The O’Hara Affair. Kate Thompson
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had been intended for Rachel, not for her. Fleur felt bad about the fact that she’d muscled in on another woman’s man, and it unsettled her to know that Corban had cheated on this Rachel with such insouciance. But any time she questioned him about her, he just said those two words: ‘Ancient history’. So finally, she made herself stop thinking about Rachel altogether.
‘Flirty! Good morning! Isn’t it a gorgeous day?’
Daisy was hailing her from the sea wall that skirted the main street of the village. She was wearing frayed cut-offs that revealed an astonishing length of golden leg, and a man’s hoodie. Despite the dressed-down ensemble, she still looked as if she’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue. Fleur felt a great surge of love for her niece. She was so beautiful, so full of joie de vivre, so young!
‘Good morning, Daisy-Belle!’
‘But bad, bad Flirty, to be lazing in the sun when she should be hard at work!’ Daisy scolded her. ‘Why aren’t you doing your homework?’
‘Homework?’
‘Livre de visage!’
Oh. Facebook. Daisy was right. Fleur should be practising her fortune-telling skills, not lounging around on her deck, coasting on a nostalgia trip.
‘OK, OK. Do you fancy joining me for coffee?’
‘No, thank you kindly. I’m off for a swim. Catch you later!’ And Daisy swung a leg over the pillion of the motorcycle that was waiting for her, a helmeted youth revving the engine. He handed her a lid, and they were off, buzzing up the village street like a hornet.
Fleur wandered back into her kitchen and booted up her laptop before fixing herself coffee. Sitting down, she entered Daisy’s password, and perused the new postings on her wall. A lot of messages that meant nothing to Fleur, some photographs, a couple of links to YouTube videos.
Fleur now knew how engrossing Facebook could be. Over the past few days she had been distracted from her ‘homework’ on numerous occasions: once you got sucked in to YouTube it was difficult to pull yourself away. She found herself checking out all the silly Bichon Frisé footage, and even contemplated putting up some of the sequences she’d compiled of Babette. And, of course, it was impossible to resist all the clips from old movies – Rita Hayworth singing ‘Put the Blame on Mame’, Marilyn crooning ‘I Wanna be Loved by You’, Ava Gardner rhapsodizing over her man in Showboat.
She had also followed links to numerous blogs, many of which made her want to weep for the young people out there who seemed so lonely, despite the myriad methods of communication available to them:
I’ve finally hit triple digits with Facebook friends – altho the females outnumber the males. Why? Now, topping out at a hundred, I have more Facebook friends than real life ones. Sad, or what?
It’s scary to see pictures and details of former friends/enemies. Revisiting the past is no fun. Some ‘friendships’ should never be resurrected, not even in a virtual sense.
I say to myself, aww fuck. Even tho I hate this person, I guess I’d better add them as my friend…I’ll take ANYONE now.
Have you noticed the weird thing is that girls seem to be way more flirtatious on Facebook than in real life. Why is that?
Scrolling through Daisy’s Facebook friends, Fleur found crazy girls, dreamy girls, beauty queens, nymphs. Princesses, preppie girls, Barbie dolls, tramps. Wannabes and It girls, Latinas and Goths. Goddesses and nerdy girls and cheerleaders and vamps. Girls with names like Tinkerbell, L’il Monkeypaws and Puss. Or plain Emily and Martha and Jennifer and Luce. The pages of Facebook were adorned with girls galore.
‘Hi, Miriam,’ Fleur murmured, clicking on a link. ‘Welcome. You had a birthday recently, didn’t you?…Come on in, Rosa. Don’t be sad about your boy breaking up with you. You have a holiday to look forward to…Hi, there, Nelly. You’ve got to get those red shoes you’ve been hankering after. If you shimmy down to Fleurissima this afternoon, maybe you’ll find they’ve been reduced by fifteen per cent…Hi, Kitten; hi, Angel; hi, Naomi; hi, Paige…’
Glancing at the time, Fleur saw that it was nearly half-past ten. Time to jump into a shower, pull on her disguise, and get her ass down to the community centre. But a new notification on Daisy’s wall made her click one last time.
Oh! Bethany had the most candid eyes she had ever seen. Her birth date told Fleur she was eighteen, but she looked younger. She had the other-worldly appearance of one of Cicely Mary Barker’s flower fairies – tousled hair, delicate bone structure, translucent skin. She was Pisces, a Friday’s child, an incurable dreamer. She loved cats and cuddles and jacaranda-scented candles. She played piano, loved to paint, and was no good at games. She adored Harry Potter and the music of A Camp and Muse. She haunted art galleries. She was partial to Dolly Mixtures. She hated polystyrene cups. She was going to be in Lissamore this weekend. She was looking forward to visiting Madame Tiresia.
And Madame Tiresia was looking forward to meeting her.
‘It is quite possible for the gazer to be able to see things in the crystal at one time and not at another. This being so, you should not be discouraged if such images fail to appear at the gazer’s command.’ Dr R A Mayne
If Madame Tiresia fails to detect your aura, there will be no charge for your consultation.
Bethany regarded the disclaimer on the placard outside the fortune-teller’s booth. It was a bit like that terms-and-conditions-apply-share-prices-may-go-down-as-well-as-up stuff that voice-overs rattled off at the end of bank ads on the radio. In other words: let the buyer beware. Still, it was worth a try. Her horoscope had told her to heed the advice of a wise woman this week, and since Daisy de Saint-Euverte had been raving about Madame Tiresia on Facebook, Bethany had to assume that this was the wise woman in question. Bethany believed in horoscopes, even though she pretended to be cynical about them.
Although they had never met in real life, she had been thrilled when Daisy had accepted her as a friend on Facebook. It didn’t matter that Daisy had thousands of friends, it still felt kinda cool. Bethany’s friends numbered just over a hundred now, but she had to admit that she was a bit indiscriminate about the friendships she’d acquired. What must it be like to be as popular as Daisy de Saint-Euverte? Bethany had never been popular at school: she hadn’t been bullied as such – just ignored. She had been in awe of those girls who seemed so effortlessly confident, whose hair swished like something out of a shampoo commercial, and who spoke in loud D4 accents. She’d never been part of a crowd that screamed and hugged whenever they met, and who threw pink pyjama parties where they necked vodkatinis and watched the singalong version of Mamma Mia while texting their boyfriends. She’d been invited to one of those dos by a cousin, and she had screamed and giggled and sung along on cue, but she had felt like a complete impostor. She had been glad the next day to return to the fantasy realms that lay beyond the portal of her Xbox.
The other reason for Bethany’s low self-esteem was the fact that she had never had a boyfriend. She reckoned it was because her boobs were too small. She’d been going to ask her parents if she could have a boob job for her eighteenth birthday, but she knew they would have pooh-poohed the idea. They’d tell her not to be so stupid, that she was beautiful as she was. They didn’t understand what it was like to be a teenager. They didn’t know that it was horrible.
A gang of girls was coming along the promenade now, a phalanx of linked arms and GHD hair and blinging teeth. Bethany knew that if they saw her vacillating outside the fortune-teller’s, she’d be subjected to their derision. And there was nothing more lacerating than the derision of teenage girls. She’d never forgotten the snorts of mirth that had erupted in the classroom when the careers guidance teacher had announced that Bethany wanted to be an actress (‘Sure after all, girls,’ the teacher had chortled,