The Secrets of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Hey Nancy!’ said Mbeki, looking as radiant as ever in a skintight bottle green dress. ‘I guess someone has a fan club – look what just arrived for you!’

  Nancy looked over to a side table, where two giant bouquets were waiting, with her name printed neatly on each one. Not, only that but, beside the flowers, was a handwritten envelope with her name scrawled across it.

  ‘Well, go on,’ Mbeki urged, ‘open everything! Aren’t you dying to know who they’re all from?’

  Nancy began with the envelope first. She felt she had to, as it looked so incongruous sitting beside such stunning bouquets of flowers.

  Hi Nancy,

  I’m writing to say that I’m sorry. The old man told me you really put it up to him and his solicitor buddy, insisting on an apology before you’d agree to drop the matter and not take it any further.

  My apology is genuine, it really is. You were a sort of ‘collateral damage’ in the ongoing feud between me and my father, and for my part in that, I’m truly sorry. Meeting you that day really made me feel like a heel – and not just because you were, rightly, so annoyed with me for what I did. But because you seem like a nice woman. Normal. Friendly. You deserve better and I only hope that you find it.

  Good luck, Nancy Thompson.

  Sincerely,

  Sam Williams, Junior

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Mbeki said, reading it over Nancy’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Nancy said, stunned. ‘In the solicitors that day, I insisted on an apology, but I never thought I’d get one. I wanted to be sure that Sam Williams had actually learned a lesson and, with luck, that he’d never put another woman through what he’d put me through. But in a million years I didn’t think he’d actually do as I asked. Wow,’ she said, turning to Mbeki. ‘I suppose this is what you call a result. And it feels good, it really does.’

  ‘You want to know something?’ Mbeki said, looking thoughtful.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The reason you got that apology is because you stood up for yourself. So come on, Nancy . . . if you can do that with Sam Williams, why can’t you do the very same with Peter Wallace when you get back to London?’

  Nancy nodded. Why not indeed?

  ‘I think you’re right. I think it’s time,’ she told Mbeki. ‘Speaking to you about it, and to all the other amazing women who’ve come into my life lately, has really made me see that.’

  ‘Now come on, girlfriend,’ Mbeki said bossily, ‘it’s almost half an hour to curtain and if you’re not going to see who those magnificent bouquets are from, then I am!’

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ Nancy said, turning her attention to the flowers. ‘No one ever send me flowers – ever.’ Her parents had called her earlier to wish her a cheery ‘good luck, darling’, but they wouldn’t be over to see the show till later on in the run, so she knew the bouquets couldn’t be from them.

  ‘Well, if you don’t open the cards, I will,’ said Mbeki. ‘Quick!’

  The first card read:

  You have real talent, Nancy.

  Maybe we work together again one day, yes? Maybe even you do my job one day. I think so, yes?

  It’s been a pleasure. You did good.

  Fond wishes,

  Diego Fernandez

  At that, Nancy almost fell over.

  ‘And that,’ said Mbeki, reading the card over her shoulder, ‘is what you might call praise from Caesar. Now come on, read the other one, will you? I’m hoping you’ve got a secret admirer, so we can keep you here in Dublin!’

  The second bouquet was ginormous, predominantly made up of tiger lilies.

  To our Primrose Square star:

  We’re all so proud of you!

  Biggest hugs from Jayne, Susan and Melissa. The ladies of Primrose Square.

  Your little Dublin family.

  ‘No, these aren’t from a secret admirer,’ Nancy said, smiling at Mbeki and bending down to inhale the beautiful musky scent from the flowers. ‘It’s better than that. So, so much better.’

  Melissa

  NATIONAL THEATRE

  Melissa and Hayley thought they’d self-combust with excitement at the pre-show champagne reception.

  ‘Okay, so far we’ve seen two of the presenters from TV3, your man who plays for the Irish soccer team, Katie from Ireland’s Got Talent and the bass player from Kodaline!’ Hayley squealed. ‘This is going down as the most amazing night of my whole life!’

