Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  This was real money, Tara thought ruefully, aware that she’d blown her chance to ever touch such real money. Working on Mike’s friend’s script had been her chance to shine and because of everything that had been going on, Tara had found it to be one of the hardest jobs she’d ever worked on. The words that usually streamed from her brain in a seamless rush didn’t come. Instead, every rewrite was a painstaking effort with the result that Tara thought it was the worst work she’d ever done. Every line reminded her of the pain of Finn’s drinking and the stupidity of her fling with Scott Irving. If they ever did make the script into a film, which she thought was highly unlikely, Tara knew she’d never be able to bear looking at it without remembering this awful time in her life.

  Mike’s assistant, Steve, took her through the house to a first-floor office with panoramic views of the countryside. With its rosewood furniture, exquisite Aubusson carpet and oil paintings on the walls, it wasn’t the sort of office she was used to. But then, Mike was a big name in Hollywood. He would probably be stunned to know that Tara worked on a laptop that sat on a hideous and cheap computer desk by her living room window.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Tara.’ Mike came in. He looked more casual than he normally did, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, as if he’d just been in the stables with his beloved horses. The Old Testament prophet image was less strong when he was out of his normal LA black ensembles.

  He shook her hand. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘No.’ Tara herself was surprised at how vehement she sounded. ‘Sorry,’ she added. ‘Water would be lovely.’

  ‘For me too,’ he said to Steve.

  ‘You’ve a beautiful house,’ Tara said, recovering.

  He grinned. ‘Not bad for a country boy from Galway,’ he said.

  Tara grinned back. ‘You could say that.’

  He motioned to her to sit and they faced each other from two vast cream sofas.

  ‘About the script,’ Mike began.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ interrupted Tara. ‘I blew it, I know. This was a huge chance and I blew it. There’s been so much going on…’

  ‘What I was about to say was that I loved what you’ve done with the script,’ Mike commented.

  Tara gazed at him. ‘You couldn’t, it was terrible. The characterisation was weak and I couldn’t manage to get it right.’

  The door opened and Steve appeared silently. He laid a glass of water in front of each of them and went out again.

  The nerves she’d managed to suppress up to now emerged and Tara took her glass and gulped back some water.

  ‘The original script was a crock of shit,’ Mike said. ‘Unsal-vageable, I’d have said, yet you managed to breathe real life into it. Yeah, sure there were places where it was flat but there were plenty of touches of sheer genius. You did that and I’m impressed.’

  She gulped more water down.

  ‘That’s partly why I asked you here today. Some things have got to be done in person. Aaron tells me you’ve been having problems.’

  ‘Aaron?’ Tara felt as if her synapses were fried. What had Aaron to do with this?

  Mike shrugged. ‘We go way back. We worked together in New York years ago.’

  So that was how Aaron had known she was working with Mike Hammond.

  ‘I have a proposition for you but I need to know if you can take it on. I want you to come and work for me in LA.’

  The only way Tara managed not to drop her glass was because she was holding it in a tight grip.

  ‘But if you’re having personal problems, you might not want to. I need to know and fast.’

  ‘To work on what?’

  ‘A movie script. It’s historical, which may turn you off because you like working on modern stuff but…’

  ‘No, I’d love it,’ said Tara. She could barely believe this. It was all she’d ever dreamed of: being offered a chance to go to LA and become a screen writer. Yeah, she knew that writers could be the lowest creature on the totem pole, but she didn’t care. This was the stuff of fairy tales.

  ‘That’s good but I need to know that you can handle it, that you’re not still going through this bad time you mentioned,’ Mike continued.

  Tara wondered whether Aaron had a better idea of what was going on in her life than he pretended. He was astute enough to find out about the Scott Irving debacle; perhaps he knew about Finn too and had told Mike. Either way, she had to come clean.

  ‘My husband and I have split up.’ Saying it made her want to cry. Finn had disappeared, that was splitting up in every sense. She’d heard nothing from him for three weeks now.

