she and Vic weren’t seeing each other any more, but would that sound worse? Like she was a total floozy and bedded Vic after three weeks only to dump him a week later. These thoughts raced through her mind at record speed. What could she say?

Tom resolved the issue by handing her the magazine. ‘Thanks for keeping me company,’ he said. ‘It was fun.’ That guarded look was back in his eyes.

‘Yes, it was,’ said Holly dully. She took the magazine, shouldered her bags of washing, and went out into the night. If only Tom knew.

She walked slowly up the street and replayed her mental Vic: The End video.

Feeling cowardly, she’d managed to avoid Vic’s phone calls for two days. Finally, he’d turned up to pick her up after work in Lee’s.

‘He’s cute,’ Bunny said to Holly as Vic wandered round children’s wear. She hadn’t seen Vic before, having been on holiday at the time of Joan’s fashion show.

‘He is cute,’ agreed Holly, ‘but I just don’t fancy him.’

‘Does he know that?’

Holly sighed heavily. ‘No, I have to tell him tonight.’

She and Vic sat in a juice bar waiting for their drinks, strawberry surprise (Holly) and a wheatgrass shot (Vic).

In all her twenty-seven years, Holly had never dumped anyone. She’d always been the dumpee and simply didn’t know how to handle things from the other side. The dumpee bit their bottom lip, became fascinated with their cuticles, and managed to hold the tears back when they nodded that ‘
Yes, you’re right. We’re not suited, we need some space, of course we can still be friends
.’

She’d thought
that
was bad, but being on the other side was worse. For the past two days, she’d gone through every permutation and combination of saying ‘I like you as a friend but not as a boyfriend.’ Now, all those carefully-chosen words deserted her.

‘I’m sorry, Vic,’ she blurted out. ‘I just don’t…I can’t…em, I don’t think we’re right for one another.’

Vic took this remarkably well, but then, he hadn’t been the brightest guy in his year in med school for nothing.

‘It’s Tom Barry, huh?’

Holly felt six inches tall.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘I’m not involved with him or anything.’

‘But you are crazy about him?’ Vic said shrewdly. ‘I’d almost prefer if there was someone else,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, it means that I’m such a hideous bore that you can’t bear to be with me. And I did always have an inkling that you liked Tom more than you let on.’

Holly felt a mist of tears shimmer over her eyes.

Their juices arrived and Vic knocked back his shot in one. ‘Yeuch, this stuff is vile.’

‘It takes a while to get used to wheatgrass,’ snuffled Holly.

Vic took their bill from the table top. ‘I’ll pay this and go,’ he said.

Holly shook her head and reached out to take the bill from him. Her wrist caught the top of her untouched juice drink and knocked it all over the table. Quick as a shot, Vic grabbed a wedge of napkins from the counter and soaked up the sea of shocking pink.

‘Sorry,’ said Holly tearfully. ‘Sorry about
everything
…’

‘Don’t get upset,’ Vic said gently, hunkering down beside her chair. He handed her a napkin to wipe a glob of strawberry juice from her hand. His kindness made her feel even more upset and her snuffles threatened to turn into full-blown sobs.

‘Don’t cry. You’re a pretty special person, Holly. It’s a pity I’m not your sort of guy. But, hey?’ He shrugged. ‘You win some, you lose some. Nobody died here today, right?’

She nodded, wiping her eyes with the napkin.

Vic got to his feet and smiled down at her. ‘See you around.’

And he was gone. Holly had sat there for ages, hating herself. Vic was such a lovely, decent man. Why couldn’t she love him? Or was she destined to always hanker for what she couldn’t have?

The laundry felt like it was growing heavier every second, and Holly was grateful when she reached home. She left the bags in the hall and immediately turned the TV on. She didn’t care what sort of rubbish was on, she’d watch it. Tonight, she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts.

‘So tell me, what sort of
research
do you do?’ The reporter blinked at Tara from behind discreet gold-framed glasses, her tape recorder at the ready, her every gesture earnestly probing. ‘Do you get inside the minds of your characters? How difficult is it to write about subjects like, oh, say euthanasia or adultery? Those have been fabulous storylines, by the way. And is it true that there’s a big alcoholism storyline coming up?’

