An Eligible Bachelor (7 page)

Today, however, was clear of commitments. Honor breathed a sigh of relief, then looked along the squares of the calendar to the weekend ahead. In big red letters on Saturday was written CHARITY BALL. Her heart sank and rose simultaneously. She couldn’t help feel excited by her first proper social engagement for nearly seven years. She’d been something of a recluse since she’d had Ted, and to be honest, once you got used to not going out, you didn’t miss it. Which was why the prospect of the ball was so terrifying. Once, glittering social occasions had been the norm for her. The rails in her wardrobe had groaned with appropriate outfits. She had at one time suffered from ball fatigue, swearing that she couldn’t face another evening of Buck’s Fizz, chocolate roulade and
insincere toastmasters raffling off trips to the local beauty salon. Those days, however, were long gone.

It was Henty Beresford who insisted she come and join their table. The moment Honor had met Henty at the school gates on Ted’s first day at school the previous September, she’d known she was a kindred spirit. Henty was small and curvaceous and bubbly and spoke like someone out of a Famous Five adventure – ‘golly’ and ‘crumbs’ and ‘crikey’. But her sweet nature was saved from sickliness by an acute observation and a wicked sense of humour. Ted and Henty’s son Walter were as thick as thieves. They looked as if they’d stepped out of a cartoon strip: Walter with his white-blond pudding-bowl hair cut and wide blue eyes, and Ted with a thatch of red curls and freckles that looked as if they had been painted on.

Henty had been gently persuasive at first, then positively begged her.

‘Please! I need someone to have a giggle with. Everyone takes these dos so seriously. And it’s in a really good cause – the children’s holiday farm. They give terminally ill kids and their families a chance for a break they’d never have otherwise.’

The emotional blackmail had clinched it, and Honor had given in, even though the fifty-quid ticket was more than she could really afford. Somehow Henty had sensed that, but she hadn’t patronized Honor by offering to pay for her ticket. She’d ordered two cakes instead – one for her eldest daughter Thea’s fourteenth birthday, in the shape of a sweetheart with ‘Text Me’ written in sugary pink, and one for her motherin-law – which had covered
the fifty pounds. Ted was to stay the night at the Beresfords’, on a camp bed in Walter’s room, and was unfeasibly excited. Honor hoped that the babysitter would cope, but – as Henty reassured her – they had mobiles and were only three miles away, and if anyone was going to cause trouble it was Thea.

Honor had contributed a prize to the auction as well – a bespoke cake done to the bidder’s specification –because everyone who donated a prize had a free advert in the programme and as Henty pointed out it wasn’t often that one had a roomful of potential customers.

‘All these mothers buy their children’s birthday cakes from Tesco, and wouldn’t mind forking out a bit extra for something special.’

As she pulled on her duffel coat, Honor couldn’t help feeling that the ball represented a turning point for her. With the cake business flourishing, her friendship with Henty, and Ted becoming more independent as each day passed, Honor found that after years of self-imposed isolation she was growing in confidence.

All she had to worry about now was what to wear…

As she approached the gates of St Joseph’s, her heart sank. The only other mother waiting was Fleur Gibson, and she’d already seen her, so she couldn’t turn round and go into the post office in order to avoid standing with her. Honor wasn’t one to judge, but she’d taken an instant dislike to Fleur.

Fleur had opened a florist’s in the nearby town of Eldenbury two years ago. After a slow start, Twig was now doing phenomenally, even though it was well known
that it was Millie Cooper who had all the talent, a young girl she’d scooped up from the nearby college who was bursting with flair and imagination. Fleur just did all the deals, all the talking, while Millie sat in a freezing cold room at the back of the shop, hidden from view, creating wonderful bouquets and arrangements that ranged from the exotic to the fantastic. Honor imagined Fleur wafting about, poking the odd gerbera into place and taking all the credit, and couldn’t help feeling it was unfair. But then Millie would never be able to afford to set up on her own. The overheads in Eldenbury were extortionate. She didn’t have the contacts, the social connections. One day, Honor comforted herself, Millie would shoot to fame after being discovered on daytime television and would become the next Paula Pryke. Honor was a firm believer in fairy-tale endings.

