Just Between Us (24 page)

‘This is your first time, then?’ asked Tara delicately.

‘Yes. Should I send an e-mail message tomorrow morning with the gory details or will a text message do?’

‘Oh e-mail,’ countered Tara, ‘you can get more in. Only kidding.’

The entryphone buzzer sounded and Tara rushed to answer it.

‘Come on up, Nick,’ she said, then added in a low voice, ‘I believe you’re a hero in the sack.’

‘Tara!’ shrieked Stella, rushing into the hall to find Tara grinning wickedly. ‘I’d hung up before I said the last bit,’ she said.

‘Bitch,’ whispered Stella. ‘You have to watch what you say when Amelia’s around, you know…I don’t want her corrupted.’

Tara squeezed her sister’s arm. ‘Don’t worry. Finn and I were due to hold the wife-swapping party this weekend but we pulled out!’

‘You’re incorrigible,’ Stella said, laughing.

‘What’s the joke?’ said Nick when he arrived.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Stella. She kissed him firmly on the mouth.

‘You smell lovely,’ said Nick, inhaling the creamy scent of vanilla body lotion.

Over Nick’s shoulder, Stella could see Tara bite her tongue to stop herself saying something naughty.

‘Hi, Nick.’ Tara waved at him. At Stella’s Sunday lunch party, the two of them had got on like a house on fire. Every one of the Millers had taken to him, in fact. Nick’s genuine love for Stella had opened the door for him. Nobody seeing the pair of them together could doubt the intensity of their feelings for each other. Even Rose, who’d been scared for her darling Stella and had been prepared to make her mind up slowly, had adored Nick from the start.

‘Hi, Nick,’ Amelia rushed out from watching TV and Nick swept her up into his arms.

‘How’s my princess?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Auntie Tara’s got Kinder eggs for me and I can have them all.’

‘What sort of a chicken lays Kinder eggs?’ Nick asked, putting her back down.

‘No chicken, silly,’ giggled Amelia. ‘They come from the shops.’

Stella got her coat and her handbag.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘We’re ready.’ For some reason, she felt tearful. She hated leaving Amelia. They’d been apart so few times since Amelia had been born. She knelt down beside her daughter.

‘Bye, Mummy.’ Amelia put her trusting little face up to her mother’s and kissed her. ‘Have fun.’

‘I’ll miss you.’ Stella buried her face in Amelia’s hair.

‘Me too,’ said Amelia. ‘But I like it here with Aunty Tara and Uncle Finn, and Aunty Holly’s coming too.’

‘I know, darling. I’ll phone lots of times and if you need me, get Aunty Tara to phone me, won’t you?’

‘Yup.’

‘Come on,’ said Nick.

When all the goodbyes had been said, Tara opened the door and Stella walked out, her eyes blurred with tears. Nick held her hand tightly. The last thing she heard before the door closed was Amelia saying: ‘Aunty Tara, can we have some chocolate now?’

It was like being fifteen again, Stella thought as they sat together on the plane. At that age, dates had filled the young Stella with wild excitement. Today, over twenty-two years on, the same excitement was bubbling up inside her. Nick clearly felt it too. His hand kept reaching over to touch hers and squeeze it.

‘I’ve never been to Paris with a man,’ Stella confided.

‘With a Golden Retriever, then?’ he asked.

‘No, idiot. I came with a school trip when I was in my last year at school and it was hilarious. The teachers were terrified at the idea of keeping this group of kids safe in Gay Paree and we almost had to go to the loos in groups of three. We all wanted to escape and wander round ourselves, but we never managed it. The highlight of the trip was when we had morning coffee in the hotel and these young men tried
to chat myself and a friend up.’ Stella smiled fondly at the recollection. ‘We thought we were the last word in grown-up-ness when that happened. Suddenly, we were experienced, worldly-wise women. This was real life, you see. Having charming men chat us up. Kinvarra seemed a long way away. The teachers were horrified, of course.’

Nick smiled and held onto her hand tightly.

‘What would you have done if you’d managed to escape?’

