Just Between Us
Cathy Kelly

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Cathy Kelly 2002

Cathy Kelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007268641

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007389322

Version: 2017-11-21

Praise for Cathy Kelly:

‘A must for Kelly’s many fans; a warm, moving read.’

Daily Mail

‘Totally believable.’

Rosamunde Pilcher

‘An upbeat and diverting tale skilfully told…Kelly knows what her readers want and consistently delivers.’

Sunday Independent

‘An absorbing, heart-warming tale.’

Company

‘Her skill at dealing with the complexities of modern life, marriage and families is put to good effect as she teases out the secrets of her characters.’

Choice

‘Kelly dramatises her story with plenty of sparky humour.’

The Times

‘Kelly has an admirable capacity to make the readers identify, in turn, with each of her female characters…’

Irish Independent

To John, with love

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Cathy Kelly:

Dedication

PROLOGUE: MARCH

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

KEEP READING

Acknowledgements

Excerpt from The House on Willow Street

Prologue

Chapter One

Back Ads

About the Author

By the same author:

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE: MARCH

Adele looked at the invitation and wondered exactly how much it would cost to print up at least a hundred such creamy, expensive cards. A fortune, she’d bet. It was the embossing that cost so much. And for all that it looked so nice, it was a waste of money.

There were perfectly acceptable invitations available in the newsagent’s – ones that you filled in yourself – but clearly, run-of-the-mill invitations weren’t good enough for her sister-in-law. But then, Rose had always had notions above her station.

Adele ran a deeply disapproving finger over the extravagant letters.

Rose & Hugh Miller have great pleasure in inviting Adele Miller to a lunch party to celebrate their Ruby Wedding Anniversary on Saturday, April 25th at Meadow Lodge, Kinvarra.

She scanned down to the dress code, which was ‘smart casual’, whatever that meant.

She’d wear one of her knitted suits, as she always did. She might be sixty-five, but she was proud of the fact that she was still trimmer than many women of her age. Maybe a shawl just in case it was cold, because it would only be April, and the party was going to be in a marquee and not in the actual house. Adele hadn’t been keen on the idea of a marquee. Talk about a waste of money, not to mention delusions of grandeur. Then Hugh had told her it had been his idea, which had suddenly made the whole plan sound like a great idea after all.

‘A big party in the house could destroy the place, what with high heels digging into the wooden floors and red wine on the chairs, you know that, Della my love,’ Hugh had said the previous week when he’d popped in on his way back from a meeting with a client in a nearby town. Adele had smiled fondly at her little brother as he tucked into the steak sandwich she’d made for him as a little treat. He was the only person in the world who still called her Della. Not that Adele would have permitted anyone else to call her by a pet name. Even the doctor she’d known for forty years was on pain of death to call her anything but Miss Miller. The cheeky pup of a postman had tried to call her by her first name once, but Adele had soon put a halt to his gallop. She wasn’t one for modern ideas of familiarity.

But Hugh could call her any name he liked. Her darling brother could do no wrong.

‘You’ve got to have a party for your fortieth wedding anniversary,’ Hugh went on, munching his sandwich appreciatively. Hugh liked his food. He was a big man after all, and handsome, Adele thought, with that six-foot frame and the shock of silver hair. His hair had been an Arctic white-blond once, so he was truly a golden boy. All Adele’s friends had been half in love with him all those years ago. If only she’d found a man like her brother, she might have married too, she thought wistfully.

She glanced down at the invitation. ‘RSVP’ it said. No time like the present.

Her sister-in-law answered on the third ring, sounding out of breath.

‘Hi, Adele,’ Rose said, ‘I was just running the vacuum over the rugs. The place is such a mess.’

Adele thought this was highly unlikely. Her sister-in-law’s home, eight miles away on the other side of the sprawling country town of Kinvarra, was always sparkling. And elegant too. Although it irked Adele to admit it, Rose did have fabulous taste. Who else would have thought of knocking down all those internal walls to transform the rather dark reception rooms into a well-proportioned open-plan space? Adele preferred carpets herself, but the pale wooden floors with their muted rugs looked elegantly modern and fresh compared with the conservative dark maroon carpet that graced Adele’s more traditional Victorian-style house.

‘I got the invitation,’ Adele said stiffly.

‘Did you like it?’ asked Rose. ‘Hugh picked it. I feel a bit guilty spending so much, Adele. They’ve just laid off twenty more people in the tyre factory down the road, you know, and here we are having a big party with a marquee and caterers and flowers…The poverty action group is in serious need of funds and all this excess doesn’t seem right…’ Her voice trailed off but, in her indignation, Adele didn’t notice.

‘My brother’s an important person in Kinvarra; people would think it odd if he didn’t celebrate according to his status,’ Adele said stiffly. ‘They’d certainly think it was odd if you didn’t have a grand party for your ruby anniversary.’ Rose seemed to forget that the Miller family were pillars of the community. How would it look if they weren’t seen to be doing things properly? People might talk. Adele was deeply against having people talk about the family.

‘You’re right, Adele,’ Rose said lightly. ‘I’m getting paranoid in my old age; I worry about the silliest things. I do hope you can make it? Hugh would be devastated if you couldn’t. We all would be. It wouldn’t be the same without you,’ she added kindly.

Adele pursed her lips. This was not going as planned. She hadn’t meant to endorse the whole event, certainly not without some reservations. But for Rose to even imply that she, Adele, might miss it! Her darling brother’s party. By rights, no arrangements should have been made until she had been consulted. She was the oldest member of the Miller clan, three years older than Hugh. She should have been consulted. What if she’d had something planned and couldn’t manage the third Saturday in April?

‘I must fly, Adele,’ Rose was saying in that low, soft, accentless voice of hers. Adele often wondered how Rose had drilled the accent out of her speech. ‘I’ve got another call coming in. Probably the florist. Thank you for calling so early, you are a love. Take care. Bye.’

And she was gone, leaving Adele as highly vexed as she usually was after conversations with her sister-in-law. Florist indeed. Far from florists Rose had been reared. The Miller family had always had lovely flowers in the house, of course. They’d had a maid, for God’s sake, when nobody else in the country had one. But Rose came from a tumbledown house on some backroad in Wexford; a house with slates coming off the roof and plumbing out of the Ark. There hadn’t been enough money for food in the Riordain house, never mind flowers. Marrying Hugh had been Rose’s ticket out of there. Adele glowered at the phone. She had a good mind to phone back and point out that Rose could do the flowers herself and not waste money on a florist. Rose had a knack with flowers. As if in honour of her name, in summer there were always roses all over the place: blowsy yellow ones that matched the buttercup yellow walls and a big china bowl of riotous pink blooms which usually sat on a low, Scandinavian coffee table. All Rose ever did was to carelessly place a handpicked bouquet in a vase and the flowers all fell into place beautifully. She was the same when it came to clothes, thought Adele resentfully. The oldest white shirt looked elegantly informal on Rose Miller because she always had some trick of pinning her dark hair into a soft knot, or of hanging a strand of pearls around her neck, and then she looked instantly right.

Adele had spent years doing her best not to resent Rose. It hadn’t been easy, for all that Rose was so kind to her. Kindness, like other people’s happiness, could be very hard to deal with. And speaking of happiness, here was more proof of how lucky Rose was. She had a lovely home, three grown-up daughters, Stella, Tara and Holly, who’d never given her an iota of bother, and no financial worries, thanks to dear Hugh.

Hugh, Adele had always felt, was the real reason that Rose had had such a wonderful life. Adele adored her baby brother passionately. He was so clever and kind. He’d plucked Rose from an impoverished background and her dull secretarial job and turned her into a Miller lady. And now Hugh and Rose were celebrating their ruby wedding anniversary, complete with uniformed caterers and florists, the whole nine yards. It was like their wedding all over again, Adele thought bitterly, remembering herself, a drab bridesmaid next to the radiant Rose. All eyes had been on the bride with tiny coral-pink rosebuds pinned into the cloud of her dark hair. Even Colin, Adele’s young man, had remarked upon how lovely Rose looked.

‘Good old Hugh.’ Colin had been frankly envious. ‘He’s a lucky fellow to be marrying a girl like her.’

Adele had never forgiven Colin for not understanding how much she felt she’d lost Hugh to Rose. She’d spent hours pinning her fair hair up with little hair clips to show off her long neck and had even dabbed on a bit of rouge and Coral Surprise lipstick, angry with herself for giving in to vanity. It had been no good. Rose had glittered like the sun, overshadowing Adele without even meaning to, and Adele had never, ever been able to forgive her.

Lost in her memories, for a moment Adele let her customary guard down. Her normally stiff back drooped and she sank down onto the arm of a faded old wing chair. If she’d said yes to Colin all those years ago, would she have had a golden life, a family like Hugh and Rose? Colin had been a nice man, sweet and gentle. He simply hadn’t measured up when compared to Hugh, though. Nobody could. At the time, measuring up to Hugh had seemed very important, but now it was different. Adele was lonely. The sidelines were cold and she was always on them, watching other people’s lives and, somehow, not feeling a part of it all. While Rose had everything. Everything. Why had Lady Luck shone so brightly on Rose, who was only a Miller by marriage, and utterly bypassed Adele?

Even the autumn blight that had savaged Adele’s beech hedge had left her sister-in-law’s untouched. And Rose had her beloved girls, the golden Miller girls. Those three girls had led charmed lives, Adele felt, and though they’d undoubtedly been indulged by Hugh, it had all turned out so well.

Adele went to the desk where she kept her stamps and notepad, and wrote formally to accept the invitation to the anniversary party. The phone call had been more in the line of information gathering, rather than an actual response. Adele Miller had been brought up properly, and written invitations got a written reply. It was the kind of behaviour that implied breeding, the sort of thing that people who were dragged up in little cottages in the back of beyond didn’t understand.

‘I would be delighted to attend…’ wrote Adele, her language as formal as the Queen’s. She sighed. Despite everything, she was looking forward to the party, actually. Parties in Hugh’s were always fun and a fortieth wedding anniversary was sure to be a splendid affair. She’d get her hair set, of course. Happier at this thought, Adele began to plan.

CHAPTER ONE

The previous December: two weeks before Christmas

Rose Miller hated committees. Which was a bit unfortunate, because she was on three of them. The Kinvarra Charity Committee was the most irritating for the simple reason that its internal wranglings took so much time, there wasn’t a moment left to actually raise any money for charity. Discussions about the size of the type on the menus for the annual ladies’ lunch, and whether to serve salmon or beef, had taken endless phone calls and two lengthy meetings. If Rose hadn’t practically lost her temper, the committee would still be arguing over it.

‘Does it really matter what the menus look like or what we eat?’ she’d demanded fierily at the final, drawn-out meeting, rising to her feet and making all the other committee ladies clutch their copies of the minutes in shock. Mrs Rose Miller with her dark eyes flashing in anger was not a common sight. A tireless worker for the local charities, she was known for her calm self-possession and for her organisational skills. Tall and strikingly elegant with her trademark upswept hairdo, she was almost regal in her anger. ‘We’re here to raise money, not waste it. Is this our best effort for the underprivileged of this town? To sit in a cosy hotel bar and slurp our way through urns of coffee and entire boxes of custard creams while we discuss minutiae?’

‘Good point,’ squeaked Mrs Freidland, the current chairwoman, who’d been stubbornly holding out for flowing script type and seafood chowder followed by beef despite the fact that the majority wanted salmon for the main course and tiger prawns to start. ‘We’ve been wasting far too much time; let’s stop arguing and vote.’

Feeling rather shocked at her own outburst, Rose sat down and wondered, as she did every year, why she didn’t just resign and take up something less stressful, like hang-gliding or swimming with sharks. But every year she let her name be put forward because, if she wasn’t on the committee, no money would be raised at all. And she passionately wanted to help people. A life lived selfishly was a life half lived: that was her credo. The only difficulty was that for some of the other committee members, charity work was more a sign of social status than anything else.

The Church Hospitality Committee only met a couple of times a year and was the least trouble, as it only involved putting together a couple of suppers for inter-church gatherings and, occasionally, a party for a visiting missionary priest.

Rose’s third committee, the Kinvarra Motorway Action Group, was halfway up the scale of annoyance. Set up to oppose the proposed new route through Kinvarra’s nature park, an area of outstanding beauty around the midlands town, the KMAG committee included a highly efficient local solicitor, several prominent business people and three local politicians. Therefore things got done. But the public meetings were a total nightmare which usually ended up with the committee being instructed to work on at least four wildly differing approaches.

Rose needed a stiff gin and tonic after the KMAG public meetings, although Hugh grinned and told her that in his experience of public meetings, she’d be better off with a stiff drink beforehand.

As one of Kinvarra’s leading legal brains, Hugh was a committee veteran. He’d even served his time as the town’s mayor many years before, which he laughingly said had been a lesson to him Not To Get Involved. Rose had a photo of him in his mayoral robes on the mantelpiece: tall, stately and handsome with his immaculately brushed silver hair setting off the high forehead and the benevolent gaze. The camera hadn’t picked up the wicked glint in Hugh’s eyes that day, a look that said he didn’t mind the job but could have done without the mayoral necklace hanging like a cow chain around his neck.

‘It’s impossible to please even half the people a quarter of the time,’ was Hugh’s sage advice on committees. ‘Everyone goes round in circles for weeks. As for your public meetings, unless someone takes the planners to court, you’re wasting your time.’

‘We will if we have to,’ said Rose heatedly. ‘But we must show our solidarity as a community. We don’t want to be walked on. Don’t you care about the motorway?’

‘It won’t be anywhere near our house,’ Hugh pointed out.

Rose gave up. She found it hard to understand how Hugh could be so pragmatic about important matters. She herself became passionately involved in all her causes, whether they affected her directly or not, but Hugh didn’t seem to feel these things as deeply as Rose.

The girls had all taken after their mother. Thirty-eight-year-old Stella, for all she appeared to be a sensible lawyer, working hard to bring up her daughter on her own, hid a romantic soul beneath her sober office suits. Tara, seven years younger, was the same: a debating queen at school and college, she threw herself wholeheartedly into anything she did. She’d fallen in love the same way, marrying computer sales executive Finn Jefferson six months to the day after they met, half-astonishing people who thought that Tara was destined for unconventionality and liable to run off with a rock star if the mood took her.

And as for Holly, the baby of the family at twenty-seven, Rose knew that beneath her youngest daughter’s gentle exterior there was a vulnerable, fiercely passionate heart. But while Tara and Stella had the courage to fight for what they believed in, Holly didn’t. The secret fear that Rose carried round with her, was that Holly lacked self-confidence because of Rose and because of what she had or hadn’t done. Somehow, Rose felt, she had failed her beloved youngest daughter. But the thought was too painful, and Rose Miller, known for facing all kinds of problems with calm resilience, blocked it out. She wouldn’t, couldn’t think about it.

Today was the dreaded Kinvarra Charity Committee and as Rose parked her car outside Minnie Wilson’s sedate semi-detached house, she had a sudden desire to take off on a mad shopping spree and forget all about the meeting. Instead, she did what was expected of a sensible Kinvarra matron; she checked her lipstick in the mirror, re-pinned a wayward strand of her greying dark hair back into its elegant knot and carried a home-made lemon cake up the path.

‘Rose, is that the time? I’m all at sixes and sevens, I’m not a bit organised!’ wailed Minnie when she answered the door.

Rose gritted her teeth into a smile and walked in. Minnie had to be at least Rose’s age, round the sixty mark, but had the manner of a dizzy young girl and got flustered at the slightest provocation. Minnie was one of the people who’d worried so much about the type size on the charity lunch menus. She’d moved to Kinvarra three years ago when her husband retired and she’d thrown herself so frenetically into local affairs, it felt as if she’d been part of the community for years.

‘Don’t worry, Minnie, I’ll help,’ Rose said automatically. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Well…’ said Minnie anxiously. ‘The kettle’s boiled but I haven’t got the cups out. And look at my hair…’

Hang-gliding, definitely. It had to be more fun than this, Rose reflected. ‘Why don’t you go and fix your hair, Minnie,’ she said calmly, ‘while I sort out the tea.’

Minnie fluttered off upstairs and Rose grimly thought that the group’s chosen charities would be better served if its members all just sent a cheque every year to the charity of their choice. They’d save money spent on endless tea mornings where at least half the time was spent on the process of sorting everyone out with seats, cups and plates of cake.

Rose briskly organised the tea, her mind elsewhere. She often wondered how had she ended up in this life. She’d never wanted to be a pillar of the community and a leading light of every local concern going. When she was eighteen, she’d wanted to work in a modern office in the city, where people addressed her respectfully as Miss Riordain and where a wage packet with the anticipated amount of money was put into her hand every week without fail. The respect and the unchanging wage packet were important. On her father’s tiny farm, income fluctuated wildly, resulting in lean times and very lean times. Nobody felt the need to show particular respect to the beautiful and clever daughter of a small farmer and Rose had grown up deeply aware of the nuances of how people treated the daughters of the local doctor and the big landowners. One of her ambitions was to receive such respect. A good, settled job and a pay packet that came every week would give her freedom. She’d got her foot on the ladder all right, with the junior secretarial job in a construction company. Efficient and eager to learn, she’d dedicated herself to self-improvement. She’d battled with an elderly typewriter until her nails broke and she watched the senior secretary for hints on how she should dress. And then she’d met Hugh, the dashing young lawyer friend of the owner’s son. Hugh came from a world where people never needed to be told how to dress or which fork to use. But to two people in love, that didn’t matter. They were soul mates. Love turned Rose’s life plan upside down and within two years she was married with a small daughter.

Occasionally, she wondered what would have happened if she’d said no to Hugh? Maybe she’d be a high-powered businesswoman, having an exciting but selfish life instead of living for others in Kinvarra where her only day-to-day concerns were her charity work, getting the freezer fixed and helping Hugh organise Christmas hampers for the firm’s most important clients.

Tonight, his firm was involved in a Christmas fundraiser for the local poverty action group which, with the recent wave of redundancies among the area’s big factories, was even more stretched for funds than usual. A black tie gala dinner, it would mean top table stuff and all the Kinvarra glitterati out in force. Rose enjoyed getting dressed up but there were times when she got bored with the inevitable polite conversation at such events. Hugh, on the other hand, never got bored with gala dinners.

She dragged her mind back to the task in hand.

There were seven committee members, so she whipped out seven cups and saucers, because Minnie always made such a big deal about china cups and not mugs. She laid out milk and sugar, cut her lemon cake into slices, and had everything ready by the time Minnie came downstairs.

‘Oh, Rose, you’re so good,’ trilled Minnie when she saw everything. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’

Rose had been about to say something mundane about how it had been no problem, when she really looked at Minnie. For once, Minnie’s girlish complexion (‘soap and water every morning!’ she claimed) was grey and tired. Her eyes were a telltale watery red. It wasn’t mere tiredness, Rose realised. It was something else.

‘Are you all right, Minnie?’ she asked gently. Minnie looked into the face of the woman she’d been half in awe of ever since she’d moved to Kinvarra. Rose was like some elegant television celebrity; gracious and ladylike, without a hair out of place. She had a look of that poor Jackie Kennedy, God rest her. Minnie had never met any aristocratic types but she knew one when she saw one. Rose Miller came from classy people, Minnie was sure. And she was kind; as friendly to the girl in the pub who served them tea as she was to Celia Freidland, the committee chairwoman.

Minnie had tidied the house extra specially for the meeting mainly because Rose would be there. Rose’s husband was a very important man, she had a beautiful house in the most expensive part of town, and she had three lovely girls. Minnie never met Rose without being overwhelmed with a desire to impress her.

‘Minnie,’ said Rose again. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Is there anything wrong?’

Minnie shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. Now, the committee will be here any minute.’ Her smile was camera-bright. ‘I suppose we’re all ready?’ she added.

‘Yes,’ Rose said kindly. There was more to it than tiredness, clearly, but if Minnie didn’t want to talk, that was her business.

The doorbell pealed and Minnie rushed to answer it, welcoming in her guests as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

For once, Rose didn’t hurry the committee’s ramblings. She was quieter than usual and the meeting meandered on until half five when everyone began making astonished noises at how time had flown and how they had families to feed. Rose left after giving Minnie a meaningful handclasp on the doorstep.

‘Please phone me if you need to talk,’ she whispered.

As she drove home, Rose couldn’t get Minnie Wilson out of her mind. There was something wrong there and Rose longed to be able to do something to help. Poor Minnie. As she speculated on her hostess’s misfortune, Rose couldn’t help thinking again of her own life and how happily it had turned out.

Adele often said, grudgingly, that Rose was lucky. But Adele was right. She had been lucky.

Nobody could be prouder of their daughters than she was of Stella, Tara and Holly. Even if she hadn’t been their mother, she’d have thought they were special women. She had a granddaughter she adored, too. Amelia had a great way of staring up at her grandmother with those big, grave eyes and asking things like: ‘Granny, will you and Grandad have a baby so I can play with it?’

Stella had roared with laughter when Rose told her about it.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said we were thinking of getting a puppy and would that do?’

‘Oh no,’ Stella howled. ‘She wants a dog more than she wants a baby sister; she won’t let you forget that.’

If only, Rose thought, Stella had someone in her life. Tara was blissful with Finn, happier than Rose would have imagined she could be. Seeing her middle daughter so settled, made Rose long for the same happiness for Stella. She’d have given anything to see Stella content. Not that she would ever say that to Stella. But a mother could hope.

And as for Holly: well Holly never told anyone what she wanted. Rose did her best to be there for Holly in the background but her youngest daughter had retreated from life in Kinvarra, and Rose, desperate to help, had to accept it. Perhaps Holly was happy after all. Because you never knew, did you, reflected Rose.

Hugh insisted that Rose should stop worrying about her brood.

‘They’re modern women, haven’t they the lives of Reilly?’ he’d say, proud as Punch of his three bright daughters. When the girls came home to Kinvarra, Hugh was always keen to take them into town to lunch or dinner, to ‘show them off’ as Rose teased him.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t set up the Daughters Sweepstake Race,’ she joked, ‘where all the great and good of Kinvarra get their offspring in the race to see who’s the best.’

‘There’s a thought,’ he said gravely. ‘You’re always telling me you’re fed up with organising charity dinner dances and cake sales. A sweepstake would be a sure-fire winner.’

Dear Hugh. He’d been blessed with a great sense of humour, for all that he drove Rose mad with his ability to spread chaos all over the house without ever bothering to tidy up. No matter how many times she scolded him, he still left the bathroom looking like someone had been washing the Crufts Best In Breed in it, with at least three soaked towels thrown around and the top off the shower gel so that a trail of sticky gel oozed into the shower tray. But, despite everything, she loved him and he was a wonderful father. There had been bad times, for sure. But Rose had weathered the storms, that was all in the past. She was lucky.

The Millers’ rambling farmhouse was in darkness when Hugh Miller returned home. Once, Meadow Lodge had been the badly-maintained home of a small farmer with several rackety haybarns, a silage pit positioned right beside the kitchen window and sheep contentedly grazing in the garden, doing their best to fertilise the landscape. When Hugh and Rose had bought it forty years ago, they’d knocked down the crumbling farm buildings, turned the three-acre plot into a decent, sheep-free garden, and had modernised the whole house. Nobody looking at Meadow Lodge now would ever think it had been anything but a gracefully proportioned building with fine big rooms, a huge comfortable family kitchen and gas heating to cope with the winds that sometimes swept down through the midlands and Kinvarra. Rose had filled the house with comfortable couches, luxurious-looking soft furnishings, lots of pictures, lamps that cast a golden glow and plenty of unusual ornaments.

With his arms laden down with his usual consignment of papers and briefcase, Hugh unlocked the front door, shoved it open with his shoulder and turned on the lights in the hall. He wondered where Rose was. It wasn’t like her not to be there when he got home. Even if she had one of her meetings on in the evening, she rarely left until he was home and, if they weren’t going out, she always had something delicious cooking for him. It was strange, therefore, to find a dark, cold house, especially since it wasn’t long before they had to go to the Poverty Action Night dinner.

Dumping his cargo, Hugh threw his big sheepskin coat on the hall chair, dropped his car keys on the hall table not thinking that they might scratch the wood, and went into the big yellow sitting room.

Switching on the overhead light, not bothering to shut the curtains or even switch on one of the Oriental table lamps that Rose liked, Hugh sank down into his armchair, stretched his long legs onto the coffee table because there was nobody there to object, and flicked on the television news.

He was still watching half an hour later when Rose arrived. She switched on the hall lamp and switched off the main light before putting Hugh’s keys into the cream glazed pottery bowl where they lived.

Hugh was still glued to the news.

Rose swallowed her irritation when she went into the sitting room and found all the main lights blazing. If opened curtains were the extent of her problems, then she had little to worry about. Silently, she shut the heavy, primrose-yellow curtains and flicked on the lamps, all of which took mere moments. Why did men never do that sort of thing? Did being a hunter-gatherer absolve the whole species from domestic tasks?

‘How are you?’ asked Hugh absently, without taking his eyes from the box.

‘Fine,’ said Rose. ‘We’ve got to be out of here in an hour: I’m going to make a cup of tea and then have a shower.’

‘Oh I’d love some tea,’ said Hugh.

Why didn’t you make some, then? Rose thought crossly. She stopped herself snapping just in time. She was grumpy tonight, for some reason. She’d better get a grip on herself. She, above all people, had no excuse for moaning. But as she went into the dark kitchen to boil the kettle, she thought that it was all very well deciding that you were lucky, but Hugh drove her insane sometimes.

She’d just made the tea when the phone rang. ‘Hiya, Mum,’ said Tara breezily. ‘How are you?’ Rose beamed to hear her middle daughter’s voice. Tara

was one of life’s the-glass-is-half-full people and it was impossible to be miserable in her presence. ‘Great, Tara love, how are you?’

‘Wonderful. Finn and I are just racing out the door to a special film screening but he just got a work phone call, so I thought I’d give you a quick buzz.’

‘Sounds like an interesting evening,’ Rose said, holding the portable phone in one hand and pouring tea into two pottery mugs with the other.

‘I wish,’ sighed Tara. ‘It’s a small-budget, black and white and boring thing written by one of National Hospital’s ex-writers.’ National Hospital was the television soap which Tara wrote for. ‘We’ve all been press-ganged into going. I’m terrified Finn will doze off in the middle of it.’ Tara laughed merrily. ‘You know what he’s like when he’s made to watch anything without either football, car chases or Cameron Diaz in it.’

‘Like your father, in other words,’ Rose said smiling. She poured the correct amount of milk into Hugh’s tea. ‘Why do women marry their father?’

‘It saves time,’ Tara said. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘The usual. Trip to the supermarket this morning, a charity meeting in the afternoon and the poverty action gala tonight.’

‘I hope you’re going to be wearing the Miller family emeralds,’ joked Tara.

‘But of course,’ rallied her mother. The Miller family emeralds consisted of old-fashioned earrings and a tiny and very ugly pendant, all of which were in Aunt Adele’s keeping. Adele was always dropping heavy hints about leaving them to one of her nieces when she died, but the girls were doing their best not to be remembered.

‘Actually,’ said Rose, ‘I haven’t worked out what I’m going to wear and we’ve got to leave soon.’

‘Shame on you,’ teased Tara. ‘The whole town will be talking if you don’t turn up in your glad rags. Do you not have some swanky cut-down-to-the-boobs dress that’ll make everyone so astonished they cough up even more money for charity?’

‘I’m trying to wean myself off the wanton trollop look,’ Rose said gravely. ‘Besides which, I don’t have the bosom for that type of thing any more.’

‘Shame,’ laughed Tara. ‘I better go then, but can I say hello to Dad?’

With the radar that meant he always knew when his beloved daughters were on the phone, Hugh had already picked up the phone in the hall.

‘Hiya, Tara love,’ said Hugh happily. ‘What mad sexy scenes have you been writing this week to shock us simple television viewers?’

Even Rose, on her way upstairs, could hear Tara’s groan of ‘Da-ad!’

‘She’s in great form,’ Hugh remarked when he walked into their bedroom a few moments later, pulling off his tie.

‘Yes, very happy,’ said Rose who was standing in front of the wardrobe mirror attempting to zip up a cream beaded evening dress. ‘Will you do me up?’ she asked Hugh.

He ambled across the room and threw his tie on the bed.

‘Were you talking to Stella today?’ he asked as he expertly pulled the zip to the top.

‘Not today,’ replied his wife. ‘She said she was going to have a busy day. And her neck’s been at her all week. I might phone her now.’

‘Great.’ Hugh grinned. He stripped off his clothes quickly, while Rose sat on the edge of the bed and dialled Stella’s number. She wedged the receiver in the crook of her neck and began to paint a coat of pearly pale pink on her nails.

‘Hello, Amelia,’ she said delightedly when the phone was finally answered. ‘It’s Granny. I thought you and Mummy were out when you didn’t answer.’

‘Mummy is in the bath. She has a cricket in her neck,’ said Amelia gravely, ‘and Aunty Hazel gave her blue stuff to put in the bath to get rid of the cricket.’

‘Poor Mummy,’ said Rose. ‘Tell her not to get out of the bath, whatever happens.’

‘She’s here,’ Amelia announced. ‘And she’s dripping wet bits onto the floor.’

‘Sorry darling,’ apologised Rose when Stella came on the line. ‘I told Amelia not to get you out of the bath.’

‘It was time I got out,’ Stella said. ‘I was in danger of falling asleep in there.’

‘How’s your neck?’

‘A bit better,’ Stella admitted. ‘It started off as a little twinge, or a cricket, as Amelia says, and today it just aches. I can’t lift a thing and Amelia has been very good, haven’t you, darling?’

In the background, Rose could hear her granddaughter say ‘yes’ proudly.

‘Have you got any of those anti-inflammatories left from the last time?’ Rose said worriedly. ‘If you’re out, remember, you left some here just in case. I’ll drop them up tomorrow if you want.’ Kinvarra was an hour’s drive from Stella’s home in Dublin, but Rose never minded the trip.

‘That would be lovely, Mum,’ Stella said. ‘I don’t have any tablets left,’ she admitted. ‘But are you sure you want to drive up? The traffic’s sure to be mad this close to Christmas.’

Rose smiled. ‘What else are mothers for?’ she said simply.

‘Can I say hello?’ said Hugh.

Rose held up a finger to indicate that she’d be another moment. ‘Tell me, what time do you want me there for?’ asked Rose. ‘If I come up for ten, you can go back to bed and I’ll bring Amelia swimming.’

‘Oh, Mum, that would be wonderful.’ Stella sounded so grateful. ‘But I feel so guilty…’

‘Rubbish. You need a break,’ her mother said firmly. ‘Here’s your father.’

Rose and Hugh changed places.

