‘Super duper,’ said Vonnie, her pink pen with the fluffy thing on top bouncing as she ticked the task off her list. ‘Now, Wednesday night, we have the hen party and that’s all sorted out. But we do have to check with people about who’s coming. I thought maybe you could do that, Savannah?’
‘OK,’ said Savannah, taking the list with the phone numbers of the people involved.
‘Someone’s going to have to keep an eye on Aunt Sandra to make sure she doesn’t take to the floor and denounce Dad,’ said Indy.
Meg looked gratefully at her eldest daughter.
‘Oh, Sandra will be fine,’ said Eden, ‘absolutely fine. She’s got over her strop. She loves Pops, really. Once she’s made her point she moves on.’
‘You think?’ said her mother anxiously.
‘I know,’ said Eden. ‘She’d a huge go at me when the party voted in favour of putting that reservoir out near her home and there were compulsory purchase orders on several farms. But once she’d made her point and the council had passed the legislation, well, it was over. She doesn’t hold grudges. She moves on. When are we going to hang all these flowery things?’ she said to Vonnie, ‘you know, the stuff for the hotel?’
‘I was hoping for tomorrow, when we go to see the place,’ said Vonnie. ‘Or maybe later …’
‘So you have all the stuff and you’ll bring it in your car?’
‘I’ve most of it. I mean, we may need more hanging equipment and possibly a ladder …’
‘OK,’ said Eden, taking out a normal pen and adding a few things to her list. She loved Vonnie but sensed that organisation was not her strong point.
‘We’ll sort it out. Just one thing—’ she looked around – ‘where’s Rory?’
Rory
Rory had a hangover. She should be used to them, had had enough of them over the years and there was no doubt about it that since she’d hit her thirties, they’d got worse. But knowing you should be used to one never helped when one’s insides felt like a boat on a roiling sea and one’s head was pounding.
She’d woken at seven, Chantal was in the bathroom and Rory knew she’d have to drag herself out of bed to get water, paracetamol and coffee, in that order.
The night before, Chantal had watched her drinking with Louisa, Rory’s recently acquired literary agent, and had pulled Rory aside anxiously. ‘Rory, please. I know you hate me saying this but you’re so like your father. You drink the way he clearly used to, wildly, crazily, I’ve seen it before. Darling, stop!’
Chantal was Irish with Vietnamese-French heritage: petite and beautiful with long dark hair that she coiled up in an elegant knot when they were going out. Rory was so in love with her, adored her.
Yet sometimes Chantal drove her mad – which was what couples did to each other, wasn’t it? Saying Rory drank like her father. How insane was that? Rory knew she was nothing like her father.
This morning, though, in the cold light of both day and throbbing hangover, she admitted, with a flash of honesty, that Chantal was only worried because Rory did drink a lot. This thought drifted in and out of her mind like mist. Sometimes absent, sometimes not. It rippled in with guilt. Guilt over drinking, guilt over the one other thing she and Chantal disagreed about: children.
Chantal was the most maternal person on the planet. Rory wasn’t ready for the responsibility. Wasn’t sure she ever would be.
‘You’re going to be late for your mother and sisters.’
Chantal was wearing her scarlet and saffron vintage kimono and her dark hair was wet, pulled back from her face, making her look exotically beautiful.
‘Sorry.’ Rory crossed the room and held her girlfriend tightly. ‘I’m a horrible old cow. You’re right, I drink too much.’
Chantal leaned into the embrace. ‘I only say it because of my worry about you.’
‘I know.’ Rory inhaled Chantal’s own scent, a mix of the various potions Chantal applied each day and the scent of her lover’s skin: something soft and flowery. How lucky was she to have found Chantal? She must never mess this up, never.
‘Now, shower. I will bring you coffee. You have ten minutes to be gone. They’ll all be waiting for you at the hotel.’
Despite the hangover, Rory was still on a high after the auction had concluded. She had told nobody in the family about it.
Telling them would be letting the cat out of the bag. They’d want to read it and she couldn’t let that happen just yet. Not until she’d tweaked it.
It was fiction but like a lot of first fiction, there was plenty of fact in there too. Rory merely needed to remove any pesky little painful facts from the manuscript and then she could tell them. Now that the deal was done and the contract signed, things would move along speedily. And she could remove any particularly tricky bits, right?
Except for Chloe. It was going to be impossible to remove Chloe.
