The Honey Queen (28 page)

She locked up the shop and ran across the road to the salon.

Bobbi herself was behind the reception desk, majestic today with ruby lipstick and nails to match. Peggy didn’t feel as scared of her as she had initially. It was Opal who had worked that magic. Anyone who could be friends with such a tentative, gentle, sweet woman could not possibly be the tough cookie she presented to the rest of the world. No, the toughness might be the outer shell to help her get on in business. Peggy suspected that Bobbi had a soft centre.

‘Good morning, Peggy,’ said Bobbi, ‘I’m delighted you are gracing our establishment at last. Two of our girls are already crocheting in their breaks with stuff they got from you. Since you showed them how to do it, they haven’t stopped. Even Shari, my daughter, is making a hat for one of my little granddaughters.’

‘I love showing people how to crochet, and it’s so simple,’ Peggy said. ‘Honestly, you should try it. I have some easy patterns to get you started, nice fat needles, lovely threads, lovely wools. You’d love it.’

‘Ah no,’ said Bobbi, ‘I wouldn’t love it, thank you. Not for me, thanks. I’d probably end up stabbing someone with a crochet hook but still, they’re all delighted with themselves and when my girls are happy, I’m happy.

‘You see, love, to me the crochet hook is still that wicked little steel thing we used years ago to do highlights. You’re too young to remember, but we used to stick a plastic bag on someone’s head and poke the scalp off them with the hook, making holes out of which you pulled the hair. It was so sore, you wouldn’t be able to brush your hair for a week! No, Peggy, I’ll never be able to see beyond that, so crochet’s not for me. But I’m delighted the girls are busying themselves. One of them says she’s making a handbag for her holidays. It’s good to see you here today, giving a little return business, my dear.’

‘I’m probably being very cheeky and crazy and there isn’t a hope in hell of it happening …’ Peggy started, suddenly thinking how reckless this whole venture was. What salon like Bobbi’s would be able to squeeze her in on a Saturday morning?

‘Tell me,’ said Bobbi, ‘I’ll be able to tell you if it’s wild and reckless.’

‘Well,’ Peggy began, ‘I had this sudden mad desire to have my toenails and my nails painted coral?’ She looked quizzically at Bobbi and said, ‘I know it’s ridiculous and I don’t really get those sorts of things done, I can’t afford them, but it just came over me all of a sudden.’

‘These things do,’ Bobbi said soothingly. ‘Hold on here till I look up the book.’

She ran a glossy red-nailed finger down the day’s appointment list.

‘Veronica, one of the younger but very talented members of staff, is not doing anything for the next hour. If you can stay now, we could do you a mani-pedi. After that, there isn’t a hope in hell. There’s weddings and hen parties coming in all day. The place is going to be wall-to-wall insanity and hissy fits until six o’clock tonight.’

Peggy thought of the shop. She didn’t think that Fifi would mind. Suddenly she thought of all the years she’d told her mother that a little joy in her life was allowed. Kathleen Barry had known no joy no matter how much her daughter tried to make her see it. Well, Peggy and her baby daughter would know joy, that was for sure.

‘Give me five minutes to run back and put a note on the door saying we won’t be open until ten. I’ll ring Fifi and tell her she has to open up, then I’ll be straight over. Is that all right?’

‘Perfect,’ said Bobbi, smiling. ‘By the time we’ve finished with you, you’ll be walking on air, darling.’

Peggy grinned. Her world had been officially turned upside down but she didn’t care: she felt an excited thrill rippling up through her from her feet to the top of her head.

Five minutes later, a sweet young girl named Veronica, who couldn’t be more than nineteen, was examining Peggy’s nails critically. Peggy had a cup of tea at her side and her feet in a footbath of bubbles.

The salon was buzzing but it wasn’t hectic. Low, gentle music filled the background and Peggy realized why Bobbi’s was always so popular: it was an infinitely soothing place.

‘Do you use cuticle oil?’ Veronica asked.

‘No,’ said Peggy cheerfully. ‘Should I?’

‘Yes,’ breathed Veronica. ‘Without it, your cuticles dry up and …’

Bobbi sailed past and leaned down to the low stool where Veronica was perched.

‘I think Peggy wants a bit of peace before her day, Veronica, dear,’ she whispered.

