The Honey Queen (36 page)

‘You make them look good too,’ pointed out Opal.

‘That’s almost a by-product,’ said Bobbi. ‘The transformations we do on the inside are just as important as the outside ones.’

Lillie and Bobbi looked up as the door swung open and in came Opal (tremulous smile), followed by Freya (determined smile) and Meredith (no smile at all).

‘My most important bridal party have arrived!’ Bobbi announced.

Meredith was going to be trouble, by the looks of things. She’d bet the day’s takings that there had been a row chez Byrne that morning. Well, what sort of wedding would it be without a few rows?

‘Freya, hello,’ said Lillie delightedly.

‘Hiya, Lillie,’ said Freya, giving her a hug.

Bobbi laughed. ‘I should have known that you pair would know each other. I’ve never seen two people who know more about what’s going on around here.’ Seeing that introductions were in order for the other members of the party, she went on: ‘Lillie, this is Opal Byrne, Freya’s aunt. The pair of you live back to back, as it were – Lillie’s staying with her brother and his wife in the big house on the corner of Maple Avenue.’

The two women shook hands with a hint of recognition.

‘This is Meredith, Opal’s daughter,’ Bobbi added, giving Meredith a prod to make her smile. ‘Of course, you know Freya.’

‘Freya’s mentioned you,’ said Opal.

‘I told her how you like to have a chat with Ronnie and Seanie the same way I do,’ Freya explained.

‘I was planning on passing by the bus stop on my way home,’ said Lillie. ‘It always cheers me up to see them sitting there.’

‘Me too,’ agreed Freya. ‘If they ever got on a bus and went somewhere that would ruin it all entirely.’

‘What’s the point of sitting at a bus stop if you don’t get on the damn bus?’ snapped Meredith, bored with this conversation.

The look Freya shot her cousin reminded Bobbi of the intensity of the pulsed light machine she was thinking of getting to remove bikini-line hair permanently. Laser-like and painful.

Seeing Opal’s face begin to fall, Bobbi sprang into action. Grabbing Lillie and Opal, she sat them on the vacant couch, handed them a pile of magazines and ordered one of the juniors to bring them coffee.

‘I’m not staying,’ Lillie protested, trying to get up.

‘You are now,’ muttered Bobbi fiercely into the ear furthest away from Opal. ‘There’s trouble brewing and I need you to take poor Opal’s mind off it. Her son is getting married today and she’s got enough ahead of her without a row this early in the proceedings. The bride’s mother is a prize bitch whose main aim in life is to make other people upset. She behaves as if she’s the Queen’s second cousin and she’s going to have a lovely day making poor Opal feel like an illiterate, dragged-up eejit from the former council houses in Redstone.’

Lillie nodded. ‘Enough said,’ she murmured. ‘What’s up with the daughter?’

‘The blonde with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp?’ said Bobbi. ‘It’d take too long to tell you. I’ll soon sort her out. You take Opal and make her see what a lovely day she’s going to have and that all weddings involve some difficult people, though.’

As she stalked off to deal with Meredith, Bobbi called over her shoulder: ‘Freya, grab a seat at the basins.’

‘I just need to talk to Meredith outside,’ cooed Freya, who wasn’t sure if she could still remember any of the karate she’d done when she was twelve, but felt that she’d manage an old-fashioned punch in the nose to make Meredith have to stay the day in bed.

‘Freya,’ said Bobbi in the voice that made grown men quail. ‘You go to the basins. I need to talk to your cousin.’

Meredith, who’d already been taken aside for a word once this morning by that little bitch Freya – ‘I don’t know what your problem is, Meredith, but don’t take it out on your mother!’ – was in no mood for another lecture.

‘I don’t want—’ she began, but got no further because she found herself being marched into the staffroom.

‘Scram, girls,’ Bobbi ordered the two members of staff chatting by the coffee machine. ‘You can come back in two minutes.’ They scrammed.

‘Now, madam, listen to me,’ growled Bobbi. ‘You have put your poor parents through enough.’

‘It’s not my fault—’ Meredith said furiously.

‘It never is with people like you!’ hissed Bobbi, dark eyes flashing. ‘You abandoned the whole family years ago, only came home once in a blue moon, flashing your money like you were better than the rest of them. Remember your father’s sixtieth? Turning up with all that stupid champagne and making your poor mother feel she hadn’t done it all properly because you had to swan in and fix it. Which, if we’re going to be entirely truthful, was for nobody’s benefit but your own!’

