Just Between Us

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.