The Happy Home for Ladies: A heartwarming,uplifting novel about friendship and love

The Happy Home for Ladies

LILLY BARTLETT

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperImpulse

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain as The Perfect Plan to Save Friendship House by HarperImpulse 2018

Copyright © Lilly Bartlett 2018

Cover illustration © Shutterstock

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018

Lilly Bartlett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008319663

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008319656

Version: 2018-11-02

To my Grandma Gorman, who taught me to dance the Charleston in her kitchen.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgements

Also by Lilly Bartlett

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Author Note

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Chapter 1

‘Well, Mum, I’ve really got to hand it to you this time,’ I tell her, yanking at the snug waistband of my dress. My comment gets carried away, though, by all the chattering going on around us. My parents’ friends talk nineteen to the dozen. ‘You’ve outdone yourself,’ I admit, louder this time. I am trying, though I sound tetchy as tetchy can be. On today of all days too. What am I like?!

I guess she shouldn’t really expect me to take the high road now, just because we’re at a funeral. We’ve never let something as trifling as the spectre of death stand in the way of a good snipe. ‘You were right. As usual.’ And nobody in the entire history of angsty mother-daughter dynamics wants to admit that. Which just shows how much I’ve grown recently as a person.

If I’m being honest, Mum does deserve every bit of credit today. Dad would have chucked a few frozen sausage rolls into the oven and maybe ordered some portions of chips from the cheap chippy that’s on his way home from work. ‘It is the party to end all parties,’ I admit, meeting her green eyes. The eyes that I didn’t inherit. I got Dad’s mud-brown ones instead. I missed out on her film-star legs too. My brother got those and her eyes. I’ve got her allergy to grass and dodgy karaoke voice.

‘It’s just a lot of money to spend on one day. A lot,’ I can’t keep from adding.

Not that she’s listening. Which is typical. She’s always been more interested in making sure everyone’s gobsmacked by her generosity.

The house is heaving with people. I’ve never laid eyes on most of them. They’re packed into the dining room and out back where the French doors lead on to the terrace and into the garden, and around the pool that Dad rushed to open early even though it’s freezing out and nobody in their right mind would turn up with their swimsuit on under their clothes. People are huddling together in the lounge, or the ‘great room’, as Mum makes us call it. I’ve got no idea what a great room is supposed to be, but I guess having a library full of books and a grand piano that’s never had anything but ‘Chopsticks’ played on it qualifies.

Sighing, I say, ‘I’ll go check that Dad’s all right.’ I leave her grinning over another perfect party.

I don’t mean to make my parents sound like nightmares. It’s just that Mum drives me round the bend. And this is us on our best behaviour. You might have guessed that they throw lavish parties, and maybe you can tell that they live in a big house. But if I say it’s Mum’s mission in life to outshine absolutely everyone – which is totally true – you’ll probably start thinking they’re horrible. They’re not, though. It’s just that they worked really hard to start their own business and build themselves up from nothing. Plus, they’re very generous. So hopefully you’ll forgive them for wanting to flash a bit of their success.

I catch a glimpse of Dad through one of the six-foot-high lilac rose floral arrangements. Mum’s got them all over the house. Lilac and deep green, that’s the colour theme. She’s coordinated everything: the flowers, tablecloths, serviettes, plates, foil-wrapped chocolates by the lorry load, and even the guests.

I tug again at the waist of my lilac gingham dress. I look like fat Dorothy, off to see the Wizard, but it was all I could find at such short notice.

Will wore gingham too. He’s my older brother. He’s also my only brother, unfortunately. We looked ridiculous standing beside each other. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber. I’m not surprised he’s already scarpered.

Dad’s not happy with his tartan purple shirt, either, but he knows which side his bread is buttered on. If Mum wants everyone to dress like their granny’s kitchen curtains, then everyone is going to turn up in their granny’s kitchen curtains.

He’s deep in conversation with their neighbour. Valentina, I think she’s called. Or Valentine. It’s hard to keep all their friends straight. According to my parents, that’s because I don’t visit enough. I was here more when they first moved away, just after I’d finished school, when the two-hour journey to Essex was worth it to get my laundry done for me.

‘Everyone’s having such a nice time!’ Valen-something says, kissing my cheek. ‘I mean… under the circumstances. I’m so sorry.’ Her face reddens to match her lipstick.

Dad squeezes her arm. ‘It’s exactly what Bev would have wanted, Valerie.’

Valerie, that’s it!

We all stare across the room, over the friends’ and neighbours’ heads, past the OTT floral arrangements and beyond the long dining table, to Mum’s photo leaning against the fireplace. It’s one that Dad took last year on their cruise. She’s smiling right into the camera, looking suntanned and happy. Dad’s right. It’s exactly the kind of send-off she’d have wanted.

