Bad Brides (14 page)

‘Are you sure, Miss Brianna?’ Mrs Hurley frowned. ‘Mrs Maloney was nice enough to sit down with me, right here at this table, and take the time to run through all of her and
your requirements and make suggestions for how to adapt my recipes for both of you. I must say, she’s an example to all the ladies who aren’t spring chickens any more! You can see
she’s very concerned to keep her figure, and who can blame her?’

One of the workmen who’d helped to bring in the Rayburns, a labourer in Stanclere employ, whistled long and appreciatively at the mention of Tamra’s figure.

‘That’s enough from you, Gideon Banks. And you young enough to be Mrs Maloney’s son!’ Mrs Hurley snapped, flapping him out into the yard with both hands.
‘
Anyway
, Miss Brianna, I wouldn’t want your mother coming back and telling me I’ve been feeding you the wrong things and getting all cross with me because you won’t
fit into your wedding dress any more, would I?’

‘I’ll run for half an hour extra,’ Brianna Jade said, torn between frustration and amusement that even when Tamra wasn’t here, her forceful personality prevailed. She
sighed. ‘Mom’s right about the wedding dress.’

If I’m going to be on the cover of
Style Bride
, my figure needs to be perfect. Model-perfect.

‘That’s right, dear,’ Mrs Hurley said comfortably. ‘After the wedding you can let things slip a bit, put on a few pounds. But not before. Oh, I can’t
wait
to see you in your dress! There won’t have been a more beautiful bride at Stanclere ever. So it’s a low-fat soufflé for you, then a nice roast with all the trimmings on the side
for Mr Edmund, and summer pudding for him. If you pick the bread off, you can have all the berries you want. Your mother said berries are anti-aging. I’ve been eating plenty ever since she
told me that, but I can’t say I’ve seen any difference myself.’

Outside in the yard, Gideon Banks sniggered loudly, but Mrs Hurley pointedly ignored him. She was a scrawny, big-boned woman with greying hair scraped back from her forehead and a twenty-a-day
cigarette habit which had miraculously not affected her excellent palate.

‘Great,’ Brianna said, crossing to the gigantic Siemens American-style fridge-freezer, pulling a glass from the brandnew cupboard and holding it first against the ice and then the
water dispenser. ‘I’ll just grab some water so I’m hydrated before I go for my run—’

‘And for lunch,’ Mrs Hurley overrode her, ‘your mother gave me a recipe for low-calorie crêpes stuffed with courgette. She said she got it from a healthy-eating magazine.
We’ve got so many courgettes from the kitchen garden, and I’ll make your batter with non-fat milk and grate a very little low-fat mozzarella on the top. Mr Edmund can have his with a
nice béchamel.’

‘Lucky Mr Edmund!’ Brianna Jade muttered resentfully into the fridge door.

‘And a tomato salad,’ Mrs Hurley finished cosily. ‘With lots of balsamic vinegar and basil. Your mother says you only need a drop of oil in the dressing with that.’

‘You know,’ Brianna Jade turned round and propped her hips against the yellow wooden panel doors behind which the fridge-freezer was concealed, a discreet rectangle cut into it by
the Smallbone kitchen fitters for the ice and water dispensers, ‘I really don’t need a cooked meal in the middle of the day, Mrs Hurley. Not if it’s too much trouble with all of
Mom’s recipe suggestions. I can easily fix snacks myself. In fact, I’d sort of
like
to. It’d give me something to do, and I never really learnt how to cook. Maybe you
could show me how to make those crêpes . . .’

Her voice tailed off as she sensed a sudden drop of temperature in the kitchen. It was as if she had opened both panel doors, allowing an icy-cold blast of chilled air to flood into the room,
filling it with frost: quite an achievement, considering that the kitchen was big enough to host a fireplace in which a whole pig could be roasted on a spit and a double-height gabled ceiling in
which, until very recently, a drying rack had been hoisted for all the kitchen towels, napkins and cleaning rags. Tamra’s installation of an entire laundry room, complete with industrial
washing machines, had rendered the rack obsolete, and the ceiling had been scrubbed and freshly painted in a pale green that chimed nicely with the yellow Smallbone wooden panelling and the dark
racing green of the Rayburns.

