by Cathy Kelly
Tara opened her eyes as Scott gently removed his hand. ‘Nobody must know,’ she said fiercely.
He nodded.
‘I’ll go first,’ she added.
She went to the women’s room and avoided looking at herself in the mirror. She didn’t want to have to look hard into her own eyes and ask herself what she was doing. Back at the group, she reached in and pulled her coat from the couch. Scott was sitting there, talking to Aaron again, not even looking her way.
‘I’m going, everyone,’ she said. ‘Headache.’
She waved goodbye to them all, trying not to let her eyes linger on Scott.
‘Do you want me to walk you out?’ asked Aaron.
‘I’m fine.’ She shot him a weak, headachey smile. ‘You stay. I’ll grab a taxi.’
The huge bar was pulsing with excitement as Tara walked down the stairs, clutching her small bag and her coat, her mind racing. She wove her way through the crowds, and at the door, she slipped her coat on. A taxi stood outside on the pavement, letting two women out. A third was paying the driver. Tara pushed through the door and hopped in. The driver nodded at her in his mirror, telling her he’d be with her as soon as his passengers had paid. She sat back in the seat and closed her eyes. She’d tell him to drive her home. She’d be home in no time and all this madness would be forgotten. What had she been thinking?
Her eyes jerked open with the opening of the cab door. Scott leapt in beside her, eyes glittering, pupils huge.
‘Where to, love?’ asked the driver.
‘Fordham Road, Killiney,’ said Scott, his eyes locked with Tara’s. ‘My place,’ he added softly.
Suddenly Scott’s mouth was hard on Tara’s, his arms tight around her waist and hers wrapped around him. The taxi driver drove off into the night.
Even before she opened her eyes, Tara knew she wasn’t in her own bed. The pillows felt different and the scent of fabric conditioner was a strong launderette one, not the subtle one she liked. She moved slowly, feeling her muscles ache strangely as she hauled herself up in the bed. Then she opened her eyes. The room came instantly into focus in the dawn light. Teal-blue walls, framed film posters and one huge expanse of wall covered with the sort of blinds that weren’t conducive to long lie-ins. The views in Scott’s apartment were incredible and the windows were floor to ceiling to take advantage of this fact. Tara remembered standing on the balcony the night before, staring out at the breathtaking view of the sea. Scott had produced a bottle of champagne from the fridge when they’d got to his apartment, and they’d stood in the chill night air, drinking slowly and talking. That had been her last chance to say that coming there had been a mistake and she was leaving. She hadn’t taken it. Scott had shivered and pulled her and the champagne inside, shutting the balcony doors and leading the way into his big, minimalist bedroom with the huge bed that would have taken up the entire living room in Tara and Finn’s cramped flat.
It could have been a hotel bedroom, Tara thought now, propping herself up and looking around. Apart from the film posters – Giant and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – it was impersonal. The show apartment, in fact.
She let her gaze settle on Scott. He slept with the duvet thrust down to waist level, arms splayed out, his lean body lying at an angle across the bed. Last night, she’d made love to that body and it had made love to her, had held her, kissed her, entered her, tensed in orgasm with her. And now it looked like a stranger’s body. She could remember the passion and the way they’d made love like they were making war, with ferocity and wildness. She could remember leaning back in Scott’s arms after the first time, feeling the ice cold of his champagne glass against her nipples, laughing as she’d told him she’d never had sex like that before, that she’d never felt such abandoned arousal.
How could she have said that? It wasn’t true. Nobody ever made her feel the way Finn did. Their lovemaking could be wildly passionate, and then exquisitely tender. That was what she loved about him. And she’d betrayed him doubly, by sleeping with someone else and by saying that the adulterous sex was the best ever.
Tara lay there in Scott’s bed and felt the breath leave her body in one, long shuddering gasp. What had she done? As quietly as she could, she slipped from the bed and tiptoed across the American Oak floor to the en-suite.
