CHAPTER THREE

      Four days later, Stella’s sister, Tara Miller, deeply in love with her husband of six months and deeply nervous about the awards ceremony she was attending, stood in the ladies’ room of the ultra posh Manon Hotel and hoisted up her dress for about the tenth time that evening. The problem with wearing a strapless evening gown and boob-enhancing plastic falsies – ‘chicken fillets’ to the initiated – meant that only industrial adhesive could keep everything in place. Toupee tape didn’t have a hope. The ladies’ cloakroom at the National Television & Radio Awards was full of famous TV stars, and was not the ideal place for major body repairs; however, Tara had no option but to reach down the front of her silver dress and manhandle each fillet up. ‘Built-in bra, my backside,’ she muttered at her reflection as she wriggled, hoping everything would fall into place in a vaguely booblike shape.

      ‘Ooh, Tara,’ cooed Sherry DaVinci, floating into view from one of the cubicles, ‘that dress is lovely.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Tara faintly, as Sherry squeezed in beside her and unpacked half the Mac range from her Louis Vuitton evening purse. Tara could see why the casting director had been so keen to get Sherry DaVinci to play a sexpot hospital receptionist in the hit television soap opera, National Hospital. And it was nothing to do with Sherry’s acting ability.

      Shoehorned into a clinging, gold, sequinned mini dress, Sherry was a porn-fan’s dream, her ample breasts sitting perkily under her chin like two tanned melon halves that threatened to escape at any moment. She didn’t need chicken fillets, Tara thought ruefully, comparing Sherry’s buxomness with her own flat chest.

      ‘Hi, Sherry,’ said a fellow soap beauty, smiling at Sherry in passing and ignoring Tara.

      Feeling invisible, Tara wondered why the beautiful people weren’t given their own loos at glitzy events, so that ordinary, non-beautiful people didn’t have to face the perfection of the ‘talent’ when they were fixing their tights, rearranging falsies and painting gloss on thin lips. Not, Tara reflected, that Sherry was what you’d call talented. But she pulled in the viewers and she was a sweet girl. Her limitations only became obvious when you were a script writer trying to write lines she wouldn’t screw up. As a storyline editor and one of the team of contributing writers on National Hospital, Tara spent a lot of time writing lines which Sherry then delivered with all the élan of the postman delivering a credit card bill. Which all went to prove that looks weren’t everything, as Isadora, Tara’s colleague, muttered bitchily every time Sherry fluffed her lines.

      Feeling as if she’d better make an effort, Tara investigated the contents of her handbag (black satin, borrowed, no visible logo). Underneath her mobile phone and a notebook and pen in case she had any brilliant ideas for the love triangle storyline she was working on, was a red lipstick, a very elderly concealer and her glasses case.

      There had been a pair of tights in there for emergencies but she’d had to break them out after the smoked salmon starter when her watch had twanged a thread on her existing pair.

      ‘Do you want a lend of anything?’ asked Sherry, concentrating on applying eyeliner with a professional’s touch. She was expertly using a tiny angled brush, Tara saw.

      ‘Er, no thanks,’ Tara said. She slicked on a speedy coat of lipstick, and looked critically at herself to inspect the effect. Standing beside Sherry was a mistake. Tara was straight as an ironing board while Sherry was all glowing curves with sparkling gold dust on her silken skin.

      Sometimes Tara wondered, in an idle sort of way, what it would be like to be beautiful rather than clever. Her mother, Rose, was beautiful, still beautiful, even in her late fifties. The family teased her about how the Kinvarra postman was besotted with her and how he nearly crashed the post van whenever she appeared. And Stella, her elder sister, was stunning too, with melting dark eyes and a serene, smiling face that made people gravitate towards her. And Holly, who had more hang-ups about her looks than a catwalk full of teenage models, was incredibly pretty in an arrestingly luminous way. But the beauty gene had clearly skipped out when it had come to Tara.

      Not that she minded, really. Tara knew she’d been given a gift that made up for not being a head-turner – a brain as sharp as a stiletto and a talent for putting words together. A gift that had brought her here tonight.

      She grinned as she thought of her Aunt Adele’s mantra at Miller family get-togethers: ‘Thank the Lord that Tara’s so clever.’ Tara knew that this was shorthand for ‘It’s lucky that Tara doesn’t have to rely on her looks.’ Her mother used to glare at Aunt Adele whenever Adele said this but it had no effect. Her aunt was one of those people who thought honesty and tactlessness were pretty close to Godliness in the hierarchy of virtue, and felt that speaking her mind was not just important, but compulsory.

      But Tara, after a few pointless years of secretly longing to be a beauty, was perfectly content with the way she looked. She’d never be pretty but instead was a combination of quirky and unusual looking, with a sharp little chin, a mischievous full mouth, and a long nose which might have dominated her face were it not for deep-set hazel eyes that glittered with amusement and brilliance. Even beside a raft of golden-haired lovelies, people always noticed Tara’s clever, vibrant face. And once they got talking to her, they loved her because she was witty and funny into the bargain.

      By the time she’d got to college, Tara had worked out a clever and eccentric look which involved very trendy clothes, short, almost masculine hair and fire-engine red lipstick. It helped that she was tall, so masculine clothes and hair worked on her. Now, at the grand old age of thirty-two and thanks to the confidence that came from having a career she loved, Tara was utterly at home with her looks. Her dark hair was expertly cut and its exquisitely tweaked style owed much to the salon wax she scrunched through the ends each morning. Trendy, dark-rimmed glasses gave definition to her eyes and drew attention away from her nose. She’d toyed with the idea of rhinoplasty for years but Finn had told her she didn’t need it.

      ‘I love your nose the way it is,’ he’d say, running his finger down it lovingly.

      Tara’s face softened as she thought of her husband of six months. Darling Finn. Theirs had been the ultimate whirlwind courtship. They’d met a year ago at a party, fell madly in love and got married within six months, confidently telling astonished friends that once you met your soul mate, you knew instantly. Finn was everything Tara wanted in a man: funny, sexy, kind, clever – and drop-dead gorgeous. A rangy man with sleepy, fun-filled eyes, tousled dirty blonde hair and an air of languid sexuality, Finn was genuinely movie-star stunning. People told her he could have been Brad Pitt’s stand-in, but a proud Tara retorted that Finn was infinitely better looking.

      Even his voice was sexy, automatically reminding her of making slow languorous love even when he was just asking her how much milk she wanted in her coffee.

      It would have been lovely to stroll into the ballroom with him on her arm. He looked good in a dinner jacket; but then he’d look good in a sack.

      At their wedding, Aunt Adele hadn’t failed the Miller family and had pointedly said, at least five times, that she couldn’t get over how Tara had netted such a good-looking boy. As if Tara had gone out with a huge fishing rod and reeled in the first gorgeous specimen she saw.

      ‘Your aunt keeps looking at me and shaking her head,’ said Finn at the reception. ‘Is she shocked that a creative genius like you has married a stupid computer salesman?’

      Tara laughed. ‘On the contrary, she thinks I’ve won the lottery. Aunt Adele has been preparing me for spinsterhood for years by reminding me I’m not a great beauty, so she’s astonished I nabbed a hunk like yourself and actually got you to marry me within six months