9
ROSIE
Aunt Lucinda was so unlike their mother that it was hard to believe she and Sarah had been sisters. Rosie and Nessa had never even met Lucinda until after their mother had died because she’d been living in Dubai and could never find the time or the spare cash to come home for a visit, until it was too late. But a couple of months after their mother died, Lucinda had arrived in dark glasses and bare-legged, deeply tanned. Now her only sister was gone, she had decided to move close by and keep an eye on the girls. ‘It’s what your mother would have wanted,’ she said. ‘She would be so happy to know that I am here to guide you both into adulthood.’
Lucinda found a small apartment in Sandycove and acquired a small sports car, the roof off in all weathers, sunglasses on, bringing a certain Riviera élan to the Irish coast. She told them stories about Dubai and how a friend of hers had fried an egg on the bonnet of her VW Beetle or the wild parties she attended. Lucinda had a particular smile which had quite the effect on members of the male persuasion, a kind of squint and a flexing of her cheeks, along with a glint of teeth, but she performed it so regularly, it had long lost its efficacy. After joining the local sailing club and the Sandycove wine society, she would tell the girls which men she had her eye on. ‘This week, it’s Roger,’ she said. ‘Newly divorced, solvent, no sense of humour. It’s very obvious why his wife left but he’ll do for now.’ Another man she snared was the newly widowed Gerald Peacock and took on running his house, bringing his dead wife’s Yorkies to the grooming parlour or picking up his suits from the dry-cleaners. However, after a year or so, she was back in her apartment. One incident threatened to become quite the scandal when Lucinda and her pals were dancing to ‘I Will Survive’ at a party in a big house in Sandycove and Lucinda was caught with her arms around Leo Devine, both singing lustily. His wife, Pauline, had marched up and pushed off Lucinda, causing her to fall backwards into some plastic garden chairs, the music suddenly halted. ‘I wouldn’t touch your husband with a bargepole,’ Lucinda had shouted. ‘Give me some credit!’
After all that, Lucinda declared she was going to give romance a miss for a while and even though Pauline Devine knocked on her door with a bunch of chrysanthemums and a bottle of home-made wine and apologised, the wind in Lucinda’s sails had died and she was in the doldrums. That was years ago now and Lucinda had instead decided to exert all her energies on finding good matches for her nieces. ‘Rosie and Vanessa are my focus now,’ she’d declared.
Lucinda had soon eyed Benji and Laurence O’Toole, two lumps of lads, whose parents owned the Sandycove golf course next door to the hotel. Benji stalked about in a vest showing off his grotesque muscles, his skin streaky with fake tan. Laurence was younger and a little gawkier, not having yet discovered the delights of steroids and protein powders. He and Rosie would sometimes meet when out and about with their friends in the village and Laurence would share stories about his sibling. ‘Benji loves himself so much,’ Laurence told her. ‘He cracked an egg straight in his mouth.’
‘Why on earth would he do that?’
‘To get bigger,’ explained Laurence.
‘He’s crazy…’
Laurence nodded. ‘He shaved his chest for better aerodynamics. Like a plane.’
Rosie laughed. ‘Is he going to take off? Or just his ego?’
‘His ego, definitely.’
But Laurence fell down that slippery slope of gym worship and soon he too was – Rosie presumed – cracking eggs straight into his mouth. And along the way, Lucinda’s dream came true and Laurence and Nessa announced they were getting married. Their wedding was held in the golf club – ‘More room,’ Lucinda said, having appointed herself wedding planner. ‘And more modern.’ She insisted on hiring a local DJ to play on repeat what she called her ‘battle cry’, ‘I Will Survive’, and because she had put so much work into it all, Nessa didn’t feel she could complain. Anyway, she was six months pregnant and spent her wedding avoiding the champagne and only managing to eat a couple of the cucumber sandwiches.
Lucinda then turned her focus on Rosie, even going so far as to have a spreadsheet of the eligible men from the village, rating them on careers, family money, financial potential, and even looks.
‘I’m being practical,’ insisted Lucinda. ‘You need a modicum of good looks. Not too many, which makes them conceited like Benji. And not too few which might make them either resentful or angry.’
Rosie took it all with a pinch of salt, refusing to look at the spreadsheet, too consumed by running the hotel and still thinking of Patrick, who had so cruelly and callously dumped her in Dublin Airport. Lucinda was the only member of her family who’d met him and Rosie had assumed she would be delighted to meet such a handsome and lovely young man, but Lucinda had seemed to take an instant dislike to him. Anyway, in the end, it didn’t matter because two days later he was gone to Boston and he and Rosie were over.
‘Yoo-hoo!’ Lucinda clip-clopped into the office, her tiny, unpleasant dog under her armpit. Pedro was piranha in dog form. He may have been the size of a sewer rat but he had the heart of a Rottweiler. He flicked his evil little eyes from Rosie to Grace, teeth bared, as though daring them to come closer.
‘Girls,’ said Lucinda, ‘how are we all?’
Grace barely looked up. ‘Hello, Lucinda,’ she said. ‘It’s the wedding weekend. The bride has just arrived.’
Lucinda didn’t approve of Grace because she only liked people who were slavishly sycophantic and Grace refused to show anything but a polite interest.
‘Rosie, it’s summer, don’t you think you should be in smart separates and not that navy skirt suit? It’s so ageing.’ Lucinda gestured to her apricot-coloured trousers and floral blouse which looked as though it had a previous life as a pair of curtains in the 1980s. ‘Smart but weather appropriate. I learned these tricks when I lived in Doobs.’
‘Doobs, Lucinda?’ asked Grace.
‘Dubai, Grace,’ said Lucinda. ‘It’s a city in the United Arab Emirates.’
‘I didn’t know you once lived there,’ said Grace. ‘You’ve never mentioned it before.’ She gazed at Lucinda, unblinkingly.
Lucinda ignored her. ‘What are you wearing, Grace? Show me?’
Grace managed to stand up with her eyes still locked on her screen and her fingers not leaving her keyboard. ‘Kaftan,’ she said, out of the corner of her mouth. ‘It’s too hot for anything else.’
‘I think a kaftan might be a bridge too far,’ said Lucinda, looking straight at Grace, equally unblinkingly. ‘I think one can only wear a kaftan if you are very slim. Otherwise, you look like you don’t care and have given up.’
‘I have given up something and that’s giving two fecks about what people think of me,’ said Grace. ‘I haven’t given up eating though. It’s my favourite thing.’ She smiled sweetly at Lucinda. ‘What have you given up? Being nice?’
Lucinda looked confused as she always did when she was lost for words, as though she hadn’t heard or quite understood what had been said. ‘Pedro has an appointment at the spa,’ she said. ‘He’s having his nails done. They are too scratchy-scratchy, aren’t they, Pedro?’ She kissed the top of his head. ‘Well, bye, Rosie.’ She turned to go. ‘Bye, Grace.’ An icy note in her voice, she left, and they heard her car start into life, just as another car rolled in over the gravel.
Grace hopped up to look out of the window. ‘It’s the groom!’ she said. ‘We have a wedding!’