‘I’ll come too,’ Hugh told Stella. ‘Amelia loves swimming with her grandad.’

As he talked to their oldest daughter, Rose hung Hugh’s tie on the rack in the wardrobe, then picked up his shirt from the beige carpet and popped it into the laundry basket. The master bedroom was no trouble to tidy. Knowing Hugh’s propensity for mess, Rose had furnished it so there was nowhere to put clutter. There was just a king-sized bed with a quilted cinnamon-coloured bedcover, a small boudoir chair in the same fabric, and pale wood bedside cabinets which were adorned with lamps and photos of the girls in wooden frames. Rose kept her scent and make-up in the big cupboard under the washbasin in the adjoining bathroom. The unfussy lines of the room were comforting, in her opinion. Relaxing. Apart from the family photos and the big watercolours of four different varieties of orchid on the walls, there was nothing to distract a person from going to sleep. Hugh had wanted a TV in the room but Rose had put her foot down. Bedrooms were for sleeping in.

Sleep sounded very alluring right now. Rose wished they weren’t going out tonight. She’d prefer to get an early night and head off for Stella’s early in the morning. Supper on a tray would be lovely.

Hugh said goodbye and hung up.

‘Try phoning Holly,’ Rose said from the bathroom. She hadn’t spoken to Holly for a week, not that this was unusual, but even so, Rose still worried when there’d been no word from her youngest.

‘Nobody there,’ said Hugh after a moment. ‘Her machine isn’t on, either. I might buy her one for Christmas. That old thing she has is useless.’ He dialled another number. ‘Her mobile’s off too. Hi, Holly, it’s Dad. Remember me? Father-type, silver hair, known you for, oh, twenty-seven years. Just phoning to say hello. Your mother says hello too. I suppose you’re out enjoying yourself as usual. Another wild party? Talk to you sometime over the weekend, darling, bye.’

He hung up. ‘Holly’s terrible at returning phone calls,’ he grumbled.

‘She’s enjoying her life,’ Rose said automatically. ‘She’s entitled to be out having fun and forgetting about us. That’s what girls her age do.’ Well, she hoped that’s what Holly was doing.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Hugh.

In the bathroom, he and Rose stepped round each other in the expert dance of people used to forty years of sharing a bathroom. While Rose applied her lipstick in the mirror, Hugh ran water to shave.

In the harsh light of the bathroom, Rose noticed that there seemed to be more wrinkles than ever fanning around her eyes. If she’d religiously slathered eye cream on for years, would it have made a difference? Rose didn’t care. She’d do. She left Hugh to his shaving and went back into the bedroom to sort out an evening handbag, and to mentally plan her trip the next day. Then she scooped the dirty clothes from the laundry basket and went downstairs to the kitchen to put on a wash. She felt happier from just talking to her beloved daughters.

Stella had sounded so grateful that Rose was going to drive up and visit, but the reality was that Rose adored seeing Stella and little Amelia and loved being able to help her darling Stella out in some small way. Not that she pushed herself into their lives, no. Letting your children go was the one part of motherhood there was no manual for. Rose did her best not to be a clingy mother. She let her daughters live their own lives, which was why it was doubly wonderful that they wanted her around.

The kitchen in Meadow Lodge was Rose’s favourite room in the whole house. Probably, because it hadn’t changed much since Stella, Tara and Holly used to sit at the scrubbed pine table moaning as they laboured over maths homework. The walls were still the same duck-egg blue, the floor was still terracotta tiled, with a frayed scarlet kelim beside the shabby two-seater couch, and the cupboards had only changed in that they’d had several more layers of cream paint applied over the years. The child’s paintings stuck on the fridge were now Amelia’s, while the wall of family photos was crammed with the ever-increasing Miller family gallery. This now included Tara looking sleekly radiant in Amanda Wakeley on her wedding day, the normally camera-shy Holly looking uncomfortable in her graduation dress, and a beautiful black and white portrait of Stella and Amelia, taken by her friend Hazel.

Rose set the washing machine to a warm wash and then looked around for something else to do. This evening wouldn’t be too bad, she decided. Talking to the girls had invigorated her. Anyway, there were loads of people who’d love a glamorous night out at a dressy dinner. She was lucky to have such a good social life. She was lucky full stop. People were always telling her so. But then, it was one thing to look as if your life was perfect, it was another thing for it to be so. Looks could be deceptive. Minnie Wilson’s was a prime example: bright on the outside, with some sort of hidden misery clearly lurking on the inside. Rose wondered if everybody’s life was different behind the facade?

CHAPTER TWO

The following Monday, Stella Miller was also thinking about how appearances mattered as she waited patiently in the jewellers for a salesperson to help her. It was ten days before Christmas, and everyone and their lawyer was shopping for gifts and the streets were heaving with irate shoppers who didn’t care if their umbrella took someone else’s eye out. The season of goodwill be damned.

Stella had walked in the door of Austyn’s Fine Jewellers at precisely the same time as the expensively-dressed couple currently being served but the only available salesman, with an unerring nose for people about to spend bucketloads of cash, had gravitated instantly towards the well-dressed couple, who were looking for an engagement ring.

The woman’s coat was cashmere and reeked of money. Stella wryly thought that her coat reeked of nothing but good value, having been a sale bargain two years previously. Still, she didn’t mind waiting. Stella had long ago decided that life was easier if she didn’t sweat the small stuff.

Leaning against the counter, she watched the engagement ring show unfold in front of her eyes. The salesman’s eyes shone with joy as he reached into the shop’s main window and let his fingers settle reverently on the pale grey suede cushion. Cushion No 1, resting place of the finest diamond rings in the entire shop.

Carrying it as carefully as if it was a priceless antiquity and he was Indiana Jones, the salesman laid the cushion on the glass counter, discreetly attaching its steel chain to a hook underneath, just in case somebody dared to snatch it and make off with several millions’ worth of flawless diamonds.

The customers sighed at the same moment, sighs of relief at finding the perfect engagement ring. They looked thrilled. The salesman allowed himself a sigh too, thinking of the commission.

‘Would Madam like to try it on?’ he said hopefully.

Stella was close enough to get a really good look at the five rings on their bed of grey suede, each seeking to outdazzle the others. The ring in the centre was her favourite. She’d seen it in the window the week before when she was rushing down the street after meeting a friend for lunch. At the time, there were still at least fourteen shopping days till the holiday, but Stella was one of life’s organised people who colour-coded her underwear drawer, rearranged the freezer contents on a monthly basis, and viewed buying Christmas presents any later than the week before the event as reckless.

Her mother adored those prettily painted enamelled pill boxes and Stella wanted to buy her something extra special to say thanks for the weekend when Rose and Hugh had arrived to take Amelia swimming. Rose had brought a basket with organic eggs, freshly baked bread and lots of her special fruit scones, as well as the wonderful anti-inflammatory drugs, which had helped her neck get better. Rose deserved much more than an ordinary pill box and Austyn’s had a huge selection: flowered ones, ones with strawberries cunningly painted on; you name it, they had it. Stella imagined that if she’d asked for a pill box with a finely painted dead cockroach on it, they’d have had one.

But it was the diamond ring, sitting fatly on Cushion No 1, that had caught her eye amidst the tinsel-strewn display of pendants and rows of bangles on the day when she didn’t have time to stop. Peering in the window and half-thinking that perhaps she should buy a department store gift voucher instead, Stella had spotted it instantly. One luscious marquise-cut diamond surrounded by oval diamond petals, like a wildly expensive flower perched on a fine platinum band. Large but certainly not vulgar; just big enough to proclaim love, devotion and hard cash.

‘Try it on, darling,’ urged the man, now. The woman beamed at him and stretched out manicured fingers.

The salesman expertly unhooked the ring, all the time thinking of what a bumper year this had been for the shop. They were running out of Rolexes and Patek Philippe watches faster than they could import them; he’d personally sold two sapphire-studded gold necklaces yesterday, and now this: a couple interested in the most beautiful (and expensive) ring on the premises.

In one fluid move, the ring was on the woman’s finger. It was exquisite. Stella sighed. Much and all as she adored the costume jewellery she bought for a song in markets and second-hand stalls, there was something irresistibly indulgent about the real stuff.

‘Can I help you, Madam?’

She looked up into the eyes of another salesman, who was in a very bad temper because he should have been the one serving the diamond-ring hopefuls and would have been if the credit card machine hadn’t been taking so long all day.

Stella straightened up, a tall, neat figure in a charcoal woollen coat with a crimson knitted hat adding the only splash of colour to her sober outfit. ‘Yes, I’d like to look at some of the enamelled pill boxes,’ she said.

With one last wistful look at the fabulous diamond being admired by the besotted couple to her left, she followed the salesman to the back of the store, where a display of enamelled boxes waited.

Within five minutes, Stella had chosen a Victorian-style box and was impatiently waiting for her credit card to be run through the machine by the still-grumpy salesman. She was in a rush because tonight was Amelia’s school Nativity play. Stella couldn’t wait to see it. Amelia had talked of nothing else for a month, her dark brown eyes shining when she practised her bit which involved shuffling onstage, kneeling at the front of three rows of angels, and singing a carol off-key. Amelia had inherited Stella’s tone deafness, but she looked so adorable when she sang that it didn’t matter.

Seven years old and cute as a button, Amelia was the image of her mother. In a police line-up, nobody could have failed to notice the similarity between the two, although the younger version had her glossy chestnut hair in pigtails, while her mother’s was styled in a chin-length bob. Amelia’s heart-shaped little face was graver than Stella’s serene oval one, and her huge eyes were watchful, which made people who didn’t know her think she was a quiet child. She was anything but. She was simply shy round strangers. But Amelia was perhaps a little more grown-up than most children her age. That was Stella’s only regret about divorcing Glenn – his absence and their status as a one-parent family had made little Amelia seem older than her years. Not that Amelia seemed to mind only seeing her daddy a few times a year, but Stella still worried about it.

The night before, Amelia had pranced around the living room in her white glittery angel robes and sang ‘Silent Night’ in her breathy voice.

‘David’s dad is going to video-tape it, Mum, and Miss Dennis says she’ll get copies for all of us if we give her a tape.’

‘We have to get two tapes, then, darling,’ Stella had said, hugging Amelia, ‘so we can keep one for us and send one to Daddy.’

‘OK. Will I sing it again?’ Amelia asked.

‘Yes, darling.’

The tape might just spark Daddy out of his habitual languor, Stella thought. He really was useless at remembering how important things like Christmas were to kids. Stella had hoped that Glenn’s beloved father’s sudden death two years previously might have forced him to grow up a bit and remember his responsibilities, but it hadn’t. Last year, she’d ended up buying Amelia a gift from Daddy, only to have Daddy turn up on Boxing Day with something else. ‘Another present, Daddy, you are good,’ Stella had said between gritted teeth, even though she’d told him she’d bought something for Amelia from him. He was working in the Middle East this year and his present had long since arrived, only because Stella had haunted him with phone calls reminding him to send one. Stella could never comprehend how her ex-husband didn’t understand children, seeing as he was such an absolute kid himself. At this rate, Amelia would be a grown-up long before her father.

Stella reminded herself to phone him again and reconfirm the arrangements for their Christmas Day phone call. As long as Amelia wasn’t disappointed, that was the main thing. Normally calm about everything else, Stella knew she was perfectly capable of ripping Glenn’s intestines out if he upset Amelia.

She glanced at her watch: ten past five. Time she was out of there. Where the hell was the salesman with her credit card receipt? Standing alone, she glanced back at the about-to-be-engaged couple who were still deliberating over the diamond ring.

They didn’t look wildly, madly in love, she decided. They looked content, but not candidates for a passionate lunchtime bonk because they simply couldn’t wait until evening. Maybe they were in like, which was easier than being in love. Less hassle. And a good way to cope with loneliness. Stella had lots of friends who’d do anything to find a good man to be in like with.

I am lucky, Stella thought gratefully, as the salesman appeared with her credit card slip. Without her darling Amelia, she might be one of the lonely people who left the radio on all day so there’d be some noise to come home to. Amelia was everything to her.

She brushed away the brief thought that having a man in her life might be fun. Stella Miller had no time for men – no diamond rings for her. Amelia was her number one priority and that was that.

The wind-chill factor was high and the rain was back as she rushed out of the jeweller’s and up the crowded street, ignoring the rows of over-decorated shop windows showing fabulous party dresses. Sparkly little tops and hip-skimming skirts were not on Stella’s shopping list. With her social life, she didn’t need clothes like that. Her most important night-time engagement for the festive season was Amelia’s play tonight, which was to be followed by a drinks party in the school hall. Stella’s work clothes were the dressiest in her wardrobe and she had nothing nicer than the tailored grey suit she was wearing with a cranberry silk shirt.

Thanks to streams of cars driving into the city centre for late-night shopping, the traffic home was astonishingly light and Stella parked the car outside Hazel’s house at half past five.

She rarely collected Amelia from Hazel’s house without saying a tiny prayer of thanks for having someone so perfect to look after her daughter. Hazel lived one street away from Stella, and she’d been looking after Amelia since she was nine months old. Hazel had started out as a childminder and become a much-loved family friend. To Amelia, Hazel was like another mother, someone who fussed over her, loved her and knew when she was up to mischief. Hazel’s own twin daughters were two months older than Amelia and the three little girls played together like sisters, which meant plenty of squabbling and plenty of making up. A former bank manager who’d had her daughters at the age of thirty-eight thanks to IVF, Hazel hadn’t needed any encouragement to give up her job to look after her longed-for babies. ‘I was waiting for the moment I could dump my business suits and become an earth mother,’ she often said ruefully, looking down at her daily uniform of elasticated-waist jeans and a big sweatshirt to hide her spare tyre. She’d certainly thrown herself into the role. Her home was lived-in, comfortable and always smelled wonderfully of home cooking. Hazel even made her own jam.

‘You make me feel so guilty,’ Stella would wail when she saw Hazel’s line of neat jars filled with jewel-coloured preserve.

‘We’ve four gooseberry bushes, redcurrants and an apple tree,’ Hazel would reply. ‘I can’t waste them.’

Today, when she reached Hazel’s house, Stella didn’t have the opportunity to ring the doorbell before Amelia raced out, pigtails flying, to open the front door.

‘Hi, Mum,’ she said eagerly, pretty in flowing angel robes with silver ribbons trailing from her coat-hanger wings. Stella had almost wept making those damn wings. It had taken two nights and three broken nails to finish them.

‘Hello Amelia,’ Stella said, tweaking a pigtail and kissing her daughter on the forehead. She knew that Hazel didn’t allow the children to open the front door themselves but she couldn’t bring herself to give out to Amelia for it after such a welcome. ‘Are you ready for the play, darling?’

‘Yes, Mum. Can I do ballet? Becky and Shona are going to do it and we’ve got to get the shoes and a dress thing…’

‘Their class has gone ballet mad,’ said Hazel, appearing from the kitchen with a carrot in one hand and a vegetable peeler in the other. She was dressed for the evening in a brown stretchy velvet dress with a bright orange plastic apron thrown over the ensemble to keep it clean. Her russet curls were loose in honour of the event and her pale lashes had been given a speedy sweep of a mascara brush. That was it: Hazel had neither the time nor the inclination for long beauty routines.

‘The gymnastics craze is officially over and we’re now into tutus and proper pink dance shoes. In a vain attempt to calm them down before the play, Miss Dennis announced that ballet is back on the curriculum in the New Year. I said I was not driving into the city to the dance shop until January.’

Becky thundered out of the kitchen, another angel with golden ribbons in her red curls and gold painted wings hanging lopsidedly from her shoulders. With two little angels, Hazel had had twice as much trouble over making coat-hanger wings as Stella had.

‘Mary’s mother is going to make her a proper ballet dress,’ announced Becky, with the unspoken ‘Why can’t you, Mum?’ hanging in the air.

A small bundle of energy, Becky stomped everywhere like a baby elephant and when she climbed the stairs, it sounded as if the entire top storey of the house was collapsing. ‘I want to be a swan princess,’ she added firmly.

Hazel and Stella exchanged amused glances over the heads of their children.

‘I’m going to be a swan princess too,’ insisted Amelia.

Becky glared at her crossly.

‘You can all be swan princesses,’ soothed Hazel, ever the peacemaker. ‘But we don’t want to spend lots of money buying swan princess outfits and ballet shoes if you get fed up with it in a week.’

Both Amelia and Becky looked shocked at the very idea. As if.

‘They handed out a note on ballet lessons and I put it in Amelia’s schoolbag,’ Hazel said.

Stella smiled thanks.

‘Look, Mum!’ said Amelia, dancing around as if she was already in ballet class. She attempted a creditable prima ballerina spin, holding up her flowing angel skirts as she twirled. ‘Look at me, Mummy.’

‘No, look at me,’ insisted Becky, having a go herself and cannoning into Stella.

‘I’m sure you’ll be a lovely swan princess,’ Stella said kindly to Becky.

Amelia, who was at that age when she was keenly aware of the difference between what adults said and what they meant, stared up at her mother.

‘Right, girls, are we all set for the play?’ Stella said quickly.

‘Yes!’ shrieked the two girls.

‘Just give me five more minutes and I’m ready,’ Hazel said. ‘Shona,’ she called.

Another red-headed angel with gold ribbons emerged from the playroom, where she’d obviously been painting herself with glitter glue. The twins weren’t identical but both had their mother’s wild red hair and her hazel eyes.

‘Go upstairs and use the bathroom; we’re going in a moment,’ Hazel said. ‘Wash your hands properly. I’ll be up in a moment to check.’

The children thundered upstairs for one final look at themselves in the mirror and a half-hearted bit of hand-washing, while Stella followed Hazel into the homely kitchen. Apart from her two sisters, Stella felt closer to Hazel than any of her other friends. Their lives were totally different, and Stella was thirty-eight to Hazel’s forty-five, but they shared the same dry sense of humour. Hazel understood her, Stella felt. Hazel never tried to set Stella up with men, or berated her for not going on dates. She understood, without being told, that Stella was perfectly happy with her life the way it was.

And if Hazel often thought that she’d love her closest friend to have someone special in her life, she kept the thought to herself.

‘Do I have time for a quick cup of tea?’ Stella asked, flicking the switch on the kettle. ‘I’ve been shopping and I’m shattered.’

‘Course, make me one too.’ Hazel rapidly chopped up the carrots and added them to an earthenware dish. ‘Buy anything nice?’

‘A pill box for my mother in Austyn’s. I’ve got everything now,’ Stella added with satisfaction. ‘I saw this couple buying the most incredible diamond ring: it was enormous. God knows what it cost, but Securicor would need to follow you around permanently if you bought it.’

‘Sounds like Hazel’s Christmas present,’ remarked Hazel’s husband, Ivan, as he closed the front door and walked into the kitchen. A tall, wiry man with laughing blue eyes, trendy tortoiseshell glasses and almost no hair at all, Ivan was a building society manager whose first love was his wife and their twins, followed by a lifelong passion for opera. Hazel sometimes grumbled that she was deaf from listening to ‘The Ring Cycle’ played at full volume, but Stella knew she didn’t really mind. She was just as mad about Ivan as he was about her. Affectionate teasing was the glue that held their marriage firmly in place.

‘You didn’t buy me another huge diamond, sweetie?’ inquired Hazel, turning her face up to her husband’s for a kiss. ‘I’ve run out of fingers!’

‘Sorry, yes.’ Ivan did his best to look penitent. ‘I’ll bring the ring back tomorrow and buy you a tasty red nylon negligee set instead. Any tea left in the pot?’

‘I want pink nylon, silly. You know I like my clothes to clash with my hair. Ooh, get the biscuits out, Ivan, while you’re at it,’ Hazel added, as he took a mug from the cupboard. ‘We won’t be back here before nine and you know school parties: if we get one soggy sausage roll between us, we’ll be lucky.’

Stella and Hazel watched as Ivan wolfed down five chocolate biscuits, while they forced themselves to eat only one plain one each.

‘How can you eat like that and not put on weight?’ Stella marvelled.

Ivan patted his concave stomach. ‘Superior genes,’ he mumbled with his mouth full.

Hazel took off her apron and threw it calmly at her husband. ‘Surely remarks like that are grounds for divorce?’ she said to Stella.

‘Don’t ask me: I’m not a family law specialist,’ Stella laughed, used to their banter. ‘I’m the property queen.’ She headed out of the kitchen, calling over her shoulder: ‘Fight amongst yourselves, I’m going to tart up quickly.’

In the small cloakroom under the stairs, Stella took out her brush and began tidying her hair. Although she stared at her reflection in the mirror, she didn’t really see herself. Instead, she thought about Ivan and Hazel, and the couple in the jewellers. Stella could live out the rest of her life quite happily without a knuckle-dusting diamond on her ring finger. You didn’t miss what you’d never had, as her mother often said. But it was possible to miss something you’d grown up with, even if it hadn’t been yours exactly. Stella had grown up with parents who adored each other. And she saw true love every day with Ivan and Hazel, who teased each other, had arguments about eardrum-splitting opera, and yet still each worshipped the ground the other walked on. Stella had spent years claiming that love was the last thing on her list, but occasionally, just occasionally, she wished it wasn’t.

She came back into the room two minutes later with her cloud of hair swinging from the vigorous brushing she’d given it.

Hazel smiled affectionately at her friend. Stella never bothered with too much make-up either. But then, the difference between them, Hazel knew, was that Stella didn’t need it. The huge dark eyes framed by thick lashes dominated her oval face, giving her the serene look of some medieval Madonna, patiently waiting to have her portrait painted. Dark brows winged out in perfect arches above her deep-set eyes. Her straight nose didn’t need any careful shading and her creamy skin was good enough to manage without all but a hint of base, which should have made Hazel madly envious. Her skin was freckled, red-tinged and needed buckets of concealer. Not that it got it.

Stella had the sort of fine-boned elegance that Hazel, a great admirer of beauty, appreciated, with tiny ankles and wrists which she said she’d inherited from her mother. But Hazel loved Stella far too much to feel jealous of her. Instead, she took pride in her friend’s beauty and despaired of Stella ever knowing how lovely she was.

Tonight, Stella had painted her mouth a surprising crimson that matched the rich colour of her satin shirt. She rarely wore such vivid colours and she looked fabulous.

‘Get you, missus,’ Hazel said.

‘Do you think the lipstick’s too much?’ Stella asked. ‘I bought it today but maybe it’s overdoing it a bit…’

‘It’s lovely, really sexy,’ Hazel insisted. ‘I don’t know why you don’t wear red lippie more often.’

‘School parties aren’t the right occasions for “sexy”,’ Stella pointed out. ‘Remember last year?’

At the previous Christmas play, the children’s teacher had worn a flirty little sequinned dress in honour of the occasion, and had been shocked to be on the receiving end of a jealous outburst from one mother whose husband had a roving eye. Both Stella and Hazel had felt very sorry for sweet, enthusiastic Miss Palmer, a newly qualified teacher, who’d thought she was doing the right thing by wearing her best clubbing outfit. Dancing energetically with the children at the party, Miss Palmer had almost bounced out of her dress, making her very popular with the fathers and not so popular with some of the mothers.

‘Simple dress code disaster,’ Hazel agreed. ‘But there’s a difference between a bit of red lipstick and a va-va-voom sequinned dress.’ She eyed Stella’s grey suit. ‘Unless you’re planning to rip that off and sing “Jingle Bells” in your knickers?’

‘How did you guess?’ Stella said deadpan.

‘What was wrong with Miss Palmer’s dress, anyhow?’ demanded Ivan, who was only half-listening to the conversation. ‘I don’t know why that stupid woman had a go at her. The poor girl looked nice. It’s a free country, she can wear what she wants.’

Hazel shot Stella a look that spoke volumes.

Stella tried to explain. ‘It was the right dress on the wrong occasion,’ she said patiently. ‘Imagine if I was going to a party here, for example, and a party at Henry Lawson, the senior partner’s house. I couldn’t wear the same thing.’

‘Why ever not?’ demanded Ivan.

Hazel interrupted. ‘Because if Stella turned up at Henry Lawson’s house wearing a PVC catsuit, Henry would have a coronary and his wife would have one too, from pure rage because she’d be firmly convinced that Stella was a harlot who was after her man.’

‘I blame those magazine articles telling women how high the chances are of their husbands having it off with someone he works with,’ Stella said. ‘They’re convinced the office is one big extramarital dating agency where everyone pants with lust. If you’re not married, all the wives think you must be after their husbands.’

‘Which is hilarious if you look at most of the husbands,’ remarked Hazel, who had met Henry at Stella’s office. Charming and friendly he might be, but he wasn’t hunk material.

Stella grinned. ‘I’d love to know what sort of offices they do that kind of research in because, clearly, I’ve been working in the wrong places all these years. Honestly, if I get a spare moment these days, it’s all I can do to rush out to the loo or grab a cup of tea. Chasing the senior partners round their desks would be very far down the list of must-do tasks.’

‘Surely not?’ Hazel teased. ‘There’s something about the way Henry’s belly swells majestically over his waistband…I find him devastating in a sea lion sort of way.’

‘You can have him, then,’ Stella said kindly.

‘I didn’t know you had a PVC catsuit, Stel,’ Ivan interrupted eagerly. ‘Could Hazel borrow it?’

‘I’ll drop it over tomorrow,’ Stella said drily.

They were still laughing a couple of minutes later when both families piled into Hazel’s space wagon. Sitting in the back with the children, Stella made sure they were all firmly strapped in and was putting her own seatbelt on when she felt a small cold hand sliding into hers. Amelia looked up at her mother, her face scared and pale in the gleam of the street lights. Stella put her arm round her daughter’s shoulders and nuzzled close until she could feel the fake fur of Amelia’s anorak hood tickling her face. ‘You’re going to be wonderful, love,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve practised loads of times and you know it off backwards.’

‘What if I forget?’ said Amelia in a hollow voice.

‘You won’t forget,’ Stella encouraged. ‘You’re far too clever for that. I know that you know all the words and you’re going to be brilliant, and mummies are always right, aren’t they?’

Amelia nodded at the logic of this and snuggled closely to her mother for the rest of the journey.

Benton Junior School was blazing with light when they arrived, and there was a line of cars ahead of them as parents pulled up outside the doors to disgorge angels, shepherds, wise men and a few farmyard animals.

‘That’s not a real sheep, is it?’ asked Ivan as they watched a white woolly animal bounce from a car and proceed to lift its leg on the headmistress’s prized box tree which was covered with festive golden ribbons.

‘That’s Mrs Maloney’s dog,’ said Shona. ‘It was in for the rehearsal yesterday. It weed on the stage.’

The children giggled.

‘I hope you don’t have to kneel in the wet bits,’ Ivan said solemnly.

‘Uuuughh,’ the girls shrieked.

‘But you probably will,’ he continued, ‘and you’ll be wet and smelly, and you won’t be able to get back in the car but you’ll have to run home in your angel clothes in the dark, all smelly and wet and yucky…’

Laughing and giggling over wet knees meant that by the time the space wagon reached the door, all performance nerves had gone and Amelia, Shona and Becky were eager to rush in to where scores of children were charging around, squealing at the tops of their voices. Some had glitter on their faces, while others had big Groucho Marx moustaches drawn on. Wings got stuck to other wings and there were several clusters of children yelling as Mrs Maloney, the worn-out music teacher, tried to unattach them. The noise level was pounding, despite the presence of three teachers and several harassed parents.

‘Whatever they pay teachers, it’s not enough,’ Ivan said heavily as he went off to park the car.

‘Where will you be sitting, Mummy?’ asked Amelia, suddenly anxious again and clutching tightly onto her mother’s hand now that they were in the middle of the excited crowd. ‘I want to be able to see you.’

‘Big hug,’ said Stella, crouching down. She held Amelia tightly, breathing in her fresh smells of shampoo and crayons. ‘I’ll wave to you when you come in so you can see me, I’ll be as near the front as I can, I promise.’

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart,’ Stella said gravely.

‘Quiet children!’ boomed a voice and the noise miraculously ceased. Mrs Sanders, the headmistress, had a commanding presence and when she spoke, people hopped to do her bidding. Suddenly, the angels were whisked away into a classroom for a final wing inspection, the shepherds were sent to the cloakrooms for one last pre-show visit, and the parents were told that everything was under control and would they please take their seats.

The hall was almost as noisy as the lobby had been, full of chattering parents and screaming little brothers and sisters who wanted to rush around and fight with other children. Hazel and Stella squeezed into seats halfway down and waited.

‘I wonder does Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother feel as nervous as this before a show?’ Stella said, twisting her handbag strap between shaky fingers.

‘Probably not. Don’t worry, they’re going to be fine,’ Hazel said. ‘They’re all word perfect. My only worry is that Becky will have a row with someone and hit them over the head with her tambourine. She’s so headstrong.’

‘It’s just a phase she’s going through,’ Stella tried to sound comforting.

‘She’s been going through that phase since she was a toddler,’ Hazel sighed. ‘If she’s like this at seven, imagine what she’ll be like when she’s a teenager. You do not know how lucky you are with Amelia; that child is so good. She puts Becky to shame.’

‘Shove up and make room, girls.’ It was Ivan, shivering from the cold.

Stella moved up a seat and tried to take her mind off her nerves by looking around.

She wasn’t the only single parent there, which was a relief, although there seemed to be more couples than normal. There were quite a few lone parents with children in Amelia’s class but, as it was Christmas, huge efforts had been made and people who usually only screamed at each other over the phone now sat side by side in icy silence for the sake of their children. Stella didn’t miss Glenn for her own sake but on occasions like this, she wondered how much Amelia’s heart ached for her dad.

‘OK?’ asked Hazel, giving her arm a squeeze. ‘You’re not getting the divorced Mummy guilts again, I hope?’

Dear Hazel. She was so perceptive, Stella thought fondly. She shook her head. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

With a fanfare of trumpets from the school’s CD player, the performance began. It started with the babies of the school who trailed on nervously and all started to sing ‘Jingle Bells’ loudly and in different keys. With the school piano banging out tunes, and the various teachers in the wings urging their pupils on, the performers sang, giggled, sobbed and in one case, screamed their little hearts out. There was one dangerous moment when it looked as if the stable might collapse on top of the Baby Jesus, played by Tiny Tears in an elderly christening robe, but Mrs Sanders leapt onstage in time and pulled the stable backwards, averting the crisis. From halfway down the hall, it was hard to see. Parents kept hopping up and down in their seats to take photos and video footage and Stella was afraid she’d miss seeing Amelia. But when the angels crowded onto the stage, she immediately saw her daughter standing nervously between the beaming twins, and stood up and waved wildly at her. Please see me, she prayed silently as she waved.

‘Sit down,’ hissed someone behind her but Stella ignored the voice and kept waving.

