Just Between Us

‘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 (#ulink_74a0f665-f7b9-5c17-a493-255eabef2c43)

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.

The salesman expertly unhooked the ring, all the time thinking of what a bumper year this had been for the shop. They were running out of Rolexes and Patek Philippe watches faster than they could import them; he’d personally sold two sapphire-studded gold necklaces yesterday, and now this: a couple interested in the most beautiful (and expensive) ring on the premises.

In one fluid move, the ring was on the woman’s finger. It was exquisite. Stella sighed. Much and all as she adored the costume jewellery she bought for a song in markets and second-hand stalls, there was something irresistibly indulgent about the real stuff.

‘Can I help you, Madam?’

She looked up into the eyes of another salesman, who was in a very bad temper because he should have been the one serving the diamond-ring hopefuls and would have been if the credit card machine hadn’t been taking so long all day.