The Honey Queen (11 page)

Today, Bobbi was at the front desk with her glasses on, scanning the appointment book when Opal walked in.

‘Hello!’ said Bobbi, looking up delightedly. Then, with a canny look at her friend’s face, she added: ‘What’s up?’

Bobbi could read Opal’s face like a map.

‘Well …’ began Opal.

‘Come through.’ Bobbi abandoned the appointment book. ‘Let’s have tea. You can tell me what’s happening in private. Caroline,’ she called to a stylist, ‘take over the desk.’

The back room was decorated in the same pretty pink brocade wallpaper as the rest of the salon. Bobbi had seen the inside of too many places where the staffroom looked as if the owner didn’t care about where the workers had to sit for their breaks.

‘Let’s make it pretty,’ she’d said. ‘I want the staff to see how important they are to the business.’

Three years previously, when the salon had last been redecorated, the staffroom had undergone a complete transformation too. There was a big couch in one corner. One of the young beauty therapists was sitting there now, muttering on the phone in a language Opal didn’t understand.

‘Right, pet, how are you?’ Bobbi went straight to the kettle while Opal put down her handbag and sank into one of the chairs at the table. ‘Didn’t think I’d see you today. What’s happened?’

Opal found the gold envelopes in her handbag and handed them over.

‘This is what’s wrong,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, I just have a bad feeling about the wedding. Not about Liz – she’s a lovely girl, no question of that – but the wedding itself …’ Opal sighed. ‘I’m not sure I’m able for it. Miranda’s making it into such a production that you’d swear nobody ever got married before. We had “hold-the-date” cards in December, then there was weeks of discussion about bridesmaids. According to Brian, Miranda flew herself and Liz to London for their dresses – I haven’t even looked for one, and the wedding’s just round the corner. Now this. Gold envelopes that cost a fortune.’

Bobbi placed a cup of steaming tea in front of her friend and passed her the milk and sugar. ‘We’re down to custard creams,’ she said, handing over the packet of biscuits. ‘The chocolate ones have all run out. There was a bit of a crisis early on this morning.’

She looked in the direction of the distressed girl on the phone.

‘Boyfriend trouble.’

Bobbi always knew what was going on in her staff’s lives. She lowered her voice so the girl on the phone in the corner couldn’t hear. ‘Poor Magda, she’s been going out with this dreadful, dreadful lout who treats her like muck. She gave him the boot yesterday and this morning she’s in floods of tears because he turned up outside the flat last night roaring drunk and yelling, “Take me back, I promise I’ll change.”’

‘Oh no,’ said Opal, feeling the girl’s pain as if it were her own.

All her life, people had told Opal to stop being so sensitive to everyone else’s problems. Freya was the only one who said: ‘Opal, stay exactly as you are – it’s what makes you so special.’

‘Here I am complaining about a silly wedding and that poor thing’s miles away from home—’

‘Now, Opal, there’s nothing you can do for Magda. I had a pot of tea with her. I opened the chocolate biscuits and I told her what her mother would tell her if she was here instead of in the Czech Republic: that man will bring her nothing but trouble. But despite all of that, she’s on the phone to him now. Going back to him. You can only tell a girl so much. I don’t know why the loveliest girls always find the worst men, but they do. Anyway, between the jigs and the reels, the chocolate biscuits went. The custard creams aren’t bad, though.’

Bobbi sat down with her own tea, took a bite of biscuit then set it aside to examine the gold envelopes. ‘Oh hello,’ she said, examining the copperplate writing on the front. ‘These must have cost a bob or two. Clearly they’re not skimping on anything.’

‘They have the money,’ Opal said.

‘Just because you have the money doesn’t mean you have to let everyone
know
you have the money.’ Bobbi’s tone was scathing.

She looked at the third envelope and got it in an instant. ‘Even Meredith’s one is addressed to your house,’ she said. She kept flicking. ‘And David’s and Steve’s. That was a low blow.’

‘I thought so too,’ said Opal. ‘It’s as if—’

‘—as if she’s saying,
You lot are common, low-class muck and all of you come from the wrong end of the city.
I get it,’ said Bobbi grimly.

