Just Between Us (52 page)

‘Yay!!’ yelled Amelia. ‘Is Nick coming?’

‘No.’

Vicki, Craig and Amelia helped Stella carry the dirty dishes indoors, where she left them piled on the draining board waiting to be put in the dishwasher.

‘That’s fine, Craig, you can leave it,’ she said when Craig attempted to put things in the dishwasher. ‘I’ll do it later. We’re in a rush, I just want to get the stuff in.’

What she wanted to do was get out of Delgany Avenue as fast as possible before Nick arrived. She didn’t trust herself to see him because she was so angry. Who knew what she’d say if he arrived? The neighbours wouldn’t have to turn on their TVs to catch up on the soaps: they could just hang out their windows and listen to the catastrophic row coming from Stella Miller’s.

Vicki and Craig left, with Vicki kissing Stella goodbye and whispering ‘Phone me later,’ into her friend’s ear.

Five minutes after that, Amelia and Stella were walking rapidly up the road to the Sandymount train station. There was a huge cinema complex in Dun Laoghaire, just twenty minutes away on the DART train. Amelia was delighted with this unexpected treat and wanted to know what film they were going to see.

Stella didn’t know. She hadn’t even checked the newspaper to see what was on and when. At worst, they’d have to wait an hour for a suitable movie and there were lots of things they could do in the interim, like walk on the pier and watch
the yachts. Stella took out her mobile, got the phone number of the cinema from directories, and dialled the film listing line. There were two animated films showing and luckily, Amelia hadn’t seen one of them yet. It started in forty-five minutes and Stella booked two seats. It would be at least half eight before they were home, long enough for Nick to get the message.

On the train home, sated by the excitement of the day, the film and too much popcorn, Amelia leaned against her mother and dozed. Even the thrill of watching the scenery speeding by couldn’t keep her awake, and Stella felt guilty for keeping Amelia out so late. Her temper still hadn’t abated. Watching the film, she’d seen nothing but a blur, her mind running through exactly what she’d say to Nick when she saw him. And she had to face him. Running away and hiding wasn’t Stella’s style. If he phoned later, she’d tell him to come over. If they had to break up, she’d do it face to face.

The sound of a thunderstorm woke Stella early on Monday morning. She sat up groggily in bed, not sure what the noise was. Then another loud crack punctured the air. Rain drummed against the windows, sounding as if it desperately wanted to come in. Stella peered at the clock. Half five. Exhausted by a restless night, she slumped back against the pillows and wondered if there was a hope she might go back to sleep. She didn’t have to be up until seven.

But her mind was racing too much for sleep to be a possibility. She gave it another ten minutes, willing herself to drift off into nothingness, but it wouldn’t come.

‘Shit.’ Wrenching the duvet off, she got out of bed and pulled her dressing gown on. The storm had taken the heat out of the air and it was cooler than it had been for days. Stella walked into the kitchen, thankful that she’d tidied up the night before. Facing a pile of unwashed dishes with rock-hard congealed food would not have been a good beginning to the day. Then again, the day was doomed from
the start, she thought grimly. Her conversation with Nick the night before had made that inevitable.

She found her favourite rich coffee beans, ground them and made a pot. She usually only made fresh coffee at the weekend. There was never time in her normal morning routine of rush cubed. With a fat mug of coffee in her hands, she sat in her favourite chair in the tiny conservatory and stared out into her courtyard where the rain was lashing the clematis to shreds. An mini regiment of worms were stretching their way across the patio stones, their pink bodies shiny and elongated on their great trek. Why did worms only travel in rain? Did they believe that humans stayed inside on wet days and they wouldn’t get squished by shoes and car tyres? Or were they trying to escape their avian adversaries, hoping that the aerodynamics of wet feathers ruled out flying in the rain?

Stella smiled ruefully. Amelia had only caught one worm captive the day before and now here were scores of them.

Curling her feet up under her, Stella sipped her coffee until the view receded and the picture in her mind was of Nick’s face. How was she going to get through the day without him?

Nick had left two messages the evening before. Both calm and a little sad, asking her to phone him. She hadn’t. Then, she was sorting out Amelia’s school uniform for the morning when the phone rang. Before Stella had a chance to say ‘Don’t pick up…’ Amelia had answered it.

