Just Between Us (17 page)

‘Beautiful, just like her mother,’ Nick said examining
the photo. ‘What about her father? Do you share custody?’

‘Nothing that ordinary,’ Stella said. ‘He works in the oil business and he’s abroad all the time. Amelia spends time with him when he’s here. She’s with him now.’ Stella didn’t mention how she tried hard not to resent this.

‘I split up with my ex husband when Amelia was a baby. There wasn’t anybody else, we’d just made an awful mistake. I’d like to say we married too young but I was twenty-eight, old enough to know better,’ she added ruefully. ‘How about you?’

The silence seemed to go on forever and Stella would have done anything to claw back the words, but finally, Nick spoke.

‘Why does any marriage break up?’ he said. ‘We made a mistake too; it just took twenty years to figure it out. I was seconded to the company’s office in Stockholm for four months a couple of years ago and it would have been difficult for Wendy and the kids to come because of school. So we agreed that I’d go and come home as often as I could, which I did, every few weekends. Four months became six months and when I got back for good, we found it impossible to live together again. That sounds terrible,’ he said looking at Stella, ‘but it’s the truth. We even went to counselling for a while. It didn’t work. Talking about it made us realise that the only glue keeping us together was the girls. The problem was, Wendy was prepared to put up with that. I knew we couldn’t.’

‘That must have been tough,’ Stella said gently. ‘You’re not over your divorce, are you?’ she added, knowing she was going too far but not being able to stop herself.

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Believe me, I am over my divorce. I’m not over the trauma and hurt that went with it. It was the most personally painful thing I’ve ever experienced and it’s with me every day.’

‘What about the girls?’

Nick’s face lit up.

‘Jenna is fourteen and Sara is nineteen. Sara’s doing Arts
in college and Jenna’s in school; mind you, she looks old enough to be in college. When she’s with her friends, they all look about twenty.’

He took out his wallet and extracted a photo of two girls. It looked like a holiday shot. Sara was fair-haired, lanky and smiled up at the camera with her father’s warm, intelligent eyes. Jenna was smiling too, but she looked more posed, as if she liked the camera. It certainly liked her. She was incredibly pretty with a heart-shaped face, almond eyes and dimples. Even the glint of the brace on her teeth couldn’t dim her teenage beauty.

‘How often do you see them?’

‘All the time, I couldn’t bear not to. But it’s caused some problems. Wendy is from Dublin and she never wanted to live in London, but at the time, that was where the work was. After the divorce, she moved back here with the girls. I missed them so much,’ he said, ‘that when I got an offer of a job here, I jumped.’

Stella was silent. How that must have infuriated his wife. He wouldn’t leave London for her, but he could make that sacrifice for their daughters.

‘It’s been tough,’ Nick added, confirming Stella’s instincts. ‘In so far as any divorce is ever amicable, you could say that ours was. There was nobody else for either of us but it’s still hard splitting after twenty years. The hardest part was telling our daughters.’ His face was bleak as he spoke.

‘We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,’ Stella said hurriedly.

He shrugged. ‘We don’t have to, but it’s a good idea to get to know each other, for, you know, future dates.’

It was Stella’s turn to look uncomfortable.

He stared at her. ‘I’ve messed things up, haven’t I?’ he asked. ‘Telling a prospective girlfriend all about the traumas of your divorce is not the way to impress her. I told you I wasn’t that clued in about modern dating,’ he said.

‘Forget it.’ Stella wanted to make it better. So what if he wasn’t dating material because he had more baggage than
a jumbo jet. He was a nice man. ‘Let’s talk about something else. How about films, the big issues of the day…’

‘Like politics and religion?’ he interrupted, amused.

‘I take that bit back,’ Stella said, wincing. ‘Forget the big issues of the day. I’m fed up discussing politics and religion and you can’t talk about either without a row. No, let’s go for serious subjects, like which is your favourite James Bond.’

Nick gave her a grateful smile as he leaned forward and poured her more claret.

They were the last to leave the restaurant after a mild tussle over who’d pay the bill.