Under her angel halo, Amelia’s expression was tense as she stared out at the unfamiliar sea of faces, the lights shining so brightly on the stage that she couldn’t see anything properly…and then suddenly she saw her mother’s frantic waving and everything was all right. Mummy was watching, Mummy was there. A huge smile lit up her little face. She looked at Miss Dennis who was at the front of the stage, ready to encourage her class to sing.

‘Ready children?’ said Miss Dennis.

Class 5 nodded earnestly and waited, eyes wide with anticipation, for their music to begin before launching into ‘Silent Night’ as they’d never sung it before.

All around the hall, parents went ‘aah’ and clutched each other’s hands with pride.

Stella felt the tears clouding her eyes as she watched Amelia singing her little heart out. With her big eyes shining like candles, Amelia was the picture of a Botticelli angel. Stella knew she wasn’t being biased – Amelia was the prettiest child there, for sure. And the most wonderful.

‘Aren’t they fantastic, Hazel,’ she said tearfully to her friend.

‘And the dog hasn’t peed on the stage yet,’ Hazel remarked.

Stella giggled but never took her eyes off Amelia. She was so very lucky. This mother-love, this was real love. The other sort of love, for a man, just couldn’t compete.

CHAPTER THREE

Four days later, Stella’s sister, Tara Miller, deeply in love with her husband of six months and deeply nervous about the awards ceremony she was attending, stood in the ladies’ room of the ultra posh Manon Hotel and hoisted up her dress for about the tenth time that evening. The problem with wearing a strapless evening gown and boob-enhancing plastic falsies – ‘chicken fillets’ to the initiated – meant that only industrial adhesive could keep everything in place. Toupee tape didn’t have a hope. The ladies’ cloakroom at the National Television & Radio Awards was full of famous TV stars, and was not the ideal place for major body repairs; however, Tara had no option but to reach down the front of her silver dress and manhandle each fillet up. ‘Built-in bra, my backside,’ she muttered at her reflection as she wriggled, hoping everything would fall into place in a vaguely booblike shape.

‘Ooh, Tara,’ cooed Sherry DaVinci, floating into view from one of the cubicles, ‘that dress is lovely.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tara faintly, as Sherry squeezed in beside her and unpacked half the Mac range from her Louis Vuitton evening purse. Tara could see why the casting director had been so keen to get Sherry DaVinci to play a sexpot hospital receptionist in the hit television soap opera, National Hospital. And it was nothing to do with Sherry’s acting ability.

Shoehorned into a clinging, gold, sequinned mini dress, Sherry was a porn-fan’s dream, her ample breasts sitting perkily under her chin like two tanned melon halves that threatened to escape at any moment. She didn’t need chicken fillets, Tara thought ruefully, comparing Sherry’s buxomness with her own flat chest.

‘Hi, Sherry,’ said a fellow soap beauty, smiling at Sherry in passing and ignoring Tara.

Feeling invisible, Tara wondered why the beautiful people weren’t given their own loos at glitzy events, so that ordinary, non-beautiful people didn’t have to face the perfection of the ‘talent’ when they were fixing their tights, rearranging falsies and painting gloss on thin lips. Not, Tara reflected, that Sherry was what you’d call talented. But she pulled in the viewers and she was a sweet girl. Her limitations only became obvious when you were a script writer trying to write lines she wouldn’t screw up. As a storyline editor and one of the team of contributing writers on National Hospital, Tara spent a lot of time writing lines which Sherry then delivered with all the élan of the postman delivering a credit card bill. Which all went to prove that looks weren’t everything, as Isadora, Tara’s colleague, muttered bitchily every time Sherry fluffed her lines.

Feeling as if she’d better make an effort, Tara investigated the contents of her handbag (black satin, borrowed, no visible logo). Underneath her mobile phone and a notebook and pen in case she had any brilliant ideas for the love triangle storyline she was working on, was a red lipstick, a very elderly concealer and her glasses case.

There had been a pair of tights in there for emergencies but she’d had to break them out after the smoked salmon starter when her watch had twanged a thread on her existing pair.

‘Do you want a lend of anything?’ asked Sherry, concentrating on applying eyeliner with a professional’s touch. She was expertly using a tiny angled brush, Tara saw.

‘Er, no thanks,’ Tara said. She slicked on a speedy coat of lipstick, and looked critically at herself to inspect the effect. Standing beside Sherry was a mistake. Tara was straight as an ironing board while Sherry was all glowing curves with sparkling gold dust on her silken skin.

Sometimes Tara wondered, in an idle sort of way, what it would be like to be beautiful rather than clever. Her mother, Rose, was beautiful, still beautiful, even in her late fifties. The family teased her about how the Kinvarra postman was besotted with her and how he nearly crashed the post van whenever she appeared. And Stella, her elder sister, was stunning too, with melting dark eyes and a serene, smiling face that made people gravitate towards her. And Holly, who had more hang-ups about her looks than a catwalk full of teenage models, was incredibly pretty in an arrestingly luminous way. But the beauty gene had clearly skipped out when it had come to Tara.

Not that she minded, really. Tara knew she’d been given a gift that made up for not being a head-turner – a brain as sharp as a stiletto and a talent for putting words together. A gift that had brought her here tonight.

She grinned as she thought of her Aunt Adele’s mantra at Miller family get-togethers: ‘Thank the Lord that Tara’s so clever.’ Tara knew that this was shorthand for ‘It’s lucky that Tara doesn’t have to rely on her looks.’ Her mother used to glare at Aunt Adele whenever Adele said this but it had no effect. Her aunt was one of those people who thought honesty and tactlessness were pretty close to Godliness in the hierarchy of virtue, and felt that speaking her mind was not just important, but compulsory.

But Tara, after a few pointless years of secretly longing to be a beauty, was perfectly content with the way she looked. She’d never be pretty but instead was a combination of quirky and unusual looking, with a sharp little chin, a mischievous full mouth, and a long nose which might have dominated her face were it not for deep-set hazel eyes that glittered with amusement and brilliance. Even beside a raft of golden-haired lovelies, people always noticed Tara’s clever, vibrant face. And once they got talking to her, they loved her because she was witty and funny into the bargain.

By the time she’d got to college, Tara had worked out a clever and eccentric look which involved very trendy clothes, short, almost masculine hair and fire-engine red lipstick. It helped that she was tall, so masculine clothes and hair worked on her. Now, at the grand old age of thirty-two and thanks to the confidence that came from having a career she loved, Tara was utterly at home with her looks. Her dark hair was expertly cut and its exquisitely tweaked style owed much to the salon wax she scrunched through the ends each morning. Trendy, dark-rimmed glasses gave definition to her eyes and drew attention away from her nose. She’d toyed with the idea of rhinoplasty for years but Finn had told her she didn’t need it.

‘I love your nose the way it is,’ he’d say, running his finger down it lovingly.

Tara’s face softened as she thought of her husband of six months. Darling Finn. Theirs had been the ultimate whirlwind courtship. They’d met a year ago at a party, fell madly in love and got married within six months, confidently telling astonished friends that once you met your soul mate, you knew instantly. Finn was everything Tara wanted in a man: funny, sexy, kind, clever – and drop-dead gorgeous. A rangy man with sleepy, fun-filled eyes, tousled dirty blonde hair and an air of languid sexuality, Finn was genuinely movie-star stunning. People told her he could have been Brad Pitt’s stand-in, but a proud Tara retorted that Finn was infinitely better looking.

Even his voice was sexy, automatically reminding her of making slow languorous love even when he was just asking her how much milk she wanted in her coffee.

It would have been lovely to stroll into the ballroom with him on her arm. He looked good in a dinner jacket; but then he’d look good in a sack.

At their wedding, Aunt Adele hadn’t failed the Miller family and had pointedly said, at least five times, that she couldn’t get over how Tara had netted such a good-looking boy. As if Tara had gone out with a huge fishing rod and reeled in the first gorgeous specimen she saw.

‘Your aunt keeps looking at me and shaking her head,’ said Finn at the reception. ‘Is she shocked that a creative genius like you has married a stupid computer salesman?’

Tara laughed. ‘On the contrary, she thinks I’ve won the lottery. Aunt Adele has been preparing me for spinsterhood for years by reminding me I’m not a great beauty, so she’s astonished I nabbed a hunk like yourself and actually got you to marry me within six months of meeting you. And you’re anything but stupid.’

Finn pulled her close for another kiss. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. ‘Well,’ he conceded, his lips brushing her cheek tenderly, ‘maybe not that stupid. After all, I’ve just married a brilliant wife. And a beautiful one, too.’

If only he were here, Tara thought now with a fresh pang of longing. Finn knew how tense she was about things like awards ceremonies, and knew just how important this one was to her. The exact opposite of her; he was laid-back about everything and would have calmed her nerves better than a pint of Rescue Remedy. But tickets to the National Television & Radio Awards were like gold dust and not even all the show’s writers had been able to get one. There was no way Tara could have brought Finn with her. She’d phone him quickly, just to say hi, that she missed him. Switching her phone on, Tara dialled rapidly. The phone in the apartment rang out without being answered. She smiled at the thought of Finn rushing across the road to the twenty-four-hour garage to buy something, forgetting to turn the answering machine on. She loved the little things he forgot. They were so endearing. She tried his mobile but it was off too. Idiot. But she was smiling.

‘Perfume?’ asked Sherry, spraying the contents of a tiny bottle of Gucci Envy down her cleavage.

‘Yes please,’ said Tara, sorry that she hadn’t thought to bring the Coco Mademoiselle that Finn had given her for her birthday. The ballroom was murderously hot and the combination of a spicy main course and too much red wine meant that everyone had red, flushed faces. None of which would look good on television. Tara had a sudden horrified vision of her shiny, lobster-pink face being all that people remembered when the nominations for the soap awards came up.

She took the proffered vial of perfume, sprayed it liberally down her front and gave a final blast to her wrists. ‘Sherry, I’ve changed my mind. Can I borrow some make-up? I think I need it.’

Five minutes later, Tara was expertly revamped. In those few moments in the ladies’ she felt as if she’d learned more about Sherry than she had over several months of work. Sherry chatted away about how her mother had helped her shop for the dress she was nearly wearing, and how her whole family were going to meet up the next night when the awards were broadcast in case they spotted Sherry. They never missed an episode of the show, either. They were so proud of her.

‘I used to be a beautician, you see,’ Sherry said as she dextrously brushed eye shadow onto Tara’s lids. ‘Mum was worried when I gave it up for drama school.’

‘You’re brilliant at make up,’ Tara said enthusiastically as she admired her newly-sultry eyes, dark and intense thanks to smoky shadows.

‘Thanks,’ Sherry said happily as she zipped up her bag of tricks.

Tara felt bad that she couldn’t say how Sherry was a marvellous actress too, but she hated hypocrisy.

Together, they braved the ballroom. A vast, high-ceilinged room decorated with giant swathes of purple velvet to go with the gilt and purple chairs, it was crammed with every sort of television and radio worker. Actors and presenters rubbed shoulders with writers and producers, all pretending to have a roaring good time because the show was being filmed, and all trotting out the standard remark: ‘It’s such an honour just to be here: being nominated/winning doesn’t matter.’ Which was rubbish because it was all about winning.

The ceremony itself was going to make up ninety-five per cent of the TV show, but nobody wanted to risk glaring sourly at a rival and ending up with that broadcast to the world. Or even worse, being included in the inevitable out-takes video which would change hands as soon as the show was over. So the whole place was awash with smiles.

Tara lost Sherry within seconds, as the actress spotted a camera crew and wove her way through the crowds, her shapely hips undulating sexily as she shimmied along. Marilyn Monroe was said to have deliberately had a quarter of an inch taken off the heel of one shoe to give her that sexy lilting walk. Sherry had clearly upped the ante and had taken off an entire inch on one side, leaving her with a hip movement that Tara reckoned a passing bishop would surely declare an occasion of sin.

Weaving her own way through the tables, Tara said hello here and there but didn’t stop. She’d worked in television one way or another for nine years and knew loads of the people here: if she stopped, she’d never make it up to her table in its much envied place at the front.

As she passed the Forsyth and Daughters table, she nodded at an old work-experience pal of hers who now wrote for the series.

‘Good luck,’ said Robbie encouragingly. ‘I hope you win.’

‘You too,’ said Tara. Which was true because she hoped he would win. It was unlikely though.

Robbie smiled weakly and Tara passed on, knowing there was nothing she could say to raise his spirits. Forsyth and Daughters was a five-year-old show about a family of female lorry drivers and not even ER’s Dr Luka Kovac, manfully wielding the cardiac paddles, would be able to bring it back to life. The scripts were tired, the storyline was exhausted and the only option in Tara’s opinion was to can the whole series. Robbie and his team hadn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning anything, while the National Hospital team were hot favourites for a whole raft of awards.

A voice on the microphone was asking people to take their seats as Tara reached her place.

National Hospital, as befitting one of the nation’s hottest home-grown soaps, had two tables at the ceremony and, now that the empty bottles and the plates had been taken away, they looked bare and untidy with wine stains on the white tablecloths. The actors had been allocated a table close to the stage, while the writers and production people were behind them. There was nobody at the actors’ table because, as soon as the meal was officially over, they’d all rushed off to get their photos taken and to work the room. The writers, on the other hand, insisted that they didn’t believe in networking and sat getting dug into the wine and trying to out-do each other bitching about rival shows. The truth was that nobody was interested in taking pictures of writers, which galled them. They wrote the words, they created the canvas on which the actors shone, so why did nobody know who they were?

‘Did you hear the one about the bimbo who wanted to be in movies?’ muttered Tommy from the depths of his glass, as Tara slipped into her place beside him. Tommy was one of the show’s long-timers. ‘She went to Hollywood and slept with a writer.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ murmured the assembled group, who’d heard it all before.

Isadora, who’d moved so she had a better view of the stage, was now sitting on Tara’s other side. Isadora was another one of the storyline editors, writers who shaped the way the show developed and came up with long-range plotlines. She and Tara worked closely together and were great friends.

‘You look nice,’ said Isadora. ‘Have you been beautifying yourself for your acceptance speech?’

Tara laughed. ‘Sherry did it. It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Very.’ Isadora was impressed. ‘Can she do something for me? I need emergency work. All this red wine has my face looking like blue cheese.’

‘Crumbly?’ inquired Tommy.

‘No, heavily veined,’ Isadora replied tartly. ‘But still, my veins aren’t half as bad as yours, sweetie.’

‘Miaow,’ Tommy retorted.

The lights went down and there was a frantic dash as people raced back to their seats. The babble of conversation went down to a low hum while the audience waited for the show to begin.

Watching the monitors to the side of the stage, Tara and Isadora could see what the cameras saw. The lenses panned across the room, coming to rest on the big male stars of the day and on the most beautiful of the women, all of whom had nearly killed themselves to wear the most talked about gown of the evening. Slit-to-the-navel, slit-to-the-thigh and slit-in-both-directions dresses were par for the course at these events. The more famous stars didn’t bare as much, while the wannabes craved attention and tended to look as if they hadn’t enough money to pay for a whole dress.

‘Leather is big this year,’ Isadora commented, glancing around. ‘Look at that woman from that kids’ Saturday morning show. That’s not a dress; that’s a python-skin bikini with a see-through overdress.’

‘I dunno why they call it an overdress,’ muttered Tommy. ‘Doesn’t look like overdressing to me.’

‘She’d better be careful,’ Isadora continued. ‘She won’t be the darling of the exhausted early morning mums and dads if she wears that type of hot little outfit. They want blue jeans, wacky sweaters, spiky hair and overall purity for their Saturday morning televisual babysitters.’

Silence reigned for a brief moment until the awards’ theme music blasted out over the sound system and the show began. Finally, the nerves began to get to Tara. This was an important evening for her. She’d been working on National Hospital for three years and in April, she’d been promoted to storyline editor. The youngest person ever to get the job, Tara had had a lot to prove. But she’d done it. Thanks in no small part to her input, the scripts since then had been ratings grabbers. The critics loved the show, the production company loved the show, now, it was time to see if the people who gave out the prestigious Soap of the Year award loved it too. They’d been nominated for the past three years but had been narrowly beaten by Ardmore Grove, their nearest rival, every time. If only tonight was the night to claim the prize for National Hospital. Tara felt sick with the anxiety of it all.

Across the table, Aaron, the show’s director, sat with his beautiful blonde wife. Tara thought of Finn sitting at home waiting for her phone call. Her nerves wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if Finn had been beside her, his hand holding hers comfortingly. But only people like Aaron were considered important enough to get two invites to the ceremony.

Onstage, clips were being shown of the best animated films. Tara glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes gone. Although the show wasn’t live, it would still run pretty much to time. The soap category was in the first hour but there was ages to go.

The veteran Irish actor on stage was slowly opening the purple envelope for the animation award. He read it out and a table at the back of the ballroom erupted with squeals of joy. Everybody at the National Hospital tables smiled. The whole ballroom smiled. They were on camera, after all.

Three more awards trundled by. Winners gravely thanked everyone from their kindergarten teacher to their Pilates coach. The only excitement was when the forty-something Best Actress gave rather an over-enthusiastic kiss to the teenage boy band member presenting her with the award. The audience applauded with delight. At last, somebody behaving badly.

‘Give him another Frenchie,’ yelled a drunk at the back of the room.

‘That’s one comment for the cutting room floor,’ Tara grinned.

‘Were there tongues involved?’ demanded Isadora eagerly.

‘Not on his part,’ Aaron said. ‘The poor guy looked scared out of his head.’

‘He should be,’ Tommy pointed out. ‘She eats boys like him for brekkie.’

‘Don’t be ageist,’ snapped Isadora, who was feeling sensitive about arriving at the big four-oh herself. ‘Just because she’s over forty, she’s not a figure of fun, you know. It’s perfectly allowable to snog younger men. You’re no spring chicken yourself, Tommy, and I bet you wouldn’t say no to a big kiss from a teenage starlet.’

‘Now, children,’ remonstrated Aaron calmly, ‘let’s not fight. We have to look like we’re happy. Save the fighting for the studio.’

Everyone grinned. Tempers often got frayed when they were under pressure at work.

‘After the break, we’ll be seeing who’s the Radio Presenter of the Year, who’s the Best Actor, and, which soap has won the Best Soap,’ said the MC suavely. The crowd applauded obediently.

The lights went up and the MC added that there’d be a fifteen minute break. Hands went into the air immediately, waving for wine waiters.

Tara thought the break would never end but it did. The Radio Personality of the Year, late-night talk show host Mac Levine, made a very funny speech.

Isadora squeezed Tara’s hand under the table so nobody would see how anxious they were.

‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ Isadora said between teeth clenched into a false smile.

‘Wonderful.’ Tara clenched back. ‘Will he ever hurry up before I die.’

And then it was their turn.

A glamorous female singer read out the nominations for Best Soap. There wasn’t a sound at their table as clips of the various shows were played. Tara closed her eyes in supplication and then realised how strange and desperate she’d look on film, so she opened them again. The clips were finished and the singer was taking forever to open the envelope. Tara watched French-manicured talons struggling with the paper in agonising slow motion. She could feel her heart rate slowing down to comatose level, please, please let it be us.

‘The winner is…National Hospital.’

‘We’ve won!!’ shrieked everybody with one voice. ‘We’ve won.’

Screaming with delight, the occupants of both tables stood up and hugged each other. Tara could barely see with the tears in her eyes.

‘Oh, Isadora, we’ve won, I can’t believe it,’ she sobbed.

‘Come on, Tara, get your butt over here,’ said Aaron, his voice cracking. ‘We’ve got to go up and take the prize.’

‘What, me?’ said Tara, shocked.

‘Yes, you and Isadora,’ he said. ‘We can’t have everyone on the stage, but you’ve both got to go up, you’ve both worked so hard this year.’

Isadora was off like a shot while Tara stumbled over to Aaron. He put an arm around her waist. ‘This is your year, Tara.’

‘But what about Tommy and everyone else…?’ gasped Tara, trying to wipe the tears from her face.

‘This is your year, kid,’ repeated Aaron. ‘Enjoy it.’ The entire table of actors and Isadora were already on the stage with the executive producer when Aaron and Tara made it up there.

‘Thank you so much!’ squealed Sherry, elbows together, boobs shoved up for the cameras. ‘Thank you for loving us.’

She was subtly shoved out of the way by the show’s female lead, Allegra Armstrong, a deceptively fragile-looking brunette.

‘You have no idea what this means to all of us at National Hospital,’ Allegra said warmly, ‘we’ve worked so hard for this and want to say thanks to all our fans.’

The audience applauded. Allegra was a genuinely loved star and her portrayal of a brilliant surgeon on the show had already garnered her many awards.

‘Also, we’ve got to say thanks to all the wonderful writers without whom we wouldn’t have a show,’ added heartthrob, Stephen Valli, who played hunky Dr McCambridge. Stephen Valli had also won many awards, at least half of which were for sexiest TV star and the man most women would like to wake up next to. He reached back and put one arm around Isadora and the other round Tara, who blushed. She stared blindly out at the audience. The fierce stage lights meant she could see nothing but darkness and yet she knew that everyone was looking up at the team, and her. It was a strange feeling.

Through the haze, she heard another interval being called.

‘Congratulations!’ shrieked everyone as the National Hospital team clambered off stage.

‘My name is Jill McDonnell, I’m with the Sentinel. How does it feel to be part of the team responsible for the best soap?’ said a woman, suddenly appearing in front of Tara and thrusting a tiny tape recorder in her face.

Tara stumbled on her high heels and had to cling onto Aaron’s jacket to stay upright.

‘Wonderful,’ she bleated, not able to think of anything else to say for the first time in her life.

‘Could I set up an interview with you?’

Tara smiled shakily. So this was fame. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Phone the office tomorrow and we can fix a time.’

At the table, there were more hugs and champagne appeared.

‘I must phone Finn,’ Tara said tearfully, feeling the shock waves of emotion finally wash over her. It was still the interval, so she hurried out of the room to find a quiet corner.

The home phone rang out endlessly again and she tried the mobile.

‘I’m in the pub with Derry and the lads,’ Finn yelled. ‘I couldn’t cope with sitting at home and not knowing,’ he said.

‘We won!’ said Tara, half-laughing, half-crying.

‘Oh my love,’ shouted Finn, thrilled. ‘Congratulations! I’m so proud of you.’

The final segment of the show was about to begin and Tara rushed back into the ballroom. A tall man with flashing eyes and a wild beard, like a movie version of an old Testament prophet, laid a hand on her arm to speak to her. Tara instantly recognised Mike Hammond, a mega successful producer originally from Galway who’d just worked on a season of Oscar Wilde’s plays for the HBO television network in the States.

He never even went to bashes like this; he’d be more at home at the Oscars or the Emmys.

‘Congratulations,’ he said in a soft Californian-Galway burr. ‘I’m Mike Hammond.’

‘I know. Tara Miller.’ She extended her hand. As if there was anybody there who didn’t know who he was.

‘I hear on the grapevine you’re one of the main reasons why National Hospital won the award,’ he continued.

Tara’s eyes were like saucers. Not only did Mike Hammond know who she was, but he’d heard good things about her.

‘That’s not exactly true,’ she said. ‘We work as a team. I’m just part of it. There are a lot of contributing writers and a large team of storyline people. You know that writing on that scale has to be team work or the whole thing self-destructs with a clash of egos.’

‘Modest too,’ commented Mike. ‘We should have lunch sometime.’

He reached into his inside pocket and removed a card on which he scribbled a number. ‘That’s my cellphone number. I’m going to be in the US for a few months but phone me, say in March. We can shoot the breeze, talk about forthcoming projects, whatever.’

‘OK,’ stammered Tara, taking the card.

‘Hi, Mikey,’ said a voice and a tall, striking dark-skinned woman came up and laid a proprietary hand on his Armani-clad shoulder.

‘Hi, Crystal,’ he replied, turning to her.

Tara slipped away, scarcely believing life could be quite this perfect. Mike Hammond wanted to meet her. The show she worked on had just won a prestigious award. And she was married to the most wonderful man in the world. What more could she want?

CHAPTER FOUR

Twenty-four hours after National Hospital won the Best Soap award, Tara still sounded as if she was on a high. She’d loved the congratulatory bouquet of flowers Holly had sent that morning, had spent the whole day pretending to work but being too excited to, and now she and Finn were going out for a celebratory dinner in their favourite restaurant.

‘You mean you aren’t going to stay in and watch yourself on the ceremony on TV?’ teased Holly.

From the phone came the sound of her sister groaning. ‘No way! I’m going to tape it instead and maybe one day, I’ll be able to bear to look at it.’

‘I’m going out too but I’m taping the show,’ Holly said, ‘so I can make everyone watch it in future and point out my fabulous sister, who was really responsible for National Hospital winning.’

Tara was still laughing when she hung up.

Holly, who was running late, rushed back into her bedroom to paint her nails, then sat on the edge of her bed waggling her fingers so the sparkly lilac nail polish would dry more quickly. She still had to wriggle into the instep-destroying boots she’d bought to go with her new black trousers, though she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to bend over to zip them up. The Dolce & Gabbana corset, lent at huge risk by Gabriella from the International Design department, was what could euphemistically be called a ‘snug’ fit. Breathing was difficult, bending over would be impossible.

‘It came back because it was too big for one of our best customers and it’s going in the sale in January, but whatever you do, Holly, don’t sweat on it!’ Gabriella had warned the day before. ‘And don’t smoke!’

‘She won’t,’ promised Bunny, Holly’s friend and colleague from the children’s department, who’d been the one to wangle the loan of the corset from the fabulously gorgeous Gabriella. Gamine and funky, with cropped blonde hair and a way with clothes that meant her uniform of white shirt and black trousers looked catwalk cool, Bunny was Holly’s idol. There was no way Gabriella would have loaned it to her, Holly thought, if Bunny hadn’t asked first.

Both Bunny and Holly crossed their fingers regarding the safety of the outfit: strange things regularly happened to Holly, weird and unexplainable things that ruined her clothes. Coffee miraculously leapt out of cups and flung itself at her; drunks on the street crossed perilous traffic to lurch happily against her; perfectly ordinary bits of the footpath reared up to trip her. Therefore, it was entirely possible that some unusual accident would mean the borrowed outfit would get shrunk/covered in bleach/otherwise hideously disfigured in the Bermuda Triangle effect which surrounded Holly. But Gabriella didn’t need to know that.

‘I know it’s a twelve and you need a fourteen, but they look better when they’re tight. And it’s perfect on you,’ sighed Bunny, earlier that day, when Holly had struggled into the corset in a changing room in Lee’s Department Store, where they all worked.

The two girls looked in the mirror. In a miracle of wonderful tailoring, the corset had jacked Holly’s waist into tiny proportions, giving her a siren-like hourglass figure which she didn’t have in real, non-D&G life. Bunny quickly pulled Holly’s scrunchie off so that her poker-straight chestnut hair shimmered over her shoulders.

‘Now,’ said Bunny, delighted with her efforts. ‘You look amazing. Those boots make your legs look so long. When you’ve got my necklace on you’ll look perfect.’

‘You don’t think I look fat, do you?’ Holly said anxiously. She wouldn’t have said it if Gabriella was around. Gabriella resembled a very beautiful twig on even more twiglety legs, and fat cells would have blanched at the thought of daring to even touch her.

‘Fat? Don’t be silly.’ Bunny shook her head vigorously. ‘You look wonderful, Holly. You’re going to wow them all tonight.’

School reunions should be banned, Holly muttered, testing a nail to see if it was dry. Ever since Donna had phoned with the exciting news about the ten-year reunion of their class from Kinvarra’s Cardinal School, Holly had fretted. For a woman with self-esteem so low it could limbo dance under a two-inch fence, the prospect of meeting the girls she’d been in school with was one filled with terror.

Old schoolmates would want to know what exciting things Holly was doing with her life and what sort of fabulous men she was going out with. ‘Er nothing’ and ‘nobody’ would not be adequate answers. On the plus side, at least she’d lost weight since school, but she was never going to be what anyone would call thin. And what was the point of being thinner when she had nothing to show for it?

Donna, her best friend from school, was thrilled at the very notion of a reunion, and had talked excitedly about how lovely it would be to catch up with everyone.

‘Just think, our class together again after all these years. I can’t imagine some of them as twenty-eight-year-olds: they’re stuck in my mind at seventeen. Obviously, I don’t mean Lilli and Caroline,’ she said. ‘I meet them every day at the school gates when I’m dropping Emily off and they’re just the same, really. But there are so many girls and I don’t really know what they’ve been up to. So many of them are living in the city or abroad…It’ll be wonderful to see everyone again, won’t it?’

‘Yes,’ bleated Holly.

‘I heard that Michelle Martin’s coming too, which is a coup for the organising group. Who’d have ever thought that one of our girls would be a big TV star.’

‘Donna, she’s a news reporter, not Britney Spears,’ Holly pointed out, overcoming her anxiety in order to set the record straight. Michelle had been a total nightmare at school: loud, overopinionated and determined to get the shy girls (like Holly and Donna) involved. Anyone who didn’t go along with her (Holly and Donna, again) received contemptuous glances which implied that amoebas were more fun. ‘We used to hide from her, if you remember.’

‘No we didn’t.’ Donna sounded cheerful. ‘Oh it’s going to be such fun. You are coming, aren’t you, Holly? I know you’re madly busy and probably have zillions of glamorous Christmas parties to go to, but this will be fantastic. I know December’s two months away but I’ve already told Mark he’ll have to baby-sit because I’m going to stay overnight in Dublin. That’s the whole point of having it in a hotel, so there’s no awfulness about getting taxis and lifts home.’

Donna still lived in Kinvarra, but many of the school’s old girls had moved to the city, which was why a hotel in Dublin had been chosen for the party. Donna was doubly pleased at this. For a start, there’d be no chance of wild misbehaving at a reunion in her home town where gossip spread like wildfire. Secondly, she loved visiting Dublin and this trip would mean a bit of blissful shopping the next day without having to manoeuvre a buggy round too.

‘The only problem is what to wear?’ mused Donna, before going on to list possible outfits and why they weren’t suitable because they were old/unfashionable/too tight on the hips. ‘Of course, you won’t have that problem, Holly. When you’re going out every night like you, you know exactly what to wear. Mark and I never get further than Maria’s Diner these days and you can turn up in a sweatshirt covered with baby sick and nobody bats an eyelid.’

After a few more minutes of this, Donna’s toddler, Jack, began crying loudly and she had to go.

Holly hung up slowly and smiled ruefully at the very notion of her having a wild life with zillions of glamorous parties to go to and the perfect wardrobe for every occasion. Dear Donna, she hadn’t a clue. She thought anyone who’d escaped the clutches of rural Kinvarra automatically entered some sort of Hollywood-style twilight zone where life was wildly exciting, invitations crammed the mantelpiece and gorgeous men were forever on the phone, demanding to know why you wouldn’t go to Rio with them.

