Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday. Cathy Kelly
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scan the letter and email it to you,’ Eric said. ‘I won’t be cooperating, but you can bet your bottom dollar that other people will, Suki.’
‘I’m sure,’ she said dully. ‘Thanks for the call. How is …?’ Too late, she realized she’d forgotten the name of his wife.
‘Keren,’ he said drily. ‘She’s great. Ciao.’
Suki winced as she placed the receiver on the cradle. Eric was one of those she’d burned during the Jethro years. It had all seemed so much fun at the time: living the high life on the touring scene, never returning phone calls, being too stoned to care about old friends. In turn, the old friends had moved on with their lives.
It was only after Suki had hung up that she realized he hadn’t asked her how she was or if she was happy. At least she’d made the effort, even if she couldn’t remember his damned wife’s name.
Her sister, Tess could stay friends forever. Tess had maintained contact with her old classmates from school, she’d go to dinner with them and have civilized conversations about life. Suki wouldn’t recognize any of her old classmates in a police line-up. It was crash and burn with old acquaintances where she was concerned. Always had been.
Suddenly, she became aware of the sound of clapping. Her introduction was over. It was time to stand up and do her thing, become the Suki who fought the feminist fight, not the Suki who was scared to the pit of her stomach.
Suki opted out of dinner with the faculty when someone suggested a vegan restaurant in town that served organic, low-alcohol wine. Give her strength! Screw vegans and all who sailed in them. She wanted pasta with a cream sauce or steak Diane, thank you very much.
Plus, she’d bet her fee that they’d order one glass of crappy organic wine each. Nobody drank any more. Two drinks and they were offering rehab advice, and she’d had enough of that to last her a lifetime.
Back in the horrible little hotel room the faculty had booked for her she took off her ball-busting purple trouser suit with satin lapels and hung it in the wardrobe. Her speech outfit scared the hell out of men; maybe because purple was such a sexual colour.
‘I hate that goddamn purple pant suit,’ Mick had said as she was leaving the house earlier that day to catch the train to Kirkenfeld.
He was leaning against the doorjamb of their bedroom, still in the T-shirt he’d worn in bed. He’d done what he did most days and just pulled his jeans and boots on. Even so shabbily dressed, he was incredibly attractive: part-Irish, part-Italian, part something else, with intense blue eyes and jet black hair. His band hadn’t landed a gig in over a month, so he spent a lot of time sitting on the porch, smoking weed and messing around on her laptop.
‘New song ideas, honey,’ he said when she tried to ask what he was doing.
She didn’t believe him.
They were so broke, yet she couldn’t ask him to get a regular job. It wouldn’t be fair. He wasn’t that sort of person.
‘Music is a calling, babe,’ he’d say. ‘I don’t turn up at nine like regular guys. I need the muse.’
No, it was no good depending on Mick, Suki thought as she changed into her brown sweatpants. She was going to have to sort out their lack of money by herself.
First, however, she needed a drink. She closed the wardrobe and went to check out the mini bar. It was entirely empty.
Please phone if you’d like the mini bar filled, said a plaintive little note on the top shelf. Damn straight she wanted it filled up. A stiff drink might help her unwind.
She ordered a double vodka tonic from room service. She’d have dinner downstairs with wine, and then, hopefully, she’d sleep. Provided she could get that damned Suarez book out of her mind.
Suddenly, even a boring night with the vegans sounded better than another evening of worrying herself sick.
Throwing open her suitcase – Suki never unpacked; what was the point for one night? – she began rifling through her stuff in search of the loose gold cashmere knit sweater she’d planned to wear tomorrow on the way home. That and her brown sweatpants would see her all right in this dump.
A petite young waitress delivered her drink.
‘Thanks,’ Suki said at the door, and scrawled her name and a big tip in the gratuity space, before taking her vodka and tonic off the girl’s tray. She always tipped well, no matter how broke she was. She’d done enough waitressing to appreciate the need. The faculty could afford a tip on her non-organic drink.
She added half the tonic and had it finished in five minutes. As the large dose of Stolichnaya, her favourite, hit her she finally began to feel buoyed up. The speech had gone well, they’d liked her. She still had it – why didn’t anyone realize that any more?
As she walked in to the sedate restaurant in the hotel, heads turned. They always did. Suki had been ultra blonde since she started using her pocket money to buy hair dye to lighten her natural fair colour. Now, at forty-eight her hair was a shoulder-length, swirling collage of honey golds. Her skin, too, was gold from the remnants of a summer tan and daily walks along the beach. The cheekbones and full lips that had been a siren-call to Avalon’s men all those years ago were holding up well. If anyone looked closely, they’d see the slight hooding of her eyes, but she didn’t want anyone to look closely. Her gold sweater hung sexily from one smooth, tanned shoulder. Suki’s clothes always appeared to be holding on to her body for a fragment of time, as if they might come off at any moment.
‘You’re sex incarnate, honey,’ Jethro had said in surprise the first night he met her, in the green room of the television chat show where they were both appearing.
‘You too,’ thought Suki, but she hadn’t said it. After all, she’d been invited on the show so she could skewer his rock band’s treatment of women in their videos.
And after she’d finished ripping him apart on screen, unable to stop herself staring at him hungrily all the while, he’d pulled her into his dressing room. It had been the best sex of Suki’s life, the best. Afterwards, there were always drugs, but that first time, it had been her and Jethro, pure and clean.
Mick was hideously jealous of her two years with Jethro, even though it had been over four years since she’d seen him.
The jealousy was understandable, Suki knew. Michelangelo O’Neill played in a small-town rock band who’d never made it, while Jethro was TradeWind, one of the most famous bands of the seventies and eighties. TradeWind performed in stadiums and Madison Square Gardens, and MTV had practically played them on a loop during their big years.
Mick and the Survivors had lost their residency in the Clambake Bar because the recession was biting, no matter what the folks in Washington said.
The effects of the vodka were telling her she needed another drink and something carb-laden for dinner.
‘Table for one,’ she said to the girl behind the desk, ignoring the man on duty. For all her outward sexuality, Suki Richardson had spent a lot of her life being wary of men.
At her table, she put on her glasses, took out a novel, a notepad and her pen – men were less likely to bother women when they had a pen and notebook – and set about trying to think her way out of trouble.
Through pasta starter, a steak so bloody that a good vet could have brought it back to life, and the hideous yet delicious concoction that was chocolate and banana caramel pie, she did her best to plan an escape clause.
She could throw herself on the mercy of Suarez: Don’t write about me, I was so young, I didn’t know what I was doing. I can tell you everything else about the Richardsons …
No, unlikely to work. She’d read his Jackie Kennedy book, his Nancy Reagan book and the Bush series. He’d have too many insiders telling him everything there was to know about Suki Power. And if she spilled on the Richardsons, they’d find out and her name would