“Not at all.”
With her thick British accent, not at all sounds like one word, notall. Harriet stops arguing with William long enough to greet Hayley and take her tea order.
“I’ll have a cup of We’re a Perfect Matcha,” Hayley says.
“Sorry, love,” Harriet says. “We are out of matcha. I used the last of it to make matcha sugar cookies. How about a nice pot of I Love You Oolong Time and a matcha sugar cookie?”
“Lovely,” Hayley says.
Harriet returns with Hayley’s tea and cookies. She refreshes my teapot before resuming her debate with William.
“Ferrero lost more than three million dollars in class-action lawsuits in America,” William says.
“The Americans!” Harriet waves her hands. “The Americans are the most litigious people in the world, after the Germans.”
“Oi!” Hayley shouts. “American here.”
Harriet looks at me and her cheeks flush.
“Sorry, love. No offense.”
“None taken.” I smile. “For the record, I have never sued Starbucks for putting too much ice in my iced coffee or Subway for serving me an eleven-inch footlong”—I raise three fingers on my right hand as if making the Girl Scout promise—“and I promise I won’t bring a lawsuit against the tea shop if you serve me a Nutella muffin.” William frowns at me. “Though, as a rule, I prefer good old American peanut butter over carcinogenic hazelnut spread.”
“Well done, you,” Hayley whispers. “Being drawn into the Nutella Crisis could be disastrous. Neutrality is your best course.”
“The line has been drawn in the sand”—I lower my voice to a whisper—“but I shall not choose sides.”
Hayley laughs. My Aunt Patricia once said, Laughter is an elixir of beauty. It has the power to transform a plain girl into a pretty girl, and a pretty girl into a remarkable beauty. Hayley is one of those pretty girls who becomes beautiful when she laughs.
William tucks his book farther up under his arm and strides out of the tea shop, nodding as he passes our table. Harriet arrives to take our lunch order—bowls of pea soup made with organic veg from Hayley’s farm and grilled cheese sandwiches on fresh-baked brown bread. Hayley’s eyes shine with pride when Harriet tells me the bit about the vegetables being sourced from her farm. I wonder if she always wanted to be a farmer? Did she ever think about choosing an easier career, one not dominated by men? Does she always wear jeans and tees, even when she is working in her market? I wait until Harriet leaves before hitting Hayley with questions.
“Have you always wanted to be a farmer?”
“Farming is all I have ever known.”
“Is it your passion, though?”
“I know it’s not sexy”—she wraps her slender fingers around her teacup and smiles at me in a sweet, self-conscious sort of way, her bottom lip pulled tight over her straight white teeth—“but farming is in my blood. It is satisfying to spend my day engaged in work that is truly meaningful, work that sustains life. My sister and her lot spend their days selling a concept—and a vapid one at that—posing in designer clothes, beside luxury automobiles, holding overpriced handbags. They work at creating images of a lifestyle that is unobtainable for most people.”
Yikes! As Taylor Swift might say, We got some bad blood up in here, y’all.
“My sister Manderley works as an assistant to a playwright,” I say, keeping my tone light and upbeat so I don’t come off judgmental. “My other sister, Tara, is a trained chef but works as a reporter for a television station. She films segments about food and the hottest restaurants in Charleston. Some might say their work is meaningless and even a little vapid, but wouldn’t the world be a boring place without movie-script writers and handbag-hocking models? I think creating art, in any form or format, is meaningful work for some people, don’t you?”
“Bloody hell! First, I cock up the greeting and then I carry on about my sister like some mad, jealous cow. Maybe I should just bugger off.”
“Get out of here.”
Hayley gasps. She pushes to a stand and is about to snatch her hat off the table when I realize she thinks I want her to leave.
“I didn’t mean that literally, Hayley,” I say, reaching for her wrist. “Get out of here is American slang for you have to be kidding. I don’t really want you to bugger off.”
She sits back down, her back ramrod straight, her lips pressed together in a tense, tight slash.
“And you didn’t sound like a mad cow. A little judgy maybe, but not mad. Not crazy-eyes, foaming-at-the-mouth, tongue-lolling-out, stomping-hoof mad, anyway.”
I laugh, and she relaxes her posture.