In consultation with Mrs Hurley, Tamra had decided that the original flagstones should be kept, but they had been power-washed and now gleamed as bright as grey stone could; Tamra had, as she
put it, fast-tracked the kitchen, and this alone would have been enough to make Mrs Hurley her loyal devotee from that moment onwards. The bright clear colours, the new paint job and the thorough
clean of the flagstones made the kitchen look enormous, a positive empire in one room over which Mrs Hurley ruled supreme.

Which was why, with Brianna Jade’s last words, all the men who worked on the Stanclere estate, and had been in the kitchen either to admire the new ranges, help ensure that the oil-supply
pipe had full access to the elevated steel storage tank outside, or slack off hoping that Mrs Hurley might have some baked goods that needed eating up before they went stale, disappeared out
through the back door in a flurry of movement. Almost instantly, they could be heard outside tapping on the side of the new tank and muttering meaningless jargon in the way that men did when they
suddenly needed to look busy. The only two men left in the kitchen were the Rayburn employees, who didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

‘
Fix yourself something?
’ Mrs Hurley repeated, her voice even colder than the water Brianna Jade was drinking. The latter shivered right to the base of her suddenly clammy
spine.

‘I didn’t mean—’ she began, as the Rayburn installer who was not trapped behind the ranges mumbled something about needing to check the radiation barrier that protected
the house from the tank, and hustled outside to join the other men as fast as his heavy work boots would take him, ignoring the agonized expression of his colleague.

‘That means “prepare yourself something”, if I’m not mistaken?’ Mrs Hurley asked Brianna Jade, picking up a tea towel and starting to wring it between her large,
gnarled fingers. ‘Even Mrs Maloney, who eats like a bird, has
me
prepare her a plate with her special Italian beef slices and her non-fat crème fraiche and her Little Gem
salad without dressing!
Mrs Maloney
doesn’t want to come into my kitchen and “fix” anything for herself. She tells me what she wants and I make it for her, which is my
job
, and has been for over twenty years!’

The installer behind the ranges managed to squat down far enough that his body was now barely visible behind the bulk of the cast-iron stoves.

‘I just meant . . .’ Brianna Jade said feebly. ‘I just wanted to save you trouble, with all these extra diet versions of regular food – and it sounds like Mom’s
been going on and on at you about it. I just meant I could go into the fridge and pull something out if you’re busy.’

She flinched back at the expression on Mrs Hurley’s face.

‘Of course I’m
busy
,’ Mrs Hurley positively snapped. ‘I’m always
busy
. A cook’s work is never done. You shouldn’t go into this line of
work if you mind being
busy
.’

Only Brianna Jade’s long experience in pageants kept her legs from buckling under her at this stage in the confrontation; Mrs Hurley’s eyes were fixed on her beadily, her head
jutting forward like a T-Rex bending over a vulnerable vegetarian stegosaurus. Very luckily, at that point Jennifer, one of the new maids, appeared in the kitchen door with Brianna Jade’s
breakfast tray, and the interruption allowed the Rayburn man to pop up from hiding, boost himself frantically over the range and scramble for the back door.

‘I was meaning to say thank you so much for a delicious breakfast,’ Brianna Jade managed to get out, thinking frantically:
What would Mom say? How would she handle this?
She’d start with a compliment.
‘The eggs were, uh, scrambled really nicely.’

The hard lines of Mrs Hurley’s hatchet face softened fractionally, and Jennifer, crossing to the new, brushed-steel commercial Miele dishwasher and putting down the tray, provided even
more distraction. The cook’s head swivelled and she said sharply: ‘Jennifer, there’s a wonky foot on that tray! Take it out and get Gideon to look at it after you’ve cleared
it. He’s doing bugger all at the moment, so he might as well have something to get on with, the lazy sod!’

Okay, now Mom would follow up with something smooth that shows she understands the situation.

‘I totally get that you’re happy to do diet meals for me as well as everything else, Mrs Hurley,’ Brianna Jade said, taking the opportunity to cross the kitchen, heading for
the back door, which also meant strategically putting the length of the kitchen table between herself and the cook. ‘I won’t worry any more about you—’
don’t say
‘working too much’, or ‘being busy’! –
‘uh, being driven crazy by all my mom’s suggestions.’

Mrs Hurley’s features tensed up again.

