Just Between Us

by Cathy Kelly

  Desmond sighed. ‘I don’t think so, dear. He blanks it out really, that’s how he handles it. And since Fay went, it’s been worse.’ He turned around suddenly, cheered up as if he’d just cracked a particularly difficult cryptic clue in his crossword. ‘That’s it. Talk to Fay. She might know. He tells her things.’

  Tara felt unbelievably sad to think that her husband told things to his sister, who lived thousands of miles and many time zones away, and said so little to her, the woman who’d shared his bed and his life. Why had she never probed him for details of his relationship with Gloria? It was clear that Gloria adored her son with an obsessive zeal that went over and above normal mother-son relationships. Tara, with all her expertise at human relationships thanks to her work as a soap writer, had completely failed to see that this might affect Finn. She’d blithely accepted his cheery remarks that people ‘got used to’ Gloria. She remembered Christmas, before she’d realised that his drinking was out of hand, when he’d deliberately kept himself in a state of comfortable drunkenness to cope with the holiday. She should have known then. How had she missed all the signs? Was she so in love with the physical aspect of Finn that she’d failed to look any deeper?

  ‘You don’t want Gloria to know that Finn has disappeared, I presume,’ said Tara.

  ‘Hell no.’ Desmond looked alarmed. ‘Finn will be fine. He’s resilient. He obviously needs time on his own. When he was a kid, before we moved here, he used to hide in the attic. It wasn’t easy to get up there and he’d have to climb up onto the tank in the airing cupboard to get up where the water pipes ran into the attic, but he’d manage it. He liked peace.’

  ‘So you could say he’s run away before?’ Tara was clutching at straws.

  ‘Ask Fay.’ Desmond tore a piece of paper from the bottom of the newspaper and wrote an e-mail address on it. ‘You’ll like Fay,’ he said. ‘She’s a great girl.’ He looked dreamy-eyed and Tara felt overcome with pity for this lovely man who’d seen his daughter flee to the other side of the world, all because of his bitter, jealous wife.

  Tara kissed Desmond on the cheek. She wanted to be long gone before Gloria came home on her broomstick.

  Dear Fay,

  You don’t know me but hopefully, you’ve heard of me. I’m Tara Miller, Finn’s wife. I know you’re probably wondering why I’m writing to you for the first time but I’m desperate. Finn and I have rowed and he’s left me. That was three days ago and I have heard nothing since, which is so unlike your brother. He doesn’t hold grudges.

  He hasn’t been to work and he’s not with your parents. (Your father knows what’s happened – he gave me your e-mail address – but your mother doesn’t.) Please, if you can think of any place Finn might have gone to, tell me. Or if he’s been in touch with you.

  I am so scared. I don’t know what could have happened to him and I keep imagining the worst. I’ve rung all the hospitals and even the police, but because he walked out on me and because he’s an adult, they don’t consider it a missing person case.

  Sorry for bothering you but I am desperate.

  Tara Miller.

  Tara reread the e-mail. It was not up to her usual standard, but who cared? She pressed ‘send’. All she had to do now was wait.

  She couldn’t relax and logged onto her e-mail account every half hour to see if a message had come through. Finally, at half eleven, after an evening of flicking desultorily through the TV channels, she gave up. Fay could be away, out at work, anything. She might not want to respond to Tara; she might be fed up of family hassles. Wasn’t that why she’d emigrated in the first place?

  In bed, Tara fell into an uneasy sleep where she dreamed of being on a sun-swept desert island. She was running through sand, trying to find Finn but he was always a few steps ahead of her, and her legs didn’t seem to work. She screamed Finn’s name but he didn’t turn round. ‘Finn!’

  Tara’s own scream woke her up. Her heart was pounding and she was sunburn hot. Flicking on her bedside lamp to banish the demons of the night, she looked at the time. Half three. That was half six in the evening in California, or was it half seven? She logged on and there, winking at her, was a message from Fay Jefferson. It had been sent half an hour ago.