‘We went to see a film and I had popcorn and Mummy didn’t,’ gabbled Amelia.

Smiling, Stella reached for the phone.

‘Bye, Mummy’s here.’

‘Hello, Stella,’ said Nick.

‘Hello.’ Unaccountably, now that she was talking to him, she felt like crying, for all her previous internal conversations where she’d raged furiously at him. Her anger was gone, leaving only a miserable sense that their wonderful relationship had reached breaking point.

‘I’d like to come over…’

Stella’s heart leapt.

‘…but I can’t. Jenna’s staying with me. She and Wendy had a row this evening and…well, it ended badly. So Jenna came here. Lucky I was in.’

Wasn’t it, thought Stella bitterly. But her temper didn’t flare again.

‘I know you’re angry,’ he said.

‘No, I’m not angry. I’m resigned, resigned to our relationship not working out because I’m making all the effort and you’re not making any,’ Stella said. She knew this wasn’t totally fair but she didn’t care. Hadn’t Nick heard a word she’d said that morning?

‘That’s not true, Stella.’ Nick sounded downhearted. ‘I love you, I’d do anything for you, but today was difficult.’

‘How do you think it was for me?’ she asked. ‘You let me down today, Nick. That was bad enough but instead of coming back and trying to sort it out, you stayed away.’

‘I’ve just got divorced, Stella,’ he said in exasperation. ‘I’m trying to rebuild bridges with Jenna and Sara. It’s not easy. I thought today would be good for the girls.’

‘Even though you knew I expected you here for lunch?’ Stella was calm now.

‘I thought you’d understand.’

‘Yeah, good old Stella, understanding Stella. Do you know what happens to people who always understand? They get walked on, Nick. I can’t afford to let you walk on me and Amelia. We can’t be second best forever.’

‘That’s below the belt. I’d do anything for Amelia and you’re not second best.’

‘That’s funny, because that’s just how I feel.’ She wanted him to understand, so she gave it one last try. ‘I love you, Nick, and it’s wonderful the way that you get on so well with Amelia. I’ve always been ready to love Sara and Jenna, they’re part of you, of course I want to love them. Sara’s a wonderful girl, I’m so fond of her. But I’ve never had the chance with Jenna, she won’t let me, she won’t meet me
halfway. And,’ she paused for a moment, ‘she’ll never meet me halfway until she knows that you and I have a solid relationship. Can you understand that?’

There was a voice in the background. Stella could hear Nick’s hand cover the receiver so that when he spoke next, it was muffled but she could make out what he was saying.

‘Just a moment, honey. I won’t be long.’

This time, the tears burned in Stella’s eyes. They couldn’t even break up like normal people. Jenna had to be involved.

She reached for the tissues on the coffee table, holding the phone away from her ear as she wiped her eyes.

‘Stella, hello?’ said Nick.

‘I have to go, Nick,’ she said quickly. ‘I have to think. I’m sure you do too. Perhaps we’ve made a big mistake.’

There was silence on the other end of the line.

‘I’ll talk to you later in the week.’

He made no effort to change her mind.

‘Good night, Nick,’ she said, balling the tissue in her hand.

‘Good night.’ His tone was cold.

Stella hung up and, for the second time that day, burst into tears.

Now, in the early Monday morning light, Stella rocked back and forth on her chair, still clutching her cooling coffee. Had she made a huge mistake? That thought had kept her awake long into the night and her dreams had been tortured, restless ones where she woke every half hour, soaked in sweat and burning up.

Her mind flickered back to the last time she’d lain on her bed with her skin slick with perspiration. Had it really only been Saturday night when she and Nick had made such wonderful love? It felt like a thousand years ago.

The fear grabbed her again. Had she driven away the only man she could ever love because her dreams of happy families didn’t happen fast enough? Or had she done the right thing, and said goodbye to someone who had too much unfinished business to ever truly love her?

That was the horrible thing: Stella just didn’t know. There
were no definites in life, not like in the law where rules made sense and you knew where you were with them. In life, the rules made no sense whatsoever.

