Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'Well, I suppose she won't be there in Tara Road any more as a kind of centre for him, you know.'

'She wasn't much of a centre for him when she was there, judging from the amount of time he spent with you.' Bernadette's mother always managed to sound disapproving of her daughter's affair with a married man while equally proud that the matter had been so satisfactorily sorted out.

'It was his home for sixteen years, it still has a great draw for him, the place.'

'This place will too in time, child. Wait till it gets a bit more settled.' Finola Dunne looked around the luxury fitted kitchen which Barney McCarthy's men had installed at double speed. This was an expensive house in one of the more fashionable southern suburbs of Dublin. It must have cost a packet. It was a sheltered avenue, a good place to bring up a new baby, and a lot of other young couples around.

Finola Dunne knew that Danny Lynch was a hot-shot estate agent. But she felt that the sooner he sold the Tara Road house, realised his money and got some small, more suitable place for his first wife, the better. The boy worked hard, she gave him that, and he obviously adored Bernadette, but he would wear himself out unless he sorted out his finances. He had left this morning for a meeting at 6.00 a.m. to avoid the traffic.

'Any mention of his selling Tara Road?' she asked.

'No, and it's not something I ask about. I think he was more attached to that house than to any woman. It gives me the shivers,' Bernadette said.

'No time for that, they'll be here any minute and a long summer of entertaining them begins.'

'Only thirty days, and they're not too bad,' said Bernadette with a grin.

Ria's children were very quiet in Rosemary's car.

'What kind of things will you do all day, do you imagine?' Rosemary asked brightly.

'No idea,' Annie shrugged.

'They don't have cable television,' Brian said.

'Maybe they'll take you out to places?' Rosemary was optimistic.

'She's very quiet, she doesn't go to places,' Brian said.

'Is she nice, I mean interesting to talk to?'

'Not very,' Brian said.

'She's okay, just you know nothing much to say,' Annie said.

“I prefer her mother actually,' Brian said. 'You'd like her, Rosemary, she's full of chat and more your age.'

'I'm sure I would,' said Rosemary Ryan who could cope with any boardroom committee meeting or television discussion, but was finding this conversation very hard going indeed.

At Dublin airport Ria looked around. So many people heading off in so many directions. She wondered whether any of them could be travelling in such a confused state of mind as she was. In the line next to her she saw a good-looking man with the collar of his raincoat turned up. He had fair hair that fell into his eyes. She looked at him wildly. For an instant she thought it was Danny, racing out to stop her leaving, a last-minute plea that she change her mind. She remembered with the feeling of a shower of cold water that this was the last thing on earth he would do. She could still feel him tugging at her hands which she had clasped around his neck. Her face burned at the shame of it.

She walked through the duty-free shop wondering what she should buy. It seemed such a pity to waste the value that was there on all those shelves. But she didn't smoke, she drank little, she didn't need anything electronic, Marilyn's house would be full of more equipment than she would ever learn to use. She stopped by the perfumes.

'I want something very new, something I've never smelled before, which will have no memories,' she said.

The assistant seemed used to such requests. Together they examined the new scents, and settled on one that was light and flowery. It cost £40.

'It seems rather a lot,' Ria said doubtfully.

'Well it is, but then it depends. Do you have that kind of money to spend on a good perfume?' The girl clearly wanted to move on.

'I don't know whether I do or not,' Ria spoke with wonder. 'Isn't that odd? I actually don't know what my financial situation will be. I never thought about it until this minute. I might be the kind of person who could afford this and more, or I might never be able to buy anything remotely like it in my whole life.'

'I should take it then,' said the sales assistant, quickly trying to head off too much philosophy.

'You're right, I will,' said Ria.

She fell asleep on the plane and dreamed that Marilyn had not left Tudor Drive after all but was sitting waiting for her in the garden. Marilyn had brown hair and copper shoes and was wearing a beige suit just like Bernadette's mother had worn. She spoke with a cackle when Ria arrived. 'I'm not Marilyn, you stupid woman, I'm Danny's new mother-in-law. I've got you out here so that they can all move into Tara Road. It was all a trick, a trick, a trick.' Ria woke sweating. Her heart was racing. It was an extraordinary sensation to be on a plane thousands of feet up in the air, people around her eating lunch.

The air hostess was concerned. 'Are you all right? You're as white as anything.'

'Yes… I had a bad dream, that's all.' Ria smiled her gratitude for the concern.

'Have you anyone meeting you at Kennedy?'

'No, but I know the bus to take. I'll be fine.'

'A holiday, is it?'

'Yes, I think it is, I'm sure that's what you'd call it, what I call it. It will be certainly a holiday.' Ria saw the nervous smile of the courteous girl in her stewardess uniform. Really, she must stop this habit of analysing what she was doing. It was just that simple questions caught her unawares.

She lay back and closed her eyes. How ridiculous of her subconscious to have made Marilyn look like Bernadette's mother when of course she looked totally different. Ria opened her eyes suddenly in shock. She had no idea whatsoever what Marilyn looked like. She knew the measurements of her swimming pool, the voltage of her electricity, the weight of laundry that the drier could handle, the times of church services in Westville and the days of the week the garbage was collected. She had the names and phone numbers of two women called Carlotta and Heidi. She had photographs of the rock garden, the main bedroom, the swimming pool and carport.

She knew that Marilyn would have her fortieth birthday while she was in Ireland but she did not know whether she was fair or dark, tall or small, thin or fat. Extraordinary to think that an entirely unknown woman had set out for Tara Road last night and nobody knew what she looked like.

The flights to Dublin were at night and there was a coach service to Kennedy Airport from a nearby town. Marilyn accepted Heidi's offer to drive her there. She closed the door and left the keys and an envelope of instructions with Carlotta. Ria would call to collect them when she arrived in the early evening. She had left her house in perfect order. Clean, freshly laundered linen and towels everywhere, food in the icebox, flowers on the table and the breakfast bar.

She decided about locking the room only when she heard Heidi's car pull up outside the house. She left the door closed but not locked. Ria would understand; she would treat it appropriately. She would probably dust it and open the windows during the two months. There were some things you didn't need to say or to write down.

Heidi chattered and asked questions all the way to the coach terminal. Did Ria play bridge by any chance? Would Marilyn take any courses in Trinity College while she was in Dublin? What was the weather going to be like? And casually, very casually, Would Greg be joining her there at all? Or might he be coming back to Westville during the vacation? To none of these questions did Marilyn give any satisfactory reply. But she did hug her friend Heidi just before she got on the coach.

'You're very generous, and I do hope to be generous myself one day, when I come out of this forest, this awful forest.'