Peggy shot a grateful look at Bobbi, who smiled back. Peggy had the strangest feeling that Bobbi could see into her head. But that was ridiculous.

She sat back in the pedicure chair and closed her eyes, but her mind went back to her parents.

She would tell her mother about the baby soon, when she drove there for her mother’s birthday. As for her father – she didn’t really care if he never knew.

She could imagine what he’d say: ‘You’re pregnant with no man beside you? Didn’t I say you’d come home to us with your tail between your legs, didn’t I say that?’

She didn’t care what
he
said, though. Her mother’s opinion was what mattered and if it made Peggy happy, her poor mother would be pleased.

And David – what would David say?

Nothing, because she could never tell him. Men messed things up, that was the way of the world. Peggy would bring her child up on her own with no help from him. He would never know. On that, her mind was made up.

‘The colour’s lovely, really suits you,’ said Veronica, admiring her own handiwork on Peggy’s long, slender fingers.

‘I’ve never had them this colour before,’ said Peggy. ‘I normally paint them with clear varnish myself, but it’s time for a change, I think.’

From the appointments desk, Bobbi looked across and saw that Peggy, who’d come in looking a bit stunned and unlike herself, was now smiling in delight over her nails. She was a nice girl, that one. Tried to project a tougher image of herself than was entirely truthful. She was tender really – wounded, in fact, Bobbi would guess – and today, well, there was definitely something strange going on today.

Still, it would come out. Everything did. Look at poor Opal and that daft Meredith, come home in disgrace. Everything came out in the end.

M
iranda was simmering. She was organizing this wedding almost single-handedly, nobody seemed to appreciate her hard work, and to add insult to injury, her daughter’s future mother-in-law hadn’t seen fit to even phone to discuss the agenda for the final wedding planning dinner party – to be held in the Byrnes’ poky little house – that they were having in a few days. If Miranda hadn’t insisted on another meeting, everyone would have been happy to let her carry on doing everything. She’d planned an elegant party in her home until Brian had stuck his oar in and said it was time one of these planning things was held at his mum’s. Liz had agreed, to Miranda’s fury.

Opal seemed to have no interest whatsoever in the wedding. Oh, she’d sent the ‘we would be delighted to attend’ cards back and hadn’t even bothered to phone to say how beautiful the actual invitations were. No, not even a message had been left on Miranda’s mobile to say that Opal had received and loved the beautiful gold envelopes and the glittering gilt-edged invitations inside. Miranda was cross. No, cross wasn’t the word for it. She was furious. Raging.

She’d said as much to Elizabeth.

‘Your future mother-in-law hasn’t had the manners to phone me up to say what she thought of the invitations,’ Miranda had snapped to her daughter only the night before.

‘Oh Mum,’ said Elizabeth tiredly, putting the shopping basket on the supermarket floor because it was so heavy. ‘That was weeks ago. You were the one who loved them more than anyone else. I wanted the red ones, if you remember and does it really matter at this stage?’

It had been an exhausting day for Liz. She had fifth class now and they were a lot harder to manage than third. Third class still looked up to the teacher. Those little eight- and nine-year-olds thought Miss was a wonderful human being. By the time they got to fifth class, they had revised their opinion – thanks to Mrs Brock, who taught fourth class and treated her pupils as if they were juvenile delinquents sent to her for harsh treatment. Consequently, with a few exceptions, fifth class thought that all teachers were demons and their main aim was to do as little work as possible and to glare at her fiercely as if daring her to transform into Mrs Brock. Sometimes, Elizabeth felt like telling the kids that everyone avoided Mrs Brock in the staffroom too, but she knew this would be a mistake on so many levels.

Having an Easter wedding had originally seemed like a super plan so that she and Brian could have a short honeymoon over the school holiday, and then she’d be around for the school summer camps in order to add to her and Brian’s fund for their own house.

But now everything to do with the wedding stressed her because as with anything where her mother was involved, there was trouble. Liz was a fabulous organizer and had planned the whole thing with Brian until her mother had insisted that Liz was busy and she’d love to help. That help had turned into a taking over of so many things and then making a big fuss over whatever she’d done, as if she’d been the one who’d discovered the God particle instead of those scientists in CERN.

Liz knew it was easier to let her mother carry on with her fussing but it still annoyed her: this was their wedding and they’d wanted no fuss. Except Miranda liked fuss.