  ‘So a change of scene would be good, right?’

  Tara nodded. ‘A change of scene would be just what I need.’ If Finn wasn’t coming back, she might as well leave the country. Perhaps if she wasn’t constantly reminded of him, she’d begin to mend her shattered heart.

  ‘Congratulations.’ Mike held his glass up. ‘They say it’s bad luck to toast with water but I don’t drink, so what the hell.’

  Tara held her glass up too and clinked it gently with Mike’s. ‘I don’t drink either,’ she said.

  Tara stood at the door of the apartment complex and watched the storage lorry trundle off down the road. Her life was now boxed up and on its way to an anonymous lock-up somewhere until such time as Tara needed it again. She’d sent two big boxes off to Los Angeles and Mike promised that his people would make sure it all arrived in the condo they’d rented for her.

  It still hadn’t quite sunk in that she was leaving Ireland. There was a definite feeling of unreality to the whole experience, even though she’d gone through all the fond farewell palaver. She’d been to the riotous leaving party with her National Hospital colleagues and had been deeply relieved when Scott Irving hadn’t turned up. She’d driven out to Four Winds with the few remaining bits and bobs of Finn’s that he hadn’t taken that night when he left her.

  Gloria had been noticeably absent, to Tara’s relief. Even though her animosity towards her mother-in-law had shifted down a few gears to pity, it didn’t mean that Tara actually wanted to meet her. Desmond had hugged her tightly and said he loved her, which made Tara feel worse than ever and she’d cried all the way home.

  All that was left was the family get-together the following night in Kinvarra, and Tara hoped that she might feel excited about the trip by then. Rose was planning a beautiful dinner for the extended family, but Stella was worried that the celebration, complete with Tom and Nick, would upset Tara. ‘Are you up to it? Tom will be there and Nick, so just tell me if you’d prefer if they weren’t.’

  ‘I can’t mourn forever,’ Tara replied. ‘And I’d be one hell of a bitch if I was upset that my sisters had found love just because I haven’t.’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ said Stella. ‘You might prefer it to be just us.’

  ‘No, the more the merrier.’

  Tara hadn’t been lying. She wasn’t upset by the fact that she’d be alone at her special dinner. Finn’s absence was something she had to get used to. After all, it was her fault. She deserved the penance.

  She shut the door of the flat and looked around. It looked strangely empty without all the books, papers, CDs and assorted other junk. The rental company people were coming first thing in the morning to get the keys from Tara and they had prospective clients due in the afternoon. Renting the flat out was the only possible course of action because without Finn, she couldn’t sell it.

  She clicked the kettle on to boil, made herself some tea and sat on the couch flicking through the TV channels. She was idly watching a rival soap when she heard a noise in the hall. She froze with terror, casting round frantically for a weapon; something to use against the intruders. They were in the hall, coming into the living room…

  Suddenly Finn was at the door, wearing his battered old jeans and an unsure expression. They both stared at each other wordlessly.

  ‘Hi, Tara,’ said Finn.

  She couldn’t m
ove, she just kept staring at him, drinking him in after all this time. His hair was shorter and spikier and his face was thinner, like he’d been training too hard in the gym. And his eyes…she tried to work out what the look in his eyes said. Was he coming to collect the rest of his stuff and give her his lawyer’s name? Or, dare she hope, was it something else?

  ‘Say something,’ he muttered,’ don’t keep looking at me like that.’

  ‘Hello.’ Tara got up from the couch but felt too unsure to move towards him. What if she went to hug him and he shoved her away? She couldn’t bear that. A lone tear swelled up in one eye and she jabbed at it impatiently.

  Finn stared around the room, taking in the bare shelves, the lack of photos and everyday detritus. ‘What’s happened to all the stuff?’

  ‘I’m moving out,’ Tara said, watching him carefully. ‘I’ve arranged to have it rented out. I didn’t know what else to do.’

  Finn slumped against the wall. ‘Moving out, huh? To live with him?’

