by Cathy Kelly
‘She could have kicked herself as soon as she said it. The Tony Carlisle story was about a consultant’s descent into alcoholism, which really was her specialised subject. Now, Bea would want to know what sort of research she’d done on that and as soon as Tara thought about Finn, she would cry, she knew she would.
‘Oh, there’s Dr McCambridge,’ whispered Bea excitedly, the interview forgotten. ‘I love him. Is he nice or is he too starry and grand to speak to normal people? I’d love to talk to him but he’s probably fed up with being interviewed.’ She looked eagerly at Tara with shiny, star-struck eyes.
‘Not at all,’ lied Tara. Saved by the bell. ‘He loves reporters.’ She waved at Stephen who came over at high speed once he spotted the tape recorder.
Up close, Stephen was even more heartbreakingly attractive than he was onscreen and Bea reacted the way they all did: she blushed, broke out into a cold sweat and reached a shaking hand out towards his.
‘Hi,’ said Stephen, sinking into a chair. ‘Honestly, what a bloody disaster. I told the PA I had to get away early today to go to the dentist and now I check and I’m shooting till eight!’
Tara smothered a smile. If Stephen went to the dentist as often as he said he did, he’d have teeth of solid gold. She reckoned he just wanted to doss off early because it was opening night for a Pinter play. At least half the cast had already pleaded medical emergencies, babysitting problems and ill relatives in order to get home early.
‘Do you always work that late?’ asked Bea, the hand holding the tape recorder still a bit shaky as she held it closer to Stephen’s handsome face. ‘I thought acting on a show like this would involve more regular hours, even if it’s not quite nine to five.’
‘I wish! The director is a bloody slave-driver!’ snapped Stephen before starting off on his tried and tested rant about long hours, low pay, zero rehearsal time, the lack of respect for soap actors, and reams of new lines to learn every day.
‘Not to mention no time off for other projects,’ he added grimly, referring to a lucrative role in a French film that had been shot in Connemara the previous winter. It would have paid his tax bill too.
‘If I was to tell you what goes on behind the scenes, you wouldn’t believe it,’ Stephen added maliciously.
Tara felt a moment’s guilt. The publicity person who’d been taking care of Bea had vanished, and would no doubt be furious that Stephen had been allowed to speak to her unchaperoned. He might have been the star of the show and become hugely successful because of it, but Stephen was one of those people who like to feel aggrieved over something. He never realised that he was far more powerful and privileged than many of the cast.
‘Very little rehearsal time, shooting scenes back to back so you never get a change to work on a scene,’ he listed off his grievances, ‘and as for storylines. Huh. Lately, I’ve been stuck with the storylines from hell.’ He glared crossly at Tara. ‘Like the love scenes with that stupid Sherry DaVinci. My character would never look at an idiot like her.’
He sounded so furious that Bea gulped and edged back in her seat.
‘Stephen.’ Armed with a clipboard and a radio mike, the production assistant smiled over at Stephen, hoping she wasn’t interrupting anything or she’d get a tongue-lashing.
Without so much as saying goodbye to Bea or Tara, Stephen stomped off.
‘He wasn’t quite like I imagined,’ Bea whispered.
‘He’s the exception,’ Tara said, taking pity on her. ‘Most of the actors and actresses on the show are fantastic people. I must introduce you to Allegra Armstrong, she loves working on National Hospital and she’s a real professional, as well as being lovely. You’ll really like her.’
‘Thanks,’ murmured Bea.
‘You see, Stephen’s very vocal about the down side of acting,’ continued Tara, ‘although he does have a point. Acting in a soap is a tough job but because everyone sees the actors looking glam in press interviews, nobody cottons onto the difficult parts. It’s actually quite a small cast, and they work very long hours to shoot three episodes a week. They get a couple of days to learn their lines, then they’ve got to come out here and perform. The technical rehearsals are really for the benefit of the crew, so nobody’s waiting to see if the actor has a scene right or not. And then they’re totally at the mercy of the viewers. Most of their contracts are only renewed every season, and if a character gets bad feedback, they’re out. Imagine being constantly under that sort of pressure.’
