The Secrets of Happiness

by Lucy Diamond

  Adam, in fact, was none of the names she’d called him back when they’d first met. She liked him. He was funny and clever, good company. Sexy, too, in his dark jeans and grey marl T-shirt, laughing at her with those chocolate-brown eyes. She liked that he was competitive, ambitious, driven; made that way by being the youngest of four brothers, he reckoned. She liked too that he’d been so sweet to her nieces and nephew over the cake and had taken their (awful, excruciating) comments so sportingly (thank goodness; she, on the other hand, could easily have throttled Scarlet for putting her clodhopping great foot in it like that). And talking to him was easy. She didn’t have to check herself, or try to be someone she wasn’t. She was herself, and that was okay.

  Best of all, at the end of the evening, when somehow four whole hours had passed in what felt like a single heartbeat and the sky was black around them, they were just stumbling tipsily back towards Rachel’s when he stopped in the street, slipped an arm around her waist, and said, ‘I think you’re pretty fucking extraordinary, Becca Farnham.’ And then before she knew it, his lips were on hers, cool and soft, and they were kissing like a couple of teenagers right outside Peacocks. He tasted of red wine, and she could smell his aftershave, clean like the rain, and feel the muscles in his back as her hands slid around him.

  It was the sort of kiss that made you feel light-headed, that caused star-bursting sensations to erupt around your body, that made you glad, so glad, to be alive and present. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said in her ear.

  ‘Well, it is now,’ she said back in his.

  He was out of her league, she kept thinking, once they had parted ways and she was lying in Scarlet’s little-girl bed, smiling stupidly up at the glow-in-the-dark constellations glued onto the ceiling. Way out of her league. He was successful and dynamic; surely too good for the likes of her, dreamy, drifting Becca who liked making things and pottering about in her own world. But he’d said he liked her, she remembered, feeling tingly. He’d said she was pretty fucking extraordinary; he’d kissed her with raw passion in a crushing, swoonsome embrace.

  Listen to her. Swoonsome, indeed. In a single kiss she had become fifteen again and besotted with a crush. Well – okay, not a single kiss, exactly. There had been quite a few, all in all. Enough kissing to intoxicate a woman.

  Consider me intoxicated, she had thought ever since. Through her appointment with Rita that next morning, through a trawl around the supermarket, through a dreamy session mopping the kitchen floor and not even caring when Harvey bounded in after a walk with Rachel and proceeded to leave a trail of footprints right through it. Intoxicated with romance . . . Mmm. That felt good.

  ‘So you know I’m going to have to report back to your mum, in my official role as Hereford spy,’ Rachel teased on Friday evening. ‘Hot new man, burgeoning tiara and knicker business empire . . . it’s all happening for you this summer, Bec.’

  They were sitting out in the back garden, a jug of Pimm’s on the patio table nearby, a trio of pink-tipped evening clouds up in the sky like giant candy-floss. Becca grinned, fishing an alcoholic piece of strawberry out of her glass and popping it on her tongue, where it fizzed deliciously. ‘God help us, she’s going to melt the phone by screaming when she hears the news. Brace yourself for imminent deafness, neighbours.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘Obviously I am going to take at least ninety per cent of the credit for introducing you to Adam in the first place . . .’

  ‘Do, you must. Mum will probably be your willing slave for life when she realizes the significant part you’ve played in it all.’ Becca smiled as she thought back to the first time she’d spoken to Adam on the phone, how strong a dislike she had taken to him. It seemed a long time ago. Since then, she’d travelled so far out of her comfort zone – looking after children, becoming a stand-in (and sit-down) fitness instructor, playing Cupid with Rita and Michael, cooking, cycling, gardening, tiara-making – she could hardly remember what her old safe life back in Birmingham looked like.

  ‘What freaks me out a bit is that I could probably have drifted along forever in my tiny boring world if I hadn’t come here this summer, you know,’ she went on, thinking aloud. ‘It was only really when I was forced to do all these scary new things in your absence that I started wondering if my own life was enough for me – the flat, scrimping along from crap job to crap job, a sad little Sunday Dad dinner with Mum the highlight of my week.’