Holly had given up trying to explain that being a sales assistant in the children’s department in Lee’s was short on glamour and actually involved a lot of time in the stock room patiently folding T-shirts for four-year-olds. The only way a man would ever throw himself at her was if one fell down the stairs on the 15A bus when she was on her way up. This had actually happened, although the man in question had been a deeply embarrassed teenager and had practically run off in mortification afterwards. Holly had been bruised for weeks.

And as for going out, Holly was far too quiet to merit inclusion in the Lee’s party-animal gang. Parties in general filled her with horror. She became obsessed with what to wear, inevitably ending up in black for its slimming properties, and even more inevitably ending up in the kitchen because of the crippling shyness that overwhelmed her on social occasions. Holly’s ideal outing was the pub with Kenny and Joan, who lived in the flat opposite.

She had once explained this to Donna, but Donna would have none of it.

‘You’re only trying to cheer me up,’ she’d insisted. ‘There’s no point denying it. Exciting things happen in cities, not like in this dump. For God’s sake, they nearly declare a state of emergency in Kinvarra when Melanie’s Coffee Shop runs out of fudge cake.’

‘Kinvarra is a lovely place,’ protested Holly.

‘If it’s that lovely, why did you leave?’ demanded Donna, refusing to admit that there was any comparison between the fleshpots of the city and a small, pretty town sixty miles away.

‘Ah, you know, I just wanted to travel a bit,’ Holly said.

Holly wrote down the date of the reunion in her diary and began a plan of worry. This was similar to a plan of action but involved no actual action and, instead, lots of soul-searching ‘how-can-I-get-out-of-it?’ moments in the dead of the night. She also wondered how Donna had grown so confident that she was looking forward to this reunion. Marriage and motherhood must be a fiercely powerful combination, Holly decided. Why had nobody put that in a pill? Those pharmaceutical firms were slacking.

At school, she and Donna been drawn to each other by virtue of their quietness. They’d never been part of the reckless but popular gang of girls who cheeked the teachers, knew how to roll joints and went to wild parties with wild boys. Holly would have been struck dumb if faced with either a wild boy or a joint. She and Donna spent their school years in the anonymity of being good girls and Holly would have bet a week’s wages that half the girls in the school wouldn’t remember either of them now. Except as the skinny girl with the big glasses (Donna) and the plump, shy youngest sister of the Miller trio. The people she’d really like to see were the other anonymous girls, but they were the very people who probably wouldn’t turn up. Holly tried to remember them: Brona, who spent all her time in the library and Roberta, a terminally shy girl who was forever drawing pictures in a sketch book and who could never look anyone in the eye.

As the reunion approached, Holly considered coming up with a previous engagement and avoiding it altogether, but then her mother had heard about it (Kinvarra was clearly still a hotbed of gossip where no snippet of information went unrecorded) and had phoned up to make sure she was going.

‘Darling, it’ll be wonderful,’ Rose had said. ‘I can still remember Stella’s ten-year reunion.’ Her mother’s voice was wistful. ‘She loved it; and to think it’s coming up to her twentieth. Time certainly flies. Are you going with Donna?’

‘Of course,’ Holly said automatically. There was little point in explaining the difference between going to a reunion when you’d been as adored at school as Stella, and going when you were one of those people that nobody would remember. Or even want to.

‘What are you going to wear?’ Her mother’s voice was suddenly a mite anxious, as if she suspected Holly of going to the party clad in some wild creation.

‘Joan’s making me a Lycra and leather mini dress,’ Holly said, unable to resist the joke. Joan was a fashion student who lived in the flat opposite Holly, and her idea of chic was ripped, heavily graffiti-ed clothes with the words spelt incorrectly. Her mother liked Joan but wasn’t so keen on her eyebrow stud. ‘Only kidding,’ Holly added quickly. ‘Something from Lee’s, I think.’ She crossed her fingers. She was terminally broke, as usual.

‘Oh good,’ Rose said, relieved. Lee’s had a reputation for beautiful, expensive, clothes.

‘You’re such a label snob, Mum,’ teased Holly.

‘I am not,’ insisted her mother firmly. ‘I simply want you to look your best.’

On the other end of the phone, Holly grinned wryly. That made two of them.

By the time the reunion was upon her, Tara, Stella, Bunny, Joan and Kenny were also involved in her nervous state.

‘You’ll enjoy it, I know you will,’ Stella had said sincerely. ‘I loved mine, although I know you feel a bit weird at first because everyone looks so different and you’ve lost that intimacy you used to have.’

Dear Stella, Holly thought fondly. For Stella, school hadn’t been a place she’d been eager to escape from.

‘And I do understand that school was a difficult time when you were hung up about your figure, Holls, but you’re so gorgeous now, that’s all in the past.’

That was Stella’s encouraging way of telling Holly that she’d moved on from being a shy, overweight girl who wouldn’t say boo to a goose in case the goose told her to go on a diet.

‘I’m, going to wear one of those sumo fancy dress costumes,’ Holly said, ‘then whip it off and give them a shock when they see I’m not twenty stone.’

Stella had laughed at that.

Tara was equally supportive when she rang, but more direct: ‘Think of what a kick you’ll get from turning up looking a million dollars. You and I have certainly improved since school. At my reunion, everyone was stunned when I turned up looking good. Go for hot, Holly. Impress the knickers off them. Make them jealous. I’m sure you’ve lots of great clubbing gear at home, and you get a staff discount in the store, don’t you?’

This was true but Holly didn’t use her staff ten per cent to purchase going-out clothes. What was the point if you only went to the pub? Tara believed her younger sister shared the same sort of lively social life she did. Tara was always at parties and glitzy media events. It was part of her job. But although Holly could wisecrack with the same insouciance as her older sister, she could only do it with close friends and family. In company, her wit deserted her and she clammed up.

Naturally, the generous Joan did offer to design an outfit for Holly.

‘I can see you in a space-age, semi-Edwardian bondage look; a comment about school in general,’ Joan said, sketching on a bit of an old envelope. Somebody had given her a video of the director’s cut of Blade Runner and she had got a bit carried away with visions of the future.

‘Space-age, semi-Edwardian bondage!’ groaned Kenny, who lived with Joan, though not as a couple, as they both constantly informed everyone. Kenny was gay, worked in a designer men’s boutique, devoured Vogue as his bedtime reading and wished Joan would give up being avant garde so she could worship at the altar of designer Tom Ford, Kenny’s greatest idol. They made ideal flatmates because they could argue endlessly about fashion and, together, they could afford the pretty flat with the balcony that neither would be able to afford on their own. ‘Holly wants to make all her classmates pea green with envy,’ Kenny insisted. ‘Not make them laugh at her. Six-stone fourteen-year-old models from Eastern Europe with cheekbones like razors can wear that type of thing but on anybody else, it looks ridiculous. What Holly wants is something…,’ Kenny paused dramatically, ‘fabulous. And credit-card droppingly expensive.’

Bunny, practical as ever, had come up with a suitably fabulous outfit which hadn’t involved any credit-card action. Holly would never be able to thank her enough. Encased in her borrowed finery – Holly had promised Bunny she wouldn’t spoil the effect by telling anyone it wasn’t actually hers – even someone as self-critical as Holly had to admit that she looked OK. Well, reasonable. Passable. All she needed to do was not spill anything on herself.

Satisfied that her nails were dry, Holly stood up and took a deep breath before attempting to bend down and put on her boots. After what felt like ages, she zipped them both up and stood up, gulping in air like a deep-sea pearl diver.

She stood in front of the mirror, gave her hair one last brushing, and then picked up her handbag. She’d have killed for a cigarette but Gabriella would go ballistic if the corset came back smelling of Marlboro Lights, so she’d had her last one before she got dressed. How she’d stay off the fags tonight, she didn’t know, but she had to. It was a small price to pay. Holly practised her tough-but-sexy look in the mirror again. She even tried her Lauren Bacall, lowered eyes, look (Holly adored Lauren), but gloomily decided that the effect was more Bogie than Bacall. It was time to go. Holly had arranged to meet her friend at the train, take her for a drink, and then travel to the hotel in time for Donna to check in and change. What she hadn’t mentioned to Donna was that this plan would make them fashionably late for the reunion. That had been Bunny’s suggestion.

‘Make an entrance,’ Bunny had advised. ‘You don’t want to be hanging around aimlessly waiting for the party to get going. Arrive twenty minutes late and you’ll look as if you’re far too busy to get to things on time.’

Caroline and Lilli had made a cosy corner of the hotel bar their own, with handbags and jackets marking the spot and a double vodka barely diluted with Diet Coke in front of each of them for Dutch courage. The reunion was taking place in an annexed corner of the hotel restaurant, but the committee hadn’t been able to arrange a private area of the bar, so Caroline and Lilli had come down early to pick a suitable spot for their gang. Even ten years after they’d left Cardinal School, they still thought of their schoolmates as ‘their gang’. Of course, their lives had moved on a lot since then. Caroline had three small children and was a leading light in the Kinvarra Drama Society. Lilli had two little girls and worked part time. Sasha, another gangette, was assistant manager in the local video shop. The other girls, including TV star Michelle, had moved from Kinvarra, and were home rarely, which was why tonight was going to be so exciting: to see how well everyone had done. Lilli and Caroline knew that reunions weren’t really about meeting up with old friends – they were about chalking up the successes and failures of their peers.

Lilli consulted her list. ‘Twenty-five yeses, three nos and two who didn’t reply,’ she said. ‘That’s not a bad tally.’

‘I wonder if Michelle’s had any work done,’ Caroline said, getting stuck into her drink.

‘Definitely not,’ said Lilli knowledgeably. ‘Michelle was always naturally pretty. Her eyebrows are done properly now, that’s it. I don’t believe in plastic surgery myself.’

‘Me neither, of course,’ agreed Caroline, who cherished a long-range plan of having her eyes lifted before they got baggy like her elder sister’s.

‘You shouldn’t tamper with nature,’ Lilli continued, holding her glass with fingers tipped with rock-hard acrylic nails. ‘These don’t count,’ she added hastily, noticing Caroline’s eyes on the acrylic tips. ‘You can’t have decent nails when you’ve got small children.’

A lone woman entered the bar, looking round nervously and clutching a small handbag. Short and thin, she was not dressed in the frontline of fashion and her dark, un-styled hair hung limply to her shoulders. Caroline and Lilli surveyed her.

‘Brona Reilly,’ Lilli whispered to Caroline. ‘She hasn’t changed a bit.’

‘You’d think she’d have made more of an effort for tonight,’ Caroline whispered back. She and Lilli had pulled out all the stops and had made a trip to the city to check out wildly expensive, fashionable looks they could copy. They’d both had their hair and make-up done professionally for the night and Caroline, though she hadn’t told Lilli, had even had a seaweed wrap in Kinvarra’s poshest beauty salon in order to lose a few inches. Her corset-style dress was very unforgiving round the middle.

They pretended they hadn’t seen Brona and watched her go hesitantly up to the bar and order a drink. The reunion might have been about meeting people, but it was important that they were the right people.

Brona had been one of the people that the girls in Michelle’s gang had ignored. Mind you, so had Donna, who was now a friend of theirs. But that was different.

Any mild guilt over how they’d once treated Donna had vanished, because Donna herself didn’t seem to remember it. When Caroline, Lilli and Donna had accidentally met up three years ago at the school gates on the children’s first day, there hadn’t been any bad feeling at all.

‘Imagine, three little girls the same age,’ Donna had sighed. ‘They can go to school and be friends like us.’

Caroline, who was more thoughtful than Lilli, blushed at this, remembering how the more popular girls like herself used to ignore the school mice like Donna except when they wanted to copy their homework. Now that she was a mother herself, Caroline would have personally ripped apart any child who dared to ignore her own beloved Kylie. But Donna clearly had no bad memories of either school or Caroline and Lilli. All was happily forgotten.

‘Would you like to have coffee in my house when we drop the girls off?’ Caroline had said quickly that day, wanting to make amends.

‘That would be lovely,’ Donna smiled.

And that had been the start of their friendship. But despite three years of trying to get them together, Donna had never managed to reintroduce them to Holly.

Both Lilli and Caroline were eager to see what Holly looked like now. Her sister was famous and they were keen to see if any of the gloss of Tara Miller had rubbed off on her. Tara was in the papers occasionally, and had been photographed at several high-profile premieres. Consequently, Holly was more interesting than she had been when she was just one of the quiet, mousy girls in school. Fame by association was better than no fame at all.

Donna revealed that Holly lived in a fabulous apartment in Dublin, had a wonderful job in Lee’s and partied like mad. She also said that Holly looked like a million dollars. Caroline and Lilli, remembering the plump shy girl with the round, earnest face, wanted to see this for themselves.

Donna was frantic by the time she and Holly pulled up outside the hotel at five past eight. ‘We’re so late,’ she shrieked, leaping out of the cab and thrusting a tenner into Holly’s hand. ‘Here’s my share. I have to check in. We were supposed to be here at half seven, the meal will have started five minutes ago and I’ve still got to get changed…’ She fled up the hotel steps into the lobby.

‘What’s the rush?’ said the taxi driver chattily as Holly paid him. ‘When God made time, he made plenty of it. And it’s Christmas: no party starts on time at Christmas. I’d say you’d be lucky if you get your dinner by ten tonight, never mind by eight.’

Holly smiled at him. ‘My sentiments exactly.’ Bunny’s plan for being late had been a good one. When Holly had picked Donna up from the train station and taken her for a pre-reunion drink, she’d assured her that they’d get a taxi to the party and be there in five minutes. Pre-Christmas traffic, driving rain and the mayhem of late-night shopping combined to make it more like forty minutes.

‘Thanks a million,’ Holly said, climbing out of the cab and slamming the door. She moved away and realised that her scarf had got stuck. The driver began to drive off.

‘Stop!’ roared Holly in panic. He slammed on the brakes.

Naturally, her scarf had somehow infiltrated the door locking mechanism and it took five minutes of fervent dragging to disentangle it.

‘Thanks again,’ she said weakly, holding the frayed ends of the scarf and hoping that she could cut off the destroyed bits. At least it hadn’t been the corset.

In the hotel, Donna had checked in and was about to race up to her room to leap into her party dress when Holly appeared. ‘Come on!’ she yelled at Holly.

While Donna’s hysteria mounted as she snagged tights and spilt glitter powder on her dress instead of on her shoulders, Holly sat in a chair by the window and looked out onto the wet streets wondering why she’d come in the first place.

‘Let’s go.’ Donna was ready, still panting from her last-minute rush.

Holly got to her feet, both the corset and her new boots creaking ominously.

She shook back her hair and breathed as deeply as was possible with several hundred pounds’ worth of designer corset glued to her.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

‘That’s a fabulous outfit,’ grumbled Donna as they went downstairs. ‘I hate this old dress. You look great and I look like I’ve been out milking the cows all day and only stopped ten minutes ago to get dressed.’

‘You don’t have cows,’ pointed out Holly, smiling at Donna’s mad logic. ‘And you look great.’

‘You know what I mean. You have that city gloss about you and I look like a bumpkin.’

‘No you don’t. And I borrowed this,’ Holly confided, breaking her promise to Bunny. ‘I was so scared that I’d look awful and the rest of them would think I’d never changed from being boring, fat old Holly Miller.’

‘But you look beautiful,’ said Donna in astonishment. ‘You’ve looked great for years. Haven’t you got a fabulous life and everything? What have you to feel scared about?’

‘Are you on drugs?’ demanded Holly, mystified as to how her friend had this inaccurate view of her life. ‘I don’t have a fabulous life, I work in a shop, I live in a flat I can’t afford, if I didn’t do overtime, I’d never be able to pay the electricity bill and my last date was a disaster.’

‘How am I supposed to know these things if you don’t tell me?’ said Donna crossly.

‘I’m sick telling you but you’re convinced I’m lying. You seem to think that living away from Kinvarra is like magic dust that transforms your life. It doesn’t.’

Donna stopped walking. ‘Right, so. We won’t mention this, though. I told the girls that you were getting on brilliantly and had men coming out your ears.’

Holly goggled at this. ‘You did what?’

‘I thought you were having a great time. Ah forget it, we’ll say nothing. Caroline and Lilli are great fun, you know,’ she added.

‘I don’t know.’ Holly was ready to confide all her fears now that she’d started. ‘I never talked to them at school, they looked down on us for being quiet.’

‘We were our own worst enemies at school, Holly,’ said Donna firmly. ‘We should have joined in more. That’s why I’m pals with Caroline and Lilli now. I don’t want Emily to grow up being all quiet and mousy like us. She plays with Caroline and Lilli’s girls and when they’re older, they’ll look after her. Nobody will call my daughter Speccy.’

So Donna had remembered. Holly stared at her friend. ‘And all this time I thought you were suffering from selective memory syndrome.’

Donna grinned. ‘No, I’ve just reinvented myself. Like Madonna. I’m making up for lost time. Come on.’

Caroline and Lilli were on their third double each. The bar was humming and they’d been mingling like mad, but there was still no sign of Michelle.

‘Stupid bitch,’ said Lilli crossly. ‘I always said she was unreliable. And where’s that Donna?’

‘She’s here,’ crowed Caroline. ‘And omigod who’s that with her?’

They watched in astonishment as Donna arrived, breathless as usual, accompanied by this tall, voluptuously stunning woman, wearing what looked suspiciously like the original version of Caroline’s corset. The woman’s dark hair fell gloriously around her shoulders, as glossy as if several catwalk hairdressers had been slaving over it for hours.

She hadn’t needed a seaweed wrap to squeeze her body into the corset; like a modern-day Sophia Loren, her figure was a natural hourglass, with a waspy waist that was surely narrower than one of Caroline’s thighs. Caroline, who’d put on a stone since her school days, wished she’d stopped her mid-morning Mars bar now.

The dark-haired woman was carrying an exquisite beaded handbag and her necklace was definitely the same one that Posh Spice had been wearing in Hello! Confidence oozed out of her like expensive moisturiser out of Estée Lauder radiance pearls.

‘It’s Holly Miller,’ said Lilli, awestruck.

Donna rushed up to her two new best friends, who clambered out of their corner to greet her and Holly. This was true reunion gold. Looking round the room, most people looked almost the same as at school, just with better highlights, real jewellery and more expensive clothes. Pat Wilson had had her long dark hair cut into a bob, Andrea Maguire’s red hair was now dyed a startling blonde, and even Babs Grafton had finally had her teeth fixed and sported contacts instead of heavy glasses. But Holly was totally different, like someone who’d just stepped out of one of those six-month make-over things on the telly.

‘Holly, I wouldn’t have recognised you!’ said Lilli, determined to get the upper hand now that she was faced with this much improved Holly.

‘Isn’t she fabulous looking,’ said Donna.

‘You look wonderful,’ agreed Caroline. ‘That’s a real designer corset, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Holly, overcome with the urge to tell them it was borrowed, ‘although it isn’t…’

Donna interrupted before Holly could say ‘mine’. ‘Wouldn’t we all like a staff discount at Lee’s.’ She gave Holly a prod in the arm and Holly took the hint.

‘…full price,’ Holly amended. ‘It wasn’t full price. We do get a discount.’ She hoped that Lilli and Caroline couldn’t tell there was a lie in the midst of all of this. Holly told lies with all the skill of a devout nun.

‘Tell us all about yourself,’ said Caroline eagerly. ‘I’d love to work in Lee’s; it must be amazing, all those famous people dropping in and out, trying on Versace evening dresses.’

‘I work in the children’s department,’ Holly said apologetically. ‘We stock Baby Dior but we’re drawing the line at sticking toddlers into sequinned evening dresses. It’s hard to get baby sick out of sequins.’

Everyone roared with laughter and Holly felt herself relax marginally. Normally, she was too nervous to joke round other people.

‘Still,’ Donna pointed out, ‘you get a discount. I must come up and look for an outfit for Emily’s First Communion. They have lovely dresses nowadays, not like the terrible frilly things we had to wear. Do you remember mine, Holly? It was awful and my mother put curlers in my hair the night before and it went frizzy and stuck out at angles like I’d been plugged into the mains!’

‘I bet mine was worse,’ said Lilli, shuddering. ‘My grandmother had my mother’s old dress put away and she made me wear it. It was all yellowing and too tight. I was a sight!’

And they were off, comparing stories about how awful they’d looked. Holly realised that it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. Lilli and Caroline seemed genuinely interested in her, and they weren’t the same arrogant schoolgirls she remembered. Lilli was still capable of being a bit sharp but Holly could cope with that now. And they seemed to think she was funny. Holly knew she’d been funny when she was at school too, it was just that nobody but Donna noticed.

As Michelle hadn’t turned up, Holly was certainly the most fashionable and interesting ex-Cardinal girl there that night and Caroline and Lilli attempted to stick with her. Holly would have preferred to talk to the other non-gang girls from school but she didn’t see any of them there. She’d met Andrea who used to sit beside her in art class, and Geena Monroe had thrown her arms round Holly and hugged her happily. Caroline’s once-great friend, Selina, who’d never even spoken to Holly in school, had been fulsome in her praise of Holly’s outfit, necklace and general improvement. But she hadn’t seen lovely quiet Brona Reilly who’d sat on her other side in art class, or Munira Shirsat and her best friend, Jan Campbell.

‘I think I saw Brona earlier, but a few of the girls didn’t reply to the letter,’ Caroline said when Holly asked her about Brona, Jan and Munira. ‘You’d think they’d want to meet up with everyone again. After all we shared together.’

Holly wondered if the other girls had been so nervous of a reunion that they had deliberately not replied.

‘You’ve heard all about us,’ Lilli said, when they were waiting for dessert, ‘and we haven’t heard a thing about the man in your life.’

‘Or should that be men?’ giggled Caroline, who’d decided that Holly was simply being enigmatic by not talking about herself. That this glamorous woman could be shy never occurred to her, and anyone who looked so amazing must have some gorgeous bloke in the wings. ‘Go on,’ she urged. ‘Tell us.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ said Holly.

Donna kicked her under the table. ‘What about that guy you were telling me about earlier?’

All Holly could remember was Donna talking about reinventing herself.

‘I bet he’s a hunk,’ said Lilli enviously.

‘Look!’ sighed Andrea, as waiters converged to place plates of butterscotch mousse, double chocolate cake and Hawaiian Surprise in front of them.

Donna took advantage of the lapse in everyone’s concentration to whisper into Holly’s ear.

‘Make someone up!’

‘Why?’ Holly hissed back.

‘Because I’ve told them you’ve got this fabulous life and I don’t want you to let me down. We were boring at school, we’ve got to make up for it now!’

Three spoonfuls into their dessert, attention turned back to Holly. She wished more than anything she could have a cigarette, otherwise she was going to eat all her mousse, and lick the plate, and she couldn’t afford to burst out of her outfit.

Caroline, Lilli, Selina and Andrea were waiting eagerly. Donna was smiling, encouragingly. Holly thought of how bad she was at lying, and then thought of how flattering it was that Caroline and Lilli really imagined that she could have a sexy boyfriend.

‘Is it someone famous?’ demanded Lilli, suddenly suspicious.

‘No,’ stammered Holly.

Donna gave her another kick under the table and Holly winced. She’d be black and blue tomorrow.

‘Well…’ They all looked at her eagerly. In fact, their entire end of the table was looking at her eagerly. All conversation seemed to have ceased as everyone waited for news of the new, improved Holly Miller’s man.

‘Go on,’ urged Donna.

Holly gulped. For some deranged reason, the only man who came to mind was the current object of Kenny’s longing: a male model named Xavier. Hard-bodied, blond-haired and with the face of a pouting archangel, Xavier reeked of sex, although Holly had it on good authority (from a drooling Kenny) that the only sex Xavier was interested in was not the female of the species. Trust her to come up with a fantasy boyfriend who was gay. Kenny would wet himself laughing when he heard.

‘Tell us,’ demanded Caroline.

Holly proceeded to describe Xavier in each perfect detail, leaving out the vital facts that he was gay and not going out with her. Lying by omission, she knew. What had Kenny said? ‘His lower lip is like a big biteable, coral silk throw pillow. Yummy.’ Kenny’s imagination knew no bounds when he was in lust.

‘A throw pillow, imagine. He sounds amazing.’ Even Lilli was impressed.

Holly smiled hollowly and took a huge gulp of wine. She’d kill Donna later.

But as Caroline and Lilli began describing their other halves in glowing terms in order to prove that Holly wasn’t the only one who could nab a handsome man, Holly began to realise why she’d gone along with Donna and lied. Feminism was a wildly outdated concept to Caroline and Lilli. Having a man was a status symbol to beat all others. Without one, Holly was low caste.

‘Hi, Holly,’ said a voice.

It was Brona, one of the few girls in school who’d been shyer than she was. Whereas Caroline and Lilli had disdainfully seen Brona as dull and unstylish, Holly’s kind eyes saw an old friend whose eyes glittered with a spark of fun.

Holly leapt to her feet and hugged Brona warmly. ‘How are you!’ she said delightedly, ‘it’s so lovely to see you. You haven’t been here all night, have you? Where were you?’

‘At the back of the room, I didn’t like to interrupt,’ Brona said, sliding mischievous blue eyes in the direction of Caroline and Lilli.

Holly grinned and bore her off to a quiet corner to talk.

‘You look completely amazing, Holly,’ said Brona in genuine admiration. ‘Poor Lilli’s eyes are out on stalks with jealousy. How are you?’

After a thoroughly enjoyable half hour, Holly had learned that Brona was working as a locum in Donegal having qualified as a doctor three years before. In her spare time, she painted, went scuba diving and she had just bought a recently-restored fisherman’s cottage on the coast. She was utterly happy.

‘Dr Reilly,’ said Holly, impressed. ‘Let’s go back and tell the gangettes and they’ll be wildly impressed.’

Brona grinned. ‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘I’ve learned not to want to impress people for the wrong reasons. Whenever I find myself rushing to try and let people see how clever I am, I ask myself: Why would I want to impress them?’

Holly flushed. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ she said, shame washing over her because that’s just what she’d wanted to do: to impress her old classmates. Why had she bothered lying? She was what she was. What was the point of pretending?

‘I used to be miserably intimidated by the Carolines and the Lillis when we were in school,’ Brona revealed. ‘But I’m not quiet any more. Med school knocks that out of you, and I don’t feel the need to bother talking to people who once looked down at me.’

‘No, you’re right, I agree totally,’ Holly said.

‘I was a bit nervous of coming here tonight, you see,’ Brona said, ‘and now I have, I’m pleased because it’s shown me how much I’ve changed and become a new, stronger person.’

When Brona left, Holly sat down beside Donna again, feeling like a fraud.

The conversation hadn’t moved on from the subject of men.

‘You’re so lucky, Holly,’ Caroline said dreamily. ‘I do love being married, but there are times when I wish I was young, free and single like you. I’ve never had the chance to go out with lots of men and have wild flings…’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Donna, who was quite drunk now. ‘It’d be incredible to not be Mummy for a while, and party with gorgeous guys. You can look when you’re married but that’s it.’

‘You can look, all right,’ giggled Caroline, pointing at the waiter, who was very young and good-looking. ‘Holly’s the only one of us who can chat him up.’

‘Do you know something,’ Lilli said thoughtfully, ‘he’s the image of that guy you used to go out with, Holly. That guy you took to our debs dance. What was his name?’

‘Richie!’ said Donna, delighted to have remembered the name through the fog of alcohol. ‘Whatever happened to him?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Holly, shuddering. ‘It was so long ago I can barely remember what he looked like.’ She could, actually, but she didn’t want to even think about Richie. He’d been her first boyfriend and the first one to dump her unceremoniously. His image was embedded in her brain as the prototype guy-not-to-trust. Since Richie, Holly’s luck with men hadn’t improved. She didn’t really trust any of them.

‘He was cute, that Richie,’ Lilli said.

‘But not as cute as your new guy sounds,’ gushed Caroline.

‘We’ve got to meet this new boyfriend of yours,’ Lilli added. ‘You’ll have to bring him to Kinvarra.’

Holly glued a smile to her face. ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said.

The children’s wear department in Lee’s was heaving with pre-Christmas shoppers the following morning, which did nothing for Holly’s mild hangover. She hadn’t got drunk: you couldn’t and keep track of all the lies about a fabulous boyfriend with lips that resembled soft furnishings. But as she hadn’t been able to smoke, she’d certainly drunk more than usual – two Bloody Marys followed by a couple of glasses of wine at dinner.

Getting up that morning had been hard and she’d had to hit the snooze button three times before she could haul herself out of bed. She’d only just remembered to grab the bag with the precious corset which she’d sworn she’d return to Gabriella that day.

On her way back down to the basement from her third trip to the loos, she stopped on the staff stairs and had a little rest to revitalise herself. It was ages to her coffee break and she could kill for a sit down and the sugar hit of a chocolate biscuit.

‘Miss Miller, good morning,’ said a voice behind her.

‘Oh, er, good morning Mr Lambert,’ Holly said, fumbling frantically in her sleeve for a tissue. She blew her nose loudly so it would look as if she was preparing herself for going onto the shop floor. Trust her to get caught dossing by the store manager. Mr Lambert held the door open and Holly, still bleary-eyed and tired, had to follow him into the children’s department. Trying to inject a spring into her step, she walked over to the squashy child-sized purple and orange chairs by the changing rooms where Bunny was trying to convince a ten-year-old boy that he wouldn’t face immediate ridicule from his soccer-mad pals if he wore something as boring as a non-football-logo-ed shirt for his baby sister’s christening.

From the grateful look on the boy’s exhausted father’s face, it appeared that Bunny was winning the war.

‘You can swap the shirt for anything you like once we’re at the restaurant,’ the father said eagerly once the despised shirt was wrapped and bagged in the Lee’s Department Store’s trademark red and gold carrier bag. Thank you,’ he added gratefully to Bunny.

‘Forget it,’ grinned Bunny. ‘It’s my job.’

Bunny’s speciality was small boys, especially when they came attached to good-looking fathers.

‘What’s your name, so I can ask for you again?’ the customer said.

‘Bunny.’

The man smiled as if this was a perfectly normal name for a grown-up. Bunny was the only person Holly knew who could carry off a child’s pet’s name and get away with it.

‘My father thought it was cute,’ was Bunny’s answer that first day, before Holly could even ask why she had such a weird name. ‘I’m actually Colleen but nobody ever called me that. Why Holly?’ she asked conversationally. ‘Are you a Christmas birthday person?’

‘July, actually,’ Holly replied. ‘My mother likes unusual names. My father wanted us all to have traditional names but my mother won. My eldest sister is Stella Verena, I’m Holly Genevieve and my middle sister is Tara Lucretia.’

