The Honey Queen (14 page)

Seth felt a wave of love for this new sister. The resemblance to his mother wasn’t just skin deep, she had that same serenity about her, the same ability to make you feel better about yourself just being in her company. Maybe, just maybe, she would be able to work some of her magic on Frankie and cheer her up on the subject of age.

‘How did you get to be so wise?’ he asked fondly.

Unlike many Irish people, who couldn’t take a compliment on pain of death, Lillie didn’t bat it away. She took the statement as her due. ‘We’re all given gifts,’ she said, ‘and that was one of mine.’

Frankie sat at her desk scanning her emails and trying very hard to be mindful. Mindfulness was a wonderful concept – holding on to the now, appreciating the current moment. Everyone was at it; half the office were sitting at their desks, smiling, determined to be in the present moment. Once the office had been full of people doing spinning classes, racing back from lunch, puce in the face and bursting with hyper energy. Then the yoga fad had taken hold: Iyengar, Bikram, Flow, whatever, and suddenly the most unlikely people began standing up at the end of meetings giving a small bow, hands in prayer pose, and murmuring ‘Namaste’.

These days, Mindfulness was all the rage.

Living in the now, enjoying the present, taking deep breaths and sending bright bursts of love out to random people who cut them up in traffic.

‘Mindfulness is so good for you, you know,’ said Lauren from Frankie’s office who had embraced Mindfulness with the zeal of person captured by the nuns years ago and told they had a vocation. ‘We all spend far too much time thinking about the future.’

Frankie half wished she had time to be mindful but who’d hold the fort if
someone
wasn’t thinking about tomorrow?

‘That’s all very well for you,’ Frankie told her, ‘but I don’t have the luxury of dwelling in the moment. My job is about the future – working out what will give people a sense of purpose, a stake in the company. Working out who we hire and where to put them so they can fulfil their potential. It’s the future that pays my mortgage,’ she said, knowing her voice was rising. ‘What’s wrong with the future?’

The look of alarm on Lauren’s face stopped her in her tracks. Embarrassed, Frankie hurried back to her office. Since when had she turned into this grumpy cow who went off on a rant at the slightest thing? She found herself muttering under her breath, constantly in a state of extreme irritation. And then she’d get all hot and bothered, literally, her core body temperature rising until she could feel the flush rising from her chest up through her neck. Thankfully her face didn’t go all red, which was something, but she’d taken to wearing silk scarves to hide the telltale redness on her throat.

Nothing hid the sweat, though. The expensive Dior foundation she relied on to hide the wrinkles and give her a subtle glow was no match for the beads of perspiration that would suddenly erupt on her forehead and start running down her face. Her choice of outfit each morning was now determined by whether it would conceal her sweaty armpits or highlight the problem. There was nothing more mortifying than having to clamp her armpits down, pray she was wearing enough perfume to hide the sweaty smell and discreetly mop her face with a tissue when nobody was looking.

It was ridiculous. She couldn’t be going through the menopause. She wasn’t old enough, surely. Or perhaps she was. Clearly something was playing havoc with her hormones.

She bashed away at her keyboard, pounding out a reply to an email. Responding to emails when you were irritable was probably not a good idea. She carried on regardless. Rita in the claims department had it coming. Rita reckoned she was undervalued in claims. According to Rita, she’d been undervalued in every department she’d been in so far. Frankie was of the opinion that Rita was the kind of person who would feel undervalued no matter where
she was or who she was working for. Rita would probably feel undervalued if she was made president of the EU. And given that she couldn’t even process an insurance claim satisfactorily, the presidency might just be a tad beyond her abilities … Aaaarghh! There she was – at it again. This damned irritation!

She deleted the
Dear Rita, I am afraid there will never be any job in this company where you will feel happy because you are determined
not
to be happy …
And started again.

Frankie had done a bit of Googling on the subject of the menopause, and Dr Google’s verdict had been far from encouraging.

First, there were endless contradictory pages on drugs – go natural/don’t go natural. Black cohosh will make you feel ten years younger/black cohosh will make your ears fall off.

