Just Between Us

‘I just thought you’d know,’ muttered Finn as he parked the car.

‘Know what?’ Tara was getting angry now. ‘I brought the sort of thing I’d wear in Kinvarra for Christmas. It’s suitable for there. Are you telling me that your mother is going to be dressed up like a dog’s dinner tonight and every night?’

Finn’s silence was enough of an answer.

‘Great. This is a great start,’ Tara said. Another black mark loomed.

‘Let’s not argue,’ begged Finn.

Tara gave him a resigned look. ‘You’re right,’ she said. Anyway, there’d be enough arguing in the Jeffersons’ without them being at it too. Gloria could argue at professional level.

Desmond Jefferson opened the door before they could ring the bell. ‘Hello Tara, Merry Christmas, hello Finn,’ he greeted them. A tall, shy man who looked like an older version of Finn, with the same unruly fair hair and the same kind, handsome face, Desmond Jefferson was often described by friends as ‘one of life’s gentlemen’. Until his recent retirement, he’d been a civil servant in the Department of Foreign Affairs. His current plan was to spend lots of time in his garden. Tara reckoned he just wanted to stay as far away from Gloria as possible, not that Desmond would ever say so. He was far too kind and liked a quiet life.

She kissed him affectionately on the cheek and handed him a small package. ‘A secret present,’ she whispered. ‘Fudge.’

Desmond smiled. ‘Our secret,’ he nodded, slipping the package into his trouser pocket.

Like Tara, he adored sweet things but Gloria kept him on a severe diet. There was no adequate excuse for this, Tara knew, because he was perfectly healthy, had no cholesterol problems and went for a four-mile walk every day.

‘Mums likes to fuss,’ was how Finn explained it.

Mums likes to control, was Tara’s personal version.

His mother was in the drawing room waiting for them. She glanced quickly at her watch, and then smiled, as if she hadn’t really been clocking the fact that they were very late. She was fifty-nine but looked at least ten years younger, thanks to rigorous dieting, monthly chestnut rinses in the hairdressers’ and a painstaking beauty routine. Dressed in a black satin evening dress that was a perfect fit for her tiny body, Gloria should have looked marvellous. But the hardness in her pale blue eyes and the taut disapproval in her jaw ruined the effect.

‘Hello, Gloria,’ said Tara, ‘lovely to see you. Your Christmas tree is nice.’ It was horrible, actually. God would strike her down for lying so much.

‘Thank you, Tara,’ said Gloria in her well-modulated voice. ‘So lovely to see you too. Finn,’ she added, sweetly reproving. ‘You haven’t shaved. We’re leaving in half an hour.’

Finn’s smile didn’t falter at the bite in his mother’s voice. ‘Didn’t have time, Mums, too busy with last-minute work,’ he lied, putting a pile of gift-wrapped presents under the tree and then giving his mother a hug. Tara never bothered hugging Gloria; she’d tried it once and it had been like embracing a shop-window dummy. ‘Just as thin and just as stiff,’ Tara had told Stella later. ‘She’s nothing but a shrew.’

‘She’s had years being on her best behaviour as a civil servant’s wife,’ Stella had said kindly. ‘I’m sure she really likes you, she’s just very formal.’

‘Stella, she’s the most un-civil person I’ve ever met. Now when are you going to wise up and turn into an old cynic like me?’ Tara laughed. ‘You expect the best of everyone.’

‘I don’t,’ protested Stella. ‘I hate to see you not getting on with your mother-in-law. She seems nice enough to me, you must give her a chance.’

‘She’s had six months since the wedding,’ Tara replied grimly, ‘and there’s been no time off for good behaviour.’

‘I’ll show you to your room,’ Gloria said now, rising graciously to her feet. ‘If you hadn’t been so late, you could have had coffee. Still,’ she gave Tara a rather contemptuous glance, ‘you’re here now.’

Tara said nothing. She knew she wasn’t imagining it. Gloria was a cow. As she led them from the room, Tara took a quick look around. The room was beautifully proportioned with big windows and, in daylight, it had a nice view of the trees in the front garden, but Gloria’s décor was positively arctic. Pale blue walls, an even colder blue rug and silvery grey armchairs dominated. Even with the heating on at full blast, the effect was cold. It was a million miles away from the comfortable charm of Meadow Lodge, where much of her parents’ furniture was beautiful but old and well loved. Everything in the Jeffersons’ house was defiantly brand new, as if Gloria consigned everything to the bin in a three-year cycle so she could keep up with the Joneses.

The Christmas tree was worse, decorated with far too few silver bits and pieces because Gloria hated ostentation and thought that less was more. Where were the elderly, much-loved decorations that the family would have had for years? Tara thought of her mother’s version of a Christmas tree: a riot of golds and reds, with battered cherubs and some wooden decorations they’d had for thirty years and which one of the family cats had systematically chewed. Rose had even held onto the now faded paper decorations that Tara herself had made when she was about six years old. Gloria would shudder at the sight of that tree.