“Sorry,” she says, brushing a curl out of her face. “I get a little defensive about my job.”
“Really?” I grin. “I hadn’t noticed.”
She laughs.
“What’s that about?”
“You mean you haven’t heard The Tragic Tale of Hayley Bartlett?”
“Nope.”
“Not even the Reader’s Digest version?”
“Not even the Reader’s Digest version.”
She draws a deep breath, wraps her hands around her teacup as if it is a talisman for summoning strength, then begins telling me her tale—the unabridged version. I wouldn’t call it a tragic tale, but it is saaad.
Annabelle, Hayley’s momma, got pregnant when she was a teenager and refused to name the baby daddy, which caused a bit of a scandal in Northam-on-the-Water. A few months after Hayley’s birth, Annabelle packed a bag and moved to London, leaving her baby, and the baby daddy gossip, behind. She worked as a successful model until she met and married Robin Whittaker-Smith III, heir of Whittaker-Smith Bespoke, a luxury tailor specializing in country clothing. Apparently, Whittaker-Smith Bespoke has been supplying made-to-order tweed garments for Britain’s blue bloods since 1873. Annabelle stopped modeling and started designing superchic tweed ware for a younger, hipper demographic. Today, Annabelle Whittaker-Smith’s brand, Cavalier, is popular with young aristocrats, socialites, and heiresses hoping to pull a Kate (marry way, way up the social ladder). Hayley calls them the Chestertons, because she says the people who buy Annabelle’s clothes always attend a champagne-fueled, fascinator-free social event called Chestertons Polo in the Park.
“Toffs who sip chilled Moët at four hundred pounds per glass and whinge about how much it costs to maintain their piles.”
“Whinge?”
“Moan,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Piles?”
“Massive country estates.”
“Ah.”
“Polo and piles,” Hayley says, her tone tinged with bitterness. “Vapid toffs, the lot of them.”
Should I tell Hayley how I used to be part of the Charleston polo and piles set, how I faithfully attended the Whitney Turn Up, how I used to sip overpriced champagne and whinge about the challenges of living in a two-hundred-year-old plantation? I like Hayley. I don’t want her to think I am a vapid toff, but my daddy used to say, A true friend sees your rickety old fence but pays it no mind because she would rather admire the flowers you got growing in your garden. How will I know if Hayley is a true friend if I bring her around the back way, if I hide my rickety old fence?
“If you had known me in Charleston, you would have called me a toff.”
Hayley looks surprised by my admission.
“I lived a vapid life,” I say. “Designer bags and debutante balls.”
“Lived. Past tense. What made you change?”
“For reals?”
Hayley nods.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I say, looking her dead in the eye. “My daddy died owing a mess of back taxes, so the IRS yanked my silver spoon right out of my mouth. They froze Daddy’s accounts and seized his assets. They even repossessed my car! A humbling and humiliating experience.”
“I can imagine.”
“The thing is”—I tip my teacup to the side and pretend to study the soggy grounds clinging to the sides
and bottom of the cup because what I am about to say is embarrassing—“that humbling, humiliating experience was the best thing my daddy could have left me, more valuable than some old plantation or luxury car, because it forced me to grow up, to take charge of my life. Suddenly, I couldn’t afford to treat my life like it was a big old pool party and I was just lounging on an inflatable pink flamingo, waiting for a breeze to push me from one side to the other.” I take a deep breath and look at Hayley. “I miss my daddy something fierce, Hayley, so I hope you don’t think I am cold or selfish when I say this, but I don’t think I would have had the compulsion to grow up if he hadn’t died.”
I said I was moving to Northam-on-the-Water so I could live rent-free in my aunt’s cottage, but I realize that was a whole lotta hogwash. I moved to Northam because it was the only way I could get off my pink flamingo pool float. Staying in Charleston and living with my sister would have been like floating on that flamingo and letting the breeze take me from one side of the pool to the other.
“I don’t think you sound cold or selfish.” She lets go of her teacup, and for a second I think she might reach over and pat my arm, but she shoves her hands in her pockets instead. “You might have run with a posh set, but you could not have been vapid, not truly, terminally vapid anyway. A vapid person would have used her loss and humiliation as an excuse to garner sympathy; you used it as an impetus for change and growth. Good on you.”
