A few weeks later, Glenn arrived home for dinner with a visitor in tow.
“Tara, this is Abby,” he said, his cheeks colouring slightly as he introduced a petite and timid-looking dark-haired girl.
“Pleased to meet you, em, Mrs Harrington,” the girl said, limply shaking Tara’s hand.
“Call me Tara,” Tara said with a friendly smile, although inwardly she wondered how on earth a girl this young and harmless-looking was going to deal with a pregnancy. Then again, she’d done it herself, hadn’t she? “Mrs Harrington sounds so old!”
“Abby was asking why I always refer to you by name,” Glenn said, casually picking out bits of vegetables from Tara’s stir-fry, “but I’ve been doing it for so long now, I hardly notice it. I don’t think I’ve ever called you Mum, have I?”
“If you do – I know you’ve done something wrong!” Tara said, with a playful wink at Abby, who blushed deeply.
Tara turned back to the cooker and smiled. He had indeed called her “Mum”, and only very recently, when she’d returned from London and they’d talked some more about his situation.
“The last thing I wanted was to disappoint you, Mum,” he’d said, and to her surprise, Tara had felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Hearing him call her that for what must have been the first and only time made her understand how truly affected he was by all this, and made her doubly resolved to help him through it whatever way she could. And by the looks of this timid little creature, he’d need it!
But gradually over dinner, Abby began to come out of herself and, judging from the calluses on her fingertips, it seemed she was as much as a computer freak as Glenn. “Abby’s one of the best hackers I’ve ever met,” Glenn enthused, his mouth open as he ate. “She kicks my ass when it comes to Linux!”
“Really,” Tara said, smiling brightly and trying to conceal her worries about the sort of child these two would produce. It would either be Bill Gates or Forrest Gump!
Much later that evening, over a cup of tea at Liz’s house, Tara aired her thoughts on the subject. She’d travelled home to Castlegate, leaving Glenn and Abby alone in her house to “discuss things”.
“For the life of me, I can’t understand how they ever got round to any funny business in the first place,” she laughed, referring to Glenn and Abby. “You should have seen the two of them plonked in front of the computer when I was leaving – the house could have been burning to the ground around them and they wouldn’t have a clue.” She sighed. “They’re such kids, really.”
“They’ll be fine,” Liz reassured her from where she sat on the sofa, “and when they run into any problems, they’ll always have you to fall back on and give them a helping hand.”
“I know. Speaking of a helping hand, any word on a full-time job for Eric yet?”
Since coming clean about his employment circumstances, Eric had asked around the village and was currently keeping busy by doing some carpentry work locally. He was still working his bar shifts in Dublin, but with any luck he would soon be in a position to give those up for good.
“Not yet, unfortunately, and I think he’s finally coming round to the fact that he might have to retrain. He doesn’t want to stay working in Dublin anyway, and after everything that’s happened recently, I don’t want him to either. We need to be together as a family. But lately he’s been doing a lot of work for Luke next door.”
“Really?” Tara looked up.
“Yep. He’s trying to give him a hand with much of the heavy work that needs doing in the house. Can you believe it? And our place practically falling asunder? The two of them are putting in a new kitchen next door at the moment. But then Luke in turn is planning to give Eric a hand with some work here so . . .” She shook her head. “I’m pleased they’re getting on so well, actually. For some reason, I got the impression that Luke didn’t really take to Eric initially.” She frowned. “But they certainly seem fine now.”
“I’m so glad you and Eric managed to work things out – and I’m especially glad that . . .” The rest of her sentence trailed off. “Well, you know . . . that none of my family was involved in it.”
“Thank you,” Liz said, a guilty smile on her face.
“Thanks for what?” Tara asked, reacting to the smile.
“For not vocalising my own suspicions back to me. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it if you’d told me you had the same idea I had – that Eric could be the father of Emma’s baby. Convincing myself that it was all in my own head was what kept me sane, so you really don’t know how much I appreciate that.”
Tara smiled back. “Well, the mystery has now been solved once and for all. I was going mad trying to figure who it was. Believe it or not, I’d started to wonder only recently if she might have had a bit of a thing with Dave McNamara but wouldn’t say anything because of his getting engaged to someone else. And what with him being a councillor and a pillar of the community and all that.”
“Interesting theory,” Liz agreed, nodding thoughtfully, “but well off the mark as it turns out.”