Meredith was about to protest, but thought better of it.

‘Then you land on their laps with a trailer load of trouble, and behave like a spoilt brat. Your cousin Freya has gone through far worse, but she’s a trouper. You won’t hear her complaining, and she looks after your mother in a way you never did. So stop the grandstanding and behave. Opal’s going to have quite enough to contend with, thanks to Liz’s snooty mother, so she doesn’t need you throwing tantrums. Got it?’

Meredith felt the tears coming. She knew she’d been horrible but she felt so low and to see Freya and her mother together like that had shaken her. Her mother was the one unchanging person in a rapidly shifting world. Now it looked as if Freya had taken her place in Opal’s affections …

‘Enough with the tears,’ said Bobbi brutally. ‘I’m sorry for everything you’ve gone through, Meredith, but I’m sorrier for the way you’ve treated your mother all these years. How often did you phone home? How often did you invite anyone from St Brigid’s Terrace to the fine events in the gallery? Tell me that?’

In full fury, Bobbi was truly terrifying. And she was livid. She’d seen Opal over the years, trying to pretend that she knew how Meredith’s posh business was getting along, when in fact all she knew was the odd detail she’d managed to pick up from the newspapers.

‘How about
not
thinking of yourself for one day?’ Bobbi said.

With that, she marched out of the staffroom, telling the two hovering juniors outside the door: ‘You can go in and make the coffee now.’

Meredith was too proud to let the tears flow as the girls, wearing Bobbi’s trademark chocolate uniform with the little pink silk scarf, shuffled in and stared at her. Like teenage birds of paradise with their beautiful eye make-up and perfect hair, they kept staring until Meredith got up and stormed out.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Magda curiously.

‘The one who was in the papers over that fancy art gallery thing. The owners robbed everyone blind and all the money’s gone. She’s Opal’s daughter.’

‘
Her
? I didn’t know Opal had a daughter.’

Veronica began to make coffee. ‘That’s the problem, according to Bobbi. Thinks she’s too good for Redstone. Got too big for her boots.’

She put a little malted biscuit in a packet on the saucer for her client. ‘Although that won’t last if she’s got Bobbi on her case. Nobody like Bobbi for knocking someone down to size.’

Over on the soft chocolate-brown couch, Lillie had managed to calm Opal down by asking about her wedding outfit. She was now telling the story of a wedding she’d been to where an old school friend who’d come into money kept boasting about her fabulous homes, her staff and her designer clothes.

‘Then she asked me if Sam and I were still in our little house out in Beaumaris. She’d moved away, to a huge property on the beach. She was so rude, it really got to me,’ Lillie admitted. ‘I was going to tell her so – which isn’t like me at all – but Sam, my husband, stepped in. “As long as you’re happy, Denise, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? No amount of dollars can make up for not being happy …”’ Lillie realized that this had to be the first time since Sam’s death that she’d managed to say
my husband
without wanting to cry. ‘This look came over Denise’s face, and I felt sorry for her,’ Lillie went on, collecting herself. ‘After that, Denise didn’t look happy, despite the houses and all the rest. And I felt bad because I’d let her stupid boasting upset me. From what Bobbi tells me, your son’s future mother-in-law sounds a bit like Denise. Would you say she’s happy?’

Opal giggled nervously as she thought of Miranda’s cold, hard face permanently set into an expression of distaste. ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ she said.

‘Think about it now,’ said Lillie with a comforting smile. ‘People who aren’t happy waste far too much time trying to make other people unhappy so they’re not alone in their miserableness. I simply leave them to it, myself. Now, what are you getting done to your hair?’

By twelve forty-five, the Byrne family were sitting in the front pew of the church on the groom’s side, with Opal looking exceptionally pretty in her lilac lace jacket and matching dress. She, Bobbi, Shari and Freya had gone on an all-day trip into the city and had come home with this beautiful creation which perfectly suited Opal’s soft colouring.

Opal had then dutifully phoned Miranda to tell her she was wearing lilac and had got off the phone quickly before Miranda had time to tell her that lilac was ageing or something else hurtful.

