Melissa gave a tinkling laugh. “You know what? It’s crazy, my girlfriends all think I’m insane for being here instead of there, but I told them, you know what? I have to meet Rhodes’s family, I just have to, and there were reasons—well!” She smiled, and leaned forward to finish her drink.
“How wonderful,” Mandana said automatically.
“So Elle, Rhodes tells me you work at a publishing house,” Melissa said, smiling in a friendly way. “That’s so fascinating! What do you do there?”
Elle thought back to the book she’d been editing that evening,
Romance with a Soldier of Rome,
a time-slip erotica novel. Time-slip erotica novels were all the rage at the moment. “Well, I started there as a secretary, and I’m now an editor,” she said.
“Wow,” Melissa said. “That is amazing. So, you edit the books? What does that mean?”
Elle said, “Oh, I’m just a junior, it doesn’t mean very much. It’s our romance list. Doctors and nurses, sheikhs and girls lost abroad, Regency heroines and dashing dukes. All that. A couple of werewolves, sometimes.”
“Romance!” Melissa laughed. “Oh, wow.” Then she realized Elle was serious, and her expression changed. “That must be fascinating.”
Yes, fascinating,
Elle wanted to say.
I spent two hours on the phone to Regina Jordan listening to him whinge about sales and how he wasn’t going to change a scene in which a girl is chained up in a Gothic dungeon for two weeks and repeatedly has sex with the sinister Duke yet orgasms every time.
“What do you read in your spare time, then?” Melissa asked.
Elle didn’t want to say that she was currently rereading
I Capture the Castle
for the seventh time. “Oh, manuscripts,” she said.
“Elle’s done very well,” her father said, as the drinks arrived. “I’m very proud of her.”
“So am I,” said her mother softly, beside her, and Elle felt a pain in her chest. “They’ve promoted her, she’s obviously very good.”
Elle picked up her drink. “Not really,” she said, not wanting
to sound rude but also not wanting to look like a vain bitch. “They made me junior editor last year, just so they could offload some work. My friend Libby was offered it but she left, so they gave it to me. I’ve been there over three years, they sort of had to.”
“Libby?” Rhodes, who had been looking bored throughout this exchange, sat up. “What, that girl I met? You… lived with her, something like that?”
“I didn’t live with her, but yes, the one you met.”
“Where’d she go?”
“She’s gone to work for Eyre and Alcock, it’s a literary imprint at a massive publisher’s. Part of Bookprint.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Mandana said. “Well, Libby, I only met her once or twice, but you could tell she was a very ambitious girl.” She said this as if it weren’t a good thing. Elle wondered again why you never heard men described as being “very ambitious” in a pejorative way. “Well, it’s great, love. How’s Karen?”
Rhodes clinked his glass. “Actually—hurr.” He coughed. “We’ve got an announcement.”
John and Mandana looked up, as Melissa raised the left hand she’d been hiding in her lap.
“We’re engaged!” she said. “Look!” She flashed a diamond at them. It sparkled in the dark bar, along with her teeth.
“Oh!” Mandana said, leaping up. “That’s—well, that’s wonderful!” She gave her son a clumsy hug. “And Melissa, welcome! Oh, welcome to the family.”
As she was hugging Melissa, who was holding her as much at arm’s length as she could, Elle caught her father looking at Mandana, and almost blanched.
My God. He really loathes her,
she thought. Elle bit her lip, then stood up.
“Congratulations,” she said, hugging Melissa. “That’s such
great news. I’m—so happy for you.” She patted Rhodes’s shoulder. “Your diamond is so beautiful. And I love silver.”
There was a shocked pause. “It’s
platinum,
” Melissa said. “From Tiffany. Rhodes chose it all by himself!”
Rhodes shrugged, his eyes half closed, and then he turned to Melissa, and kissed her briefly on the cheek.
“Well,” John said, as they all sat down. “This is great news. Have you set a date?”
