Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'Why? This is the way.'

'I want to come home with you. Please.'

'No, Danny, it would be pointless.'

'Nothing between us was ever pointless. Please, Rosemary, I need you tonight. Don't make me beg.'

She looked at him. It had always been impossible to resist him. Rosemary had already been congratulating herself that her infatuation had not let her sell her company for this man. And he wanted her. As he had always wanted her more than his prattling little wife and the strange wan girl he lived with. She turned her car in the entrance of Colm's restaurant and drove back to Number 32.

Nora Johnson taking Pliers for his nightly walk saw Lady Ryan driving up the road with a man in the passenger seat. Nora squinted but couldn't see who it was. For a moment she thought it was Danny Lynch. Lots of people looked like that. She had liked Danny and loved him calling her Holly. And she had thought he was handsome when she met him first. But when all was said and done what Danny had was cheap good looks.

Danny started to caress Rosemary before she had even put the key into the front door of Number 32.

'Don't be idiotic,' she hissed. 'We've been so careful for so long, don't blow it now.'

'You understand me, Rosemary, you're the only one who does.'

They went upstairs in the lift and as soon as they were in the door he reached for her.

'Danny, stop.'

'You don't usually say that.' He was kissing her throat.

'I don't usually refuse to save your business either.'

'But you told me you couldn't, that your funds were all tied up.' He was trying to hold her and stop her slipping away.

'No, Danny, we have to talk.'

'We never had to talk before.'

She saw her message light winking on the answering machine but she would not press the button. It might be one of the men she had had dinner with increasing the offer, raising the stakes. Danny must never know what had been turned down only feet away from him in the restaurant.

'What about Bernadette?'

'It's early, she won't expect me for a long time.'

'It's foolish.'

'It was always foolish,' he said. 'Foolish, dangerous and wonderful.'

Afterwards they had a shower together.

'Won't Bernadette think it odd that you smell of sandalwood?' Rosemary asked.

'Whatever soap you get I get the same for our bathroom.' He wasn't being smug or proud of his cunning, just practical.

'I remember Ria always had the same soap as I did,' she said. 'I used to think that she was copying me but it was you all the time. My, my.'

Rosemary wore a white towelling robe. She glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror. She did not look like someone for whom time was marching on, nor a woman approaching forty. Those men would never get their hands on her company.

'I’ll call you a taxi,' she said.

'I needed you tonight,' he said.

'I suppose I need you too in ways otherwise you wouldn't have stayed. I don't do anything out of kindness.'

'So I notice,' he said drily.

She called a cab company, giving her own account number. 'Remember to get out at the end of your road, not your house, the less these drivers know the better.'

'Yes, boss.'

'You'll survive, Danny.'

'I wish I could see how.'

'Talk to Barney tomorrow. You're both up the same creek, there's nothing to be gained by fighting each other in it.'

'You're right as usual. I'll go down and wait for the cab.' He held her very close to him. Over her shoulder he saw the light on her machine. 'You have a message,' he said.

'I’ll listen to it later, probably my mother demanding that I find a suitable man and get married.'

He grinned at her, head on one side. 'I know I should hope you will, but I really hope you don't.'

'Don't worry, even if I did I expect we'd cheat on him as we have on everyone else.'

The honeymoon period was still on in Tudor Drive. Ria could hardly believe it though she walked on eggshells. Sean and Kelly Maine proved to be perfectly satisfactory friends for Annie and Brian.

'I wish Sean was younger,' Brian complained. 'It's the wrong way round. Kelly's okay but she is a girl.'

I'm glad Sean's not your age. I think he's fine the age he is,' Annie said with a little laugh.

Ria opened her mouth to say that Annie wouldn't want to do anything silly with both Hubie and Sean fighting for her attention but she closed it again. These weeks of having to think before she spoke were paying dividends. It had been no harm learning to live in entirely new and different surroundings where people might judge you by what you actually did and said here and now and not in the context of years of friendship. Ria felt she had grown up a lot in a way she had never had to at home. After all she had never lived alone, she had gone straight from her mother's house to Danny's. No years in between like girls who lived in flats might have known. Girls like Rosemary.

She had got an e-mail from Rosemary saying that Dublin was Rumour City and that it was impossible to separate the truth from the fiction but it had always been that way. Still if there was anything to tell, she would tell it, and of course Danny wouldn't keep her in the dark if there was anything serious. Rosemary wrote that the children had disappeared without saying goodbye which was a pity because she had intended to send out a couple of dresses for Ria to wear at the picnic.

'You didn't say goodbye to Rosemary?' Ria asked them before she headed out to the gourmet shop.

Annie shrugged.

Brian said, 'We forgot her, we called on everyone else.' He seemed to think that it was a source of income they had overlooked.

'Brian, she wouldn't have given you a penny,' Annie said.

'You don't like Rosemary, Annie, do you?' Ria was surprised.

'You don't like Kitty,' Annie countered.

'Ah, but that's different. Kitty's a bad influence.'

'So is Lady Ryan on you, Mam, giving you things, patting you on the head. You can earn money to buy your own dresses, not wear her cast-offs.'

'Thanks, Annie, that's true. Now will you two be all right, I'll only be gone three hours?'

'It's so funny to see you going out to work, Mam, you're like a normal person,' said Brian.

Ria drove Marilyn's car to John and Gerry's, her knuckles white with rage. This was the thanks she got for staying in Tara Road to make the place into a home for them all. Danny had left her saying she was as dull as ditchwater and they had nothing to talk about. Annie thought she was pathetic and Brian thought she was abnormal. Well, by God, she was going to make a success of business anyway.

She parked with a screech of brakes and marched into the kitchen.

'What thought have we given to making special alumni cakes?' she barked. The two men looked up, startled. 'None I see,' she said. 'Well I suggest we have two kinds, one with a mortar board and scroll of parchment, and one with hands of friendship entwined.'

'Special cakes for the weekend?' Gerry said slowly.

'Everyone will be entertaining, won't they need something festive? Something with a theme?'

'Yes but…?'

'So we'd better get started on them at once, hadn't we? Then I can get the graphics up and running and get young people at home to do work on the advertisements, posters for the window and leaflets.' They looked at her open-mouthed.

'Don't you think?' Ria said, wondering had she gone too far.

'We think,' said John and Gerry.

'I'm finding it real hard to see you alone,' Hubie said to Annie. 'Last weekend there was the party with all the other guys around, and then Sean Maine was everywhere like a shadow, next weekend is the alumni weekend and then you're going off to stay with the Maines.'

'There's plenty of time left.' They were lying by the pool sailing a paper boat from one side to the other by flapping the water with their hands.