She’d avoided looking at herself the night before but now her eyes stared out at her, eyes that shone dully. How could Finn look into those eyes and not know? He’d know because she wasn’t home, anyhow. She looked at her watch. It was ten to six in the morning. Even if he’d been pissed the night before, Finn was capable of adding two and two and coming to the correct conclusion.
Tara pulled off a piece of loo roll and wet it to scrub the make-up from her eyes. They were still sooty with the remains of mascara when she was finished, but it was an improvement. She rinsed her face with Scott’s soap and debated whether or not to use his toothbrush. It was funny, she thought wryly, that she’d shared every centimetre of his body the night before, glorying in every part of him, and now she wondered if he’d mind her using his toothbrush.
She used it anyway. Then ran his comb through her hair. Her face was pale but she looked reasonable. Or she would until she put on her sexy black dress and high heels. She might as well get ‘dirty stop-out’ embroidered on the back of her fitted leather jacket.
She dressed in the living room, and was ready to leave in five minutes. All she needed was some water to make her feel more human after last night’s excesses. She knew why she’d drunk more champagne in Scott’s: to numb herself from what she was about to do. Well, she was paying for it now, in spades.
Scott’s fridge contained nothing but wine, beer and orange juice. Tara poured herself a glass of juice and drank it standing up by the sink.
‘Leaving so soon?’
She almost dropped the glass.
‘Yes.’
Scott stood at the bedroom door, naked and sleepy, but his expression was hard.
‘I’m sorry, Scott. I have to go.’
‘I don’t mind you going, I hate the way you’re doing it,’ he said evenly, walking towards her.
‘I shouldn’t have come here last night,’ Tara said.
‘So much for “no regrets”, huh?’ He stood beside her, close enough to touch but he didn’t and Tara was struck again by how powerfully attractive he was, even tired and unshaven. It would have been easy to put her arms around him and let herself be taken back to bed for more earth-shattering sex and intense orgasms. But she couldn’t.
Last night, she’d clicked off the switch that connected her brain with her conscience. Now, she couldn’t. It had been reconnected and Finn’s face was hovering in her head.
‘I love my husband,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me you were drunk and didn’t know what you were doing, Tara,’ he said angrily. ‘You weren’t in the slightest bit drunk when we left the nightclub; you wanted me as much as I wanted you. What happened wasn’t a mistake, the way we were together wasn’t a mistake. You can’t fuck like that if you don’t mean it.’
Tara didn’t flinch at his words. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t mean it,’ she answered, looking him straight in the eye. ‘But I love my husband and I have to go. I made a mistake, I can’t give you what you want. We can’t have a relationship.’
She could see the hurt in his face when she said that.
‘How do you know what I want?’ he demanded.
Tara shrugged. ‘If you wanted a one-night stand, you’d be happy for me to get out of here as quickly as possible.’
‘Suddenly you know a lot about me.’ His gaze was harsh and uncompromising. ‘I don’t do one-night stands.’
‘Neither do I,’ she shot back, stung.
‘Looks like you just did,’ he said coldly.
‘Scott, I can’t do this…’ she began. ‘I’m married and I love Finn.’
‘Even though he’s destroying you?’
Tara closed her eyes. The only hazy part of the night be
fore was when Scott had asked her about Finn and she wasn’t sure what she’d said. She must have told him enough. Too much, in fact.
‘I’m sorry, Scott,’ she said. She put her glass down and walked past him. Scott didn’t make any attempt to stop her. It was only when she was standing outside the building that it occurred to her that she should have phoned a taxi.
Her high heels weren’t the most comfortable for walking in but Tara marched briskly on, ignoring the ache in her feet. She didn’t notice the pain, all she could think about was what she was going to say to Finn.
It took at least fifteen rings before Isadora answered the phone.
‘Isadora, it’s Tara.’
‘Tara, hi,’ said Isadora blearily. ‘What time is it? What’s wrong?’
‘Did Finn phone you last night?’
‘No. Why?’ Isadora sounded awake now. Awake and suspicious.
‘I wasn’t at home last night.’
‘Scott?’
‘Inspector Poirot strikes again,’ said Tara wryly.