  ‘I know!’ Melissa giggled. ‘I think I might have run out of room on my phone, I’ve taken so many photos and selfies!’

  ‘And right here behind you,’ said Susan, gently interrupting the girls, ‘is the woman we have to thank for all this.’

  Everyone turned as Nancy joined them, looking stunning in what she’d told Melissa was her ‘lucky’ red dress, which clung to her neat little figure and made her look like one of those YouTube superstars, who work as models on the side as well. She seemed so cool and calm and unruffled, even though Melissa knew her pal was really a bag of nerves inside.

  ‘Nancy!’ Melissa said, rushing over to hug her tight. ‘This is so incredible!’

  ‘How are you feeling, Nancy, love?’ Jayne asked her kindly. ‘Certainly it looks as though the evening is off to a great start.’

  ‘Oh, don’t talk to me,’ said Nancy, fanning her face with a programme. ‘I’m just about holding it together, but believe me, I’ll be a lot happier when the final curtain comes down. If all goes well, that is.’

  There was a loud chorus of ‘of course it will!’ from Melissa, Hayley, Susan, Jayne and Eric.

  ‘The show will go brilliantly,’ said Melissa stoutly. ‘I know. I’ve already seen it. Sort of. And it’s going to knock everyone’s socks off.’

  ‘Have a glass of champagne,’ Susan offered, but Nancy shook her head.

  ‘I’d kill for a glass of fizz right now,’ she said, ‘but I think I’ll only really enjoy it when the show is over.’

  Then Susan steered Nancy to the side to whisper in her ear. Melissa couldn’t catch what it was, but she did hear Nancy’s reply.

  ‘Not yet,’ Nancy said under her breath. ‘But soon.’

  It was even stranger when they all took their seats before curtain up in the packed auditorium. Nancy had made sure that they’d got the best seats in the house, but what Melissa couldn’t understand was that on a night like this, with tickets like gold dust, there was still one solitary, vacant seat in between her and Susan.

  Excitement mounted as the orchestra tuned up, the National Anthem played and everyone stood up as the President of Ireland entered and took his seat, directly in front of them.

  ‘OMG,’ Hayley mouthed. ‘This is like . . . sitting in the royal box! Wait till I tell everyone . . . No one will believe this!’

  Then, as the lights dimmed before curtain up, Melissa was aware of someone slipping quietly into the vacant seat beside her. She turned abruptly – and there was her dad. Gripping hands with her mum, and winking sideways at her.

  ‘Hey, princess,’ he whispered. ‘I told you I’d make the show, didn’t I? And better late than never.’

  *

  If Melissa had thought the pre-show drinks reception glamorous and glitzy, it was nothing compared with the high-octane star wattage of the after-show party, held at the long bar in the National Theatre. Just about everywhere she looked, she was surrounded by happy friends and family, all glowing from the joy of a great show, brilliantly performed. Even Lady Catherine and Mrs Bennet, who’d been so mean to each other every time Melissa saw them in rehearsals, were actually laughing and joking and clinking champagne glasses together, side by side up at the bar.

  But no one here, Melissa thought, is as thrilled as me. She was overjoyed to have her dad home again, and never for one second suspecting that this was a little surprise just for her that her mum had long been brewing.

  ‘Best of all,’ her dad proudly told her, ‘is that I’m home for good this time. So you never kno
w, princess. Maybe you, me and your mum will get to take that trip to the West End that I’ve promised you both for so long.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about that, Dad.’ Melissa beamed, gripping onto one of his hands as her mum held onto the other one. ‘All that matters to me is that you’re here. You’re really here and Mum is here and it’s . . . well, it’s perfect. Tonight has been completely perfect from start to finish.’

  ‘Hey, here’s our local Primrose Square celebrity!’ said Jayne, giving a spontaneous round of applause when Nancy joined their little group, clutching a neat posy of roses. ‘That was amazing – the best night out I’ve had in years!’ she added warmly.

  ‘I’m so glad it’s all over!’ Nancy laughed. ‘Now, for the first time in weeks, I feel like I can really breathe again.’

