Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘No, looking after people. You need people to look after,’ Freddie said. ‘It’s the motherly instinct.’

  ‘I suppose I do.’ Rose finished her own coffee and got ready for dog-walking duties. Then, she was off to do the meals on wheels run on her own. Being busy was invigorating, she decided. She’d forgotten how good it felt to feel in charge of a host of things, things that would fall down like a house of cards if she wasn’t around. In Kinvarra, she’d been running the house, taking care of Hugh and taking responsibility for her various charities. Here, she’d had no real responsibilities at all.

  Freddie, on the other hand, couldn’t conceal her growing impatience at being stuck on the couch with her ankle up. By the time Rose came back from meals on wheels and the supermarket, Freddie was bored rigid.

  ‘I hate this!’ she groaned. ‘Lying on a couch reading is no fun unless you’re not supposed to be doing it. And I can’t do anything.’

  Rose, with many years of rearing small fractious children behind her, racked her brains for something to occupy her aunt.

  ‘Your box of photos!’ she said, in triumph. ‘You said you’ve been meaning to date and sort them into albums for years.’

  Freddie brightened.

  ‘I’ll rush down to the town and see if I can buy some albums,’ Rose volunteered. Before she went, she found the big dusty box which Freddie had stored on top of her wardrobe for decades. She settled the box on a low table beside the couch so that Freddie wouldn’t have to move to go through the photos.

  ‘When I get back, I’ll get dinner started. I bought some lovely lamb pieces and you can tell me how you’d like them. I’ll help with the photos then.’

  Freddie didn’t answer, already lost in sheaves of sepia-toned memories.

  In Castletown, Rose met the doctor who wanted to know if Freddie was managing to keep off her ankle. Then, she bumped into a posse of her aunt’s poker friends who promised they’d be up on Friday night for a game.

  When she got home, Freddie had abandoned the couch and was sitting at the dining room table with her hoarded photos spread all around. Her strapped-up ankle was resting on one of the dining chairs.

  ‘Look, Rose, pictures of Anna. I thought I’d lost these ones.’

  Rose leaned over the table and looked at three tiny black and white photos of her mother. She looked younger than Rose could ever remember seeing, her dark hair girlishly loose, her figure slight and youthful.

  ‘I’ve let her down,’ Rose said, unable to take her eyes from the photo.

  ‘In what way?’ Freddie asked idly.

  ‘By not staying married. I did my best to keep it going, Freddie. Mother was so happy when I married Hugh, it was what she’d always wanted, to see me move up in the world.’

  Freddie took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose where the glasses had made an indentation. ‘I still don’t understand why you stayed with Hugh. If you knew he’d had affairs with these women, why didn’t you confront him? Because you did mind, didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course I minded,’ said Rose. ‘I adored Hugh, I was devastated when I found out the first time but who could I talk to? Who could I tell? Adele? Hugh’s mother? My mother?’

  ‘Why didn’t you confront him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Pride, Rose. Pride kept you from saying anything. You didn’t want to admit that there was anything wrong in the Miller paradise. You clearly got all the pride out of your system when you flipped at your ruby wedding and gave the locals something to think about. Now you’ve got to continue the work.’

  Rose began to feel irritated at this attack on her. She hadn’t cheated on anyone. Hugh was the person at fault here. ‘You said you wouldn’t get involved,’ she said.

  ‘No, I decided not to until you were ready for some straight talking,’ Freddie said. ‘Now, you’re ready. Go back to Hugh and talk to him, for God’s sake. Even if you kill each other within five minutes, at least you’ll have faced up to it. You can’t run away forever, Rose.’

  ‘I’m not running away,’ protested Rose.

  ‘You are. You ran away from your past, you know. You could never reconcile your new life with your old one, I could see that.’

  Rose stared at Freddie, shocked now.

  Freddie spoke sensibly and kindly, the way she always did, but the words still hurt.

