Just Between Us (49 page)

‘But you wanted to pay him back, didn’t you?’

Tara sighed. ‘Fay, if this is psychic healing, you are an expert at it.’

Her sister-in-law’s chuckle was deep. ‘I’m not a psychic healer, I just said that to irritate my mother. I’m a fitness
instructor. I had an arts degree from home and that didn’t help much in the job market, so I retrained.’

‘You don’t get on with her,’ Tara remarked.

‘You could say that,’ Fay said sardonically. ‘Finn and I have very different relationships with her. She and I didn’t get on but she adored Finn. He was always so sweet, he tried to get her off my back by being extra nice to her so she’d be happy and cut me some slack. You know, he’d say, “Mum, you look tired. Why don’t you have a rest and Fay and I will clean up,” and she’d be all “Finn, darling, you’re so good” and she’d go upstairs and lie down or paint her nails and everyone would be happy because she wasn’t around.’

Tara had to ask: ‘Do you think that he drinks because of that, because of your mother and your childhood?’ She wanted there to be a reason because then, it could be fixed.

‘That reminds me of the joke written on a bathroom stall door: “
My mother made me an alcoholic
.” And written underneath in different writing is: “
If I get her the wool, will she make me one too?
” Nobody makes anybody an alcoholic, Tara,’ said Fay firmly. ‘What happens to you in life can probably push you down that path, but it’s a cop-out to say another person forces you into it. Now, I’m not standing up for my mother here. She’s quite a piece of work.’

Tara agreed with that. Gloria was a strange woman, and yet her daughter was warm and friendly. Tara realised that even the way Fay spoke felt so familiar that Tara didn’t think twice about having this bizarre and deeply personal conversation with her.

‘I’ve read that scientists are still juggling the nature versus nurture effect of alcoholism, like is it genetic or is it learned behaviour. But to be fair, my mother didn’t hand Finn a bottle and say “finish this, kid”. He did that himself and he’s the only person to blame. Finn’s been drinking for a long time,’ Fay continued. ‘He’s two years older than I am and I noticed it for the first time when he was, I don’t know, perhaps nineteen. He never drank for fun, he drank to get really out of it. We all tried to get served in bars then, it
was the classic teenage rebellion thing. We were adults, we could handle our beer, yeah right. But Finn drank differently, even then. I didn’t realise what it meant until I was in college and I did psychology in the first year. We had this lecture about alcoholism and it sort of clicked. Everything the lecturer said reminded me of my brother. Drinking is his coping mechanism.’

Tara felt so incredibly sad hearing this. It took a phone call to the other side of the world to tell her things she should have known about her husband.

‘Finn’s known he’s had a problem for years,’ Fay went on. ‘He and I discuss it but nobody else does. My mother would never admit that he has any flaws and Dad, well Dad hates hassle.

‘When Finn phoned last year and said he was getting married, I didn’t like to ask him if you knew. He said he was drinking but it was under control.’

Tara sat in miserable silence. It all made so much sense; how had she never noticed before? ‘Why didn’t I realise at the beginning?’ she said. ‘I could have helped.’

‘Finn doesn’t fit into the Photofit of your typical drunk. He doesn’t hang around street corners and stumble off the sidewalk. He’s clever, he’s kind,
he functions
. How would you know?’

‘I should have,’ insisted Tara. ‘I love him.’

‘You’ve got to ask yourself can you still love him, knowing this?’

‘Of course I can. But where is he?’

‘Did you try phoning the rehabilitation clinics? He might have booked himself into one.’

‘Do you think that’s possible?’ Tara felt a glimmer of hope.

‘He probably feels he’s lost you, that he’s reached the end of the line, so the only way of winning you back is sorting out the problem.’

‘But
he
left
me
,’Tara pointed out. ‘Not the other way round.’

‘Had he been drinking that night?’

Tara didn’t know.

‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed that he’s in rehab. If he is, he’ll need you when he gets out.’

‘I’ll be there,’ Tara said, her voice cracking.

‘I’ve got to go, Tara,’ Fay said. ‘I’m on late shift tonight at the health club. Keep in touch, won’t you?’

‘Yes, and thanks for everything.’

As she hung up. Tara tried to imagine what she’d do if either Stella or Holly were alcoholics. She’d have dragged them into a clinic and kept them there until they were better. Fay appeared to know all about Finn and yet she’d never forced him to do anything about it. Then again, didn’t they say that was the problem with addiction: you couldn’t force anyone to do anything. They had to want to do it. Tara felt so ignorant about the whole subject. She should have bought a book on alcoholism or something. Then it hit her: the Internet. Of course. She didn’t need a book. She got on-line and began to search.

