Honeycote (13 page)

‘We just want a few miracles worked, that’s all. We’ve got a party tonight.’ Lucy drew Mandy forward, who didn’t like to protest. ‘Mandy wanted a hot oil treatment – ’

‘No worries.’ Wendy spent all her time between clients watching Australian soaps in the kitchenette. She pulled a fiver out of the drawer and waved it at her assistant. ‘Nip over to the chemists, would you, Trish?’

Impressed by the service, Mandy resigned herself to the fact that a conditioning pack with blow-dry couldn’t really do her any damage, and she could always wash it again before tonight if the worst came to the worst.

Half an hour later, she realized she’d completely underestimated Wendy’s talents. Lucy’s hair was coaxed, teased and backcombed into a sophisticated and elegant chignon, with not a pin showing. Sophie’s unmanageable waves were tonged and waxed and pinned on top of her head into a riot of tumbling curls that gave her that just fallen out of bed look. Georgina’s girlish bob was snipped into chic precision that sent her into gales of delighted laughter as it added two years to her. And once Mandy’s treatment had been rinsed off by the stolid Trish, Wendy painstakingly dried it segment by segment until it hung dead straight and shining like a gleaming mahogany table top.

The real shock came when it was time to pay: it was less than a tenner each. Mandy thought of the salon her mother dragged her to in Solihull, all white marble and potted plants and expensive lighting. The trendy proprietor, with his goatee beard and pierced eyebrow, wouldn’t pick up a pair of scissors for less than fifty quid.

The life she’d been leading up till now was clearly just one big rip-off. And if she hadn’t been to the Liddiards’, she could have gone through the rest of her life thinking you had to pay to get what you wanted.

On the way home, Lucy opened her window to adjust the wing mirror – there was a wire loose; it kept going wonky – and everyone shrieked. They’d all been sitting still as statues.

‘Shut the window, mum!’ screeched Georgina.

‘Sorry!’ Lucy grinned and turned round to look. ‘You’re all right: not a hair out of place. I’ve just got to stop for petrol.’

Even the garage was antiquated; OK, it was self-service, but the pumps were ancient and you could hear the numbers clunk as the clock went round.

‘Get some chocolate!’ shouted Georgina as Lucy went into-pay, but she didn’t hear.

‘I’ll go,’ offered Mandy, and scrambled out of the car.

Inside, Lucy was waiting by the counter while the cashier flicked through the tray of accounts to find the Liddiard file. She drew it out, then looked a little embarrassed.

‘I’m ever so sorry, Mrs Liddiard. You’ll have to pay cash…’

In defence of this treasonable statement she held up their account. A yellow Post-It had been stuck firmly and defiantly on the front, and emblazoned in red writing was ‘Cash until further notice’. Lucy peered rather puzzled at the note, then smiled reassuringly at the mortified assistant.

‘Oh God. Sorry, Linda. Mickey must have forgotten to drop the cheque in. Honestly…’

Linda, unconvinced but wanting to be, smiled. She’d doubted Lucy would make a fuss, but somehow that made it worse. Linda hated anything to do with money. Now she was just relieved that this wasn’t going to be an issue. Lucy picked up her handbag to find the cash.

‘Linda, I’m so sorry – I’ve only got three quid but I’ve put fifteen in.’ Lucy looked up, stricken. ‘Shall I leave you my wedding ring? Isn’t that what people do at petrol stations?’

Obviously this was meant as a joke. But privately Linda thought of saying no, she’d better not leave it, because the boss would have no hesitation in selling it to cover what the Liddiards owed. Mickey was fast becoming the county’s most notorious bad payer. She did her best to smile again, inwardly panicking. She wasn’t sure what to do. If she called the boss down, she knew he’d tell Mrs Liddiard straight out that they had sent no less than four final demands to the brewery. Linda knew Lucy didn’t have an inkling and would be horrified if she knew the truth. And she wanted to protect her. People always did.

Suddenly a clear voice rang out.

‘Here. Have this. Dad sent me tons of cash for the holidays. You can give it me back when we get to Honeycote.’

Lucy turned to see Mandy holding out a twenty-pound note. Thankful that she was to save Linda any embarrassment, she fell upon it. She had no qualms about borrowing money for what would in effect be scarcely half an hour.

