Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  There wasn’t a sound in the marquee.

  ‘Rose,’ croaked Hugh. ‘Please stop.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked in her clear voice, still amplified by the microphone. ‘You wanted this party, even though I told you I felt it was a mistake. You wanted to parade our marriage when I knew it was hypocritical. And look, you haven’t denied it in front of our friends.’

  Alastair leapt to his feet to do something and Rose shot him a look that could fell a lion. Alastair sank down into his chair again.

  ‘I’m leaving you, Hugh,’ she said.

  ‘Oh my God,’ whispered Stella, leaning against Nick for comfort.

  ‘We must do something,’ said Tara, who’d been stunned into immobility.

  Rose waved encouragingly at the band, who were just as dumbfounded as everyone else. She didn’t notice Minnie Wilson, who was staring at her heroine in utter shock. ‘The party is continuing and maybe some music might be nice,’ Rose said. There were a few wrong notes and suddenly the marquee was filled with the strains of The Girl from Ipanema. There was no other noise.

  Rose handed the microphone to Hugh and walked towards the house. Stella and Tara shot after her. The buzz of astonished conversation began to drone loudly with aghast guests saying ‘I can’t believe it!

  ‘Aren’t you going too?’ Finn asked Holly.

  She shot him a sideways glance. ‘In a minute,’ she said. Her earlier anger at Rose was gone. It was as if somebody had punched her in the stomach and winded her. She felt wicked and ungrateful for ever feeling angry with her mother. Her mother had been hurt too, just like Holly had been.

  Finn waved at one of the waiters, who’d just come back into the marquee with bottles of wine and who had clearly missed Rose’s bombshell.

  The waiter filled Holly’s glass with white wine.

  ‘Red for me,’ said Finn happily, holding up a fresh glass. ‘After a shock like that, we all deserve a little drink to steady our nerves.’

  ‘Mum, talk to us.’ Stella and Tara rushed after Rose into the house but Hugh got there before them.

  ‘Girls,’ he begged, ‘let me talk to your mother.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Stella, her dark eyes awash with tears, ‘what’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he hedged, ‘let me talk to her.’

  He followed Rose up to their bedroom, leaving the sisters alone. Stella sank down onto the bottom step of the stairs. Her legs felt too weak to support her.

  ‘What can have happened?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Tara sat down beside her and put a comforting arm round her sister’s shoulder. ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Hugh demanded, as he shut the bedroom door with a resounding bang.

  ‘You know exactly what’s going on,’ answered Rose calmly, opening a drawer and taking out a neatly folded pile of clothes. She put the clothes on the bed and did the same with another drawer. ‘I’m fed up with playing second best to your women. I’m fed up with your womanising. I’m fed up, full stop. But tell me, precisely how many have there been over the years, Hugh? Don’t lie to me because I know, I’ve always known.’

  The blood drained from Hugh’s face.

  ‘Did you really think I was that stupid?’ she said. ‘I knew you so well that I could tell instantly the moment you fancied someone. The doctor’s wife all those years ago when Stella was a baby, was she the first? I always thought she was. And other people told me, you know. They’d say ‘I saw Hugh with somebody at dinner’ and they’d wait for me to look shocked or deny it, but I brazened it out, Hugh. I didn’t want to be humiliated.’ She glared at him, despite her intention to remain coolly calm.

  ‘Rose,’ said Hugh weakly, ‘don’t do this. I can explain.’

  ‘It’s too late for explanations,’ she replied, moving to her wardrobe and surveying the contents. ‘I genuinely thought it was all over, that you no longer had other women or brought them out to discreet lunches or dinners. But your latest phoned me. She says she knows you’ll never leave me but that it still hurts. Poor dear. I know how it feels. It still hurts me, Hugh.’

  Rose wasn’t even angry any more. At least, not with anyone else. She was angry with herself for having put up with it all for so long.

  She began taking clothes from the wardrobe, carefully smoothing skirts and trousers so there were no creases in them as she folded. She was probably bringing too much but where she was going, it was better to be prepared for any eventuality.

  ‘What are you doing?’ For the first time, Hugh realised that Rose had two big suitcases on the floor.