  ‘Rose, you have to heal yourself before you can move on,’ Freddie continued. ‘I know this is painful, but let’s keep going. You never confronted Hugh because you didn’t want his family to think that you’d failed somehow, and you had to prove that you were just as good as them. And, Rose,’ Freddie was gentle, ‘you never seemed to realise that you were always just as good as the Millers.’

  The truth of her words were like little chinks of light in Rose’s mind. She had done her best to prove that everything in her life was perfect; it was her defence. She’d done it when Holly had been born and Rose had somehow kept her misery and depression to herself. Nobody must know. There could be no visible cracks in Rose’s life. Because of that, the misery lingered for years and poor Holly had suffered. Rose’s pride had hurt her darling baby.

  ‘Anna was happy because you didn’t have to work your fingers to the bone like she did,’ Freddie went on. ‘She was proud of what she’d done, that was an achievement to her, getting you out of the poverty our family had grown up with. But you felt ashamed of having left, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Rose thoughtfully. ‘It was just that I never felt I quite belonged anywhere.’ She remembered how her mother had insisted she stay on at school when most others of her age had long since given up. Anna Riordain had given birth to three children and had seen one of them die as a baby. Stoic in the face of this tragedy, Anna was determined that nothing would touch Rose and her brother, James. Six years older, James had grown up with a plan to emigrate to Australia, and when he was just seventeen, he had. Bereft of her beloved son, Anna set her sights high for her only daughter.

  Rose could have helped out on the farm as a teenager; indeed, most young girls left school in their early teens to work on the land. Not Rose. ‘Lady muck, aren’t ya?’ the other local children yelled at her when she returned to school year after year, while they gave up their books to help their fathers.

  ‘Don’t mind them,’ Anna would say proudly to Rose. ‘You’ll do well for yourself and they won’t be laughing then.’

  When the headmaster told Anna that Rose was his prize pupil and that she should go to the convent fifteen miles away if she was to fulfil her potential, Anna started piece work, knitting jumpers for the big tourist shops and their stream of wealthy customers who wanted hand-knit Irish sweaters. Ruining her eyes with bad lighting and complex stitches, Anna made enough money for Rose’s school uniform and her books.

  She’d been paid buttons for her work, Rose thought bitterly. But that work had given Rose the education that allowed her to enter a different world.

  ‘I know you won’t like me saying this, Rose, but you are partly to blame for what went wrong with yourself and Hugh.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You should have put a stop to it years ago or else left him. Hugh loved you but he was always a bit of a charmer.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. It wasn’t my job to police him,’ Rose said heatedly.

  ‘True. But you could have told him that he had a choice: you and your family or other women. Not both.’ Freddie’s expression was noncommittal and she went back to sorting through the old photos.

  There was silence in the room after that, with just the ticking of Freddie’s old clock breaking the silence. Glancing at Freddie, Rose saw that she didn’t seem the slightest put out by the exchange of views. She was quite comfortable working on her photos and stroking Pig’s ears every few moments when she leaned her furry head back against Freddie’s knee specifically for that purpose. There was nothing wrong, in Freddie’s eyes, with saying what you thought. Not saying what you though
t was a far greater crime.

  Maybe this was why she’d been so eager to forget about Castletown, Rose thought grimly. Both sides of her family were such combative people. Her mother had been the same, a blunt talker. Her mother, she realised with startling clarity, wouldn’t have put up with infidelity. She’d have held her family together by putting her foot down. But then, Rose’s father would never have dreamed of straying. Not like Hugh. The injustice of it all struck Rose. Freddie couldn’t blame her, Hugh had been the one who’d failed.

  ‘Hugh hurt me, he should regret it and be sorry for it!’

  ‘You’re not a plaster saint, Rose Riordain,’ said Freddie sternly. ‘Haven’t you ever done anything you regretted, that you felt sorry for?’