‘Mandy – you’re an angel.’

She handed Linda the note, who hastily scrabbled for change and handed it over, relieved to have avoided any sort of confrontation. Lucy smiled at Mandy, who was choosing chocolate bars.

‘Don’t let me forget I owe you. I’ve got a head like a sieve.’

‘I won’t.’

Mandy handed over another fiver for the sweets she had decided upon. As she waited for her change, her eyes fell on the Liddiard account. Unlike Lucy, she scrutinized the figures. And the dates. They hadn’t paid a penny for three months. And they owed the garage close to a thousand pounds. Mandy frowned to herself. Twice in one day. Lucy seemed oblivious, but to Mandy’s sharp little mind, something was up.

Sophie sat in the car and prayed to God for the willpower not to eat any chocolate. She’d been good all day – just a banana for breakfast and a piece of toast and Marmite for lunch – and lying flat on the bed this morning, her hip bones had definitely felt sharper. She was determined not to eat anything before the dance, except maybe a glass of milk to line her stomach, otherwise she’d never be able to pour herself into her dress.

The dress. The very thought of it filled her tummy with butterflies. Even now she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to wear it. But there was no alternative; she had absolutely nothing else remotely suitable to wear and, besides, no way was Mandy going to let her chicken out. She knew she looked stunning in it: her reflection, strange and unfamiliar, had told her she did when she’d tried it on. Mandy, who was not one to pay false compliments, had been genuinely thrilled by her transformation; and Georgina’s jaw had dropped open in scandalized admiration as Sophie stood, shy and self-conscious, in the middle of the changing room. But after years of hiding behind loose shirts and baggy sweaters it was going to take a mountain of self-confidence to go through with this change of image. What would everyone think? Most important, what would Ned Walsh think?

For he was definitely going to be there. She’d double-checked nonchalantly with Patrick earlier. And he was going to be sitting at their table. She hadn’t dared ask Patrick to sit her next to Ned. Not that Patrick would have teased her, for he thought the world of Sophie and took her very seriously, unlike most older brothers. But once she had expressed a public interest, however slight, she could no longer deny her feelings to herself.

Really, it was quite weird the way things were turning out. She and Ned had grown up together, as the outer reaches of his father’s farm lay snugly alongside the boundary of Honeycote House. He was an only child, and with both parents busy on the farm he’d been saved from a solitary existence when the Liddiards had informally adopted him as an honorary brother. None of them ever had to ask plaintively if Ned could stay for tea, as Lucy unquestioningly fed him if he was there. And if at the end of a long day’s intensive playing Ned had still not been collected by one or other of his parents, he would be thrown with the rest of the Liddiards into the huge roll-top bath with its claw feet and then into Patrick’s top bunk. He and Sophie had been led out on chubby ponies, wrestled in piles of dried leaves in their anoraks and mittens, purloined peanuts at their parents’ respective cocktail parties and giggled at the back of midnight mass together, warmed by the potency of the punch they’d been allowed.

Sophie could put her finger on the moment when her feelings for Ned had changed. It was at the last point-to-point of the season, which had been unexpectedly cold. She had been wearing her full-length waxed coat, standing with some friends outside the beer tent, when Ned, heartily underdressed in a tattersall shirt and yellow cords, had bounded up to her and insinuated his way into her coat in a mock attempt to shelter from the bitter wind. It was a light-hearted gesture: even Ned’s girlfriend at the time was quite unthreatened by it, as everyone knew Ned and Sophie were if not quite like brother and sister, then at least cousins.

But there was a moment when Ned’s arms clasped themselves around her waist and she felt his broad chest against hers, and Sophie found herself suffused with a hot, sweet heat from top to toe. Fleetingly their eyes had met, then suddenly Ned had released her, scuttling back to his girlfriend’s side, and she’d felt cold, empty and rather desolate.

