Just a Family Affair

by Veronica Henry

  In which case . . .

  She looked down at the red numbers. She held the key to his happiness in her own hands. How far would all this money go at Honeycote Ales? Quite a long way, she imagined. The brewery could be completely refurbished. Several of the pubs could be transformed. The Horse and Groom could have a long awaited makeover. Mayday’s mouth watered as she imagined it becoming the Cotswold townhouse hotel.

  What should she do? Was it too late to stop the proceedings? She calculated that it had been a week since Patrick had proposed to Mandy. Surely not too many arrangements had been made? Surely he could extricate himself discreetly? Of course there would be uproar initially, but when things had died down, when Mandy’s wounds had been licked and she was back on her feet . . . then Mayday could come out of the woodwork. It didn’t matter how long it took. She’d wait a lifetime if she had to.

  Mayday let the precious slip of paper flutter to the floor. She must still be drunk. She couldn’t phone up and stop the wedding just because she’d come into a load of cash. She would only be doing what she had derided; luring him with her money. She didn’t want to buy Patrick Liddiard.

  No, decided Mayday. If she was going to have Patrick, it would be because he had decided, of his own volition, that Mayday Perkins was the woman for him.

  Ten

  On Tuesday afternoon, Patrick sat under the ‘Thank you for not smoking’ sign that Elspeth had carefully laminated and put up in the boardroom, and lit his fourth Marlboro. He’d ditched the Lights in favour of full strength. When it was all over, then he’d give up, he decided, but at the moment, nicotine was keeping body and soul together.

  Mickey and Patrick had had to come clean, for they had no way of getting access to the kind of money they needed without the board’s cooperation. And so Patrick had just undergone the most humiliating ten minutes of his life, even though what he had revealed to a shocked Keith and a knowing James was not strictly true. But he and Mickey had decided it was best to stick to their story: that Flora had been fathered by Patrick, for by making Patrick culpable there was less potential flak. James was Patrick’s godfather and was duly protective of him, whereas there had always been an antagonistic undercurrent between him and Mickey, and Mickey didn’t trust him not to blab to Lucy if they told him the truth. But James would keep quiet to protect Patrick. As would Keith.

  Mickey stood up to take centre stage.

  ‘So,’ he said rather grimly. ‘It looks as if we have reached something of an impasse. We - Patrick and I, for I’m not going to let him face this one out on his own - have a huge financial commitment that we can’t honour with things as they stand. James has stated his financial position quite clearly. And Keith . . . ?’

  He looked over to Keith, who was looking rather sad. He coughed, and twisted the signet ring on his little finger as he spoke.

  ‘I’d love to be able to pull a magic rabbit out of the hat and tell everyone it is going to be all right,’ he said slowly. ‘But I can’t. I’ve reached a time in my life when I don’t feel, for various reasons, that I can rise to this challenge. Ten years ago I would have wanted to fight, to have made some compromises, raised some money, taken some risks. But I think, given our collective situations, that would be suicide. The stakes are too high and we don’t have the expertise. This is not a cottage industry that can bumble along with the family at the helm any longer. I think we are in danger of jeopardizing everything if we don’t recognize that. I think the brave and the right decision would be to sell.’

  As he gave Honeycote Ales the death sentence, Keith felt sick. There was no way he could give them any other verdict, given that his own future was so uncertain. How could he make them promises? He might be dead by the end of the year. At least this way everyone would come away with some profit.

  ‘Thank you for your honesty, Keith.’ Mickey looked around at everyone else gravely. ‘I think the next move is for me to talk to the bank, and ask Robert Gibson to start drawing up some guidelines for a prospective purchaser. Obviously, we want a place for Patrick, so that he can stay on as a consultant for at least five years. I can spend the next few months training him up, teaching him the mysterious ways of the master brewer. Letting him in to the closely guarded secrets of Honeycote Ales . . .’