  Hi, Tara,

  Nice to meet you, Sister-in-law. Sorry it’s because of this. Do you mind me asking what you argued about? I don’t want to get into your personal lives but I think I can guess what part of the problem is. Finn and I have talked about it many times. By the way, Finn hasn’t been in touch with me but if he does, I will tell him to get in touch with you. I have to say that normally, he’s not the one to run away. That’s my job.

  Adios,

  Fay.

  Still shaking from her dream, Tara typed rapidly.

  Fay, are you still there? Can I phone you? Please?

  Tara.

  She didn’t disconnect the line and stayed near the computer, waiting. Seven minutes later, a single-line message arrived with a phone number.

  ‘Thank you, Fay, thank you,’ said Tara joyfully as she dialled.

  Her sister-in-law answered on the third ring. ‘Hi, Tara, say it’s late for you, isn’t it?’ Fay’s Irish accent had mellowed into a soft Californian purr but Tara could still hear traces of Finn’s husky voice in there.

  ‘Hi,’ she said and burst into tears. ‘You sound like your brother.’

  ‘He’s done a lot of things but he doesn’t usually make women cry,’ Fay said gently.

  ‘No, that’s my fault,’ said Tara.

  ‘Why?’ asked Fay.

  Tara told her, the real version, not the sanitised ‘we rowed and he left’ one. It never occurred to her not to tell the truth. She was desperate and this total stranger, Finn’s sister, was the only chance she had left.

  ‘That’s not what I expected,’ Fay said finally. ‘I guessed it was something to do with Finn’s alcoholism.’

  Tara’s sharp intake of breath was audible. ‘His alcoholism?’ she said.

  ‘Ri-ight.’ Fay drew the word out into two syllables. ‘He hasn’t talked to you about it?’

  ‘Never, but I know. I’ve been so worried and every time we talk about it, he says he doesn’t have a problem but he does and oh, Fay, it’s been hell.’ Tara began to cry again, this time silently.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Tara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘When we first got married, I thought the problem was his job and all the schmoozing the sales team had to do,’ she said, her voice thick from crying. ‘It seemed as if Finn was always out late and home drunk. He was never bad tempered or anything when he drank, just different.’ She tried to find the right words to explain his distant state, the way he was still Finn but somehow different, as if he wanted to be miles away. ‘I began to hate him saying he had to entertain clients or anything with Derry.’

  ‘Oh, Derry, yeah.’ Fay laughed but there was no mirth in it. ‘I remember him.’

  ‘I hate Derry,’ Tara said tonelessly. ‘He’s a heavy drinker and even if Finn was going out for one pint of beer and he was with Derry, it ended up with them getting plastered. Then, Finn spent money from the bank account and we couldn’t pay the mortgage.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I confronted him. I was furious. He said it would be fine, he had this bonus coming, but it didn’t, and he kept drinking and I was so angry…’ Tara had been standing up and now she slumped onto the remaining armchair in the room. ‘That’s when I slept with this man I worked with. That’s not an excuse, Fay. Just because Finn drinks doesn’t mean I have to hop into bed with other guys.’

  ‘But you wanted to pay him back, didn’t you?’

  Tara sighed. ‘Fay, if this is psychic healing, you are an expert at it.’

  Her sister-in-law’s chuckle was deep. ‘I’m not a psychic healer, I just said that to irritate my mother. I’m a fitness instructor. I had an arts degree from home and that didn’t help much in the job market, so I retrained.’

  ‘You don’t
get on with her,’ Tara remarked.

  ‘You could say that,’ Fay said sardonically. ‘Finn and I have very different relationships with her. She and I didn’t get on but she adored Finn. He was always so sweet, he tried to get her off my back by being extra nice to her so she’d be happy and cut me some slack. You know, he’d say, “Mum, you look tired. Why don’t you have a rest and Fay and I will clean up,” and she’d be all “Finn, darling, you’re so good” and she’d go upstairs and lie down or paint her nails and everyone would be happy because she wasn’t around.’

  Tara had to ask: ‘Do you think that he drinks because of that, because of your mother and your childhood?’ She wanted there to be a reason because then, it could be fixed.