It was probably easier to teach yourself to remove somebody’s appendix with a fish knife and a soup ladle than it was to work out what worked best for menopausal symptoms.

What’s more, the blasted thing had squillions of symptoms. Frankie felt as if she had every last one of them. It was a bit like looking at the ‘possible side effects’ bit on leaflets for tablets.

Frankie always found that if she read these, eventually, she’d convince herself that she had every single one of them. So these days, unless the doctor said something specifically about a certain drug, Frankie had trained herself not to look at the symptoms. The nocebo effect it was called. But with this bloody menopause thing, she was coming to the conclusion that she had them all. Irritability, grumpiness, hot flushes, headaches, feeling tearful at the oddest moment and, she had to admit it, absolutely no interest in sex.

Dealing with this was not quite as difficult as it might have been. As a human resources boss, Frankie knew all the theoretical downsides of people losing their jobs and for men in particular, lack of libido was a common problem. For the first month after Seth had been made redundant, it had affected him terribly. It made it worse that his bosses had chosen the month before Christmas to do the deed, and with the children both away, it fell to her alone to try and comfort him. She’d hoped that making love would succeed where words had failed, but after a few minutes’ hugging, Seth would kiss her on the forehead – a definite
Thanks, but no thanks
signal if ever there was one – say goodnight and roll over.

Frankie had felt rebuffed, as if the comfort she was offering wasn’t good enough. As if
she
wasn’t good enough. And now … now it suited her not to have to think about sex.

The sad thing was that they’d always been so wonderful in bed. Seth’s love-making had been so tender and passionate, she’d never doubted he felt the same way about her as she did about him.

Lately, they’d turned into one of those couples whose idea of bedroom bliss was twin beds and a stair lift. No, she thought grimly, twin
rooms
, so they could say goodnight on the landing, shuffle through adjoining doors and climb into bed with a cup of cocoa and a crossword to keep them occupied till they fell asleep.

Frankie didn’t want to be that sort of person – ever. She certainly didn’t want to be that sort of person now.

Mindfulness … yes, she thought. Mindfulness, that’s it: think of the now. Think calm thoughts. But she couldn’t. Feeling irritable always gave her a headache and she had the mother of all headaches hammering in her skull.

Was it high blood pressure? Heightened blood pressure was one of the things she’d read on one of the peri-menopause sites. Oh heck, something new to worry about. Maybe she should go to the doctor, talk it over.

That was it, she’d go to the doctor.

She picked up the phone and dialled. If she begged, she might get an appointment tonight. And then she remembered: Lillie. This would be her first night in their house. Damn! She’d make the appointment for later in the week.

Seth had felt apprehensive about introducing his wife to his new sister.

That evening, when Frankie swept in with a shopping bag full of goodies and a bouquet for their guest, it was immediately clear that she had taken to Lillie in a big way. Seth had never doubted that she would. That was the thing about Frankie: she was always so full of warmth towards other people, why should Lillie be any different? No, his apprehension had another cause.

Though he knew it was entirely childish of him, he wanted his long-lost sister to be
his
, like a child in the playground who didn’t want anyone else to play with their special friend. He’d been afraid that Frankie would burst in with all her energy and vitality and Lillie would cease to notice him.

But it didn’t happen that way.

‘Lillie, it’s wonderful to meet you,’ said Frankie, embracing her. ‘You look the image of Seth’s mother. Has he told you that already?’

‘Yes,’ said Lillie, surprised at how moved she was to hear this again.

‘We’ve spent the afternoon going through the photo albums,’ Seth said pointedly.

‘Lillie, you must be exhausted after that flight. Seth, she needs to sleep,’ Frankie went on, taking over.

‘She said she was fine,’ Seth replied tightly.

Observing the exchange between husband and wife, Lillie immediately picked up on the undertones. This had all the hallmarks of a marriage in trouble. Not on the edge of the precipice, yet, but definitely heading in that direction.