  Mickey managed a smile. He kept the recipes for each of their individual brews - the proportions of hops, malt and liquor and the addition of any extra ingredients - that had been handed down since the brewery’s inception. But even as he spoke those words a cold chill settled over the table. A new buyer might not give a fig for their magical formulae. Honeycote Ale could become a weak, gassy, forgettable brew cooked up in some faceless factory unit. But they couldn’t afford to protect their heritage and keep the name synonymous with quality and tradition. They didn’t have that luxury. All they could hope was that a prospective purchaser would buy for the right reasons.

  ‘The most important thing,’ Mickey went on, ‘is that what has gone on in here stays inside these four walls. If we are to get our best price, we mustn’t let any interested parties know how vulnerable we are. Apart from the bank and Robert, no one else must know. Especially not Mandy or Lucy or Ginny or Caroline.’

  ‘How very sexist,’ drawled James. ‘Personally, I like to share everything with my wife.’

  ‘Except the washing up,’ shot back Mickey. ‘And the childcare.’

  James met his gaze evenly, then slowly raised an eyebrow before looking away. Mickey felt his stomach turn over. He felt sure his brother was telling him that he knew everything; that he wasn’t fooled by Patrick’s charade for a single moment.

  Patrick put his head in his hands. He hated it when the stress of a situation caused Mickey and James to snipe.

  Keith felt the need to take control yet again.

  ‘Mickey’s right, I’m afraid.’ He spoke adamantly. ‘This is a delicate situation. If word gets out we’ll be instantly devalued, which could cost us our profit. We need to put up a united front, and give the impression that we are quitting whilst we are ahead, rather than giving up. Is that quite clear to everyone?’

  This short speech reminded everyone why they had been so grateful to have Keith on board. He was so focused. He could assess a business situation and encapsulate it into just a few words. He looked around the table, and everyone nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘We’re all agreed, then. As of three o’clock this afternoon, Honeycote Ales is open to offers.’

  After the meeting, Keith felt an overwhelming sense of relief. For him, it was one more decision that had been taken out of his hands. Although he loved the brewery deeply, he didn’t have the same loyalty ingrained since birth that the Liddiards had. And somehow the thought of getting rid of it relieved him of a burden. Either way, it made perfect sense. If he was going to die, then he wasn’t going to be of much use. And if he was going to live, then frankly that’s exactly what he wanted to do. Live a little. Go and see all those far-flung places he had never visited because he had grafted all his life. Go to Glyndebourne. Go fly fishing in Scotland. He still had another agonizing week before the results of his biopsy, which would tell him if he definitely had cancer, and if so what grade it was. But either way, he had decided that things had to change.

  As he left the building, he found Patrick hovering nervously by his car. He looked incredibly young, as if he was waiting for his exam results.

  ‘I just wanted to say I’m very sorry about everything,’ he said. ‘And I want you to know that I still worship your daughter. But if you think in any way that I’m not fit to marry her . . .’

  Keith frowned, and for a moment Patrick thought he was going to say that was exactly what he was thinking.

  ‘I think what you did was very brave. And I shall be proud to call you my son-in-law. Very proud indeed.’

  He put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, then turned and got into his car rather quickly and drove off, because he had felt a momentary panic that Patrick was going to pull out of the
wedding through some sort of misguided sense of honour. And that was the very last thing he wanted. While his own future was so uncertain, he wanted Mandy’s to be set in stone. If he had to leave this world, he would only be happy knowing she was safe in Patrick’s hands. He wouldn’t trust anyone else with her. Patrick might have made a terrible mistake, but at least he was man enough to face the consequences. And Keith admired him for that. There were very few people left happy to take responsibility for their actions.

  His daughter was marrying a gentleman. That was all he needed to know.

  Mandy tried on the twelfth dress of the afternoon and sighed. It was sheer lace, with a high halter neck and a full-length skirt that was slashed to the thigh.

  ‘Oh wow,’ sighed Sasha. ‘That looks amazing.’