  ‘And now you think you want something more?’

  ‘Yeah, I think I do. It wound me up at first, Adam, constantly questioning me about work – what’s the career plan? Where are you going with this? What happens now?’ She pulled a face. ‘I felt really defensive. Like, I don’t know! What are you asking me for? But it forced me to think, at least. To get my thoughts in order. What do I want to do?’

  ‘And . . .?’ Rachel prompted. ‘Come up with any answers yet?’

  ‘Well, he gave me a few pointers, of course. Couldn’t resist telling me how I should draw up a business plan, identify possible clients, get off my arse and just do something, rather than waiting for the perfect job to fall in my lap. Blah blah blah.’

  ‘What kind of business plan, though?’

  Becca felt suddenly self-conscious. A high-flier she would never be. Her idea of a business was very much the homespun cottage-industry style, rather than anything with legions of staff and huge turnover and management schemes. ‘I want to carry on with the sort of work I’ve always loved doing,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Making things with other people: jewellery, sewing, crafts – I’ve realized that this is what really does it for me, makes me happy. Now I just need to be more targeted about putting myself out there and start pitching for jobs. Hen parties, private tuition, after-school craft clubs . . . whoever wants me.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ve even thought of a name for my business.’ Now she felt really on the spot. ‘Make Yourself Happy,’ she said with a nervous little laugh. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Make Yourself Happy,’ Rachel repeated. ‘I love it! That’s perfect – because you do make people happy, Bec. You do!’ They grinned at each other shyly. Then Rachel’s voice became more studiedly casual. ‘And this would be back in Birmingham, would it?’

  ‘Er . . .’ The six-million-dollar question. ‘That was the other thing. I mean, I’ll travel anywhere, within reason, at first,’ Becca replied. ‘But . . . Well, I’ve come to really like this area. I like being near you and the kids. And – God! I mean, me and Adam, we’ve only had one drink, one snog, it’s not like I’m pinning all my hopes on the two of us living happily ever after or anything but . . .’ She shrugged, feeling her cheeks pinken. ‘But I’d like to see what happens. I’d like to give us a chance. And seeing as I’m a bit of a free agent right now, I thought I might as well give Meredith notice on the flat and look for somewhere to rent nearby.’

  ‘Oh, Becca!’ Rachel’s voice was suddenly thick with emotion. ‘That would be brilliant. I’d love that. The children would love it too. Oh!’ And then Rachel, the most undemonstrative person in the world, had plonked her drink on the table and was launching herself at her sister for a hug, her plastered wrist clonking Becca’s spine quite painfully as a matter of fact, but Becca didn’t care at all.

  Make Yourself Happy, she was thinking, the logo suddenly bright in her head. Rachel and her children made Becca happy. Being here made her happy. This whole summer so far had been an exercise in remembering how it felt to be happy. She hugged her sister back, a huge grin on her face, her mind cartwheeling with excitement about what might lie ahead.

  On Monday morning, Becca saw Hayley for her weekly session which proved to be as enjoyably energetic as ever. It was only as they were saying goodbye at the end that Hayley asked smilingly if she’d had any interesting emails recently.

  ‘Me? I don’t think so,’ Becca replied, feeling confused. Her phone had run out of battery the day before and she’d left it charging. With all the usual Monday mayhem that morning, she’d not had a minute to check for mess
ages. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, just wondering,’ Hayley said, maddeningly. ‘Thanks for today, anyway. See you next week!’

  Becca cycled home wondering what all that was about. Back at Rachel’s, she dumped the bike and ran straight to switch on her phone. Maybe Hayley had sent her a wedding invitation, she thought in excitement. Or some official bridal booking document for the knicker party. Or . . .