They’d hardly seen each other at all that summer, but just before she went back for the autumn term, he and his family had come over for Sunday lunch. Whereas once they might have slipped off together for a ride, or a walk, or to watch the
EastEnders
omnibus, Ned seemed reluctant to leave the table, preferring to sit with his father and Mickey and Patrick, drinking red wine, talking and laughing in very loud voices. Sophie had wandered round the house in a burning torment, not knowing why she was so miserable or what she wanted, and bewildered by the image she had in her head: of Ned sitting on the squashy sofa in the snug with her on his lap, dropping warm, affectionate kisses on her neck. She had ended up falling asleep on that very sofa, then woken scarlet with shame and embarrassment at the turn these thoughts had taken in her dreams. Since then she’d tried to convince herself that it was just her age and that Ned was obviously the object of her fantasies as he was the only male she really knew. Gradually, as the days of term slipped into weeks, she’d managed to suppress the memory and reincarnate the image of Ned as a boisterous and brotherly figure.

But as the dance tonight loomed, Sophie couldn’t pretend to herself that Ned’s reaction was not the single most important one. Even if every other guest jumped up and burst into spontaneous and admiring applause on her entrance, if Ned was left untouched it would all be for nothing. Every now and then her mind would whirr like a camera on automatic drive and a succession of shots would torment her: Ned’s face, normally merry and smiling, frozen in horror, disgust, ridicule or disbelief.

The thought made her feel quite sick; sick enough to banish any desire for chocolate. Which solved the immediate problem at least. When Mandy emerged from the garage with two Flakes, a KitKat and a bar of Fruit and Nut, she couldn’t face a single bite.

Ned Walsh was Patrick’s lifeline; the only other male close to his own age in a thirty-mile radius who still lived at home, or so it seemed. He had even less academic prowess than Patrick, but lived safe in the knowledge that he was going to inherit a substantial slice of the county. Ned sometimes wondered if this was a curse rather than a blessing as it left him little choice as to his future. Lacking the qualifications to get on to even the most mediocre of agricultural courses – though his father would only have considered Cirencester – Ned was now learning how to preserve his inheritance hands-on.

The physical demands of labouring on a thousand-acre mixed farm were Ned’s saving grace, for were he not involved in strenuous toil from dawn till dusk, his five foot five frame would have given him more than a passing resemblance to Humpty Dumpty. Instead, his shoulders were magnificently broad and his stomach, despite gargantuan fry-ups, was hard. A thatch of strawberry blond hair topped a perpetually ruddy face, his twinkling eyes were fringed with ridiculously long lashes and a trio of dimples lurked one either side of a continuous smile and one in the midst of a very pronounced chin. Happy-go-lucky and good-natured, Ned had worked out a simple equation in life: to work incredibly hard, then to go out and have a proportionate amount of fun, which basically meant drinking as much beer as possible, maybe getting lucky with a girl and definitely being sick at the end of the night. This formula looked set to continue until such time as he chose a particular girl to share his inheritance and cook his breakfasts, whereupon the beer drinking would continue, getting lucky with girls would stop and he would be sick less frequently and more surreptitiously.

Ned was particularly looking forward to the bash this evening. He and Patrick had been press-ganged on to the committee by the good ladies of the parish in order to liven up the proceedings. Tonight they had got to the Gainsborough Hotel early, to help set out the room and do the seating plan.

He and Patrick had just finished putting jet-propelled balloons at each place setting. Designed to whizz around the room until finally deflated, they were the committee’s attempt to deflect their notoriously high-spirited guests from starting a food fight. Whether the balloons would provide a suitable alternative was yet to be seen. Ned thought not: there was nothing more satisfying than catching someone’s lapel with a stodgy serving of duchesse potato.

The Gainsborough had put up with this rumbustious behaviour for years. Its function room was huge, tattered and fading, thus able to withstand the most extrovert of behaviour. The food was mediocre but cheap and the dance floor was big and sported a huge glitter ball. And as the whole affair was not about gastronomy, but bopping till you dropped (as the cheesy resident DJ liked to put it), it was the ideal venue.

Patrick was standing in front of the table the Liddiards had reserved. It seated twelve and Patrick frowned as he shuffled a batch of handwritten place cards. It was going to be a nightmare, working out who to put where, especially as there were more women than men. And tempting though it was, he didn’t dare sit himself near Kay: he wasn’t yet sure how she was going to react. He was pretty confident he had hooked her, but until he’d worked out the next move it was best to keep her at arm’s length. With both his father and Lawrence at the table, he needed to play safe.

Ned sauntered over as Patrick started experimenting with the cards on the table.

‘Can’t everyone just sit where they want?’