The Alphabet Sisters (3 page)

She could ring her mother or father at the motel, but she’d never really confided in either of them. It had always been too hard to get the timing right. They’d be either in the kitchen cooking for houseguests, or out in the bar, or doing the accounts, or any of the hundred things both of them always seemed to be doing. She could ring Lola, but lately those calls hadn’t been having the calming effect they used to. For the first year or two after the big fight, Lola had been understanding, trying to see each of their points of view, as she always had. Understanding had turned to exasperation. “This is ludicrous. I’m ashamed of the three of you, carrying on like this.” She’d tried the frosty approach for a while. “I’m not talking to any of you while you persist in this ridiculous carry-on.” But then Lola had missed their phone calls, too. “Just because I’m talking to you doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven any of you.” But for the past six months there had been silence on the subject. Perhaps she’d realized, as Anna herself slowly had, that that was that. It had gone on too long now for things to change.

A scream on the TV made Anna jump. A young blonde detective was being chased down a dark street by two men in suits, her face in close-up, fear-stricken. “Oh, shush, would you,” Anna said aloud. “You’re just acting, for God’s sake.” She put the remote control on the shelf under the coffee table. As she did she noticed the mail in a pile, wrapped inside the free local newspaper. How long had that been there? She picked it up and checked the date—more than two weeks old. How many times had she asked Glenn not to leave the mail there? Is this what it had come to? Each of them deliberately doing the things they knew most annoyed the other?

She flicked through the bundle. Bills. Advertising material. A fund-raising letter from Ellen’s school. And a thick cream envelope. She turned it over, recognizing the handwriting immediately. Puzzled, she tore it open. It was an invitation. She read it again. No, not an invitation. A summons.

CLARE VALLEY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Lola Quinlan turned her gaze away from the vineyards visible through the window of the Valley View Motel dining room and back to the table where her youngest granddaughter was sulkily folding serviettes. “Did I tell you what happened in the charity shop this morning, Carrie? A young woman, around about your age, perhaps a bit older, came in and said, ‘Could I try on that dress in the window?’ And I said, ‘Yes, of course, but I’d much rather you used the changing room.’ ”

Carrie didn’t smile or look up. “You’ve been telling that one for years, Lola.”

“Good jokes never die, you know. What did the zero say to the eight? Nice belt.” She glanced at the elegant gold watch on her thin wrist and stood up. “Time for
Days of Our Lives.
I’m not going to offer you any help because you’re doing such a marvelous job of it yourself. And you know how important I think it is for you young people to see a job through from start to finish.”

Carrie ignored her, not looking up as her grandmother came closer.

“Carrie, are you ignoring me?”

The younger woman kept her head down.

“That’s fine, but don’t frown like that, darling. It’s very bad for the skin. If you’re going to sulk, at least do it with a smile on your face. Or try doing those exercises I showed you, the ones that firm your chin. See, like this.” Lola started grimacing, stretching her lips sideways, then into a tight pout; out, then in again. “Twenty of those a day and it’s like a gym workout for your face, so I read. A little alarming for any passersby, but that’s the price we pay for endless beauty, isn’t it?”

Carrie started to smile.

“That’s more like it,” Lola said. “And I know what you’re thinking, and, yes, I am a wizened interfering old bag of bones and quite happy to be like that.” She leaned over and kissed her granddaughter on the top of the head. At five feet nine inches, her posture still excellent, Lola towered over Carrie. “But I still love you, you know.”

“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have—”

“Yes, I would have.” Lola collected her handbag. “Will you be staying on for dinner tonight? Thursday, schnitzel night.”

“No, I’ll go home, I think.”

“How are those renovations going?”

Carrie and her husband had bought an old farmhouse several kilometers south of the Valley View Motel the year before. “Fine. Slowly.”

Lola was watching her. “And how is Matthew, Carrie?”

Carrie turned back to the serviettes. “He’s fine. Up to his eyes in sheep manure and vet magazines as usual. You know the sort of thing.”

“You’re getting on all right, are you?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Really?”