  Her email icon flashed as the phone came to life, and then the number 220 appeared in one corner of it. Two hundred and twenty new emails? They couldn’t all be from Hayley. She stared at it, taken aback, wondering if her account had been hacked and these were two hundred and twenty spam-bots trying to sell her Viagra or a penis extension. Probably.

  Clicking on the icon brought up her inbox on screen – and in the next second her hand flew to her mouth, a faint squeak emitting from her throat, as she saw email after email, a great long list of them, almost all with the subject line ‘Tiara’.

  No. What? How . . .?

  Feeling dazed, she clicked on one at random and scanned the message. Then she clicked another and another, not quite able to believe her eyes. Phrases leapt out at her, tangling themselves in her boggled mind.

  I’m a big fan of Hayley George’s ‘Here Comes the Bride’ column and blog

  I saw the article in the Sunday Telegraph

  I’m interested in your bespoke jewellery service

  I’m a Sunday Telegraph reader and getting married myself next year, so always make straight for Hayley’s articles . . .

  Wait just a cotton-picking minute, she thought, bewildered. Stop right there. Hayley – her Hayley – was in fact an actual proper journalist? Her blog, that she’d mentioned in such an off hand manner, was something to do with the Sunday freaking Telegraph?

  No. She would have said, surely. She would have mentioned that she wrote for a national newspaper. Wouldn’t she? Becca racked her brain, trying to think back to what, if anything, Hayley had said about work, but her thoughts kept returning to all the emails she’d received. Those two hundred and something emails! Because of Hayley!

  Fingers shaking, she opened her browser and found the newspaper’s website, then typed in Hayley’s name. This had to be a mistake, she kept thinking. Someone was winding her up.

  But then her jaw dropped as a new page opened with Hayley’s face at the top, and a list of all the articles she’d written. The most recent one was entitled ‘Here Comes the Bride 42: Try a Tiara’.

  Becca’s heart seemed to have thumped its way up into her throat. Her hands were clammy. Clicking the link to the article opened another page, this one with an artistic soft-focus photograph of the tiara Hayley had made right there at Rachel’s kitchen table, and another, more professional shot of Hayley wearing the tiara and beaming into the camera. Oh my God, thought Becca, hardly able to believe her eyes. Had this really just happened? To her?

  ‘All hail Princess Hayley!’, the piece began.

  No need to curtsey, I haven’t secretly joined the royal family – but when I’m wearing this little beauty, I feel as if I might as well have. Here’s the astonishing thing, though: I made it myself. Seriously! And if you like the sound of some customized handmade jewellery for your own wedding or a special occasion, then you’d better read on, because I have stumbled upon the perfect person to help.

  ‘No,’ Becca muttered under her breath. The perfect person – Hayley meant her. Ha! ‘No,’ she said again in disbelief. ‘No way.’ But as she finished reading the article and then flicked back to all those emails from interested readers, she began to feel the bubbling of an almighty hell, yes inside her. Yes, Becca. These appear to be genuine customers. Yes, Becca. This is really happening, right now, to you. Yes, Becca. It looks like your business is well and truly up and running.

  A laugh burst from her throat as she wondered dazedly who she should phone first, Hayley or Adam. Then Rachel walked into the room. ‘Are you all right in here? What?’ she asked, as Becca turned to her, practically gibbering.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Becca stammered, pointing at the screen and feeling slightly hysterical. ‘Look: orders. Customers,’ she gabbled. ‘The Sunday bloody Telegraph. This is it, Rach. This is it!’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Two and a half weeks later

  ‘HURRY UP, AUNTY BEC!’

  ‘WE NEED TO GO!’

  ‘WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE!’

  Small fists were beating against the bathroom door and Becca gave her hair one last pat, pulling a face in the mirror. ‘Coming! All right! I’m coming!’

  All eyes were upon her as she descended into the hall, wearing her sexiest midnight-blue bodycon dress, red siren lipstick and heels. She had straightened her hair and spritzed on perfume and had her best pulling knickers on too, just in case.

  ‘Is that really my daughter?’ Wendy asked, doing a double-take.