  ‘Packing. Leaving you.’

  ‘Oh, Rose, you can’t do that.’ Suddenly it was Hugh who was sinking onto the bed in shock, all the fight gone out of him like a punctured balloon.

  She looked at her husband with a tinge of sympathy.

  ‘Hugh, what do you expect me to do?’

  He hung his head in his hands. ‘I love you, Rose. Don’t leave me, please.’

  ‘I should have left you years ago, Hugh. I stayed for the children. I could cope with a certain degree of humiliation for them but not any more.’

  ‘I was discreet,’ cried Hugh in anguish.

  ‘Not discreet enough,’ she shot back. ‘I, personally, spotted you coming out of Monsieur’s earlier this year. ‘The redhead. Is she the current popsie?’

  ‘No, there hasn’t been anyone for years. I was friends with her once and her husband died and she wanted to meet me again…’

  ‘She thought you could take up where you left off? How convenient. You should offer a service to widows. A valued customer service.’

  ‘Rose, stop it.’ Hugh looked genuinely pained.

  ‘You’re right, that was below the belt, Hugh. I need to get away from here,’ she added, still packing.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘I’m not telling you, Hugh. I don’t want you following me there and begging me to come home. We need time apart.’

  Hugh picked up the jewellery box which still lay on the bed even though Rose had carefully tidied away the incriminating diaries and the phone bills. She’d used them to prove to herself that she wasn’t going mad. She didn’t need them any more.

  ‘Why now, on our ruby wedding anniversary, why today of all days?’ he asked weakly, looking at the box he’d given her with such happiness earlier.

  Rose looked him in the eye. ‘To humiliate you,’ she said. ‘So you’d know what it feels like.’

  ‘I never knew it would hurt you so much.’ He gazed up at her sorrowfully. ‘You must believe that. I didn’t think you knew and I thought, well, what you didn’t know, didn’t harm you.’

  ‘I daresay that’s the difference between men and women,’ Rose remarked. ‘Men believe that a casual fling won’t hurt the relationship and that she’ll never find out. Women know that even the most careless affair has the capability to deliver a mortal blow. It’s my fault too, you know,’ she added. ‘I should have confronted you all those years ago and told you how I felt.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ he said, almost crying.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d choose me.’ Rose finished one case and snapped the lid shut.

  ‘It’s over, Hugh. I’m going. You ought to go out and say goodbye to the guests. Somebody has to. Oh, and you may need to explain matters to Adele. Send the girls in, could you please?’

  Mutely, Hugh did as he was told. He knew that there was no point in saying anything more to Rose. She had made up her mind. Rose’s steely determination was one of the things he’d been drawn to forty years before.

  Rose and Holly were the only members of the Miller family who weren’t white faced when Hugh opened the door and let the three sisters in.

  ‘Dad?’ asked Tara, grabbing her father’s arm. ‘What’s happened? It’s not true, is it?’

  Hugh looked her in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, girls, I’m so sorry.’

  Tara gasped and rushed over to her mother. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she s
aid, hoarsely, hugging her tightly.

  Stella sat beside them and laid her hand on Rose’s knee. Holly perched on the end of the bed and patted Tara’s back.

  Seeing this tableau of feminine solidarity, Hugh bit back a sob and left them. This was all his doing. His ego. His hubris.

  ‘I’m sure you all think I’ve made a mess of everything, don’t you?’ Rose said. ‘You’re probably convinced I’ve gone stark, raving mad but I haven’t. I feel…’ she searched for the word, ‘empowered. Isn’t that the word?’ she asked Tara, who was still too weepy to respond in any intelligent way. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you three but I have done, and I’m sorry for that. I was just so angry and I hope you can understand why I had to do it.’

  ‘Tell us why,’ said Stella, who didn’t understand at all.

  Rose chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to overdramatise things or make the girls hate Hugh.

  ‘Your father and I need some time apart,’ she said. ‘Well, I need time apart from your father. He was unfaithful to me and it hurt. But I was culpable too,’ she added. ‘I never told him that I knew about the other women. I wanted to believe that men were different and could have meaningless flings…’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ demanded Tara furiously. ‘How could you have let him away with it? If Finn was unfaithful to me, I’d stab him and then leave!’