She sat up into the night reading on-line about families and partners of alcoholics. The facts of the stories were often different on the surface, but underneath, they all shared the same thread of pain from living with an alcoholic. There were wives and husbands who’d divorced their drinking spouse, having been pushed to the limit too many times, and who told of how it was an uphill battle recovering from what they’d been through. There were adult children of alcoholics who, years after their drinking parent was dead, still had nightmares about what it meant when Daddy or Mummy came home with that familiar glitter in their eyes and the miasma of alcohol in the air.

And there were the good stories, where people came online to give hope that there could be life after the bottle.

‘I was married to two people, the kind man I loved and the bitter, cruel man he became when he was drunk,’ wrote one woman. ‘For years I lived with both until I’d had enough
and threw him out of our home, for my sake and for our children’s sake. Only then did he face up to what he’d done. Now my husband is back, not the drinking one, the kind, decent one. He’s been back for four years and not a day goes by but I don’t praise the Lord for giving him back to us. It can be done, I promise.’

Tara felt a lump in her throat as she read each account. These real stories were more poignant than anything she could have written.

If only she could get a second chance with Finn. But that was out of her hands now. All she could do was hope he’d done the positive thing and gone for treatment. Until she knew otherwise, she had to get on with living her life.

‘Remind me again why we’re going to this party?’ grumbled Joan, fiddling with her newly-dyed coal-black hair, now cut in a sharp modern crop. In preparation for her trip to New York, she’d revamped her personal style and was getting used to wearing pieces from her tailored collection. She still wore her funky graffiti T-shirts but worked hard to make her more outrageous clothes look good with mainstream pieces.

‘I want to be successful and being too weird won’t work on Seventh Avenue,’ she told Kenny and Holly when they expressed amazement at this new look. Tonight, she was dressed in a sleek charcoal pinafore dress with a clinging, filament-thin white net shirt with cotton collar and cuffs underneath. Genuine ‘Forties stack heels and a classic YSL evening bag from a vintage shop completed the look. Somehow the outfit was the epitome of French chic with a very modern twist.

‘We’re going to this party because we love Tom and have to support him in his hour of need,’ said Kenny, who didn’t need to fiddle with his outfit because he knew that his Diet-Coke man cream linen suit was exquisite. ‘And we’re hoping that Caroline will fall for some of the top totty I’ve arranged to crash the party, thus leaving dear Tom alone.’ He didn’t add ‘alone for Holly’. He and Joan might think that Tom would be perfect for their Holly but they said nothing. Holly had been bruised enough as it was. ‘Besides, the only other option is to find a witch and put a hex on Caroline, and
they haven’t opened up a branch of Witches Ä Us in Dublin yet,’ Kenny continued irrepressibly.

It was the Thursday evening of Tom and Caroline’s grand engagement party and Joan and Kenny were in Holly’s apartment waiting for her to emerge from the bedroom.

‘Holls, what are you doing in there?’ yelled Joan. ‘I want to get to the party and meet Kenny’s model boys.’

In a daring move, Kenny had phoned Caroline and mentioned that he’d be working on a shoot on the day of the party. ‘I’ll be working with four of the most delectable male models in the country. Could I ask a huge favour and take them along? They’d love your party.’

Predictably, Caroline had jumped at the chance.

‘Jennifer Lopez is in the ha’penny place compared to Caroline when it comes to ego,’ Kenny sighed. ‘Honestly, I’ve organised rent-a-crowd and she genuinely believes the country’s top male models are wetting themselves to go to her little bash.’

In her bedroom, Holly stared at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t go out in this dress. It was Caroline’s night and there was an unwritten rule about upstaging the bride, wasn’t there? Vintage shopping with Joan, she’d come upon a red Hervé Léger dress, a marvellous construction which worked like a fabulous foundation garment, squeezing Holly’s hourglass figure into even more Jessica Rabbit proportions. Holly wouldn’t have tried something so daring on except Joan wanted to see it modelled so she could croon over the brilliance of Léger. Once it was on, even the manageress of the shop had come to admire the effect. After that, Joan insisted that Holly buy it.

Now Holly decided that she j ust didn’t have the nerve for so much va-va voom. This was a dress to be tried on when she needed cheering up, because it did make her look fabulous, but she just wasn’t the sort of person who could actually set foot outside the flat wearing it. People would look at her in a dress like that.

‘We hope you’re not taking that dress off?’ Joan stood at the bedroom door.

‘Oh good, you’re ready,’ said Kenny, popping his head into the room. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I don’t know…’ said Holly miserably.

They grabbed her and propelled her out the bedroom door. Joan rushed back and picked up Holly’s evening bag. ‘Jesus, Holly, what are you like? You look wicked.’

The two fashion mavens examined Holly critically.

‘A teeny bit more lip gloss,’ said Kenny. ‘Otherwise, it’s perfect.’

Joan opened the front door and they trooped down the stairs. Holly fiddled with her dress, hoisting it up so that it covered her boobs a bit more.