“Thank you!”
Harriet brings our soup and cheese sandwiches and we chat about slightly less serious matters, like the new Harry Styles album (love), our favorite Netflix binge-worthy programs (Peaky Blinders), the latest celeb scandals (looking at you, Kendall Jenner), and our predictions for the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle mash-up (Hayley thinks they will end up like Prince Andrew and Fergie, with Meghan caught by the paparazzi in a toe-sucking peccadillo, while I feel they will follow the Disney route, remaining faithfully and happily wed till death do they part). Harriet clears away our empty dishes and refills our teacups.
“Did you spend a lot of time in London when you were growing up?”
“Not at all.”
“Didn’t you visit your momma?”
Hayley’s face hardens. “Annabelle hid my existence from her husband and her new family. She sent money to my grandparents so they could buy birthday and Boxing Day gifts, but that was the extent of her involvement in my childhood. When I was fourteen, she suffered a pang of conscience and confessed her dirty little secret to Robin.”
“How did he react?”
She fiddles with the handle of the tiny silver spoon sticking out of the sugar bowl, toying with the brown lumps of demerara.
“He invited me to live with them, said he would buy me a car, send me to the best schools, but I didn’t want to leave my grandparents. The farm is my home. Robin asked me to be involved in Annalise’s life, but I was a moody, sullen teenager by then. The last thing I wanted was to play big sister to my mum’s beloved brat.”
Hayley looks as bruised as she sounds, just a big, old emotional sore, and I can’t stop myself from reaching out and grabbing her hand.
“Annabelle didn’t even name me. My grandparents named me after Hayley Mills, the actress.”
I think about my momma and try to imagine how I would have felt if she had up and left me. I only know my momma through memories—other people’s memories. Still, I take comfort in knowing my momma wanted me and only left me ’cuz the good Lord needed another angel in heaven. I reckon it hurts Hayley something fierce to know her momma couldn’t be bothered to give her firstborn a name, but she sure enough gave her secondborn a name. Annabelle. Annalise. Ouch. Annabelle was a model. Annalise is a model. Now I see why Hayley seems to reject anything associated with the fashion industry—from modeling to tinted moisturizer.
“I grew up with the stigma of being the unwanted child of Hester Prynne of Northam-on-the-Water.”
“Hester Prynne?”
“The Scarlet Letter?”
Sweet lawd have mercy! Another book I only pretended to read in freshman lit. I skimmed it. Honest I did. I remember it had a whole mess of Mensa vocabulary words like ignominious, physiognomies, and contumaciously. For real, y’all. Who—besides Neil deGrasse Tyson and Manderley Maxwell—uses the word contumaciously in everyday speech? Brainiacs, that’s who. Note to self: download The Scarlet Letter. Unabridged version, not CliffsNotes.
“Um, Literature has never really been my thing, so you’re going to have to explain the Hester Price reference.”
“Prynne,” Hayley says, smiling. “Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, lives in a village in New England. She has an affair with a puritan minister and gets up the duff.”
“Up the duff?”
“Pregnant.”
Hayley tells me the rest of Hester’s sad, sordid story, peppering it with British slang and snarky editorial asides.
“Lawdy! I wish you would have been my freshman lit study buddy,” I say, laughing. “I might have enjoyed Orwell.”
“I have just had the most brilliant idea!”
“Ooo! Goody!” I clap my hands. “I love brilliant ideas.”
“I will entertain you with a Hayley Bartlett original retelling of any classic novel, if you teach me how to make my eyeliner flick up at the ends like yours.” She thrusts her hand at me. “Do we have a bargain?”
Hayley has this whole jeans-and-tee, I-don’t-care vibe going on, with her fresh-scrubbed face and unmanaged curls, but with a little help, a little of my help, she could be beautiful, as beautiful as her half sister. Her passion for her vocation and her commitment to excel in her field—pun accidental—reminds me of Kristen. Focused, driven women are so inspiring (and intimidating), aren’t they? They make me want to be more focused and more driven.
“It’s a deal,” I say, shaking Hayley’s hand. “When do you want to start?”
“Are you busy next Saturday night?”
“Nope.”