‘Let me,’ insisted Stella.

‘But I asked you out.’

‘No, really, let me.’

The waitress stood patiently to one side while they argued.

‘You could always make a run for it so nobody would have to pay,’ she suggested.

Both Nick and Stella looked up in surprise.

‘Or split the bill,’ the waitress added.

They split it and soon found themselves outside on the street where the sky was undecided over whether to send down snow or sleet. A sheet of something white began to fall as they walked along and Stella shivered in the icy wind.

‘Let’s get out of this for a moment,’ Nick suggested. They sheltered in a shop doorway, watching the snow fall onto the wet street and disappear.

‘At least it’s not sticking,’ Stella said, still shivering.

Without saying anything, Nick took off his coat and draped it over both their shoulders so that Stella was warmed by an extra layer. She had to stand close to him so they’d both be covered, and the sensation of being that close to another person felt strangely good. No, she thought, not just another person. Nick. Standing close to Nick felt good and somehow right.

‘I don’t think it’s going to stop,’ he said.

‘No,’ she agreed, pasta and claret churning inside her in
excitement. She couldn’t believe she was standing in a doorway with this man; a man she found unbelievably attractive.

‘You’ll freeze.’

‘Body heat’s a wonderful thing,’ he smiled at her.

Stella smiled back, feeling a little nugget of heat inside her despite the cold. His coat slipped and Nick pulled it back over her, his arm momentarily round her shoulders. She kept staring at him. The arm didn’t move, staying wrapped round Stella, who found herself leaning in closer towards him. His mouth was just a few inches above hers and Stella wondered if she was supposed to give him a signal that he could kiss her. Was that how it worked nowadays? Maybe she should have read Aunt Adele’s despised copy of
The Rules
to find out. Without waiting for any signal, Nick’s mouth lowered onto hers. Then both his arms were around her and they lurched against the doorway, like lovelorn teenagers stealing a forbidden kiss, bodies tight together as the kiss deepened into fierce, hard passion. Tasting the sweetness of his mouth, holding his body tightly, Stella didn’t care who saw her. All she wanted was Nick; Nick kissing her face and her throat, murmuring endearments and making tender love to her…

Nick broke away first, his olive eyes shining, his breath ragged. ‘We haven’t had the fifty dances yet and there’s no chaperone,’ he said.

‘You’ve got one foot on the ground, haven’t you?’ she replied.

‘Yes, just about!’

This time, Stella kissed him and went on kissing him until they were no longer cold and until the snow was swirling around their doorway like a blizzard.

Only when a police car drove carefully down the street, blue light illuminating doorways, did they stop and step onto the street, laughing like kids and holding Nick’s coat over their heads.

‘I’d hate to see the papers if a respected lawyer and a respected businessman were arrested for obscene behaviour,’ chuckled Stella.

‘It was only a kiss,’ said Nick.

Their eyes met and they both grinned. What a kiss.

He helped her into the first taxi they saw and then took her hand and softly kissed the back of it. Stella smiled at him with affection. From anyone else, such a gesture would have seemed corny but not from Nick.

‘I’ll phone tomorrow.’

He shut the door and the taxi drove off into the night.

For a brief moment, Stella thought about men and phoning. Everyone from Vicki to Tara said that men promised to phone but rarely did.

It was a game, Vicki insisted miserably. To ring or not to ring.

But sitting in the back of a taxi, feeling the car’s heater slowly warm her bones, Stella allowed herself to smile happily. Nick wasn’t like that. He’d phone. She knew it.

‘Rose, have you seen my waterproof jacket?’ Hugh roared up the stairs.

Rose, on her hands and knees on the upstairs landing as she did an emergency sort-out of the airing cupboard, rolled her eyes. She’d left Hugh’s waterproof on the kitchen chair nearest the hall door. Unless he was walking round the house with his eyes closed, he couldn’t miss it.

‘It’s in the kitchen,’ she yelled back, suppressing the desire to add, ‘stupid.’

‘Where in the kitchen? I can’t see it?’