  ‘No way,’ said Kitty. ‘She looks like a member of Girls Aloud.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It would be all right for the Brit Awards. But not a country wedding.’

  Sasha rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘Well, let’s just put her in a boring taffeta meringue, then.’

  ‘Why not let Mandy make up her mind?’ Ginny chided her squabbling daughters gently. They often lost sight of the point - in this case the fact that it was Mandy’s wedding.

  She was looking at her reflection critically.

  ‘It’s a fantastic dress. If it was green, or black, or red, I’d wear it to a party, no problem. But . . .’ She wrinkled her nose, not quite sure what was wrong with it. The infuriating thing was that every single dress she’d tried so far had looked fantastic on, but none of them had felt quite right.

  ‘For my money,’ interjected Sandra, safe in the knowledge that it was her money, ‘none of these are special enough. I want my daughter to feel special.’

  Lucy looked at the price tag and said nothing. For two and a half grand, she’d want to feel more than special.

  There were six of them in the changing room. Seven, if you included the assistant hovering by the white velvet curtain that separated them from the rest of the shop. The room was large and airy, strung with white chandeliers that threw a flattering light onto giant scrolled mirrors which allowed the future bride to see herself from all angles. There were two dear little white velvet sofas for mothers and bridesmaids to sit on and give constructive comments. But there weren’t usually five people giving advice. Five people with very different opinions.

  The assistant gave an inward sigh and smiled brightly. ‘Perhaps a glass of wine?’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps everyone needs to relax?’

  Sandra gave her a withering glare. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to choose your wedding dress drunk.’ She turned back to her daughter. ‘Mandy, I think we need to focus. You need to narrow it down. Are you going streamlined and sophisticated? Ruffled and romantic? Or . . . what?’

  Mandy struggled out of the skin-tight lace and emerged red-faced. She stood in the middle of the changing room in a white bra and minuscule thong, quite unselfconscious. But distressed nevertheless.

  ‘None of it feels like me.’

  ‘You’ve just got to keep trying. What about this?’

  Sandra plucked a heavily beaded camisole with a plethora of chiffon ruffles off the rail of dresses that hadn’t yet been tried. Lucy could see that Mandy was blinking back tears of frustration. Or perhaps exhaustion. This was the fourth shop they had been in.

  ‘Perhaps we should just leave Kitty and Mandy to get on with it?’ she suggested. ‘I think we’ve got a case of too many cooks.’

  Mandy looked at Lucy gratefully. Sandra turned and gazed at her with a mixture of aggrievement and scorn.

  ‘I am not missing out on my only daughter choosing her wedding dress,’ she stated.

  ‘No. Of course not. Sorry,’ said Lucy, realizing she’d put her foot in it. ‘In that case, why don’t Ginny and I go and have a cup of tea? There’s that little patisserie we passed earlier.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Ginny, whose head was throbbing. Why on earth had she agreed to come on this outing? Mandy didn’t need her. But the twins had been adamant, and she was supposed to be looking for wedding outfits for herself. ‘Come on, Sasha. You can come too.’

  Sasha looked mutinous. ‘I’m supposed to be taking the photos,’ she hissed.

  This was a covert operation. Kitty was going to copy whichever design Mandy ultimately chose. It had been agreed that Sasha would take surreptitious snaps on her mobile so they could compare the different dresses when they got home.

  Lucy looked at Ginny and nodded towards the door. ‘Looks like it’s just us, then.’

  As Lucy and Ginny left, Mandy turned back to the assistant.

  ‘Actually,’ she said. ‘I think you’re right. A glass of wine for everyone would be perfect.’

  She caught her mother’s disapproving eye and smiled sweetly.

  ‘After all, this is supposed to be fun.’ She flopped onto the white sofa in her underwear and shut her eyes. ‘I think I might just wear jeans,’ she declared.

  ‘Over my dead body,’ snorted Sandra.

  Behind her, Sasha mimed stabbing her in the back. Mandy shut her eyes, not sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. No one had told her that choosing a wedding dress would be such hard work.