Melissa and Rhodes looked at each other and laughed, in that infuriating way couples have when they want to impart what they think is fascinating news. “Well, yes, we have!” Melissa said. “Next autumn! Maybe in September, my birthday’s in October and I definitely want to get married before I’m thirty!” She stopped, and looked at Rhodes. “Shall I ask her?”
“Go on.” Rhodes smiled at her, and Elle nearly reared back in shock, she hadn’t seen her brother smile since the mid-eighties.
Melissa said breathlessly, “Elle, I would love it if you’d be my… bridesmaid?”
“Me?” Elle said, trying to sound delighted. “I’d—wow, I’d love to!”
Melissa clapped her hands. “Really? Oh, gosh, that’s so great. I really felt it was important to have Rhodes’s family involved too, and I want to get to know you better, you’re Rhodes’s sister!” Elle opened her mouth, but Melissa went on, “My best girlfriends are Hayley and Darcy and they’re going to be my other bridesmaids along with my sister Francie, which is four, I know it’s not that many for a bridal party, but I just really don’t want it to be too confusing for the guests, and I can’t wait for you all to meet!”
Elle was touched. “That’s so sweet, Melissa,” she said. “How exciting!”
“Yes!” Melissa said. “And I hope you’ll come over for the
bachelorette party, it’s going to be so much fun! Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Um—” Elle was blindsided. “I—no, I don’t.”
“Elle doesn’t have time for a boyfriend, do you, Elle?” John said, and Elle realized there was pride in his voice. “She’s a Career Woman.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Dad,” Elle said. “They don’t make you sign an agreement at the Career Women’s Coven, you know.”
“OK. That’s OK,” said Melissa, ignoring this exchange. “But hey, maybe you’ll meet someone before the wedding!”
“Hey!” Elle said, holding up crossed fingers. “Maybe I will!” She stared into her martini glass. “Um… I might get another one of these, actually.”
A waiter shimmered into place beside her and took their order again. Mandana said suddenly, “Rhodes, love—where’s the wedding going to be?”
Melissa and Rhodes looked at each other and clasped hands again.
“Well, we’re moving back to the UK after Christmas,” Rhodes said. “I’m being relocated, I don’t know how long for.”
“Which means it’s going to be
so great
you’re here to help me!” Melissa turned to Elle.
“Oh,” said Elle. “Yes!”
“Anyway, we want to get married in the States, so we get the chance to go back and see our friends and family,” said Melissa. “My father has a place in upstate New York. It’s near Woodstock, it’s got beautiful gardens, right next to an old coaching inn. We’ll put a rose bower up at the bottom of the lawn, by the stream, and we’ll have the ceremony there. It’s
very
romantic.”
Elle’s mother sat back against the seat. “Oh.”
“‘Oh’?” said Rhodes, turning to her aggressively. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Don’t be rude to her,” Elle was quick to defend. She hated the way Rhodes would side with Dad, act like that to Mum. They were so similar, they looked the same; so unapproachable, convinced of their own rightness, with a definite place in the world, never wrong.
Mandana was twisting her small, shiny paper napkin into a spiral between her fingers. Her big brown eyes were sunken smudges in her pale face.
Elle’s father crossed his arms and turned to Mandana. “Go on. Tell them.” It was the first time he’d directly addressed his ex-wife since Elle had arrived.
“Tell us what?” Melissa smiled.
Elle felt an oiling trickle of discomfort, like sweat rolling down the back of her neck. Something was wrong. She didn’t know what. The alcohol rippled on her empty stomach. This was so unnatural, all of it, the four of them were never together as adults, and these words like family, engagement, bridesmaid, romantic—the Bee family didn’t use them. They didn’t do this kind of stuff.
Mandana swallowed. “I—oh, God. Love—Rhodes—look. I—can’t come.”
“What?” Rhodes said sharply. “What do you mean, you
can’t come
?”
John sat back against the banquette. “Go on. Tell them, then,” he said, with something like satisfaction in his voice.
“I can’t come… if the wedding’s… in…” Mandana looked up, her eyes flicking from her ex-husband to her son, her thin fingers wrestling in her lap. She cleared her throat. “I can’t come if the wedding’s in the States. I’m not allowed back there.”
