Tidings of Great Boys

by Shelley Adina

  “Look at it practically, darling. It took me months to arrange events at Strathcairn. People in the village worked for weeks, and everyone came and helped out. How are you going to get the same results in such a short time? You have to be realistic. And let’s face it, the money—” She stopped.

  “What about the money?”

  “You can’t just pick up the phone and expect it to solve everything,” she said lightly. “People have other obligations.”

  “Well, then, we’ll do it ourselves. I have four friends here to help, and my friends in the village will, too. You’ll see. I’ll have everything pulled together in time, and it will be talked of for months.”

  “I do hope you’ll send me photographs. What a wonderful invention Flickr is.”

  “You’d do better to see it in person.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, darling. I shall live it vicariously through your pictures and stand amazed at my talented daughter’s feats of social brilliance.”

  “You will,” was all I said. “Love you.”

  “And you. ’Bye-bye, love.”

  So much for the opening salvo. I disconnected and tossed my phone in my bag. It was time to bring in the big guns.

  I walked down the corridor and knocked on Lissa’s door.

  chapter 6

  I NEED YOUR HELP.”

  She closed the top drawer of the bureau, and turned to me without hesitation. “This is your house, so I don’t know what use I can be. What do you need?”

  “I just talked to Mummy. She had your parents in to dinner this evening, and she and your mum seem to have hit it off. I need you to call your mum and have her convince mine to come for Christmas.”

  Lissa reached behind her for the edge of the bed and sat slowly. “And a woman she’s met once is going to convince her when her own daughter can’t?”

  “I’m hoping so.”

  “Isn’t that a little… intrusive?”

  “Lissa, you don’t understand. It’s not enough for me to ask her. She isn’t listening and I think—”

  Carly stuck her head in the door. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Lissa waved her in. “We’re having a war council.”

  “Strategizing again?” Carly smiled at me.

  “It worked on your dad, didn’t it?”

  “I think it wasn’t so much our strategy as it was his wanting to get one over on my mom.”

  “But I paved the way. If we hadn’t softened him up beforehand, it would have gone much differently.”

  “You’re probably right.” Carly yawned so hugely I heard her jaw crack. “Does anyone but me feel like it’s the middle of the night?”

  “Um, hello, it’s tomorrow morning.” Gillian and Shani came in and shut the door behind them, though there wasn’t a soul on the whole floor but us. “Or is it last night? The clock says nine p.m. but we’re…” She gazed into the distance. “I’m too tired to even calculate what time it is.”

  “It’s one in the afternoon, California time,” I said helpfully.

  “Yes, but which day?” Then Shani waved her hands, pushing an answer away. “Never mind. What’s going on?”

  “Mac’s mom won’t come home for Christmas, so she’s trying to rope mine into convincing her,” Lissa said. “I don’t think it’ll work.”

  “Just try.” I hoped I didn’t sound like I was begging.

  To give Lissa credit, she convinced her mother to ring mine up and offer to include her in their party. But when Patricia called half an hour later, the only person who’d managed to accomplish anything was Lissa. She’d unpacked her underwear and filled another drawer with it.

  “No luck.” Lissa tapped her iPhone off and gave me an apologetic look. “Apparently your mom was nice as could be, but she still said no.”

  I clutched my hair in frustration, which didn’t do it any favors. “What is the matter with that woman? She and my dad are perfectly civil to one another. Would it hurt so much to come up here and spend one single holiday?”

  “Maybe she’s afraid,” Carly said softly.

  “Afraid of what? Dad is the least threatening person on the planet!”

  “Not to someone who was in love with him once.”

  I stared at her. Lissa and Gillian stared at her. Shani just smiled.

  “Oh, my,” I said. “I think I’ve just had a brain wave. And we’re rolling to Plan D.”

  COULD MY MOTHER still be in love with my dad? If so, what on earth was keeping her from chucking her divorce decree and coming back? I knew it wasn’t another man—unless someone had stepped into her life since I’d seen her in October at the trial.