She thought about it. ‘All very innocent stuff, really. Gone to see a film, maybe. And I had this very romantic notion of myself in an Audrey Hepburn scarf wafting round Paris and being admired. I wanted to order coffee and sit in a street café looking cool and aloof. The reality was different,’ she added. ‘We had to wear our school blazers, which would have certainly marked me out as a schoolgirl and, at the time, I was very keen on enormous brass jewellery. My favourite earrings were like satellite dishes, not very Hepburn-esque. And my hair was very long and very bushy, so with wild hair, big earrings and my burgundy school blazer, I wasn’t what you’d call the epitome of Parisian chic.’

‘I bet you looked wonderful,’ Nick said. ‘We could relive the experience and you could pretend you’re an earnest schoolgirl who’s managed to throw off her teachers.’

It sounded like a marvellous idea.

‘Can I pose in a café wearing my sunglasses?’ she begged.

‘Only if you tie your hair back in a scarf and pretend to be in a film,’ Nick said.

‘Let’s,’ said Stella enthusiastically.

They began to draw up a mental plan of sightseeing and it was clear that Nick had been to the French capital many times. But Stella deliberately didn’t ask him about how often he’d been there and who with. The answer would surely involve Wendy, and Stella felt strongly that hearing about her might break the spell.

The problem with romance at their age, she reflected, was that you were never the first to do anything. You were never the first person to go to Paris with them, or the first person
to walk on a rain-soaked beach. She knew it was childish, but Stella felt a certain sense of loss at not being the first to do things like that with Nick.

Still, she resolved not to think about it. They were together now. Stella wanted the past to stay in the past. Surely that couldn’t be too difficult?

Their elegant little boutique hotel reminded Stella of Holly’s interior decoration.

‘Shabby chic,’ she whispered to Nick as they stood in the faded lobby beside a giant armoire that was genuinely rather than deliberately distressed.

‘I’ve never stayed here before but I was told it’s unusual and very elegant,’ Nick said. ‘I thought we should go somewhere neither of us had ever been before.’

Her smile was grateful. He
did
understand how the ghosts of past relationships could be hard to live with. This was new, this was
theirs
, Stella thought delightedly. No past lovers would loom up in the middle of the night to taunt her.

Their room was just as pretty as the lobby, a vision of sea-green muslin with prints of Fragonard paintings on the walls, spindly white furniture and violets in painted pots. Dominating the room, however, was a huge bed big enough for an orgy, complete with an elaborate canopy and enough flowing muslin to drape an elephant.

‘Lovely room,’ said Stella, skirting the bed with all its meanings, to look into the bathroom.

‘Great view,’ agreed Nick, also avoiding the bed to stare out of the louvred window at the spires of Paris.

The female receptionist who’d shown them to the room looked worried. ‘You don’t like the bed?’ she said, perplexed. Everyone loved the bed in this room. It was the first thing people mentioned. What was wrong with this couple?

Nick’s eyes met Stella’s across the expanse of the bed.

‘We love it,’ Stella said firmly, controlling the urge to giggle. ‘It’s the best bit of the room.’

Satisfied, the receptionist left.

‘The best bit?’ said Nick, grinning.

Stella’s gaze was even. ‘Possibly the best bit,’ she said.

‘Only possibly?’ Nick crossed the room to stand beside her. He took off his raincoat and threw it on a chair.

‘I can’t be more sure until I test it out,’ Stella said, unbuttoning her coat. She threw it on top of Nick’s.

‘Research, you mean?’

She nodded.

A knock on the door signalled the porter with their bags.

‘I’m glad we were still dressed when he got here,’ Stella said when the porter had departed, having left their luggage carefully on the rack.

‘I’d say he’s seen things that would make our hair turn,’ Nick said cheerfully. ‘This is Paris after all. A couple standing tamely beside a bed, dressed or otherwise, must be very dull to him.’

‘Dull?’ inquired Stella. ‘Are you saying we’re dull? We’ve got to put a stop to that. Phone down this instant and order champagne, strawberries and a mirror for over the bed.’