Rose got creakily to her knees. The cold, damp weather definitely made aching bones worse. If January had been cold and wet, February was proving to be even worse, with gale force Northern winds that made Rose glad of decent heating that kept Meadow Lodge toasty. Braving the great outdoors was another matter, and Rose had decided she wasn’t leaving the house that morning without her long-sleeved thermal vest. She knew it was
somewhere
and she’d been searching fruitlessly when Hugh called.

She was halfway down the stairs when Hugh found his waterproof. ‘There it is,’ he yelled. ‘I didn’t leave it there,’ he added indignantly.

Rose managed not to reply. She walked into the kitchen to find Hugh ready for a Saturday morning walk with his best friend, Alastair. The kitchen, just tidied up by Rose, was a mess again because Hugh had cleaned out his pockets by the bin, brushed the worst of the muck from his walking
shoes and made himself a cup of tea, the debris of these three tasks having ruined all her good work.

Hugh spotted Rose’s exasperated look in the direction of the mess.

‘Oh er…sorry about that but I have to rush, love,’ he said, dropping a speedy kiss on her cheek. ‘I’m meeting Alastair in ten minutes. I’ll tidy up when I get back.’

He raced off, leaving Rose crossly thinking that if she had a penny for every time Hugh promised to clean up, she’d be lying on a beach in the Bahamas by now. She tidied up again, went back upstairs to finish ransacking the airing cupboard, then got ready for her trip out with Adele. It was Hugh’s birthday in a few weeks and Adele, who’d stopped driving several years previously after a collision with a gatepost, had asked Rose to take her shopping for his present. This was Rose’s idea of pure torture but she’d said yes. Charity did, after all, begin at home.

Adele lived in the old Miller family home eight miles on the other side of Kinvarra and Rose never drove there without thanking her lucky stars that she and Hugh had bought their own house when they first got married. She didn’t like to imagine what would have happened if they’d ended up living with Adele, without the eight-mile buffer zone.

The old Miller place had once looked so imposing to Rose Riordain, with its hedge-lined drive and its plethora of high-ceilinged Victorian rooms. It had a scullery, for God’s sake. But now, compared to some of the big, modern mansions built around the town, the house looked quite ugly. Hugh helped Adele out with the cost of maintaining it, which gave Rose a certain grim satisfaction. She, the poor girl from Wexford whom Adele looked down on, was involved in keeping up the Millers’ grand house.

Adele was dressed for Buckingham Palace in her fur coat, tweed suit and a little Russian hat that smelled as if it had spent the past fifty years in a box over a wardrobe. Adele’s unforgiving eye skimmed over Rose’s tan leather coat, wide-legged Karen Millen trousers and loafers. She said nothing
but her expression spoke volumes. Adele believed that middle-aged women should know their place and that included wearing the correct uniform. Rose, with her modern, youthful clothes, refused to conform.

‘Adele,’ said Rose, embracing her sister-in-law. ‘Are you all set?’

‘I was expecting you earlier,’ Adele said pointedly. It was after ten. Adele had been up for hours. ‘You know how bad the traffic gets on Saturdays.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Rose reassured her. Be nice, she commanded herself. Adele wasn’t too good on her feet these days, and was just worried about walking through Kinvarra when it was busy with Saturday shoppers wielding umbrellas and pushing ankle-defying baby buggies.

As they drove into town, Adele reeled off a list of the misfortunes that had befallen her recently, before turning to the knotty question of what everyone was going to buy for her beloved Hugh. Adele herself favoured a nice tie and matching handkerchief which he could wear to his birthday lunch.

‘The girls are coming to the lunch, aren’t they?’ she asked, secretly hoping they weren’t and that she could have him all to herself. Well, herself and Rose.

‘Of course they’re coming,’ Rose said, only half concentrating.

‘Good. Will Amelia be there too? I’m not sure I approve of children in restaurants,’ Adele went on, without waiting for Rose to answer. ‘But she’s very well behaved. Mind you, she’d probably be better off if Stella had stayed married to Glenn.’ Adele hated the fact that a member of the Miller family was divorced. In her day, people stayed together till the bitter end. ‘Young people don’t have the staying power our generation did.’

