‘There you go. You’re on the way up, you’re on track, Freya, checking off life’s boxes.’ Dad spoke like that a lot of the time, like a motivational guru or a tobacco-chewing movie baseball coach.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘I’m proud of you. You were so lost for so long, drifting and waitressing, and not knowing what you wanted out of your college degree. And look at you now, getting married, running your own business. I am proud of you, I really am.’
I felt tears begin to prickle at the back of my eyes. I sniffed. ‘Oh stop, Dad, you’ll have me in tears. I don’t have time for crying today, I’ve too much to do – there can’t be tears in the bouquet.’
We both laughed and said our goodbyes. And then my phone beeped again. A text from BBest Wise Investment Banks.
Congratulations, Freya, your application for a line of credit has been approved. We’ll be in touch.
What? Just like that, there was money in the bank.
4
The next morning I woke from the best dream. There was a lotto win and a dangerously handsome man and glasses of champagne and me laughing hysterically, head flung back, mouth open wide, just as you think you might if you won the lotto. But then my phone started shouting at me.
‘Wake up, Freya, wake up.’
There was an undercurrent of an English accent to its electric tones and a school marmish quality, which gave it an air of superiority that made me fearful of disobeying it. My phone knew best.
Well, my lovely blissful, dreamlike state was ruined now. I may have even gone on to shag that handsome man, or he may have gone on to kill me. Dreams are terribly unpredictable.
‘I’m up.’ It knows I’m not, though. I may have bought myself thirty seconds for a stretch. My phone operated through BBest, which meant that everything on the phone – mail, weather, contacts, location – was run through the app. It was with me constantly and probably the thing that I consulted more than anything or anyone. Mam called her phone Rasheed. Some people did that, gave their phone a nickname like it was a pet. The voice on Mam’s phone got stuck on a heavy Indian accent for two days about a year ago and, in spite of the fact that she can’t understand it half the time, she liked the singsong, raspy quality of him. He’s all ‘wakey wakey’ and calls her a full double-barrelled ‘Ev’ – slight electronic pause – ‘ie’. She joked that he was the only reliable man in her life. I thought he sounded like a heavy smoker and may not be around for much longer, unlike my fitness guru, military task-master-style phone, who was downing virtual kale smoothies and I reckoned had a virtual portrait in a virtual attic. Ah no, that’s not fair, I loved it really, just not so much at 5.35 am.
I felt an anxiety bubble pop in my stomach, the first of many, I was sure. Today was the day of the Crayling wedding, and there was a lot at stake for my little business.
The shower woke me up. I dressed in my work uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, pushed my dark hair into a high ponytail, smoothed down my fringe and applied a minimal amount of make-up.
‘What’s for breakfast?’ I asked as I pulled the fridge door open, fighting the urge to crawl in and rest my head on a shelf to absorb the coolness. I flashed my screen at the fridge, which automatically produced a shopping list for later on. I must have been running low.
I scrolled through the three options that popped up, based on the contents of my fridge and the fact that I was tired and had only had a few hours’ sleep. The recommended option was poached eggs on brown bread toast, avocado and orange juice. I had a sixty-six per cent chance of feeling good if I started the day that way, rising to seventy-four per cent if I got a black coffee at eleven.
‘Perfect, and good odds,’ I said.
I heard footsteps upstairs; Jay was probably just getting to bed. He normally sat up all night playing Dungeons & Dragons, or something that looked like Dungeons & Dragons. There was definitely some reptile type of creature in the game, all sharp tooth and lizard tongue. He synced up through BBest to thousands of other gamers, who watched him play as he made witty comments, or at least things he thought were witty, like: I’ll slay you, Dragonmaster and send you to the dungeons. I don’t get it, but Jay got thousands of hearts and smiles when he shouted things out.