Nick grinned at her and gently pulled her close.

‘We don’t need champagne.’ He undid one button on her shirt dress. ‘Or strawberries.’ He undid two more buttons. ‘Or a mirror on the ceiling.’ He opened the dress and his hands slid round her waist.

Stella felt profoundly grateful for having bought her new, sexy underwear, because she didn’t think she’d have felt as sexual if she’d been wearing her standard cotton knickers and plain, firm control bra. These lacy, silken garments made her feel like a different woman, a sensual, beautiful woman. Yes, underwear did help.

Very soon, she wasn’t thinking about underwear any more because the passion she’d been damping down for months came rushing to the fore. Nick’s body was close to hers, he was as turned on as she was, there was a hugely inviting bed at their backs and they were, after all, in Paris.

‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ murmured Stella, when
Nick’s lips were buried against her neck and his hands were cupping her breasts in their covering of lace.

‘That’s supposed to be my line,’ he said.

‘I’m an equal opportunities sort of person,’ Stella said, arching her back as Nick unhooked her bra and took a nipple sweetly in his mouth.

Stella, who’d thought she’d forgotten what lovemaking could be, discovered that she’d never really forgotten. It was perfectly natural to caress Nick and undress him, natural for him to peel down her silky pants so she could sit straddled across him on the bed, feeling his hands caressing her fiercely and his mouth on hers. Then, she couldn’t think straight because she felt herself go liquid with desire and she wanted him inside her. Then he was, holding her closely with his powerful arms, their bodies locked together in wild sexual tension, driving her to an exquisite orgasm that made her shriek out in pleasure and astonishment. Even some strange flapping noise going on outside the window couldn’t stem the blissful release that throbbed through her body as she came. When Nick’s body stiffened in her arms and he moaned softly, she clung to him, willing his orgasm to be as good as hers. At last, they lay panting on the sheets, still tangled together, too shattered even to move apart.

‘I think we frightened the pigeons,’ said Nick, wiping away the beads of perspiration from Stella’s upper lip.

‘Was that what the noise was?’ She felt the laugh grow deep in her belly and rumble up into her chest. ‘I can’t believe we frightened the pigeons.’

Nick rolled her over until she was lying on his chest gazing down at him. ‘Actually,
you
frightened the pigeons,’ he said gravely.

‘It wasn’t me,’ she giggled.

‘Yes it was,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘We’ll probably be thrown out of the hotel, you know.’

Stella rested her head against his chest, glorying in the sensation of his body close to hers. She’d had sex before. She knew what that felt like, but this, this utter transporta-
tion with someone she loved, this was something else. This felt perfectly right. Nick’s body fitted hers perfectly.

As they lay spent, her face nuzzled up to his big shoulder, Stella felt a protective love so intense that it startled even her. She would kill for this man. She loved him, cared for him, wanted to take care of him and, in turn, be taken care of by him.

His hands caressed her back, idly massaging her muscles, moving from her shoulder blades down to the base of her spine. Then his fingers splayed down further, cupping her bottom gently in a way that was suddenly intensely erotic. Stella, who’d been worn out a few minutes before, found her body responding.

‘Since we’re going to be thrown out soon, should we have another go?’ she whispered, moving slightly to test if Nick was getting as turned on as she was.

‘Oh yes,’ he murmured. ‘Definitely.’

The pigeons didn’t make quite as much noise the second time.

Stella, curled up beside Nick and ready to fall asleep, decided that they must have got used to it.

Tara had a cramp in her leg from standing patiently behind the cameramen. She was also boiling hot because the powerful studio lights kept sound stage seven at tropical heat, even on a chillier-than-usual late March day. The make-up department went through horrendous amounts of translucent powder toning down glistening faces.

Rotating her ankle to deal with the cramp, Tara stared intently at the set but her mind was elsewhere. Professionally, she was on a high since Mike Hammond had phoned her and mentioned that a friend of his with a small production company was trying to get a low-budget Irish movie off the ground and needed a reliable, and cheap, hand with the script he was writing.

‘Script polishing,’ Mike had said, ‘that’s what we’re looking for.’