  ‘You’re young, darling,’ said Rose, stroking Tara’s tearstained cheek. ‘It’s different when you’ve got children and it’s different for women of my generation. I never wanted to split up the family or create waves.’ She made a wry face. ‘I thought it was the wisest thing to do, but I’ve changed my mind. Something happened and I was so angry with your father for being a hypocrite. And,’ Rose was ashamed to admit it, ‘I wanted to hurt him publicly.’

  ‘But why now?’ begged Stella. ‘Why today?’

  ‘Today seemed right,’ her mother replied. ‘I’d had enough of the hypocrisy and when I came out and heard your father’s speech, I just flipped.’

  ‘You didn’t mean it, though, did you?’ Tara said frantically. ‘You’re not really leaving Dad.’

  ‘I am.’ Rose was determined and even pleading from her daughters wouldn’t change her mind. She was doing this for her.

  ‘Where are you going to go?’ It was the first time Holly had spoken.

  Rose leaned across and touched Holly’s fingers. ‘To my Aunt Freddie’s. I phoned her and she’s expecting me.’

  ‘Is that why she didn’t come today, because you knew you were going to do this?’ asked Tara.

  ‘Not at all. I asked Freddie but she couldn’t come. She mentioned something about a bed-pushing charity event she was involved in to raise funds for the hospital.’

  ‘Freddie and bed-pushing,’ said Tara, brightening up. ‘That’s a howl. She must be seventy-five if she’s a day. I hope she was in the bed and not one of the pushers.’

  The four of them grinned.

  ‘Knowing Freddie,’ said Rose, ‘she was pushing, all right.’

  She got off the bed. ‘I have to finish packing,’ she said.

  ‘You’re really going?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Rose was firm. ‘I’m doing this for me, girls, please understand. I need time to myself and this is the only way I can think of doing it.’

  ‘But you could stay with me or Tara or Holly,’ protested Stella. ‘You don’t have to go all the way to Aunt Freddie’s.’

  ‘You have your own lives and I’m not going to land in on top of you and disrupt things,’ Rose pointed out. ‘I’d love to spend a few weeks with Freddie. I haven’t spent much time in Castletown since I left there forty years ago. Your father was never very keen on going there,’ she added bitterly. Her husband had always been reluctant to visit Rose’s hometown. He hadn’t minded spending the day there but never wanted to stay in Rose’s parents’ small, pristine cottage. It was too much of a contrast to the big Miller family home, Rose reckoned.

  ‘Can we come and visit?’ asked Tara.

  ‘Of course. I’d prefer if your father didn’t know where I am, although it’s entirely your decision whether to tell him or not.’

  Her daughters watched silently as she finished packing.

  ‘I’ve got my mobile too,’ she added. ‘I’m not going to the far side of the moon.’

  They kept watching, reminding Rose of their childish selves when they’d watched her every move with big, dark eyes. ‘I promise I’m not having a breakdown,’ she insisted. ‘I’m just doing something wild and unpredictable to shake up my life. Aren’t mothers allowed do things like that, even at my age?’

  ‘Yes, of course you are,’ said Stella wearily. ‘It’s just a shock. And I don’t know what to say to Amelia.’

  ‘That’s why I made her come into the house,’ Rose said. ‘I didn’t want her to hear. We’ll tell her I’m going on a holiday on my own.’

  ‘But when are you coming back?’ asked Tara.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The caterers had never seen a party disperse so quickly. Within half an hour of Rose’s announcement, the marquee was empty, with half-filled plates lying on the tables amid empty glasses and congratulations cards never handed over. There was a lot of food untouched and Stella, whom everyone seemed to feel should be in charge in the absence of Rose, couldn’t think what to do with it. The freezer in Kinvarra would never hold it all and the family would be eating cake for a month if they took it.

  The head caterer mentioned a friend who worked with homeless groups and said that the huge untouched vats of food could be a Saturday night feast for some of the people who lived rough. Satisfied that at least somebody would benefit from the debacle, the Miller women sat in their parents’ kitchen and waited for whatever was going to happen next.