Briefly, she considered grabbing her suitcases and checking into a hotel. She didn’t need to be in the middle of this. But then something changed her mind. Even though they’d been strangers until today, Seth was still her blood. She’d spent a lifetime wondering about her birth family. And now that she was here, she wasn’t about to turn her back on them.

‘Do you know,’ she announced, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen, ‘I think it’s time we had more of that famous Irish tea. And then maybe we can have a look at your albums again. I brought mine, too, so we could look at those. I think you’ll find that Martin, my eldest, has a look of our mother about him. It’s funny, isn’t it, the way, even where there isn’t an obvious physical resemblance, one person will have some indefinable something about them that puts you in mind of someone else?’

She beamed at her brother and sister-in-law, willing them to smile with her, willing them to let go of whatever tension was there.

‘I suppose so,’ said Frankie.

‘Possibly,’ said Seth.

‘And I want to hear all about when you were young, Seth,’ said Lillie, turning back to him. ‘Now that I’ve found you, I want to know everything. I bet you’ve some great stories too, Frankie,’ she added.

This time, both Frankie and Seth smiled.

‘I’ve some tales all right,’ Frankie agreed, wryly. ‘I’ll go and I’ll make the tea and then we can look at the albums together. I know you’ve seen some of them but it’ll be fun because I haven’t looked at those for years, have I?’ she said to Seth.

Lillie could see the flicker of warmth in her brother’s eyes. Perhaps she’d been imagining the tension. She was tired, after all, and Frankie and Seth must be under such pressure, what with the loss of his income and the worry over whether to spend his redundancy on doing up the house or wait and see. No wonder they were tense.

Honey has been used for healing since at least 2000
BC
and its use has been recorded in texts from Egypt, China, Greece and Ancient Rome. The Egyptians used it most widely, for everything from wound care to asthma. In these ancient cultures, bees were revered and honey itself was treated as a great enhancement to the joy of life.

The Gentle Beekeeper
, Iseult Cloud

O
n her second morning in Seth and Frankie’s house, Lillie woke in the spare bedroom to sun streaming in through the badly fitting curtains. The bed was fabulous. Big, soft with cool beautiful smooth white sheets and a plump duvet that nestled around her body. Even though Seth said it was remarkably warm for this time of year by Irish standards, it was still cold for Lillie, more accustomed to the beautiful heat of Melbourne.

The previous evening, Seth had served dinner in the garden. Lillie had been somewhat dubious about sitting outdoors on an Irish March evening, but he’d been so enthusiastic she couldn’t refuse.

‘The weather’s going to be nice today, so we can have dinner outside,’ he’d announced. ‘I realize it’s a bit of a jungle, but we have the patio table and chairs from our last house, and I can drag the patio heater out so you won’t freeze.’

She and Seth had taken a stroll around the garden together beforehand. Everyone here called their back yard a garden, even if it was nothing more than a desolate space clogged with weeds – and Frankie and Seth’s home fell squarely into the latter category. There were weeds Lillie didn’t recognize and vicious nettles. She’d stung her legs and Seth had instantly found a big fat ugly-looking leaf which he’d pronounced to be a dock leaf and rubbed the sap gently into the stinging bumps on her legs.

It was such a tender gesture and she’d had a sudden vision of them if they’d grown up together with him as a protective brother helping her along the way. Of course such a thing couldn’t have happened. She was ten years older than Seth. By the time he’d been old enough to know what a dock leaf was, she’d have been a teenager, looking out for
him.
Nevertheless she felt a tinge of sorrow for the relationship they’d missed out on.

Though she’d only been here a short while, already she felt at home. Lying in her comfortable bed, she felt a sense of calm, almost as if her beloved Sam was by her side. She could almost feel his big hand resting affectionately on her shoulder the way he used to stand when they went on tours years ago and the guide would list out details of the various places they’d been, Ephesus in Turkey, the oracle at Delphi. How bizarre that in this far-away country of her birth, where everything should be alien, the sense of enormous heart-shattering grief over Sam’s death had somehow abated. She didn’t know why, and couldn’t put her finger on it, but that was how she felt.