It wasn’t exactly the A-list Hollywood stuff she’d dreamed of, but Tara had been delighted. The script doctoring was something she could do in her spare time and if it worked, she was sure Mike would come up with something more concrete for her. This was an audition of sorts. Mike owned a tiny share in this friend’s production company and if her work was good enough, she knew Mike would be impressed. The second subject taking her mind off her job was Finn. Apart from the past weekend when they’d been taking care of Amelia, he was socialising every second night and, in her darker moments, Tara wondered if there was someone else in his life. That could be the only explanation for both the
late nights with the boys and the endless evenings when he was out with clients, yet when Finn crept into bed beside her, hugging her and telling her that he loved her, Tara knew instinctively that he wasn’t lying. So what was wrong?

Sighing, she turned her attention back to the set where Sherry DaVinci, boobs jacked up to her chin in a strawberry-pink V-necked dress that was highly unsuitable for working as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, was confronting the lantern-jawed Dr Jack McCambridge, her boss and serial womaniser.

Theodora, Sherry’s character, was the only person in the country who hadn’t realised that the handsome Dr McCambridge was engaged to be married and was, therefore, going to dump her before rushing up the aisle with the virginal and rich daughter of the chief surgeon. Their frantic weekends in a country hotel had meant nothing to him. Although being used as a location for the nation’s most popular soap had done wonders for the hotel’s business.

‘You pig!’ hissed Theodora, bosom heaving, flecks of mascara flying as she emoted with all the skill of four months of drama college. ‘You absolute pig!’

Tara had wanted her to call him a bastard, but
National Hospital
went out before the nine o’clock watershed. Bad language was not an option. As the scriptwriters liked to joke, aliens could come down and perform quasi-sexual experiments on the entire cast for ten episodes and nobody would bat an eyelid. But let one character utter an expletive and
National Hospital
would be at the centre of a controversy over corrupting the nation’s youth with profanity.

‘Theodora, stop shouting, someone will hear,’ said Dr McCambridge testily.

Tara watched in approval. Unlike poor Sherry, Jack could act.

He sounded exactly like a charmer who was trying to perform damage limitation, a dangerous charmer who could possibly turn nasty. Millions of women tuned in at eight p.m. twice a week to see how dangerous Dr Jack could get
and to watch him stripped to the waist in the surgical scrub room where lots of the show’s action took place. Male TV critics complained that the surgery rate would be higher if the show’s chief heart-throb didn’t spend so long stripping off. Female TV critics had been known to express the opinion that there wasn’t half enough of Dr Jack with his shirt off. Even the revelation that he got his chest waxed hadn’t put Dr Jack’s fans off.

On the set, the emotional temperature was rising.

‘But Jack,’ wailed Theodora. ‘How could you do this to me?’

‘Grow up, Theodora,’ he snapped back. ‘You knew what this was about. Don’t kid yourself that you didn’t. We had a bit of fun, that was all.’ He let his dark eyes rove over her full figure. ‘I had fun,’ he said evilly, ‘didn’t you?’

At this point, Theodora’s eyes were supposed to brim with tears. Tara, who couldn’t resist liking Sherry since the awards, had decided that the vampish receptionist should suddenly reveal her more vulnerable side.

‘Perhaps the problem with Sherry is that she has a problem playing such a bitch on screen,’ Tara had said at the storyline meeting. People had shrugged their shoulders. Most of the writers felt that Sherry’s problem was acting full stop but they let Tara run with her idea. It was therefore important to her that Sherry could pull the sympathy card off.

On camera, Sherry’s eyelids fluttered.

Tara scrunched up her own eyes, as if to stimulate tears of her own in sympathy with the character. But Sherry appeared to be tearless. She narrowed her eyes a bit but couldn’t produce anything. Tara sighed.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be fun, it was supposed to be love,’ she said finally.

Tara winced at every word. It was official. Sherry simply couldn’t act. No wonder all the show’s other actors, many of them charismatic stage stars who’d done everything from Pinter to the Bard, were annoyed to see someone as talentless as Sherry on the show.