Fifteen minutes after I left my house I pulled open the garage door of Blooming Brilliant. Waiting expectantly in the back room were some of the hard-wearing blooms I had been able to prepare in advance: boutonnieres for the groom and groomsmen of ivy and de-thorned roses that were beginning to delicately open up to the day, intricate displays of orchids that had been sewn together in a circle to form table centrepieces. I had ten minutes until the delivery arrived. I threw on my apron and started to clear space, mentally running through my to-do list. Not that I needed to remember anything; my phone was keeping a close eye on my day – it had been planned out to the minute. It would run successfully as long as I stuck to its whip-cracking regime. Then Mason called.
‘Hi, Mase, I don’t have much time to chat,’ I said, shouting down to the speaker phone.
‘I know, I just wanted to wish you good luck today.’
So nice, he was so nice. ‘Thank you.’
‘I was also wondering if we could schedule in some time to get together on mortgage rates and financial planning?’ He sounded serious.
‘You’re not joking, are you?’ I said a little sharply.
‘No, why would I joke about this?’
‘You’re getting me all hot and steamy under the collar here, tell me more about these sexy mortgage rates.’ I changed my voice to a raspy, throaty one. Mortgage rates? Seriously?
‘Okay, okay, I get it, but it is something we need to discuss, sooner rather than later.’
‘Okay, I suppose. We’re getting married, this is the type of thing married people talk about. Right, sign me up, I can’t wait,’ I said, hurrying the conversation to a close.
‘It’ll be fine, we just need to clear up our finances.’
Clear up? What did that mean? Was he going to put a spreadsheet in front of me of what I spend? Knowing Mason, that’s the type of thing he would like – in fact, he would love it. I, however, would find it difficult, because I had no idea. I mean the big things like my rent were fine, but the other little things like clothes, food, make-up, well, the money just slipped away, didn’t it? It was like there was a big online shopping hole in my bank card that was just for nice-smelling and -looking things. I earned my own money, so it really wasn’t any of his business. I felt myself getting so hoity toity during this imaginary conversation, I could feel the words ‘independent woman’ on the tip of my tongue.
‘Thanks, Freya, I love you.’
‘Yes, you too.’ But I may not love your spreadsheet or any sideways glances or judgmental tut-tuts you might release when you discover what I spend on bath salts. Just saying.
The morning disappeared in a flurry. I worked at a feverish pace; there were three bouquets to make and four floral displays. Everything was coming together beautifully. The flowers that had arrived that morning were perfect; they were just beginning to stretch themselves, half opening their petals, shaking off their slumber. If all went according to plan, they would explode open like a fireworks display just as the bride walked down the aisle. The colours would pop and the heady scent of spring blooms would be like a magic potion of happiness consumed by all the guests.
I twisted wires and plucked and shaped the flowers into place. The bride’s designs were a very traditional style. The flowers were in uneven numbers that appealed to the eye, and the bouquet was yellow and green, with a trail of ivy that mirrored the design of her dress.
‘Load up, Freya. Load up,’ my phone said.
Bang on target, I loaded up my van with the green and pink logo printed on the side. Within ten minutes I was on the outskirts of Dublin, and the spaces between houses grew further and further apart as the dwellings got larger and the scenery became greener and more like a picture postcard. I was happily driving along when I spotted
traffic. There was not supposed to be any traffic. I grabbed my phone and balanced it on the wheel, swiping as I drove. Why was there traffic? And then, oh God, I saw it wasn’t just traffic but a standstill. This was not good. I was running to a tight deadline, but now my little van was coming to a slow chug-chug-chug stop. I felt my heart start to pound. What if I couldn’t get there? The bride couldn’t get married without a bouquet. No, that couldn’t happen. I couldn’t be late, it would be a disaster. Just as I was wondering about the possibility of reversing down the motorway, like a beacon of light I spotted the fluorescent jacket of a guard striding between the cars with great importance, swinging his arms like a man in power. I rolled down my window and half catapulted myself out of it.
