Maeve Binchy - Tara Road

Gertie rang on the door of Number 16 Tara Road. 'This has to be the most embarrassing moment of my life, Marilyn.'

'Yes?' Marilyn was flushed and anxious. The mixture of honey, soya sauce and ginger looked very glutinous and was sticking to the bottom of the saucepan while the chicken still seemed raw.

'But you know the way I come tomorrow… could I come today instead?'

'It's not really suitable Gertie, I'm cooking a lunch.'

'It's just… it's just it would help matters greatly at home if I were to…'

'I'm so sorry. But if you want to be away from home would you care to join Ria's mother and sister for lunch?' Marilyn felt her head buzzing. She was dizzy from her first attempt to cope with Dublin traffic. She was cooking a complicated dish for people she had not wanted to entertain, under the eyes of a menagerie of watchful animals. Now she was asking a third and very stressed woman to join them.

'Ah, no thank you, Marilyn, that's not what it was at all.' Gertie was fidgeting with her hands, her eyes looked frightened.

'Then what is it, Gertie? I'm sorry, I'm not sure…'

'Marilyn, could you give me the money for tomorrow and I'll do the 'work of course later…?' It was so hard for her to ask.

So hard to hear. Marilyn flushed. 'Yes, yes,' she muttered, embarrassed, and went to find her wallet. 'Do you have any change?' she asked without thinking.

'Marilyn, if I had any change would I be here like this asking you for tomorrow's money?'

'No, how stupid of me. Please take this.'

'This will cover tomorrow and all of next week,' Gertie said.

'Sure, fine, whatever you say.'

'You could ring Ria in America and she'll tell you I always honour it.'

'I know you will, and well… goodbye now.'

Marilyn came downstairs flustered and unsettled by the conversation. 'That was Gertie,' she said brightly. 'She couldn't stay.'

'No, she had to get Jack's drinking money to him,' said Nora Johnson succinctly.

At that moment they all realised that one of the saucepans seemed to be on fire with what looked like a toffee coating on the bottom.

'That will never come off,' said Hilary. 'And those are very expensive saucepans.'

They left the saucepan to soak and Marilyn began again. As Hilary had said, it was a mercy she hadn't wasted the chicken fillets, the other bit was only old sauces.

The telephone rang. It was Annie and Brian from the River Shannon. Could Marilyn please find this form? She went upstairs again to the front room where she kept all the mail neatly on the sideboard. She found the form and called them back at the pub where they were waiting for news.

'Great,' Brian said. 'All you have to do now is drive it around to the address with the one-pound entrance fee.'

'Yes, well…'

'Thanks very much, we'd hate for him not to enter.' Annie had taken the phone by now.

'I don't have to take Clement to the show myself?' Marilyn asked anxiously. 'Walk him around a ring or anything?'

'No, they sit in cages actually, and to be honest I'd quite like to do that myself, but if you liked to come along or anything…?'

'Yes well, we'll see.' Marilyn ended the conversation.

'Are they having a good holiday?' Nora sniffed at the unlikely prospect of this.

'I didn't ask them,' Marilyn cried with a great wail because she saw that the second saucepan was burning and neither of these two women who were used to Ria Lynch being in total charge had lifted a finger to rescue it.

Was this what she had come all the way to Ireland for? This ludicrous, exhausting kind of day? Getting more and more enmeshed and involved in the lives of total strangers?

There was a letter from Mam in the mailbox on Tudor Drive.

Dear Ria,

I should have been better about writing letters but somehow God does not put enough hours in the day. And talking of God as we were, I hope you've found a Catholic church out in that place for my grandchildren to go to on Sundays. Marilyn said that she gave you all the details, phone numbers and Mass times and everything, but you don't have to pretend to me that you are a regular Mass-goer, I know better. Marilyn doesn't go to the Protestant church here, and of course she might be of the Jewish faith, but I didn't like to suggest the synagogue to her. She's a grown woman and can make her own choices. I'd be the last one to interfere in anyone else's life.

She was a bit stiff in the beginning but I think she's getting used to our ways all right. A mother should not criticise her daughter's friends, and I don't intend to but you know I don't like Lady Ryan and never will, and I regard Gertie as a weak slob who deserves what she gets by putting up with it. Marilyn is different, she's very interesting to talk to about everything, and very knowledgeable about the cinema. She drives your car like a maniac and has burned two saucepans which she has replaced. She's going to be forty on August 1st. I'm twenty-seven years older than her but I get on with her just fine. I think she's sleeping with Colm Barry but I'm not certain. The Adulterer Barney McCarthy is still prancing around the place. The children get back from the ludicrous boat holiday tomorrow. I'm going to take Annie out for a pizza and hear all the gory details. Annie's anxious to bring her friend Kitty as well, so we may include her in the party and then let them go home together.

Lots of love from your Mam

Ria looked at the postmark wildly. Five days since her mother had written all this. Five whole days. And she hadn't known anything that had been going on. What kind of friends' support system was there that nobody had told her all of this vital information? It was eight o'clock in the morning. She reached for the phone and realised that since it was lunch-time in Ireland her mother would be out on one of her insane perambulations. Why did people write letters like this that took five days and five nights to get there instead of using e-mail? She realised that it was a little unfair of her to blame her mother for not being on the Net since she herself had hardly heard of it a couple of weeks ago. But honestly.

She rang Marilyn. The answering machine was on but she had changed the message. 'This is Ria Lynch's house but she is not here at present. Messages will be taken and relayed to her. Marilyn Vine speaking. I will return your call.' How dare she do that? Ria felt a huge surge of rage. She could hardly contain her hatred of Marilyn.

This woman had gone into her house, driven her car into the ground, chopped down the garden, burned Ria's saucepans, slept with Colm Barry. What else was there to discover about her?

Ria rang Rosemary. She was at a meeting, her secretary said. She rang Gertie in the launderette.

'You're so good to entertain Sheila and the children, she loved her visit to you. She phoned and told me all about it. Loved it she did.' Gertie's voice was happy. What she was really thanking Ria for was keeping up the fiction that Gertie and Jack lived a normal life.

More lies, fantasy, pretence. Ria was so impatient she could hardly keep it out of her tone. 'What's Marilyn up to, Gertie?'

'She's great, isn't she?'

'I don't know, I never met her.'

'Is she sleeping with Colm?'

'Is she what ? Gertie's laugh from the busy lunch-time launderette was like an explosion.

'My mother says she is.'

'Ria, your mother! You never listened to a word your mother said before.'

'I know, did she burn my saucepans?'

'Yes, and replaced them with much better ones. You'll be delighted. She got herself a couple of cheap ones in case she burned them again.'

'What is she… accident prone?'

'No, just not any good as a cook. But you should see what she's done with the garden!'

'Is there any of it left?'