CHAPTER FIVE

      On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Tara idly wondered what the rest of her family were up to. Normally, the three Miller girls would be ensconced in the kitchen in Kinvarra, wrapping presents, laughing and joking as they tangled themselves up with Sellotape and shiny paper, with Amelia helping. Christmas wouldn’t be quite the same without everyone else, she thought. But then again, she had Finn. Life couldn’t always stay the same and if it had, she might never have met him. Noticing the time, she went in search of her husband. While she’d been out buying last-minute bits and pieces, he was supposed to have packed his stuff and all the presents. However, his suitcase lay empty on their bedroom floor and Finn lay sprawled on the bed, fully dressed and loose limbed. One long arm dangled over the side of the bed, almost reaching the floor, the other was flung across the pillow. Tara crept quietly over and gazed down at him. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and the combination of stubble and slept-in golden hair should have given him a dissolute appearance. But it didn’t. Even unkempt and deeply asleep, her husband shone with inner goodness. It was those long baby-girl eyelashes, Tara decided.

      She slipped off her shoes and launched herself onto the bed.

      ‘Wake up!’ she roared, as she bounced into position beside her sleeping husband.

      ‘Errgh, what?’ groaned Finn, opening his eyes to reveal plenty of red-veined eyeball.

      ‘You were supposed to pack and shave while I was out,’ Tara said, crawling up the bed until she was lying on him. ‘I needed a rest,’ moaned Finn, burying his head under the pillow. ‘A few more minutes. It’s only lunchtime.’

      ‘It’s nearly two thirty and we’re supposed to be at your parents’ by half three.’

      Somehow, they’d been roped into an intimate Jefferson family Christmas when Tara had wanted them to go to Kinvarra instead. But short of faking appendicitis, she knew there was no way out of it. They still had to pack for a three-night stay and the drive would take at least another hour, meaning that unless they left soon, they’d be very late.

      ‘Get up,’ she said again. ‘You know how awful the traffic is to your parents’ place, and today it’ll be worse than ever.’

      From under the pillow, Finn groaned again. ‘We can phone and say we got delayed. Then I can have a snooze.’

      Tara whipped the pillow away. ‘No way, Finn. Your mother won’t blame you if we’re late. It’ll be my fault. So get out of that bed or I’ll go and get the cold sponge.’

      ‘Not the sponge,’ pleaded Finn. ‘Anything but the sponge.’

      Her fingers burrowed under his sweater and she began to tickle relentlessly.

      ‘Stop,’ he said weakly. ‘I can’t cope…’

      Feeling guilty, she stopped. Finn took advantage of her weakness. In one quick twist, he’d jumped up in the bed and began tickling her, his longer, stronger fingers wickedly insistent.

      ‘No!’ squealed Tara as he began tickling her feet. ‘Not my feet! No, pig! Stop it!’

      ‘OK.’ Too hungover to continue at any event, he rolled off her and they both lay back on the bed, panting.

      ‘Have you packed anything?’ Tara inquired.

      ‘I got halfway through and I lay down for a nap,’ Finn confided. ‘I’m wrecked.’

      ‘That’s what happens when you get totally hammered at your office Christmas party,’ Tara said smugly. ‘I told you that drinking pints wasn’t an Olympic sport.’

      Finn grinned. ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’

      ‘Not the day before we go to your parents for Christmas when you leave me to do all the packing,’ Tara reproved. ‘Get up, lazybones. We’ve got to be out of here in twenty minutes.’

      ‘Yessir,’ saluted Finn, half-heartedly.

      Tara began packing quickly, rushing round the flat finding things like her mobile phone charger and her diary. Soon, she promised herself, they’d redecorate.

      The bedroom was probably the best room in the two-bedroomed flat as it had the least awful curtains (plain, French blue) and boasted an entire wall of mirror-fronted wardrobes which hid a multitude of sins. Neither Tara nor Finn were tidy people and once the wardrobes were opened, things fell out and had to be carefully jammed back in. In spite of this drawback, they were packed and in the car in thirty minutes. The traffic was, as Tara had predicted, terrible. The Jeffersons lived in a pretty commuter town on the East coast, but the thirty-mile journey from Dublin inevitably took forever.

      ‘Relax,’ said Finn as they sat in a four-mile tailback to the toll bridge. ‘Mums won’t mind.’

      Tara managed to keep her mouth shut. Mums or Mrs Gloria Jefferson would mind very much and would undoubtedly take it out on Tara. Just thinking about the next three days made Tara feel sick. She loved her father-in-law, Desmond, because he was funny and kind, like Finn, but Gloria was another matter. Chillier than the faint dusting of snow on the side of the motorway to Naas, Gloria was obsessed with class, money and ‘doing the right thing’. The right thing for Christmas, apparently, was a sedate meal out with friends the night before, an intimate family dinner on the day (Tara had previous experience of the great silences at any meal where the guest list was just herself, Finn, Desmond and Gloria), and an afternoon drinks party at the Jeffersons’ on Boxing Day where lesser neighbours were invited in to be allowed a glimpse of Gloria’s newly-purchased dining room table and twelve, no less, chairs. The wrong thing, as far as Tara could make out, was Gloria’s beloved only son marrying a television script writer. In her more wicked moments, Tara wished she’d been heavily pregnant when she married Finn, just for the thrill of watching Gloria’s deeply shocked face as her daughter-in-law sailed down the aisle in a maternity wedding dress. What a scene that would have made. Tara’s inventive mind went into overdrive. Imagine if she’d had the baby halfway down the aisle…

      ‘She likes you, of course she does,’ Finn protested whenever Tara gently pointed out that his mother didn’t appear too keen on her. ‘She’s protective, that’s all. And reserved. It was the way she was brought up.’

      Unless Gloria had been brought up by Trappist monks, Tara could see no reason for her icy silences. But then, Trappist monks were amiable people and there was no way that Gloria could ever be called amiable. She could be friendly to other people, mind you, just not to Tara, who never ceased to be amazed at how her mother-in-law could simultaneously bestow smiles on Finn, and disdainful glances on her.

      There were no beloved ex-girlfriends in the closet to account for this bitchiness, nobody Gloria would have preferred Finn to marry. Tara decided she was simply the sort of woman who viewed all women as rivals one way or the other. Tara might not have been a rival when it came to Mr Jefferson, but she was a rival for Finn’s affection. That put her on Gloria’s hate list. And boy, could Gloria hate.

      It was well after six when they drove in the gate to Four Winds, the Jeffersons’ meticulously maintained house. The house was small but even so, it was about three times the size of Tara and Finn’s shoebox apartment. Gloria had dropped heavy hints about how the couple would be able to afford a bigger home if only they moved out of the city, nearer to Four Winds. But Tara would prefer to endure constant penny-pinching, not being able to afford much in the way of luxuries and having a bathroom the size of a built-in wardrobe as long as it kept her