The Honey Queen. Cathy Kelly
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grinned as she clicked send.
If only she could fly through the Internet like her email and perch on the computer of the man receiving it, to see his astonished face as he read it.
Just outside her window, she could see the blossom on the apple tree in the postage-stamp garden below. Behind the fence her uncle Ned had painted pale green the summer before, the council had started turning a scrap of deserted land into a proper park. The adjacent allotments would stay the way they were, despite the plans for the park, which was wonderful. Uncle Ned would have died if he couldn’t go to his allotment every day. She could see some of the plain but sturdy sheds from the window and the neatly planted allotments themselves. Ned grew tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes and all manner of salad greens on his. In the distance Freya could make out the spires and towers of the city, but it seemed a long way away, giving the sense that Redstone was out in the country instead of being part of town.
All in all, Freya felt that the view from the third-floor bedroom of the narrow house more than made up for the tininess of the room.
‘You’re sure it’s not too small?’ Aunt Opal had said anxiously four years ago when Freya had come to live with them. ‘Meredith wouldn’t have this room – she said it was a spiders’ paradise up here in the attic. Mind you, Steve was happy enough in here.’
‘I love it,’ Freya had replied. She wasn’t in the slightest bit scared of spiders for she had spent years taking them gently out of the bath for her mother and releasing them back into the wild. Now the bedroom had a DIY bookcase on one wall, and Freya’s own artwork on another. She’d painted the old wardrobe so it looked like part of Opal and Ned’s colourful garden down below, although Opal didn’t have any enquiring and abnormally large caterpillars on her flowers, or indeed, a Venus fly trap with a shy smile.
Freya checked her watch. Eight o’clock. Time to grab some toast and leave for school.
She clicked off her inbox, unplugged her phone and picked up her schoolbag. This rucksack contained her life, although it hardly looked the part: a greying canvas thing inherited from her cousin David, she’d decorated it with butterflies interspersed with gothic, dangerous-looking faerie creatures, all painstakingly coloured in – often in lessons – with felt-tip pens. She skimmed down the narrow stairs, light on her feet, racing past the second floor where her cousins’ old bedrooms were. Opal and Ned’s bedroom was the biggest, but it was still small compared to Freya’s old home. Not that she cared. Twenty-one St Brigid’s Terrace might be cramped and shabby, but the difference was that in this home she felt loved. Beloved. Something she hadn’t felt for a long time with Mum.
Opal was standing at the cooker in the kitchen that she, Ned and Freya had painted Florida sunshine yellow last Christmas.
‘Too bright?’ Opal had said doubtfully in the paint shop, as the three of them had looked at the colour chart.
Freya hated to see even the faintest hint of worry in her darling Opal’s face.
‘No such thing!’ she reassured her with a hug. ‘Yellow makes people happy, you know.’
And Opal, who would have done anything to make Freya happy, was satisfied.
The tiles on the kitchen splashback were a riot of citrus fruits far too fat to be normal and Opal herself had run up a pair of yellow gingham curtains on her old sewing machine.
‘Freya, love, good morning,’ said Opal now, her face creasing up in a smile as her niece flew into the kitchen. A small, plump woman with a cloud of silvery, highlighted hair, Opal had one of those faces that made everyone want to smile back at her. It didn’t matter that, as she neared sixty, her face was wreathed in wrinkles or that she didn’t walk as fast as she used to because of her arthritis. She was still the same Opal.
Freya had long since decided that her aunt was one of life’s golden people: someone from whom goodness shone like light from a storm lantern on a dark night. Someone who brought the best out in everyone.
‘Morning, Opal,’ Freya said and bent over to give her aunt a kiss on the cheek.
Freya wasn’t tall herself but Opal was really tiny.
Foxglove the cat, a black-and-white scrap that Freya had rescued near the allotments two years ago, sat on the radiator licking her paws. Freya gave her a quick stroke, which Foxglove ignored as usual.
Almost instantly Opal began to fret about Freya’s breakfast. It was a routine that the two of them played out every morning.
‘Look, pet, it’s after eight and you have to get going. You haven’t had a bite to eat or a drink of water, nothing. Honestly, I can’t let you out the door like this. You know they say that young people have to have a proper breakfast in them before they can study. Now I was doing eggs for your Uncle Ned and I can easily pop in a bit of toast and give you some …’
Opal went back to the cooker where she was stirring an ancient saucepan with a wooden spoon. Opal’s scrambled eggs were better than anyone else’s, fluffy clouds glistening with butter. But Freya had neither the time nor the appetite this morning.
‘Sorry, Opal,’ she said, popping a piece of toast out of the toaster, grabbing a knife from the drawer and spreading a hint of butter on it. She took a few bites and set it down on the table without a plate while she filled her water bottle from the tap, then reached into the fridge and snagged the lunchbox she’d packed the night before, stuffing it into her duffel bag. Finally she picked up the toast again. ‘Have to go, Opal, can’t be late.’
Opal sighed the way she did pretty much every morning.
‘Pet, I don’t feel I’m doing my job if you’re not eating properly,’ she began. ‘Your four cousins never left the house without their breakfast – and that includes Meredith and I have to say she was fussy about her food. But the boys …’
Freya gave her aunt a quick hug to stem the tide of how Steve, David and Brian could vacuum up meals at Olympian speeds.
‘Have to go, Aunt Opal. I know, the boys ate everything you put in front of them and still do. Don’t worry, I won’t starve. I made lunch last night. I’ve got to race in.’
‘Don’t forget to brush your hair, pet,’ Opal called after her niece.
As she swung out of the kitchen, Freya caught a quick glance of herself in the old mirror in the narrow hall. Dark eyes and the same long slim nose as her mother. Wild dark hair that reached to her shoulders and probably would have hung halfway down her back if it had ever gone straight in its life. She ran her fingers through it quickly. Brushing only made it worse. The top button of her shirt was open and the knot of her tie was too low. Someone in school would give out to her about it, but she’d deal with that when she got there. Freya didn’t worry too much about being given out to. There were certain people in life who felt their day was lacking something if they hadn’t remonstrated with at least four people. The vice-principal, Mr McArthur, who hovered perpetually just inside the main door of the school, was one of them. Freya was used to it now. She didn’t mind. Words didn’t really matter. Actions were what counted. And people like Opal.
‘See you this evening, Opal. This is my late day at school, don’t forget,’ she roared as she shut the door behind her.
The house was bang in the middle of a terrace of tall, skinny red-brick homes and to make up for the postage-stamp-sized patch of garden at the back, there was quite a sliver of front garden.
Opal had worked her magic there too. Pink was her favourite colour.
‘I’ve loved pink ever since I was a girl,’ Opal admitted bashfully to Freya when she’d moved in.
It had been summer then and despite how shell-shocked Freya had felt after the six months that had followed her father’s death, she’d noticed that her aunt’s garden was a riot of every shade of pink. From the palest roses tinged with sun-blush to outrageous gladioli with their vivid crimson flowers. There was no grass, only a scatter of gravel amongst which grew a selection of herbs and alpines. There were a few varieties