‘Well, the sexual tension was buzzing off the pair of you all night,’ Isadora pointed out. ‘I did speculate that you were up to something when you rushed off with a headache with Scott rushing after you.’
‘Subtle, huh?’
‘As a brick. So, I’m your alibi,’ Isadora added briskly.
‘Would you mind?’ Tara held her breath as she waited for her friend’s response.
‘Of course not.’
‘Thanks. I’m sorry to do this to you, it’s not fair,’ Tara said. She felt close to tears. Not only had she betrayed Finn, but, in her attempts to cover it up, she was telling someone else. She thought of how hurtful this would be if he ever found out: the husband being the last to know.
‘Where are you?’
‘Somewhere in Killiney. Have you got any taxi phone numbers handy?’
‘Sure. And come here,’ Isadora suggested. ‘Alibis work best when there’s a grain of truth in them.’
‘Yeah,’ said Tara sadly.
She was grateful that her friend didn’t ask for any sordid details. With one look at Tara’s pale face, Isadora ushered her in, sat her down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and poured a cup of strong, sweet tea.
‘Do you want to shower and change into something of mine?’ asked Isadora. Her own hair was wet from the shower and she was wearing a silky dressing gown in a very un-Isadora-ish shade of feminine pink.
Tara nodded. ‘What have I done, Izzy?’ she said miserably. She held onto her cup with both hands and stared into the dark brown depths.
‘You went to bed with someone you fancied. You didn’t run amok with an AK47 and murder anyone.’
‘It feels like I did.’
Isadora lit up a cigarette. ‘Tara, I know you’re not happy for some reason and I haven’t interfered and asked why. I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to but I guess something’s wrong between you and Finn. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone off with Scott. My advice, for what it’s worth, is forget about what happened with Scott and see if you can sort things out with Finn.’
‘But what if Finn finds out?’ said Tara hollowly.
‘He’s not going to find out. Have a shower, borrow some clothes and come to work with me. Then phone Finn and tell him we went clubbing and you stayed here. He’ll believe you.’
‘I’m no good at lying, Isadora.’
Isadora poured more tea into both cups. ‘I’ll teach you.’
In the shower, Tara scrubbed herself with strawberry shower gel, trying to wash away the memory of Scott’s caresses. Then she stood for ages with her eyes closed and let the water stream over her face, flattening her hair against her skull. When the water began to cool, she got out and wrapped herself in a big towel. She was clean but she still felt dirty.
‘Phone,’ yelled Isadora from outside the bathroom. ‘It’s Finn,’ she added when a white-faced Tara opened the door. ‘Just as well you came here.’
Dripping wet, Tara picked up the receiver. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘You might have phoned,’ Finn said harshly. ‘I was worried.’
‘Sorry, we went clubbing…’
‘So I believe. If you managed to get home to Isadora’s, why couldn’t you get a taxi to bring you home. Or,’ he added viciously, ‘are you trying to punish me because I went out too?’
‘No, I was drunk, that’s all. I wanted to crash out somewhere and Isadora said I could stay.’ Tara began to shiver and it wasn’t from the cold.
‘Whatever,’ he snapped.
‘I’ll see you tonight,’ Tara said but Finn had hung up.
At work, Tara and Isadora passed Scott in the corridor.
‘Hello, Scott,’ said Tara, fixing him with her clear gaze.
‘Hi,’ he said brusquely.
‘That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ whispered Isadora as they parted to go to their desks.
‘That was easy,’ murmured Tara, untruthfully. It had been a battle to look Scott in the eye. But what really worried her was seeing Finn. If the message of guilt in her eyes didn’t give her away, then the livid love bite on her neck might. Isadora’s camouflage make-up had hidden it for the moment. She couldn’t spend the next week hiding it.
Finn was at home when Tara reached the flat at seven that evening. Don’t rush home early, Isadora had advised. ‘That’s like proof of having done something wrong. Be your usual, bolshy self.’
Tara wondered where Isadora had picked up all these Adultery: The Easy Way tips. But she didn’t say anything. In her position, she couldn’t afford to sit on the moral high ground.