“Brilliant! I planted a mango tree in my greenhouse and the first fruit is ripe. Nigella has a mango margarita recipe that sounds scrummy. I will bring the fruit—”
“—and I will supply the tequila!”
I want to jump up and cheer, but I am afraid my American enthusiasm might be too much for my new friend, so I settle for softly clapping my hands and letting out a restrained and dignified squeal.
Chapter Thirteen
Emma Lee Maxwell’s Facebook Update:
I saw the sweetest thing this morning, y’all. I was walking in the village when I noticed an elderly couple strolling arm-in-arm ahead of me. The woman stopped, looked in a shop window, frowned, and began fussing with her hair, patting the sides, twisting her curly bangs in place. This went on for a while. Finally, her husband bent down and kissed her cheek. She stopped fussing and smiled up at him. Isn’t that what we all want—someone who has the ability to make us stop our fussing with a simple touch?
It was his overcoat that caught my attention. Single-breasted, expertly tailored wool in Prince of Wales check. The sort of coat found in European fashion magazines or old-time movies. The sort of coat created by an Italian fashion designer and sold exclusively in Bergdorf’s Goodman’s Guide. The sort of coat I would expect to see on—
“Knightley!”
“Hello, Emma Lee.” He smiles and tiny, happy crinkles appear around his eyes. “You’ve been exploring the village, I see. How do you find Northam-on-the-Water?”
Sweet lawd! The skies are leaden, the air cold and wet, but I suddenly feel flushed all over, like the time I ate dodgy oysters and got food poisoning. I wonder if it was Harriet’s pea soup? Or the sandwich? The cheese smelled off.
“Hey there, Knightley,” I say, casually untying the belt around my trench coat to let in a blast of cool air. “I love Northam! I feel as if I have stepped into the pages of a fairy tale.”
Knightley turns around and we walk along the river in the direction of the cottage.
“I am cur
ious; which of our neighbors is to be the first to benefit from your matchmaking expertise?”
I assume he is teasing me, because, well, everyone has teased me about my desire to become a matchmaker—everyone, that is, except Knightley’s momma, Miss Isabella.
“Well,” I say, peeking at him out of the corner of my eye. “I was fixin’ to start with you.”
The happy crinkles around his eyes deepen and his lips lift in a smile. His laughter, warm and comforting, wraps around me like a familiar hug.
“Is that so? And what makes you think I want to be matched?”
“Everybody wants to find their perfect match.”
He suddenly stops walking. “Everybody?”
I turn back, see his slow, smoldering smile, and my heart skips an entire beat, like the needle of my daddy’s old vinyl player when it hit the scratch in his favorite Otis Redding record. Lawd, Knightley is a beautiful man!
“Sure.”
“Even you?”
Skip. Skip. I can’t tell if Knightly Nickerson is flirting with me or just teasing me back, and it’s got me feeling all flustered. Manderley would respond with something deeply wise and poetic. Tara would twist her hair around her slender finger and say something so witty, so brazen, Knightley would make like her hair and twist himself around her little old finger.
I am not as wise as Manderley.
And I am not as brazen—read: sexually confident—as Tara.
So, I opt for unvarnished candor.
“No, I reckon I don’t want to find my soul mate.”
He stops smiling, and the happy crinkles disappear.
“You don’t? Why not?”
It’s probably the same reason I never pressed my daddy to get me a pet. Growing up, my best friend in the whole, wide world was Ginger May Harrison, on account of she could play basketball like a boy and still look mighty pretty in a dress and Mary Janes. I remember Ginger May begging her momma and daddy to let her have a silky-haired Boykin Spaniel pup from a litter of pups we saw at the pet store near Citadel Mall. They said no, but Ginger May kept on them. They finally gave in. Ginger May named her sweet little pup Baby Dumpling and fastened a big old floppy pink polka-dot bow to her collar. For three years, Baby Dumpling followed Ginger May everywhere, faithfully trotting behind her with that bow still fastened to her collar. Then, one day, Baby Dumpling up and stopped eating. Her stomach bloated, and she died. Ginger May was devastated. And I was devastated for her. That’s why I never pressed my daddy for my own Baby Dumpling, and that’s why I am not pressing for a soul mate.
Badly Done, Emma Lee Page 10