‘Caroline will die when she sees you,’ crowed Joan happily.

At that, Holly stopped. She didn’t want Caroline to die at the sight of her in full battle dress. Because that’s what it would look like; the desperate, embittered woman who’d lost and who was giving it everything she’d got one last time. Caroline knew damn well that Holly liked Tom, even if he seemed oblivious to it. And Holly would compound matters by making a fool of herself in this dress; a dress that screeched ‘Look what you’re missing!’ She might as well paint a banner with that legend on it.

She didn’t want that air of desperation to be Tom’s last vision of her. She wanted to be cool and calm, and as happy for the engaged couple as she could: it was bad karma to be anything else. And after tonight, she’d never see them again. Tom and Caroline were moving out into a bigger flat. Holly knew she’d be invited to the wedding but she wouldn’t go. Tonight was bad enough. Tonight, she would be graceful and hopefully nobody would notice that she was being graceful in defeat.

‘I’ve forgotten to turn the…er…television off,’ she improvised and dashed upstairs. ‘Keep walking, I’ll be with you in a moment.’

In her flat, Holly ripped off the dress and threw it on the bed. She pulled a sleekly-fitting ebony trouser suit out of the
wardrobe along with a white wrap shirt. Dressing quickly, she swapped the original strappy sandals for chic black mules and changed her sparkly evening bag for a simple leather one. The woman in the mirror looked classy and businesslike, and the outfit looked enough like she’d rushed home from work without time to change. It didn’t say she’d tried too hard.

‘What the hell…?’ said Joan when Holly joined them outside the gate, where they were waving for a taxi.

‘Leave her alone,’ chided Kenny. ‘Holly knows what she’s doing.’

At the hotel, a big sign in the lobby announced that the Jacob anniversary party was in the Sackville Room, the O’Connor wedding reception was in the Hill of Tara Room, and the Barry/Davis engagement party was in the Cuchulainn Room.

‘It’s all a bit historical for a hotel that’s only ten years old,’ remarked Kenny. All three names were important ones in Irish history and mythology.

‘I suppose tourists love getting in touch with the old Ireland,’ said Joan. A thought struck her: ‘God, do you suppose I’ll have to learn all sorts of Irish history when I go to New York? When my aunt came home from Philadelphia years ago, she went out of her mind that I didn’t know any old Irish songs or any of that stuff. She thought I’d be able to speak Irish too and you know all I can say in Irish is “Can I have permission to leave class to go to the loo, Miss?’”

‘Stop worrying,’ laughed Kenny. ‘Nobody’s going to expect you to start spouting guff about leprechaun legends. Anyway, you’ll probably get all homesick when you’re there and start buying Irish folk music and getting maudlin on Paddy’s Day, sobbing about the Auld Sod.’

‘Will not. I’m a club music girl and the only reason I like Paddy’s Day is because it’s a bank holiday.’

‘But you must know some Irish history,’ Kenny went on.

‘I wasn’t good at history, so what?’ said Joan crossly. ‘We weren’t all the teacher’s pet at school.’

‘Are you two going to argue all night or are we actually going into this party?’ demanded Holly.

‘Right, I’ll go first,’ said Joan. ‘You pair come after me, talking as if you’re having the most fabulous conversation on the planet and haven’t noticed you’re here at all yet.’

‘Will we talk about Irish history?’ said Kenny innocently, and Holly burst out laughing. Thus, the first impression that the other guests had of the threesome was of beautifully dressed, elegant people who were having a marvellous time, thanks to their own scintillating company.

‘That wasn’t too hard, was it?’ murmured Joan, nudging the small group in the direction of the bar.

‘Should we go and say hello to Tom and Caroline first?’ asked Holly anxiously. She could have quite happily done without seeing either of the blissfully-happy affianced couple but she knew it would have to happen.

‘No, they can come to us,’ Joan said and began ordering drinks.

Holly looked around surreptitiously.

The room, decorated in expensive ivy wallpaper for the mystic Ireland effect, was big enough for around two hundred people, and had a stage at one end. A lurid pink ‘Congratulations Tom and Caroline’ banner hung above the stage. Scores of pink, heart-shaped balloons were dotted around, clashing wildly with the riotous wallpaper.

‘Can you see any of my guys?’ said Kenny, craning his neck.

‘No, they’re probably all in the bathroom making frantic calls on their mobiles to find a cooler party to go to,’ Joan said.

‘They’re doing this for me,’ Kenny pointed out, ‘and they won’t leave until they’ve made dear Caroline see that she’s making a huge mistake by settling down when there are so many handsome men in the world who fancy her rotten.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Joan said, eyes widening.