  ‘Who gave you the flowers?’ Susan asked, spotting the little bouquet she was carrying. ‘They’re so beautiful.’

  ‘They were a good luck gift,’ Nancy said, flushing just a tiny bit.

  ‘From who?’ said Jayne but, just then, Nancy was pulled to one side by someone else demanding her attention and never got to answer. Not that Melissa needed her to. Because she already knew the answer to that one, just knew without being told.

  Later on in the evening, she made a point of finding Alan to congratulate him and to introduce him to a gushing Hayley, who insisted on using up the dregs of her phone’s battery taking selfies with him. Alan smiled and grinned and gamely posed for every photo.

  ‘You know something?’ Melissa said to him, as she spotted his eye following Nancy through the crowd.

  ‘What’s that?’ he twinkled down at her.

  ‘When this is all over, I think you should ask Nancy out.’

  ‘You do? You think she’d say yes?’

  ‘I think you should definitely ask.’

  Susan

  PRIMROSE SQUARE

  ‘I bind your hands in love and trust,’ Eric was saying to Jayne, as a small gathering of friends and family sat around them in the tiny Remembrance Corner of Primrose Square, all looking on. Some were smiling and laughing, snapping photo after photo on their phones – like Frank, for instance, who was sitting right by Susan’s side. Others were a bit teary, she noticed. Funny, she thought, the way weddings did that to people. She herself, on the other hand, was content to do nothing more than hold onto her husband’s hand and remember.

  ‘I bind your hands as a symbol of our lifelong commitment,’ Jayne was saying, clearly and confidently, at the prompting of the humanist minister who was conducting the service. ‘From this day forth . . .’

  ‘And forsaking all others,’ Eric finished the sentence for her, to a tiny ripple of applause as the minister pronounced them both man and wife.

  Next thing, a guitarist from somewhere behind began to strum the opening chords of ‘Something’ by The Beatles. There was a lovely, hushed calm as everyone listened to the music, savouring the sunny, warm spring day and the wonderfully joyous atmosphere of this very special ceremony, held – at Jayne’s insistence – right in the middle of Primrose Square’s brand new Remembrance Corner.

  So Susan looked around her, doing just that – remembering.

  She glanced over at Jason and his wife Irene, who looked as pinched and sullen as ever, and remembered how horrible they’d been to Eric when he first came on the scene.

  Yet when she looked at Jason and Irene now, she marvelled how far the pair of them had come in the last year. Jason was actually looking prosperous for the first time in ages. His ‘mobile catering units’ were doing a bomb and not only that, but he was single-handedly looking after the catering after the ceremony.

  ‘All very posh, you know, Susan,’ he’d bragged to her beforehand. ‘Chicken vol au vents and sushi all the way. None of your batter burgers and fries – this is a class operation, I’ll have you know. Me and Irene are going very upmarket these days. Eric says we might even start doing vegan takeaways soon. Sure all the young ones are going vegan these days, clean eating is all the rage. Might as well make a few quid of it if we can, eh?’

  Then Susan’s eye wandered over to Jayne herself, looking radiant in a flowing white dress with matching white trousers, with a comfy pair of sandals from M&S, the only touch that the old Jayne would have approved of.

  Susan remembered only too well how lonely grief had left Jayne after her husband died. Her first husband, she reminded herself to say from now on. Hard to reconcile the old Jayne with the happy, glowing woman who stood at the centre of their little makeshift circle now, brimming over with joy and radiating – as she would have said herself – ‘an abundance of love’. Who could have predicted that Jayne’s story would have ended so happily?

  Even Nancy was here too, having come all the way over from London especially for the ceremony. She was now sitting in the row beside Susan with that lovely actor guy she’d been seeing for months now – Alan what’s-his-name – the guy from Harry Potter. A real sweetheart and mad about Nancy too. Susan caught her eye and the two women gave each other a quick little wink as Nancy mouthed over, ‘We’ve so much to catch up on later!’

  And again, Susan remembered back to when she first met Nancy. She thought of the busy, stressed professional woman who’d first come to Primrose Square via a fraudulent Homesitter scam all that time ago, but who was as much a part of their little community now as any of them.