Dr Jack moved closer to Theodora/Sherry and took her pointed little chin in one big hand.

‘I don’t do love,’ he growled.

Staring at the scene, Tara felt an answering growl deep in her solar plexus. Dr Jack could do that to a woman, even when the woman in question knew what he was going to say because she’d written his lines. Off camera, Dr Jack was the sort of person Tara avoided. On camera, he was droolingly delectable with enough sexual charisma for a dozen men.

‘You don’t mean that,’ said Theodora woodenly.

‘Yes I do.’ And Dr Jack, an expert soap star after ten years on the job and two technical rehearsals that morning, swept around and exited, leaving Theodora to sink to her desk and pretend to sob.

‘Cut!’ yelled the director.

Everyone on sound stage seven sighed with relief. The last scene of the day was finally in the can and everyone could pack up and go home, albeit an hour later than usual.

Dr Jack, aka Stephen Valli, stalked angrily off the set muttering about working with amateurs and how he should have never given up theatre.

Everybody ignored him.

Tara looked at her watch. Ten past six, time to go home to Finn. Maybe they could have a heart-to-heart discussion and get a few things out in the open. She knew that Finn had to entertain clients, but his job seemed to be taking over their lives. When they’d got married, Tara hadn’t thought there’d be quite so many late nights. ‘The computer industry’s in a bit of a recession,’ he’d said when she’d lost her temper the last time. ‘This is my job, Tara. I don’t complain about your hours or the times you’re up late glued to the laptop, do I?’

He never complained, she had to admit that. If she had to work late, Finn was happy to phone Derry and head off for a ‘quick pint down the local’. But then he didn’t come back for hours and when she finally switched off her laptop, she ended up alone again.

Finn obviously didn’t understand that things were different now that they were married; he wasn’t the single man about town any more. It was up to her to make him understand. Tonight, she decided, she’d get a Chinese takeaway, his favourite, and they’d have a talk.

Tara smiled to herself, relieved to have sorted this out in her mind and relieved the day’s shooting was over. There was only one more scene to shoot the following morning and the episode would be finished. The scene involved other actors and, even though Tara had written it, she wouldn’t be needed on set because it didn’t involve Theodora and there was no possibility of having to rewrite anything because the actress fumbled her lines.

Normally, the writers didn’t spend too much time on set: instead, they sat in their office writing scripts and discussing things like the ratings and how they were going to get rid of Theodora. So far, the ideas included suicide (unlikely as Sherry wouldn’t be able to fake abject misery) and leaving to visit her sister in Boston (this was an in joke as six people so far in the programme’s ten-year history had gone to visit their sister in America). Dr Jack/Stephen had popped his head round the door the previous day and suggested that he shoot Theodora. ‘I’d like that,’ he said grimly. ‘It could be a crime of passion.’

‘You’d have to go to jail and we can’t do without you,’ said the story editor.

‘I could dump the body in the canal and nobody would know,’ Stephen replied.

Everyone in the room had laughed. They’d already had a body in the canal in the Christmas episode three years ago. Two bodies in the canal would be pushing it.

Tara was grinning at the thought as she left the set and walked slowly up to the control room for a few words with Aaron, the director. But Sherry got there before her and managed to accost Aaron just as he was nipping out of the room.

‘What did you think?’ Her bosom still heaving in full-on
Theodora mode, Sherry stood in front of Aaron and blinked appealingly. A great bear of a man with a gruff manner and a gentle heart behind it, Aaron regarded the pretty girl who’d brought the show buckets of publicity. Tara had known directors whose savage sarcasm could strip paint and it was a joy to work with one who genuinely considered people’s feelings before he spoke. Standing behind Sherry, she smiled at Aaron and hoped he’d stay true to form and wouldn’t say anything awful. Sherry was sweet, after all.

‘Too much anger in your passion, darling,’ Aaron said finally.

Sherry had to think about this for a moment. ‘Is that good or bad?’ she asked.

When Sherry had gone, Aaron and Tara walked back to the
National Hospital
production offices.