  No, it must be something else—and I was going to find out when I finally got her here.

  “All right, listen,” I told the girls. “Mummy has two weaknesses. If Carly is right—and I don’t know if you are.” I glanced at her. “But if you’re right, Dad is one of them. And the other is her social standing.”

  They blinked at me. “You mean like her title?” Carly asked. “The one she still uses even though technically she isn’t married to an earl anymore?”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that.” I tried to think it through as I spoke. “She’s always on about mixing with the right crowd. Her friends are all titled, and half of them are still Sloane Rangers deep inside.”

  “What Rangers?” Shani asked.

  I waved an impatient hand at the interruption. “That’s what they used to call girls like us who shopped on Sloane Street in London—but my point is, they wear certain things not because they like them but because women in their position are supposed to look a certain way.”

  “My mom would probably fit right in,” Shani said. “Except that now she can’t afford it.”

  “Right. So you know what I’m talking about. I’m betting Mum will see our Christmas festivities as a reflection on her—because she’s made sure in the past that everything was just so in comparison with the parties of all the other ladies. If I make sure she knows about every little thing, it will drive her crazy that it’s not being done the way she thinks is right.”

  “Control freak?” Lissa asked.

  “Maybe a little. Or someone who can’t see that a different way isn’t bad, it’s just different.”

  “I don’t know,” Gillian said. “That doesn’t seem like much of a plan. Depending on control-freakishness, I mean.”

  “But it’s all we’ve got.”

  Gillian gazed at me thoughtfully. “How can you be sure that bringing your mom up here is the right thing? You don’t have any evidence she still loves your dad.”

  “Neither of them has married again, have they?” I couldn’t help it if my tone challenged her. These were my parents, after all. Gillian hadn’t even been here for an hour. What did she know?

  “That could just be because they haven’t met anybody they want to get serious about. Doesn’t your mom date?”

  Admitting it seemed like undercutting my own argument. “Yes. But having someone escort you to the races or take you to dinner isn’t the same as marrying him.”

  “But she’s looking. She’s on the market.”

  “No!”

  “Gillian, leave her alone.” Lissa put a hand on my arm. “I’m with Mac. My mom could decide to fly home tonight instead of coming up here on Friday. It’s tearing me up. I’d do anything I could to get my parents on the same thousand acres and keep them there.” She smiled at me, and some of the hard lumps of anger inside me softened. A little. “You and I are on the same page,” she told me. “Anything you need me to do, I’ll do.”

  “Same goes for me.” Lissa and I had never been particularly close—not in the way she and Gillian were, or even Carly and I. We had hardly anything in common—she liked fairy-princess designers like Robin Brouillette and Maja Fortescu while I liked them edgy, like Alexander Wang, or classic, like Chanel. She liked surf music and Hawaiian slack-key guitar, and thought my alt-Celtic stuff was annoying. And don’t even get me starte
d on food.

  But here was something two people from opposite sides of the world agreed on: Our parents were meant to be together, no matter what they thought about it personally.

  Across the hall, my mobile rang. “Maybe that’s Mummy, changing her mind.” I bounced off the bed and ran into my room, snatching up the phone.

  But it wasn’t Mummy.

  “Mac,” Carrie shrieked. “Lachlan said he saw you coming through the village. Why have you no’ called me back?”

  “It’s only been an hour. I’ve got people to sort. It is so good to hear your voice.”

  “You’d have heard it sooner if you’d called me back. When are you coming over?”

  “Not sure. Lots going on here. Parties to plan. Maybe tomorrow, when I’m in the village order—”

  “Tomorrow?” Honestly, she sounded like a seagull on crack. “I can’t wait until tomorrow. A bunch of us are going to the pub for shandies. Meet us there.”

  “Carrie, are you crazy? I’ve got a houseful of guests. We’ve barely got our coats off, and I’ve said hardly a word to Dad. I can’t come over now.”

