by Maeve Haran
‘You stay, I’ll go and order,’ she told Debora.
She arrived at the reception desk at the same time as a statuesque young woman wearing a pink tulle tutu over a black body with leggings and Doc Martens plus a pink sash proclaiming LOU’S HEN PARTY. The whole thing was topped off with a fetching fake tiara.
The newcomer was as well upholstered as the devoré chairs, with generous breasts that spilled out of the front of her dress, luxuriously unruly long red hair and an infectious smile. She also reminded Stella of someone.
The receptionist’s smile froze over like a glacier as the girl approached and Stella remembered the sign at her own much less posh hotel.
Hen and stag parties were not welcome here either.
She listened, fascinated, as the newcomer addressed the frosty woman behind the desk. ‘Hi, I’m looking for Bernadette O’Riordan. I gather she’s staying at the hotel.’
With a haughty air, as if the girl might have dog shit on her shoe, the receptionist consulted her screen. ‘We have an Amber O’Riordan.’
The girl in pink smiled engagingly. ‘Aye, that’ll be her. Is she in?’
So Amber was really Bernadette. It didn’t quite have the same ring to it.
‘I’m sorry, madam. Can I take a message?’
‘Only to ask her if she’s really going to miss her own sister’s hen party?’
‘Do you want me to write that down?’ the girl on the desk enquired.
‘No, no.’ She shook her head and the fake diamonds in her tiara winked sadly in the light of the lobby. ‘Just tell her that her sister Dolours called and can she get me on my mobile. Here’s the number, just in case she’s forgotten it.’ This last was in a tone heavy with irony.
She wrote the number down and passed it over.
‘Excuse me,’ Stella interrupted, ‘my friend and I know your sister and we were about to have a glass of champagne round the corner. Why don’t you come and join us? To mark such a special occasion?’
‘I don’t mind if I do.’ Dolours grinned, to the evident disapproval of the receptionist. ‘Hoity-toity old cow,’ she added just loudly enough for the woman to catch her words.
Debora had appeared behind them. ‘I think you’d better make that a bottle,’ she announced. ‘And three glasses please.’
Their new friend followed them into their alcove and they pulled up another chair.
‘So you’re Amber’s sister?’
‘Indeed I am. You know her, you said? Her real name’s Bernadette, after Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, the one that does all the miracles. She must have done one on Bernie, turning her into an Amber!’
‘And you’re getting married?’
‘To Brendan. He’s a plumber. Not quite up Bernie’s street.’
‘And your name’s Dolours?’
‘Desperate name, isn’t it? My mam is religious, as you can probably tell! People call me Lou.’
‘It’s a pity about Amber missing your hen night.’ The champagne arrived and Stella began pouring it.
‘We’re not exactly in touch. In fact, we haven’t spoken for months. Bernie was always a bit up herself. She’s frightened we’ll all get hammered and end up in the papers and embarrass her.’
‘Is she that well known?’
‘She thinks she is. She was always a bit of a killjoy. It comes from being the eldest of nine. My mam used to go on about how having nine children was a piece of piss, but that’s because Bernie did all the work; it was really her who brought us all up. She had no life. My mam drank, you see.’
Debora and Stella exchanged glances at the revelation. This was a whole side of Amber they’d never suspected. Maybe there was more to her than they had seen so far.
‘What about your dad?’
‘Our da ran off when we were wee. So you can see why Bernie had it hard. Why she couldn’t wait to get away and turn into Amber. She always says one thing’s for sure. She’s never going to have any children of her own. She says the Pope can have the children if he cares about them so much.’
‘He may be liberal,’ Debora grinned, ‘but I don’t think he’d go that far.’
‘Bernie made sure she couldn’t, though; she had the operation and everything. It caused a big scandal in Ireland. Well, you can imagine, she’s only a young woman. But maybe it explains why she doesn’t like bad publicity. It doesn’t mean she should turn down my hen party, though. That’s downright mean of her.’ Dolours drained her champagne. ‘I’d better be getting along. It wouldn’t do for me to have a hangover for me own hen night, would it now?’