  Their father had disappeared. Holly had looked for him in the garden but there was no sign of Hugh anywhere. He wasn’t answering his phone.

  ‘I hope he’s all right,’ said Holly anxiously. ‘Maybe he’s with Uncle Alastair.’ She found the Devons’ number and phoned but the answering machine was on.

  Aunt Adele sat beside Tara at the kitchen table and stared blankly into space.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Aunt Adele?’ asked Stella kindly. Adele seemed to be taking this particularly badly. Incredibly, she hadn’t lost her temper the way Stella had expected she would. Instead, she kept saying that she must talk to Rose.

  ‘Rose needs me,’ she said in a weak voice.

  Stella, who didn’t think her mother would appreciate a visit from Adele, explained that Rose was packing for a few days away and wanted to be on her own.

  Now she placed a cup and saucer in front of Adele and gave her a slice of fruit cake.

  ‘We’ve got to keep our strength up,’ said Stella, attempting some false jollity.

  ‘Hi, girls, how are things?’ It was Nick, arriving back after a trip with Amelia into Kinvarra for ice cream. He and Stella had thought it best if Amelia was out of the house.

  ‘I’m going out for a cigarette,’ said Holly, getting up and heading for the back door.

  Nick took her place. ‘Any news?’ he asked Stella.

  She shook her head. Nick reached over and took her hand in his, giving it a comforting squeeze that said he was there for her.

  Tara watched them for a moment, then got up to look for Finn.

  She found him in one of the armchairs in the living room, watching Sky Sports. At his elbow was one of Rose’s occasional tables upon which rested a glass of brandy. The bottle was beside it.

  Finn looked up warily when Tara entered the room.

  ‘What’s the situation?’ he asked carefully.

  Tara stared at the bottle of brandy. ‘I’d say it was situation normal, wouldn’t you?’ she said caustically.

  ‘After a day like this, you need a drink…’ began Finn.

  ‘On a day like this? Surely you mean on any day? You might have laid off the booze for once…’

 
; ‘For once!’ yelled Finn, getting to his feet. ‘I haven’t had a drink all week. I’m fed up with it.’

  They stood facing each other like pit bulls about to go for the kill. The pent-up emotion of the day had spilled out of Tara and she felt as if she could very easily hit Finn. All she wanted was some support from her husband, the sort of support that Nick was providing for Stella. But Finn couldn’t provide it, because he’d sought solace in the bottom of a glass. He would never change, she felt it in her heart and in her bones. She would never be able to lean on him while he was leaning on alcohol.

  ‘Why did I marry you in the first place?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t know you at all.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ he hissed back. He looked around for his car keys but Tara was too fast for him. She swiped them from the coffee table.

  ‘Just because you want to kill yourself, there’s no need to kill anyone else,’ she said.

  Finn flushed. ‘I wouldn’t have driven far,’ he said. ‘Just to the hotel beyond Kinvarra.’

  ‘That’s too far,’ Tara said. ‘Driven too far, hah. That’s ironic. That’s what you’ve done to me.’

  Finn stormed out of the house. There wasn’t anywhere he could go, Tara decided. She had his keys and he’d left his jacket on the couch. She checked quickly. His wallet was in the pocket and all he’d have in his trouser pockets was loose change. He couldn’t come to much harm.

  ‘Girls, I’m going.’ Rose stood in the hall with two suitcases beside her. She also had a small bag and her handbag. ‘Could someone put these in the car for me?’ she asked.

  Nick put the cases in the boot of Rose’s car. The three sisters, Adele and Amelia stood outside the front door and watched.

  Rose bent down to talk to her granddaughter. ‘Now Amelia, love, I’m going on a small holiday and you’ll have to come and visit me, won’t you?’

  ‘What about Grandad? Why isn’t he going with you?’ asked Amelia.

  Rose hugged her. Out of the mouths of babes, she thought bitterly.

  ‘Grandad has to work so he’s staying here. But we both love you, that’s the important thing, isn’t it?’