Lola was like a human sniffer dog, Carrie thought, still not looking up. Line up a row of people and she’d sniff out each of their problems instantly. Not this time, though, Carrie decided. The days of confiding in her grandmother were well and truly over. “Really. It’s a bed of roses, in fact.”

“Rubbish. No marriage is a bed of roses. That at least was one of the positive things about Edward dying so young. We might have missed out on the good times, but we missed out on some of the bad, boring times as well.” Lola was amazed, as always, at how easily the lies about her husband tripped off her tongue. “Tell me, do you ever get bored with Matthew, Carrie?”

“Tell me, do you ever think you’re overstepping the mark with your questions, Lola?”

“Oh, good Lord, yes. But people are usually so shocked, they’ve answered me before they’ve had time to think twice. Do you know what I found out this morning? That Mrs. Kennedy is stepping out with her son-in-law’s father at the moment. Talk about keeping it in the family. Having a grand old time, she told me.”

Carrie felt a rush of combined affection and annoyance, her usual reaction to Lola’s behavior. “That’s the only reason you’re still working in that charity shop, isn’t it? It’s nothing to do with helping the poor or keeping yourself busy.”

Lola made an elegant gesture with her hand. “If people choose to tell me things, there’s nothing I can do about it. I see it as my gift to society: helping people unburden themselves of their problems.”

“Digging the dirt on them, you mean.”

“I noticed you changed the subject, by the way. Don’t think that’s the end of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do. Now, then, I must be off. I’m going to call on your mother in the kitchen and beg some afternoon tea. I really do have the perfect setup for an old lady, don’t I? A son and daughter-in-law with their own motel and restaurant and a granddaughter who is the sweetest in the world.” Lola gave Carrie another kiss, then swept out of the room, leaving a faint trace of expensive perfume behind her.

Alone in the dining room once again, Carrie worked quietly until she had folded the last of the serviettes. With a loud sigh, she leaned back in her chair. One hundred paper swans surrounded her. This time in two days the room would be transformed for a wedding reception, the paper swans swimming elegantly up and down the rows of long tables. She’d already strung up the fairy lights the bride had requested. She’d ordered the special candles from Adelaide, and they were due to arrive any moment. The bridal arch had proved tricky for a week or so. It would all come together, though. She’d done it enough times to be sure of that.

She sat back and flicked at one of the paper swans with her finger. It toppled, falling against the swan beside it, which also toppled. Within moments a whole row of them had fallen, domino-style. She could have jumped up and stopped them but instead watched idly as the last dozen or so flipped and rolled onto the unswept floor.

She didn’t care. At that moment she was sick of it all. She was sick of her job. She was sick of the motel. She was sick of the fact people made such a mess while they were eating that they needed serviettes in the first place. She was feeling especially sick about her grandmother wanting to throw a birthday party for herself and insisting that Bett and Anna attend.

“But why, Lola? Why now? It’ll ruin everything,” Carrie had said that morning, hoping she wasn’t giving too much away. “All that tension.”

“I’ve given you all three years to sort it out, and you haven’t even got to the starting gate. So I’m taking charge once and for all. I’ve written to both of them as well. Insisted they come or else. So they will, I know.”

Carrie opened her mouth to protest, but one of Lola’s quelling looks had blasted her way and she shut it again.

Scooping up the paper swans now and ignoring the state of some of their wings, Carrie replayed the conversation yet again. If only Lola had turned eighty a few months ago. A year ago, even. But no, it had to be now. And she had to insist on throwing a party. A huge party.

“You wouldn’t be happy with a nice family dinner, you and me and Mum and Dad?” Carrie had suggested hopefully.

“Of course not. I could die any day, and I want to go out with a bang. And I want Anna and Bett to see the explosion. Besides, I’ve got something very important I want the three of you to do for me.”

“Important? What’s wrong? Lola, you’re not sick, are you?”

“Don’t pry, Caroline. I said I want to talk to the three of you about it. Once I have the three of you in the same room together again.”

The three of them. The three of them who hadn’t spoken to each other for years, let alone been in the same room. Or the same town. Or the same country even. And whose fault was it?

Hers.

Who did everyone blame?

Her.