‘I never thought of it that way,’ said Bea, frantically writing notes in case her recorder packed up at this vital point. ‘You sounded a bit critical there, Tara. Don’t you like working here?’
In the distance, Tara could see Scott Irving pop his head round a partition.
She didn’t answer the question immediately, concentrating on watching him. He was clearly searching for Aaron.
She sunk down in her seat, not wanting that laser gaze to rest on her. Scott would stare with such naked dislike that Tara frequently wilted under his gaze. Not that she made this obvious. She stared back defiantly, giving him her toughest ‘You’re confusing me with somebody who gives a shit!’ look.
‘Of course I do,’ she said automatically. ‘I love it. We all do.’
‘I’ll have to go, Bea,’ she said, looking round for someone to off-load the reporter onto. ‘Oh gosh, have I asked you everything?’ Bea riffled through her notes and checked her list of questions.
‘Tell me about the National TV awards – the team won one. Was that the highlight of your career?’
Tara remembered that night so many months ago, a time when her life had been on track, when she’d had a marriage, when she hadn’t known that Finn was drinking himself to death, when her parents lived happily together like normal parents, when she wasn’t an adulterous bitch. It seemed like a million years ago.
‘Fantastic,’ she said woodenly. ‘It was a fantastic night, definitely the highlight.’
Finn’s car was there when Tara got home, which was unusual these days. Since the night of Godzilla’s infamous party, Finn had been coming home later and later. Suffused with guilt and terrified he’d guessed her terrible secret, Tara felt she could say nothing to him. It was checkmate. She tiptoed around without mentioning his drinking, ready to endure anything as penance for betraying him. As long as he never found out, she could cope. In time, they’d confront the problem of Finn’s drinking but only when Tara’s own demons were laid to rest. If they ever were.
‘Hi,’ she said, letting herself into the apartment. She dumped her briefcase, kicked off her shoes and reached under the hall table for the comfy espadrilles she liked to wear as slippers in the summer.
‘Hi.’ Finn was in the kitchen eating breakfast cereal, which was probably one of the few things left to eat in the house.
Tara picked a blackening banana out of the fruit bowl and peeled it, vowing to visit the supermarket at the weekend. They were out of so many household staples it would be easier to say what they weren’t out of.
‘We should talk,’ he said. ‘About us.’
Tara’s toes curled in her espadrilles. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, stalling for time.
‘I mean, we should talk about our marriage and what’s left of it.’ Finn took another spoonful of cereal.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Tara asked again.
Finn finished the cereal and dumped the bowl in the sink. He faced her. ‘Have. Some. Respect. For. My. Intelligence,’ he said slowly.
Adrenaline coursed through Tara’s body as the fight-or-flight reaction kicked in.
‘Even now, you’re denying that there’s something wrong, Tara. I thought you were smarter than that. There’s no point lying. I know you slept with somebody. I don’t know who,’ Finn added, ‘but I know you did it. In fact, I don’t really give a fuck who it was because I don’t care any more.’
Tara hadn’t known that she was capable of experiencing such fear. Her heart plummeted deep into her solar
plexus. She opened her mouth to speak but all that emerged was a guttural gasp of shock.
‘I was waiting for you to tell me, you see,’ Finn went on. He leaned back against the sink with his arms folded, observing her coldly. The easy warmth in his expression was gone, along with the sleepy-eyed sensuality and the faint turn-up at the corner of his beautiful mouth. Finn wasn’t smiling any more. ‘Call me stupid, but I had this vague notion that our marriage meant something to you and that you’d come clean about whatever happened. You were under strain, we were experiencing problems, whatever. We could have moved on, Tara. I’d have forgiven you, I loved you.’
Tara could only stare at him mutely, shame burning inside her. Then, the tense of his sentence kicked in. Loved. He’d said loved. Not love.
