The hotel had always been pretty. Like a fading beautiful woman, it’d had good bones and was always able to put on a good show: Virginia creeper hiding bits of outer damage to the late Georgian structure; the stone wolfhounds looking suitably heroic in their pose by the door, the bay trees still elegantly standing sentinel at the steps up to the porch. If the Sorrento Hotel had been a lady, she’d have been one of those now stooping, yet still elegant, who wore Hermès scarves in their eighties, a real pearl necklace and nobody would notice bent, arthritic fingers or the fact that the cords in her neck were taut with age, while the skin around drooped and creped.
‘Stand still!’ commanded Vonnie, holding up her phone. ‘I’m taking a photo. I’m the chief bridesmaid – this is my job.’
Obediently, Savannah and Meg held on to each other and smiled, then Savannah drifted off.
‘Shall we wait for Eden, Rory and Indy?’ Vonnie was walking towards them and checking the phone’s pictures.
‘No,’ said Meg. ‘Indy’s on an emergency labour, Rory might not make it, she says and Eden …’ She shrugged.
Politics was a crazy business: Eden was always saying it. She might have been on the phone frantically trying to find housing for someone or in a meeting about a bypass or discussing children’s health services. Between running her weekly surgeries and her endless meetings, Eden never stopped. Ralph’s mother had taught her well. Agnes Tallisker made Meg feel a bit of a time waster, which was something few other people could.
Agnes had raised four children, run a successful chain of pharmacies, and took care of the small stuff so her husband, Diarmuid, could be the great politician. Now Eden was doing
it all, but Ralph – and Meg loved him but he was sweetly dizzy – would not be there sorting out the loose ends the way Agnes had done for Diarmuid.
At the edge of the circular lawn in front of the hotel, weeds were growing in the gravel. Meg bent out of habit to pull them up. She had lived here for twenty-five years, after all, and had never walked on the gravel without stooping to weed a bit. Saturday would quite possibly be her last visit, she thought, suddenly hit with sadness. She would not want to come back when her once-beloved home was turned into flats.
‘Coming?’
Savannah was at the door.
Meg straightened up. No more reminiscing. This was not a time for sadness. It was a time for happiness. The Robicheaux family were becoming whole again in a wonderful, rich new way.
Eden found them in the ballroom where the smell of damp was faint but still there.
Vonnie was having a bit of a panic.
‘I had no idea there could be this much damp. It never looked that way before, did it?’ she was saying, pulling elderly brocade curtains away from the giant French windows that led into the gardens. The curtains were held together with thread and miracles while above, the curtain poles were draped in ancient spiderwebs. ‘This fabric is ruined. We’ll never get it ready for Saturday. Why did we say we’d have it here?’
‘Because we’re getting it for nothing, because it’s a bit last minute and because it’s romantic,’ said Eden, kissing her mother on the cheek.
Meg perked up.
‘No second thoughts,’ Eden whispered.
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Meg whispered back.
‘I was a bit hormonal,’ said Eden lightly.
Meg started and Eden quickly moved the conversation on.
‘Plus, pulling this hotel back from the brink is what we Robicheaux women do, isn’t that right, Ma?’
Eden was clenching her fists as she said this and spoke loudly, so that Vonnie could hear.
‘Really?’ Vonnie’s eyes were as big as a nine-year-old’s at Christmas.
Eden looked at Vonnie, who was like an aunt to her and yet was still adorably childlike, despite having two adult children of her own, three grandchildren, and a husband whose bad back had forced her into a life of bending over a sewing machine and occasionally cleaning other people’s houses to make ends meet.
Vonnie had never done anything in her blameless life that would make her the target of blackmailing hate mail. Eden was sure of it.
Nobody would be sending herI know what you didletters. For a brief moment, she wished she was Vonnie, with a simple, blameless life.
But then she wouldn’t be running to be chosen as a national candidate with a big political party, she wouldn’t have a chance to make real change in the world and she wouldn’t be married to darling Ralphie. His mother was great, too, she conceded, but she could do without his father right now.
‘Yup, that’s what we Robicheaux women do. We sort things out,’ said Eden firmly. She looked around the room, pushing away all the memories the hotel evoked in her. This had been their home for so long and it was really quite strange being back. In fact, she wasn’t sure why Mum and Pops had decided to get married again here, of all places. But – there was no point thinking about that now.
Keep moving forward.