Brian didn’t appear to have noticed anything amiss with his future mother-in-law and he’d been relaxed about it all. Probably because his mother was normal and didn’t feel the need to claim things for ‘their side’, Liz thought darkly.

‘It’ll be a great day,’ Brian said. ‘Something simple, just all the people we love in the world, coming together to celebrate our marriage.’

Liz had stared at him. Brian was so clever with computers but often so blindingly innocent when it came to people.

‘Are you nuts?’ she said one night, finally losing it after her mother had gone on a bender buying ludicrously over-the-top table decorations and making enquiries with a string quartet who’d had their own album in the classical charts. ‘Weddings are battlegrounds,’ Liz said. ‘Archetypal events where the two families feud and everything goes wrong and …’

‘Hang on there a second,’ said Brian, startled. ‘Weddings are lovely. Our wedding will be lovely. I’m sure everyone will have a great time.’

Liz thought of the frenzy her mother was in over her only child’s wedding. She thought of her mother’s cutting comments about the Byrne family in general – Brian was lovely and David was obviously cut from the same cloth as his brother and was on the way to making a few bob with his new business.

But as for the rest of them … Miranda didn’t appear to have words to explain precisely how lower class the rest of the Byrne family were. More and more, Liz wished that they could just elope – slip away to Vegas and get married in one of those dinky little chapels where you could buy a dress and a wedding suit in one room, and tie the knot in another, with a free glass of champagne thrown in.

‘It’ll be a wonderful wedding,’ said Brian, thinking of how happy his parents were about it all because they could see how much in love he and Liz were.

‘Look you’re right,’ Liz had sighed, determined to think positively. ‘It’ll be lovely. An expression of our love, yes.’

This was supposed to be the best day of her life and she didn’t want to remember it as an occasion of tension.

If only her mother would stop treating the wedding as a military campaign where she was at war with just about everyone. She’d gone to battle with the florist, the caterers, Opal.

What was deeply annoying to Miranda was the fact that Opal wasn’t the sort of woman you could have a proper battle with. Even Miranda had to admit that there was nothing malicious or spiteful about her. Worst of all, and this really enraged her, Opal seemed oblivious to Miranda’s disdain.

Miranda’s attempts to show superiority all failed because Opal never entered the game. There was no reason, for example, for Miranda to get in a fit of jealousy over Opal’s fabulous hat or outfit because Opal never seemed to dress up at all. Still, Miranda continued to judge the Byrnes by her own standards because that was the only point of view she understood.

‘You’d think she’d have the manners to phone about the arrangements, wouldn’t you?’ said Miranda again.

It was a habit of hers. Repeating the question in different ways until eventually she got the answer she required.

‘I expect she’s busy,’ Liz said.

‘Busy? Doing what?’ hissed Miranda. ‘I am the mother of the bride. I am shouldering all of the work. What has she done? Absolutely nothing. Those two brothers are going to be ushers and I can’t imagine what that young girl who lives with them is going to turn up like. I’m very glad she’s not a bridesmaid.’

‘I’ll have to talk to you about that, Mum,’ Liz said. ‘I’ve been thinking it over and perhaps we should ask Freya and Meredith after all. I know it’s late in the day, but I feel guilty about it. Chloe’s dress won’t be that hard to match. Or we could have Chloe in her pale pink, and Meredith in coral and Freya in a warm blue. You know, not matching dresses, just pretty colours. It’s very common these days to have bridesmaids in totally diff—’

‘But Chloe’s your best friend since you were four,’ shrieked her mother. ‘You said you only wanted one bridesmaid! What changed your mind? Was it something Brian said?’

‘Brian has said absolutely nothing,’ Liz went on, determined to have her way in this. ‘No, I’ve been thinking that it would be better to be
inclusive
,’ she said, ‘and to have Freya and Meredith as bridesmaids. I feel mean, not having asked them.’

‘It’s too late,’ squawked Miranda. ‘Chloe has a dress and everything. It’s all sorted. I can’t stand the thought of all the dresses not being the same.’

‘It can be unsorted, Mum,’ said Liz crossly. She might as well stick to her guns. ‘It’s not too late. Meredith and Freya can get something off the peg. If they’re in different colours, it’ll look as though we made them all different on purpose. I’m going to tell Brian tonight. We can finalize arrangements when we have dinner at the Byrnes on Thursday.’