Tara did her best to wipe the look of misery off her face. It wasn’t the poor reporter’s fault that
National Hospital
’s recent storylines could have been plucked from Tara’s personal life and whacked up on screen without any rewriting whatsoever. The guilt about going to bed with Scott Irving grew inside her like an abscess, getting bigger and more painful with every day. When she stared at her computer screen, she could see Finn’s face. Every sentence she wrote made her think of him. Every scene seemed to have some resonance with her guilt. And it felt as if everyone and everything were conspiring to make her feel worse.

Bea, newly-hired junior features writer with women’s magazine
Style
, allowed her gaze to flicker past Tara’s preoccupied face. Everything was so interesting on the set. People rushed around all the time, with mobile phones and headsets, talking and gesturing, discussing camera angles, dragging huge cables around. Bea could barely believe she was spending the whole day on the
National Hospital
story and she’d been promised access to all areas, which included
watching some of the show being filmed. She hoped she might get to interview that gorgeous Dr McCambridge who really was her favourite but there was no sign of him anywhere…

Tara dragged herself back to the task in hand. Aaron had specifically asked her to talk to Bea. On the set, they were about to film a pivotal scene where one of the main characters owned up to an affair with a colleague. She was a junior doctor and originally Tara had wondered, given the workload of real junior doctors, how the hell the poor woman would have the energy to have sex with her husband, never mind an extramarital fling. These days, Tara tried very hard not to think about the concept of extramarital flings full stop.

‘Research is key,’ Tara heard herself saying. She hated the word
key
. It was real middle-management gobbledegook and just using it was proof that her thought processes were as scrambled as satellite TV signals. ‘All the writers sit around and brainstorm when we’re working on a particular storyline. We bounce ideas off each other. It doesn’t work as well when you’re sitting at home on your own. Working with the team is what makes it happen.’

Bea was fascinated, holding her tiny tape recorder under Tara’s nose as if Tara was revealing the meaning of life, plus how to get rid of cellulite.

‘But where do the ideas come from?’ asked Bea, eyes flicking down to the huge list of questions that she’d spent the previous night thinking up. ‘Like the scene today with Dr Kavanagh. I’m a huge fan and I’ve been watching those episodes where you know her husband is going to find out and she’s doing her best to cover it up. Oh, it’s so real. You really get into her heart and see how awful she feels. It must be difficult to get inside someone’s head like that?’

Tara managed a thoughtful expression, as if she was mulling over the precise way to answer all these knotty questions. It would certainly make for an interesting article if she said ‘
Yes, I know all about adultery because I just cheated on my husband with one of the scriptwriters. I’m talking about
Scott Irving, who’s pretty hunky and goes like a train but now he’s not talking to me, which means the atmosphere on set is icy and uncomfortable. And my husband suspects, so he’s not talking to me either, which certainly helps my understanding of the subject. So yes, personal experience heightens your ability to write about something…
’ Instead, she shrugged. ‘I didn’t write today’s scene,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working on a different storyline, the one about Tony Carlisle.’

‘She could have kicked herself as soon as she said it. The Tony Carlisle story was about a consultant’s descent into alcoholism, which really was her specialised subject. Now, Bea would want to know what sort of research she’d done on that and as soon as Tara thought about Finn, she would cry, she knew she would.

‘Oh, there’s Dr McCambridge,’ whispered Bea excitedly, the interview forgotten. ‘I love him. Is he nice or is he too starry and grand to speak to normal people? I’d love to talk to him but he’s probably fed up with being interviewed.’ She looked eagerly at Tara with shiny, star-struck eyes.

‘Not at all,’ lied Tara. Saved by the bell. ‘He loves reporters.’ She waved at Stephen who came over at high speed once he spotted the tape recorder.

Up close, Stephen was even more heartbreakingly attractive than he was onscreen and Bea reacted the way they all did: she blushed, broke out into a cold sweat and reached a shaking hand out towards his.

‘Hi,’ said Stephen, sinking into a chair. ‘Honestly, what a bloody disaster. I told the PA I had to get away early today to go to the dentist and now I check and I’m shooting till eight!’