But now it had all changed, hadn’t it? The reason none of them had spoken to each other in that time no longer existed. Which would make this reunion of Lola’s even more hideous and humiliating and horrible than it would normally have been.

Carrie took her anger out on the last of the paper swans, crumpling it up in her hand and then immediately feeling guilty. “Sorry, swannie,” she said out loud, smoothing the serviette and readjusting the little paper beak. It now looked like it had been in a washing machine. She tucked it away in her pocket. The way her luck was going this one would end up on the bride’s place mat and she’d cause a scene. Carrie had already spent enough hours calming the young woman, as she’d fretted about everything from the number of prawns to be served in the prawn cocktails to the mathematical probabilities of it raining on her wedding day.

Carrie had wanted to snap at her more than once. “You think the wedding day is stressful? Try getting through the marriage.”

She jumped as the bell at reception rang once, twice, a third time. Right now she’d had enough of guests, too—especially guests who rang the bell more than once. She walked out, plastering a smile onto her face, knowing it was just several teeth short of a grimace. At least she was exercising her facial muscles. Lola would be pleased.

“Good afternoon,” she said to the waiting couple, her voice sickly sweet. “I’m very sorry to have kept you.”

Chapter Two

A
week before her flight back to Australia, Bett walked into the record company’s office in the center of London, took off her raincoat, sat down, and slowly, rhythmically, banged her head against the pile of papers on her desk.

“Great new move,” Jessica said, wandering over. “Can’t see it taking off in the clubs though.”

Bett looked up, her head still on the desk. “You should have seen this one, Jess, heard the things he was saying.”

Sprawled on the sofa in the plush Kensington hotel room, the young pop singer had fixed Bett Quinlan with a sincere blue gaze and tossed his head so a lock of blond hair shimmered across his forehead. “I want to grow with my music but stay close to my beginnings. Most of all, I want to keep it real.”

Bett had blinked twice at him and tapped her pen against her teeth. Keep it real? That could be tricky. With all the makeup and hair gel he was wearing, it was already hard to tell where his body stopped and the cosmetics industry took over. As for staying close to his beginnings—he was barely out of his teens as it was. Any closer to his beginnings and he’d be back in a pram.

There’d been a long awkward silence before he finally shifted in his seat and shot her another of his well-practiced blue gazes. “Well? Was that answer okay?”

Answer? She’d already forgotten the question. Her mind had been drifting to Lola’s birthday party. Come on, Bett, concentrate. She gave herself a mental shake. “Sorry, Grover.”

“Groover.”

“Pardon?”

“My name’s Groover, not Grover.”

“Groover, sorry. Yes, that answer was great, thanks. Well rehearsed. Well delivered.” She ran her eye down the list of sample interview questions in the notebook in front of her, fighting an inclination to pick Groover up, tuck him under her arm, and make a run for it. She could tell people he was her foster child. Her butler. Anything to get him out of the music industry before it had eaten him alive, pretty face, sweet singing voice, and all.

“Where are our consciences, Jess?” Bett asked now in mock despair. “We’re sending young men to their deaths, armed with nothing but microphones.”

“Rubbish. We’re sending them on their way to fame and fortune. Don’t tell me you’re getting all pure about music again. You child performers are all the same, pining after more innocent times, when all it took to put on a good show was a few matching outfits and a tinny backing track.”

“Yes, hilarious.” Jessica hadn’t stopped teasing her about the Alphabet Sisters or the situation with her sisters since the night in Bett’s flat. “You’re very cruel, you know. I thought you’d promised to leave me alone about all of that.” She should never have mentioned it to her.

“No, I promised to help toughen you up about all of that. Anyway, I can’t leave you alone. I have to give you another assignment. Karl wants you to get onto it straightaway.”

“He deigned to ring?” Since their boss had floated the record company on the stock market and become an instant millionaire, he hadn’t found it quite so necessary to come into work every day.

“Well, a quick call. Then he faxed. He’s in Spain, I think. Or Portugal. He told me he wants to work you to the bone till you leave on Friday. Said he must have been off his head giving you that week off to go to your granny’s party.”