Of course it is. She planned every last detail, because that’s the kind of control freak Mum is. Was.

Everyone’s finally gone and I’m dead on my feet. If you’ll pardon the expression. You wouldn’t think people would outstay their welcome at a funeral, but that Valerie just wouldn’t take the hint. I was ready to flick the lights off and bang Mum’s stew pot with the ladle to get her to go. And she and Mum weren’t even that close.

‘That went well,’ Dad says, like he’s just passed his driving test or something.

‘Yeah, except for Mum being… you know.’

‘Yeah. Except for that,’ he says. Then he laughs. Of all things! ‘She’d have loved the look on everyone’s faces when the cake came out.’

The man’s wife is dead and he’s laughing over the cake? I’m no grief counselling expert, but that’s not right. ‘Dad, aren’t you even a little bit upset? I mean, she and I had our differences, but I am sad that she’s gone. Now I’m an orphan.’

His dark eyebrows draw together. They’re only so startling because his hair is nearly white. ‘What about me? Aren’t I still your parent?’

‘I’m half an orphan, then.’

His pat on my shoulder is awkward. Dad’s not a great one for the touchy-feely. ‘Now, now, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, Phoebe. What’s done is done.’

‘It’s not spilt milk, Dad, and Mum’s not done, she’s dead! Will you stop trying to make it sound like no big deal?’

I dash away the tears with my hand. Maybe I’m sad. Maybe I’m frustrated. All I know is that I do feel something. Unlike my father, the Dalek.

I look into his face, trying to remember whether I’ve ever seen him get emotional. He shouts at his football team on TV sometimes. ‘How can you be so cold?’

‘Phoebe, come on,’ he says, running a hand over his five o’clock (yesterday) shadow. If Mum were here, she’d have made him shave this morning. She hates stubble. Hated. ‘Just because I’m not falling to pieces doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything. People show their emotions differently, that’s all.’

‘Yes, but they show them, Dad. You’re acting like you don’t even care.’

‘Let’s not fight,’ he says. ‘Not today. Want a cup of tea?’ Without waiting for an answer, he pulls out three mugs and chucks the teabags in. ‘Oh.’ He hesitates. ‘Silly me.’

As he puts Mum’s favourite spotty mug back in the cabinet, I catch the lost look skittering across his expression. I guess it is there, after all.

‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

He’d rung me just after lunchtime. He never does that during the day unless it’s to tell me I’ve forgotten a birthday or an anniversary or something.

I’d just managed to wrestle four giant packs of chicken thighs out from the overstuffed freezer at work for the next day’s curry. Care home residents might not seem like they’d appreciate food that’s not bland or pureed, but our residents aren’t what you’d call the norm.

‘Who did I forget?’ I answered with my mobile wedged between my cheek and shoulder.

‘Hi, Phoebe. This is your father.’

‘I know it’s you, Dad. You come up on my phone.’ Every conversation started like this.

‘Your mother has gone into hospital.’

I felt my tummy sink to my knees. I clasped the phone to my ear. ‘What’s happened?’ Horrible scenarios flashed through my mind: she’d been in a crash. No, it was a mugging. She’s always marching around with a big expensive bag dangling off her arm. Or a random acid attack or a knifing or she’d lopped her fingers off chopping onions or confused arsenic for sugar in her tea. Though I’m not sure why there’d be arsenic in the cabinet.

‘Heart attack, they think,’ said Dad.

‘Is she … okay?’

‘Oh, yes, she’s fine,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want me to bother you. I just thought you might like to know.’

‘How can she be fine, Dad, when she’s had a heart attack? And, yes, I want to know!’ Only my mother could think that a near-death experience wasn’t even worth a phone call.

‘I mean she’s awake and feeling fine, so don’t worry.’ His voice was as calm as always. Unlike mine.

‘Have you rung Will already?’ I asked.

‘He’ll be busy with work. We don’t want to disturb him.’

Of course, they’d never dream of giving him anything to worry about at work. Like the entire financial system would collapse if he were ever to take a personal call. I looked around my kitchen. In their eyes, Will was the one with the important job, not me. I’m ‘just’ a cook. ‘I’m leaving now,’ I told him. ‘I can be there in two hours depending on traffic. I’ll see you soon, Dad.’

‘I’ll meet you at the hospital in a few hours, then. Text me when you’re off the motorway.’

‘But aren’t you at the hospital now?’

‘Your mum wants me to stay at the office. The sealed bids are coming in today.’ He gave me the hospital’s address. Then he told me not to use the car park there.