After Dolours had left, Stella looked thoughtful.
‘Well, that was unexpected,’ Debora confessed. ‘I may not like the woman but I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge her.’
‘Maybe it explains the wombs,’ Stella suggested, and they both burst out laughing.
While Dolours had been drinking champagne with Debora and Stella, Duncan had been waiting in the small bar the other side of the hotel for Laurie, who had spent the day sleuthing in record shops.
‘Any news?’ Duncan asked, ordering them both a pint of Camden ale.
‘I went back to that Feeling Groovy place and hung about a bit.’ Laurie sipped his beer. ‘This dog came in, obviously at home there, and the kid behind the counter called it – “Licky! Licky!” Now that might have been referring to an unsavoury habit of the dog licking its balls, but it turns out Licky is short for Licorice.’ Laurie was looking exceptionally pleased with himself. ‘You know that daft bird who sang with The Incredible String Band? Do you remember what she was called?’
Duncan grinned. ‘Licorice. Licorice McKechnie.’
‘Too right. And that was what the dog’s called too, so I deduced this had to be where your kid is.’ He grinned at Duncan like a mischievous leprechaun. ‘The one in the photo. He works there three days a week. As a matter of fact, he’s there tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Laurie – you’re wasted as a roadie, you should be a private eye. I can’t tell you how pleased Stella will be.’
‘Good, she’s a nice lady, not like that—’
‘Thanks, Laurie,’ Duncan interrupted quickly. ‘Another pint?’
‘Don’t mind if I do.’
Duncan downed his and went up to his room. Amber was still out celebrating her show, he noted with relief. He couldn’t cope with any more emotion tonight. He needed to think.
He really felt for Jesse. His own parents hadn’t given a toss about him. No matter how well he did at school, they never came to his parents’ evenings. He used to watch the kids with the mums and dads who pinned down the teachers with endless questions about their children’s progress and envy them. He even envied the kids who complained that their parents were never satisfied and that they gave them a hard time no matter how well they did. At least they cared. So Duncan had stopped working, stopped getting straight A’s. And his parents hadn’t even noticed, even when his teachers did. One teacher, who’d taught him English, had even cared enough to visit them at home. The last thing he’d expected, in a school full of pushy parents, was to hit a brick wall of indifference, but that was what he had got even when he’d tried to explain that their son had a real feeling for poetry and wrote the best essays about Shakespearean tragedy in the class.
After that, Duncan had given up. He’d started messing about on guitars with Cameron while his grades slipped week by week. He’d made a last-minute effort just before A levels when he’d realized he wouldn’t even get into college and all his mates were going. In the end he’d just scraped in. Of course, his parents thought college was a waste of time and money and hadn’t supported him with a penny.
So he thought he knew a little bit about what Jesse must be going through with parents who didn’t seem to care about him that much or surely they would have tried harder to find him?
It was after eleven by the time Stella left The Old Galleon. She stood for a moment on the seafront breathing in the clear night air. The stars were out and
the sliver of a moon trailed a fine line of light across the water. She sat down on a bench, mesmerized by the loveliness.
After a few minutes she made herself remember what she was doing here and got out her phone. There was a message from Roxy passing on a tweet she’d received from her appeal. It was from one of Roxy’s followers in Brighton. It showed a young boy in a hoodie with a dog on a piece of string walking past a row of beach huts.
Stella sat up, electrified. You couldn’t see the boy’s face but there was something about his stance, slightly stooped and bending forward as if he were in a strong wind, that instantly made her think of Jesse. The dog was some kind of lurcher cross, a little like the one she’d painted.
The backdrop of the beach huts sparked something in Stella’s memory. And then she remembered it. The family photo at Kirsty’s house. The one she had envied and she had then told herself that photos could lie. It had been taken in a beach hut. Stella closed her eyes and tried to picture it. It had been pale blue with lime-green doors. She remembered now how distinctive it had been, because her grandparents had owned one in windblown Suffolk, which had been plain white, peeling and dilapidated, though much loved; a prefab compared to the palace that appeared in Kirsty’s family photo.