‘Excuse me, guard, excuse me!’ I hollered across the motorway.
He heard my damsel-in-distress cry, straightened his cap and briskly walked towards me.
He crouched down to my eye level. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘What’s going on?’ I waved my phone at him. ‘There isn’t supposed to be any traffic.’
‘It’s all happened very quickly. You see that field over there?’ He pointed in the general direction of a million fields. ‘RealTime’s helicopter is landing there in the next few minutes.’
‘RealTime? The RealTime?’ I felt all a-quiver, and peered back over to the millions of fields to see if I could pinpoint exactly which one.
‘The BBest founder, yeah.’
As if I didn’t know who RealTime was, as if any living soul on the planet didn’t know who RealTime was. Probably the nicest, kindest man, who genuinely wanted to make the world a better place. Everyone loved him; he was a complete tech genius and gave away all his money to medical research. He had been a rapper in the early nineties; I’m too young to remember him but Mam says she hopped around nightclubs to his songs.
‘Some bright spark, some Luddite, has decided to protest. They’re waving their banners and shouting.’ He peered down at me and I could see up close that he was probably a fresh-faced twenty-five, which was disconcerting. Shouldn’t guards and doctors be older, like a minimum of forty so they appear wiser, maybe even with a slight greying at the temples?
‘What are they protesting about?’ I asked, thinking I had heard the term Luddite before, when I was back at school.
‘Who knows? I bet they want us all to wear loincloths and go back and live in caves.’
‘My hair would never survive the Stone Age, it’s practically allergic to any natural products.’
He looked at me, confused, and I explained myself, which was a worry – you should never have to explain a joke.
‘I could never be a Luddite, I need products and technology and things for my hair.’
‘Oh right,’ he said, deadpan, and straightened his back a little. ‘Anyway, there you go, the traffic’s moving now.’
And it was, the cars ahead were speeding up again.
‘Hooray, thank you.’
He flicked his hand to the peak of his cap in a gentlemanly fashion. ‘See you now. Be the Best you can be.’
I smiled. The BBest tagline. He must be part of the privatised Garda units, a trial program being run by BBest. As far as I knew, they were better paid and had better conditions than the state guards. I waved him off, and started to scan the skyline and listen eagerly for the sound of a helicopter coming in. It was quite exciting to be this close to RealTime. The story goes that RealTime started BBest out of his apartment in LA. I don’t quite think it was humble beginnings like me in a garage, because he had already made a lot of money from his music career. Apparently he had spent hours online trawling the web for a pair of shorts. He wanted a pair of Bermuda shorts but as he scrolled through site after site, he was bombarded with so many choices he froze and started to question his original intention: did he really want shorts? Maybe he should get compression pants? Or what about some tracksuit pants? And on and on.
He wasted six hours trying to decide, and with stinging eyes and a sense of frustration, he eventually gave up. What he wanted was someone to tell him what he needed, what would fit with his wardrobe and his body shape and what would be acceptable for him to wear to a business meeting and Friday night drinks. Twenty years ago, someone might have had a personal assistant or a stylist who might do just that, but nowadays we have phones, and they should be able to do the same thing. It was RealTime’s ‘aha’ moment. He wanted to develop an app that knew him so well it could make these kind of decisions for him.
BBest grew out of this idea. It was launched as a shopping app and grew quickly to rival Amazon, which RealTime later bought out. That was when he started to investigate lifestyle choices rather than just retail, and he invested heavily in the development of machine learning. A few computer geniuses managed to produce an algorithm that could recommend future successful behaviour for an individual. BBest needed your entire online history in order to give you successful options for your future. It was no big deal; I know I just scrolled down through loads of terms and conditions and clicked okay. Pretty simple really.
I was only two minutes behind schedule for the wedding. It was fine. Foot to the floor and I’d be there bang on time.