She sidled up to the school gates, conscious that she looked less than glamorous in her duffel coat and wellies. Fleur was in faded jeans, a pristine white T-shirt with the Twig logo, and a cream mac, her razored bob perfectly in place and her matt lipstick freshly applied. She always managed to look crisp and chic, even though one would have thought the work of a florist was necessarily grubby.

Fleur gave Honor a tight smile, an insincere ‘hi’, and didn’t even bestow an appraising glance on her outfit – Honor was clearly no competition. The mothers at St Joseph’s were on the whole a sensible lot – jeans and muddy estates were pretty much the order of the day – but there was a small contingent who arrived in their convertibles fully made up and dressed to the nines. And Fleur liked to think of herself as leader of this pack,
setting trends, dictating by example what should be worn, what car should be driven, what diet should be followed and what exercise regime adhered to. She repeatedly boasted that she was a size six, so tiny she had to shop in Gap Kids for her jeans. Not her tops, though, because on top she was a 36DD. She didn’t mind telling anyone that she’d got her tits for her thirty-fifth birthday. Honor was desperate to ask her which birthday she’d had her nose for, because no one was born with a tiny little retroussé button that tilted up slightly at the end. But Fleur wasn’t yet admitting to facial surgery.

Honor and Henty’s friendship had been cemented by an intense hatred of Fleur.

‘She shouldn’t stand too close to fire,’ murmured Henty, ‘Or she might melt.’

Honor and Fleur waited in awkward silence until a bigger crowd had accrued outside the gates and the atmosphere became more relaxed. It was only when Fleur was happy that she had a large and appreciative audience that she dropped her bombshell.

‘Guess what? I delivered a bouquet up to the manor this morning. It seems congratulations are in order.’

Everyone looked at her, waiting for the revelation.

‘Guy and Richenda.’ Fleur held up her ring finger and rubbed it. ‘Wedding bells…’ she hinted, and waited for the reaction. There were gasps of amazement.

‘Seriously?’

‘Wow!’

‘Oh my God!’

Honor frowned.

‘Don’t florists have a Hippocratic oath?’

Fleur looked at Honor blankly.

‘What?’

‘Shouldn’t you keep your clients’ details a secret? Like doctors? I mean, if people know you’re going to blab, they’re hardly going to order a bunch of flowers to send to a secret lover. Are they?’

There was a shocked silence. Fleur smiled frostily.

‘I imagine, as the flowers were sent from the
Daily Post
, that it will be common knowledge soon enough. But thank you for your concern.’

She turned her back pointedly.

‘Now. Only three days to go, girls. Have you all got your outfits?’ This said with the smugness of one with a white silk Armani frock hanging in the wardrobe.

The crowd of mothers closed in around Fleur, managing to exclude both Honor and Henty from their circle. Somehow the word ‘ball’ turned the most sensible female into a gibbering wreck. Nearly everyone from St Joseph’s was going. For the past few weeks, there’d been debates over the best crash diet as they all battled in vain to drop a dress size. The local gym saw its subscription rate flourish; the lanes were littered with joggers. The day spa at Barton Court was fully booked for inch-losing seaweed wraps and St Tropez tans.

Honor knew that she was, as usual, going to have to make do. She thought back with irony to all the dresses that used to hang in her wardrobe: some barely worn, one or two never worn, all carefully wrapped in dry-cleaning bags and hung in length order. She’d sold them all to a ‘dress exchange’ in Bath. It was scandalous really, what she had received in return – the full amount wouldn’t
have covered the price of one of the outfits. But to a jobless, homeless girl about to give birth, it was the deposit she needed to rent the tiny cottage she’d found in Eversleigh.

She looked down to see that Henty’s little face was wrinkled in anxiety.

‘I still haven’t found a dress,’ she confessed. ‘Charles was supposed to take me to Liberty to choose something but he hasn’t had time.’

Honor frowned. From what she knew of Charles, she was quite sure he had plenty of time. He just wasn’t interested in his wife, which was verging on the criminal, as Henty was quite the squidgiest, funniest, most adorable little creature that walked the earth and Charles was a smug, self-satisfied pig. She didn’t say that to Henty, though.

‘Let’s have a look through what you’ve got.’

‘Nothing! Absolutely nothing!’ squeaked Henty.

‘You’d be amazed. You just need an objective eye and a bit of imagination.’

