Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday

Trust me, we don’t. Nobody said that without having learned it the hard way, through personal experience. Suddenly, Mara wanted to know how Danae had come by her wisdom.

She poured another cup of tea to give herself time. Despite their closeness and fondness for each other, she knew so little about Danae’s life. Her dad’s older sister, the calm, kind postmistress who loved her chickens: that was all Mara knew of her aunt.

‘Oh, listen to me – Madam Know-It-All,’ Danae said with a light laugh, as if she could read Mara’s thoughts. ‘Don’t take my advice, Mara, love. Do what you want.’

She was changing the subject, but it was easier that way.

‘I am going to recover from my broken heart, walk along the beach and write poetry,’ Mara said dramatically. ‘Really bad poetry that I’ll send to Jack. I may throw myself into the sea a few times with misery … but it’s a bit cold right now, isn’t it?’

‘Bitterly cold,’ agreed Danae. ‘If you want Jack’s attention, throw yourself into the sea nearer his house, perhaps?’

Mara sniffed. ‘Hell will freeze over. I wasted enough time on him. I’m not going to get hypothermia over him.’

‘Good girl,’ said her aunt. ‘At the risk of sounding like a walking cliché, you’re young and there are more fish in the sea.’

‘I am off fish for good. No fish.’

‘I bet your father told you to find a lovely man who’ll adore you,’ Danae said, tilting her head to one side as she studied her. Mara burst into laughter.

‘Those were almost his exact words. How come he’s such an innocent and—’

‘—and I’m so bitter and twisted?’ asked Danae wryly.

‘No. Well, Dad is innocent,’ Mara pointed out. She’d often marvelled at the difference between her father and his sister. Morris Wilson was a gentle man who thought well of the world and was assured of his happy place in it. Danae was wise, kind and gentle too, but she lived an almost hermit-like existence in Avalon. This place had always been Mara’s sanctuary when she needed peace and tranquillity. Nice for a few days, but not necessarily somewhere you’d want to live. Yet this was how Danae spent her days: alone but for her animals.

Maybe that was why Mara had felt the urge to flee to Avalon, she mused. Everything happened for a reason and this was the reason.

Chapter Ten (#ulink_f4476e0b-9f1b-5b59-923a-a4e136e8f13e)

Suki sat in the Petersens’ great room in their holiday mansion on the Cape, a glass of Krug in one hand, and wondered why she’d come to the party in the first place. It had been a long time since she’d bothered with these sort of events: parties in huge mansions with waiting staff, the finest champagne on tap and exquisite canapés cooked by the finest chefs.

At least she’d found somewhere to sit – there were rarely enough seats at these affairs and there was nothing worse than standing for hours. Here, in her corner seat, she was signalling taking a break from the party. Here, she could simply watch.

After the divorce from Kyle, people had continued to invite her to parties because she remained a part of the great Richardson clan, and so far as hosts and hostesses were concerned, even a tenuous connection with Kyle Senior was worthy of a place on the guest list. For their part, the Richardsons hadn’t cast Suki out, because they knew better than to alienate her; the last thing they wanted was a bitter divorcee who’d been privy to life on the inside telling the world all their secrets.

Back then, Suki had also enjoyed the status of a minor celebrity; a feted author appearing on chat shows and in the press.

But since she’d hit skid row, there had been no embossed, gilt-edged cards on her mantelpiece inviting her to dinners or elegant parties in the moneyed enclaves in Massachusetts.

So when she’d bumped into Missy Petersen in the health-food shop in Provincetown, the best one by far in the area, she’d been surprised when Missy had hugged her and said it had been too long.

‘What have you been up to?’ Missy said, tucking a strand of glossy, recently blow-dried blonde hair back with a perfectly manicured hand. Her engagement ring, a pink diamond the size of a conker, caught the light.

‘Working on a new book,’ Suki said pleasantly.

She’d always liked Missy: she was genuinely nice, not like some of the rich men’s wives, who viewed all other women as competition.