Rose gripped the steering wheel in a vice grip. What did Adele know about staying with someone through thick and thin?

She was torn between feeling sorry for her sister-in-law,
whose life was lonely after all, and feeling angry because Adele’s tactlessness knew no bounds. Had Adele always been this irritating or was Rose just less able to cope with her? Then another thought occurred to Rose: had loving Hugh been the reason she’d been able to deal so serenely with Adele for so many years?

It was half ten when they’d finally parked and were ready for the shopping marathon. Adele proceeded along the main street at a stately pace that made Rose, used to speed walking everywhere, deeply impatient. First, Adele had to go into the post office to pass the time of day with old Mrs Robinson. This took some time as they had to wait in the longest queue for Mrs Robinson, who processed unemployment benefits and children’s allowances with the speed of a two-legged centipede.

Next, they admired the clothes in the window of Madame Irene’s and Adele got the chance to tut-tut about the price of things.

‘Shocking,’ she said, shaking her head so that her curls rattled a bit. ‘I remember when you could buy an entire outfit, with a hat, for fifteen shillings. Oh and the hats then, they were proper hats, not like those feathery things that are all the rage now, just three feathers stuck on a comb. Things are different now and more’s the pity.’

Adele never remembered the bad things about the good old days before changing social mores and advances in medicine made the world a better place to live. Her sister-in-law, reflected Rose, was in love with the past.

Rose, on the other hand, liked the new order. She still yearned for the sort of clothes she wore when she was young, although she wryly admitted that was probably because she yearned for the sort of figure she had then too. But there were so many positive things about modern life, like the fact that people could be whatever they wanted to be. The iron-clad social structures were a thing of the past.

In McArthur’s Men’s Shop, Adele enjoyed a heady twenty minutes dallying over the ties before settling on a shirt.

‘Hugh’s collar size is sixteen,’ Rose murmured tactfully when Adele had made the decision and was carrying her prize, in the wrong size, to the till.

‘He was always sixteen and a half,’ said Adele, triumphant with superior knowledge.

‘I know, but he’s sixteen now,’ Rose said. ‘Age diminishes us all,’ she said, trying to make a joke about it. She swapped the shirt for the correct size and went off to idly look at the socks.

The Central Hotel for mid-morning tea was the next stop on the tour. Once the premier establishment in Kinvarra, the Central looked as if it had been around since Adam was in short pants. Gracious, ivy-clad and boasting the biggest ballroom for miles around, it had long been the venue for the town’s most expensive wedding receptions and had once been
the
place to have dinner. Although she wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, Rose loathed the Central Hotel. She’d never forget the first time she’d been there, the first time she’d met Hugh’s family. Now that had been a night to remember. She’d been so unsure of herself then and the hotel reminded her of a time Rose preferred to forget. She’d been so young, so gauche.

Adele’s gait slowed down even more as she made the majestic journey up the Central’s marble steps and into the foyer, which somehow still looked exactly the same as it had forty years before, despite redecoration since. Rose wondered was there a factory churning out gilt pictures of purple mountains and elegantly faded velvet curtains circa 1950 for selling on to hotels like the Central? They settled themselves into two chintzy armchairs in the drawing room and Rose politely summoned the young waiter.

‘Morning tea with scones and real strawberry jam,’ Adele told him imperiously when he arrived.

‘For two, thank you so much,’ added Rose, smiling at the waiter in an attempt to make up for Adele’s lack of charm in the ordering department.

Adele waved graciously at an acquaintance of hers, and
then sat back happily in her seat. Two crisp copies of the local paper lay on the table in front of her but Adele didn’t pick one up. When she was young, a lady never read a newspaper in public. It was a signal that she wasn’t interested in everything around her and young ladies, as her mother used to say, must look interested at all times. The waiter arrived with tea in a silver teapot, china cups and a silver two-tiered cake stand decked with scones. Adele graciously poured tea. All was right with her world.

