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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about them, that instead you came to me with this,’ she said, smiling ingenuously.
If Delilah was discomfited by Suki’s apparent calmness, she didn’t show it. Botox, naturally. Delilah’s brow was smooth as alabaster.
It was time for her to go.
‘Thank you,’ Suki said again, embracing Delilah’s bony frame. ‘I must phone Kyle and tell him this,’ she added with a hint of sadness.
Last time she’d spoken to Kyle, they’d had a blazing row. But Delilah didn’t need to know that.
Suki never drove up to the Richardsons’ compound in Hyannis without feeling a sense of mild astonishment that she’d once belonged there. The seat of political power, a bit down the road from the Kennedy compound. It was all heady stuff. Back in the day, the Richardsons had been friends with the Kennedys in spite of their political differences. Kyle Senior had socialized with JFK and Jackie, and Suki used to love listening to his stories about those far-off days before it all ended so horribly in Dallas. Of course she’d exhibited only idle interest. Nothing marked someone out as a rubber-necker more than ‘Tell me more …’ requests.
And yet all that seemed so long ago. Suki had lived many lifetimes since she married and divorced Kyle Junior.
Antoinette, the family matriarch, was seventy-nine now, with steely grey hair and a steely grey attitude. Her day uniform had never deviated in all the time Suki had known her: cashmere twinset, pearls and woollen skirt in winter, and silk or linen blouse and silk skirt in summer, also with pearls. Of an evening, she opted for crocodile pumps (never during the day – far too common), something in crêpe de Chine in a jewel colour, and a hint of face powder and lipstick that had probably been on her bureau since Roosevelt was in power.
Suki couldn’t imagine Antoinette sitting in Dr Frederik’s office asking for a top-up of Botox. Her frown lines presumably did as they were told, much the same way as the compound staff leapt to do her bidding. Worrying about physical beauty was for lesser mortals.
In her day, Antoinette had been what people called a handsome woman. Noble bones, a strong chin and a gaze that made her son quail. Nothing much had changed. Handsomeness certainly lasted longer than prettiness.
An uneasy truce had existed between Suki and her former mother-in-law since the first day they met. Suki’s background – checked ruthlessly by Kyle Senior’s private investigators – was certainly top drawer. Impoverished gentry, but gentry nonetheless.
Even Antoinete had been charmed by Suki’s father, who was the perfect example of an Irish gentleman landowner with more than a whiff of academia thrown in for good measure.
Adding to the patina of class, Suki could talk the talk about antiques, thanks mainly to Tess’s interest in the subject.
‘Daddy had a full set of Audubon prints, you know, but they had to be sold,’ she might say, which was entirely untrue but impossible to check. Her father only remembered the things he’d had to sell when they’d had some special significance to the family, so should Antoinette ever ask if this was true, he could be relied upon not to recall one way or the other. Suki was clever enough to know that the best lies were the ones where you couldn’t be caught out.
Her father had cried over selling the Walter Osborne portrait of his grandmother, but a growing interest in Osborne as a painter and the roof in the west wing falling in had coincided and it had made sound economic sense. She’d mentioned the sale of the Osborne too and had craftily added in a little Pissarro and a minor Watteau as well. She had no intention of letting her new in-laws spend too much time with her family, so it was safe to lie. For all Antoinette’s much-vaunted blue blood, she hadn’t grown up in a house with beautiful art, had she? She’d had to marry it.
Throughout the marriage to Kyle, Antoinette never ceased to remind Suki that she wasn’t a suitable wife for her darling son.
In return, Suki got to slip little digs into her conversations with Antoinette. Like the time she’d meanly identified Antoinette’s charming collection of floral bowls as fake Meissen rather than the real thing. Suki had absolutely no interest in antiques unless they were worth something and Meissen certainly was, so she could tell the difference.
Plus, during her one and only visit to the compound, Tess had told Suki she thought it was wonderful that Antoinette wasn’t hung up on original everythings, but kept items of sentimental value like the Meissen copies. Tess, silly girl, had meant it as a compliment; she admired people who collected valuable and non-valuable things and displayed them side by side. It meant they liked what they liked, rather than what was expensive.
Suki knew Antoinette too well to fall for that. Clearly her mother-in-law thought those bowls were the real McCoy.
‘I do adore Meissen copies,’ she’d said, waving a hand over the display of bowls occupying pride of place in the formal drawing room. ‘So very clever, and equally adorable, aren’t they?’
Antoinette’s lips had tightened imperceptibly.
The next day, the bowls were gone.
Life as Kyle Junior’s wife was all about savouring such victories. It was petty of her, Suki knew, but her mother-in-law was equally petty – and Suki liked to win. She wasn’t the matriarch, not yet. But watch this space, she seemed to be saying to Antoinette.
And then it had all ended when Antoinette found out. But by then, Suki’s daydreams of becoming the next Jackie O had been dust for a long time anyhow.
The fierce animosity between the two women had not diminished with time. Suki and Antoinette still loathed each other, but these days they met so rarely that they could just about manage to put up with each other. Especially with Senior on hand to remind them to keep it civil.
‘Nobody needs to know our business – understand, girls?’ he’d growl in that gravelly voice that brooked no disagreement.
And the ‘girls’ had both toed the line.
As Suki approached the front door, she knew that, for today at least, Antoinette would have declared a truce where she was concerned. The Redmond Suarez biography was threatening the family and they needed to join forces to fight off the common enemy. After that, they could resume the old hostilities.
Mrs Lang, the housekeeper, opened the door with a frozen smile on her face: ‘Hello, Mrs Suki. Lovely to see you back again.’
‘Mrs Suki’ was the courtesy title decided upon by Antoinette once the divorce was final. It wasn’t quite as bitchy as ‘demoting’ her to Miz Power, but was another telling detail.
‘Hello there, Mrs Lang,’ Suki said, marching into the hall, pulling her weekender suitcase behind her. She knew Mrs Lang didn’t like her, but she didn’t care.
As usual, the house smelled of money and beeswax polish. The antiques – all genuine, Suki was pretty sure because she’d looked – gleamed from constant dusting, while the pictures, all by major American artists, were beautifully lit. Two old leather couches – the sort of thing Ralph Lauren was famous for, but clearly a much earlier vintage than his iconic designs – sat on either side of the huge hall with tapestry cushions scattered upon them, decorated mainly with nautical themes and the American flag.
Suki went straight to her bedroom. She was always assigned the blue bedroom at the back of the house where they were no views of the sea. It was definitely one of the lesser bedrooms. Once you were put in a bedroom in the compound, it was your spot for life. She tidied up, put on a soft pink sweater and went down into the great room.
The lights were set Hyannis-style for November – Antoinette was a penny-pincher who insisted that no bulb could be of a high wattage. Consequently, the house was like an ill-lit restaurant and reading was impossible, except in places like Senior’s study or your bedroom, provided you’d had the foresight to smuggle in a decent bulb. It had been many years since she’d stayed there, nothing had changed lighting-wise; fortunately Suki had brought a little battery-powered reading light, just in case. On the other hand, the wine was always good and she expected