‘I’ve heard your name mentioned in connection with the TV film of the Paton Smyth book,’ Aaron remarked.

Tara was astonished. ‘Where did you hear that?’ she demanded. Mike Hammond had only phoned her two days previously. He’d told her the film was hush-hush.

‘I have my sources,’ said Aaron. ‘I don’t hear everything but when my best scriptwriter and top storyline editor is moving on to something bigger and better, I keep my ears to the ground.’

Tara decided to be honest with Aaron. She owed him that. ‘I’d tell you if they asked me to do something big, Aaron. Mike called me. We met at the awards and he said he was interested in talking to me sometime. Now he’s rung and suggested I might be interested in polishing this script. It just needs tweaking, he says. It’s a low-budget flick and it might never get made because they haven’t got the financing sorted out yet. Writing a real film script is just a pipe dream,’ she added lamely.

‘Not for you, Tara,’ Aaron said seriously. ‘You’re good, better than good. You don’t need me to tell you that. And I’ve always known you’re ambitious, don’t forget.’

They reached the tiny office kitchen and Aaron paused in
front of the coffee machine. ‘I knew you wouldn’t end up with us forever, that you’d want to move on to something different. You high-fliers don’t sit still for long.’

Tara patted Aaron’s arm affectionately. He’d been such a good mentor, always ready to listen to her ideas even when she’d been a novice scriptwriter and the most junior on the
National Hospital
team. He’d been the one who told her she could really write, the one who said that coaxing a performance out of the most wooden actor was much easier when Tara Miller had written the lines.

‘I’m not rushing off anywhere just yet, I promise. I’d tell you if I was, so don’t advertise my job. Deal?’ Tara added.

‘Deal,’ he agreed. ‘Look at this,’ he added in disgust, pouring a stream of pale muddy liquid into a mug. ‘What’s with this fake coffee stuff? Can’t we have real coffee round here?’

Tara left him to it. Glancing at her watch, she wondered what the rush hour traffic would be like.

‘Hey Tara, coming to the pub?’

It was a contingent of the show’s writers, all intent on their customary last-Tuesday-of-the-month trip to the pub. Not that this was the only trip to the pub every month by any means, but this was payday, the only firm date in their diaries. Other sessions were more spontaneous.

‘You haven’t been over to the pub for ages,’ complained Lisa, an avowed party animal.

‘Do we smell or something?’ demanded Ralph, the oldest writer in the team, who was just as mad for partying as Lisa and had a sharp tongue.

‘I’m sorry, Ralph,’ Tara said in mock distress, ‘but we thought it would be kinder to let you drink on your own instead of leave cans of deodorant around the office to give you the hint. BO is a terrible thing.’

‘Funny ha ha,’ said Ralph. ‘So, are you coming for a drink or not?’

‘Yeah, I’ll meet you over there; save me a bar stool,’ Tara said, wishing she’d managed to avoid them because she genuinely didn’t want to spend any time in the pub. Her weekends
with Finn revolved around pubs. Still, she hadn’t been out with the team for weeks and a lame excuse would not do.

‘And you can tell us all about this hot new script you’re working on,’ said Lisa coyly. ‘Is it Spielberg or Coppola who’s interested?’

Tara laughed outright at that. ‘Is nothing a secret in this damn place?’

‘No,’ said Tommy, who was an inveterate gossip with a nose like Lassie when it came to scandal. ‘We know who’s been sleeping with Dr Jack while the real Mrs Jack is away having her eyes de-bagged in a clinic in London, and we know which nymphet from publicity is having after-hours trysts with her female boss.’

‘Tommy, are you sure that you sent your CV to the right place?’ inquired Tara. ‘This is
National Hospital
, not the
National Enquirer
.’

The other three were laughing as they departed, with Ralph threatening dire repercussions if Tara did not arrive at the pub in ten minutes.

Still smiling from the encounter, Tara went to her partitioned cube in the writers’ office and phoned home, hanging up when she got the answering machine. Of course Finn wouldn’t be back yet. Then she phoned his mobile. Another machine.