‘I hope you brought your good suit,’ Gloria said to Finn as she marched up the stairs to the guest room.

‘Yes, Mums,’ said Finn.

Behind Gloria’s back, Tara stuck her tongue out at her husband, feeling like a naughty schoolgirl following a stern teacher to the head’s office.

Finn pinched her bum in return.

‘Is this going to be a very formal occasion?’ Tara asked innocently, ‘because I didn’t bring anything suitable.’

Gloria whisked around, her beady eyes slitted down to the size and texture of uncooked lentils. ‘It’s Liz and Pierre Bailey-Montford,’ she said incredulously, as if that fact alone explained why dressing up was a necessity. ‘You must remember them from the wedding?’

Tara could remember many things from her wedding, chief among them thinking that she must love Finn very much to marry him when she was getting Gloria as part of the deal. ‘Sort of,’ she said, deliberately hazy.

‘Pierre owns B-M Magnum Furniture!’ hissed Gloria, the veneer slipping. ‘Their house is two hundred years old. Liz buys all her clothes in Paris.’

That was what was she disliked most about her mother-in-law, Tara reflected: her criteria for assessing people were all wrong.

‘So this outfit won’t do?’ Tara knew she was pushing Gloria to the limit but she couldn’t help herself.

Gloria stood by the spare room and let Finn and Tara enter. ‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ she said venomously.

‘We won’t be long,’ Finn said, interrupting before war broke out. ‘Tara has other clothes.’

‘Yeah, my lap dancing thong and my feather boa, you old bag,’ Tara muttered under her breath as she dumped her bag on the floor.

‘Don’t wind her up,’ pleaded Finn when the door was shut and they were on their own.

Tara sat down on the duvet, which was hysterically floral, as though the fabric designer had accidentally jumbled up two different patterns on one piece of material. It gave her a headache just to look at it.

‘I don’t wind her up,’ she said. ‘I simply don’t understand why your mother plays games all the time, that’s all. If she wanted us to bring formal clothes, all she had to do was telephone and tell us. But no, that would be too easy.’ Tara was getting crosser thinking about it. ‘Instead, she lets us come and then goes overboard with disapproval because I haven’t packed a cocktail dress. That’s being manipulative, pure and simple. I’m fed up with it.’

‘Tara love, please don’t get upset.’

Finn sat down beside her and held her. ‘Can’t we have a nice Christmas, please?’

Tara laid her head against his shoulder, relishing the comfort of being close to his lean, muscular body. Tara never seemed to have time for the gym but Finn went religiously. ‘I’d love to do that,’ she murmured, ‘I’d love our first Christmas as husband and wife to be special, but I don’t know how I can cope with your mother, Finn.’

Finn stroked her hair gently. ‘Christmas reminds her of Fay, that’s all. It’s difficult for her.’

Tara sighed. Fay was Gloria’s sympathy card. Gloria’s younger child and Finn’s twenty-seven-year-old sister, Fay had gone off travelling after a huge blow-up with her mother and had refused to talk to Gloria since. Although Tara had never met her, because Fay’s dramatic departure had been two years ago which was before Tara and Finn had even met, she sounded like a bit of a free spirit. Fay now lived in California, practised psychic healing and corresponded with Finn and Desmond, but hung up when her mother came on the phone. Clearly, psychic healing could only do so much.

If it had been anyone else, Tara would have felt sorry for a mother who was cut off from her daughter. Tara loved her own mother far too much to ever do such a thing. But knowing Gloria for the past eighteen months, Tara could see why someone would be driven to travelling to the other side of the world to escape her.

‘We’ll have a nice Christmas,’ she reassured Finn.

‘Thanks, babe.’ He looked so grateful. It was the least she could do. She’d bite her tongue when Gloria was being bitchy.

Tara decided to wear the corduroy dress, plenty of lipstick, and a big, jaw-clenching smile. Gloria, who’d obviously decided to modify her own behaviour, said nothing and the foursome set off in a taxi with Finn and Desmond chatting happily as if they hadn’t noticed anything was amiss.

At the restaurant, Tara had to start biting her tongue when she met the others. If Gloria had pulled out all the stops in the dressing up department, she had nothing on Liz Bailey-Montford who was dressed as though Hello! were due to photograph her at any minute for a ‘lifestyles of the rich and tasteless’ piece. Jewels gleamed at ears, wrists, neck and fingers and her silver and black plunging dress was a dizzying combination of sequins and beading. Tara was blinded by the glitter.

There was obviously plenty of one-upmanship between the two supposed best friends because Liz had brought along her daughter and son-in-law as backup and wasted no time telling everyone that Serena was doing a masters in art history and Charles was a tower of strength who worked with his father-in-law in the furniture business.