‘After the Borgias, I hope? How cool,’ said Bunny. ‘Is Tara Lucretia a poisoner type of girl?’

Holly laughed. ‘The only person she’s ever likely to poison is our Aunt Adele. Tara writes scripts for National Hospital.’

‘Wow,’ said Bunny, impressed. ‘You see, that proves my dad’s point which is that people with unusual names end up doing out-of-the-ordinary things. Although I think he was hoping for more from me than the kids’ department of Lee’s.’

Holly soon discovered that, in typical Bunny fashion, this wasn’t strictly true.

Bunny had just finished an English degree and was taking a job to finance her year off round the world, when she planned to veg out in India before a stint working as an English language teacher in Japan.

Bunny was one of those people Holly felt utterly comfortable with, and they’d instantly become good friends.

Now Bunny waved off the grateful customer and turned to where Holly was studiously folding sweatshirts on a display. All it took was one person rifling through the clothes for an entire display to look hideously untidy. Miss Jackson, the department head, took a dim view of untidiness even in the war zone that was the pre-Christmas rush.

‘Do you mind if I take first coffee break?’ Bunny asked. One of the pitfalls of working in the same department was that Bunny and Holly couldn’t take their breaks together. There were four of them in children’s clothes and there had to be three members of staff on duty at all times.

‘Fine,’ said Holly, wishing she’d asked first.

‘I could kill for a fag.’ Bunny started rooting about in the under-till cupboard for her cigarettes and her cardigan. Lee’s was strictly non-smoking, so smokers congregated on the rooftop level of the store car park. ‘See you in fifteen minutes.’

Fifteen minutes more and Holly could pour herself a huge coffee. She closed her eyes and wished she could learn how to press the stop button when it came to red wine.

‘Are you feeling all right, Holly?’ inquired Miss Jackson, appearing from the baby wear department.

‘Fine, great,’ said Holly brightly. She smiled so broadly that her face felt as if it would crack.

Miss Jackson approved of Holly Miller. Diligent and polite to the customers, she was always scrupulously turned out, and never gave a moment’s bother, even if she was a little on the quiet side. But then Miss Jackson had seen Holly chatting away nineteen to the dozen with Bunny, so perhaps she was only quiet with management.

‘If you have a moment, perhaps we can sort out the fancy dress rails…’ Miss Jackson began.

‘Have you got this in age ten to eleven?’ inquired a woman, holding up a pair of boy’s trousers.

Saved by a customer. ‘Let me check,’ smiled Holly, turning her attention to the woman gratefully. Sorting out the fancy dress stuff was a nightmare job at the best of times as customers thought nothing of rampaging through the fairy and wizard costumes like tornadoes when they were looking for a particular size. The last time she’d done it, Holly had absent-mindedly stuck a pair of kitten’s ears on her head, forgotten to take them off, and had spent the morning serving customers with fluffy pink and black ears bobbing eccentrically until Miss Jackson had noticed.

As soon as Bunny came back from her break, Holly raced off for hers. Desperate for coffee, she bypassed her usual cigarette-stop in the car park, and made straight for the canteen. This proved to be her undoing.

There was a small clique of the store’s party girls in there gossiping about a Christmas drinks they’d all been to. Holly steeled herself for the inevitable queries about her social life. The clique never talked about anything else but parties and men, and they didn’t understand why anyone (Holly) didn’t share their fascination. Consequently, they thought Holly was a bit stand-offish, not realising that she was simply shy.

She quietly made her way to the coffee machines and poured herself a cup, then, because it would seem rude to go and sit by herself, tentatively sat at the edge of the circle and listened. Pia (ground floor, Clinique counter) was keeping the group enthralled with tales of what happened next, after Tomás, he of the melting foreign accent, had told her she was beautiful enough to be a model.

‘It’s not as if I haven’t heard that before,’ Pia said without arrogance. She was stunningly beautiful after all. Skin like caramel silk, doe eyes and the grace of a ballerina. Men must surely always be telling her how beautiful she was, Holly thought wistfully.

‘But he really is a photographer,’ Pia went on.

The group were impressed. Men pretending to be photographers in order to chat up Pia was nothing new. One actually turning out to be a photographer was a surprise.

‘Which one was he?’ inquired Rebecca (ladies’ hosiery). ‘Not the tall, older guy? I noticed him talking to you but then I went to the mezzanine for a smoke with Leo and we ended up there for ages.’

‘The tall one, yes. He’s Hungarian,’ Pia said dreamily. ‘I thought you’d given up smoking, anyway?’ she added.

Rebecca grinned. ‘You know me: two drinks and I’m scabbing cigarettes from everyone.’

‘Oh yes, and what went on in the mezzanine with Leo?’ demanded Fiona (millinery). ‘It can’t be the same I-never-want-to-see-you-again Leo, can it?’

Rebecca’s grin widened. ‘Same story as with the cigarettes,’ she said wickedly. ‘Two drinks and I forget all my good intentions.’

They all laughed.

‘I was talking to your Tomás earlier, Pia,’ Fiona pointed out. ‘He never said he was a photographer.’

‘He was probably lying,’ Pia said easily.

Fiona, Rebecca and Pia all smiled. Men. What were they like?

‘What about you, Holly?’ asked Rebecca kindly, dragging Holly into the conversation because it wasn’t nice to let her hang on the edge. ‘Do anything interesting last night?’

‘I was at a school reunion,’ Holly said shyly.

The other girls smiled but the languid Pia looked unimpressed. School reunions were very far down her list of exciting events. Real parties involved rock stars, possibly a footballer or two, and at least one gossip column photographer recording the event for posterity.

‘I’d never bother going to a school reunion,’ said Pia. She eyed Holly speculatively, her cool gaze reminding Holly of Lilli the night before. Pia and Lilli were like sisters under the skin, Holly thought. Both keen to gauge a person’s success by the wrong standards.

Holly wished she could say something witty in return but, as usual when faced with people like Pia, words failed her. She smiled weakly, knowing she looked like an idiot.

Fiona began talking about some fabulous new high-heeled boots she’d bought that looked madly expensive even though they weren’t. Everyone nodded respectfully at this. Cheap, fashionable stuff that looked expensive was a favourite topic of conversation because none of them were on very good salaries despite their glitzy lifestyles.

‘Oh, you won’t believe the new shoes I got on Monday.’ Rebecca held the floor.

Holly drank her coffee and flicked through the old magazine that somebody had left on her chair. She couldn’t concentrate on it because she was wondering why she was such a wimp.

She drained her coffee and got to her feet, her movements graceful. Say something, she told herself, say something. ‘Better go back. See you.’ Oh well, it was better than nothing.

She’d just left the canteen when she realised she’d left her cigarettes on the table and doubled back to pick them up. Which was when she overheard them talking about her.

‘Do you believe that about a school reunion?’ asked Pia in a poor-dear voice. ‘I certainly don’t. In fact, I don’t think she has a social life at all. She’s a total oddball, really. She never has a word to say for herself.’

Hovering outside the canteen door, Holly was shocked into immobility.

‘She’s shy,’ protested Rebecca.

‘Well, I think she’s just rude,’ Pia continued dismissively. ‘Or stupid. Somebody should tell her. I’d kill myself if I was as dumb as she is.’

‘Don’t be such a bitch, Pia,’ said Rebecca. ‘Not everyone’s as confident as you.’

‘I don’t understand shyness,’ Pia said haughtily. ‘If you stammer, you can get that sorted out. If she’s shy, why doesn’t she go to classes or something? There’s no excuse for that type of thing.’

‘Poor thing. And I don’t think she ever has a boyfriend. I know, why don’t we introduce her to someone?’ suggested Rebecca. ‘That might give her a bit of a social life.’

‘Waste of time.’ Pia was scathing.

Outside, Holly’s face burned with embarrassment and pain. Blindly, she hurried to the staff stairs, and raced down to the basement and the comfort of the children’s wear department. Taking deep breaths to try and stop herself shaking, Holly leaned against the wall hoping that her legs wouldn’t let her down. How could they let Pia say such awful things? Grimly, Holly thought of all the things she’d like to say to Pia if only she had the courage. She’d show her. She’d get a bloody fantastic life together and make Pia jealous of her, she would.

Like all the best tear-stained plans of revenge, by evening, Holly’s thirst for retribution had vanished and she simply felt miserable and lonely. It was Friday night and as she walked slowly through the streets to catch her bus, she felt convinced that everyone else on the whole planet had exciting pre-Christmas party plans while she was going home alone for a date with Ben and Jerry.

Her mobile buzzed and, for once, she managed to find it in her bulging shoulder bag before the caller had given up.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi Holly,’ said Joan. ‘Spill the beans. How did last night go?’

‘’kay,’ said Holly despondently.

‘What’s wrong?’ demanded Joan. ‘You sound like Cinderella when the pumpkin coach hits the dust.’

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Holly couldn’t bear to have this conversation in the middle of the street. She might burst into tears, which would undoubtedly give Pia more ammunition for the ‘Holly Miller is an anti-social nutcase’ theory. Her phone began to crackle. ‘The signal’s bad here,’ she yelled at the phone but it was too late. She’d been cut off. Feeling more wretched than ever, she switched the power off.

Joan and Kenny were both going out that evening, so she wouldn’t see them until the morning. She’d tell them about the awful incident in the canteen then. But not now.

Her flat was in a crumbling Victorian monstrosity that had been built onto so many times, the original architect would never have recognised it. It was situated on Windmill Terrace, a long, winding road made up of a strange mix of vandalised old tenements and sprawling Victorian houses which canny property developers were doing up in advance of the area being gentrified. When that happened, Holly’s landlord would undoubtedly eject all his tenants out onto the street and sell up. Holly was crossing her fingers that this wouldn’t happen until she had saved money for a deposit on a flat of her own, although that prospect was still a long way off. Her current apartment was one of two on the second floor. Across the hall was Joan and Kenny’s flat, a much bigger, two-bedroomed establishment with its own miniature balcony, a bathroom with a cracked roll-top bath instead of the shower Holly had, and a kitchen that was never used for anything except making coffee and toast. Kenny and Joan had moved in two years ago, at the same time as Holly, and once they’d discovered that she loved to cook, they turned up at hers at least twice a week looking hungry. Consequently, they pooled the food money and treated their floor like one big flat, with Holly in charge of cooking. Joan, who as a student had the best working hours, did most of the grocery shopping, while Kenny took care of the laundry and ironed. Holly was dangerous with an iron because of her ability to singe holes in all her most precious garments. Anyway, she knew she’d never be able to get knife-edge creases into trousers the way Kenny did.

The walk from the bus stop was cold and she was chilled to the bone by the time she wearily opened her door. She switched on lights and the kettle, hung her heavy winter coat on the door and sighed with relief to be home. It was a tiny flat, but one of Holly’s great skills was making a house into a home. With her own special brand of shabby and very cheap chic, she’d transformed the place. All the walls were painted a calming apple white with big colourful prints in distressed white frames grouped on them, and in pride of place stood a big dresser with glass doors which Holly had bought for &euro;20 from a market and had distressed herself. The dresser contained all sorts of treasures: china, books, antique brocade bits and bobs could be seen through the glass, while an embroidered Japanese kimono in saffron silk hung from one knob. Beaded tea lights, an enamelled French lamp and a pretty, carefully-mended chandelier provided the lighting. Two small couches, at least fifth-hand but expertly disguised by two amber velvet throws and a variety of mismatched cushions made of chintzy scraps of fabric, made up the seating arrangements. The single divan bed in her box-like bedroom had a draped canopy that wouldn’t have shamed the Empress Josephine and even her clothes hangers were padded floral ones, in colours that went with the rag rugs on her wooden floors.

Her home, unique and utterly individual, expressed her personality in the way she so often was too shy to do herself.

That night, Holly did what she always did when she was upset: she cooked. She slotted Destiny’s Child into the CD player, pushed the volume up, poured herself a glass of red wine, lit a cigarette and started cutting up fat juicy tomatoes for her pomodoro sauce. When the sauce was bubbling, she opened her small but perfectly organized freezer and took out a portion of frozen fresh pasta. Purists might have shuddered at the thought of freezing pasta, but it was home-made, then frozen into portions for the occasions when she didn’t have time to make it fresh. Her pasta machine had been a huge investment but was one of her most prized possessions: there was something infinitely calming about kneading the pasta dough gently and slowly feeding the sheets in and out of the gleaming stainless steel machine. It made her feel grounded, at home, as if endless Italian mamas or her own, Irish one, were looking kindly over her shoulder, helping her and comforting her.

The doorbell rang at half seven and Holly knew who it would be: either Joan or Kenny. She bit her lip, knowing that whichever one of them it was, they would instantly drag the humiliating story out of her.

‘Omigod what a day,’ groaned Joan, erupting into the room. She was thinner than a pipe cleaner but somehow seemed to take up a lot of space. She was in a purple phase this week, and dressed as befitted a fashion design student: Morticia Addams blue-black hair, an eyebrow stud, dyed purple army fatigues and a hand-painted lilac T-shirt decorated with her version of Japanese calligraphy. Kenny, who, when he wasn’t fantasising about Xavier, was cherishing a long-range crush on a handsome Japanese student who lived in a house down the street, was always begging Joan not to wear the T-shirt because he was convinced it said something rude in Japanese. Joan ignored him on the grounds that the Japanese student wasn’t gay and wouldn’t look twice at Kenny no matter what Joan’s T-shirts said. Now she tweaked Holly’s cheek, stuck a finger into the tomato sauce to taste it, turned the volume of the CD player up to trouble-with-the-landlord level and threw herself onto Holly’s smaller couch, all in a matter of seconds.

‘I didn’t make enough dinner. I thought you were going out tonight,’ said Holly.

‘I might be,’ hedged Joan, who was sure something was wrong with Holly and was determined to get it out of her. ‘What’s up?’ she inquired. ‘You look like you’ve had a shit day, too.’

‘No, why do you think that?’ asked Holly.

‘Your mouth is all droopy and you look like you might cry any minute,’ Joan pointed out. ‘So either you’re depressed or you’ve aged very badly in the twenty-four hours since I last saw you, in which case I recommend Botox. What happened, and tell me all about last night’s reunion? Did you look a million dollars and did you thump any of the horrible old bitches who used to ignore you?’

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Holly, only asking the question to avoid having to answer others. Joan was always hungry. Kenny said she had a tapeworm inside her.

‘Yes, and what’s wrong?’

Holly moved away from the counter which separated the tiny kitchenette from the sitting room. With her back to Joan, she lit up another cigarette. Joan was always nagging her to stop but Holly needed the crutch of smoking, and anyway, if she stopped, she’d just balloon up into a fat girl again. And then she’d be anti-social and fat…

She stifled a sniff but Joan heard.

‘Holly, what’s wrong?’ said Joan again in a gentle voice.

Faced with her friend’s kindness, the whole story came tumbling out: how Holly had felt good because everything had gone well at the reunion, but then how stupid she’d felt for lying about a boyfriend. And then, how utterly hurt she’d been by what Pia had said.

‘Stupid bitch!’ raged Joan, threatening death, destruction and the reorganisation of Pia’s facial features. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t go back and hit her. Did you mention this to Bunny?’ Joan and Bunny were on the same wavelength. Both were tough, unafraid of anyone and fiercely protective of Holly.

‘No,’ said Holly miserably. ‘I couldn’t tell her. I am a mess, Joan. Pia was right.’

Like many sensitive people, all it took was one push and she was down.

‘You’re not a mess,’ screeched Joan furiously.

‘When I lied to the people at the reunion, the boyfriend I invented was gay! I can’t even lie like normal people.’

‘Kenny is cute,’ Joan pointed out.

‘It wasn’t Kenny, I’m dating Xavier.’

Joan grinned. ‘Mr Throw-Pillow-Bottom Lip. Holly, love, you have to lie at school reunions.’ She decided that Holly needed cheering up before her morale could be boosted. ‘What else are you supposed to say? Everyone has a fantastic life according to what they say when they meet old enemies. Did you ever hear of anyone at a reunion who said: “I got thrown out of college, was busted for drugs and avoided a jail sentence by doing eight zillion hours of community service, plus I live in a squat, have never had sex and my job involves spending all day saying ‘would you like fries with that?’”

Holly burst out laughing. ‘Compared with that, I have a fantastic life and I don’t know why I bothered lying.’

‘I do,’ Joan said, ‘you lied, and it was only a teeny, weensy lie, by the way, for the same reason everyone lies – because we’re all basically insecure and we want people to think we’re wildly successful. Am I right or am I right?’

‘Right,’ Holly replied hesitantly. ‘But that makes me a very shallow person if I give in to that sort of thinking.’

‘Everyone does it.’ Joan was matter of fact. ‘My sister tells people her husband is in the merchandise relocation business when he drives a truck, and my mother tells my grandmother that I dress like this because we have to wear strange clothes in college. It’s easier than telling my grandmother to eff off because she’s an interfering old cow.’

‘That’s different,’ Holly said. ‘I lied because it was easier than admitting that I’m hopeless with men and just can’t talk to them. I lied so that all the girls I was in school with wouldn’t look at me the way Pia looks at me. She said there was no point in them fixing me up with a man because it would be a waste of time.’ Holly looked so downcast that Joan’s blood began to come to the boil again. Pia was so dead. ‘We’ll just have to find a fabulously hunky boyfriend for you then, someone who can race into the children’s department just before closing and ravage you on top of the Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer pyjamas, and that would show dopey Slut Face Pia.’

‘I can’t speak from experience but I daresay that type of behaviour would get me fired,’ Holly pointed out.

‘But at least the girls would know you had a hunky boyfriend.’

‘I’d also be jobless.’

‘Just an idea.’ Joan twiddled a bit of spiky hair thoughtfully.

Holly stabbed out her cigarette and went back to stirring her sauce miserably.

‘Enough already,’ said Joan, changing the conversation. ‘Was everyone at the reunion impressed with your outfit?’

Holly grinned for the first time all day. ‘We’re talking eyes popping out of heads. They couldn’t believe it was chubby little Holly Miller.’

‘That’s what I call a result. I can’t imagine you as a chubby kid,’ Joan added. ‘You are so not fat.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Holly mumbled. ‘But I was and I still don’t feel different, Joan. I still feel like the old me.’

Joan regarded her grimly. ‘The problem isn’t other people, Holly,’ she pronounced, ‘it’s you. It’s in your head.’

The doorbell rang again, a long insistent ring made by somebody keeping an impatient finger on the bell. Only Kenny rang like that. The word ‘impatient’ failed hopelessly to convey the notion of how much in a hurry Kenny always was.

‘Don’t mention this to Kenny,’ begged Holly as she went to open the door. She couldn’t cope with the two of them giving out to her all evening for being a neurotic wimp.

‘Hello sweeties. Is there enough din dins for me?’ inquired Kenny, once he’d hugged Holly and examined the contents of the saucepan bubbling on the stove.

In contrast to Joan’s fashion college rig-out, Kenny was beautifully dressed in a charcoal shirt that clung snugly to his slim torso and a pair of elegant grey trousers that looked as though they had been made for him. Gucci and Hugo Boss respectively. Kenny loved labels and could identify any item of clothing at fifty paces. A senior salesman at an exclusive menswear boutique, Kenny was branching out into working as a stylist. His dream was to stop working in the shop altogether and freelance.

Holly thought he could work either side of the camera. He had cropped dark hair with a Richard Gere-esque sprinkling of early grey, and a handsome face with dark stubble. Kenny couldn’t cross the road without women looking admiringly at him. Joan’s favourite method of teasing him was to sigh and say, ‘Isn’t it a waste you’re gay. Why don’t we give it a go? I’m sure all you need is the love of a good woman.’

Kenny’s answer to this was to roll his eyes theatrically and shudder: ‘Don’t go there.’

Holly hunted in the freezer for more pasta. ‘There’s enough dinner for everyone,’ she said.

‘Goody.’ Kenny bounced onto the couch beside Joan and the two of them looked happily up at Holly, with eager hungry expressions on their faces. They reminded Holly of two kids expectantly watching Mummy cooking. The three of them were certainly a little family unit, she thought ruefully. Although they took turns being Mummy, because there was always one of them in some trauma. Kenny was plunged into gloom roughly every month because his love life never ran smoothly and there was always some gorgeous hunk of a man who wasn’t returning his phone calls. Joan’s traumatic incidents involved her finances – she spent all her grant on clothes, regularly ran out of rent money and scattered IOUs around like confetti. Holly’s problem was herself, which was handy in that it didn’t involve outside influences.

‘I thought you guys were going out?’ Holly said.

‘Change of plans,’ Kenny said.

‘Is there anything good on the telly tonight?’ Joan asked, searching in vain for the TV guide.

‘Nothing good on a Friday, except Sex and the City on satellite,’ Kenny said instantly. Kenny loved TV and read the listings in the paper first, followed by his horoscope, and then the headlines.

From the kitchenette, Holly grinned. She might not know what a wild existence with lots of men was like personally, but she could watch it on TV thanks to the Sex and the City girls. She began to grate some Parmesan reggiano, letting the day’s events seep out of her system, while Kenny and Joan argued over the television. What would she do without them?

Ten minutes later, dinner was on the table, served on Holly’s auction-house Italian china with the pastel fruit designs. None of it matched, but it was exquisite.

Joan began mopping up sauce messily with a heavily-buttered roll while Kenny fastidiously dipped slivers of unbuttered bread into his.

‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘Holly, you are talented.’

Holly beamed.

‘You’ve got to forget what happened today,’ he continued, having heard a whispered version of the story from Joan while Holly was busy in the kitchen.

Holly stopped beaming. ‘You promised not to mention it,’ she said to Joan.

‘I agree with Joan,’ Kenny said, ‘Pia is a blot on the landscape but let’s not rush into making her suffer. She gets her hair cut by my friend Marco, just you wait till next time she wants her fringe trimmed. Linda Evangelista is the only person I’ve ever seen who can cope with a one-inch fringe. Huh.’

‘But making Pia suffer is not our primary mission,’ Kenny added. ‘Fun, yes.’ He grinned evilly. ‘Hilarious, absolutely. But not our primary mission. That,’ he paused, ‘is to get you a man, Holly dear. It would make all the difference to your life.’

Holly blinked anxiously at him. ‘I don’t need a man,’ she said.

Kenny’s smile widened to Cheshire Cat proportions. ‘Yes you do,’ he said. ‘You need to be loved, cherished and adored by some man who spends his whole life telling you how beautiful and wonderful you are. And we’re going to help you find him.’

‘Is that my Christmas present?’ inquired Holly, seeing the funny side.

‘Don’t talk to me about Christmas,’ groaned Joan. ‘I haven’t bought anything and I’m broke.’

‘I’m broke because I have bought everything,’ Holly added. ‘But I’m not really looking forward to Christmas this year because Tara isn’t going to be at home in Kinvarra with the rest of the family. She’s going to spend it with Finn’s parents.’

‘The dreaded mother-in-law?’ Joan said.

‘The very same. For Tara’s birthday in September, she bought her a steam iron.’

‘Lovely present,’ cooed Kenny. ‘I hope Tara’s buying her something suitably awful for Christmas.’

Holly giggled. ‘Tara did mention being tempted to buy a year’s supply of constipation pills but she chickened out and bought perfume instead.’

‘Well, I’ve bought nearly everyone’s gift, except my mother’s,’ Kenny added. ‘I have my eye on this fabulous Tanner Krolle handbag that she’d just love.’

‘Oh, you mean you’re not getting a boyfriend for everyone,’ joked Holly.

Kenny blew her a kiss. ‘Only you, Holly, only you.’

CHAPTER FIVE

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Tara idly wondered what the rest of her family were up to. Normally, the three Miller girls would be ensconced in the kitchen in Kinvarra, wrapping presents, laughing and joking as they tangled themselves up with Sellotape and shiny paper, with Amelia helping. Christmas wouldn’t be quite the same without everyone else, she thought. But then again, she had Finn. Life couldn’t always stay the same and if it had, she might never have met him. Noticing the time, she went in search of her husband. While she’d been out buying last-minute bits and pieces, he was supposed to have packed his stuff and all the presents. However, his suitcase lay empty on their bedroom floor and Finn lay sprawled on the bed, fully dressed and loose limbed. One long arm dangled over the side of the bed, almost reaching the floor, the other was flung across the pillow. Tara crept quietly over and gazed down at him. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and the combination of stubble and slept-in golden hair should have given him a dissolute appearance. But it didn’t. Even unkempt and deeply asleep, her husband shone with inner goodness. It was those long baby-girl eyelashes, Tara decided.

She slipped off her shoes and launched herself onto the bed.

‘Wake up!’ she roared, as she bounced into position beside her sleeping husband.

‘Errgh, what?’ groaned Finn, opening his eyes to reveal plenty of red-veined eyeball.

‘You were supposed to pack and shave while I was out,’ Tara said, crawling up the bed until she was lying on him. ‘I needed a rest,’ moaned Finn, burying his head under the pillow. ‘A few more minutes. It’s only lunchtime.’

‘It’s nearly two thirty and we’re supposed to be at your parents’ by half three.’

Somehow, they’d been roped into an intimate Jefferson family Christmas when Tara had wanted them to go to Kinvarra instead. But short of faking appendicitis, she knew there was no way out of it. They still had to pack for a three-night stay and the drive would take at least another hour, meaning that unless they left soon, they’d be very late.

‘Get up,’ she said again. ‘You know how awful the traffic is to your parents’ place, and today it’ll be worse than ever.’

From under the pillow, Finn groaned again. ‘We can phone and say we got delayed. Then I can have a snooze.’

Tara whipped the pillow away. ‘No way, Finn. Your mother won’t blame you if we’re late. It’ll be my fault. So get out of that bed or I’ll go and get the cold sponge.’

‘Not the sponge,’ pleaded Finn. ‘Anything but the sponge.’

Her fingers burrowed under his sweater and she began to tickle relentlessly.

‘Stop,’ he said weakly. ‘I can’t cope…’

Feeling guilty, she stopped. Finn took advantage of her weakness. In one quick twist, he’d jumped up in the bed and began tickling her, his longer, stronger fingers wickedly insistent.

‘No!’ squealed Tara as he began tickling her feet. ‘Not my feet! No, pig! Stop it!’

‘OK.’ Too hungover to continue at any event, he rolled off her and they both lay back on the bed, panting.

‘Have you packed anything?’ Tara inquired.

‘I got halfway through and I lay down for a nap,’ Finn confided. ‘I’m wrecked.’

‘That’s what happens when you get totally hammered at your office Christmas party,’ Tara said smugly. ‘I told you that drinking pints wasn’t an Olympic sport.’

Finn grinned. ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’

‘Not the day before we go to your parents for Christmas when you leave me to do all the packing,’ Tara reproved. ‘Get up, lazybones. We’ve got to be out of here in twenty minutes.’

‘Yessir,’ saluted Finn, half-heartedly.

Tara began packing quickly, rushing round the flat finding things like her mobile phone charger and her diary. Soon, she promised herself, they’d redecorate.

The bedroom was probably the best room in the two-bedroomed flat as it had the least awful curtains (plain, French blue) and boasted an entire wall of mirror-fronted wardrobes which hid a multitude of sins. Neither Tara nor Finn were tidy people and once the wardrobes were opened, things fell out and had to be carefully jammed back in. In spite of this drawback, they were packed and in the car in thirty minutes. The traffic was, as Tara had predicted, terrible. The Jeffersons lived in a pretty commuter town on the East coast, but the thirty-mile journey from Dublin inevitably took forever.

‘Relax,’ said Finn as they sat in a four-mile tailback to the toll bridge. ‘Mums won’t mind.’

Tara managed to keep her mouth shut. Mums or Mrs Gloria Jefferson would mind very much and would undoubtedly take it out on Tara. Just thinking about the next three days made Tara feel sick. She loved her father-in-law, Desmond, because he was funny and kind, like Finn, but Gloria was another matter. Chillier than the faint dusting of snow on the side of the motorway to Naas, Gloria was obsessed with class, money and ‘doing the right thing’. The right thing for Christmas, apparently, was a sedate meal out with friends the night before, an intimate family dinner on the day (Tara had previous experience of the great silences at any meal where the guest list was just herself, Finn, Desmond and Gloria), and an afternoon drinks party at the Jeffersons’ on Boxing Day where lesser neighbours were invited in to be allowed a glimpse of Gloria’s newly-purchased dining room table and twelve, no less, chairs. The wrong thing, as far as Tara could make out, was Gloria’s beloved only son marrying a television script writer. In her more wicked moments, Tara wished she’d been heavily pregnant when she married Finn, just for the thrill of watching Gloria’s deeply shocked face as her daughter-in-law sailed down the aisle in a maternity wedding dress. What a scene that would have made. Tara’s inventive mind went into overdrive. Imagine if she’d had the baby halfway down the aisle…

‘She likes you, of course she does,’ Finn protested whenever Tara gently pointed out that his mother didn’t appear too keen on her. ‘She’s protective, that’s all. And reserved. It was the way she was brought up.’

Unless Gloria had been brought up by Trappist monks, Tara could see no reason for her icy silences. But then, Trappist monks were amiable people and there was no way that Gloria could ever be called amiable. She could be friendly to other people, mind you, just not to Tara, who never ceased to be amazed at how her mother-in-law could simultaneously bestow smiles on Finn, and disdainful glances on her.

There were no beloved ex-girlfriends in the closet to account for this bitchiness, nobody Gloria would have preferred Finn to marry. Tara decided she was simply the sort of woman who viewed all women as rivals one way or the other. Tara might not have been a rival when it came to Mr Jefferson, but she was a rival for Finn’s affection. That put her on Gloria’s hate list. And boy, could Gloria hate.

It was well after six when they drove in the gate to Four Winds, the Jeffersons’ meticulously maintained house. The house was small but even so, it was about three times the size of Tara and Finn’s shoebox apartment. Gloria had dropped heavy hints about how the couple would be able to afford a bigger home if only they moved out of the city, nearer to Four Winds. But Tara would prefer to endure constant penny-pinching, not being able to afford much in the way of luxuries and having a bathroom the size of a built-in wardrobe as long as it kept her far away from her mother-in-law.

‘We’re going to be in trouble,’ Finn said gloomily. Even he had decided that his mother would go mad at the lateness of their arrival. Consequently, it was up to Tara to cheer him up.

‘We’re only going out for a quick meal,’ she said, ‘I can be changed and ready to go in five minutes.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but she won’t be pleased. We’re going out with the Bailey-Montfords and Mums has a bit of a keep-up-with-the-neighbours thing going with Liz B-M, so everything has to be perfect. Did you bring something dressy to wear tonight?’