5
I pulled into the venue. It was already a hive of activity, with cars pulling in and out of the imposing grey brick, seventeenth-century castle, which had big wooden doors waiting for a princess to burst through, and turrets that had fallen straight out of a Hans Christian Andersen story.
And there was the mother in a white dressing gown, slippered feet scuffed from the gravel pathway. She had a face like a bag of hammers. It didn’t look like things were going to plan, or at least her plan. I tooted the horn, waved out the window and gave her a confident smile.
She stormed over, flailing her arms, her face a thunderous purple. ‘At least you’re on time, the photographer’s a bloody joke. He slept out. He slept out in this day and age, can you believe it? I’ve already slated him on BBest. He’s completely incompetent.’
I swallowed hard. Getting slated on BBest was career suicide. The photographer probably wouldn’t turn up at all now. His career was as good as over. Once it’s up there, you can’t take it back.
I peeped out of the window. ‘How’s the bride?’
‘Stressed. We’re all stressed. You can set up inside.’ She pointed a well-manicured nail towards the doors of the castle and, looking distracted, headed for a van that was creeping up the drive.
l unloaded in the reception room, a beautiful ballroom that had been transformed into a heavenly setting: acres of white silk cloth draped from the ceiling, stars dangling intermittently to resemble the night sky. It would look magnificent when the lights went off. Tables dressed in white linen waited expectantly to be decorated. The room was filled with waiters and event planners moving in all directions like spilled coffee beans.
‘Set tables, Freya, set tables.’
As directed, I set to work positioning the centrepieces around the room, marvelling at how the stars on the ceiling reflected in the mirrored bases. The jigsaw was clicking into place.
‘Freya querida, I didn’t know you were working la boda.’
I heard the heavy Spanglish and smiled, knowing that it belonged to Enzo, my lovely friend who had incredibly expressive eyebrows, all dark and wriggly. He occasionally worked the bars at weddings, but would rather be teaching salsa.
‘Enzo, what a surprise!’ We double kissed, very European.
He dropped his voice. ‘Have you met the mother? Madre mia, what a piece of work.’
‘I know, I know, but they’re big influencers.’
‘So we all gotta suck balls, huh?’ He winked and slapped me playfully on the hip. ‘So I heard a rumour about you, missy? You and that hot stud, que guapo?’
And I did what you do, I went all jazz hands on him and then, like I was on the TV shopping channel, displayed my sparkler, running my fingers lovingly over it. He pursed his lips together.
‘Hmm, it’s big, it�
��s nice. You must be so happy.’
I grinned. ‘Yes, I am delighted.’
‘You’ll be a big blubbery mess on the day, Freya, what will we do? You’ll just cry and cry, it will be a disaster. Your make-up – everything – will be ruined.’
I laughed. ‘Shut up.’ In wedding circles, my ugly crying face was infamous. ‘Pulling a Freya’ it was called, when you blubbed uncontrollably at a ceremony. I couldn’t help it. Weddings turned me to mush. I had to leave the church when my cousin Louise got married last year. I don’t even particularly like her but I just got so overwhelmed with the emotion of the event. It was the way her groom looked at her as she walked down the aisle. I can’t even remember his name now, but it was amazing, his face was flushed with pure joy and love. I couldn’t handle it; I started bawling, a festival of snot and tears. It was bordering on the indecent. I do try my best to hold it together in work situations though, but obviously, what with pulling a Freya and all, I slip every now and again.
‘I bet you cried when he proposed, I bet you couldn’t even say yes, because the tears, the tears.’ Enzo sprinkled his fingertips across my face.
‘Nope, not one,’ I said.
‘Liar. You mentiroso.’ He took a step back and crossed his arms, smiling.
‘Seriously, I didn’t, I think I was in a state of shock.’
Enzo looked so disappointed. He was just about to say something when his phone buzzed. He flashed a glance at his screen. ‘I have to work, work, work. Will I see you at the syncing? We can hold each other up?’
Right Girl Page 3