Rose stood in the ladies’ room in Lee’s and examined herself in the mirror. Her clothes were fine: a cream linen shirt and chocolate palazzo pants would take you anywhere. It was the look on her face that was the matter. There were lines of tension in her jaw and Rose decided that she looked as if she was en route to the dentist for two hours of root canal without an anaesthetic. This wouldn’t do. Rose rubbed her temples to dissipate some of the tension and tried some deep breathing. She knew that Holly would get a surprise when she realised that her mother had driven to visit her unannounced, and Rose didn’t want to frighten her by looking as if somebody had died and she’d come to break the news.

Going to see Holly had been a last-minute decision. Rose had spent days mulling over what Freddie had said to her. Strangely enough, Rose found she wasn’t dwelling on Freddie’s remarks about herself and Hugh. Rose understood the dynamics of their relationship well enough to see that Freddie had been speaking the truth. What did occupy her mind endlessly was the thought of how she’d failed Holly and how she might just mend the crack between them if she told Holly the truth of what had happened when she was a baby. Holly deserved to know. Freddie had been right about that as well: the time for running away from unpalatable things was past. Freddie had said she’d be fine on her own all day, but Rose, fearing Freddie would hop up and damage her still-fragile ankle, had asked some of her aunt’s friends to pop into Nettle Cottage during the day.

‘I’m not a child, Rose,’ Freddie had said mildly when she heard of these convoluted arrangements.

‘Humour me, Freddie,’ begged Rose. ‘That way I can go to Dublin to visit Holly with a clear conscience.’

Now Rose slicked on some lipstick and, after one final look in the mirror, walked out into the store. She’d been there so rarely, she realised as she walked through the bed linens and kitchen department. It was a beautiful department store and yet, since Holly had gone to work there, Rose could count on one hand the number of times she’d visited.

The store had changed a lot since her last visit. Now it was spacious and airy, rather like an elegant loft apartment where you could buy beautiful things. It didn’t resemble the dark, cluttered department stores of Rose’s youth. She walked into the international design department, which was where she knew that Holly longed to work. Rose didn’t feel intimidated by elegant assistants eyeing her up from behind the Yves St Laurent racks. Rose had long perfected the art of looking as if she belonged. But she felt a pang of guilt that her dear Holly had no such ability. Holly had inherited Rose’s effortless sense of style but was wracked with self-doubt and insecurity. And was that Rose’s fault? She ran her fingers over a rack of filmy chiffon garments in natural shades and mentally shuddered at the price, before moving on to touch exquisitely folded jeans, each pair delicately touched with crescents of silver embroidery.

‘Do you need any help?’ asked one of the assistants. She was pretty and nicely turned out in a white wrap shirt and black pants, but she was nothing to Holly, Rose thought. And Holly would have asked if she wanted help in a more genuine way. This girl looked as if she was longing for her break and fervently hoped nobody would require any assistance until it was over.

‘No, thank you,’ said Rose smoothly, gliding off.

She made her way down to the basement. The children’s department was busy and Rose was able to stand near the escalator and watch her daughter at work. She and another
girl, one with cropped blonde hair, were both at the cash register. Holly was carefully folding up a selection of little garments while the other girl was processing a credit card for a customer. Holly looked relaxed and happy, confident in her work, Rose realised with pleasure. Here, it seemed, her shy youngest daughter was at home. The customer began walking away with her carrier bags and Rose approached the cash register.

‘Mum.’ There was utter astonishment in Holly’s face.

‘Hello, love, I was up doing some shopping and I thought I’d surprise you,’ said Rose.

‘You have. Mum, this is Bunny, my friend. Bunny, this is my mother.’

‘Hello, Mrs Miller,’ said Bunny. ‘I’ve got to say, you two really look alike.’

She gazed from mother to daughter. Holly’s wide-spaced eyes were shyer than her mother’s, but otherwise, they were the image of each other.

Rose beamed. ‘Thank you for the compliment,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose we could have lunch, Holly?’

‘I’m not due to go for another half an hour,’ Holly said, looking at Bunny who nodded, ‘but Bunny will cover for me.’

‘They’ve really changed the store,’ remarked Rose as the two of them took the escalator to the ground floor. ‘I haven’t been here for so long, I hardly recognised the place.’

‘You need to visit more often,’ Holly replied lightly.

They walked out of the store and Holly led the way to a small coffee shop. ‘Is there something wrong, Mum?’ she asked as they sat down at a tiny table in the window.

