by Melissa Hill
“How would you feel about looking after Toby and the kennels while I go to London with Tara?” Liz held her breath, waiting for him to make up some excuse not to do it. “We’re hoping to go Friday and it’d just be for the weekend and –”
“No problem – go for it. I’ll be coming off nights early Friday morning, and I’m not back in until the following Monday night. So it should be fine.”
“But won’t you be tired, having just finished your shift and everything?”
“Not at all! I’ll get a few hours sleep in before you leave, and I’ll be grand.”
“Are you sure?” Liz couldn’t believe he’d agreed so readily.
“Honestly, Liz – go. You’ll enjoy it.”
“I can go!” Liz laughed down the phone to Tara afterwards, feeling happier and more optimistic than she’d felt in ages.
“Fantastic! I’m about to book the flights online as we speak. How about a lunchtime flight on Friday and a late one back on Sunday evening?”
“Sounds fine to me – just let me know how much I owe you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” her friend insisted. “Natalie’s insisted she’ll look after it.”
“Really? That’s so generous of her! Oh, Tara, thanks for asking me! I really can’t wait,” Liz cried. “This will be great fun!”
“It certainly will,” her friend laughed, “and I really think it’ll do us both the world of good!”
Chapter 26
The following Thursday afternoon at five p.m., Tara sighed with pleasure as she closed the office door behind her and raced upstairs to get changed. That was it, she thought, as she cast off her work clothes and changed into a pair of denims and a T-shirt – no more clients until the following Monday. And in the meantime she and Liz were going to have a wonderful time visiting Natalie in London. She couldn’t wait.
She went downstairs and opened the fridge, wondering what she could make for dinner. Glenn’s shift ended at seven this evening, so for once he’d be home for dinner.
Tara debated whether to go to the trouble of cooking something or just order in. Blast it, she’d order in, she decided, closing the fridge door and rummaging in the drawer for a takeaway menu.
Glenn wouldn’t mind – in fairness, most of the time he preferred takeaways to what he described as her “bland” cooking. Understandable, she supposed, given that she preferred using lots of fresh vegetables and lean meat, instead of the fat- and additive-laden stuff from the fast-food places.
But tonight Tara didn’t care. The odd takeaway now and again wouldn’t kill either of them. Still, Glenn would probably be living on them while she was away in London, wouldn’t he? She bit her lip. Maybe before leaving tomorrow she should prepare a few things in advance for him to reheat while she was gone – a few simple pasta dishes or something.
But blast it, she’d probably only be wasting her time. If Glenn had his way, he’d live on pizza and Chinese, and it was highly unlikely he’d go to the trouble of reheating something of hers. Oh well, she decided eventually, he was a big boy and she’d have to leave him to his own devices.
She was really looking forward to this trip and couldn’t wait to meet up with Natalie again. The girl was so vivacious and fun-loving, Tara just knew she’d go all out to ensure she and Liz enjoyed their stay. And after all this time, it would be nice to put a face to lover-boy Jay and suss out whether he really was as good as he seemed. She hoped so. Natalie was a pet who, after so much disappointment, really deserved a good man in her life.
And apparently she was pulling out all the stops for Liz and Tara’s visit – despite Tara’s protestations that she didn’t owe her anything. Instead of just meeting her and Jay for a quiet dinner, Natalie had used all her (and Jay’s) connections and had actually arranged a table for them in the celebrity restaurant the Ivy for tomorrow night! Liz had nearly fainted with excitement when she’d heard this, before immediately becoming hysterical over what to wear.
“Oh my God! What if David Beckham is there?” she’d cried. “I’d keel over if I walked in and saw him and Posh sitting at the table next to us or something!”
“Well, seeing as he’s living in Madrid these days, and will probably have a game on Saturday, I doubt very much that he’ll be there,” Tara told her calmly.
Liz sighed. “Pity.”
“But we’re bound to spot somebody interesting,” Tara added. “So be sure to let Eric know his wife will be mixing with the rich and famous. Get him worried that you might arrive home with some male model on your arm or something!”
They were getting a lunchtime flight the following day, so the plan was for Eric to drive Liz to Tara’s house, and she would drive them both to the airport from there.
So they should get into Heathrow around early afternoon and then . . . Tara frowned and set down the takeaway menu.
What would they do from there? She hadn’t been in London in donkey’s years. Was there a train they could get into Central London, or would it be quicker to just get a taxi? Tara wasn’t sure, but she supposed she’d better find out. Natalie had the restaurant booked for early evening so, by the time they got to the hotel and changed, there really wouldn’t be a whole lot of time, and she couldn’t take the chance of being late. Especially when Natalie had gone to so much trouble.
Deciding she’d better ask Natalie what was the best thing to do, Tara picked up the phone and dialled her work number, but it went straight to voicemail. Tara was tempted to leave a message asking her friend what they should do upon arrival at the airport but then she realised how silly that sounded. Talk about Irish country bumpkins! There was no point in bothering Natalie – she could easily find out herself on the Internet.