‘Parking will be expensive,’ he said. ‘There’ll be spaces further along the main road and you can walk back.’

Honestly.

The drive there is a blur, but I do remember the feeling. It was all I could do not to scream and bash the steering wheel every time I had to slow down for traffic or lights. I just knew I wouldn’t get there in time to see Mum one last time.

I found the closest spot in the car park, sprinted to the critical care unit and blurted my mother’s name to the nurse, who calmly pointed me to her room.

‘God, Phoebe,’ said Mum when I skidded through the door. ‘Where’s the fire? You nearly gave me a heart attack. Ha ha.’

‘Mum, what happened?!’ She was sitting up in bed with a blue hospital gown draped loosely across her front. Wires trailed from under the covers to the machines that beeped and chirped beside her.

She had her mobile to her ear. ‘Sorry about that,’ she told the caller. ‘I’ll have to ring you back.’

She kept her phone clasped in her hand as she waved away my question. ‘It’s a lot of palaver over nothing. The doctors aren’t even sure it was a heart attack. They’re making me go through tests to check. Your father didn’t need to bother you.’ She looked me up and down. Then she sighed. ‘Isn’t there something better that you could wear to work?’

I glanced down at my black checked chef trousers and short-sleeved white tunic.

‘And those clogs. I wouldn’t wear them around the house, let alone out of it. Why can’t you try a bit harder, Phoebe? Don’t you care what people think?’

I ignored the jibes. Only because she could be dying. ‘Tell me what happened, Mum. Did you have pain?’

‘Of course I had pain,’ she snapped. ‘It was a heart attack. Or something like it anyway. I feel fine now, though. I need to get back to the office. The sealed bids are coming in today. I can come back after for the tests if they’re so keen on them.’

‘I’m sure the office understands that you’re here.’

‘Pah, I didn’t tell them! And don’t you, either. They think your dad gave me a surprise spa day.’ Then she muttered, ‘As if I’d tell them about something like this.’

What was wrong with my mother? ‘Mum, that’s nuts. You can’t cover up a heart attack with a spa day. You’re ill. You could be here for some time. Everyone at the company cares about you. They’d want to know.’

‘I just bet they would,’ she said. ‘Phoebe, how many times have I told you that people will exploit their advantage. I’m not about to give them an excuse.’

‘These aren’t just people, Mum, they’re your friends. Your employees. You’ve worked with them for years.’

She waved away my protest. ‘You’d hope that friends wouldn’t use something against you, but why would I take the chance when I don’t have to? If you’ve learned anything from me, darling, I hope it’s that.’

Then she pulled off the covers and started to swing her legs to the floor, sending the machines into a meltdown.

‘Mum, don’t!’

A nurse hurried into the room, probably expecting cardiac arrest. What she found was the world’s worst patient peeling off the tape holding the monitors to her chest. ‘What are you doing?’ the nurse demanded. ‘Get back into bed. You’ve got to rest. And keep these on.’ She pulled off another length of tape with a furious tear and stuck it to my mother. ‘If you need the loo, push the button and someone will help you.’ She glared at Mum. ‘Do not leave this bed.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured to the nurse as she left. ‘Mum, why can’t you behave?! You need to stay here until they know what’s wrong. These people are trying to help you.’

‘I know that, Phoebe, but I’ve got things to do. I’m very busy. We didn’t build our business by sitting around on our bums, you know.’

How many times had I heard that over the years? Whenever I didn’t do things the way she thought I should. Which was almost always. ‘Being in hospital with a heart attack is not just sitting around on your bum,’ I reminded her. ‘Besides, you’ve got Dad looking after the bids, so you don’t need to worry about anything.’

She rolled her eyes. Then she zeroed in on my hair which, I remembered too late, was still in its ponytail from work. ‘Couldn’t you have done something with that?’ She patted her own perfectly coiffed gingery head. She looked like she’d had it styled on the way over in the ambulance. ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression. You could look so much better, you know, if you tried at all.’

Despite my mother being mortified by a hair tie, I actually think it looks all right, thank you very much. It might not be as shimmery and because-I’m-worth-it as Mum’s, but it’s a nice brown, long, straight and thick.

‘You made a great first impression with that nurse,’ I said. ‘You’d better be careful or she won’t give you the good biscuits at teatime.’ I heaved a great sigh. ‘Do you need anything? I can run downstairs to the shops.’

I was desperate to get away for a few minutes to catch my breath. Besides, my tummy had been twisting into knots since the drive.

She always did that to me. My mother didn’t get ulcers, she gave them. Which said everything about our relationship, really.

