Just Between Us

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.