‘This is nice,’ said Rose, doing her best. Rose’s idea of shopping was a speedy race round the town, gathering up bags of groceries and finishing with a very quick latte in Melanie’s Coffee Shop if she was lucky. She sipped her tea slowly and tried not to think of all the jobs she could be doing now. A tea cup clinked in the distance, reminding Rose of another time.

There was a certain smell in the drawing room of the Central Hotel, she realised. A strangely familiar smell that mingled lily of the valley perfume with whatever polish they used on the furniture. If Rose closed her eyes, she could imagine herself back over forty years to that night…

As she and Hugh drove to Kinvarra, Rose felt her stomach lurch with nerves. Hugh was eager to show his beloved Rose off to his family, he’d never understand how scared Rose was that his parents would see through her and discover that she didn’t come from a suitable background for their only son. Hugh, who adored his beautiful, clever and passionate girlfriend, didn’t care where she came from. But the most respected solicitor in Kinvarra and his wife might.

‘Dad’ll wonder what a girl like you is doing with me,’ he said.

Rose laughed.

‘My mother can’t wait to meet you,’ Hugh went on. ‘She’s fussing over which dress to wear.’

Rose was startled and a little pleased. She hadn’t thought that ladies like Mrs Miller would fuss over anything, but it
was a good sign that she wasn’t the only person suffering from nerves. Maybe this mightn’t be too bad.

They both fell quiet as they approached Hugh’s home. Rose hated herself for feeling nervous. She was just as good as these people, she was proud of her family and her background, so what had she to be nervous about?

Hugh’s parents seemed delighted to meet her, welcoming her enthusiastically to their home. And if Rose noticed that the sedate drawing room was four times the size of the cosy kitchen in her home in Castletown, she didn’t let on. Hugh was a carbon copy of his father, Edward; both had the same blond hair and easy charm. His mother, Iris, turned out to be a plump, kind-faced woman with neat grey hair who wore a silk print dress with real pearls shining in her ears. She was warm to her son’s nervous young girlfriend, wanting to know all about Rose and wasn’t she wonderful to be living in Dublin and working.

‘I’m sure your parents worry about you living away from home,’ Mrs Miller said. ‘We were the same when Hugh went off to college. Young fellows can get into awful trouble but Hugh was never a bother.’

‘Iris, you’re forgetting that incident with the collapsible umbrella and the number seven bus…’ Edward Miller chimed in with a grin. ‘Only teasing, Hugh. He’ll never forgive me, Rose, for teasing him in front of you.’

Everyone laughed and Rose allowed herself to relax. This was going to be fine. The Millers might speak differently to her, and they might have a maid to clean up for them, but they were the same really, with the same worries, and able to joke about the sort of daft things that all families loved.

There was a certain dreamlike quality to the rest of the evening. They drove to dinner in the Central and Rose carried on blithely as if her entire childhood had involved family dinners in such establishments. She was more comfortable with restaurants nowadays, but there was a difference between a meal in the diner on O’Connell Street with stainless steel knives and paper napkins, and this grand affair
with silver plate and linen napkins so fine it felt a shame to use them.

Only Adele had shot her envious looks across the table, watching Rose’s animated face and her dark eyes glittering with wit and intelligence. Many people looked at Rose that night, admiring the tall, slender figure in the silvery grey shift dress, appreciating her halo of glossy dark hair, wondering who this wide-eyed beauty was. Rose had met girls like Adele, the ones who envied Rose her beauty and watched her jealously. There was no winning with girls like that, Rose thought. Adele was tall, thin rather than slender, and had none of her brother’s golden glamour. With her long disapproving face and haughty expression, she was nothing like the other Millers in any way. They were charm itself, while Adele had an air of being frostily convinced of her family’s exalted position in life. Rose, aware of Adele’s eagle eye on her every time she picked up a piece of cutlery, put on her coolest smile and determined that this girl would not ruin her night.

When she was alone in the spare bedroom after her evening of triumph, Rose sat on the window seat in her elderly pyjamas, hugging her knees to her chest and thinking how much she loved Hugh.