  Freddie was the grand inquisitor now. ‘Holly.’ Even to her own ears, Rose’s voice was faint. ‘I let Holly down.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I went through post-natal depression when she was a baby and it took me a long time to come out of it – years maybe.’ Rose closed her eyes against the pain of remembering. ‘I could barely manage to look at her and then, she grew up and she knew. I know she knew. She wasn’t like the other girls. Stella and Tara couldn’t wait to see me, to hug me and tell me everything but Holly was so self-contained, so distant, as if she knew I hadn’t loved her properly when she was a baby and couldn’t forgive me.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, that’s ridiculous,’ said Freddie briskly. ‘She didn’t know, she just sensed that you were different towards her. Children aren’t stupid. You were different to her and she reacted to that. She’s still reacting, I daresay. She was always the quiet one, watchful and silent. Gauging the world.’

  ‘It’s still my fault,’ said Rose, crying now.

  ‘Well, all you have to do is make it up to her. It’s up to you to go back and make amends.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Tell her about it, be honest.’

  ‘I nearly told someone about it a few months ago,’ Rose said slowly. ‘A friend of mine, Minnie, she’s obviously depressed and I tried to get help for her but I wouldn’t let myself do the one thing that might have really helped. I couldn’t tell her I’d gone through crippling depression and that it was possible to come out the other side.’

  ‘How is she now?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Rose. ‘I haven’t phoned her since I’ve been here.’ Suddenly, she grinned. ‘You know, Freddie, all that’s left is for you to tell me I’m the Weakest Link.’

  Freddie looked puzzled.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Rose. ‘It means that I’m suitably chastened.’

  ‘That wasn’t my intention,’ Freddie said honestly. ‘I love you, Rose, and I want you to be happy.’

  ‘I know.’ Rose leaned over and patted her aunt’s arm. ‘I suppose I have to walk these three hounds before dinner.’

  At the word ‘walk’, Mildred, Prinny and Pig looked up expectantly.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ said Rose. She changed her shoes and headed out into the evening. She was looking forward to some time on her own. She had a lot to think about. So much of what Freddie had said had the painful ring of truth to it. She was right about meeting Hugh. Rose had to face him. As she hiked up the hill behind the house, with the dogs rushing delightedly in front of her, she made a decision: she’d stay with Freddie until her ankle was fully healed. Then, Rose would go home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Tara negotiated the heavy traffic on the M50 roundabout with her mind only half on the job. At least she didn’t have the radio to contend with. Since Finn had left, she hadn’t been able to listen to the radio. Every song seemed to be about love and heartbreak, and Tara couldn’t cope with any of it. Even the funkiest dance tracks reminded her of some night out with Finn.

  She realised she was in the wrong lane and tried to move over, receiving an irate blast on the horn from another driver.

  ‘Sorry,’ she waved a hand apologetically. Sorry for everything, sorry for living.

  In her early days as a scriptwriter, Tara had written a script about someone who’d disappeared into thin air. Not vanished like a magician, but vanished in every other sense. At the time, Tara had thought it was a stupid storyline. People just didn’t disappear, she’d pointed out to Isadora.

  Now, she knew that they could and did. To all intents and purposes, Finn had vanished on Monday night. It was now Thursday afternoon, nearly three terrifying days since she’d seen him. He hadn’t been in work, a fact which was clearly infuriating Derry, his boss, when Tara had humiliated herself by phoning the office.

  And he hadn’t gone home to Four Winds and his parents, which Tara had discovered by clandestine means. She’d phoned the Jeffersons’ several times until Desmond answered instead of Gloria, then casually asked if she and Finn could take Desmond and Gloria out to dinner at the weekend.

  ‘That would be wonderful but I’ll have to check with the War Office,’ joked Desmond in his usual gentle way.

  On the other end of the phone, Tara had gone white. Obviously Finn wasn’t with his parents, so where was he?

  ‘Desmond, I haven’t been telling you the truth. Finn and I have argued and he’s left me – I don’t know where he is. I thought he might be with you and Gloria.’

  ‘Oh Tara,’ was all Desmond could say sorrowfully.

  That had been yesterday. Today, she was driving out to Four Winds to talk to her father-in-law to find out if there was anywhere else Finn might be. Gloria would be out and Tara fervently hoped that Desmond hadn’t mentioned this to her. She couldn’t ask, naturally. It was Desmond’s business what he told his wife.