‘You saw what I packed,’ said Tara, startled. ‘I don’t have anything very dressy with me, not for any day. I thought this was just a relaxed dinner with old family friends. You didn’t mention any special significance to this meal.’ Tara thought of her suitcase with its selection of casual clothes which she’d imagined were suitable for a family Christmas. She had a couple of sweaters, a white shirt styled like a man’s dress shirt, her chinos, jeans for any rambles in the snow with Finn, and an indigo corduroy dress she’d brought to wear for Christmas Day. She was currently wearing black jeans, a black polo neck and her beloved sheepskin coat. Because she’d packed in a hurry, she’d brought far too much but even so, none of this rapidly assembled wardrobe could be described as dressy. ‘Why didn’t you tell me we’d need to dress up?’ she asked.

‘I just thought you’d know,’ muttered Finn as he parked the car.

‘Know what?’ Tara was getting angry now. ‘I brought the sort of thing I’d wear in Kinvarra for Christmas. It’s suitable for there. Are you telling me that your mother is going to be dressed up like a dog’s dinner tonight and every night?’

Finn’s silence was enough of an answer.

‘Great. This is a great start,’ Tara said. Another black mark loomed.

‘Let’s not argue,’ begged Finn.

Tara gave him a resigned look. ‘You’re right,’ she said. Anyway, there’d be enough arguing in the Jeffersons’ without them being at it too. Gloria could argue at professional level.

Desmond Jefferson opened the door before they could ring the bell. ‘Hello Tara, Merry Christmas, hello Finn,’ he greeted them. A tall, shy man who looked like an older version of Finn, with the same unruly fair hair and the same kind, handsome face, Desmond Jefferson was often described by friends as ‘one of life’s gentlemen’. Until his recent retirement, he’d been a civil servant in the Department of Foreign Affairs. His current plan was to spend lots of time in his garden. Tara reckoned he just wanted to stay as far away from Gloria as possible, not that Desmond would ever say so. He was far too kind and liked a quiet life.

She kissed him affectionately on the cheek and handed him a small package. ‘A secret present,’ she whispered. ‘Fudge.’

Desmond smiled. ‘Our secret,’ he nodded, slipping the package into his trouser pocket.

Like Tara, he adored sweet things but Gloria kept him on a severe diet. There was no adequate excuse for this, Tara knew, because he was perfectly healthy, had no cholesterol problems and went for a four-mile walk every day.

‘Mums likes to fuss,’ was how Finn explained it.

Mums likes to control, was Tara’s personal version.

His mother was in the drawing room waiting for them. She glanced quickly at her watch, and then smiled, as if she hadn’t really been clocking the fact that they were very late. She was fifty-nine but looked at least ten years younger, thanks to rigorous dieting, monthly chestnut rinses in the hairdressers’ and a painstaking beauty routine. Dressed in a black satin evening dress that was a perfect fit for her tiny body, Gloria should have looked marvellous. But the hardness in her pale blue eyes and the taut disapproval in her jaw ruined the effect.

‘Hello, Gloria,’ said Tara, ‘lovely to see you. Your Christmas tree is nice.’ It was horrible, actually. God would strike her down for lying so much.

‘Thank you, Tara,’ said Gloria in her well-modulated voice. ‘So lovely to see you too. Finn,’ she added, sweetly reproving. ‘You haven’t shaved. We’re leaving in half an hour.’

Finn’s smile didn’t falter at the bite in his mother’s voice. ‘Didn’t have time, Mums, too busy with last-minute work,’ he lied, putting a pile of gift-wrapped presents under the tree and then giving his mother a hug. Tara never bothered hugging Gloria; she’d tried it once and it had been like embracing a shop-window dummy. ‘Just as thin and just as stiff,’ Tara had told Stella later. ‘She’s nothing but a shrew.’

‘She’s had years being on her best behaviour as a civil servant’s wife,’ Stella had said kindly. ‘I’m sure she really likes you, she’s just very formal.’

‘Stella, she’s the most un-civil person I’ve ever met. Now when are you going to wise up and turn into an old cynic like me?’ Tara laughed. ‘You expect the best of everyone.’

‘I don’t,’ protested Stella. ‘I hate to see you not getting on with your mother-in-law. She seems nice enough to me, you must give her a chance.’

‘She’s had six months since the wedding,’ Tara replied grimly, ‘and there’s been no time off for good behaviour.’

‘I’ll show you to your room,’ Gloria said now, rising graciously to her feet. ‘If you hadn’t been so late, you could have had coffee. Still,’ she gave Tara a rather contemptuous glance, ‘you’re here now.’

Tara said nothing. She knew she wasn’t imagining it. Gloria was a cow. As she led them from the room, Tara took a quick look around. The room was beautifully proportioned with big windows and, in daylight, it had a nice view of the trees in the front garden, but Gloria’s décor was positively arctic. Pale blue walls, an even colder blue rug and silvery grey armchairs dominated. Even with the heating on at full blast, the effect was cold. It was a million miles away from the comfortable charm of Meadow Lodge, where much of her parents’ furniture was beautiful but old and well loved. Everything in the Jeffersons’ house was defiantly brand new, as if Gloria consigned everything to the bin in a three-year cycle so she could keep up with the Joneses.

The Christmas tree was worse, decorated with far too few silver bits and pieces because Gloria hated ostentation and thought that less was more. Where were the elderly, much-loved decorations that the family would have had for years? Tara thought of her mother’s version of a Christmas tree: a riot of golds and reds, with battered cherubs and some wooden decorations they’d had for thirty years and which one of the family cats had systematically chewed. Rose had even held onto the now faded paper decorations that Tara herself had made when she was about six years old. Gloria would shudder at the sight of that tree.

‘I hope you brought your good suit,’ Gloria said to Finn as she marched up the stairs to the guest room.

‘Yes, Mums,’ said Finn.

Behind Gloria’s back, Tara stuck her tongue out at her husband, feeling like a naughty schoolgirl following a stern teacher to the head’s office.

Finn pinched her bum in return.

‘Is this going to be a very formal occasion?’ Tara asked innocently, ‘because I didn’t bring anything suitable.’

Gloria whisked around, her beady eyes slitted down to the size and texture of uncooked lentils. ‘It’s Liz and Pierre Bailey-Montford,’ she said incredulously, as if that fact alone explained why dressing up was a necessity. ‘You must remember them from the wedding?’

Tara could remember many things from her wedding, chief among them thinking that she must love Finn very much to marry him when she was getting Gloria as part of the deal. ‘Sort of,’ she said, deliberately hazy.

‘Pierre owns B-M Magnum Furniture!’ hissed Gloria, the veneer slipping. ‘Their house is two hundred years old. Liz buys all her clothes in Paris.’

That was what was she disliked most about her mother-in-law, Tara reflected: her criteria for assessing people were all wrong.

‘So this outfit won’t do?’ Tara knew she was pushing Gloria to the limit but she couldn’t help herself.

Gloria stood by the spare room and let Finn and Tara enter. ‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ she said venomously.

‘We won’t be long,’ Finn said, interrupting before war broke out. ‘Tara has other clothes.’

‘Yeah, my lap dancing thong and my feather boa, you old bag,’ Tara muttered under her breath as she dumped her bag on the floor.

‘Don’t wind her up,’ pleaded Finn when the door was shut and they were on their own.

Tara sat down on the duvet, which was hysterically floral, as though the fabric designer had accidentally jumbled up two different patterns on one piece of material. It gave her a headache just to look at it.

‘I don’t wind her up,’ she said. ‘I simply don’t understand why your mother plays games all the time, that’s all. If she wanted us to bring formal clothes, all she had to do was telephone and tell us. But no, that would be too easy.’ Tara was getting crosser thinking about it. ‘Instead, she lets us come and then goes overboard with disapproval because I haven’t packed a cocktail dress. That’s being manipulative, pure and simple. I’m fed up with it.’

‘Tara love, please don’t get upset.’

Finn sat down beside her and held her. ‘Can’t we have a nice Christmas, please?’

Tara laid her head against his shoulder, relishing the comfort of being close to his lean, muscular body. Tara never seemed to have time for the gym but Finn went religiously. ‘I’d love to do that,’ she murmured, ‘I’d love our first Christmas as husband and wife to be special, but I don’t know how I can cope with your mother, Finn.’

Finn stroked her hair gently. ‘Christmas reminds her of Fay, that’s all. It’s difficult for her.’

Tara sighed. Fay was Gloria’s sympathy card. Gloria’s younger child and Finn’s twenty-seven-year-old sister, Fay had gone off travelling after a huge blow-up with her mother and had refused to talk to Gloria since. Although Tara had never met her, because Fay’s dramatic departure had been two years ago which was before Tara and Finn had even met, she sounded like a bit of a free spirit. Fay now lived in California, practised psychic healing and corresponded with Finn and Desmond, but hung up when her mother came on the phone. Clearly, psychic healing could only do so much.

If it had been anyone else, Tara would have felt sorry for a mother who was cut off from her daughter. Tara loved her own mother far too much to ever do such a thing. But knowing Gloria for the past eighteen months, Tara could see why someone would be driven to travelling to the other side of the world to escape her.

‘We’ll have a nice Christmas,’ she reassured Finn.

‘Thanks, babe.’ He looked so grateful. It was the least she could do. She’d bite her tongue when Gloria was being bitchy.

Tara decided to wear the corduroy dress, plenty of lipstick, and a big, jaw-clenching smile. Gloria, who’d obviously decided to modify her own behaviour, said nothing and the foursome set off in a taxi with Finn and Desmond chatting happily as if they hadn’t noticed anything was amiss.

At the restaurant, Tara had to start biting her tongue when she met the others. If Gloria had pulled out all the stops in the dressing up department, she had nothing on Liz Bailey-Montford who was dressed as though Hello! were due to photograph her at any minute for a ‘lifestyles of the rich and tasteless’ piece. Jewels gleamed at ears, wrists, neck and fingers and her silver and black plunging dress was a dizzying combination of sequins and beading. Tara was blinded by the glitter.

There was obviously plenty of one-upmanship between the two supposed best friends because Liz had brought along her daughter and son-in-law as backup and wasted no time telling everyone that Serena was doing a masters in art history and Charles was a tower of strength who worked with his father-in-law in the furniture business.

‘I don’t know what we’d do without Charles,’ Liz said, ‘he’s so capable.’

Charles had a blank, unintelligent face and Tara thought he didn’t look as if he was capable of changing a light bulb. But he’d obviously lucked out by marrying Serena who was heiress to the B-M furniture kingdom, so he couldn’t be that dumb.

There were lots of double kisses, oodles of ‘oh you look wonderful, Gloria! Doesn’t she, Pierre?’ and it took ten minutes for everyone to be seated, according to a table plan, naturally. Tara hated table plans. She liked sitting beside Finn and hated all that rubbish about sticking him as far away from her as possible and putting her beside someone she didn’t know.

Pierre, on her right side, appeared tired, while Charles, on her left, looked uninterested until he found out that she worked on National Hospital, and then spent the next ten minutes plying her with stupid questions about what the stars were really like.

‘Theodora, I mean, Sherry,’ he said with glazed eyes, ‘she’s fabulous, isn’t she? Is she like that in real life?’

‘You mean man-mad?’ inquired Tara, bored. ‘Men adore her.’

Charles backtracked hastily. ‘Oh no, I don’t mean that. I just admire good acting.’

‘Of course you do.’

The waiter arrived and Gloria and Liz ordered melon and plain fish.

‘Thank you,’ Gloria said sweetly to the young waiter, who beamed back. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ she added to Liz. ‘Melon is the only option. A moment on the lips…’

‘…a lifetime on the hips,’ finished Liz and they both giggled.

Tara watched in astonishment. Nobody would recognise her stony mother-in-law in this giggly woman across the table. Talk about street angel, house devil.

‘I might have melon too,’ said Serena thoughtfully.

‘Nonsense!’ Gloria was kind but firm. ‘You don’t need to diet, pet. You’ve a lovely little figure.’

Despite being seated apart, Liz, Gloria and Serena talked to each other noisily across the round table. Finn and his father were laughing over some story, while Pierre and Charles had livened up enough to argue over the wine. Tara sat silently and watched it all, thinking of the wonderful time Mum, Dad, Stella, Holly and Amelia would be having by now in Kinvarra. Nobody could magic up an air of festivity like Mum, and by now, the house would be filled with the smells of Christmas cooking, with Mum’s absolute favourite, Frank Sinatra, belting out love songs from the kitchen. Holly and Stella would be laughing as they stuffed the turkey and Dad would be gleefully sorting out glasses for the traditional Miller Christmas Eve drinks party which always kicked off between half eight and nine. Everyone came to the party; all the close family friends and relatives, half of Kinvarra almost. Mum and Dad had been hosting the party for as long as Tara could remember and it was like the official signal for Christmas to start. Entire families turned up, people were delighted at the opportunity to let their hair down, drink flew around at a fierce rate and such was the spirit of fun that people who’d originally apologised that they could only drop in for a moment would have to be decanted drunkenly into taxis at half eleven before the family went to midnight Mass.

It would all be incredible fun, with no pretensions. Her longing to be there overwhelmed Tara and she felt a lump swell in her throat. It was so easy to forget how important family were until you weren’t with them.

She tuned back into the here and now to overhear Serena, Gloria and Liz discussing clothes.

‘I love your dress,’ Gloria was saying warmly to Serena. ‘You can never go wrong with a little black dress and a nice gold necklace.’

Tara glanced over at Serena, who looked quite overshone, despite the LBD, by her flamboyant mother, but who did have a heavy gold necklace hanging from her neck. Tara was not a jewellery person, which was just as well because Finn certainly didn’t have the money to shell out on chunky gold stuff. They just about managed the mortgage and the bills on both their salaries: TV script writing wasn’t the money-spinner everyone thought it was. That was why Tara longed to get into writing for someone like Mike Hammond. She loved working on National Hospital, but if only she could work on a film script or one of the big-budget television adaptations that Mike was involved with, well, she’d be on the road to fame and fortune.

‘…well,’ her mother-in-law was saying, ‘these media types don’t put the same store on dressing up as we do.’ She lowered her voice. ‘They’re really quite casual, which can be inappropriate on occasion.’

Tara knew exactly who Gloria was referring to. Bitch. Double bitch.

She glared across the table at Finn who seemed oblivious to it all.

‘Does Sherry have a boyfriend?’ asked Charles, unable to get his mind off her.

‘No, rumour has it she’s a lesbian,’ snapped Tara, although the lie backfired because Charles drooled even more; no doubt at the notion of being sandwiched in bed between the beauteous Sherry and another stunning woman.

Trust him to be one of those blinkered men who saw gay women as some sort of kinky challenge. She’d have to tell him it was a joke. She gave up on Charles and turned to Pierre, who looked grey in the face and was trying to keep awake.

‘Are you looking forward to Christmas?’ she asked brightly.

Pierre fixed her with a glassy stare. ‘No,’ he said and turned back to his wine.

Think of tonight as research, Tara told herself firmly. Writers couldn’t write unless they observed. But despite her good intentions, separated from Finn and stuck in conversational limbo with Charles, the evening crawled past.

Pierre came out of himself enough to keep ordering bottles of wine but remained monosyllabic otherwise.

‘Poor darling Pierre is worn out,’ Liz admitted. ‘The pre-Christmas rush has been so busy. What about you, Tara? Do tell us all about the glamorous jet-set life. Do you get to see many stars?’

‘Sherry, the girl who plays Theodora, is a lesbian,’ interrupted Charles, sounding shocked.

Tara gasped theatrically. ‘Charles, you old tease. You know I was joking! She loves men.’

That shut Charles up. She turned to Liz. ‘I know them all,’ she sighed. ‘All the stars. We’re like one big, happy family.’ Ooops, another lie. The big television stars wouldn’t have any time for lowly script editors like herself.

‘Really.’ Liz leaned big bosoms on the table in her eagerness to hear all. Tara could see the young waiter’s eyes popping out of his head as Liz’s plunging dress front plunged further still. ‘You mean Daniel Anson, from Anson Interviews?’ Liz named one of the country’s biggest chat show hosts. ‘You know him?’

Tara nodded. Well, she had stood behind him in the canteen one day; that was almost meeting.

‘What’s he like?’

Tara thought about the contents of Daniel Anson’s tray that day: burger, chips, diet soft drink. He’d thrown his packet of cigarettes and a disposable lighter onto the tray when he was searching for change.

‘Very normal,’ she said.

‘Tell us about Dr McCambridge on National Hospital.’ Serena looked animated for the first time all night.

‘He’s handsome,’ said Tara truthfully. ‘He has that special something that really works on camera…’

‘Animal magnetism,’ growled Serena.

Finn, who knew from Tara that the actor could be hard to work with, smothered a giggle. Tara smiled across at him. She could just about cope with the evening if Finn was with her.

‘Welcome back,’ she mouthed.

Finn raised his glass to her. He was going to have another hangover in the morning, Tara reflected.

It was just after eleven when the taxi deposited the Jeffersons back at Four Winds.

Tara, exhausted after an evening of trying to be polite under difficult circumstances, wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and cuddle up to Finn. But Finn and his father decided that liqueurs were the order of the day.

‘It’s less than an hour till twelve, let’s stay up and toast in Christmas,’ suggested Desmond.

‘Great idea.’ Finn fell onto the big grey armchair and held out his arms for Tara to sit on his lap. Mindful of Gloria seeing this as another breach of decorum, Tara sat on the side of the chair instead and put an arm round Finn’s shoulders.

Gloria disappeared on some errand.

‘What would you like, Tara?’ asked Desmond, poised over the drinks cabinet.

‘Er…’ Tara didn’t know. She generally drank wine and wasn’t fond of spirits apart from the odd gin and tonic. ‘Baileys?’ she hazarded, ‘in honour of the Bailey-Montfords? Maybe not.’ She grinned to herself. Baileys was creamy and smooth, while the B-Ms were hard to swallow.

She heard a shocked gasp and looked up to find Gloria had reappeared and was staring at her grimly.

‘Did I say that out loud?’ laughed Tara. She must have drunk more wine than she’d thought. ‘Sorry, Gloria.’

‘They’re nice people,’ said Desmond, peacemaking, ‘but it’s not easy to be catapulted into a group of people who know each other well. I’m sure you and Finn would have preferred to stay at home.’

He gave Tara a big crystal balloon of Baileys anyway and she took it with a murmured ‘thanks’, humbled by Desmond’s gentle reprimand.

Gloria asked frostily for a crème de menthe, ‘very small, please, Desmond,’ she said, shooting a poisonous look at Tara and her generous glass.

‘I’ll get mine, Dad,’ volunteered Finn. ‘I need to see what you’ve got.’

Desmond took his brandy over to the other big armchair and Tara watched while her husband fiddled around in the cabinet before pouring himself an enormous glass of Cointreau.

‘You’ll die in the morning,’ she whispered as he sat beside her.

‘I need to block out the arguments,’ he whispered back, nuzzling her ear. ‘Total inebriation is the only way.’

Everybody sat and sipped their drinks in silence.

‘This is nice,’ said Tara politely, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

‘It’s a pity you didn’t enjoy dinner.’ Gloria’s tone was glacial.

Tara shrugged. If Gloria wanted to be like that, it was her business.

‘Mums and Dad, did I tell you we’re going skiing in March?’ Finn said.

‘No, you didn’t. Good for you, son.’ Desmond was envious. ‘I love skiing.’

‘We’d half-planned to go at Christmas,’ Finn said, ‘but we didn’t want to let you down, of course,’ he added hastily.

Tara said nothing. She hated these stilted family conversations. In her home, everyone talked nineteen to the dozen about anything and everything. Not like this. It was as if Finn and his father were afraid to say the wrong thing in case they inadvertently upset Gloria.

Still, she glanced at her watch, another interminable forty minutes to go and it was officially Christmas Day, and they could all go to bed.

‘I hope it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice to give up skiing for Christmas with your father and me.’ Gloria’s voice dropped plaintively, ‘I feel that Christmas is for families.’ Her thin face was taut under its perfect layer of base.

‘We know that,’ Finn said easily. He never displayed even the slightest irritation with his mother. Tara wondered what the secret was.

Gloria sniffed as though she might possibly cry. Tara didn’t think tears could squeeze themselves out of the space between Gloria’s eye liner and her pinched little eyes.

‘I know it’s selfish of me, darling, but I love having my family around me at this time of year.’ She shot a venomous glance at Tara, who bridled. It was clear that Gloria didn’t include Tara in that sentence. Tara glared furiously at her mother-in-law. Then the little demon flicked on in Tara’s head.

Rose Miller would have recognised the wicked glint in her daughter’s eyes but Gloria carried on regardless.

‘As it’s your father’s first non-working Christmas, I thought the three of us should be together.’ Another martyred sigh.

Tara had had enough of her drink and decided she’d like a rapid exit. ‘Why doesn’t Fay ever come home for Christmas?’ she asked innocently.

It was worth it to see the look of horror on Gloria’s face. Even Finn looked a bit alarmed. Nobody mentioned Fay in front of his mother.

‘We do not speak of Fay,’ intoned Gloria icily.

Tara smiled as sympathetically as she could and put her head to one side. ‘That’s so sad, Gloria. It would be wonderful to forget the past and welcome Fay home. Christmas is for families, after all.’

Gloria’s face darkened.

‘Look at the time,’ said Desmond gently, getting to his feet. ‘We should get to bed or we’ll be tired tomorrow. Merry Christmas, everyone.’

He hugged Tara and Finn, then put his arm round his wife. ‘Come on Gloria dear, time for bed.’ He led her from the room and Tara turned in time to see Finn swallowing the last of his Cointreau.

‘Another one?’ he said, making for the cabinet.

‘No,’ Tara said, suddenly suffused with guilt. ‘Do you need one? Don’t you think we’ve had enough for one night?’

‘There’s no point blaming that little scene on you having too much to drink,’ Finn teased, pouring himself another. ‘Anyway, you’ve certainly found the ideal method of sending my mother to bed quickly.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tara apologised. ‘I didn’t mean to upset your dad.’

Desmond had looked so very sad at the mention of his daughter’s name.

Finn sat back with his drink. ‘Dad’s fine. He talks to Fay too, you know. He can e-mail quite happily from home because Mums never goes near the computer. You’re right, though, Fay should come home. She just wants Mums to suffer.’

Tara could identify with that.

‘There was no excuse for mentioning her,’ she added. ‘I feel bad. For your father’s sake.’ She didn’t regret any hurt to Gloria. She’d been asking for it.

‘Forget about it.’ Finn didn’t seem concerned.

She looked at him curiously. ‘How come you’re so laid-back about it all? Your mother drives me mad, but you never bat an eyelid.’

He shrugged. ‘You get used to her. She’s highly strung, that’s all and a stiff drink helps you deal with her.’

Tara mused silently on the concept of stringing her mother-in-law from somewhere high, then shook her head guiltily. She was turning into as bad a bitch as Gloria.

‘Anyway, that’s what I admire about you,’ Finn added. ‘You don’t pull your punches, Tara. You say what you think.’

Tara had a sudden vision of the ever-tactless Aunt Adele and shuddered. She’d have to watch her tongue or she’d turn into her aunt.

At the same moment in Kinvarra, a very drunk Mrs Freidland was objecting to being given a soft drink.

‘I’m having wine,’ she said loudly when Stella tried to hand her a tall glass of lemonade.

Not after the bottle and a half I must have served you already, thought Stella. ‘We’re stopping serving alcohol now, in honour of Christmas Day,’ she said gravely. ‘We always do at the end of the night.’

‘Weally?’ Mrs Freidland was fascinated at the very idea. How eccentric these Millers were. Still, it would be rude to argue and she felt very tired all of a sudden. She might just sit down and have a little rest. Or a sleep, even. Rose had lovely, comfy cushions on all her chairs.

Stella helped Mrs Freidland to a chair and peered around the room for Mr Freidland, who had originally said he and his wife would be driving to another party by ten. It was now half eleven. She spotted Mr Freidland in a corner with a glass of something ruby red which was definitely alcoholic.

The Kinvarra taxi men would make a fortune tonight. Rose always pre-booked and the drivers knew she’d make it worth their while with a decent tip.

With Mrs Freidland safely ensconced in a nest of cushions, Stella resumed her trip round the house to make sure that everybody had enough drinks. There were hordes of people, all chatting, laughing and eagerly eating Rose’s home-made canapés. Slipping through the crowd, Stella found her mother in the kitchen making coffee. Rose looked as immaculate as ever, her hair swept up and the soft copper colour of her v-necked dress bringing a gentle flush to her face. But Stella noticed that there was a weariness evident in her mother’s eyes. Rose had worked very hard to make the party a success, never stopping for so much as a bite to eat or more than a sip of water herself while her guests were there. Everyone else saw Rose Miller gliding through her lovely house, charming everyone and with a kind word to all. They didn’t see the heightened activity in the kitchen during the party, or the hectic preparations before.

‘You’re a bit of a swan, Mum,’ Tara would say fondly to her. ‘Serene on the surface with your legs going like mad underneath!’

Rose adored that comparison. It was a pity Tara wasn’t here tonight, Stella thought. It wasn’t the same without her, though Holly was doing the work of two: going round with a tray of food and drinks. And she looked marvellously festive in a slinky black lace dress with a Christmassy red silk flower in her hair and her lips glossed up in poinsettia scarlet.

‘Pre-sale,’ Holly had revealed delightedly when Stella admired the dress and the way it clung to her sister’s curves. ‘It was dead cheap because there’s a tear under one arm but I’ve fixed it. You know I don’t like things that are very fitted because they show off all the lumps and bumps, but Bunny said it suited me…’

‘What lumps and bumps?’ Stella had demanded. ‘I don’t think you should be allowed near Dad’s friends: they’ll all be grabbing you and saying you’ve turned into a beautiful woman.’

Holly laughed. ‘Some hope of that.’

Dear Holly. Stella wished with all her heart that she could give her sister a confidence transplant.

‘Should I ask the taxi firm to check on the whereabouts of the cars we’ve booked?’ she asked Rose now.

‘That might be an idea,’ her mother replied. ‘I meant to do it but I got tied up here…’

‘It’s OK, I’ll do it.’

‘I booked ten taxis for half eleven,’ said Rose, ‘but they’re bound to be a bit late tonight of all nights. Maybe you and Holly could round up the people who definitely shouldn’t be allowed to drive home and steer them in the direction of the hall.’

‘Mum looks a bit stressed,’ said Stella to Holly as they stood in the hall and waved goodbye to the Freidlands, the Wilsons, and a gang of other happy, swaying people, most of whom had dropped in ‘for half an hour’ several hours before.

‘I know,’ Holly said. ‘She was fine until she got a phone call an hour ago. She literally went white. To be honest, I thought Tara had been in an accident or something.’

‘Who was it?’ Stella asked curiously. She’d never even heard the phone ring.

‘I don’t know. It wasn’t anything to do with Tara. She said it was nothing. Probably a wrong number,’ she added.

Stella looked worried. ‘I hope Mum would tell us if there was anything wrong. But you know how determined she is to cope with everything herself. She’s as stubborn as a mule…’

‘How are my lovely girls?’ Their father’s best friend, Alastair Devon, came into the hall with Hugh and put an affectionate arm round both Holly and Stella.

‘Thank heavens at least there’s one guest leaving the premises sober,’ said Hugh jovially as he opened the hall door.

‘Somebody has to stay sensible,’ said Alastair, kissing both Holly and Stella goodbye. ‘This rabble have been drinking like there’s no tomorrow.’

‘I haven’t.’ Alastair’s wife, Angela, who had followed him from the party, sounded insulted.

Her husband grinned and took her hand in his. ‘Sorry, darling. There are two sensible people in the rabble.’

‘What about us?’ said Stella, grinning and gesturing at herself and Holly.

Hugh ushered Alastair out the door. ‘Get out of here before you get lynched, Alastair. You know we can never say the right thing with women.’

Slowly, the guests went home and the family were left alone. Glasses and crumpled up napkins littered every available surface and Stella sighed at the thought of clearing it all up. Parties were wonderful but the aftermath was not.

‘I’ll get started here,’ Rose said, picking up a tray. ‘We don’t need to leave for midnight mass for another ten minutes.’

‘No, you won’t,’ said Stella firmly, taking the tray from her mother. ‘You have a rest and beautify yourself. I don’t have to get ready, so I can do this.’ She was staying at home with Amelia who, despite begging to be allowed up with the grown-ups, was fast asleep in bed.

For once, Rose acquiesced. ‘Thanks, Stella love.’

‘Mummy, is it time?’ said a sleepy voice from the doorway. Amelia, eyes crinkled with tiredness, stood there fully dressed in purple corduroy trousers and an embroidered lilac jumper. She must have been awoken by the sounds of people leaving. ‘I’m a big girl now, can’t I go with you?’

Rose sat with her family in a middle pew of the soaring Kinvarra cathedral and stared at the altar. Amelia leaned against Rose with her eyes half-closed.

‘Grown-ups get to go to see Baby Jesus in the crib for the first time,’ she’d said miserably earlier. ‘Why can’t I go? Becky and Shona get to go. I’m not a baby.’

‘You’ll be too tired,’ Stella had said.

‘I won’t,’ Amelia was insistent.

‘She wants to,’ Rose said, ‘why not let her. You can sit beside me, Amelia, and we’ll cuddle.’

Amelia had sat wide-eyed and alert beside her grandmother at first but now tiredness was getting to her. Even the thought of seeing the Baby Jesus in his crib couldn’t keep her awake and she snuggled into Rose’s soft camelhair good coat.

On the other side of Rose sat Holly, who didn’t look terribly awake either. Holly leaned in the direction of her father, who sat at the edge of the pew. She adored her father, Rose knew, and was closer to him than she was to Rose. In times of trouble, Holly had always run to Hugh.

From the corner of her eye, Rose could see her husband’s proud head, his bearing upright and proper even at midnight. Hugh looked as if he was concentrating totally on the service, although Rose knew from experience that Hugh’s mind could be miles away however attentive he looked.

Rose knew that her eyes always gave her away if she didn’t pay attention, no matter how carefully she schooled her expression. She stared at the altar and thought about the phone call that had exploded into her Christmas Eve party like a hand grenade.

It was a miracle she’d heard the phone at all, what with the noise of the guests and the sound of Sinatra crooning old hits.

‘I’m looking for Hugh,’ said the voice on the phone. A woman.

‘Well, hold on…’ Rose had picked up the phone in the hallway so she carried it a few yards so she could look into the living room. She could see Hugh’s silver head towering above most of their guests. He was in the middle of a group of people near the piano and she couldn’t really interrupt him. She hoped Hugh didn’t start a singsong. It always took hours to persuade people to sing and twice as long to shut them up. Nobody would leave until the wee, small hours if the piano got going.