She wanted to go and look now but knew it would be madness. She wouldn’t be able to tell what colour any beach hut was at this time of night and she would look highly suspicious poking about on the beach at midnight. No matter how excited she felt it would have to wait till tomorrow.
On the other side of the road she saw a taxi stop and Cameron emerge rather unsteadily. Rather to her surprise he was alone, with neither Duncan nor any of the other band members in tow. She wondered how he’d managed to shake them off, given that he was supposed to be being minded carefully. Only two more nights till the final show here at the Dome, then back to Camley for the concert in her garden.
Stella realized with a shock that she’d hardly thought about Camley, the concert, or Matthew. Somehow things had seemed more vivid here. And yet, in the blink of an eye, real life would return. Stella recognized that this was a truth she’d been avoiding, but it was one she was going to have to face. She couldn’t let things drift like this. She knew that her life in Camley was a lot less than perfect, but till now she’d been prepared to accept the compromises. Why? To stay married? To keep a comfortable roof over her head? The hope of a secure and settled old age? She’d always believed in staying together if you could, and sharing all your memories, and it had always seemed important to be near Emma and her grandchildren, but even that had been problematic lately. What if Emma actually left Stuart for Hal?
She crossed the road to find that Cameron, the rock legend, didn’t seem to have enough money on him to pay for his cab. This made Stella giggle as she delved into her wallet and retrieved a tenner.
‘Sorry about this, Stella.’ Cameron grinned his famously lopsided grin and took hold of her hand. ‘Come on, one for the road.’ The bar and lobby were as dead as a graveyard at midnight. ‘We’ll have it upstairs. You can see how much smaller my room is than Duncan’s.’ He signalled to the night porter. ‘A bottle of Bolly. Room twelve. Thanks.’
‘Cameron,’ Stella started to protest.
‘Shut up, Stella.’ Cameron softened the words with a crinkly smile. ‘I’ll drink it on my own, if you won’t join me, and don’t give me that crap about watching the drink before the last show. I get enough of that from Dunc.’
With understandable misgiving Stella followed him to the lift. But although he might attempt a kiss he was hardly going to throw her on the bed and ravish her. Not at her age. He probably just wanted to talk about himself as usual. What was that great line Debora had used about Fabia? ‘She’s always there when she needs you.’ That was even truer of Cameron.
The room was indeed smaller that Duncan’s, but it was still a delightful room with a big bay window looking out at the moonlit sea, a huge bed, and bunches of flowers on every surface – ‘from grateful fans,’ Cameron smirked – and piles of CDs. ‘I’m not up to all this downloading crap.’ Cameron shrugged. ‘Debora got them for me. Obviously I’m too famous to walk into a record shop myself.’ His grin undercut the boast. The mention of record shops made her think of Jesse and a cloud crossed her features.
‘You all right, Stell?’ Cameron asked in a rare moment of sensitivity.
For a split second she considered telling him about Jesse and the beach hut but Cameron wasn’t really interested and would soon stop listening.
The champagne arrived and Cameron began opening it. He filled the glasses and brought one over to her. She would regret this in the morning but reality would soon be back and drinking in hotel rooms with rock stars a distant memory.
They clinked glasses.
Suddenly he put his down and looked at her fixedly. ‘There’s something I want to say.’ He took her glass and put it next to his. ‘You’ve always been special to me, Stella. I know I’m a romantic. It gets me into trouble. I like the world to be the way I see it. Maybe it’s because of when we met, but to me you’ll always be the innocent girl with the blonde hair and the big eyes, who was there with me when it all started to happen. I can remember it like it was yesterday.’
Stella smiled at him. ‘We really were stardust and golden. I don’t suppose anyone after us would really understand.’
Cameron raised his glass to hers.
‘Here’s to never forgetting!’
They clinked their glasses again and Cameron raised her hand to his lips. ‘To Stella Scott. My inspiration.’
The door opened behind them and Duncan stood on the threshold. ‘I saw the waiter with the champagne and didn’t want to interrupt a tender moment.’