Chapter 2

By the time I got back with all Mum’s shopping, Dad was there, sopping wet from the squall that had whipped up outside. His dress shirt was stuck to his chest and little rivulets dripped down the sides of his face from his flattened hair. His whole head had gone grey early, but at least he’s still got it, and despite the stress of being an entrepreneur, he doesn’t look his age (fifty-eight). He does look like a builder, which he is, even though he spends more time on email now than on building sites.

‘You really didn’t park in the garage?’ I asked him.

‘You really did?’ he shot back. ‘I told you it was a waste of money.’

That’s pretty much what passes for a friendly greeting in our family.

Dad wasn’t offended because he’s cheap. We’re talking about the man who drives a £60k car. He and Mum went on exotic holidays. He’s not afraid to spend his cash. He just hates feeling ripped off. That’s why he buys own-brand baked beans if the good ones aren’t on sale. Tesco won’t ever put one over on him.

Not Mum, though, aka Spendy McSquillions. She’d never met a purse she couldn’t empty. It was a good thing their business had done well.

‘I’m only supposed to have one visitor at a time,’ Mum said when I gave her the carrier bags from downstairs.

‘I’m sure it’s fine, Bev,’ Dad said. ‘Phoebe’s driven all the way here.’

‘I know, thank you,’ she said to me. ‘But really, you don’t have to stay, now that Dad’s come. I’m fine, don’t worry about me.’

I could tell that she was fine by the way she was just as critical as usual.

‘Mum’s right,’ Dad added, glancing at his phone. ‘You’ve got to get out of that garage,’ he said, like the parking attendant there was holding my car hostage.

‘I don’t care about the money, Dad.’

But I let them convince me to go back to their house. He’d only keep going on about the expense anyway, and clearly Mum wasn’t in any danger.

I couldn’t say I was completely at home at my parents’, but it felt comfortable enough. Like I said, it wasn’t where I grew up. They sold that when they decided to make their fortune a hundred miles south. Still, I flattered myself that the guest bedroom where I always stayed was ‘my room’, and that I’d at least get first dibs over any Tom, Dick or Harry who came to visit.

Dad didn’t stay at the hospital very long after me, but he went back to work and then out for some dinner meeting that couldn’t be moved just because his wife and business partner was dining in Critical Care.

When I got to Mum’s room the next morning, all I saw was a lump in her bed with a sheet pulled over it. Exactly like they did in films when the paramedics had done all they could to save the patient.

She was dead! ‘Mum!’

‘What!’ snapped the voice under the bedding.

‘What are you doing?’

Mum appeared with an angry yank of the sheet. She had her phone to her ear.

‘You’re not supposed to use that in here!’

‘No kidding, Phoebe, so stop shouting about it or the nurse will hear. Shush.’ She waved me away as she continued to talk and scribble in the notebook I’d picked up for her in the shop.

‘That could interfere with the machines, you know,’ I said when she’d hung up.

‘Don’t be such a worrier,’ she grumbled. ‘It’s my machine, so it’s my risk.’

‘There are other patients with machines on the ward, you know. Do you really want to kill one of them with a phone call?’

Mum rolled her eyes. She was a famous eye-roller. ‘Don’t believe everything you read, Miss Health and Safety. If it was such a problem, then they’d block mobiles.’

‘If it’s such a problem, then they’d put up signs.’ I pointed to the warning posted by the door. ‘Oh, look, they have.’

Then, right on cue she said, ‘Are those the same clothes from yesterday?’

‘I was at work when Dad rang,’ I reminded her. ‘I can pick up some things later if it’s so important to you that I dress for the hospital.’ I knew I should have at least borrowed one of Dad’s shirts. Though the checked trousers were still a problem.

I didn’t usually take Mum’s image critiques to heart. I’d never leave my flat if I did that. Instead, I tried not to give her too much to work with. It was easier emptying the gun than trying to keep the bullets from hitting their mark when she spotted an easy target.

‘Standards,’ Mum said. ‘Anyway, did you have a nice breakfast with Dad?’ We’d gone out to the builder’s caff before he left for the office. ‘The food here is vile. They couldn’t make a decent fry-up with guns to their heads. You could teach them something. Maybe you should work for the NHS. I bet it pays better than what you’re getting now.’

Not wanting our possibly last conversation to be an argument, I ignored her career advice. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be eating fry-ups, Mum,’ I said instead. Although she was generally one of those women who kept fit and ate well-ish. If she started filling out a bit, she just cut back, as she loved to say. Simple as that. The implication was that anyone could do it. But I’m no supermodel and there’s no ‘just’ cutting back. I’m rounded, like any good chef worth her salted butter should be.