Knowing their place was a lesson that had been drummed into Alice and Vera so harshly that no stain remover would ever eradicate it.
‘Vera and Alice, hello! How lovely to see you,’ said a gentle voice.
It was Gloria Cooper, Lillian Cooper’s sister-in-law, walking slowly in through the main barn door on her cane, a peony pink silk wrap around her narrow shoulders and stooped figure.
‘Gloria,’ they both said guiltily.
‘We were only—’ began Alice.
‘We didn’t mean—’ began Vera simultaneously.
‘Are you coming into the party?’ said Gloria, leaning in to give them each a gentle kiss on the cheek.
‘No, merciful hour, we’re not invited,’ said Alice, shocked.
‘It’s only that Alice’s little granddaughter, Solange, would love an autograph if there’s anyone famous, that we’re here at all.’
‘Well come in, then,’ said Gloria gently. ‘It’s Lou’s party. Her fiftieth, and she’d be delighted to see you both there.’
‘Lou? I thought it was something for Toni and Oliver. That’s what everyone says ... No, we couldn’t come in,’ squeaked Alice.
‘Nonsense, you must,’ said Gloria firmly. ‘Who helped out at the water station during the charity half-marathon for cancer that was in honour of Lou’s best friend, Mim Kerrigan? You both did. Lou said she knew she’d mistakenly leave out some of the people she meant to invite to this party and that I was to keep an eye out for anyone she had forgotten. She’ll be devastated if you don’t come in.’
‘But—’ protested Vera.
Gloria was strong for such a frail-looking old lady. She swept the two of them along with her, past Jess the baker and the bridge ladies who had decided that they might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb and were ordering cocktails in jam jars and plates of nibbles. Gloria smiled sweetly at the bridge ladies but did not invite Jess in. Having been the subject of much gossip many years ago, Gloria didn’t like it. Back in the old days when Bob, Gloria and Lillian were young, there had been plenty of gossip and Jess’s mother had been keen to spread it.
Gloria had been raised to forgive her enemies, but she remembered their names.
Lou waited nervously for the first guests, touching her hair self-consciously. She and Emily had been to the hairdresser earlier. Her hair was blow-dried so that it looked elegant and had no fly-away hairs fluttering in front of her eyes. Emily, whose own long dark hair had been curled into glossy waves and who wore a fitted dress with a skater skirt, had insisted that her mother wear mascara. Emily was determined to make her darling mum make the absolute best of those beautiful big dark eyes and had even taken out her eyelash curler to start the process off properly.
‘It’s like an instrument of torture,’ protested Lou.
‘But it curls them up beautifully,’ said Emily, concentrating hard as she curled her mother’s lashes. ‘You have such long lashes but they’re straight. Now, mascara and look: aren’t you gorgeous.’
Lou blinked at herself in the mirror and smiled. What was gorgeous was that she had a daughter who loved her enough to help her tonight. That was her gift. It even surpassed the little magnolia tree Emily had given her.
‘I thought we could plant it in the garden close to where you sit for your morning reset time,’ Emily had said proudly. ‘Mim had a magnolia tree, and you can think of her and me when you sit in the morning.’
Emily had also got a huge card on which she’d written a beautiful note telling how much she adored her mother.
‘I don’t know who I’d be without you, Mum,’ it finished. ‘Have a wonderful day: you deserve all the love in the world, love Emily.’
There was also a keyring with an obsidian stone: ‘To protect against mean people,’ Emily had said happily, and a rock salt lamp for the top of her mother’s bookcase where she kept her self-help books.
‘Thank you, darling,’ Lou had said tearfully.
Emily’s gifts were the epitome of thoughtfulness and thinking of them made Lou smile now as she saw the first few people start to come in, her aunt Gloria looking elegant and talking to two other women. She took a deep breath and prepared to mingle.
When it was your party, you were supposed to sparkle, mingle happily and have in-depth conversations with all the people you hadn’t seen for ages. In reality, Lou felt, when it was your party, you worried that the group of friends from your book club would be horrified by the lack of bookiness of your friends from school. The school friends would be talking about that holiday to the Canaries where strange men were snogged senseless on the dance floor and the only book talk would be about how someone had once memorably tried to recreate the goldfish scene from Shirley Conran’s fabulous book,Lace. And then there was the issue of whether people would think she and Ned were mean as hell for not paying for a free bar for the whole night. Toni had offered to foot the bar bill, but Lou simply couldn’t accept such generosity, it was far too much – but maybe she should have? Lillian had warned her it would look cheap, hadn’t approved of the barn as a venue at all actually and maybe she was right...
Breathe in for six, hold for three, out for nine.
Lou took a moment to check her spiralling thoughts. She reminded herself that Ned had said that light beer and jugs of the barn’s classic fruity wine punch was perfect, and the barn’s head barman had agreed.
‘Free bars are a mistake,’ he advised with the air of one who had had to haul out far too many horizontal guests who’d over-availed of free bars. ‘Light beer and the punch, which is quite weak, are the perfect choice.’
Her mother was already installed in a corner of the barn with a few of her cronies and even if Lillian would have preferred a more salubrious setting where expensive wine was available she seemed fine, now. They had plenty of jam jars of cocktails on the table, as well as boards with the barn’s special sourdough and baba ganoush, and she had waved regally at Lou in a way that suggested she was happy. Lillian had a special code for when she wanted rescuing from what she called ‘art groupies’. The signal was a little wave and then she’d blow a kiss at Lou. So far, her mother had not blown any kisses her way, but Lou knew it would happen. Lillian found people overwhelming sometimes.
