Eden stopped contemplating her twin. She worried about Savannah but then she always had. It was a mission for another time.
‘Yeah, sorry, Ma. Course we want you guys to be happy. But three weeks … it’s a bit sudden. You’ll never get a venue,’ she added, hopefully.
She had an election coming up in the autumn. And the letters. Oh hell, the anonymous letters. She thought of how the scandal could rip her career apart, so she needed to focus. Her parents’ wedding would be distracting and it felt … she searched for what was niggling at her. For the correct word about the wedding. Nothing came. Nothing but a strange feeling in her gut that said her mother was rushing into this.
Now, the Robicheaux remarriage was only six days away.
Six days!
Eden had a speech to write, had endless work to do and still had to throw herself into the merry-go-round of a wedding week or else her mother would think she didn’t approve of the wedding itself.
She would not be the daughter who was happily married and begrudged her parents happiness. There was too much of that around. No, she would be smiling, waving and encouraging. A grown-up.
However, her schedule was manic. She also had to fit in a meeting with other councillors on the local drugs task force, visit a lady who’d just turned one hundred, and meet up with a local shop owner about dodgy street lighting outside her shop and how it was a security risk. That wasn’t even taking into account her normal political surgery which she’d originally slotted in for Friday evening and which she’d had to cancel because of the rehearsal dinner.
No doubt about it: your parents remarrying was a pain but that wouldn’t make a very good speech opening.
Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, it’s annoying to have to be here at the wedding of two people who are possibly better off not marrying each other again …
Er, nope. The tone was all off. Who was she to say they were wrong for each other? Pops – she was the only one who called him that and he loved it - did all that Gambling Anonymous stuff, didn’t he? He even meditated.
Indy, Eden’s eldest sister, was giving their mother away, seeing as there were no male relatives left to do this.
Indy was the beautiful and utterly perfect one of the Robicheaux sisters. Indy never put a foot wrong.
‘That’s not true,’ Indy always said, showing a rare hint of irritation whenever this was said.
‘It is,’ said Eden, who prided herself on being the one who said it like it was. ‘If you weren’t my darling sis, I’d hate you,’ she added.
Indy was genuinely beautiful: a tall, willowy blonde with a flawless face, a woman who could have been on the cover of any magazine if she’d wanted to and had chosen midwifery over a life of champagne, couture clothes and pots of money. She was happily married to Steve – also annoyingly perfect – with two exquisite little daughters, Minnie and Daisy, and a job where she brought actual human life into the world, coaxing tiny babies out of wombs, the ultimate in frontline nursing. She was like someone who’d get on the cover ofTIMEmagazine – in an issue entitled ‘Heroines of our decade’ or something like that.
‘Nobody’s perfect, and you can’t hate people for being nice,’ their mother said, mildly shocked at the notion of one sister hating another.
Mum never got really shocked. It was being young in the seventies, she said, by way of explanation: nothing shocked you after seeing lots of people tripping on drugs and behaving with wild abandon. Aliens could land in Delgany, the village in Wicklow further down the east coast where her mother now lived in a pretty white bungalow, and Meg Robicheaux would wave them inside with a tanned, braceleted arm, gesturing to her all-white couches and asking which variety of green tea they wanted.
‘You can hate people for being nice,’ Eden sighed.
Actually, she hated loads of people – OK, not total hate, really, but certainly fierce annoyance, enough to make her grind her teeth.
It was a constantly evolving list: random people who rang her council office asking for ludicrous things, like permission to mimic Pamplona’s bull run in a small village in a bid to up tourism; anyone who did their grocery shopping wearing full make-up; people who could eat what they wanted and not put on weight; journalists who asked her if marrying into a political dynasty gave her an unfair advantage in the upcoming election; people who automatically knew the right things to wear.
Savannah, her twin, might have fitted into the not-putting-on-weight category except for the fact that Savannah was thin because she didn’t appear to eat, which was different.
And Savannah was always perfectly dressed too but that was for work and the fact that Calum, her husband and a man who never let any part of their lives go to chance, had hired a stylist for her. Said stylist bought a whole wardrobe for Savannah every summer and winter.
Calum was spookily involved in Savannah’s life, unlike most men, Eden thought.
‘Wish I had a stylist,’ Eden had moaned once to Ralphie, her husband.
‘You don’t need a stylist,’ he’d said loyally. ‘You look perfect the way you are.’
Ralphie wouldn’t have noticed if she’d gone to work in her dressing gown but then that was because he utterly loved her. He didn’t see clothes or hairstyles.
‘You’re a total pet,’ said Eden, kissing him on his chin. She was tall but he was taller.
Calum might be good at hiring stylists but Calum was actually shorter than Ralphie and Eden had never seen him pull her sister into a bear hug, the way Ralphie routinely did with her.
‘Ralphie, when you replace your glasses, don’t get rid of the rose-coloured ones, will you?’