  “Since when has that ever stopped you? Come on. Kirsten and Lily and all our old gang are meeting us, and the boys are coming too. I’m walking there as we speak.”

  I had to admit that the prospect of seeing all my old friends after so long was very tempting. And the pub made toffee shortcake that just couldn’t be duplicated anywhere on the planet. The girls were practically asleep on their feet, so a tour of the house would be wasted on them.

  “All right. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll meet you there.”

  Her squeal of delight cut off abruptly as she snapped her phone shut.

  When I went back into Lissa’s room, carrying my leather bike jacket, the others had gone. “Not your mom?” She pulled her coat off the trunk at the end of the carved Victorian four-poster and hung it in the wardrobe.

  “No. My friend Carrie, from the village. Everyone is getting together at the pub to welcome me home. I said I’d go.”

  “Everyone?”

  “All my school friends. I’ve known most of them all my life.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Want to come?”

  She’d taken out her contacts, and gave me a look over the tops of her narrow black glasses. “Don’t think so. It’s you they’re expecting. I’d just be butting in.”

  “Not if I’ve invited you.” She shook her head, and her blonde hair rippled in the lamplight. “There will be guys,” I said slyly.

  She looked up. Talk about weaknesses. I may not have known her as well as I knew Carly or Shani, but I did know that. “What about the others?”

  “They’re probably exhausted. We can do the tour tomorrow. Come on, I told her I’d be there in twenty minutes.”

  “No, you go. I’ve already taken my contacts out and my eyes are so gritty I’ll never get them in again.”

  “Nobody cares about your glasses, Lissa.”

  “If there are boys there, I care,” she said. “Deeply.”

  “All right. Your loss.” I slipped my jacket on.

  She blinked as if I hadn’t been standing there the whole time with it over my arm. “You’re riding a motorcycle?”

  “Dirt bike. How did you think I was going to get to the village? Walk?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea where it is in relation to where we are. All I know is, it’s dark and freezing out there. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Of course. I do it all the time.” The zipper sang up its track.

  “History repeats itself,” she said thoughtfully.

  “What?” I turned at the door.

  “The last time I was here, you rode off as well. Only then it was on a horse.”

  I laughed, as if she’d made a joke. “No chance of that, at least. Selkie and Ambrose are in winter stable at a farm five miles from here.” I hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen door, where it was a short jog across the courtyard to the garage. It had been a carriage house a hundred years ago, but now instead of housing barouche landaus, it kept the Range Rover, the Mercedes, my Ducati, and my dirt bike snug and dry.

  I tugged on my helmet, fired up the bike and raced down the driveway, the engine smooth and tuned, the gears cold under my hands. All of it combined to erase the sound of Lissa’s voice, her quiet words repeating what my guilty conscience already knew: I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be making my new friends comfortable and serving them hot chocolate until everyone nodded off where they sat. Not dumping them flat and riding off to see my old friends.

  The pub in the village wasn’t really a pub—more like a family restaurant that served the local brew, housed in a stone building that had been there since people’s great-great-grandfathers were young. On the walls were pictures of kids from the forties at their gymkhanas, pictures of fishermen, pictures of me—but only a couple of those. Dad had offered the pub samples of his homemade whiskey, but Blythe Rose, the proprietress, had suggested that as a brewer, he made a wonderful earl.

  Poor Dad. His gifts always seemed to lie outside his passions.

  I pushed open the door and was swarmed immediately by all my old crowd. “Mac! You’re back!”

  “We didn’t think you’d come, with all the Americans underfoot.”

  “We missed you!”

  You’d think I’d been off exploring the Amazon for a year, not going to school for three months. But the ride had been freezing (and maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit stupid on my part) and the pub was warm, and it felt good to be welcomed and see the smiles on the faces of my childhood friends.