  Confusion reigned in Tara’s mind. To live with whom? Mike Hammond? ‘Don’t be silly, he asked me to work on a script…’ she began before suddenly she understood what Finn was asking. Was she moving out to live with whoever she’d slept with. Was she moving out to live with Scott Irving. It was so laughable, so utterly ridiculous, that Tara burst into laughter, a sort of high-pitched giggle that sounded odd even to her ears. ‘No, don’t be silly.’

  ‘What’s silly about thinking that?’ he asked quietly.

  Tara decided that one of them had to take the initiative. She moved closer to him, and leaned on the edge of the couch, just two feet away from where he stood.

  ‘It’s silly because that was a huge mistake when I was distraught about what was happening to us. I love you, Finn, there’s never been anyone else for me, but I made a mistake. I’m moving out because I got a job offer abroad. I didn’t know what else to do because I’m…I’m…’ The words just wouldn’t come. Tara wanted to tell Finn that there was nobody else and that she loved him with all her heart but it had happened again. Just when she needed to be able to pick the perfect words to tell him how she felt, her mind seized up and she felt tongue tied. Ironic for a woman who worked with words. ‘Heartbroken,’ she tried, hating saying it because it sounded like such a cliché. Yet clichés worked, if they were true. ‘I’m heartbroken because you left me and I can’t stop thinking about you and how we could do it differently if you came back.’ She ran out of steam and words.

  Finn was still watching her, his face unreadable, his eyes opaque.

  ‘You talked to Fay,’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘She said that you still loved me even though you told her about my alcoholism.’

  Tara’s breath stilled. Finn had never used that word before.

  He smiled, a weak little smile. ‘Yes, I said it. Alcoholism. I am an alcoholic.’ His eyes were no longer opaque: blue and anxious, they found hers, spearing into her soul. ‘Do you still love me?’

  For her answer, Tara lunged at him, wrapped her arms round his body and clung on. ‘Oh, Tara,’ he cried, his face buried in her hair, then his lips were on hers and they were kissing wet kisses as tears ran down Tara’s face. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she sobbed, ‘but never, never leave me again.’

  When their tears were spent, they sat hand in hand on the couch and Finn told her where he’d been. It wasn’t a rehab clinic in the strictest sense of the word but a slightly New Age place run by a recovered alcoholic who wanted to give something back. You paid to stay in one of his rooms, you worked on the small organic farm he ran, and you went to AA meetings every day. Nobody was ever allowed to stay twice. It was a one-off deal. You cured yourself and there were no second chances.

  When Finn had stormed off, he’d thought of going there but had been too angry. Only after a two-day bender, had he made the decision. ‘I couldn’t call you, I needed to see if I could stop,’ he said, ‘or it would have been wrong to come back. I couldn’t ruin your life too.’

  ‘You could have told me you were all right,’ Tara said, remembering the pain of wondering where he was. ‘I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere.’

  ‘I thought of e-mailing you but I was too much of a coward,’ he admitted. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to face it if you’d replied and told me you didn’t want to see me ever again.’

  They talked long into the night. Finn sat with his fingers interlaced with Tara’s, wanting her to understand but still scared at telling her his story.

  ‘You’d sit there with your one gin and tonic, and I used to long to be like you. One was enough for you, you didn’t care if you didn’t have another one. But me…’ Finn’s face was suffused with sorrow. ‘One wasn’t enough. Or two. I wanted every drink in the bar. None of it would be enough, I wanted to blot everything out and not think.’

  ‘Not think about what?’ Tara desperately needed to understand.

  ‘Me, what I felt about me, how much I hated me. It’s hard to explain.’

  She squeezed his fingers even more tightly. ‘Do your best,’ she said softly.