‘Oh, I don’t know how you do it,’ said Missy. ‘You career women. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had to have a career. Charlie says I’d make a good interior designer, though. I have thought of it, you know.’

Rich women always wanted to be designers. Making a house look pretty was easy when you had a million-dollar budget to play with.

Suki smiled and prepared to move on. ‘Lovely to see you, Missy,’ she said truthfully.

‘Do you know, I clean forgot to invite you to Charlie’s birthday party,’ Missy said. ‘He’s fifty-nine, can you believe it? He’s planning something wild for his sixtieth, but you know men, they like a party, anyway. What’s your address now?’

Suki dutifully gave it, thinking that it was a nice gesture on Missy’s part but not expecting it to come to anything. Charlie, a money-mad alpha male, would nix her from the guest list if he saw her name on it. Charlie only wanted players at his parties.

To Suki’s amazement, true to her word, Missy sent an invitation: Charlie’s fifty-ninth, the run-up to the Big One. Come dressed up or come as you are.

Suki didn’t know what made her do it, but she accepted. However, she didn’t tell Mick. He wouldn’t like that sort of party, she reasoned: Chopin playing on the Bang & Olufsen, or maybe an actual string quartet. No, he wouldn’t like it.

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t fit in, she told herself. It wasn’t that at all.

She went to the salon and had her hair done; something she rarely did these days.

‘A file and paint,’ she told the manicurist. She couldn’t afford the extra ten dollars for proper cuticle work.

Money – why did it always come back to money?

There was plenty of money in the Petersens’ house, a timber-framed mansion on the Hyannis side of the Cape with more rooms than the Louvre.

Because this wasn’t a ‘big’ party, Missy explained as she greeted Suki, they didn’t have a marquee or anything. ‘It’s only us at home.’

‘Home’ was filled with modern art and enough odd sculptures to convince people that Charlie and Suki had artistic sense. In reality, Suki knew they’d have an art expert on the payroll, looking out for nice ‘pieces’ that would ensure they kept their place in the art fashion loop.

That was the trick when you had new money. Old money people could have paintings of the family home and deranged great-grand-uncles who’d had four wives and twenty-six children and had owned half of East Manhattan when horse-drawn carriages drove the streets.

New money people had up-and-coming artists and a selection of hideously expensive pieces to show how rich they were.

The Petersens at home turned out to consist of a collection of rich men scattered around the place, comparing their assets – or wives.

I should never have come, Suki thought again, accepting a glass from a waiter.

Sitting in her armchair, champagne glass in hand, she surveyed the room. It was a world she thought she’d left behind. Everyone here was rich or married to someone rich. The result was a roomful of people all hell-bent on outdoing each other while trying not to be too obvious about it.

During her years on the ultra-rich social circuit, Suki had noticed that the women generally fell into one of two tribes: the more ordinary women, who got by with a little regular maintenance, and the trophy second wives, for whom maintenance was a way of life. First wives tended to avoid standing beside second ones. The sole exception was one exquisite first wife, Delilah Verne, who managed to look younger than her forty-eight years, having been rejuvenated so many times that a second wife could no doubt have been assembled from the bits she’d had surgically sucked out of her.

It was Delilah who descended upon her quiet corner now, teetering on her platforms. Not quite Prada witch but not far off it, she was dressed in something designer-ish (Balmain?) that Suki knew had commanded a sum that would have paid her own household bills for three months.

‘Suki! Hello!’ trilled Delilah.

Class A or anti-depressant drugs, Suki wondered. Or merely the permanent ultra-happiness required if one wanted to stay married to a grumpy billionaire? Clark Verne, in common with most billionaires, was always grumpy. The amassing of money seemed to do that to people, a fact which mystified Suki. If she was rich, she’d be so happy she’d never stop smiling.

‘Hello, Delilah,’ said Suki, tilting her cheek to be air-kissed. Once, she’d thought it made sense to stay friends with people like Clark via their wives. Now, she couldn’t really see the point of fake friendships.

‘You look super, darling!’ Delilah went on enthusiastically.

Suki flashed the regulation thank-you smile, and followed it up with, ‘And so do you!’