Tara went into the living room and sat down in front of Glenn’s laptop. Her office computer had the previous week been infected by some Internet virus and despite Glenn’s best efforts was still off-limits as far as Internet access was concerned. So in the meantime, she’d been using Glenn’s for her online coaching sessions and for researching her trip to London.
She’d try the site she’d used a few days before when looking up the exact location of the hotel that Natalie had arranged for them – that had loads of tourist information about London.
But when she went online, she found she couldn’t for the life of her remember the website address . . . was it londonhotelbookings . . . londonhotels . . . hotelslondon? Nope, obviously none of those, Tara thought frowning as the “address not found” page kept coming up on the screen.
Then she thought of something. As she’d accessed it only recently, the site would still be saved on the Internet history file, wouldn’t it?
Tara clicked on the “history” button, feeling rather pleased with herself that she’d remembered to do it. Ha! Glenn wasn’t the only dab hand at computers in this house!
A list of recently viewed pages appeared on the screen, and Tara scanned through them, hoping to spot the one she was looking for. But something else caught her eye instead, a web page she knew she’d find the answer on in any case: the celticfemmes.com forum.
The forum was a mine of information – its hundreds of members continuously exchanging information on everything from fake tan to failed relationships. Tara had posted a request for information on Sharm El Sheikh on the site before eventually choosing it as a holiday destination, and she’d been inundated with lots of very helpful information and useful advice. So, why shouldn’t she do the same for London? Someone would know about how difficult it was to get a taxi from the airport into the centre of the city and how much it would cost.
She clicked onto the travel section and posted a new topic, labelling it, “Weekend in London”.
“Hi everyone,” Tara typed, “am off to London tomorrow for the weekend and wondered about the best way to get from Heathrow to Kensington in Central London. Is there a train I can get from the airport to this area, or should I get a cab to go directly? Would prefer not to use the tube if possible. Any info would be greatl
y appreciated. Thanks, Pixie.”
“Pixie” was Tara’s username for the forum, as like many other Internet users she generally preferred not to use her real name. She then hit “send”, and waited for the page to reload and her query to appear at the top of the travel section. And within seconds, there it was.
Grand, she thought, standing up from the laptop. She’d disconnect from the Net and then come back after dinner to see what the femmes had to say and hopefully . . . Tara’s eyes widened as she realised she already had a reply and another member’s nickname, “Obi-wan” had appeared beside her topic. That was quick.
“Good woman,” Tara muttered as she clicked into the topic once more to see what advice Obi-wan had given her.
But when the page reloaded, Tara frowned. There was nothing there but her own query – no reply from anyone in the last few seconds.
Perplexed, she refreshed the page again, thinking that the reply might not yet have properly registered, but then something caught her eye.
The topic she’d posted was there, but instead of registering as being posted by her own user name, “Pixie”, it was showing as being posted by someone called Obi-wan.
Flummoxed by this, Tara sat back in her seat and stared at the screen.
How had that happened? Her user name was definitely Pixie: it was the nickname she used for the various websites and forums she belonged to.
So how had her query ended up as being posted by Obi-wan?
Then, she looked at the login details displayed at the top of the screen.
It read: “You are logged on to celticfemmes.com as Obiwan.”
Of course! Tara grinned as the penny dropped. She was using Glenn’s computer now, wasn’t she? So, obviously, Glenn had visited this particular site before her and had logged on with his own user name, Obi-wan – a name that made sense, really, if she thought about it for half a second: Glenn was such a Star Wars fan that she should have guessed at once!
So, obviously what had happened was that Glenn had stayed logged into the forum after his last visit, and Tara’s new query was automatically recognised as being from Obi-wan when she posted it.
Then she thought of something. Why would Glenn be a member of a mostly female-friendly site? And what had he been enquiring about?
Tara smiled. She shouldn’t do it really but, at the same time, this could be interesting.
Still grinning to herself, Tara clicked onto the “View Member Profile” section. This revealed that Obi-wan had joined the forum a couple of weeks back and had posted on only three occasions.
Without thinking too much more about it, Tara clicked into the “View all Member Posts” heading. She knew she shouldn’t be so nosy, but she couldn’t help it. She was dying to see what information Glenn might have wanted from celticfemmes! Knowing him, it was probably computer-related – though, considering his level of expertise, why he would go to the celticfemmes was beyond her – or, in fact, and this was probably exactly what it was, she thought now, it could be something to do with scuba diving. Since the trip to Egypt, Glenn had been trying to arrange to go on some more dives here in Ireland. He could very well have come across the celticfemmes website through a search for Irish scuba-diving information on one of the search engines. It seemed the most likely explanation anyway, Tara mused.
But the topic he’d apparently been interested in was labelled: “Serious shit – advice needed.”
As she began to read through the topic, Tara began to wish she hadn’t been so inquisitive. But once she’d started she just couldn’t stop – she couldn’t tear her eyes away and her heart raced as she read the words.
The topic had been started by a member called Mattie who was asking for advice on some “serious shit” all right.
“I need some advice from a female perspective as this is something I’m finding hard to deal with and I can’t exactly talk to my mates about it,” Mattie wrote. “My girlfriend’s seven weeks pregnant and is thinking of having an abortion. I don’t want her to do it – I’m totally against that kind of stuff – but I also know that she is determined to go All Because of You through with it, and the longer we fight about it, the more the baby will grow and the worse it’ll be if she does do it in the end.”