  ‘I wasn’t good enough, there was this hole inside me, this emptiness and I had to hide it.’ Finn closed his eyes, as if he could see what he was talking about and only then could he describe it. ‘You’re a good person, Tara, and you don’t understand what it’s like not to be one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, you’re a wonderful person…’

  ‘No, let me explain. That’s what I see inside me: this gaping hole, this nothingness. And when I drink, that goes away a little bit. Or I can’t feel it so much. I can like myself when I drink. The self-hatred goes woozy with that first hit of vodka. I feel that nice warmth and it’s good, and that’s the problem, I think that if I drink more, I’ll feel more of that nice warmth. But it doesn’t work like that, so I keep drinking to try and regain that first feeling and then, I get scared that the nice feeling will go away altogether and I have this compulsion to drink more. Even when I was drunk, I had to have more, just in case. I used to keep vodka in a tonic bottle in the kitchen.’

  Tara nodded. ‘I know, I found it.’

  Finn opened his eyes and looked ashamed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I do love you, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know. Why didn’t you tell me any of this? I could have helped.’

  ‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?’ he said wryly. ‘No alcoholic wants to tell anyone because then, other people will know. It won’t be a fear in your head any more, it will be real and you’ll have to face it. And stop drinking.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now it’s over. I can’t drink again, ever. A drink will never be just a drink for me, Tara. It’ll be a drug, an anaesthetic. I can’t drink any more. Not a glass of champagne on special occasions or the odd half bottle of wine with a meal. I’d love to be able to, I’d love to be able to control it but I can’t. I’m an addict.’

  ‘You’re supposed to give up the people you drank with,’ Tara said.

  ‘Like Derry? I’m fired anyhow.’

  ‘Good. What about a new start in a new country?’

  ‘Do they have AA meetings there?’

  Tara grinned. ‘They have fabulous weather, glorious beaches, a fantastic standard of living and we’ve got a condo off Melrose.’

  ‘A condo, huh?’ said Finn. He pulled her onto his lap so that they were sitting curled round each other. ‘That sounds fabulous. Let’s do it, but do you know what I’d like to do first?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Get into bed with you, curl close and sleep. I missed you so much, especially at night. I’d lie there and think of holding you close, sleeping with your body right beside mine, of waking up and feeling your back wedged against me, your skin naked next to mine. That’s what I want to do now: sleep.’

  Nothing had ever sounded better to Tara. They got to their feet, switched off the light, and walked hand in
hand to the bedroom.

  Their lovemaking was gentle and tender, as if the tenderness could make up for the pain of their separation. Afterwards, Finn curled up close to his wife and fell asleep. But Tara knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep yet. There was so much to think about. She lay in the dark and thought about the future with Finn.

  There were no happy endings in real life, she knew, no walking off into the sunset with violins playing a mystical gypsy tune. Their life together would be real, crude and perhaps painful: hard-edged reality instead of a sepia-tinted world as the credits rolled.

  Finn wouldn’t be able to sit at languorous dinner parties and trail his long, skilful fingers round the top of his wine glass any more. Tara used to love watching him do that, it was like a private prelude to sex, the implication that those fingers would soon be exploring Tara’s body with the same subtlety of touch. His eyes would light up as they met hers, teasing her and sending that shiver of liquid excitement rushing through her.

  No, their life would mean avoiding those sort of parties, of going home when everybody else was going out. They’d both smile tautly at grand occasions when people were hoovering up champagne, and there’d be a lifetime of people who didn’t understand, innocently saying ‘oh but you must have one glass. One won’t hurt.’

  Would Finn be able to cope with that? Would she? Could she be the gatekeeper of his sobriety, always watching, rewarding good behaviour like a mother with a naughty child? Tara didn’t want to be anyone’s keeper. She moved gently in the bed, and watched Finn as he slept. Still the same long lashes and the serene, unworried curve to his cheeks. In sleep, Finn looked as if nothing but good luck had ever touched his life.

  She reached out and touched a strand of his golden hair. He looked golden still and he was there, with her. Tara closed her eyes for a minute to gauge how she felt. There it was: that little oasis of comfort in her heart, spreading its heat out into her whole body. She opened her eyes. It was still there. It was there because she was with Finn. He was the person who made her feel this way. They were in this together.