Cathy Kelly - Just Between Us

There had been a pair of tights in there for emergencies but she’d had to break them out after the smoked salmon starter when her watch had twanged a thread on her existing pair.

‘Do you want a lend of anything?’ asked Sherry, concentrating on applying eyeliner with a professional’s touch. She was expertly using a tiny angled brush, Tara saw.

‘Er, no thanks,’ Tara said. She slicked on a speedy coat of lipstick, and looked critically at herself to inspect the effect. Standing beside Sherry was a mistake. Tara was straight as an ironing board while Sherry was all glowing curves with sparkling gold dust on her silken skin.

Sometimes Tara wondered, in an idle sort of way, what it would be like to be beautiful rather than clever. Her mother, Rose, was beautiful, still beautiful, even in her late fifties. The family teased her about how the Kinvarra postman was besotted with her and how he nearly crashed the post van whenever she appeared. And Stella, her elder sister, was stunning too, with melting dark eyes and a serene, smiling face that made people gravitate towards her. And Holly, who had more hang-ups about her looks than a catwalk full of teenage models, was incredibly pretty in an arrestingly luminous way. But the beauty gene had clearly skipped out when it had come to Tara.

Not that she minded, really. Tara knew she’d been given a gift that made up for not being a head-turner – a brain as sharp as a stiletto and a talent for putting words together. A gift that had brought her here tonight.

She grinned as she thought of her Aunt Adele’s mantra at Miller family get-togethers: ‘Thank the Lord that Tara’s so clever.’ Tara knew that this was shorthand for ‘It’s lucky that Tara doesn’t have to rely on her looks.’ Her mother used to glare at Aunt Adele whenever Adele said this but it had no effect. Her aunt was one of those people who thought honesty and tactlessness were pretty close to Godliness in the hierarchy of virtue, and felt that speaking her mind was not just important, but compulsory.

But Tara, after a few pointless years of secretly longing to be a beauty, was perfectly content with the way she looked. She’d never be pretty but instead was a combination of quirky and unusual looking, with a sharp little chin, a mischievous full mouth, and a long nose which might have dominated her face were it not for deep-set hazel eyes that glittered with amusement and brilliance. Even beside a raft of golden-haired lovelies, people always noticed Tara’s clever, vibrant face. And once they got talking to her, they loved her because she was witty and funny into the bargain.

By the time she’d got to college, Tara had worked out a clever and eccentric look which involved very trendy clothes, short, almost masculine hair and fire-engine red lipstick. It helped that she was tall, so masculine clothes and hair worked on her. Now, at the grand old age of thirty-two and thanks to the confidence that came from having a career she loved, Tara was utterly at home with her looks. Her dark hair was expertly cut and its exquisitely tweaked style owed much to the salon wax she scrunched through the ends each morning. Trendy, dark-rimmed glasses gave definition to her eyes and drew attention away from her nose. She’d toyed with the idea of rhinoplasty for years but Finn had told her she didn’t need it.

‘I love your nose the way it is,’ he’d say, running his finger down it lovingly.

Tara’s face softened as she thought of her husband of six months. Darling Finn. Theirs had been the ultimate whirlwind courtship. They’d met a year ago at a party, fell madly in love and got married within six months, confidently telling astonished friends that once you met your soul mate, you knew instantly. Finn was everything Tara wanted in a man: funny, sexy, kind, clever – and drop-dead gorgeous. A rangy man with sleepy, fun-filled eyes, tousled dirty blonde hair and an air of languid sexuality, Finn was genuinely movie-star stunning. People told her he could have been Brad Pitt’s stand-in, but a proud Tara retorted that Finn was infinitely better looking.

Even his voice was sexy, automatically reminding her of making slow languorous love even when he was just asking her how much milk she wanted in her coffee.

It would have been lovely to stroll into the ballroom with him on her arm. He looked good in a dinner jacket; but then he’d look good in a sack.

At their wedding, Aunt Adele hadn’t failed the Miller family and had pointedly said, at least five times, that she couldn’t get over how Tara had netted such a good-looking boy. As if Tara had gone out with a huge fishing rod and reeled in the first gorgeous specimen she saw.

‘Your aunt keeps looking at me and shaking her head,’ said Finn at the reception. ‘Is she shocked that a creative genius like you has married a stupid computer salesman?’

Tara laughed. ‘On the contrary, she thinks I’ve won the lottery. Aunt Adele has been preparing me for spinsterhood for years by reminding me I’m not a great beauty, so she’s astonished I nabbed a hunk like yourself and actually got you to marry me within six months of meeting you. And you’re anything but stupid.’

Finn pulled her close for another kiss. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. ‘Well,’ he conceded, his lips brushing her cheek tenderly, ‘maybe not that stupid. After all, I’ve just married a brilliant wife. And a beautiful one, too.’

If only he were here, Tara thought now with a fresh pang of longing. Finn knew how tense she was about things like awards ceremonies, and knew just how important this one was to her. The exact opposite of her; he was laid-back about everything and would have calmed her nerves better than a pint of Rescue Remedy. But tickets to the National Television & Radio Awards were like gold dust and not even all the show’s writers had been able to get one. There was no way Tara could have brought Finn with her. She’d phone him quickly, just to say hi, that she missed him. Switching her phone on, Tara dialled rapidly. The phone in the apartment rang out without being answered. She smiled at the thought of Finn rushing across the road to the twenty-four-hour garage to buy something, forgetting to turn the answering machine on. She loved the little things he forgot. They were so endearing. She tried his mobile but it was off too. Idiot. But she was smiling.

‘Perfume?’ asked Sherry, spraying the contents of a tiny bottle of Gucci Envy down her cleavage.

‘Yes please,’ said Tara, sorry that she hadn’t thought to bring the Coco Mademoiselle that Finn had given her for her birthday. The ballroom was murderously hot and the combination of a spicy main course and too much red wine meant that everyone had red, flushed faces. None of which would look good on television. Tara had a sudden horrified vision of her shiny, lobster-pink face being all that people remembered when the nominations for the soap awards came up.

She took the proffered vial of perfume, sprayed it liberally down her front and gave a final blast to her wrists. ‘Sherry, I’ve changed my mind. Can I borrow some make-up? I think I need it.’

Five minutes later, Tara was expertly revamped. In those few moments in the ladies’ she felt as if she’d learned more about Sherry than she had over several months of work. Sherry chatted away about how her mother had helped her shop for the dress she was nearly wearing, and how her whole family were going to meet up the next night when the awards were broadcast in case they spotted Sherry. They never missed an episode of the show, either. They were so proud of her.

‘I used to be a beautician, you see,’ Sherry said as she dextrously brushed eye shadow onto Tara’s lids. ‘Mum was worried when I gave it up for drama school.’

‘You’re brilliant at make up,’ Tara said enthusiastically as she admired her newly-sultry eyes, dark and intense thanks to smoky shadows.