To Stella’s surprise his voice was heavy with irony. ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Duncan,’ she replied, suddenly irritated at the implication. ‘Cameron and I are just old friends. What else would we be at our age?’
‘Stella,’ Cameron looked at her as if she’d plunged a knife into him, ‘is that all I am to you? A friend?’
Duncan began to laugh and Stella joined him, struck by the ludicrousness of the idea of her, at almost sixty-five, being Cameron’s new lover.
But Cameron didn’t see the joke. ‘I’d like you both to leave,’ he announced grandly as if he were Louis XIV dismissing his courtiers, ‘and give me some time to prepare for my show.’
Sixteen
————
Well, that was clever, Stella told herself, as she walked briskly back to her hotel. She had obviously managed to wound Cameron’s amour propre just when she was expecting him to give his services free for their concert in three days’ time. What if he took umbrage and pulled out? They’d already sold all the tickets, provided food for two hundred guests and assembled a dozen auction prizes on the back of Cameron Keene performing in their back garden.
‘Hello, Stella, how’s it going?’ shouted a woman’s voice. Stella turned to find Amber’s sister Dolours and her hen party approaching from the direction of the lower promenade beyond the Sea Life aquarium. They were an impressive sight.
‘Are you OK? Only you looked a bit mournful walking along,’ Dolours said.
‘We were just remembering the giant stingrays we saw this afternoon,’ commented one of her friends.
‘And isn’t one of them the spit of Brendan?’ added another.
Dolours linked arms with Stella. ‘You can’t be thinking of going home yet! The night’s young. We’re off to Dirty Martini, some new place near here where I’m guessing they sell . . . ?’
‘Dirty Martinis!’ chorused her friends.
Laughing, Stella let herself be led towards a narrow staircase to a basement dive. ‘Watch out for these stairs now, girls,’ sang out Dolours. ‘They’re desperate for getting your heel stuck and ending up arse over tits, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Not with my sister being such a big noise in the town.’
Dirty Martini turned out to be a bare room with loud music,
strobe lighting and zero atmosphere. Everyone was so young, Stella began to feel like the unwelcome parent who’d come home early at her teenager’s party. But the Martinis were surprisingly good and she really liked Dolours.
‘So when’s the wedding?’
‘Not for another two weeks. We wanted time to sober up before the next round.’
She explained how Brendan had wanted to get married in Las Vegas or even the Isle of Man, anywhere to escape the entire O’Riordan clan descending on them, vying with each other in their thirst.
‘But, sure, what would be the fun in that? I said we could go to Las Vegas for the honeymoon, if he wanted, but, surprise, surprise, he’s booked all-inclusive in Majorca, the mean old sod!’
‘Where do you live in London?’ Stella enquired and was delighted to find the answer was Streatham, only a few miles up the road from Camley. ‘You really must come to our concert on Saturday afternoon. Cameron Keene is playing.’
‘Now isn’t he the one Amber’s boyfriend is the manager of?’
‘He is indeed. The very one. Though unfortunately I have just wounded Cameron’s masculine pride, so I’m hoping he won’t change his mind and cancel.’
‘What did he do to deserve that, at all?’ demanded Dolours. Then she nudged Stella in the ribs. ‘As if we didn’t know. They’re all the same, men. No better than the beasts in the field.’
Stella decided against trying to explain that it was Cameron’s heart rather than his sexual prowess that had been at issue in this case.
‘Just drop us a text if it’s all on and I’ll be delighted to come. Give me a chance to get away from Brendan’s mother and the serviette-folding session she’s got planned for the wedding.’
Stella took her leave as another enormous jug of Martini arrived, sent by a young man the other side of the room. The group gave him and his friends a big thumbs-up. She hoped Dolours was going to behave herself or there might not be a wedding.
The following morning she got up earlier than usual and put on jeans and sneakers to go to the beach to look for Jesse. She was surprised to find Debora sitting on a wall outside her hotel with a hot chocolate and a bag of croissants.