  ‘That reminds me of the joke written on a bathroom stall door: “My mother made me an alcoholic.” And written underneath in different writing is: “If I get her the wool, will she make me one too?” Nobody makes anybody an alcoholic, Tara,’ said Fay firmly. ‘What happens to you in life can probably push you down that path, but it’s a cop-out to say another person forces you into it. Now, I’m not standing up for my mother here. She’s quite a piece of work.’

  Tara agreed with that. Gloria was a strange woman, and yet her daughter was warm and friendly. Tara realised that even the way Fay spoke felt so familiar that Tara didn’t think twice about having this bizarre and deeply personal conversation with her.

  ‘I’ve read that scientists are still juggling the nature versus nurture effect of alcoholism, like is it genetic or is it learned behaviour. But to be fair, my mother didn’t hand Finn a bottle and say “finish this, kid”. He did that himself and he’s the only person to blame. Finn’s been drinking for a long time,’ Fay continued. ‘He’s two years older than I am and I noticed it for the first time when he was, I don’t know, perhaps nineteen. He never drank for fun, he drank to get really out of it. We all tried to get served in bars then, it was the classic teenage rebellion thing. We were adults, we could handle our beer, yeah right. But Finn drank differently, even then. I didn’t realise what it meant until I was in college and I did psychology in the first year. We had this lecture about alcoholism and it sort of clicked. Everything the lecturer said reminded me of my brother. Drinking is his coping mechanism.’

  Tara felt so incredibly sad hearing this. It took a phone call to the other side of the world to tell her things she should have known about her husband.

  ‘Finn’s known he’s had a problem for years,’ Fay went on. ‘He and I discuss it but nobody else does. My mother would never admit that he has any flaws and Dad, well Dad hates hassle.

  ‘When Finn phoned last year and said he was getting married, I didn’t like to ask him if you knew. He said he was drinking but it was under control.’

  Tara sat in miserable silence. It all made so much sense; how had she never noticed before? ‘Why didn’t I realise at the beginning?’ she said. ‘I could have helped.’

  ‘Finn doesn’t fit into the Photofit of your typical drunk. He doesn’t hang around street corners and stumble off the sidewalk. He’s clever, he’s kind, he functions. How would you know?’

  ‘I should have,’ insisted Tara. ‘I love him.’

  ‘You’ve got to ask yourself can you still love him, knowing this?’

  ‘Of course I can. But where is he?’

  ‘Did you try phoning the rehabilitation clinics? He might have booked himself into one.’

  ‘Do you think that’s possible?’ Tara felt a glimmer of hope.

  ‘He probably feels he’s lost you, that he’s reached the end of the line, so the only way of winning you back is sorting out the problem.’

  ‘But he left me,’Tara pointed out. ‘Not the other way round.’

  ‘Had he been drinking that night?’

  Tara didn’t know.

  ‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed that he’s in rehab. If he is, he’ll need you when he gets out.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Tara said, her voice cracking.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Tara,’ Fay said. ‘I’m on late shift tonight at the health club. Keep in touch, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and thanks for everything.’

  As she hung up. Tara tried to imagine what she’d do if either Stella or Holly were alcoholics. She’d have dragged them into a clinic and kept them there until they were better. Fay appeared to know all about Finn and yet she’d never forced him to do anything about it. Then again, didn’t they say that was the problem with addiction: you couldn’t force anyone to do anything. They had to want to do it. Tara felt so ignorant about the whole subject. She should have bought a book on alcoholism or something. Then it hit her: the Internet. Of course. She didn’t need a book. She got on-line and began to search.

  She sat up into the night reading on-line about families and partners of alcoholics. The facts of the stories were often different on the surface, but underneath, they all shared the same thread of pain from living with an alcoholic. There were wives and husbands who’d divorced their drinking spouse, having been pushed to the limit too many times, and who told of how it was an uphill battle recovering from what they’d been through. There were adult children of alcoholics who, years after their drinking parent was dead, still had nightmares about what it meant when Daddy or Mummy came home with that familiar glitter in their eyes and the miasma of alcohol in the air.

  And there were the good stories, where people came online to give hope that there could be life after the bottle.