‘I’m afraid Hugh can’t come to the phone right now,’ she said politely. ‘Can I take a message?’ Even as she said it, Rose thought how odd it was that any caller to their home wouldn’t recognise who she was and say ‘Hello, Rose.’ Unless it was business, of course, and it could hardly be a business call at ten o’ clock on Christmas Eve.

‘I need to speak to him.’ The woman was insistent and there was something else in her voice, something Rose couldn’t quite identify.

‘We’re having a party,’ Rose explained, still polite. ‘I can’t get him for you now. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to leave a message? If it’s an urgent legal matter, I can give you the number of someone else from Miller and Lowe.’ She’d picked up a pen by now, ready to write a message on the notepad, although she couldn’t imagine anything so urgent it would require legal assistance right now.

‘No message,’ the woman said silkily. ‘It’s not business. Thank you.’

Rose stood listening to the dial tone. She put the receiver back slowly.

Holly was coming downstairs with some coats. ‘Are you all right, Mum?’ she asked urgently. ‘Was that bad news? It’s not something wrong with Tara, is it?’

‘Nothing like that.’ Rose managed a faint smile. ‘Just a mistake. Now, I must rush and check the oven.’ She flew into the kitchen, shut the door and sat down on the bench seat under the picture window, feeling a cold sweat emerge all over her body. She knew what had been nagging her about the woman’s voice, she knew the unidentified ingredient: mockery.

At noon on Christmas Day, Stella and Amelia drove to Adele’s house to pick her up for lunch. Amelia, thrilled to have got a bumper haul from Santa, not to mention a pink typewriter from the absent Tara and Finn, could only be torn away from her new possessions with bribery.

‘Aunt Adele has your present under her tree and she might forget it if you don’t come with me to pick it up,’ Stella had said disingenuously.

‘Sure, Mum,’ said Amelia, instantly getting up from where she was laboriously typing her name for the tenth time. ‘What did she get me?’

Rose and Stella’s eyes met.

‘Something lovely, I’m sure,’ Rose reassured her.

Hugh would have gone with them but he’d woken up with a sore throat and was sitting in front of the box with his feet up, being mollycoddled by Holly.

Adele had been at a special carol service the previous evening, which was why she’d missed the drinks party. Now, vexation at having missed the festivities made her sharp-tongued.

‘I suppose last night was the big event of the season,’ she snapped as soon as Stella and Amelia stepped inside her hall door. ‘I’m sure your mother outdid herself, as usual.’

Stella told herself to count to ten. No, she reflected, make that a hundred.

‘The party was lovely, Aunt Adele,’ she said evenly. ‘We missed you.’

Adele harumphed a bit. ‘I’ll get my handbag,’ she said, beetling off. ‘The presents are in the living room, Stella. You can manage them, I imagine.’

A Mount Everest of parcels sat on the living room floor. Stella sighed, thinking of dragging them all out to the car. Adele always bought big, un-Christmassy things like frying pans and fake bamboo magazine racks that she liked the look of in catalogues. Over the years, Stella had received two trays specially designed for use in bed and at least three decorative tea towels covered with slogans about the kitchen being the heart of the home.

‘Can I open mine now?’ whispered Amelia, dropping to her knees to check the labels.

‘Better not,’ said Stella.

In the car, Adele thawed out a bit but the ice shield went back up when she got to Meadow Lodge and saw the hall table groaning under the weight of a huge bouquet of flowers which one of the previous evening’s guests had brought for Rose. Too late, Stella saw Adele reading the card, eyes narrowed as she scanned the message full of praise for Rose and her ‘famous Miller hospitality’. Stella thought it was sad that Adele had never been able to get over her jealousy of Rose. Neither of them had sisters; wouldn’t it have been wonderful if they had been able to love each other in the way that Stella loved Tara and Holly.

‘Poor Hugh, how are you?’ Adele sat down beside her brother and held his hand as if he was a Victorian hero on the verge of expiring from consumption.

‘Coping, Adele, coping,’ said Hugh stoically.

Stella bit her lip as she arranged Adele’s presents under the tree. Then, leaving Amelia to bash out more typing, she went into the kitchen.

The smell of cooking was delicious but Rose’s normally pristine kitchen was dishevelled, with saucepans, vegetable peelings and various implements all over the place. At least half of the cupboards were wide open and squares of paper towel were strewn on the terracotta tiles where something had spilled. Rose was attempting to wedge a turkey the size of a small ostrich back into the oven.

‘That smells incredible, Mum,’ said Stella, looking round to see what she could do to help. Her mother was normally so organised and this chaos was unusual. ‘Has Dad been helping?’ she asked with a grin.

‘No.’ Her mother shut the oven with a resounding bang and straightened up, sighing as she did so. ‘He’s in front of the television playing the dying swan and asking for hot lemon and honey drinks.’

There was an uncharacteristic edge to Rose’s voice.

‘Adele’s arrived, so she can look after him,’ Stella said easily.

‘She’s welcome to him,’ Rose snapped as she flicked the switch on the kettle.

Stella began wiping up the gunk on the kitchen floor.

‘Are you missing Tara?’ she asked sympathetically. When her mother didn’t reply immediately, Stella answered for her. ‘It is strange without her but I suppose we’ll have to get used to things being different now that she’s married.’

Rose dunked a couple of teabags in two mugs. She missed Tara like hell and resented the notion that bad-tempered Gloria, who didn’t appreciate her daughter-in-law, was benefiting from her company. But the lack of Tara was short term, something Rose could live with because she knew that in a few days, she would erupt into Kinvarra like a tidal wave, making everyone laugh and instantly forget about her absence at Christmas. What rankled deep in Rose’s heart was the memory of the enigmatic phone call. Painful as the ache of a deep-rooted toothache, it throbbed away maliciously. Rose knew exactly what that phone call had meant.

‘Of course I miss Tara.’ Rose handed one of the mugs to Stella. ‘But it’s only natural that she spends time with Finn’s parents. I didn’t sleep well, to be honest; that’s all that’s wrong with me.’

‘Mum, why didn’t you say that?’ said Stella, exasperated. ‘Holly and I could have cooked dinner and you could have had a rest.’

‘Merry Christmas, Rose,’ said Adele, sweeping into the room carrying the detritus from Hugh’s various sore throat remedies. She sniffed the air, wrinkling her nose doubtfully. ‘Turkey? We always had goose at home…’

‘Yes, it’s turkey, Adele,’ said Rose, speaking in the calm, measured tones she’d found worked best with Adele. Reacting to one of Adele’s snubs was fatal. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she added. ‘But I insist that you don’t do a thing. You should relax and enjoy yourself. You’re our honoured guest.’

Flattery and a stranglehold of calmness was the key to dealing with prickly members of the family. Rose had learned that the hard way.

‘I suppose I am tired,’ Adele said, taking the bait. ‘Last night’s carol service was exhausting for all of us in the choir.’

Stella, who thought her aunt sang like a strangulated cat and could only imagine the noise of a choir with Adele in it, smothered a grin.

‘Can I get you anything, Aunt Adele?’ she asked.

‘Tea perhaps, for myself and poor Hugh. He’s worn out.’ This last remark was directed at Rose and was designed to remind Rose of how Hugh required cosseting far beyond Rose’s abilities. But Rose merely nodded and turned back to her cooking. One day, she’d like to tell Adele a few secrets about her precious little brother. That would serve Adele right.

They opened the rest of the presents just before dinner.

Holly loved the set of tiny coffee cups and saucers that Rose had trawled the antique shops for. ‘They’re beautiful,’ she exclaimed, holding up a hand-painted china cup, so delicate that it was almost transparent.

Adele gave Holly a copy of The Rules and a contraption for hanging over radiators and drying clothes.

‘I told them in the bookshop that I was looking for a present for my unmarried niece and they said that this book would do the trick. It’s all about teaching modern girls how to get a man,’ Adele said with satisfaction, as Holly leafed through the book in bewilderment.

‘Holly doesn’t need anyone to teach her how to get a man,’ said Stella hotly.

‘And it wouldn’t do you any harm to have a look at it too, madam,’ Adele reproved.

Rose bit her lip so she wouldn’t lash out. How could Adele?

‘Ah now, Della,’ said Hugh soothingly, ‘modern women don’t want men. They have it all tied up and they don’t need us any more. Isn’t that right, girls?’ He put an arm around each of his shocked daughters and squeezed them close. ‘Don’t mind,’ he whispered to Holly. ‘She’s doing her best.’

Holly smiled bravely. ‘Thanks, Aunt Adele,’ she said.

Stella blew her sister a kiss and glared at her aunt.

‘Holly,’ she said, ‘I need a hand in the kitchen.’

They scrambled to their feet and hurried out.

‘Cigarette?’ said Stella.

‘I must look very hurt if you’re telling me I need a cigarette,’ Holly said ruefully.

‘Yeah, well, Adele can put her feet in her mouth more easily than anyone else I know. She must have been a contortionist in a previous life. Let’s sit in the conservatory. You can smoke, and I’ll crack open the wine.’

While Holly sat in the tiny conservatory off the kitchen, Stella opened a bottle of wine that had been cooling in the fridge.

‘It always feels weird to smoke in the house,’ Holly said, lighting up. ‘I was so used to hanging out my bedroom window and blowing smoke outside.’

‘I wish you’d give up,’ Stella said gingerly.

‘How could I cope with Aunt Adele at Christmas without nicotine?’ laughed Holly.

‘Wait till I tell Tara what Adele gave you,’ said Stella. ‘She’ll howl.’

‘She mightn’t howl at all,’ pointed out Holly. ‘She’s probably getting another steam iron or a saucepan from Gloria as we speak.’

‘In-laws, yuck,’ shuddered Stella. ‘That’s the problem with marriage – you get saddled with a whole new batch of people.’

‘Not my problem,’ said her sister.

‘Nor mine,’ replied Stella thoughtfully.

That night in Four Winds, Tara dragged Finn off to bed halfway through the late-night Christmas film. He’d been snoring for at least the last twenty minutes of The Untouchables, although when she woke him, he insisted he was watching the film and that they hadn’t seen the best bit yet.

‘You were asleep,’ she hissed.

‘Wuzzn’t,’ he slurred. ‘Oh all right.’

Christmas at the Jeffersons’ had been a master class in Cold War tactics. Tara and Finn hadn’t emerged until after eleven that morning, which was the first mistake – Tara’s naturally. Finn was nursing a hangover and Tara was nursing a grievance over being in Four Winds in the first place. Arriving downstairs to find a prune-faced Gloria on her way out to church without her son and heir, Tara had managed an apology for being up so late.

Gloria was not full of Christian charity on Christ’s birthday. ‘Good morning, or should I say good afternoon,’ she sniped.

‘And Happy Christmas to you too, Gloria,’ said Tara sweetly.

The present-giving revealed that Gloria had outdone herself in the gift stakes this year, with Tiffany cuff links and an exquisite dress shirt for Finn and a sandwich toaster for Tara.

It had been downhill all the way from then, to the extent that Finn had made sure that the television in the den, the room which backed onto the dining room, was blaring loudly so that the sound of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang made up for the lack of conversation at the dinner table.

Making small talk while having one ear cocked for all her favourite tunes from the film, Tara wished she was in the den watching the TV instead.

After dinner, Gloria and Desmond piled on extra sweaters and coats to go for a walk in the December gloom. Finn, snug in the den with Tara and a fresh bottle of red wine, waved them off, saying he was too full of that fabulous dinner to walk anywhere.

‘Promise me that we can leave the country next Christmas,’ groaned Tara, positioning herself on the couch so that her feet were on Finn’s lap. He idly massaged her feet, giving in to a quick tickle now and then.

‘The Caribbean?’ he suggested.

‘We can camp out on the side of a mountain without a tent as long as we’re on our own,’ Tara said, then regretted being so blunt. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she added, ‘it’s just that your mum and I…’ she tailed off.

‘Chill out, love,’ said Finn, reaching for his wine glass. ‘Christmas is the ultimate endurance test. I don’t know why the reality TV people haven’t made a game show where they stick a family in one house over Christmas and see how long they last before there’s bloodshed over who gets to pull the last cracker.’ He tickled her toes, then moved his fingers up to caress her calf. ‘I hate Christmas.’

But he shouldn’t hate Christmas, Tara reflected. The holiday wasn’t an endurance test at Kinvarra. She loved spending it with her family. How sad for Finn that he didn’t enjoy it with his family.

The only light relief came when Finn and Desmond dragged out the box of Trivial Pursuit and inveigled Tara to play with them.

‘What about your mother?’ Tara murmured to Finn.

‘She doesn’t like board games,’ he replied.

‘Count me in,’ Tara said loudly and settled down to see how many pieces of pie she could win.

By the time Desmond won, it was time for some of Gloria’s sandwiches with coffee and Tara, who thought she’d never be able to face food again, gamely managed two crustless triangles to be polite.

‘Do you not like spiced ham sandwiches, then?’ demanded Gloria.

Feeling like a foie gras goose, Tara took another sandwich and willed for the day to be over soon. At least tomorrow was the occasion of the drinks party, which meant Gloria would have a whole host of other people to be bitchy to and might forget about Tara.

‘I’ll tape the rest of The Untouchables,’ Desmond suggested as Finn and Tara headed for bed.

In their bedroom, Finn flopped onto the bed and began to crawl under the duvet fully dressed. ‘I’m wrecked,’ he groaned.

‘Finn, you’ve got to take your clothes off,’ complained Tara, trying to slip off his shoes.

‘I’m too tired,’ he said, not helping the undressing process by lying like a giant slug in the bed.

‘Cold sponge,’ warned Tara.

‘Not the sponge,’ said Finn, beginning to giggle.

He was still giggling when he sat up and let Tara pull off his shirt.

‘I love you, Tara Miller, d’ya know that?’ he said, kissing her drunkenly.

‘I love you too,’ she replied, ‘although I don’t know why.’

He leaned against her, nuzzling into her shoulder, making murmuring noises.

‘Finn, please stand up so we can take your trousers off,’ she said.

But Finn was asleep. Sighing, Tara finished undressing her husband and covered him with the duvet. Honestly, he was like an overgrown teenager sometimes. Only a big kid would drink too much at his parents’ house and have to be put to bed.

CHAPTER SIX

Stella’s fellow solicitor and colleague, Vicki, was insistent that she suffered from SAD. ‘Seasonal Affected Disorder,’ she repeated for Stella’s benefit. ‘It means I suffer from depression caused by not enough light. And look,’ Vicki gestured out of the office kitchen window where a square of foggy January sky could be seen through the grubby glass, ‘look at that weather.’

‘It’s called winter,’ Stella said, taking the milk from the fridge. Full fat, she realised, putting it back and reaching for the skimmed. Why had she eaten all those chocolates over Christmas? Her camel trousers, normally slightly loose, were biting into her belly reproachfully.

‘I hate January,’ Vicki moaned, pouring hot water onto her low-calorie chocolate drink. A statuesque redhead who was five foot nine in her fishnets, Vicki was always on a diet until about noon, when the thought of nothing but crispbread and low fat yoghurts made her abandon hopes to slither into a size fourteen.

‘Join the club,’ Stella said with a sigh.

Vicki looked at her friend in surprise. Stella was normally so cheerful. Nothing got her down: not torrential rain when they were rushing back from lunch with no umbrella, not clients from hell who demanded double attention and were late paying their fees, not even Mr McKenna, one of the senior partners and a creep who could put even Vicki off her food for a week with one lascivious leer down her blouse at her 38DDs.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked.

Stella shook her head. ‘It’s just January blues,’ she murmured, moving aside to let someone else into the kitchen. A mere cubicle tucked away beside the post room on the ground floor, it was barely big enough for two, never mind three people. Of course, the partners never ventured into it: they had tea and coffee delivered by their assistants whenever they felt like it. Stella, who was the most senior of the conveyancing solicitors, Vicki and another lawyer named Jerry Olson all shared an assistant and, theoretically, could have ordered tea and coffee with abandon. But Lori was run off her feet as it was answering their phones, without making them coffee as well. Or at least, that was Lori’s excuse.

They took the lift up to the fourth floor which was where the property department was situated. Property or conveyancing wasn’t seen as the sexy part of law: the hot favourite at the moment was the family law department and Lawson, Wilde & McKenna handled many of the highest-profile divorces around. The family law offices were huge. ‘Lots of space for exes to scream and hurl things at each other without actually injuring an innocent bystander,’ explained Henry Lawson whenever anybody remarked on the vast conference rooms on the second floor.

Conveyancing, which ‘earns LW & M a fortune’ as Vicki said furiously, was relegated to the less prestigious fourth floor, in the grand-looking but unmodernised part of the building where draughty windows, elderly heating and prewar plumbing reigned.

The fourth-floor conference room was the nicest part of their floor and was decorated in some style with a vast pink-veined marble fireplace, a mahogany table almost big enough to play tennis on, and exotic Indonesian silk wallpaper that had survived decades of cigar smoke. The staff called it the Gin Palace because the maroon-coloured walls made it look like the sort of room where colonial types would have sipped gin slings and moaned about the natives.

‘Two calls holding for you, Vicki,’ announced Lori cheerfully as they emerged from the lift into the 1930s splendour of the fourth floor. ‘I told them you were yakking in the kitchen and would be along later when the mood took you.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Vicki, who was used to Lori’s sense of humour. She picked up her messages with one hand and, holding her coffee in the other, shoved open her office door with one stiletto-ed foot.

‘Bad news, Stella,’ Lori added, ‘Jerry’s wife has just phoned. He’s been on the bog all night. Dodgy prawn vindaloo. He’s got two meetings today and they can’t be cancelled. Sorree.’

As the second most senior person in the department, which included five lawyers, three legal executives, a law clerk and a panel of apprentices, Stella merited the biggest office. (The Partner in charge had a large office on the third floor and a golf handicap in single figures.) In return for her big office, Stella also got the flak when anything went wrong and had to juggle appointments when somebody was ill. Jerry had an apprentice named Melvyn working with him for the year, and while Melvyn might be able to keep an eye on things in Jerry’s absence, he wasn’t qualified to deal with serious issues on his own.

‘What time’s the first meeting?’

‘Half ten. The second one’s in the afternoon. I’ll get the files for you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Stella sighing. That was all she needed. It was only half eight and already she was behind. And she was feeling miserable, although she’d lied to Vicki about it being January blues. It was the Missing-Amelia-Blues. Glenn was home from the Middle East and Amelia was staying with him in his mother’s house in Cork until Sunday night, five whole days away. It wasn’t that Stella begrudged Glenn a week with his daughter, or even that she worried about Amelia when she was there: Glenn’s mother, Evelyn, was a marvellous granny and would take the best care of Amelia. It was just that Stella missed her daughter so much.

Her interoffice line buzzed. ‘Oh Stella.’ It was Lori. ‘Forgot to tell you, the plumbing’s gone in the ladies’ loo. It’s like Niagara in there when you flush. I rang Martin in maintenance but he’s still on his Christmas holidays. What should I do?’

By ten, Stella had the beginnings of a Grade A headache, not to mention a list of backed-up phone messages as long as her arm. She still hadn’t had time to cast her eyes over Jerry’s client’s file except to glance at the name on the top: Nick Cavaletto. It sounded glamorous but names could be so deceptive. She and Vicki had once laughingly argued over who got a client called Joaquin d’Silva, both instantly thinking of the handsome Spanish dancer Joaquin Cortes, only to find that their Joaquin was many continents away from his namesake in looks. Mr D’Silva had been short, over-hairy and over-friendly, a bit like a dog. Vicki had said she kept waiting for him to lift his leg on the furniture.

‘Lori, could you hold my calls for half an hour?’ Stella asked.

‘Sure.’

Five minutes later, Stella had just scanned through Mr Cavaletto’s file and was fast coming to the conclusion that Jerry’s handwriting was illegible. Scribbled notes in the margins of the file made no sense whatsoever. The whole thing actually looked quite straightforward, as Mr Cavaletto had power of attorney for his elderly mother and was intending to sell her home for her. The only difficulty appeared to be a problem involving stables which had been built and for which no planning permission had been given. Stella grimaced. She hated planning permission problems. She shut Mr Cavaletto’s file briskly. For his sake, she hoped he was on time.

He was early.

Stella’s internal line buzzed at twenty-five past ten.

‘Mr Cavaletto’s here,’ breathed Lori in a much more husky voice than usual.

‘Put him in the Gin Palace,’ Stella said. ‘And tell Melvyn he can sit in.’

‘Of course,’ said Lori, again in that husky voice.

She normally said ‘right-oh mate,’ in a breezy manner that no amount of discussion about correct behaviour for a legal office could remove. What was with the proper assistant carry on? Stella wondered. Lori must be hoping for a raise.

‘Will I order coffee?’ Lori added in her new sexy growl.

‘Er, yes,’ said Stella. Definitely a raise.

The whole place was losing its marbles today.

It was more than five minutes before she left her office to walk to the conference room.

‘Coffee’s in there,’ said Lori. Twenty-something and a vibrant brunette with a liking for va-va-voom clothes, she looked altogether overexcited for some reason. She’d even applied a fresh splash of hot pink lipgloss.

‘Thank you,’ said Stella, opening the door to the Gin Palace. ‘Sorry for keeping you, Mr Cavaletto,’ Stella added conversationally, dropping her files onto the polished mahogany. She looked up smiling, her hand extended in a professional manner. And then she realised why Lori was behaving like a cat on a hot tin roof. Mr Cavaletto lived up to the glamorous name and then some, although he was not classically handsome. A big leonine man with grey-streaked dark hair, his clever face had too many crags and hollows in it to ever be called handsome. He had a granite hewn jaw and a firm mouth that gave the impression he was used to getting his own way. But that wasn’t it. He was more than the sum of his parts. Presence, charisma, whatever it was, it drifted off him in great waves. Tara might be able to describe him, to capture what it was that made him so attractive. Stella couldn’t put it in words.

He’d been staring out the window and now crossed the room swiftly and shook her hand. ‘Nick Cavaletto. Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.’

‘No problem,’ she said, adding, ‘I’m Stella Miller.’

Heavy-lidded muddy green eyes, the colour of gleaming Mediterranean olives, locked with hers. Unlike other men, his gaze didn’t flicker up and down, quickly assessing her. What Vicki dismissively called the classic man’s ‘would I or wouldn’t I?’ glance. His eyes stayed locked with hers until Stella, feeling that this intense gazing thing had gone on for too long, sat down abruptly.

‘Please, take a seat,’ she said.

He sat down too, not beside her, thankfully, but in a chair at the top of the table, a few feet away from her.

‘Er…now I’ve been looking over your file and er…’ She opened the file but couldn’t seem to lay her hands on the cover sheet. She’d just been looking at it, where the hell was it? Clumsiness swept over her like a rash and she felt her temperature rise rapidly as she fumbled through the pages. It must be the heating. Either that, or the powers that be were pumping hallucinogens through the system, Stella decided wildly. Only that could account for the level of madness on the premises.

‘I’m sorry you’ve been thrown in at the deep end,’ Mr Cavaletto said. ‘Your receptionist said Jerry was unexpectedly called away…’

Stella glanced up to see if Lori had imparted the prawn vindaloo information, but was relieved to see that Mr Cavaletto’s craggy face held no amusement.

‘Yes, something unavoidable,’ she murmured, trying to pull herself together. Well, being glued to the bathroom was probably unavoidable in Jerry’s case.

She looked back at her papers, sensing that he was still gazing at her. She wished he’d stop it.

‘Now.’ She cleared her throat and finally found the cover sheet.

‘Shall I pour you some coffee?’ he interrupted.

She looked at him.

‘It’s just that you seem a little harassed and I feel responsible. You could do without having an extra client dropped onto your lap today, I’m sure.’ He looked so earnest, so genuinely apologetic, that Stella decided that he wasn’t trying to unnerve her. He was just being nice, after all, Stella sighed to herself. She was jumpy today and it wasn’t fair to take it out on him.

She sat back in her chair. So much for detoxing. ‘I’d love a cup. But I’ll get it,’ she added, getting up. He was the client after all.

He waved her back into her seat.

‘That doesn’t seem right,’ she said.

‘Let’s buck convention, shall we?’ he said.

‘Why not?’

He poured coffee while Stella watched him with interest.

He was tall, which she liked, and she liked the way his hair was carelessly swept back from his high forehead, as if he used an impatient hand to rake it into place far more often than a brush. He wore nice clothes, slightly casual but expensive. And he looked clever, too. Shrewd intelligence burned behind those eyes.

She idly wondered was he married? Then, shocked at herself for even thinking such a bimbo-esque thought, she sat up straighter in her chair.

‘Milk and sugar?’

‘Just milk, thanks,’ she said. Would he chance a hackneyed comment about her being sweet enough already?

He passed the test by saying nothing.

‘There’s nothing worse than one of those days when you have to take the flak for other people’s absences,’ he remarked. ‘Colleagues imagine that managerial positions mean nothing more than a bigger salary, but it’s a hell of a lot more than that.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Stella. ‘I’m trying to sort out Jerry’s client list, my own, and deal with some disaster in the ladies’ loo because the maintenance men are out.’

‘Maybe I can help with the latter part?’ he said.

‘Are you a plumber?’

He grinned. ‘No, I’m in the engineering business, actually, but I know my way round the u-bend.’

Stella laughed. ‘That’s better than me. I’ll attempt any DIY that involves paint, a hammer or tubs of plaster, but don’t ask me about plumbing or electricity. Seriously,’ reality reasserted itself, ‘I can’t ask you to look at the ladies’.’

He got to his feet and made for the door. ‘Come on, show me. I might be able to tell you what the problem is.’

Stella followed, feeling surprised and amused.

Lori jerked her head up from her computer keyboard when Nick marched out of the Gin Palace.

‘Hello again,’ she breathed huskily, batting her recently mascara-ed eyelashes at him.

‘Mr Cavaletto needs to visit the ladies’ loo,’ said Stella gravely.

‘What?’ demanded Lori in her normal voice.

‘You’ve a problem in there, I hear,’ Nick said.

‘You mean you’re going to fix it?’ Lori said, batting furiously again.

Stella grinned. Clearly, Lori was one of those women who went limp at the idea of men who knew what to do with power tools. She’d never made such an effort for the firm’s maintenance man, but then, he didn’t look like Mr Cavaletto.

‘That’s wonderful,’ Lori said, as she led the way, explaining the problem as solemnly as if she was a doctor describing some hideous illness to a consultant.

Stella followed again, feeling like a third wheel in this adoring little procession.

Nick didn’t look like the sort of man who did much plumbing, she thought. Not unless plumbers were going in for fine tweed jackets, of the Milanese palazzo variety.

He reached into his pocket and took out a pair of frameless glasses, which added to the professorial, brain-the-size-of-a-planet effect.

Lori glanced back at Stella and made swooning motions.

Stella glared at her to stop.

Nick crouched down to examine the gushing loo. Both Stella and Lori admired his broad shoulders and the way he stroked his chin thoughtfully.

‘It’s a leak in the cistern,’ he said finally.

‘You’re so clever, we would have never worked that out,’ sighed Lori.

Stella began to feel irritated. Just because none of the fourth-floor staff had their plumber’s apprentice certificates, didn’t mean they were witless little women incapable of changing a light bulb. And why was Lori giving poor Nick Cavaletto the full treatment? Honestly, he was Stella’s client. Well, Jerry’s really, but Stella was dealing with him. Lori would get eyestrain if she kept batting her eyelashes seductively up at him.

‘Do you have a wrench somewhere? I’ll close the stopcock, which should solve things until your maintenance men get a chance to look at it,’ Nick said, seemingly unaware of the effect his presence was having on Lori.

‘There are tools in the maintenance office in the basement,’ Lori volunteered, then looked at Stella, as if to say that she certainly wasn’t going to leave Mr Cavaletto to trail down to find a wrench when it was far more fun to stay here.

‘I have to answer the phones, I can’t go,’ she announced.

For some reason that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, Stella found that she didn’t want to leave Lori with Nick. They’d probably be engaged by the time she returned.

‘One of the apprentices can go,’ replied Stella. She would kill Lori for being so blithely insubordinate but she couldn’t say anything in front of Nick.

‘Great idea. You better tell them; I have no authority over the apprentices,’ Lori added sweetly.

‘Right,’ said Stella and marched off, furious, to find one.

She dispatched one of the apprentices to look for a wrench and returned to find Lori perched demurely on the edge of her desk, ignoring the phone ringing off the hook.

If Nick thought this was strange, he didn’t say anything.

‘I’ll just wash my hands,’ he said. ‘In the men’s toilet, I don’t want to startle anyone.’

‘Mm, what a guy,’ said Lori when he was gone. ‘He can look at my plumbing any time.’

‘Don’t drool, Lori,’ said Stella, irritated. ‘You’ll ruin the carpet. And he’s not that gorgeous.’

‘Hello! Earth to Stella!’ said Lori incredulously. ‘You so need to get your eyes tested.’

‘He’s too old for you,’ Stella added, crossly. ‘You’re twenty-five.’

‘Older men are in,’ Lori said in a dreamy voice. ‘I’ve never gone for anyone older than thirty-five before but I could make an exception in his case.’

‘He’s forty-five if he’s a day,’ snapped Stella. ‘Far too old for you.’ She stalked off into the Gin Palace.

‘She’s quite a character, your receptionist,’ Nick commented when he reappeared.

‘I suppose you want her phone number,’ Stella said sourly.

His gaze caught her by surprise.

‘Actually, I’d prefer yours. I’d like to ask you out to dinner tomorrow night.’

Stella sat down quickly on the hard chair, landing painfully on her coccyx. ‘Ouch,’ she yelped.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Was that totally out of order?’

‘Er, well…’ Stella stammered.

If only Nick hadn’t been looking at her, Stella might have drummed up her standard answer whenever men attempted to chat her up: ‘Thanks but no thanks.’

But before Stella the Sensible had a chance to say anything, at the precise moment she’d made her mind up to turn him politely down, in spite of everything, he suddenly moved the goalposts. He gazed at her, hopefully. And when Nick Cavaletto’s intelligent, warm eyes bored into hers, she’d had no option. Sensible Stella faltered and the long-buried Romantic Stella shoved her out of the way like a shopaholic on sale day.

‘I’d love to.’ Had she really said that?

His face creased up into a smile. ‘I was sure you were going to turn me down.’

To hide how jolted she felt by the entire experience, Stella tried to sound light-hearted. ‘I was just about to but you looked so forlorn, I hadn’t the heart to say no.’

His craggy face looked even better when he grinned broadly. ‘Forlorn? Nobody’s ever accused me of that before. But whatever the reason, I’m glad.’

For a full minute, they stared at each other, Stella holding her breath for some bizarre reason. Then Melvyn rushed into the room, stammering apologies for lateness, and Stella instantly picked up a document to give herself something to hide behind in case he picked up on the charged atmosphere.