Tara smothered a smile. If Stephen went to the dentist as often as he said he did, he’d have teeth of solid gold. She reckoned he just wanted to doss off early because it was opening night for a Pinter play. At least half the cast had already pleaded medical emergencies, babysitting problems and ill relatives in order to get home early.

‘Do you always work that late?’ asked Bea, the hand holding the tape recorder still a bit shaky as she held it closer to Stephen’s handsome face. ‘I thought acting on a show like this would involve more regular hours, even if it’s not quite nine to five.’

‘I wish! The director is a bloody slave-driver!’ snapped Stephen before starting off on his tried and tested rant about long hours, low pay, zero rehearsal time, the lack of respect for soap actors, and reams of new lines to learn every day.

‘Not to mention no time off for other projects,’ he added grimly, referring to a lucrative role in a French film that had been shot in Connemara the previous winter. It would have paid his tax bill too.

‘If I was to tell you what goes on behind the scenes, you wouldn’t believe it,’ Stephen added maliciously.

Tara felt a moment’s guilt. The publicity person who’d been taking care of Bea had vanished, and would no doubt be furious that Stephen had been allowed to speak to her unchaperoned. He might have been the star of the show and become hugely successful because of it, but Stephen was one of those people who like to feel aggrieved over something. He never realised that he was far more powerful and privileged than many of the cast.

‘Very little rehearsal time, shooting scenes back to back so you never get a change to work on a scene,’ he listed off his grievances, ‘and as for storylines. Huh. Lately, I’ve been stuck with the storylines from hell.’ He glared crossly at Tara. ‘Like the love scenes with that stupid Sherry DaVinci. My character would never
look
at an idiot like her.’

He sounded so furious that Bea gulped and edged back in her seat.

‘Stephen.’ Armed with a clipboard and a radio mike, the production assistant smiled over at Stephen, hoping she wasn’t interrupting anything or she’d get a tongue-lashing.

Without so much as saying goodbye to Bea or Tara, Stephen stomped off.

‘He wasn’t quite like I imagined,’ Bea whispered.

‘He’s the exception,’ Tara said, taking pity on her. ‘Most of the actors and actresses on the show are fantastic people. I must introduce you to Allegra Armstrong, she loves working on
National Hospital
and she’s a real professional, as well as being lovely. You’ll really like her.’

‘Thanks,’ murmured Bea.

‘You see, Stephen’s very vocal about the down side of acting,’ continued Tara, ‘although he does have a point. Acting in a soap is a tough job but because everyone sees the actors looking glam in press interviews, nobody cottons onto the difficult parts. It’s actually quite a small cast, and they work very long hours to shoot three episodes a week. They get a couple of days to learn their lines, then they’ve got to come out here and perform. The technical rehearsals are really for the benefit of the crew, so nobody’s waiting to see if the actor has a scene right or not. And then they’re totally at the mercy of the viewers. Most of their contracts are only renewed every season, and if a character gets bad feedback, they’re out. Imagine being constantly under that sort of pressure.’

‘I never thought of it that way,’ said Bea, frantically writing notes in case her recorder packed up at this vital point. ‘You sounded a bit critical there, Tara. Don’t you like working here?’

In the distance, Tara could see Scott Irving pop his head round a partition.

She didn’t answer the question immediately, concentrating on watching him. He was clearly searching for Aaron.

She sunk down in her seat, not wanting that laser gaze to rest on her. Scott would stare with such naked dislike that Tara frequently wilted under his gaze. Not that she made this obvious. She stared back defiantly, giving him her toughest ‘You’re confusing me with somebody who gives a shit!’ look.

‘Of course I do,’ she said automatically. ‘I love it. We all do.’

‘I’ll have to go, Bea,’ she said, looking round for someone
to off-load the reporter onto. ‘Oh gosh, have I asked you everything?’ Bea riffled through her notes and checked her list of questions.

‘Tell me about the National TV awards – the team won one. Was that the highlight of your career?’

