Cathy Kelly - Just Between Us

‘Tara love, please don’t get upset.’

Finn sat down beside her and held her. ‘Can’t we have a nice Christmas, please?’

Tara laid her head against his shoulder, relishing the comfort of being close to his lean, muscular body. Tara never seemed to have time for the gym but Finn went religiously. ‘I’d love to do that,’ she murmured, ‘I’d love our first Christmas as husband and wife to be special, but I don’t know how I can cope with your mother, Finn.’

Finn stroked her hair gently. ‘Christmas reminds her of Fay, that’s all. It’s difficult for her.’

Tara sighed. Fay was Gloria’s sympathy card. Gloria’s younger child and Finn’s twenty-seven-year-old sister, Fay had gone off travelling after a huge blow-up with her mother and had refused to talk to Gloria since. Although Tara had never met her, because Fay’s dramatic departure had been two years ago which was before Tara and Finn had even met, she sounded like a bit of a free spirit. Fay now lived in California, practised psychic healing and corresponded with Finn and Desmond, but hung up when her mother came on the phone. Clearly, psychic healing could only do so much.

If it had been anyone else, Tara would have felt sorry for a mother who was cut off from her daughter. Tara loved her own mother far too much to ever do such a thing. But knowing Gloria for the past eighteen months, Tara could see why someone would be driven to travelling to the other side of the world to escape her.

‘We’ll have a nice Christmas,’ she reassured Finn.

‘Thanks, babe.’ He looked so grateful. It was the least she could do. She’d bite her tongue when Gloria was being bitchy.

Tara decided to wear the corduroy dress, plenty of lipstick, and a big, jaw-clenching smile. Gloria, who’d obviously decided to modify her own behaviour, said nothing and the foursome set off in a taxi with Finn and Desmond chatting happily as if they hadn’t noticed anything was amiss.

At the restaurant, Tara had to start biting her tongue when she met the others. If Gloria had pulled out all the stops in the dressing up department, she had nothing on Liz Bailey-Montford who was dressed as though Hello! were due to photograph her at any minute for a ‘lifestyles of the rich and tasteless’ piece. Jewels gleamed at ears, wrists, neck and fingers and her silver and black plunging dress was a dizzying combination of sequins and beading. Tara was blinded by the glitter.

There was obviously plenty of one-upmanship between the two supposed best friends because Liz had brought along her daughter and son-in-law as backup and wasted no time telling everyone that Serena was doing a masters in art history and Charles was a tower of strength who worked with his father-in-law in the furniture business.

‘I don’t know what we’d do without Charles,’ Liz said, ‘he’s so capable.’

Charles had a blank, unintelligent face and Tara thought he didn’t look as if he was capable of changing a light bulb. But he’d obviously lucked out by marrying Serena who was heiress to the B-M furniture kingdom, so he couldn’t be that dumb.

There were lots of double kisses, oodles of ‘oh you look wonderful, Gloria! Doesn’t she, Pierre?’ and it took ten minutes for everyone to be seated, according to a table plan, naturally. Tara hated table plans. She liked sitting beside Finn and hated all that rubbish about sticking him as far away from her as possible and putting her beside someone she didn’t know.

Pierre, on her right side, appeared tired, while Charles, on her left, looked uninterested until he found out that she worked on National Hospital, and then spent the next ten minutes plying her with stupid questions about what the stars were really like.

‘Theodora, I mean, Sherry,’ he said with glazed eyes, ‘she’s fabulous, isn’t she? Is she like that in real life?’

‘You mean man-mad?’ inquired Tara, bored. ‘Men adore her.’

Charles backtracked hastily. ‘Oh no, I don’t mean that. I just admire good acting.’

‘Of course you do.’

The waiter arrived and Gloria and Liz ordered melon and plain fish.

‘Thank you,’ Gloria said sweetly to the young waiter, who beamed back. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ she added to Liz. ‘Melon is the only option. A moment on the lips…’

‘…a lifetime on the hips,’ finished Liz and they both giggled.

Tara watched in astonishment. Nobody would recognise her stony mother-in-law in this giggly woman across the table. Talk about street angel, house devil.

‘I might have melon too,’ said Serena thoughtfully.

‘Nonsense!’ Gloria was kind but firm. ‘You don’t need to diet, pet. You’ve a lovely little figure.’

Despite being seated apart, Liz, Gloria and Serena talked to each other noisily across the round table. Finn and his father were laughing over some story, while Pierre and Charles had livened up enough to argue over the wine. Tara sat silently and watched it all, thinking of the wonderful time Mum, Dad, Stella, Holly and Amelia would be having by now in Kinvarra. Nobody could magic up an air of festivity like Mum, and by now, the house would be filled with the smells of Christmas cooking, with Mum’s absolute favourite, Frank Sinatra, belting out love songs from the kitchen. Holly and Stella would be laughing as they stuffed the turkey and Dad would be gleefully sorting out glasses for the traditional Miller Christmas Eve drinks party which always kicked off between half eight and nine. Everyone came to the party; all the close family friends and relatives, half of Kinvarra almost. Mum and Dad had been hosting the party for as long as Tara could remember and it was like the official signal for Christmas to start. Entire families turned up, people were delighted at the opportunity to let their hair down, drink flew around at a fierce rate and such was the spirit of fun that people who’d originally apologised that they could only drop in for a moment would have to be decanted drunkenly into taxis at half eleven before the family went to midnight Mass.

It would all be incredible fun, with no pretensions. Her longing to be there overwhelmed Tara and she felt a lump swell in her throat. It was so easy to forget how important family were until you weren’t with them.

She tuned back into the here and now to overhear Serena, Gloria and Liz discussing clothes.

‘I love your dress,’ Gloria was saying warmly to Serena. ‘You can never go wrong with a little black dress and a nice gold necklace.’

Tara glanced over at Serena, who looked quite overshone, despite the LBD, by her flamboyant mother, but who did have a heavy gold necklace hanging from her neck. Tara was not a jewellery person, which was just as well because Finn certainly didn’t have the money to shell out on chunky gold stuff. They just about managed the mortgage and the bills on both their salaries: TV script writing wasn’t the money-spinner everyone thought it was. That was why Tara longed to get into writing for someone like Mike Hammond. She loved working on National Hospital, but if only she could work on a film script or one of the big-budget television adaptations that Mike was involved with, well, she’d be on the road to fame and fortune.

‘…well,’ her mother-in-law was saying, ‘these media types don’t put the same store on dressing up as we do.’ She lowered her voice. ‘They’re really quite casual, which can be inappropriate on occasion.’

Tara knew exactly who Gloria was referring to. Bitch. Double bitch.

She glared across the table at Finn who seemed oblivious to it all.

‘Does Sherry have a boyfriend?’ asked Charles, unable to get his mind off her.

‘No, rumour has it she’s a lesbian,’ snapped Tara, although the lie backfired because Charles drooled even more; no doubt at the notion of being sandwiched in bed between the beauteous Sherry and another stunning woman.