‘You were different afterwards,’ he went on. ‘The next evening when you came home, I knew instantly you’d fucked someone else. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’
Tara longed to rush over and throw her arms round him, cradling him close so that his head could dip to kiss her face and she could taste the sweetness of his lips gently against hers. She could make it better if she did that, she knew she could. Finn couldn’t resist her.
‘The love bite on your neck was a dead giveaway too.’
She thought of her feeble attempts at camouflage.
‘Finn, listen…’ she began.
‘No, I won’t,’ he exploded. ‘I would have listened a few weeks ago but not now. It’s over, Tara. We should never have married each other. We barely knew each other. What the hell were we thinking of?’
‘We loved each other,’ gasped Tara, ‘that’s why we got married. It doesn’t have to be over, Finn. We can get counselling, talk to someone, get all the problems out in the open.’
‘Spare me the counselling shit,’ he snapped. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than laying our bloody misery out for some head-wrecker to analyse. My head’s wrecked enough as it is, I don’t need it further screwed up trying to sort out our ‘relationship issues’. Go on your own. I won’t be around to watch.’
‘No!’ she yelled, rushing to him and putting her arms round him. ‘We can sort it out, Finn, we love each other and that’s all you need, right?’ She was babbling now, her loving words tumbling out any old way instead of in the careful sentences that would show Finn that she adored him.
‘Forget the dramatics, Tara. This isn’t an episode of your show. It’s real life and it’s over.’ With uncharacteristic roughness, he shrugged her off him.
‘Don’t go,’ she wailed. But he was gone anyway and the next thing she heard was the front door slamming. At least he hadn’t taken anything with him, Tara reasoned with herself. He’d be back, she knew it, and then she could make everything all right. She’d tell him that she’d felt lost and alone because of his drinking, but that they could deal with that. She’d been stressed, she’d acted out of character, she loved him and no matter how much he hated what she’d done, she hated it more. And she hated herself.
Still working out what she’d say, she made her way slowly into the living room but stopped at the door. Something was wrong, where was all their stuff? The stereo, the CDs, the black leather recliner that Finn loved even though it was old and the leather was paper-thin in places: all gone.
Blindly, she rushed into their bedroom. The wardrobe doors were open and Finn’s side was cleared out. The only things left were the shirts she’d bought him, hanging forlornly in the empty space. His clock radio was gone, along with all his books, magazines and photos. He must have done it today while she was at work.
Walking shakily like an invalid on her feet for the first time in ages, Tara returned to the living room and numbly surveyed what was left. She’d spent months remarking that they had too much stuff between them and that the apartment would benefit from a ruthless clean out. Well, it was certainly cleaned out now. Tara sank onto the couch.
Finn was gone for good and it was all her fault.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The weather in Castletown had changed. As if Mother Nature had decided to reflect Rose’s darkening mood, the sun sulked and sent clouds out in her place. Storms wracked the east coast, dispatching punishing winds and torrential rain to keep the locals and holidaymakers indoors.
Rose sat at the window in Nettle Cottage for the third day in a row and watched colossal waves topped with dancing white caps in the distance. There were no boats beyond the shelter of the harbour, not with gale force warnings on every weather forecast.
‘I hate the rain,’ remarked Freddie, pulling on an elaborate dog-walking-in-the-rain costume that included a strange-looking oilskin that Sherlock Holmes might have liked.
‘It’s depressing, all right,’ agreed Rose, still staring blankly into the middle distance. She’d felt so happy to see Stella and Amelia, but now, that happiness had vanished and all that was left was a lingering sense that she’d let everyone down. Tara, Holly, even Adele. They all needed her and she’d swanned off and left them. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known about Hugh for years. She had. She’d just chosen now to make her anger public and they’d all been innocent victims caught in the crossfire.
‘Come on, Rose,’ urged Freddie, jamming a hat firmly down on her snow-white head. ‘Come for a walk with me. It’ll do you good to get out. You’ve been stuck in the house since Sunday apart from yesterday’s meals on wheels.’