Tara remembered that night so many months ago, a time when her life had been on track, when she’d had a marriage, when she hadn’t known that Finn was drinking himself to death, when her parents lived happily together like normal parents, when she wasn’t an adulterous bitch. It seemed like a million years ago.

‘Fantastic,’ she said woodenly. ‘It was a fantastic night, definitely the highlight.’

Finn’s car was there when Tara got home, which was unusual these days. Since the night of Godzilla’s infamous party, Finn had been coming home later and later. Suffused with guilt and terrified he’d guessed her terrible secret, Tara felt she could say nothing to him. It was checkmate. She tiptoed around without mentioning his drinking, ready to endure anything as penance for betraying him. As long as he never found out, she could cope. In time, they’d confront the problem of Finn’s drinking but only when Tara’s own demons were laid to rest. If they ever were.

‘Hi,’ she said, letting herself into the apartment. She dumped her briefcase, kicked off her shoes and reached under the hall table for the comfy espadrilles she liked to wear as slippers in the summer.

‘Hi.’ Finn was in the kitchen eating breakfast cereal, which was probably one of the few things left to eat in the house.

Tara picked a blackening banana out of the fruit bowl and peeled it, vowing to visit the supermarket at the weekend. They were out of so many household staples it would be easier to say what they weren’t out of.

‘We should talk,’ he said. ‘About us.’

Tara’s toes curled in her espadrilles. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, stalling for time.

‘I mean, we should talk about our marriage and what’s left of it.’ Finn took another spoonful of cereal.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Tara asked again.

Finn finished the cereal and dumped the bowl in the sink. He faced her. ‘Have. Some. Respect. For. My. Intelligence,’ he said slowly.

Adrenaline coursed through Tara’s body as the fight-or-flight reaction kicked in.

‘Even now, you’re denying that there’s something wrong, Tara. I thought you were smarter than that. There’s no point lying. I
know
you slept with somebody. I don’t know who,’ Finn added, ‘but I know you did it. In fact, I don’t really give a fuck who it was because I don’t care any more.’

Tara hadn’t known that she was capable of experiencing such fear. Her heart plummeted deep into her solar plexus. She opened her mouth to speak but all that emerged was a guttural gasp of shock.

‘I was waiting for you to tell me, you see,’ Finn went on. He leaned back against the sink with his arms folded, observing her coldly. The easy warmth in his expression was gone, along with the sleepy-eyed sensuality and the faint turn-up at the corner of his beautiful mouth. Finn wasn’t smiling any more. ‘Call me stupid, but I had this vague notion that our marriage meant something to you and that you’d come clean about whatever happened. You were under strain, we were experiencing problems, whatever. We could have moved on, Tara. I’d have forgiven you, I loved you.’

Tara could only stare at him mutely, shame burning inside her. Then, the tense of his sentence kicked in.
Loved
. He’d said loved. Not love.

‘You were different afterwards,’ he went on. ‘The next evening when you came home, I knew instantly you’d fucked someone else. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’

Tara longed to rush over and throw her arms round him, cradling him close so that his head could dip to kiss her face and she could taste the sweetness of his lips gently against
hers. She could make it better if she did that, she knew she could. Finn couldn’t resist her.

‘The love bite on your neck was a dead giveaway too.’

She thought of her feeble attempts at camouflage.

‘Finn, listen…’ she began.

‘No, I won’t,’ he exploded. ‘I would have listened a few weeks ago but not now. It’s over, Tara. We should never have married each other. We barely knew each other. What the hell were we thinking of?’

‘We loved each other,’ gasped Tara, ‘that’s why we got married. It doesn’t have to be over, Finn. We can get counselling, talk to someone, get all the problems out in the open.’

‘Spare me the counselling shit,’ he snapped. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than laying our bloody misery out for some head-wrecker to analyse. My head’s wrecked enough as it is, I don’t need it further screwed up trying to sort out our ‘
relationship issues
’. Go on your own. I won’t be around to watch.’

‘No!’ she yelled, rushing to him and putting her arms round him. ‘We can sort it out, Finn, we love each other and that’s all you need, right?’ She was babbling now, her loving words tumbling out any old way instead of in the careful sentences that would show Finn that she adored him.