‘Hi,’ she yelled when she arrived home and plonked her briefcase on the floor. She threw her leather jacket on the overladen hall chair as usual. Acting as normal as possible was vital but why then did her every move seem like that of a particularly clumsy actress in an amateur play?
As usual, she walked into the living room where Finn was watching the news. Once, they’d have hugged when they met up at the end of the day, but lately, the frostiness in their relationship meant that the hug had bitten the dust.
Tara sat down on their only armchair, forcing herself to sink lazily into it rather than sit on the edge and wait for Finn to grill her.
‘Well?’ he said caustically. ‘Don’t I merit an explanation?’
‘I gave you one,’ said Tara, her heart thumping. ‘We were dancing and I stayed over in Isadora’s.’
‘Why not come home?’
‘Be your usual, bolshy self,’ Isadora’s voice echoed in her head.
‘Because I was drunk and angry and I needed a night off!’ she yelled.
‘Fine!’ he yelled back. He got to his feet and stomped from the room. The next noise she heard was of the front door slamming. Tara closed her eyes in relief. She didn’t know how long she’d have been able to keep up the normality charade.
She was a bad actress and for the first time in her life, she began to appreciate the difficulties of playing someone else. Tonight, she was playing the old Tara Miller, the pre-sleeping with a colleague version. And as far as she was concerned, every gesture and every sentence screamed ‘Fake’.
When Finn came in at two in the morning, Tara closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. It was hard, lying there and not moving a muscle, but she did it. The bedside clock read a quarter to three before Finn’s breathing had evened out into the regular breaths of someone who was asleep. Only then could Tara move and stretch her cramped muscles. She turned onto her back and lay gazing up at the ceiling. If only she could turn the clock back to somewhere around eleven o’clock last night. She’d never have kissed Scott, never have allowed him into her taxi, never gone willingly to his bed. But she had done all those things and they couldn’t be undone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The wave of Mediterranean weather that had hit the sunny south east at the beginning of May, continued into June. At Nettle Cottage, this meant that the three dogs didn’t like to leave the cool of the house an
d spent their days lying on the cool stone floor of the kitchen, only moving to slobber some more water up from their bowls. Rose, who adored the heat, didn’t mind how high the temperature got. Her olive skin was lightly tanned from sitting outside the cottage on a deckchair, reading her way through Freddie’s collection of novels, with bees buzzing lazily in the herbaceous border beside her. The mock-orange blossom on the other side of the garden was losing its bloom, but she could still smell the heady scent drifting around her.
At night, she left her bedroom window open and she loved the sense this gave her of being close to nature. In Meadow Lodge, her bedroom was on the first floor and she never heard the crickets singing wildly outside, or the foxes barking at night.
She’d been in Castletown for five weeks now and in some ways, it felt as if she’d never lived anywhere else. There was a restful routine to her days with Freddie. For a start, formality was not part of her aunt’s life. Freddie dressed unconventionally in clothes that looked as though she’d found them in a chest marked ‘Second World War Fashions’. When she entertained, guests had to be prepared to take pot luck. The meal could involve one of Freddie’s famous Moroccan stews or might mean phoning the takeaway if she hadn’t had time to cook. The only definite appointments in any week were Freddie’s work with the meals on wheels people, and her poker nights. Rose was invited along to everything Freddie went to, but if she couldn’t go, Freddie never minded in the slightest.
For the first time in forty years, Rose felt as if she could do what she liked, when she liked. The sense of personal freedom was dizzying. She didn’t have to be the respectable Mrs Hugh Miller any more. She could race down the lane on Freddie’s elderly High Nellie bicycle with her skirt tucked into her knickers if she felt like it. She could throw on her oldest linen skirt and a T-shirt, slip her feet into dusty old sandals, and never bother about her appearance from morning to night. The people she met through meals on wheels were delighted to see cheery faces appearing at lunchtime; they didn’t care whether Rose had great wefts of dog hair on her skirt or hadn’t bothered with lipstick. If she didn’t feel like answering the phone, she didn’t, and if she had had the inclination to walk through Castletown at four in the morning, she could have.