‘No,’ said Rose. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Freddie easily.
She was gone an hour and when she returned, wet and windswept with three happy, muddy dogs, Rose didn’t appear to have moved a muscle.
Freddie said nothing but took herself off to the bathroom for a boiling hot bath to ease her aching muscles. Her left ankle twinged where she’d put her foot down on an unsteady piece of bank by the stream and it had collapsed under her. The ankle had hurt when she walked on it, and now, after the long trek home, it felt ominously bigger than the other ankle.
In the bath, it seized up altogether and it took all of Freddie’s strength to haul herself out. Sitting in an ungainly heap on the cotton bath rug, naked, wet and with a throbbing ankle, even the indefatigable Freddie felt a frisson of fear for the future. She would not give up her enormous roll-top bath for some old-lady shower thing with a sit-up bath. She’d die first. She might be getting older but she wasn’t an invalid. After a few minutes rest where she’d given herself a stern talking to for such miserable thoughts, she hobbled out of the bathroom, wrapped in her Chinese silk dressing gown.
‘Rose,’ she said, wincing at the pain, ‘I don’t suppose you’d have a look at my ankle. I seem to have twisted it.’
Rose jumped up in concern. ‘Freddie, what did you do to it?’ she asked, helping her aunt to the couch.
‘Sort of twisted it by the stream,’ Freddie said, as Rose helped her swing both legs onto the couch.
‘That looks very swollen and painful,’ Rose said worriedly. ‘I’d better call the doctor.’
‘Nonsense,’ declared Freddie. ‘There’s not a thing wrong with it that a rest and some arnica won’t cure.’
‘You’re overruled,’ said Rose firmly. Freddie looked mutinous at this attempt to impinge upon her independence, so Rose sweetened the pill. ‘Besides,’ she said airily, picking up the phone, ‘the sooner your ankle heals, the sooner you’ll be back walking the dogs again. They’re never entirely happy walking with just me, you know. They keep looking back to see where you are.’
Freddie grinned and relaxed back against the cushions. ‘That’s a classic piece of manipulation,’ she said, ‘but as it was so expertly done, I won’t complain.’
The doctor arrived late that afternoon. He strapped Freddie’s ankle up, gave her painkillers and drugs to take any inflammation down, and told her to stay off it for as long as possible. He also checked her blood pressure and chest.
‘Fit as a fiddle,’ he remarked, putting his stethoscope back in his bag. ‘Freddie, you’re living p
roof that lots of wine, fresh air and not worrying are the secret to a long life.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Have you stopped smoking those cigarillos yet?’
‘No,’ said Freddie defiantly.
The doctor laughed and Rose joined in. ‘My other patients all lie when I ask them things like that, but you’re always brutally honest.’
‘I have a couple every day and they haven’t killed me yet,’ Freddie pointed out.
The doctor refused a cup of tea because he was on his way to the Albertine Nursing Home, which was on the far side of Castletown.
‘They do such wonderful work there,’ he said, ‘and they’ve lost another care worker this week. Without volunteers, I don’t know how they’re going to stay open. The staff are fully stretched as it is. I don’t know what’ll happen to all the patients if they have to close.’
‘Blast this ankle,’ said Freddie furiously. ‘If I wasn’t laid up, I could help.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘But if you got me some sort of crutch, I could hobble around…’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Rose. ‘You’ll rest until your ankle’s better. I’ll help. I’ve no experience of nursing homes, but I can make beds and that sort of thing,’ she said to the doctor. ‘Would that be any good?’
Both he and Freddie looked delighted at this offer.
‘You’d be perfect,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone the matron and get her to call you. In the meantime, you rest up, Madam,’ he said to Freddie.
It was nice to be looking after someone again, Rose thought on Thursday morning as she made breakfast for Freddie. Under normal circumstances, Freddie required absolutely no looking after and prided herself on fierce independence.
‘You’re a natural at this,’ Freddie said as Rose laid a tray on her lap.
‘At making scrambled eggs?’ laughed Rose.