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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from other women because she’d left her home and had to make a living for herself in America, yet it turned out she was only doing what countless other women had done before her. And like countless other women, she’d succeeded in marrying well, but not wisely.
Kyle didn’t like her studies.
‘For God’s sake, what are you doing with all those damn books?’ he said. ‘You’ve finished with school, you don’t have to go back to it.’
Kyle was not bookish in the least, despite his father’s attempts to get him to keep up to date with happenings around the world. Kyle Senior was a voracious reader of non-fiction, particularly biographies and accounts of war. He’d never served in the military and yet he thought like a military commander, Suki realized. If he hadn’t been such a cut-and-dry bastard, she might have admired him.
It didn’t help that the slow push to get Kyle Junior’s feet wet in the world of politics was beginning to gain momentum.
‘Children,’ said Kyle Senior, ‘you need children. The wife isn’t enough.’
Suki was in the room while this conversation was going on and she sat, quite astonished. ‘Talk about me as if I’m not here, Senior,’ she said. ‘Absolutely fine. I’m a brood mare, am I?’
Kyle Senior laughed. ‘Yes, honey, I guess you are. And we’re looking for sons.’
That night Suki went out on her own to a bar across town and proceeded to get very, very drunk. She arrived home at two in the morning, having danced the night away in a jazz club and extricated herself with some difficulty from the very good dancer who’d wanted to take her back to his place. ‘I can’t, my husband wouldn’t like it,’ she’d managed, which was strange because the old Suki would have leapt at the chance.
‘You’re drunk,’ Kyle had said as she’d thrown herself into bed, clothes on, her mascara sliding down her face.
‘Yeah, I am,’ she said. ‘So what?’
The next day she’d felt sorry. She loved Kyle. It wasn’t his fault that his family were pigs and treated her as if she was nothing but an accessory in a political campaign.
‘Maybe we should have a baby,’ she said.
The baby-making plan brought them closer together – at first. Six months down the line, and still no baby, it was a different matter.
‘Maybe we should go see Dr Kennedy?’ Suki had suggested. ‘There’s lots of tests you can have these days and stuff you—’
‘We will not go to the doctor to discuss this,’ said Kyle, his nostrils flaring. For a second, he looked exactly like his father. Oddly, Suki found this a turn-on.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s give it another few months.’
But nothing happened. Kyle started to spend nights in a different bedroom, said he couldn’t get to sleep at night, he didn’t want to wake her, but Suki knew the real reason. He couldn’t bear to make love to her any more. He could barely get an erection when he came near her. In their desire for a baby, somehow Kyle Junior had been emasculated.
She began going out on her own more, hanging out with women from her college course. Nobody on the course had any money, but Suki would buy them all drinks, cocktails. ‘You’re gonna love this one,’ she’d say. ‘It’s a Long Island Iced Tea and it is fantastic.’
Carlotta, a fiery Latina on the course, wanted to write a thesis on racism and stereotyping of Hispanics in American culture. Her father had threatened to disown her. ‘He wants us to fit in,’ she said, dark eyes flashing. ‘I do not want to fit in, I want to be myself. I do not want to be put into a box I need to fit.’
‘Me neither,’ said Suki.
‘And you drink too much, Suki,’ said Carlotta, ‘if we are being straight with the truth.’
‘Yeah, thanks for telling me, honey,’ Suki said. ‘You might drink too, if you had my life.’
‘You might drink if you had my life,’ countered Carlotta. ‘I pay for this course by cleaning houses at night. Maybe I clean yours too?’
‘Oh, gimme a break, Carlotta! We’re supposed to be in this together.’
‘Money separates us,’ said Carlotta. ‘Don’t forget that, chica.’
Kyle Senior rang her up. ‘I want you to stop this ludicrous college course immediately,’ he said. ‘From what I hear, it’s all rubbish about women’s rights, that tired old turkey. You’ve got plenty of rights, you don’t have to work, you’ve got money to buy clothes. What else do you want?’
‘A life,’ said Suki sarcastically. ‘A life where I’m not the Richardson family brood mare.’
‘If you can’t have a baby, you’re not much of a brood mare, are you?’ said Kyle Senior.
‘What do you mean, if I can’t have a baby?’ said Suki. ‘Who says it’s me? Your bloody son can’t even get it up when he sees me.’
She wondered if she’d gone too far, but Kyle Senior never shied away from plain talking.
‘We’ll have to make sure he does then,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you going out at night with your girlfriends, going to bars. There are rumours starting, rumours about you having fun in bars. Inevitably, sooner or later somebody will pick up on the rumours and start to wonder whether you’re playing around. No Richardson wife plays around. So you be very careful, because I’ll be watching you.’
‘There’s nothing to watch,’ snapped Suki, and slammed the phone down, but she felt frightened. Kyle Senior was not a man to cross.
The days following Kevin’s revelation, outwardly Tess continued to drive Zach to the bus, take Kitty to school, and carry on with her daily business. Inside, Tess wondered was the whole separation disaster all her fault and thought that if only she could have kept her mouth shut, if only she’d been happy with I love him most of the time love, then she, Kitty, Kevin and Zach would still be a family. Then Zach wouldn’t have to put out the bins in an attempt to be the man of the family, Kevin wouldn’t have fallen for Claire, and she wouldn’t be consumed by the most unbelievable rage she’d ever experienced.
Despite her best intentions, a great vat of anger was boiling inside her over Kevin and Claire.
‘I’m so furious with him for doing this to the kids and to me,’ she said to Vivienne. ‘How could he?’ Tess paused because the last bit was the hardest: ‘And I’m angry with myself for almost pushing them together! I made this happen. Me!’
Zach wasn’t talking to her at all, as if it was all her fault.
I didn’t tell Kitty. We need her to get used to the idea of Claire first, Kevin texted.
Wonderful, thought Tess. Now he turns into the concerned parent.
Then she felt guilty – Kevin had always been a good parent. And he loved Zach and Kitty. He probably was doing his best under difficult circumstances. She needed to meet him to discuss what they did next.
The problem was that Kitty was desperately keen to meet Claire.
‘She had to go away,’ fibbed Tess, which earned her a furious glare from Zach.
‘It’s not my fault, Zach,’ Tess said to her son later.
Only to have him hiss: ‘Isn’t it?’
‘If Gerard did that to me,’ Vivienne said, ‘I’d take him to the cleaners in the divorce courts. I’d be more than bitter, I’d be furious.’
Under the