‘I shouldn’t let it upset me so much,’ Opal went on, ‘but it did. I thought I’d come down and tell you and you’d make me feel better. Because I’m so angry and it’s wrong to be like that. If you’re angry, you put anger out into the universe …’

Bobbi reached out and held her friend’s hand. ‘Pet, I’d say the Dalai Lama would feel the urge to slap Miranda’s smug face if he spent any time with her, so stop feeling guilty about it. Concentrate on how wonderful it is that Brian’s getting married. Once he’s done it, they’ll all be marrying. Think of how often you worry about the three of them and why they haven’t settled down.’

Bobbi deliberately didn’t mention Meredith here. If there was any sign of Meredith settling down, they knew nothing about it and Bobbi was aware just how hurt Opal was to be cut so efficiently out of her daughter’s life.

She went on: ‘Liz is a wonderful girl and she and Brian adore each other. But you have to face up to the fact that her mother is a complete cow – there’s no point in beating around the bush here. Nothing ever pleased that woman in her life and you can bet she won’t be happy till she’s upset someone about this wedding. Let’s just decide here and now that it won’t be you or Ned, right?’

Opal nodded.

‘We’ll get your dress sorted and make you look a million dollars. I’ll be looking a million dollars too. We’ll show Madam Miranda that we might not have been born with silver spoons in our mouths but we know how to enjoy a day out.’

‘Yes,’ said Opal, ‘that’s what we’ll do. It’ll be a great day, and then life will go back to normal.’

‘Not quite normal,’ Bobbi pointed out. ‘She is going to be your fellow granny, remember that. As soon as Brian and Liz start having children, the granny wars will be under way, you versus her. And, let’s face it, the girl’s mother gets the most time with the grandchildren.’

Opal’s sweet face fell again.

‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ Bobbi muttered. ‘It’ll be fine. Do you think Meredith will come to the wedding?’ she asked, desperate to change the subject.

‘Heavens, I don’t know. I was talking to her a couple of weeks ago and she sounded very busy, you know, going to art fairs and things like that.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Bobbi meaningfully. ‘With all the travel she does, you’d think she’d make it down this way once in a while.’

‘I know,’ said Opal. ‘But she’s a successful woman, she’s got her own life.’

It was a well-worn subject and Bobbi had learned to leave it be or risk upsetting Opal.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘when are we going shopping for your dress? We’ll have a brilliant day, you and I. I’m really looking forward to it.’

‘Me too,’ said Opal.

Of course, Meredith wouldn’t be joining them on the big adventure to buy Opal a suitable mother-of-the-groom dress. That hurt, but Opal didn’t let on. She wouldn’t hear a word said against Meredith.

‘I tell you what,’ said Bobbi, who could tell all this as plainly as if it were written on Opal’s face, ‘we’ve a spare appointment this morning. Will we give your hair a wash and blow-dry? Cheer you up? Always works with me,’ she said, patting her own curls, brightened with a lustrous dose of platinum once a month. ‘On me, naturally.’

Usually Opal said no to these offers, but today she thought how good it would feel to lean back and have somebody gently massage shampoo into her hair, letting all her cares and worries drift down the sink with the suds. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thank you, I’d love that.’

‘Great,’ said Bobbi. ‘Let’s get you started. You’re not to worry about the wedding.’ Behind her back, Bobbi crossed her fingers. ‘It’ll all be fine. At least Brian and Liz are right for each other.’

They glanced at the red-eyed girl sitting on the sofa, still talking earnestly on the phone.

W
hen she got to Singapore, Lillie emailed Doris. She tried phoning first and left a message on her friend’s cell phone because Doris didn’t pick up. Lillie had felt terribly lonely on the flight from Melbourne to Singapore and now she was there with three hours to hang around, she felt like a lost soul walking around the airport. She kept seeing couples everywhere, people the same age as her and Sam enjoying themselves. The plane had been full of them, laughing happy people flying all over the world together and she was there alone feeling herself growing smaller and tighter like a little gnarled nut.