“I nearly fell down dead when she told us, Liz,” Tara went on. “I knew Emma had a thing for unavailable men, but honest to God! Still, apparently Colm is determined to give her all the support she needs, so . . .” She shook her head. She’d known that her sister had always had a bit of a soft spot for Colm Joyce – as had lots of women in this village over the years – but had no idea that it had been anything more than that. Was it because the guy – due to his ongoing confusion – was the ultimate challenge? Or did she really have true feelings for him? Poor Emma – in this case, it seemed that Colm was the one man she truly never could have. And because of this, she felt for her sister and was annoyed that Colm had messed around with her feelings like that. “Liz, can you imagine what’ll it be like around here when the news finally gets out?” In the end, her poor sister had been right to keep it all a secret for as long as she could. “The gossips will have a field day!”
“I certainly don’t envy her. It’s tricky one to take in at all, let alone try and explain. But Emma seems a very resilient girl – when it does all come out, I’m sure she’ll cope with it.”
“Resilient?” Tara repeated, wryly. “That’s a slightly different description to the one you used for her that night she was here, isn’t it?”
Liz grimaced. “I know – I feel awful now about calling her a tramp like that. But at the time, I was so angry I had to lash out at someone.”
“Well, Emma’s a big girl and from what you were telling me, she was messing with your head anyway. She seems to like doing that.” Tara had told Liz all about Jason’s telephone call to the house shortly after Glenn was born and how Emma hadn’t mentioned anything about it. “She’s a strange one, Liz, and as much as it pains me to admit it, it’s true. While I do feel sorry for her with this whole Colm situation, there’s no getting away from the fact that she really needs to grow up once and for all. I just hope that when she does have this baby, she’ll stop all her silly games and start behaving like an adult.”
“Well, at least the child will have two more sensible parents to rely on if Emma isn’t up to the task,” Liz said, unable to resist a giggle as she referred to Colm and Nicky’s promise to help with the childrearing.
“Less of the sneering at my family, Liz McGrath!” Tara joked. “You’ve only been living in this town for barely a year, and already you’re sounding like one of the natives!”
“Yep, with all these secrets and lies, I think I’ve just about qualified as a true Castlegater,” her friend laughed. “And speaking of which, are you ever going to make the move?”
“Where? Back here?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot lately, you know that – especially now after all this with Glenn and Abby – but I just don’t know.”
“I know someone who’d be happy,” Liz said, her eyes dancing.
“Who?” Tara looked at her in surprise.
“Well, my favourite next-door neighbour for one. As I’ve told you a thousand times before, he’s always asking for you. Every time I meet him he manages to bring the conversation round to you.”
Tara snorted. “He probably just wants some more mice removed.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Bloody hell, woman, can you not see something when it’s staring you plain in the face?”
“What are you on about?”
“Luke’s crazy about you! And I know you’re a bit partial to him too – I saw you with him that night in the pub. So you’d want to get up off your backside and do something about it before someone else snaps him up. I know I would, if I were single, which I’m not of course,” she added primly. “In fact, I’m very happy with my man.”
“You and Natalie both then,” Tara said.
Natalie had phoned her again a couple of days after her conversation with Jason.
“I’d love us to stay friends,” she’d told Tara, “but I know it’s not ideal. Especially not as it’s getting serious with Jay and me.” Then she added, almost apologetically, “He’s asked me to move in with him.”
“Natalie, I’m so happy for you, really I am,” Tara said truthfully, “but you don’t need me now. Yes, we were friends of sorts but you no longer need me to help you out with your love life. And don’t apologise for that,” she added quickly, before Natalie could speak. “You and Jason . . . Jay . . . are obviously very much in love, and you deserve that. You both deserve it.”
“Tara, I don’t know what to say,” Natalie said tearfully. “I never thought something like this would happen.”
“It’s OK, and I’m sure we’ll keep in touch and ring one another from time to time to see how we’re getting on.”
But of course that wouldn’t happen, and sadly, they both knew it. It was a pity but, Tara thought, such was life. And she couldn’t help but be reminded of Jason’s comment about how the universe conspired to keep people together or apart. Maybe she shouldn’t think too much more about it and instead just leave it all up to the gods.
“I’m telling you – you’d better do something about Luke,” Liz was saying. “Only the other day, I saw that young Slattery one chatting him up in the greengrocer’s!”
Although, on the other hand, Tara thought, smiling to herself as she thought about it, maybe this time, she should just bite the bullet and take destiny into her own hands.