  ‘Blimey,’ Rachel commented. ‘I know the Poplar Primary School talent show is the social event of the year, but you’re really going for it tonight, Bec.’

  ‘You look pretty,’ Luke said, lifting up his pirate eyepatch to make a closer inspection. ‘Can we go now?’

  Becca stuck out her tongue at her sister. Not only were they heading to the school talent show (event of the year), but she had a date lined up afterwards, as well Rachel knew. Date number five with Adam, in fact, for drinks and pasta at a rustic Tuscan place that had just opened in town. Mamma Mia. She could hardly wait. ‘Let’s go,’ she agreed.

  They made a strange parade walking to school together: one pirate, one violin player, one texting teenager, plus her, Rachel and Wendy bringing up the rear. Rachel was much more confident about going out in public again these days, especially as she was almost completely healed now. That morning they had been back to the fracture clinic for the last time and the plaster had been cut away from Rachel’s wrist, revealing shiny pink skin beneath and a fully working joint once more. Next Monday she was due to have the wiring in her mouth removed, and would be free to eat, drink, kiss, laugh, yawn and scream to her heart’s content. She had joked about having a ceremonial bonfire on which to destroy the liquidizer and every last soup recipe in the house – or at least Becca thought she was joking, anyway. (Her soup wasn’t that bad, was it?)

  Over the last fortnight Rachel had been building up her fitness levels: walking in the mountains, some gentle jogging around the park and all sorts of torturous core exercises on a mat on the living-room floor, which didn’t half make you feel lazy if you were trying to watch trash television and power through a carton of ice cream at the same time. You could tell it made her feel happy, though – her eyes had started to sparkle again, she joked more with the children, and there seemed a new lightness about her. ‘You’re actually quite a nice person when you’re not mooching about, feeling sorry for yourself,’ Becca had told her, only half-kidding, and promptly had a cushion thrown at her head for her honesty.

  That was the lovely thing, though – that they had the sort of relationship now that could cope with a home truth here or there, as well as a hurled cushion. Having a sister you got on with was not necessarily all about spa days, being one another’s bridesmaids and going on villa holidays together. In Becca’s experience, it was shared jokes and knowing looks and taking the mick out of each other. Thrown cushions, too. Nobody said that on the Hallmark cards.

  ‘So am I going to meet him tonight then, this Adam?’ Wendy asked. ‘Is he coming to the show as well?’

  ‘No,’ Becca said. ‘Are you mad? Of course he’s not.’

  ‘We met him, though,’ boasted Scarlet, who was of course eavesdropping in front.

  ‘He’s going to pay us fifty pounds to make him a cake,’ Luke added happily. ‘He said so!’

  ‘He isn’t,’ Becca told Wendy, ‘and I’m keeping him away from you too, for at least the first five hundred dates, so just give up now, all right, because it’s not going to happen.’

  Wendy pouted. ‘There’s no need to be so melodramat
ic about it, Becky,’ she said. ‘I was only asking.’

  Right. And she could ask away until she was blue in the face, but Becca was going to keep Adam to herself for a while. Partly because she couldn’t resist winding her mum up by doing so, but also because . . . well, she was basically enjoying just having him to herself right now. He was lovely. Funny. Handsome. Can I have a plus-one to your weddings? she had texted all her engaged friends. Am dating total hottie. Get in!!!

  So far, the two of them had been out for three more dates since that initial evening at Leo’s. Dinner at Castle House (fabulous). A bike ride together along the river, until they’d found a meadow full of long grass and wildflowers where they had picnicked on deli-bought quiche and salads, clinking together cold beer bottles as they watched a pair of shimmering dragonflies draw iridescent patterns in the air. And then, most recently, he’d cooked dinner at his place, a splendid stone Victorian house up on Broomy Hill, which had a sun terrace out the back and a view right over the Wye Valley. Steak and chips and a bottle of wine. (Yes, she had stayed over. Yes, it had been amazing. Yes, she had woken up the next morning with the most gigantic grin on her face.)