  The fact that Nancy had moved back to London to direct a huge West End musical meant little to the ladies of Primrose Square; Nancy was and would always remain one of them. In fact, Susan herself had been the very first person Nancy had called when she went back to London, not long after Pride and Prejudice had wrapped. She said she had ‘some pretty big news’ to share and Susan was all agog to hear what it was.

  ‘I did it!’ Nancy joyfully told Susan down the phone. ‘Inspired by you, I actually did it!’

  ‘Tell me everything!’ Susan had gasped.

  ‘I took the bull by the horns,’ Nancy said, the strength in her voice all too obvious. ‘I formally requested a face-to-face meeting with Peter Wallace and the HR representative at the Kensington Theatre, and boy, did I say my piece or what . . . Oh Susan, you’d have been proud of me! I said abuse of power was just that, abuse, and that I wasn’t prepared to see my good name and reputation and everything I’d worked for run into the ground for another moment longer.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Susan asked, on the very edge of her seat.

  ‘Well, of course Peter denied everything and acted the bully and threw his weight around – his standard way of reacting whenever he’s threatened – but I was still cool with that, because you know why? Because I’d said my piece. No more running away and hiding and behaving like a victim. I felt like a strong woman in that meeting and it was bloody wonderful.’

  ‘Atta girl,’ Susan said proudly.

  ‘And then you know what else?’ Nancy said. ‘He formally apologised and the news travelled like wildfire through theatre circles. The theatre even put out a press release, can you believe it? All of a sudden, actors and directors were calling me to say sorry if they’d ever got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I even did an interview about it in the press! And since then, all sorts of doors have started opening for me again. Even the Royal Court, where I’ve always wanted to work, have invited me in to “have a chat about future projects”!’

  Susan had been overjoyed for Nancy then, and still continued to be, with every career success she notched under her belt. Since Pride and Prejudice, Nancy had gone from strength to strength, and she was now directing a new musical, which was due to open in London later in the year. Frank and Susan were planning to take Melissa over to see the show as a birthday surprise for her, and Nancy had faithfully promised them backstage tours, the whole works. Not only that, but between them, they’d plotted a birthday party for Melissa – to be held in a capsule of the London Eye.

  To this day, Nancy was still so incredibly kind to Melissa and was now somet
hing of a role model and big sister figure for her – it seemed that no distance could erode the bond that was there between them.

  Thank God, Susan thought, closing her eyes tightly. Thank God for sending someone like Nancy into our lives.

  She thought of all her other new friends who were now very much a part of her life now. Like Bunny and Emily from St Michael’s, who she’d grown so close to over the past year. Bunny was back home with her own family and Emily had her eye on a rental flat on Primrose Square, which Susan was madly encouraging her towards taking, loving the fact that they might end up neighbours. Poor Bungalow Bill was still at St Michael’s, but Susan, Emily and Bunny made a point of visiting him regularly, always bringing freshly baked cakes for him, and taking care to let him know he had true friends in his corner who’d never desert him.

  Then Susan looked over to her pride and joy, Melissa, who was standing right beside Jayne in a gorgeous new dress from Zara. She was clutching a posy of lilies and looked utterly delighted with herself, as she’d been asked to do a reading at the ceremony, which she’d preformed faultlessly.

  My little pet, Susan thought, looking fondly across the garden at her, my reason for going on, my bright, smiley child. Although not a child any more, a proper teenager now.

  Yet again, Susan remembered – this time, back to that lost, lonely, neglected girl, struggling to keep her family together at a time when everyone else was falling apart. There were no words to say how proud Susan felt as she looked at Melissa, how much she loved her, how she gave deepest thanks every day of her life for the very fact that she had a daughter like her. She and Frank had so much making up to do to their beautiful younger daughter, but they were certainly well on their way. With Frank permanently back in Dublin now, family time was what the three of them really cherished so much. They’d all sit around the kitchen table for dinner, laughing, joking and just loving the simple, ordinary pleasure of being together. For always.