Rose sighed. ‘I deserve that,’ she said. ‘If I came to see you more often, you wouldn’t automatically assume there was some tragedy if I do turn up.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Holly said quickly. ‘It’s just…’

‘That I never come to see you. I’m sorry. That’s why I’m here: to sort out this problem between the two of us.’

Holly’s eyes grew wary. ‘What problem?’

‘Holly, we know it exists and it’s my fault. I want to make it right.’

‘D’yawanna order?’ A gum-chewing waitress stood over them, boredom dripping from every pore.

Rose could see that Holly was too startled to speak. ‘Two tuna sandwiches on brown?’ She looked to Holly for approval. Holly smiled weakly.

‘Two mineral waters, one still, one sparkling,’ continued Rose. ‘Thank you.’

‘D’wanteaorcoffee?’

‘Not now,’ said Rose firmly.

The waitress shuffled off.

‘Is tuna fish all right for you?’ Rose asked.

Holly smiled again. Rose didn’t know how she was going to do this but she had to. She ploughed on: ‘I’m making amends, you see. Freddie and I were talking about your father and I was so angry for what he’d done and then Freddie, quite rightly, asked me if I’d ever hurt anyone. She was trying to show me that we all make mistakes but we have to move on. And,’ Rose found she couldn’t bear to look into her daughter’s huge dark eyes any more and she stared down at her hands which she realised she was clasping and unclasping. ‘I said I’d hurt you because of the post-natal depression I went through when you were born.’

‘What? I never knew you had that.’ Holly was incredulous. ‘Nobody told me.’

‘Nobody knew,’ Rose admitted. ‘It was my big secret but it affected you and I never told you. I’m so sorry, love.’

She reached across the table and held Holly’s unprotesting hands.

She could see the tears swell up in her daughter’s eyes, could see Holly battling with them so they wouldn’t fall.

‘I thought it was because you’d wanted a little boy instead of me,’ she said finally.

‘Never,’ cried Rose. ‘I was so happy to have you. Midway through the pregnancy, the doctor told us you were a boy at first, but that wasn’t it at all. Oh, Holly, it’s so hard to
explain. It was nothing to do with you, the problem was me.’

‘Tell me, then. We have lots of time,’ said Holly.

Rose cast her mind back twenty-eight years.

She’d been so excited in the early stages of pregnancy but towards the end, Rose had felt so tired all the time. Stella was a self-reliant little girl of nine, but Tara was a demanding five-year-old who needed a lot of attention and who didn’t understand that her heavily-pregnant mother wasn’t able to rush around after her. By the time the baby was due, Rose thought she’d never give birth. Instead of being eager for her baby to be born, as she had been with Stella and Tara, she was eager for the whole procedure to be over. But even that proved to be complicated. After an agonising thirty-three-hour labour, Holly was born by caesarean.

Rose could still remember lying exhausted in the hospital bed, feeling that dull ache deep in her belly and the rush of nausea from the morphine. A screaming Holly lay beside her in the hospital cot and the kind, rushed-off-their-feet nurses didn’t have time to do more than pick Holly up and place her gently in Rose’s arms.

‘You’ve two other little girls, haven’t you? So you’re an old hand at this,’ they smiled at Rose.

The pain and the misery overwhelmed Rose and she felt as if she couldn’t possibly cope with this new baby, a baby who never seemed to stop crying. How could such a tiny creature make so much noise? Surely Stella and Tara hadn’t cried so much? Glancing round the ward, she saw other mothers joyfully holding their new-born babies and Rose envied them for their happiness and their ability to cope.

The trail of delighted family members who visited all adored little Holly and told Rose, by now forcing herself to smile, how lucky she was. If only she felt lucky.

Everything would be better when she was home from hospital, she told herself. Being stuck in a busy ward and listening to other crying children, that was the problem. In the
comfort of her own home, both she and Holly would settle. But when she got home, things got worse. Hugh did his best and Angela was great for taking care of Tara and Stella so that Rose had time to spend on Holly. But nothing Rose did seemed to help her new baby settle down, and exhaustion and misery engulfed Rose like a tidal wave of darkness. She told nobody how she felt because how could she? Covering up this shameful secret seemed to be the only option. What sort of person felt a sinking misery in her heart when she heard her baby cry? What type of mother wanted it all to go away so she could crawl into her bed until the despair and unhappiness receded?