Melissa’s eyes grew huge and tendons appeared on the sides of her neck. She made a sound in her throat. “Mmm?”
Mandana glanced imploringly at her ex-husband. “Ah—well, when I was—when I was twenty-five, I was in California.
In Haight-Ashbury. I got—ah.” Her voice was so soft Elle could hardly hear her. “I was arrested. For dealing… for dealing pot. Just pot, a tiny bit, nothing else,” she said, pleading. “I was convicted. Given a fine. I got a record. But my visa had expired too, and both those things together mean—well, I’m not allowed back in the country.”
There was a long silence.
“I’m sorry—what?” Rhodes said. His voice was light. “You
what
?”
Mandana didn’t say anything.
“Mum, is that true?” Elle asked, disbelieving. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“She didn’t ever bother to tell
me,
” John said.
“John, don’t,” Mandana said, a flicker of impatience in her voice, like the furious, rollicking Mandana of old, not this timid woman terrified of making a mistake. “Just don’t.”
“What, I’m the one who shouldn’t say anything?” Elle’s father didn’t even look at her mother. “I always wanted you to know this, you two,” he said, looking from Elle to Rhodes. “Now you understand why she didn’t come to Disney World. I didn’t find out until we actually arrived at the airport.”
The Disney World holiday
. Instantly, Elle’s palms started sweating at the memory. The journey to the airport, both parents in a terrible mood, but Mandana worse than usual. She’d be fine for months, then suddenly she’d go mad, and this was one of those days. Queuing up to go through, Elle holding her Dumbo toy, making him fly along the fabric tape separating the queues. Then something happening, and Mandana screaming at John, him shouting back, in front of everyone, but they didn’t care: that was how it was with them. Rhodes and Elle, eleven and eight respectively, had stood to one side, silently watching and holding each other’s hand, not understanding how this holiday—which was basically the best thing that had ever happened to them, which
their dad had booked as a surprise and only told them about a week ago—was now, suddenly, going so horribly wrong.
Their mum had left, not even said bye to them. John fussed with passports and pieces of paper, as if nothing had happened. Elle had watched her mother walk away, her shoulders hunched, head bowed, and the further away she’d got the faster she’d walked, as if she was glad to be free, till she was almost running down the long gray terminal building, no one else paying any attention. Elle gazed at her till suddenly she turned a corner and was gone.
“Where’s Mummy?” Elle had asked, as they were sitting in Wimpy a little later, eating burgers and chips, trying to recapture the excitement they’d had earlier.
“She’s not coming. There was something wrong with her passport,” John had said, and they’d left it at that, and the holiday had been great—children are selfish, it was Disney World, after all—but when they’d got back home a week later, it had been bad. Very bad, because Mum wasn’t good on her own. Curtains closed, a meaty, musty smell through the cottage, everything in a mess, Mum most of all, till she saw them and burst into tears. That was the first time Elle realized she drank too much. Not like Emily from Brownies’ mum who had three sherries and then started singing music hall songs. That was sort of funny. Different from that. This wasn’t funny. But she and Rhodes could boast about their Disney World holiday at school and things went back to normal, sort of, until the next time, and the time after that for a few years more, and then the holiday in Skye, which somehow was the final tipping point.
Elle glanced at Rhodes, wondering if he was thinking the same as she was. But he was watching their mother, and the look on his face was enough.
“I’m sorry,” Mandana said eventually. She looked up, her eyes full of tears, her cheeks hollow. “I am so awfully sorry. It
was a stupid mistake when I was young. I’ve paid for it, but it’s—it’s so awful that you’re suffering too. Of course, you must have the wedding where you want. I’ll be so happy for you, wherever you do it.”
Rhodes spread his fingers out on his knees. “That’s not the point, is it?” He looked at his mother. “How will it look, Mum? You’re always going on about that bloody San Francisco trip like it was so pure and free and everything else is crap by comparison and it’s bollocks. You’re full of shit.”