As business resumed, Stella managed to continue a professional conversation, all the while wondering if she was mad. He was a client. Well, no, he wasn’t actually her client and if Jerry hadn’t been ill, she never would have met him. But he was a man she knew nothing about, apart from the fact that he needed to sort out a property issue for his elderly mother. He could be married with ten kids for all she knew.

Stella cast a suspicious glance at his left hand. There was no ring but that meant nothing. She’d have to ask.

‘Jerry’s so very sorry and I’m sure he’ll be in for your next appointment,’ apologised Melvyn as Nick was leaving.

‘That’s good,’ said Nick, a faint smile hovering about his mouth. ‘Prawn vindaloo poisoning can be fatal.’

Stella smothered a snigger. She would have to have several words with Lori. So much for saying Jerry had been unavoidably kept out of the office.

‘I’ll show Mr Cavaletto out,’ she added smoothly.

She walked him to the lift, ignoring the looks Lori shot at them.

‘Just one question,’ Stella said, pitching her voice low so nobody could overhear. ‘Are you married?’

‘Divorced with two children,’ he replied, just as seriously. He held up his left hand. ‘Look, no ring.’

‘Did you wear one when you were married?’ Stella inquired.

Nick threw back his head and laughed. ‘No. And did you ever think of becoming a barrister? Your skills at interrogation are wasted here. About dinner, how about Figaro’s?’

Stella decided it was time to reassert her independence. Nick was calling all the shots here and she refused to be a pushover. ‘Figaro’s, I don’t think so,’ she said. She’d never been to Figaro’s but that wasn’t the point. Surely there was some modern rule of dating that said only pushovers cooed yes to the first suggestion.

‘You pick somewhere you like,’ he offered. ‘I’ve been out of the country for so long that I don’t know the good spots.’

Stella thought hard, storing away that snippet of information about his time out of the country. The only restaurants she knew were ones suitable for business lunches, girls-only get-togethers or meals with seven-year-olds. It had been a long time since she’d done the eyes-meeting-over-the-candlelight-at-a-table-for-two thing. Years, in fact.

Casting around wildly for an intelligent suggestion, a snippet of something she’d heard about a review of a new restaurant came to mind. Something about The Flying Carpet, a new restaurant on the quays. She hadn’t seen the review herself but from the bit of the conversation she remembered, the place sounded good, she was sure of it. ‘Mussels to die for’ or something.

‘The Flying Carpet,’ she said confidently. ‘At eight.’

‘May I pick you up or would you prefer to meet me there?’ Nick asked solicitously.

You’ve already picked me up, Stella thought mischievously.

‘I’ll meet you there,’ she said. ‘If there’s a problem, I’ll phone you. Your number is on the file.’ And it was a land line, she remembered. If he was married, he’d instantly give her a mobile number to phone instead. But Nick just nodded in agreement.

‘Till tomorrow,’ he said.

He turned to go.

‘Oh, Mr Cavaletto, you forgot something,’ Stella called.

‘Yes?’

Stella whispered so her voice wasn’t audible to the receptionist. ‘Divorced, one daughter. Just so you know.’

Again, the intense green eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘Goodbye, Ms Miller, it’s been a pleasure.’

A pleasure, thought Stella dreamily as she took the stairs up to the fourth floor. She certainly hoped so. After six years on her own, well, longer really, as you could hardly count the last year with Glenn as actually being with anybody, she was utterly unprepared for the prospect of going on a date.

She went back to her office.

‘Isn’t he lovely?’ said Lori dreamily. ‘Sort of Sean Connery-esque with a hint of Michael Douglas in there somewhere.’

‘You’ve got to stop reading Movieline,’ Stella said, biting her lip to stop herself beaming idiotically.

‘He was gorgeous, though. Come on, Stella, even you can see that.’

Stella felt a quiver of electricity shoot through her at the thought of Nick’s smile. ‘I suppose you could call him attractive,’ she said.

‘Who?’ demanded Vicki, appearing at her door. ‘Have I missed something?’

‘Vicki, can I talk to you for a moment?’ Stella asked. She had to tell someone and if she told Lori, there was a fair possibility of being stabbed with Lori’s trademark silver-ink pen.

Vicki’s jaw dropped when she heard the news.

‘Lucky you,’ she sighed. ‘They say that lots of love stories begin at work, but it’s never happened to me.’ Vicki suddenly looked thoughtful. ‘Can we search through Jerry’s client list and see if there’s anyone else gorgeous coming in today?’

By half twelve, Stella had raced through her workload at twice her normal speed. She felt inspired and excited, as though she’d had ten espressos and no breakfast. She’d been asked out on a date and she’d said yes! What would she wear, what would they talk about…?

Her phone rang and she switched into work mode instantly.

‘Hello, Stella?’ said a woman’s voice. ‘It’s Jackie Hess.’

Even through the phone lines, Stella could hear her client’s anxiety.

Without giving her lawyer a chance to speak, Jackie rattled through her problems.

‘If we don’t get the contracts signed by tomorrow, I’ll lose the new house and I can’t do that. I can’t. This is a new start for me and I love that house…’ Her voice rose almost hysterically.

Stella had heard enough. Calming people was one of her many skills, a vital one in the business of legal conveyancing, although nobody had mentioned it in college. There hadn’t been any lectures on dealing with real, agitated clients who were splitting up with their husbands and hoping to buy new (smaller) houses in order to start again.

‘Jackie,’ soothed Stella, ‘we’ll sort it out, I promise. Please leave it with me.’

Jackie was quiet, as Stella knew she would be. When Stella Miller told you she’d sort everything out, you believed her.

There was something about the low, measured voice that calmed even the most highly-strung client; something about her serene, smiling face with its kind dark eyes that made anxiety seem silly. More than one person had seriously considered taking up yoga after learning that the tranquil Stella was a devotee.

‘Are you sure everything will work out…?’ Jackie asked more quietly.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Once Jackie was gone, Stella made a firm decision to stop thinking about Nick Cavaletto. It was ridiculous for a grown woman to get so excited about dinner with a man. This dreaming and staring out the window had to stop. She worked steadily for the next half an hour, making phone calls and trying to sort out Jackie’s problems. Jackie had split up with her husband of two years and every time Stella spoke to her, she seemed more shell-shocked than the last, muttering about joint credit union accounts and what were they to do with the oil painting of Venice. Was it Jackie’s because her rich old grand-uncle had given it to them as a wedding present or was it joint property? Privately, Stella thought that the distraught Jackie should seek counselling to help her climb out of the dark pit of sudden break-up. She’d hated that painting, she’d told Stella. Yet she was fiercely determined to have it, as if salvaging something that wasn’t communal property, could salvage her damaged soul.

Over the years, as she dealt with clients like Jackie, Stella had come to realise that she’d never loved Glenn enough to feel such emotion over their break-up. Teenage sweethearts who’d married when they were ridiculously young, they’d drifted apart. Their over-riding emotion at the break-up had been apathy for each other, and parental worry over Amelia. She wondered what it would be like to love and hate with such passion that splitting up would destroy you.

‘Lunch?’ said Vicki, peeping round the glass door with her tongue out, her normal signal that starvation was setting in.

‘Lunch. Yes, I forgot,’ Stella said absent-mindedly.

‘How can you forget lunch?’ Vicki wailed, shutting the door and perching on the edge of Stella’s desk. Then, catching sight of Stella’s serene face, she’d grinned. ‘You’re still living off love, then?’

‘It’s only a dinner date,’ protested Stella. ‘I wish I hadn’t told you. If you mention it to anyone else I’ll kill you.’

‘You mean it’s a secret?’ said Vicki, deadpan. ‘I’ve just e-mailed my 100 closest friends, all the LW & M partners and the Law Society with the news. It’s not unethical to sleep with a client, is it? I have such trouble remembering the whole ethics thing…’

‘We’re going to have dinner, Vicki, not rip each other’s clothes off over dessert.’

‘Pity,’ sighed Vicki. ‘Mind you, if it was me, I’d go for the actual dessert instead. It’s so long since I had sex, I can’t remember what it was like, except it was often an anticlimax, which is not something you can say about a double helping of double chocolate roulade with cream.’

‘We’re going for a sedate meal,’ Stella insisted. ‘That’s all. Anyway, you’ve been to bed with someone far more recently than me. I’m the poster girl for celibacy since Glenn and I divorced.’ Stella knew this wasn’t utterly truthful but she wanted to forget the disastrous fling she’d had with an old friend of hers and Glenn’s when Amelia had been a toddler. She’d discovered that even when you’d felt like you’d known someone for centuries, they were just as capable of being a sexual predator as a stranger. After a few weeks, he’d dropped her like a hot potato. Burned and humiliated, Stella had never told Vicki about it and she never intended to.

Vicki was in full flood on the subject of her last lover, a fellow lawyer she’d met at a charity ball. ‘If you’re referring to my encounter with that horrible man from Simpson and Ryan, then forget it. He was a disaster in bed. If he’d wanted to be paid by the hour, I would have wasted my money for fifty-eight minutes.’

Stella groaned. ‘You’re terrible, Vicki. The poor man would be horrified to hear you.’

‘Poor man indeed! He thought he was the last of the red-hot lovers,’ said Vicki in outrage. ‘That was the problem. He thought I’d be grateful, can you believe it? The louse. His sort think all women over thirty-five should quiver with thanks if a man so much as looks at them, never mind brings them to bed. They reckon we’re desperate for any crumb of affection that isn’t battery-powered.’

Vicki was getting into her stride on the women-over-thirty-five theme: ‘We’re on the conveyor belt to single TV dinners and interlock knickers that never come off…’

‘Vicki, you live with your sister,’ interrupted Stella, ‘and you know perfectly well that Craig from accounts fancies you rotten but you won’t deign to notice him.’

Deflated, Vicki sighed. ‘I know but he’s six years younger than me. That’s the last sign of absolute desperation. Imagine what people would say if I started dating a younger man? It’s easier to just sit at home and fantasise about Russell Crowe.’

‘Lunch,’ said Stella firmly. ‘You need your mind taken off men.’

Life conspired against Stella the next day. Jerry was still out sick, leaving Stella to deal with his clients again, which kept her in the office all through lunch when she’d planned to get her hair done. And the lurking demon of pre-menstrual tension paid a visit, bloating her stomach despite her post-Christmas detox.

‘Do hormones know when you’ve got something important happening and deliberately act up?’ Stella raged, as she realised she wouldn’t be able to wear the burgundy jersey dress she’d planned on because it clingfilmed around her stomach and could only be worn on thin days.

‘Yes,’ sighed Vicki. ‘It’s like herpes, which apparently appears on the occasion of any hot date.’

‘You have sex on the brain, Vicki,’ Stella reproved.

‘Don’t be so prim and proper,’ teased Vicki. ‘You don’t fancy him for his mind, do you? I bet you’re going to wear your best knickers too.’

Stella had to laugh. ‘I am, but only because they make me feel good, not because there’s any vague hope of anybody seeing them.’

As she drove home that evening, she remembered what Vicki had said. Vicki wasn’t afraid of the idea of sex, while it terrified Stella. It was five years since she’d felt a man’s arms around her; five years since she’d been to bed with anyone. If sex was like riding a bicycle, Stella decided that she’d obviously gone back to using stabilisers.

Going out with a man could, eventually, lead to sex but Stella wasn’t sure she was ready for that. Celibacy, by choice or otherwise, was easier, wasn’t it?

At home, she washed her hair in an agony of uncertainty. If only she could phone Nick up and cancel the date. Tell him she was washing her hair for the rest of her life.

No, she decided finally. That would be the coward’s way out. She’d go out and tell him that it was a mistake, that she was sorry. And she’d pay for dinner. If that wasn’t the way to stay in control, she didn’t know what was.

The restaurant was empty. So empty that Stella momentarily wondered if she’d got the time wrong. Starkly designed in black and white, there were no tablecloths on the black tables, and no other diners either.

The waitress inside the door fell on her with ill-concealed delight.

‘Good evening, lovely to see you, can I take your coat?’ she said joyously.

‘Yes.’ Stella surrendered her coat. ‘Miller for two.’ Why had she worried over booking?

‘Your guest hasn’t arrived…’ began the waitress.

‘He has now,’ supplied Nick, shutting the door behind him. His eyes were flatteringly appreciative as he looked at Stella, all dressed up in her faithful cranberry red shirt and a long black suede skirt she’d had donkey’s years but which was happily back in fashion again.

‘Nice to see you,’ he said, and leaning forward, he kissed her on the cheek. Stella felt something inside her go ‘ping!’ with excitement.

‘Nice to see you too,’ she said and, just as a test, proffered the other cheek for a double kiss. There it was again. Ping!

‘You look beautiful,’ he said, his eyes caressing her face.

Ping, ping, ping!

‘Will I show you to your table?’ asked the waitress.

Nick shrugged out of his coat, giving Stella a chance to admire him. He’d swapped the casual look for a steely grey suit worn with a pale pink shirt that only the most masculine of men could get away with. Nick got away with it.

‘Ready?’ He turned around and Stella rapidly averted her eyes, not wanting to be caught staring. But wow, could he fill a suit in all the right places. Nick didn’t look as if he needed a detox but then you could never tell with clothes on and…

Stella shocked herself. What was she doing thinking about Nick with his clothes off? Vicki was right: she was losing the run of herself. She gave herself a stern talking to while they were led to a table for four at the back of the restaurant. The waitress gave them menus and left them alone in the bare expanse of the restaurant.

‘It’s odd that we’re the only ones here,’ whispered Stella, leaning forward.

Nick nodded solemnly but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes.

‘What?’ Stella asked.

A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

‘Tell me,’ she demanded.

‘If you need any help with the menus, please ask,’ said the waitress, appearing beside them. She flitted off again.

‘Do you come here often?’ Nick asked blandly.

‘Never been here before in my life,’ Stella said. ‘What is it?’

‘I wanted to know if this was your favourite restaurant, that’s all.’

She was puzzled. ‘What’s that got to do with the lack of customers?’

A party of six people arrived and the waitress flew to the front desk to usher them in. Despite the increased noise from the new arrivals, Nick still whispered.

‘I mentioned to a friend that we were coming here and he told me they’d had a write-up in one of the papers recently.’

She nodded. ‘I knew I’d read about it somewhere. Mussels to die for…Ah.’ She got it. ‘It wasn’t a good review, was it? In fact,’ she looked for confirmation in his face, ‘it was a Very. Bad. Review, wasn’t it?’

‘Bad is not the word,’ Nick said. ‘Horrendous fits the bill more successfully. Apparently, the reviewer had mussels and ended up cancelling his holiday because he was so sick. Mussels you’d die from was the tone of the review, I’m afraid.’

The whole situation suddenly struck Stella as hilariously funny. Trying to prove that she was a coolly independent modern woman, she’d inadvertently recommended a restaurant rocked by a food poisoning scandal.

Laughter bubbled up inside her and she bit her lip to stop it erupting. It was no good. She burst into laughter at exactly the same time as Nick. They both roared so loudly that the newly-arrived customers stared at them curiously, interested to see what was so amusing.

‘It’s not funny for them, but it’s hilarious really,’ she howled, leaning over the table and clutching her stomach with the intensity of her outburst. ‘I knew I’d heard something about this place but I couldn’t remember what and I didn’t want to say yes to Figaro’s instantly because I didn’t want you to think…’

Their waitress appeared, looking anxious. ‘Is…is everything all right?’ she asked.

‘Wonderful,’ squawked Stella. ‘Joke, that’s all.’

Nick composed himself.

‘Just another minute, please.’

The waitress drifted off.

‘You didn’t want me to think you were a pushover,’ finished Nick.

Stella grinned. ‘Got it in one.’

‘We can leave if you want to,’ Nick added, ‘although I’d prefer to stay now that we’re here. It might be hard to get a table anywhere else at such short notice, and our waitress would be so upset if we did leave.’

That did it. Stella smiled at him in admiration. Any man who was so kind would be worth a proper date. She could always say she couldn’t see him again at the end.

‘I don’t think I’d have liked you if you’d wanted to leave,’ she admitted. ‘The mussels could have been a once off and it would see so mean to leave now, when the dear waitress was so thrilled to see us.’

‘I agree. And there’s pasta on the menu, anyway, so less chance of fatal illness there.’

Stella erupted again.

‘Are you ready to order?’ inquired the waitress, once again materialising out of nowhere. Was she on roller skates? Stella wondered.

‘Yes,’ smiled Nick.

They ordered quickly – no fish – and agreed on a bottle of claret.

‘I am very out of practice at this date thing,’ Stella confessed when they were alone after the waitress had served the wine. ‘I’m sure that even saying that contravenes modern dating standards, but I can’t help it. I did all my dating when flares were in, the first time. I’ve forgotten the rules.’

‘I didn’t know there were rules,’ Nick replied. ‘See what I know about women. I thought I had to fill in your dance card, and after fifty dates, we were allowed out without chaperonage as long as I kept one foot on the floor at all times.’

Stella giggled. ‘Let’s skip a bit. I left my dance card at home, anyway. I think we have to tell each other our histories. That’s what they do in those articles in the paper when they set people up on blind dates.’

‘I’m afraid I never read that stuff,’ Nick said apologetically.

‘Men never do. But the theory is simple: we each get five minutes to tell our life stories.’

‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if mine will last that long.’

‘I bet,’ said Stella in mock cynicism. ‘OK then, make it shorter, say…twenty words or less. Let’s keep it short.’

‘Twenty words,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘OK. You first or me?’

‘You,’ she said quickly.

‘Right. You keep count of the number of words and when I’ve done twenty, stop me.’

‘More than twenty, and I’ll leave,’ Stella replied solemnly.

‘Forty-four, Irish, two daughters, fourteen and nineteen, married for twenty years, worked abroad, ran engineering company, divorced a year ago, head-hunted home. That’s more than twenty words, isn’t it?’ He stopped and his face had a faint weariness about it.

A hard divorce? wondered Stella with intuition. Or something else?

‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘That seemed tough for you, I didn’t mean it to be.’

‘No, you’ve a right to know who you’re having dinner with. Laying your life down in a mere twenty words makes it sound pretty hopeless.’

Stella fiddled with the stem of her wine glass. She wanted to ask why the marriage had broken up but was unsure of venturing into such personal territory. She decided to tell him her story. ‘Age: undisclosed.’

He laughed.

‘A woman’s age, like her weight and dress size, is highly classified information,’ Stella said gravely. ‘If I tell you any of them, I have to kill you. One daughter, wonderful Amelia, who’s seven and absolutely adorable.’

‘You’re using too many words,’ Nick put in.

‘Nick.’ She fixed him with a stern glance. ‘I’m a lawyer.’

He laughed again.

‘One daughter, Amelia, seven. Lawyer, specialising in property, divorced, erm…two fantastic younger sisters, great parents, yoga, perfume bottles, bad at picking restaurants…’ She broke off.

‘That’s good.’ ‘Tell me more about the perfume bottles bit.’

‘I love those little crystal perfume bottles, the ones with silver tops from ladies’ dressing tables a hundred years ago. I have magpie tendencies when it comes to junk like that. And costume jewellery, forties and fifties stuff.’

‘What about the fantastic sisters?’

Stella’s face always softened when she thought of Holly and Tara. ‘Holly’s the youngest and she works in the children’s department in Lee’s. She’s so funny, she’s brilliant, I worry about her, though.’ She didn’t know why she’d said that but she felt as if she could say things to Nick. ‘Tara,’ she continued, ‘is a storyline editor for National Hospital. She’s brilliant too. They just won an award at the television and radio awards.’

‘They sound wonderful. Are you a close family?’

‘Very. We’re like this tight unit. Mum, Dad, me, Holly, Tara, and now Amelia. The Miller clan. It’s all down to Mum, really,’ Stella added. ‘She’s an incredible person, very warm and strong. Mum has no time for family squabbles or long-running arguments. She taught us how important family is.’

Nick was quiet.

‘What about your family?’

‘I’ve a younger brother, Howard, and an older sister, Paula, and of course my mother. Paula lives in the same village as my mother near Wicklow town and she’s looked after her for years. They want to sell both their houses so they can move to a bungalow, which would be easier for my mother to get around. Paula’s artistic – she paints – and she hates sorting out legal matters, so my brother and his wife, Clarisse, have always done that side of things. Clarisse feels that now I’m back in the country, I can take over.’ His slightly wry smile revealed more than he was saying.

‘Clarisse feels put-upon and wants you to shoulder some of the burden?’ Stella offered.

‘You are intuitive,’ said Nick, impressed.

Through the meal, they talked about their jobs, places they’d worked and more about their families. Clarisse sounded vaguely like Aunt Adele, Stella reflected. By dessert, they had discussed every relative except their children – and their exes; a glaring omission.

‘Tell me about Amelia,’ Nick urged.

Stella produced a photo from her wallet. It had been taken the previous summer in Kinvarra, when her parents had held a barbecue for friends and family. Stella’s father had hung a low swing from a sycamore tree, and, in the picture, Amelia was sitting on it, colourful in pink and white shorts and T-shirt, laughing into the camera and with her hair swinging in two jaunty pigtails.

‘Beautiful, just like her mother,’ Nick said examining the photo. ‘What about her father? Do you share custody?’

‘Nothing that ordinary,’ Stella said. ‘He works in the oil business and he’s abroad all the time. Amelia spends time with him when he’s here. She’s with him now.’ Stella didn’t mention how she tried hard not to resent this.

‘I split up with my ex husband when Amelia was a baby. There wasn’t anybody else, we’d just made an awful mistake. I’d like to say we married too young but I was twenty-eight, old enough to know better,’ she added ruefully. ‘How about you?’

The silence seemed to go on forever and Stella would have done anything to claw back the words, but finally, Nick spoke.

‘Why does any marriage break up?’ he said. ‘We made a mistake too; it just took twenty years to figure it out. I was seconded to the company’s office in Stockholm for four months a couple of years ago and it would have been difficult for Wendy and the kids to come because of school. So we agreed that I’d go and come home as often as I could, which I did, every few weekends. Four months became six months and when I got back for good, we found it impossible to live together again. That sounds terrible,’ he said looking at Stella, ‘but it’s the truth. We even went to counselling for a while. It didn’t work. Talking about it made us realise that the only glue keeping us together was the girls. The problem was, Wendy was prepared to put up with that. I knew we couldn’t.’

‘That must have been tough,’ Stella said gently. ‘You’re not over your divorce, are you?’ she added, knowing she was going too far but not being able to stop herself.

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Believe me, I am over my divorce. I’m not over the trauma and hurt that went with it. It was the most personally painful thing I’ve ever experienced and it’s with me every day.’

‘What about the girls?’

Nick’s face lit up.

‘Jenna is fourteen and Sara is nineteen. Sara’s doing Arts in college and Jenna’s in school; mind you, she looks old enough to be in college. When she’s with her friends, they all look about twenty.’

He took out his wallet and extracted a photo of two girls. It looked like a holiday shot. Sara was fair-haired, lanky and smiled up at the camera with her father’s warm, intelligent eyes. Jenna was smiling too, but she looked more posed, as if she liked the camera. It certainly liked her. She was incredibly pretty with a heart-shaped face, almond eyes and dimples. Even the glint of the brace on her teeth couldn’t dim her teenage beauty.

‘How often do you see them?’

‘All the time, I couldn’t bear not to. But it’s caused some problems. Wendy is from Dublin and she never wanted to live in London, but at the time, that was where the work was. After the divorce, she moved back here with the girls. I missed them so much,’ he said, ‘that when I got an offer of a job here, I jumped.’

Stella was silent. How that must have infuriated his wife. He wouldn’t leave London for her, but he could make that sacrifice for their daughters.

‘It’s been tough,’ Nick added, confirming Stella’s instincts. ‘In so far as any divorce is ever amicable, you could say that ours was. There was nobody else for either of us but it’s still hard splitting after twenty years. The hardest part was telling our daughters.’ His face was bleak as he spoke.

‘We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,’ Stella said hurriedly.

He shrugged. ‘We don’t have to, but it’s a good idea to get to know each other, for, you know, future dates.’

It was Stella’s turn to look uncomfortable.

He stared at her. ‘I’ve messed things up, haven’t I?’ he asked. ‘Telling a prospective girlfriend all about the traumas of your divorce is not the way to impress her. I told you I wasn’t that clued in about modern dating,’ he said.

‘Forget it.’ Stella wanted to make it better. So what if he wasn’t dating material because he had more baggage than a jumbo jet. He was a nice man. ‘Let’s talk about something else. How about films, the big issues of the day…’

‘Like politics and religion?’ he interrupted, amused.

‘I take that bit back,’ Stella said, wincing. ‘Forget the big issues of the day. I’m fed up discussing politics and religion and you can’t talk about either without a row. No, let’s go for serious subjects, like which is your favourite James Bond.’

Nick gave her a grateful smile as he leaned forward and poured her more claret.

They were the last to leave the restaurant after a mild tussle over who’d pay the bill.

‘Let me,’ insisted Stella.

‘But I asked you out.’

‘No, really, let me.’

The waitress stood patiently to one side while they argued.

‘You could always make a run for it so nobody would have to pay,’ she suggested.

Both Nick and Stella looked up in surprise.

‘Or split the bill,’ the waitress added.

They split it and soon found themselves outside on the street where the sky was undecided over whether to send down snow or sleet. A sheet of something white began to fall as they walked along and Stella shivered in the icy wind.

‘Let’s get out of this for a moment,’ Nick suggested. They sheltered in a shop doorway, watching the snow fall onto the wet street and disappear.

‘At least it’s not sticking,’ Stella said, still shivering.

Without saying anything, Nick took off his coat and draped it over both their shoulders so that Stella was warmed by an extra layer. She had to stand close to him so they’d both be covered, and the sensation of being that close to another person felt strangely good. No, she thought, not just another person. Nick. Standing close to Nick felt good and somehow right.

‘I don’t think it’s going to stop,’ he said.

‘No,’ she agreed, pasta and claret churning inside her in excitement. She couldn’t believe she was standing in a doorway with this man; a man she found unbelievably attractive.

‘You’ll freeze.’

‘Body heat’s a wonderful thing,’ he smiled at her.

Stella smiled back, feeling a little nugget of heat inside her despite the cold. His coat slipped and Nick pulled it back over her, his arm momentarily round her shoulders. She kept staring at him. The arm didn’t move, staying wrapped round Stella, who found herself leaning in closer towards him. His mouth was just a few inches above hers and Stella wondered if she was supposed to give him a signal that he could kiss her. Was that how it worked nowadays? Maybe she should have read Aunt Adele’s despised copy of The Rules to find out. Without waiting for any signal, Nick’s mouth lowered onto hers. Then both his arms were around her and they lurched against the doorway, like lovelorn teenagers stealing a forbidden kiss, bodies tight together as the kiss deepened into fierce, hard passion. Tasting the sweetness of his mouth, holding his body tightly, Stella didn’t care who saw her. All she wanted was Nick; Nick kissing her face and her throat, murmuring endearments and making tender love to her…

Nick broke away first, his olive eyes shining, his breath ragged. ‘We haven’t had the fifty dances yet and there’s no chaperone,’ he said.

‘You’ve got one foot on the ground, haven’t you?’ she replied.

‘Yes, just about!’

This time, Stella kissed him and went on kissing him until they were no longer cold and until the snow was swirling around their doorway like a blizzard.

Only when a police car drove carefully down the street, blue light illuminating doorways, did they stop and step onto the street, laughing like kids and holding Nick’s coat over their heads.

‘I’d hate to see the papers if a respected lawyer and a respected businessman were arrested for obscene behaviour,’ chuckled Stella.

‘It was only a kiss,’ said Nick.

Their eyes met and they both grinned. What a kiss.

He helped her into the first taxi they saw and then took her hand and softly kissed the back of it. Stella smiled at him with affection. From anyone else, such a gesture would have seemed corny but not from Nick.

‘I’ll phone tomorrow.’

He shut the door and the taxi drove off into the night.

For a brief moment, Stella thought about men and phoning. Everyone from Vicki to Tara said that men promised to phone but rarely did.

It was a game, Vicki insisted miserably. To ring or not to ring.

But sitting in the back of a taxi, feeling the car’s heater slowly warm her bones, Stella allowed herself to smile happily. Nick wasn’t like that. He’d phone. She knew it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘Rose, have you seen my waterproof jacket?’ Hugh roared up the stairs.

Rose, on her hands and knees on the upstairs landing as she did an emergency sort-out of the airing cupboard, rolled her eyes. She’d left Hugh’s waterproof on the kitchen chair nearest the hall door. Unless he was walking round the house with his eyes closed, he couldn’t miss it.

‘It’s in the kitchen,’ she yelled back, suppressing the desire to add, ‘stupid.’

‘Where in the kitchen? I can’t see it?’

Rose got creakily to her knees. The cold, damp weather definitely made aching bones worse. If January had been cold and wet, February was proving to be even worse, with gale force Northern winds that made Rose glad of decent heating that kept Meadow Lodge toasty. Braving the great outdoors was another matter, and Rose had decided she wasn’t leaving the house that morning without her long-sleeved thermal vest. She knew it was somewhere and she’d been searching fruitlessly when Hugh called.

She was halfway down the stairs when Hugh found his waterproof. ‘There it is,’ he yelled. ‘I didn’t leave it there,’ he added indignantly.

Rose managed not to reply. She walked into the kitchen to find Hugh ready for a Saturday morning walk with his best friend, Alastair. The kitchen, just tidied up by Rose, was a mess again because Hugh had cleaned out his pockets by the bin, brushed the worst of the muck from his walking shoes and made himself a cup of tea, the debris of these three tasks having ruined all her good work.

Hugh spotted Rose’s exasperated look in the direction of the mess.

‘Oh er…sorry about that but I have to rush, love,’ he said, dropping a speedy kiss on her cheek. ‘I’m meeting Alastair in ten minutes. I’ll tidy up when I get back.’

He raced off, leaving Rose crossly thinking that if she had a penny for every time Hugh promised to clean up, she’d be lying on a beach in the Bahamas by now. She tidied up again, went back upstairs to finish ransacking the airing cupboard, then got ready for her trip out with Adele. It was Hugh’s birthday in a few weeks and Adele, who’d stopped driving several years previously after a collision with a gatepost, had asked Rose to take her shopping for his present. This was Rose’s idea of pure torture but she’d said yes. Charity did, after all, begin at home.

Adele lived in the old Miller family home eight miles on the other side of Kinvarra and Rose never drove there without thanking her lucky stars that she and Hugh had bought their own house when they first got married. She didn’t like to imagine what would have happened if they’d ended up living with Adele, without the eight-mile buffer zone.

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