  Carrie grabbed my arm and dragged me to a table, where Lily, Kirsten, Terrell, and Gordon pulled chairs over and crowded round it with us. I remembered the day when the sum of my and Carrie’s ambition had been to get Gordon to notice us. That was a long time ago. Now he was just one of my friends, and I was still looking for someone who could put the same look on my face that Brett put on Carly’s.

  So far he hadn’t shown up, and I was getting rather tired of waiting. In the meantime, this lot filled that space inside.

  Outside, too. “Move over,” I told Carrie. “You’re squashing me.”

  “Am not. Move your chair back. What’s going on wi’ you? Too much chicken-fried steak?”

  “I’ll have you know I’ve lost half a stone over the term. All those California salads.”

  Carrie grimaced. “Revolting.”

  “Have you been surfing?” Gordon wanted to know. “You said you were going to.”

  I nodded. “Lissa had us down to Santa Barbara for the Thanksgiving holiday and I actually got up on the board. It’ll be Newquay next.” The Cornish beach was famous for its waves and surfers came from all over the world to ride them. I know. Right here in the UK. Who knew?

  Carrie made a rude noise. “I can think of things I’d rather do. So what’s she like, this Lissa?”

  “Well, you saw the pictures from the premiere, yeah?”

  They all nodded. “Never thought I’d see you hobnobbing it in Hollywood,” Terrell said with a grin. “They know about that episode with old Macaulay’s goats?”

  “No, and they never will. Besides, I was only ten. How could I know they were some experimental breed and worth a fortune?”

  “So what’s it like?” Lily wanted to know, her sloe eyes alight with interest. “Hollywood, I mean.”

  “It’s difficult to say.” I thought for a second. “The red carpet was all about camera angles and which of the news crews would get the stars the most coverage. We all stuck together, but the spotlight was mostly on Shani.”

  “That girl who was dating the prince?” Kirsten asked. “Is he ever a looker.”

  “And he’s just as nice as he looks.” I smiled. “He’s ever so good at political science—probably the only reason I managed to float above a C-plus.”

  “Princes and Hollywood types,” Carrie mused. “I’m surprised you condescended to hang wi’ t
he likes of us.”

  “Oh, don’t take that tone with me,” I said impatiently. “You’re my friends. Nothing will ever change that.”

  “She’s been horrid these last couple of weeks,” Lily said with a glance at Carrie. “Always on about would you be different, were you going to come at all, blah, blah.”

  “And here you are, same as ever,” Kirsten said. She turned to Carrie, who was sucking up the last of her shandy. “See? I told you.”

  “She isn’t the same.” Carrie gave me the once-over. “She’s lost half a stone, didn’t you hear? She’s all into the California image thing now.”

  “Would you give over?” What had brought this on? Carrie couldn’t seriously be jealous. “I’m eating salad instead of chips, yeah, and playing an appalling game of football because they don’t have field hockey. But that has nothing to do with anything. You’re the one who’s all about appearances if you think my losing weight is going to make me less your friend.”

  “I’m all about appearances?” Carrie pushed away from me, then got up altogether. “You have no reason to say that about me.”

  “Oh, come on.” I reached over and tugged on her arm. “Don’t go getting upset over nothing. It’s my first night back. Come and tell me what this lot has been getting up to.”

  She felt heavy as she allowed me to drag her back down beside me on the ancient slat-back chair. But she seemed to perk up as Lily and Kirsten dished the gossip, and by the time they got to the part about the chemist’s not-so-secret affair with the third-form teacher in Inniscairn, Carrie was back to her usual self.

  Finally, I got up to go.

  “You can’t be going yet,” Carrie complained. “It’s only just gone eleven.”

  “Uh-huh. And I’ve been flying for what seems like two days. I need to sleep if I’m to plan for Christmas and Hogmanay. We’re having a big party and you all must come. No exceptions.”

  Amid the chorus, Carrie alone stayed quiet. “Are all your American friends going to be there?”

  “Of course. I’m going to start teaching them Strip the Willow straight away in case Dad manages to bribe the band into playing a country dance.”