The topic had lots of responses from regular posters on the site, some passing judgement, others giving him genuine advice. Heart pounding, Tara scrolled down through most of it until she found what she was looking for, which was Obi-wan’s reply. Evidently this topic interested Glenn enough for him to sign up for membership to the site in order to reply, as non-members were not allowed to post or reply to topics. But what would Glenn know about things like abortion?
Knowing full well she shouldn’t be doing it, and sensing that she wouldn’t like what she found, Tara couldn’t help but continue down the page until she found Glenn’s reply. Now she knew why Liz had felt so awful about checking up on Eric. It was like being drawn to something like a magnet.
Finally, Tara reached Obi-wan’s – Glenn’s – reply.
“I hear you, man, and I understand what you’re going through. I’m in the same fucked-up boat. I got involved with someone I really shouldn’t have, and now she’s pregnant too. Because of our situation, we can’t tell anyone about it, and we’ve talked about the possibility of her having an abortion too. I think she wants to, but I don’t want her to do it. It’s just not right. We looked it up, and I think it’s OK up until twelve weeks but after that . . .”
Stunned by what she was seeing, Tara couldn’t read any more. What the hell was he talking about – or playing at? Was this some kind of joke?
Tara’s heart pounded in her chest as she thought about it over and over again. Glenn, her Glenn, getting some girl pregnant? How was it possible? Her mind struggled to take in the enormity of it all while she stared at the screen as if in a trance.
Then she read back through the words again. He’d said, “I got involved with someone I really shouldn’t have”. Who the hell was that?
Then, almost instantly, Tara sat up in her seat as she remembered something – something that hadn’t bothered her too much at the time, but perhaps it should have. Emma arriving unannounced at her house the weekend she was baby-sitting Toby while Liz and Eric went to the funeral.
Glenn suddenly deciding not to join her in Castlegate . . . the two of them looking very cosy coming in the door when she returned home on the Sunday. Glenn running around after Emma and making her sandwiches and . . .
No, it couldn’t possibly be . . . it would be crazy to even think . . .
But Tara couldn’t come up with any other possible explanation. She thought about everything that had happened recently, Emma’s refusal to talk about the father of her baby, her insistence that she wouldn’t or perhaps couldn’t say a word. Then Liz’s concerns about Eric, her unspoken belief that he might be the father of Emma’s – her sister’s – baby.
As the realisation hit her hard, Tara put her head in her hands.
Liz had been worrying for nothing. The mystery of the father of Emma’s baby had finally been solved, and it almost certainly wasn’t Eric.
It was Glenn.
Chapter 27
One look at his expression told Tara everything she needed to know.
She’d sat stunned in front of the computer for what seemed like hours, but was actually only a few minutes, and was only woken from her trance when she heard Glenn’s key in the front door.
“Tara? Are you here?” He’d moved around the kitchen for a minute or two before eventually finding her in the living room, sitting dazedly in front of the laptop.
“What are you doing? I thought you were finishing work early this evening, and . . . hey, what’s wrong?”
When she didn’t answer, wouldn’t look at him, he asked again. “Tara?” Then he looked past her face to the computer screen, and his face paled. It was then that Tara knew for sure that her worst fears had been realised.
“What the hell is going on, Glenn?” s
he whispered, barely able to find her voice. “Is this . . .” she turned to the computer screen, “this person really you? Or is this all some kind of joke?”
But Tara knew deep down that it was no joke; Glenn’s face had drained of colour and he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“What are you talking about?” he said, but his words held no conviction.
“I’m talking about you giving advice on some Internet site about pregnancy and abortion! What the hell would you know about things like that, Glenn?”
“So you’re checking up on me now – is that it?” he countered, but Tara knew it was only for show.
“I wasn’t checking up on you! You know I’ve had to use this computer while mine is out of action! I was looking for something totally different and I just happened to . . . Anyway, that’s not the point,” she went on, eyes flashing with anger. “What the hell is this all about? Tell me, Glenn!”
He ran a hand through his hair and began to pace the room. “Look, I was going to tell you –”
Right then, Tara thought she actually felt her heart split in two. Oh no . . . please no. “When?” she cried. “When were you going to tell me, Glenn? When she had the baby? Or were the two of you planning on keeping that a secret from us too – hoping none of us would know any better?”
“I just didn’t . . .” Glenn was lost for words.
Tara felt the room swim out of focus. She couldn’t believe this. How could he? How could she? How on earth could this nightmare have happened?
“Tell me, Glenn!”
“It wasn’t going to be a secret much longer. I was going to tell you soon. Her parents already know.”
“I see, so it’s OK to tell her parents but not me –” Then, she shook her head wildly as his words penetrated her brain properly. “Hold on a second, what do you mean her parents know? You mean it’s not Emma?”
Glenn looked like she’d punched him in the face. “Emma . . . what the fuck? Are you crazy? Emma’s your sister, for fuck’s sake! What kind of a sicko do you think I am?”