  Ginny and Lucy made their way down the street and into the tiny patisserie they’d passed earlier, flopping into their seats and ordering tea and cakes, which arrived mercifully quickly. As she picked up the teapot and poured, Lucy looked at Ginny.

  ‘Ginny . . . I don’t like to say this. But you don’t seem yourself.’

  Ginny grabbed her teacup and drank so she didn’t have to answer straight away, scalding her mouth in the process. What on earth was she supposed to say?

  ‘What . . . what do you mean?’ she stammered.

  ‘I don’t know, exactly. You just seem a bit . . . subdued.’ Lucy helped herself to a macaroon and bit into it thoughtfully.

  Ginny scooped two spoons of sugar into her tea. It was one of the wonderful things about Lucy; the way she noticed things other people missed, the way she could pick up on your mood. Only today Ginny wished fervently that Lucy hadn’t picked up on the fact that she was feeling rather vulnerable. She couldn’t bear to talk about it.

  She couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t, bring herself to tell Lucy Liddiard that she and Keith hadn’t had sex for more than three months. She would never understand. Lucy was the sexiest woman alive, in a very understated way. She was sitting there, with her glowing skin, her hair escaping from the slide that pinned it up, in her short-sleeved cashmere top and skinny jeans and ballet flats, not looking a day older than the incipient bride. Ginny was certain that the Liddiards were probably at it seven nights a week, because what man would be able to keep their hands off Lucy? Whereas Keith seemed to be able to restrain himself from her only too well. And she knew why. Keith had gone off her because she had gone to seed, was always tired and, although she knew she shouldn’t, wore big baggy knickers from Tesco because they were so much more comfortable.

  She’d tried her best last night. She’d specifically put on a strappy nightdress instead of her usual pyjamas, and had playfully suggested a massage. She had caught a fleeting look of horror on his face before he had blustered a polite refusal and gone scurrying off to his laptop. Mortified, she’d taken off the nightdress and consigned it to the laundry basket. He’d crept into the bedroom an hour or so later. She had pretended to be asleep, and she could almost feel the relief emanating from him.

  But she couldn’t bear the humiliation of admitting this to Lucy. So she stirred the sugar into her teacup, took a bite of macaroon, and gave Lucy a bunch of reasons for not being herself that were all true, but weren’t the actual truth.

  ‘I think I’m just tired. It’s all a bit of a strain. I suppose I’m just not sure of my role in all of this. I’m not the mother of the bride, but I feel I should be supporting Mandy as Keith’s . . . well, whatever.’ She was blustering, casting round for convincing reaso
ns for her lacklustre countenance. ‘And I’ve been working too hard. Business is booming, but it’s still at that stage where I have to be hands on - I’m not confident enough to delegate yet. And I find Sandra . . . Well, it’s just a bit awkward.’

  She was trying to be tactful, because she didn’t want to sound like a bitch. Lucy put a hand over hers and leant forward with a mischievous smile.

  ‘You don’t have to say anything. I think you’re a saint. Just hold on to the fact that when the wedding is over she’ll be gone.’

  Ginny managed a smile. ‘I’m sure her heart’s in the right place.’

  Lucy narrowed her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. I’m sure Sandra’s jolly nice as long as she’s getting her own way. That’s why I split the wedding down the middle. I don’t want to fall out with her, but I know there is no way on God’s earth we will agree on anything.’

  Ginny nodded agreement, thinking that you couldn’t get two people less alike than Sandra and Lucy.

  ‘She’s not at all what I expected, you know,’ she said suddenly. ‘I didn’t expect her to be so . . . glamorous.’

  Lucy rolled her eyes and waved her fingers in the air with a snipping motion.

  ‘Darling, if we spent as much as she had on plastic surgery . . . And anyway, you’re far more gorgeous. I know Keith thinks so.’ She frowned. ‘You don’t feel threatened, do you? Because you shouldn’t.’