Holly and Kenny followed her gaze to where a crowd of people had parted, revealing a petite blonde woman in a
spray-on red dress. It was Caroline, smiling smugly like a cat who’d just consumed a pint of double cream. Her dress was not unlike Holly’s discarded one as it revealed lots of flesh and had a devastatingly deep plunge neckline, combined with a more subtle gash up one thigh. But while Holly had the curves to carry off such a siren’s outfit, Caroline did not. Her tiny pert breasts and boyish hips, perfect for her trademark slip dresses, were lost in the dress.

‘I can’t believe she’s wearing that,’ said Joan pityingly. ‘That is so not her style.’

Holly sent up a grateful prayer that she’d changed out of her own little red number. Beside each other, she and Caroline would have looked like Little and Large. Or worse: the lo-cal and full-fat versions.

It was obvious that Caroline didn’t have any doubts about her outfit and she sailed triumphantly over to the trio.

‘I’m sooo pleased you’re here!!’ she squealed, hands flapping excitedly. ‘Isn’t this exciting! Do you like my dress?’ she added to Joan, clearly still keen to butter the designer up over the as yet unresolved matter of her wedding dress. ‘It’s Versace.’

‘Last season and a copy,’ murmured Kenny sotto voce into Holly’s ear.

She gave him a tiny slap on the wrist. ‘Don’t be mean.’

‘What do you think of my wonderful balloons?’ gushed Caroline. ‘I should have had red to go with my dress, but I prefer pink. It’s more womantic,’ she added, lisping prettily.

Holly hoped that Joan wouldn’t start to make sick noises at Caroline’s baby talk. Joan’s bullshit-ometer was very sensitive.

‘Where’s Tom?’ Holly asked.

‘Over there somewhere,’ Caroline said, distracted as a gaggle of newly arrived women in party sequins waved gaily at her.

‘Talk to you later!’ shrieked Caroline. She tottered off in her high heels to greet the newcomers, screaming, ‘I’m sooo pleased you’re all here!’

Behind the new arrivals stood three of the most handsome men Holly had ever seen in her life. All casually clad in worn jeans with their hair fashionably tousled, they had the careless elegance of people so beautiful that what they wore didn’t matter. One bore more than a slight resemblance to Brad Pitt, reminding Holly of her brother-in-law. Finn had that same effortless way of walking, a sexy stroll that said he had all the time in the world. They spotted Kenny and drifted sexily over. In contrast to their languid beauty, close up they all seemed excitable and almost boyish in their enthusiasm. They hugged Kenny and shook hands with the girls.

‘Lovely to meet you.’

‘Oh, you’re Joan and Holly!’

‘We’ve heard all about you.’

Soon, the six of them were laughing and giggling like they’d all known each other for years. Kenny pointed out the betrothed couple to the boys.

‘He’s divine,’ sighed Brad Pitt, whose real name was Napier.

Holly giggled into her orange juice. Kenny winked at her.

‘Nape’s a diesel,’ Kenny whispered.

Holly looked bewildered.

‘He runs on different fuel.’

She got it.

When Tom walked over to say hello to them, with Caroline holding his hand firmly, it looked as if Kenny’s cunning plan was going to backfire. The two straight models ignored Caroline, while Napier smouldered away at Tom.

‘Caroline, you must meet Napier, Denzil and Kurt,’ said Kenny firmly, shoving Napier away from Tom and towards Caroline.

‘Hello, boys,’ simpered Caroline. Imagine, real models at her party. Moving to Dublin was going to work out after all.

Tom slipped his hand from hers and moved closer to Holly.

‘Thanks for coming,’ said Tom. ‘You look nice.’

Holly looked down at her businesslike suit. ‘It’s a bit formal for tonight,’ she said apologetically. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, it’s lovely. You always look…’ Tom stopped mid-sentence, as if realising it was inappropriate to talk to her like that. ‘lovely,’ he said finally, ‘you always look lovely.’

‘Right back at you,’ she said. He was in the cashmere sweater she, Kenny and Joan had bought him for that fateful birthday; the night when Caroline had appeared on the scene, dashing hopes Holly hadn’t even known she’d had. She thought of the expensive book on that famous architect she’d bought as a private present for Tom. It was still under her bed, still tied up with ribbon, like a parcel of hopes and dreams.

‘This is the sweater you gave me,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Holly. What was the point of feigning ignorance. She remembered everything Tom wore and what he’d said to her when he wore it.

‘Kenny tells me you’ve got a new flat; one of those posh ones in Glasnevin,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Caroline’s madly keen to have a housewarming before we get the wooden floor down.’

‘You’re turning into a party animal,’ she teased gently. ‘Engagement parties, house-warmings, the wedding…So, when are you moving out of Windmill Terrace?

‘Next week.’

‘That soon?’ She looked down into her glass. Just another week, then, and Tom would be out of her life for good. It was better that way.

‘I hope we can all keep in touch,’ he said, ‘you, Kenny, Joan, me. The Purple Mosquito gang.’