Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

Ria looked at the cushion she had embroidered for him. The two words 'Danny Boy'. It had taken her weeks of unpicking the stitches to finish it. She could remember his face when she gave it to him. 'You must love me nearly as much as I love you to do something like that for me,' he had said. Nearly as much!

She looked at their new music centre. Only last Christmas, less than six months ago, he had spent hour after hour testing where the speakers would be best. He had bought her so many compact discs, all the Ella Fitzgeralds she had loved, and she had got him the big band sound he liked, the Dorsey brothers, Glenn Miller. The children had groaned at their taste. Perhaps the youthful Bernadette played the strange music that Annie and Kitty liked. Perhaps Danny Lynch pretended he liked it too. Soon he would be home to tell her things like this.

Ria saw Colm Barry in the garden. He was turning the soil but in a desultory way, as if he weren't really there to dig vegetables but to look after her in case she needed it.

Gertie phoned Rosemary at seven o'clock. 'I just rang to say… well, I don't know why I rang,' she said.

'You know why you rang, you rang because it's seven o'clock and we're both mad with worry.'

'Are the children there?'

'Yes, that bit worked anyway. I nearly had to give my body to get that video but I got it.'

'That'll keep them entertained. Do you think they'll patch it up?'

'They'll have to,' said Rosemary. 'They've too much to lose, both of them.'

'But what about the baby? The girl who's pregnant?'

'That's probably what they're talking about this minute.'

'Do you say prayers at all, Rosemary?'

'No, not these days. Do you?'

'No, I do deals, I suppose. I promise God to do things if Jack stops, whatever.'

Rosemary bit her lip. It must have cost Gertie a lot to admit this. 'Do they work, these deals?'

'What do you think?'

'No, I suppose not all the time.' Rosemary was being diplomatic.

'I've done a deal today. I've told God that if he gets Danny back for Ria, I'll well… I'll do something I've been promising to do for a long time.'

'I hope it's not to turn the other cheek again or anything,' Rosemary said before she could stop herself.

'No, quite the contrary as it happens,' Gertie said and hung up.

At seven o'clock Ria turned down the volume control on the answering machine. She didn't want to be disturbed by any more drunken messages from her mother and sister who appeared to have become legless at the restaurant where they had lunch. There were also messages from other people. A query from her brother-in-law Martin to know where Hilary was. Dekko's mother to say that there would be a babysitting opportunity for Brian at the weekend. The hire shop confirming the rental of the sanding machine for next weekend. A woman organising a class reunion lunch who wanted addresses of others who had been at school with them.

Ria would not have been able to talk to any one of them today. What did people do without answering machines? She remembered the day they had installed it and how they had laughed at Danny's attempts to record a convincing message. 'We have to face it, I'm just not an actor,' he had said. But he had been an actor, a very successful one for months. Years maybe.

She sat down and waited for Danny Lynch to come back to Tara Road.

He didn't call out as he usually did. There was no, 'Yoo hoo, sweetheart, I'm back.' He didn't leave his keys on the hall table. He looked pale and anxious. If things were normal she would have worried, wondered if he was getting flu, begged him to take more time off from the office, to relax more. But things were not normal so she just looked at him and waited for him to speak.

'It's very quiet here,' he said eventually.

'Yes, isn't it?'

They could have been strangers who had just met. He sat down and put his head in his hands. Ria said nothing. 'How do you want to do this?' he said.

'You said we must talk, Danny, so talk.'

'You're making it very hard for me.'

'I'm sorry, did you say that I am making it hard? Is that what you said?'

'Please, I'm going to try to be as honest as I can, there will be no more lies or hiding things. I'm not proud of any of this but don't try and trip me up with words and phrases. It's only going to make it worse.' She looked at him and said nothing. 'Ria, I beg you. We know each other too well, we know what every word means, every silence even.'

She spoke slowly and carefully. 'No, I don't know you at all. You say there'll be no more lies, no more hiding things. You see, I didn't know there had been any lies or any hiding things, I thought we were fine.'

'No, you didn't. You can't have. Be honest.'

'I am, Danny. I'm being as honest as I ever have been. If you know me as you claim you do, then you must see that.'

'You thought that this was all there was?'

'Yes.'

'And you didn't think it had all changed. You thought we were just the same as when we got married?' He seemed astounded.

'Yes, the same. Older, busier. More tired, but mainly the same.'

'But…' he couldn't go on.

'But what?'

'But we have nothing to say to each other any more, Ria. We make household arrangements, we rent a sander, we get things out of the freezer, we make lists. That's not living. That's not a real life.'

'You rented the sander,' she said. 'I never wanted it.'

'That's about the level of our conversation nowadays, sweetheart. You know this, you're just not admitting it.'

'You're going to leave, leave this house and me and Annie and Brian… is that what's happening?'

'You know it's not the same any more, like it was.'

'I don't, I don't know that.'

'You can't tell me that for you everything's perfect?'

'It's not totally perfect, you work too hard. Well, you're out too much, maybe it's not work after all. I thought it was.'

'A lot of it is,' he said ruefully.

'But apart from that I thought everything was fine, and I had no idea that you weren't happy here with us all.'

'It's not that.'

She leaned over and looked him right in the eyes. 'But what is it, Danny? Please? Look, you wanted to talk, we're talking. You wanted me to be calm, I'm being calm. I'm being as honest as you are. What is it? If you say you weren't unhappy then why are you going? Tell me so that I'll understand. Tell me.'

'There's nothing left, Ria. It's nobody's fault, it happens all the time to people.'

'It hasn't happened to me,' she said simply.

'Yes it has but you won't face it. You just want to go on acting.'

'I was never acting, not for one minute.'

'I don't mean in a bad sense, I mean playing Happy Families.'

'But we are a happy family, Danny.'

'No, sweetheart, there's more, for both of us. We're not old people, we don't have to ruin ourselves and put up with the way it all turned out.'

'It turned out fine. Don't we have the most marvellous children and a lovely home? Tell me, what more do you want?'

'Oh Ria, Ria. I want to be somebody, to have a future and a dream and to start over and get things right.'

'And a new baby?'

'That's part of it, yes, a new beginning.'

'Will you tell me about her, about Bernadette? About what you and she have that we don't have, I don't mean glorious sex of course. Calm I may be but not quite calm enough to hear about that.'

'I beg you, don't bring bitter accusing words into it.'

'I beg you to think about what you say. Is there anything bitter and accusing about asking you in a totally non-hysterical way why you are suddenly ending a life that I thought was perfectly satisfactory? I just asked you to tell me what you are going to that's so much better. I'm sorry I mentioned sex but you did tell me that you and Bernadette are going to have a child and so forgive me but there must have been some sex involved.'