Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

'No, of course not, a mistake.'

'Exactly.'

At Danny's table they had paid the bill and were leaving. 'I took the price of the wine off to compensate for the unpleasantness involved,' Colm said.

'Thank you.' Danny was cold.

'It wasn't Colm's fault,' Annie said.

'Of course not.' Danny was still chilly.

'Nor was it your father's fault that Orla picked on him specifically,' Colm said in an even icier voice.

'No indeed, and thank you very much for your generous gesture about the wine,' said Danny Lynch, changing his tack so swiftly it knocked them all off course.

'Was it a great dinner?' Ria asked her daughter.

'It was extraordinary, Mam. This singer got pissed or stoned or something and started going around with her bosom falling out upsetting everyone. Then she was sort of carried out. Mrs. Vine was there and the drunk singer headed straight for her table and said they were all lesbians! Honestly, Mrs. Vine, Gertie and Rosemary.'

Ria held her head in her hand. 'Come again, Annie? Gertie, Rosemary… I don't believe any of this, Annie.'

'Well, Mam, the only one who's going to confirm it to you is that brilliant observer Brian Lynch, who was there for it all and who's waiting to get on the phone.'

'I'm sorry, Annie, of course I believe you, love. It just seems so unlikely. And did Bernadette and… um… Finola enjoy it all too?'

'Well I think they were a bit stunned.'

'I love you, Annie,' said Ria.

'Oh Mam, for heaven's sake. I'll put Brian on now.'

'Mam?'

'Brian, was it a great night?'

'It was mad, Mam. You just wouldn't believe it. Mam, what's a lebsian? Nobody will tell me.'

'A lesbian, is it?'

'Yes, whatever.'

'It's a lady who likes other ladies more than she likes men.’

'So, is that a big deal?'

'Not a bit. Tell me about the night in the restaurant.'

'Do you know any lebsians?'

'Yes, I know a few, sure.'

'Are they awful?'

'No, of course not.'

'So why do people whisper about them?'

'They don't, believe me.'

'They did, Mam, tonight. Believe me.'

'I'm sure you misunderstood.'

'I don't think so. Do you want to say goodnight to Finola? She's just off.' Ria could hear Annie scream.

'Brian, you are so stupid,' she could hear Annie crying.

'Yes, sure, I'd love to say goodnight to Finola,' Ria heard herself say.

There was a fluster and then a woman came on the line. 'Well, I just want to say that your children are great company,' she said desperately.

'Thank you for saying that. They seem to have taken to you greatly also,' Ria gulped. 'And I gather there was some kind of night to remember?'

Finola considered. 'Unless there had been someone there with a video camera you would never believe it.'

Neither used the other's name. Perhaps it was always going to be like that between them. 'Good luck to you,' Ria said.

'And great good luck to you too,' said Bernadette's mother.

Ria hung up the telephone. She had two hours to get ready for her date with a man who was in technical publishing in Los Angeles and was en route to a conference in Boston. She had just finished a pleasant conversation with the mother of her husband's mistress. The apparently manic-depressive woman with whom she had exchanged homes had been out partying in Colm's restaurant. The world had tilted.

Andy Vine didn't look at all like his brother when he came in and had a lemon drink by the pool, so she was glad she had telephoned Hawaii about him. About her own age or younger, slight and red-haired. Somewhat academic and assuming that she knew much more about college life than she did. 'Forgive me, I keep making the wrong assumptions,' he said when she knew nothing of any faculty or alumni association in either Ireland or Connecticut. 'I thought that's how you and Marilyn met.'

'No, not at all. Other people thought we met over an obsession about gardens, in which I have no interest at all.' She was all smiles and wearing her best summer outfit, a blue-and-white dress that she had got for a wedding last summer and had never worn since. It had looked great with a hat from Polly Callaghan, but there was never anywhere smart enough to wear it since. She should have dressed better. Would everything have been all right had she been an elegant wife?

'Do you know Thai food at all?' he was asking.

'Well, there are Thai restaurants in Ireland now, we are very international. But I've only been twice so I don't remember it all and I'd love you to choose for me when we get there.'

This seemed to go down well. Maybe it was easier making fellows interested in you when you were old and way past it and it didn't matter any more.

They talked easily in the Thai restaurant. He told her about the kind of publishing his company was involved in. Books that you would never hear of unless you happened to be in that field, and then you not only heard about them, you bought them because you had to. He explained how it had all changed so radically because of technology and CD-roms. His grandfather had been a door-to-door salesman for encyclopaedias. The man would spin in his grave if he saw the size of an encyclopaedia now and knew how they were sold. Andy lived in LA in an apartment. He had been married, and was now divorced. There were no children.

'Did you leave her or did she leave you?' Ria asked.

'It's never as simple as that,' he smiled.

'Oh it is,' she insisted.

'Okay, I had an affair, she found out and she threw me out.'

Ria nodded. 'So you left really, by ending the marriage.'

'So you say, so she said. I didn't want it to end but who listened to me?'

'Would you have forgiven her, if she were the one who had the affair?'

'Sure I would.'

'You'd have gone on as if nothing had happened?'

'Look, Maria, people let each other down all the time, don't they? It's not a perfect life with everyone delivering on every promise. Marriages survive affairs if there's something there in the marriage itself that's bigger than the affair. I thought there was in our case, I was wrong.'

'If you had your time all over again… ?' She was keen to know.

'You can't rewrite history, I have no idea what I'd do. Tell me, are you divorced also?'

'I think so,' Ria said. He looked at her, startled. 'That's not as mad as it sounds. You see, divorce was only recently introduced in Ireland. We're still not entirely used to it. But the answer is yes, I am about to be.'

'Did you leave him or…?'

'Oh, he left me.'

'And you won't forgive him?'

'I'm not being given the chance.' There was a pause, 'Andy, can I ask you about Dale?'

'What do you want to know exactly?'

'It's just that when I talked to Greg, well, I think I may have somehow said the wrong thing. He seemed a bit startled, upset almost.'

'What on earth did you say?'

'I don't know, ordinary things, you know, good wishes, and so on.'

Andy shook his head. 'Well, of course people are not all the same the way they respond. Everyone takes things differently. Marilyn's never really accepted it, that's the way she copes.'

'Can't she and Greg talk about it?'

'Greg wants to but she won't apparently.'

Ria felt stung by the way men shrugged things off. Dale was in Hawaii, his mother clearly missed him and yet things were stuck in this impasse. She and Danny hadn't made a brilliant job of sorting their children out, but they had tried. Both of them, she gave Danny that much. This matter of Dale was very baffling. 'Surely all Greg has to do is to work it out with her, dates and times of visits.'

'He was trying to and then she disappeared to Ireland.'

'But when does she think he will come back?'

'In the fall.'

'That's a long time and she still leaves that room like that?' Ria was puzzled.