  Nobody at National Hospital knew what had happened either. Not even Isadora. Distraught, Tara had gone in to work as usual on Tuesday but looked so wild-eyed and white-faced that everyone assumed she was ill.

  ‘Don’t come in here if you’ve got the flu,’ said Tommy in horror as he met a ghostly Tara in the script room for the early morning meeting. ‘We don’t all want to catch it.’

  ‘You look terrible,’ Aaron agreed. ‘You should go home.’

  Tara had taken the chance and left before she could bump into Isadora. Her closest friend would know that whatever ailed Tara, it wasn’t flu. Since then, she’d called in sick every day and sat numbly at home, waiting by the phone in between trying Finn’s mobile. She could no longer leave messages for him. The message service told her crisply that his message box was full. Was it full because he wasn’t listening to and deleting her tearful pleadings for him to come back? Or was it full because he hadn’t heard any of his messages, and was lying in the crumpled wreck of his car, injured and unable to phone for help? These were the thoughts that raced through Tara’s mind endlessly.

  Seeing Four Winds basking in the afternoon sunlight made the pain in her heart more intense. She’d never driven here without Finn beside her, laughing and joking, trying to cheer her up before seeing his mother. She’d give anything to turn the clock back so he could be beside her again. How differently she’d do things then.

  Desmond came out to meet her. He looked so like Finn that Tara had to force herself not to cry. They embraced.

  ‘I’ve been in the shed working on some cuttings,’ Desmond said. ‘Would you like to see them?’

  Tara had never been in her father-in-law’s inner sanctum before, so she said yes. Once inside, she could see why he preferred working in the shed to spending time in Gloria’s frosty domain. There was a worn old armchair with lots of springs sticking out of the back, and a big workbench with pots, plants and all manner of garden equipment. To Tara’s inexperienced eyes, it didn’t look as if Desmond had been doing much in the gardening department. She moved that day’s newspaper crossword from a stool and sat down.

  ‘No, please take the armchair,’ insisted Desmond gallantly.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Tara said. She waited for him to ask her what this was all about but he didn’t, and it occurred to Tara that there were many similarities
between her husband and his father. Finn never wanted to discuss problems either. Or at least he hadn’t, until that last awful night.

  ‘Finn and I rowed on Monday night and it was bad. He said he was leaving me.’ Tara felt deeply ashamed to be saying this to Finn’s father. ‘We’d been having problems but this was my fault,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t heard from him since. He hasn’t been in to work, his mobile is turned off. Even Derry doesn’t know where he is, and I know that for a fact because Derry’s furious with Finn for missing some important meeting. I just thought you’d know where he’d go,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘I wish I could help, Tara,’ said Desmond. ‘But I can’t.’

  His expression was one of sympathy rather than condemnation, which made Tara feel even guiltier. She didn’t deserve Desmond’s kindness. She’d cheated on his son, she deserved his disgust.

  ‘There must be somewhere he’d go, somewhere from childhood, some place I don’t know about,’ she said, desperate for any help. ‘I’ve tried all his friends, everyone, and nobody has a clue. Would he tell Gloria where he was going?’

  Desmond’s smile was wry and more than a little bitter. ‘She’s the last person he’d tell,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d know that.’

  Well, no,’ said Tara. ‘I don’t really know anything about Finn’s relationship with his mother at all. I just know that she loves him…’

  ‘Oh she loves him, all right. Too much,’ said Desmond. He got up and began fiddling round with some of the black pots on his workbench. ‘Gloria’s always been intensely involved in everything surrounding Finn but she’s like that, you know. She gets worked up about things. Finn and I are old hands at defusing her and keeping the peace when she gets wound up but it’s not always easy. It’s been harder since he married you,’ Desmond added, almost apologetically. ‘I know you can’t have failed to notice that she resents you.’

  There was silence for a few moments as Tara digested this information.

  ‘I’d always thought that Finn got on well with his mother, that he handled her…intensity well.’