Just Between Us

‘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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