And so she found a seat and typed out an email:

Hi Doris

I’m glad we had those silver surfer lessons at the library, at least I can use this thing. You’re only about my fifth email ever. Just thought I’d drop you a line … that sounds wrong, doesn’t it? That’s what we used to say with letters. I decided to say hello because I’m in Singapore airport on my own. It’s very lonely and I’m sorry I’m here. I’m sorry I came, sorry, sorry, sorry. I know Martin and Evan mean well and everything but I’d be better staying at home. Travelling alone is a very sad thing. Sorry to be dropping all this on your head, Doris, but you did say I could.

Love,

Lillie

The second part of the flight wasn’t as bad, partly because she was so exhausted trying to get comfortable in the upright seat that she actually fell asleep for a while.

The boys had wanted to upgrade her to business class.

‘Mum, you’re sixty-four, you need to stretch your legs out. You could get DVT,’ said Evan, but Lillie wouldn’t hear of it.

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s a ridiculous amount of money. I’ll go the way we—’ She stopped herself. ‘I’ll go the way your father and I always went: economy.’

She’d have liked one of those business-class beds now, but at least she was on the outside of a row, so she could get up and walk around the plane between her intermittent periods of dozing. It had grown quieter, more peaceful, once the food had been served, the lights had been dimmed and people began to fall asleep. The stewards and stewardesses were finally sitting down, taking their break. With most of the plane quiet, she didn’t feel quite so alone as she stood outside the bathroom waiting her turn, stretching her legs and wriggling her ankles the way the video they showed had told her to do.

Inside her head, Lillie found herself talking to Sam again.

I hope this is a good idea, Sam
, she told him.
You’ve got to look after me. Please, my love, I need you. I wish that you were a presence beside me. I wish I was a psychic so I could feel that you’re there instead of this nothingness: that’s what scares me. You’d have told me to do this. You’d have told me to go and see Seth and Frankie, meet the family. You’d have loved it, you’d have come too and it would have been so different. The fun we’d have had. We might have stayed over in Singapore for a couple of nights in a posh hotel, done the tour. I don’t want to upset you. You wanted me to be OK and I said I would be. I told you to go. But it’s so hard without you …

The toilet door clicked open in front of her and somebody stumbled out. Lillie didn’t really want to go to the loo but she locked herself in anyway, put the lid of the toilet down and sat, just to be here on her own and cry. Was she mad, coming on this trip?

She coped at home because she was among the familiar things, among familiar people, but so many thousands of miles away from home, how could she not feel lost?

Worst of all, that niggling thought that she’d been deftly shoving to the back of her mind kept wriggling its way to the fore: what if she felt bitterness when she met Seth? What if all she could think of was that their mother hadn’t given
him
up for adoption?

Lillie had never been a bitter person, but then, she’d had her beloved Sam. While he was alive, she’d had so much love in her life, that she was able to give love and kindness to other people.

‘You’re an earth mother,’ Sam told her once, ‘always finding lost souls to help and pulling them close.’

‘Do I drive you mad with my schemes to help people?’ she asked thoughtfully. Sam had never said anything like that before and she felt a hint of worry that he was tired of her endless good works. A colleague in the charity shop had once given her advice on balancing healing other people with taking care of her family: ‘
Lillie, you’re one of life’s givers
.
Mind that you don’t neglect your own family. Much as they’ll admire you for being a good person and helping others, they still want to know that they come first. They’d rather have you home making dinner than out saving the world.
’

Lillie had tried always to bear that in mind, but when Sam told her she was an earth mother she wasn’t sure whether this was a good or a bad thing in his eyes. So she’d asked him.

‘No, chicken,’ he said, smiling. ‘I love you for it. You can’t stop yourself: that’s what you do. Why should I change you?’

In the cramped plane toilet, she dried her tears and hoped she was still the earth mother her husband had loved. She’d hate it if his death had changed that and she no longer had anything left to give.

Seth Green drove to the airport with so many thoughts and feelings crowding each other that he had to force himself to concentrate on the road ahead.

The whole business of finding out he had a sister had reawakened the huge sorrow at the loss of his wonderful, kind mother.

He’d always adored her. Even when other boys muttered in school about how their mothers drove them mad, and were always wittering on about wearing coats in cold weather and having a decent breakfast, Seth had never had a bad word to say about Jennifer. She was gentle and endlessly calm. He could picture her now with her strawberry-blonde hair framing that round, smiling face and those beautiful flower-blue eyes.