‘I’ll just run out into the kitchen and see if there’s a ladder lying around. There used to be a little step ladder hidden in one of the pantries.’
The kitchen was a warren of little rooms from back when the hotel had been a grand private house. The plans to turn them all into cold rooms and clever storage places had never materialised.
Eden was gone before anyone could go with her.
Eden knew she was a doer. Other people talked about what they were going to do, but she did it, it had always been the same. That was why Ralph said proudly she was just a good politician, would make such a good person in government.
‘You get stuff done, darling,’ he said proudly.
‘She does,’ agreed his mother, just as proudly.
Eden adored her mother-in-law because Agnes saw a side of her that not many people did: that of a very straight arrow who wanted the best for other people, especially for women and children. Some thought that Eden had had a conversion when she’d found politics but, really, it had happened earlier than that. Eden knew how easy it was to have life hit you in the solar plexus.
With her own family, Eden felt as if her rather rackety youth was what they remembered. They looked at her and they didn’t see the calm local politician. No, they saw the wild child and that rankled.
The kitchen smelled bizarrely of richly spiced Indian food. Eden tried to remember who had last had the hotel and could come up with nothing where Indian cuisine was the main dish and yet the scents were there: the mystical sweet scent of cardamom, layered with cumin, the hint of the smoky spice of the tandoor oven. But there was no tandoor oven. Everything was totally tidy but a film of dust lay all over the once-sparkling stainless-steel surfaces. Brushing away memories of how often she’d scrubbed the place down as a teenager, Eden shouldered into the door at the back hall, and after some searching, found herself in one of the old pantries where they used to keep tins and other non-perishables. There, as she remembered it, was a now slightly rusting small metal ladder. It would do perfectly, she thought.
Back in the ballroom, Vonnie was explaining her vision for the theme for the room. She had been, to all their great misery, on an Instagram account of a fancy wedding designer. Vonnie was a recent convert to Instagram but she loved what she saw and applied no internal filters to the unreachable, filtered photos of Malibu-tanned girl brides with flowers in their hair, dewy skin and vast budgets.
‘When we talked about it ages ago, I was thinking swags of silk flowers,’ Vonnie was saying, gesturing at the curtain poles in a fluid movement. ‘I’ve been making them for other weddings over the years and once I heard about you and Stu, Meg, I started on your batch. But the ones I’ve seen … just lovely. Ombre is very in right now. You could buy them if you don’t like mine or if I don’t have enough. We should have started earlier …’ she trailed off.
Meg was firm: ‘We could never buy anything as beautiful as you make, Vonnie. What nonsense. Your flowers are exquisite.’
‘But I hope I have enough. If only we had started earlier. I am fast, obviously, but it’s all so rushed.’
Vonnie had hit the nail on the head, Eden thought, carefully putting down the ladder. Her parents had decided to get married, then did nothing for ages so that now, days before the event, they were staring at a once beloved but now shabby premises which would require fleets of people to make it decent. A Lottery win. Or both.
The most they could hope for was to hide the worst of the damp, light a million candles, set up fairy lights and pray the bougainvillaea and buddleia still threw off such strong scents from the garden that no hint of damp smell would linger.
Vonnie was back on Instagram. ‘I mean I could have made silk-flower table settings too, I have so many off-cuts of material. Look at this – isn’t it gorgeous?’
‘We want it clean and fresh, that’s all,’ Meg said calmly. ‘You are not to worry or overwork, Vonnie, darling. We are going to have flowers on the table and—’
‘— and take down the curtains,’ said Eden, deciding to put the ladder in front of the first set of French windows.
Worrying over the road not taken was Vonnie’s speciality.
Eden had no time for it. Her life had always been lived going forwards, at full tilt. She adjusted the ladder and had climbed up before anyone could squawk about holding it steady. Eden had so much on today that there was no time for wasting. She had a meeting at two and it was already nearly twelve. She had an hour here, max, and she needed to get the plan made.
The heavy curtains unhooked and fell to the floor in massive piles, clouds of damp spores rising like puffs of smoke.
‘We’ll probably all get triple pneumonia,’ she joked, staring down at the piles of fabric.
Savannah, who had been standing looking out at the French windows in a faintly vacant way, turned and smiled. An automatic smile, Eden thought. What was wrong with Savannah? It was like she’d checked out of her head, somehow.
Savannah caught her twin sister staring at her and pulled herself together.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘what should we do?’
‘OK,’ said Eden in the space where she knew she was best – in charge. ‘I suggest we take down all the curtains, we get someone in to clean the walls, because it’s a lot of work. Maybe get Dad and a couple of friends to clean.’
‘Not the wallpaper,’ said her mother, shuddering.
They all paused, thinking of the days when the old wallpaper was part of the Sorrento’s charm.
‘Shabby chic full of turn-of-the-last-century grandeur with painted walls and real William Morris panels scattered here and there,’ someone had described it in a review.
‘We need the walls cleaned with sugar soap or something,’ Eden said.