‘Which you’re not! You’re not, and that’s great,’ Brianna Jade said swiftly. ‘My mom’s great and really cool and I bet after all these years of just
kicking around here with Edmund, Mr Edmund – the Earl –
anyway
, I bet that it’s really great to have a lot of new challenges in the kitchen and of course my mom’s
made sure that you have loads of new stuff to cook with . . . and on . . . and put stuff in . . .’

She trailed off rather desperately, but Mrs Hurley’s face was now wreathed in smiles.

‘She’s ordered me a Gaggia ice-cream maker – the professional one!’ Mrs Hurley said. ‘And don’t worry, Miss Brianna, I can just as easily make you frozen
yoghurt in it too. With a little fruit in it and Hermesetas for sweetening.’

‘Sounds great!’ Brianna Jade said, now almost at the back door. ‘So, lunch at one, right? Cool! Off for a run now – lovely talking to you – really glad you’re
happy about the ice-cream machine. Back for lunch, courgette crêpes, sounds totally yummy—’

Outside! Into the sunshine, moving swiftly, not looking back, passing the group of men gathered around the huge oil tank, their voices low, clapping the second Rayburn installer on the back in
congratulations at his successful escape. They averted their eyes respectfully from her Lycra-clad figure as she walked swiftly by; she was followed by Jennifer carrying the tray out to Gideon for
repairs, and she heard the guys bursting into relieved banter with the maid, letting off steam as they teased her and tried to get her to bring them cups of tea and biccies.

There’s nothing men hate more than women fighting!
she thought, waiting until she’d rounded a corner, turned into the farmyard and was out of view before she hoicked one leg
up on a fence and stretched out her hamstrings.
I mean, if it’s not a pillow fight between two Victoria’s Secret models, they’re more scared of that than almost anything in
the world. They’d rather face a charging bull.

She started to run, slowly at first, five minutes just to warm up, past the old stables, which were now the garages, as Edmund couldn’t afford the expense of keeping horses to ride. She
skirted the huge lorry which had brought the two Rayburns and the oil tank and turned onto the gravel drive that looped around the whole front wing of Stanclere Hall. By the time she had reached
the façade of the house, she was hitting her stride, crossing the lawn, dodging and dancing around the mole holes, taking long leaps over them for extra shits and giggles, as they’d
said back home.

Make the most of it,
she told herself.
This is the biggest fun you’re going to have today.

Which was . . . depressing. And also, not quite true: she and Edmund were spending tonight in, i.e. not going out to one of the many dinner parties or ‘drinks dos’ to which they were
constantly invited, and they’d planned to watch a film after dinner. Brianna Jade was definitely looking forward to that. Tamra had been quite right on the phone yesterday: Brianna Jade was
much more of a homebody than her mother was, much more inclined to stay in and watch a movie than go out to the latest hot club and fall over George Clooney in the darkness.

I mean, what would I say to George Clooney anyway? Mom would know just the right thing. She’d be rattling away with him in a minute, saying something funny and making him burst out
laughing. I’d just mumble ‘sorry’ and stare at him, making an idiot of myself looking star-struck.

But that’s why I’m in the country and she’s in the city. Which is cool, I love it here, but I have to find something to
do.

Her lame attempt to ask Mrs Hurley if she could give her some cooking lessons had been thrown back in her face. Which was a real shame, as Brianna Jade genuinely wanted to learn to cook, and had
barely had the opportunity. The only real lesson she’d ever had was when she begged Mrs Lutz, their landlady, to show her how to make that casserole for the Kewanee State Fair Pork Queen
pageant. Tamra, working her two jobs, was rarely home long enough to be able to make home-cooked meals, not that she had ever been the domestic type anyway. On the road, mother and daughter had
pretty much foraged. And after their miraculous elevation to multi-million-dollar status under the aegis of Ken Maloney, they had still not been free to do exactly as they wanted.

Which was fair enough, considering all Ken was giving us
, Brianna Jade thought.
Ken wanted me to be his perfect princess. He loved me to dress up, go shopping, get my hair and nails
done, have beauty treatments, take tennis and swimming and dance lessons so I could join in the junior and débutante cotillion balls. Boy, I don’t miss those at all! All the girls
being competitive with me because I hadn’t grown up in their so-called high society, most of the guys thinking I’d be easy because my mom and I weren’t as classy as they were.
Well, they soon learnt their mistake. I hated all those preppy boys, acting like they were the cream of the crop in their polo shirts with the collars turned up . . .