  ‘I was married to two people, the kind man I loved and the bitter, cruel man he became when he was drunk,’ wrote one woman. ‘For years I lived with both until I’d had enough and threw him out of our home, for my sake and for our children’s sake. Only then did he face up to what he’d done. Now my husband is back, not the drinking one, the kind, decent one. He’s been back for four years and not a day goes by but I don’t praise the Lord for giving him back to us. It can be done, I promise.’

  Tara felt a lump in her throat as she read each account. These real stories were more poignant than anything she could have written.

  If only she could get a second chance with Finn. But that was out of her hands now. All she could do was hope he’d done the positive thing and gone for treatment. Until she knew otherwise, she had to get on with living her life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Remind me again why we’re going to this party?’ grumbled Joan, fiddling with her newly-dyed coal-black hair, now cut in a sharp modern crop. In preparation for her trip to New York, she’d revamped her personal style and was getting used to wearing pieces from her tailored collection. She still wore her funky graffiti T-shirts but worked hard to make her more outrageous clothes look good with mainstream pieces.

  ‘I want to be successful and being too weird won’t work on Seventh Avenue,’ she told Kenny and Holly when they expressed amazement at this new look. Tonight, she was dressed in a sleek charcoal pinafore dress with a clinging, filament-thin white net shirt with cotton collar and cuffs underneath. Genuine ‘Forties stack heels and a classic YSL evening bag from a vintage shop completed the look. Somehow the outfit was the epitome of French chic with a very modern twist.

  ‘We’re going to this party because we love Tom and have to support him in his hour of need,’ said Kenny, who didn’t need to fiddle with his outfit because he knew that his Diet-Coke man cream linen suit was exquisite. ‘And we’re hoping that Caroline will fall for some of the top totty I’ve arranged to crash the party, thus leaving dear Tom alone.’ He didn’t add ‘alone for Holly’. He and Joan might think that Tom would be perfect for their Holly but they said nothing. Holly had been bruised enough as it was. ‘Besides, the only other option is to find a witch and put a hex on Caroline, and they haven’t opened up a branch of Witches Ä Us in Dublin yet,’ Kenny continued irrepressibly.

  It was the Thursday evening of Tom and Caroline’s grand engagement party and Joan and Kenny were in Holly’s apartment waiting for her to emerge from the bedroom.<
br />
  ‘Holls, what are you doing in there?’ yelled Joan. ‘I want to get to the party and meet Kenny’s model boys.’

  In a daring move, Kenny had phoned Caroline and mentioned that he’d be working on a shoot on the day of the party. ‘I’ll be working with four of the most delectable male models in the country. Could I ask a huge favour and take them along? They’d love your party.’

  Predictably, Caroline had jumped at the chance.

  ‘Jennifer Lopez is in the ha’penny place compared to Caroline when it comes to ego,’ Kenny sighed. ‘Honestly, I’ve organised rent-a-crowd and she genuinely believes the country’s top male models are wetting themselves to go to her little bash.’

  In her bedroom, Holly stared at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t go out in this dress. It was Caroline’s night and there was an unwritten rule about upstaging the bride, wasn’t there? Vintage shopping with Joan, she’d come upon a red Hervé Léger dress, a marvellous construction which worked like a fabulous foundation garment, squeezing Holly’s hourglass figure into even more Jessica Rabbit proportions. Holly wouldn’t have tried something so daring on except Joan wanted to see it modelled so she could croon over the brilliance of Léger. Once it was on, even the manageress of the shop had come to admire the effect. After that, Joan insisted that Holly buy it.

  Now Holly decided that she j ust didn’t have the nerve for so much va-va voom. This was a dress to be tried on when she needed cheering up, because it did make her look fabulous, but she just wasn’t the sort of person who could actually set foot outside the flat wearing it. People would look at her in a dress like that.

  ‘We hope you’re not taking that dress off?’ Joan stood at the bedroom door.

  ‘Oh good, you’re ready,’ said Kenny, popping his head into the room. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘I don’t know…’ said Holly miserably.

  They grabbed her and propelled her out the bedroom door. Joan rushed back and picked up Holly’s evening bag. ‘Jesus, Holly, what are you like? You look wicked.’