She felt an unnatural mother, as if nobody else had ever felt that way. How could she not love Holly? What was wrong with her?

‘Looking back, I don’t know why I kept it to myself,’ Rose said quietly. ‘I think Angela guessed but I pushed her away. I refused to let anyone in, I didn’t want anyone to know that I’d gone through this. Pride is a terrible thing.’

‘You were depressed,’ cried Holly, ‘you weren’t up to making decisions. Don’t be so hard on yourself.’

Dear Holly, she was so kind and forgiving, Rose thought. ‘Pride was part of it in the years after,’ she said. ‘If only I’d told you what I’d gone through, then you might have understood. I felt such huge guilt that I wasn’t a very good mother for probably the first nine months of your life. And when you were a teenager and we weren’t getting on, I felt as if it was all my fault for how I’d behaved when you were a baby. I thought you somehow knew and blamed me.’

‘That wasn’t it,’ Holly admitted. ‘I honestly thought you’d wanted a boy instead of me. You see, Adele told me you’d had a name picked out and everything, and after that, I felt so unwanted. It sounds so ridiculous to say it but…’

Rose could have cried. ‘Blast Adele,’ she said vehemently. ‘We had lots of names and when we thought you were going to be a boy, we liked Emlyn for some reason. God knows why, it’s not a name I’d pick now, but, Holly, you must
never imagine that we didn’t want you. Please believe me. I went through post-natal depression, I wasn’t myself. It was nothing to do with you.’

The waitress thumped two sandwiches and two glasses of water onto the table.

Rose was too distraught now to even say thank you, so Holly did. Then, she stared firmly at her mother. ‘Now listen, Mum, stop getting upset. It was a bit of a mix-up and I should have known better than to listen to Adele.’

‘I still can’t believe that you spent years thinking we wanted a boy instead of you, Holly. That’s terrible.’ Bitterness at those wasted years welled up in Rose’s heart. She had failed Holly. She should have seen what was wrong and fixed it instead of letting the misery fester like an open wound. ‘Please forgive me, please tell me we can start again.’

‘Of course we can.’ This time, it was as if Holly was the mother, the one who nurtured and protected. ‘I can’t believe I ever thought that,’ Holly said ruefully. ‘I should have known better but I felt so insecure and that seemed like the reason. I suppose I wanted something to blame for how I felt.’

‘And I was the one to blame all along,’ said her mother sadly.

‘You weren’t,’ insisted Holly. ‘I wanted there to be a reason for me feeling insecure and shy, I wanted something to blame. It’s easier to blame something or someone than to face up to yourself. I am what I am and changing that is down to me.’

‘But I’m your mother and I should have helped, I should have understood your insecurity.’

‘You did help and you’re helping now.’ Holly spoke so genuinely that Rose felt the first vestiges of comfort. ‘I love you, Mum, and I know you love me, isn’t that all that matters? Let’s put everything else behind us?’

Tears fell onto Rose’s sandwich but she didn’t mind. Who needed food at such a moment?

‘We’ve got to eat up,’ Holly said apologetically. ‘I’ve only got another fifteen minutes for lunch.’

Holly wolfed down her sandwich, while Rose nibbled hers. ‘During Freddie’s lecture, she told me I wasn’t entirely blameless over the matter of your father’s affairs,’ she said.

Holly listened wide-eyed as she ate.

‘I knew for years and I went along with it. I should have confronted him and told him he was damaging our marriage. I honestly don’t think he knew what it would do to me. For him, it was diversion, a bit of fun.’

‘He’s sorry now,’ Holly said. ‘He’s shattered that you left him, Mum, and he’s so sorry. He’d do anything to turn back the clock.’

‘You’re a good daughter,’ Rose smiled. ‘You took care of him.’

‘He needed looking after,’ Holly said simply. ‘It wasn’t a matter of choosing sides. But he needed me most.’ She hesitated before asking the question she most wanted to know the answer to. ‘Do you think there’s any hope you’ll make it up?’

‘I don’t know. I needed to resolve this between us before I thought about your father,’ Rose pointed out. ‘This was more important.’

Despite her constant worry about Hugh, Holly felt a burst of pride at the knowledge that she was the most important thing on her mother’s mind. ‘He loves you,’ she said quickly. She had to stand up for her dad.