A crack team of Bobbi’s hair and make-up people had spent two hours on her in the salon that morning, blending and shading her make-up, curling her silvery blonde hair and attaching the violet silk roses that Opal was wearing instead of a hat.

‘Hats don’t suit you,’ Bobbi had stated firmly, and Freya agreed.

‘The roses will frame your face,’ she added.

Meredith, desperate to be forgiven, nodded. ‘You look beautiful, Mum,’ she said, then had to leave the salon in case she burst into tears. She might as well go back and get into her dress for the wedding. She’d been back to the apartment the previous week to work out what she could sell to salvage some money out of the whole mess, and she’d brought all her clothes back with her. The small bedroom in St Brigid’s Terrace wasn’t big enough for them all, and most lay, untouched, in black plastic sacks. With no enthusiasm for the task, she’d settled on a pink silk sheath. After running an iron over it, she slipped it on and then unearthed a pair of antique gold sandals that probably cost more than her mother and father’s electricity bill for a month. Then she’d set off for the church feeling that, no matter how much money she was wearing on the outside, on the inside it was as if she was dressed in the cheapest rags ever.

Over on the other side of the church, Miranda looked magnificent enough for Buckingham Palace in a royal-blue suit with startlingly purple spike-heel shoes and a purple hat that resembled a vast taffeta flying saucer perched at an angle on her head. The hot pink lipstick was a mistake, Freya thought with a grin. Only people like Kaz – fifteen, with naturally pouting lips – could get away with a slash of hot pink.

She wished Kaz was beside her, so they could nudge each other and have a giggle at Miranda’s rig-out. But Kaz, who’d come as her plus-one, was further down the church, while Freya was stuck beside Meredith at the end of the family pew. Whatever Bobbi had said to her must have worked: Meredith had been making more of an effort to be considerate towards her mother, but you couldn’t exactly say she was caught up in the joy of the wedding day. She had the look of someone who was waiting for their chance to make a run for it. To the pub, no doubt. Just before they’d set off for the church, Freya had caught Meredith having a sneaky glass of the champagne that Steve had brought over that morning.

‘That,’ said Freya, ‘is not the answer to anything.’

‘What do you know?’ said Meredith, guilty to be caught but convinced that a bit of champagne-induced numbness would help her through the day.

‘Opal and Ned have enough to put up with without having to send you into rehab, you stupid mare.’

Meredith wasn’t about to let some interfering kid tell her what to do. So she polished off a second glass. Stupid brat. Who the hell did she think she was?

Unfortunately, the champagne wasn’t working. It didn’t numb the pain of seeing the way all the arriving guests looked at her and muttered into the ears of their companions as they filed into the church.

She could imagine the conversations:
That’s the woman from the Alexander fraud case, the business partner who claims she didn’t have a clue what was going on. How could you not know?

Everyone felt that way – even her old friend Laura.

When Meredith had seen Laura’s name come up on her smartphone a few days before, she’d answered it without hesitation. Even though she’d given up answering calls after days of being besieged by investors and artists who’d fallen victim to Sally-Anne and Keith’s scheme. And journalists, of course. There had been hundreds of calls from the media. She didn’t know how they’d managed to get hold of her mobile number. James had warned her against speaking to them:

‘There’s absolutely no point,’ he said, ‘and I would strongly advise against it.’

‘But I want people to know that it wasn’t me, that I wasn’t involved in it,’ Meredith had protested.

‘At this stage, let’s keep it simple. You say nothing, I’ll deal with the police. Later, when we know exactly where we stand, if you wish to engage a PR firm, you can. But don’t go off talking to the media yet.’

Meredith had felt so chastened, so stupid. She thought of the days when she’d been an avid reader of the scandals plastered across the front pages of the Sunday papers, never dreaming she’d be caught up in one herself. She’d always rather looked down on these people, not being able to understand how they couldn’t deal with it privately. Now she understood all too well. When everyone was publicly denouncing her she wanted to tell her side of the story desperately. And if that meant discussing it with newspapers who wanted to ask her the most personal of questions, then she understood it very well. But Laura was different, though. Seeing Laura’s phone number on caller ID had felt like a blessed relief. Laura would understand.

Eagerly, she answered.

‘Oh, Laura, it’s so good to talk to you. You’ve no idea what I’ve been going through—’