Henty didn’t look convinced, but she needed no excuse for a bit of girly fun and the opportunity for someone to share a glass of white wine with. Ted and Walter were also delighted to have an impromptu play together, and piled into the back seat of Henty’s Discovery. Honor leaped into the front, and Henty put on Thea’s Pink CD. All the way back to the Beresfords’ farm they sang ‘Get This Party Started’.

There was one long plain black velvet dress in Henty’s wardrobe that fitted.

‘But it’s so boring,’ she wailed. ‘I want to look sexy, not as if I’ve just buried my husband.’

Honor managed to stop herself from saying that really would be something to celebrate.

‘Pass me the scissors,’ she commanded, then proceeded to hack at the skirt until the hemline hung asymmetrically from mid thigh to ankle. Then she marched across the corridor to the bedroom that Thea and her younger sister, twelve-year-old Lily, shared. It was a treasure trove of pink girliness. The girls lay on their beds texting and glaring at Honor balefully as she rummaged around.

Eventually she pulled out a hot-pink feather boa from under Lily’s bed.

‘Hey!’ chorused the girls in protest.

‘Can you honestly, honestly tell me that you wear this?’ demanded Honor, and neither of the girls had the nerve to say they did.

Quarter of an hour later, the boa was stitched round the hem.

‘Are you sure I don’t look like Lisa Riley?’ asked Henty anxiously.

‘You look gorgeous,’ assured Honor. ‘Go into Cheltenham tomorrow. Get yourself some killer strappy shoes and some long black evening gloves. And book yourself an up-do at the hairdresser’s.’

Henty threw her arms round her.

‘You’re a life-saver,’ she cried. ‘We need a massive glass of wine. And why don’t you stay for supper?’

When Charles walked in at seven o’clock, he found Henty, Honor, Thea and Lily practising dance moves in the kitchen, Ted and Walter taking the piss out of them behind their backs, and his oldest son Robin slugging the wine out of the second bottle that had been
opened. And the potatoes stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.

‘The potatoes are burnt,’ he complained.

‘Shut up, you old fart,’ sang Henty, who was trying to do the splits but ended up falling in the dog’s basket.

When Honor got home that evening, she put Ted to bed, keenly aware that they hadn’t done his spellings but promising herself that they could squeeze it in if she got him up ten minutes earlier. Then she sat on her bed, immersed in the gloom that comes from having a drink too early in the evening and not carrying on. Which is always worse if you find yourself on your own.

‘Be positive,’ she told herself, and pulled back the chintzy curtain that hung in front of the rail she’d inexpertly put up in an alcove to house what remained of her clothes. Underneath were neatly stacked old shoe-boxes that she’d covered in pretty wrapping paper, which held her accessories. Taking a deep breath, she started to rifle through.

Half an hour later, she appraised herself in the mirror and decided that, although she needed to double-check her appearance in the cold light of day and when she was sober, she hadn’t done a bad job.

She’d unearthed a naughty black silk corset, tied with ribbons up the back, that she’d bought from an exquisite underwear shop in Paris at great expense. She’d kept it because she could hardly flog off her underwear, and of all the items in her wardrobe she loved this the most – the tiny, handsewn buttonholes, the discreet wiring and boning that gave her a minute waist and an impressive cleavage.

Round her waist she draped a black and white silk shawl. It had belonged to her grandmother, so once again she hadn’t been able to part with it. She knotted it on one hip like a pareo, and the heavily tasselled silk hung beautifully. Then she slung on half a dozen pearl necklaces that she’d harboured from various charity shops: all different lengths and sizes. All she would have to buy was some cobwebby tights and false eyelashes. With some dramatic eye make-up and her short dark hair spiked, she’d look…

Well, different.

The one thing she wouldn’t have to worry about was someone else turning up in the same outfit.

‘Oh my God!’ breathed Henty on Saturday night when Honor and Ted turned up. ‘You look amazing! Like a punk princess.’

‘You look beautiful too.’ Honor gave her a hug.

Henty did indeed look stunning. The hairdresser had piled her dark curls on top of her head in an elegant updo, and she’d added some of Thea’s dangly earrings and some deep red lipstick.

Charles was draped languidly in a chair in the sitting room in his dinner shirt and braces, smoking a cigarette. He looked up as the girls trooped in.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You look fantastic. You see,’ he added to Henty, ‘look what you can achieve when you make a bit of an effort. There’s no reason to let yourself go.’