The Surprise Party

Suzie considered for a split second whether she should carry on with the family tradition. She had wet hair, was naked except for a bath towel, couldn’t find the new shoes that went with the new dress she’d bought for the party and would still be in the shower if Fleur hadn’t rung and insisted that she really needed to speak to Suzie now. Sam had assumed it was some sort of emergency and had practically dragged her out of the bathroom.

‘So how long do you think it’s going to be before you get home?’ Suzie asked, taking a long hard look under the dressing table as she spoke. Her new shoes had got to be somewhere.

‘I’m just going to go back and find your mum and dad. It’ll be a least another half hour before we leave.’

‘Okay. Perfect. Fleur, I’m really sorry but I’ve got to go—’

‘Oh that’s right. It’s all right for you, I don’t know why you couldn’t have taken them out for the day and come here with them instead of me. You know I hate all this garden lark,’ said Fleur miserably. ‘It’s been my idea of hell dragging them round this place all day.’

‘You’re doing a brilliant job,’ said Suzie as brightly as she could. ‘We couldn’t have managed to do it without you.’

But Fleur was in no mood to be interrupted, or flattered, come to that. ‘My place, I’ve got gravel, couple of strips of Astroturf, bit of paving and some plastic trees. You just hose the whole lot down once in a while to wash the dust off. I don’t hold with all this weeding, cutting and pruning palaver. Talk about a waste of time. You know your mother knows the name of all the plants, don’t you? In Latin. I’ve never been so bored in my entire life – red flowers, yellows flowers, why would anyone get excited over a bush, for God’s sake?’

Sam, who had leapt into the shower as soon as he had dragged Suzie out, walked into the bedroom wrapped in a towel. He looked at her anxiously. ‘Everything all right?’ he mouthed, indicating the phone.

Suzie nodded and gave him the thumbs up as she continued the conversation with Fleur. ‘Well, you can come home as soon as you like now, we’re more or less ready here.’

‘Thank God for that,’ sighed Fleur. ‘I’m totally petunia-ed out.’

*

Meanwhile, up on the terrace outside the stately home’s tearooms, having decided not to go looking for Fleur, and having finished off a pot of tea and the best of the cakes, Rose had left Jack sitting in the sunshine reading the guidebook, while she went off to wander around the gift shop. She had intended to go looking for plants, but what caught her eye instead was a large notice standing slap bang in the middle of the main aisle that read: ‘Unfortunately our fairy tale folly will be closed this summer for refurbishment. We apologise for any inconvenience to our visitors and invite you along next year for the grand gala opening. Special rate tickets are available at the counter.’

Rose raised her eyebrows; it looked as if Fleur was going to be disappointed after all.

*

Back at Rose and Jack’s cottage Liz was becoming increasingly flustered and annoyed. She hated to be rushed: it made her feel uneasy. Usually she allowed herself at least two hours to get ready, that was the absolute bare minimum; and as far as she was concerned it was two hours well spent.

Suzie’s daily regime appeared to involve slapping on a bit of moisturiser, some mascara and an old pair of jeans. But then again there was nothing in Suzie’s precious organic vegetable patch that was going to think she’d let herself go just because she wasn’t in full make-up at six in the morning for some stupid promotional do in a park in the middle of nowhere. No cabbage, courgette or cauliflower was ever going to suggest Suzie needed to lose a few pounds, no leek would ever mention in a meeting that they had seen this fantastic new girl on some obscure cable show who was really hot and incredibly talented and only twenty-bloody-three.

Oh no, in her line of work Suzie could go on till she had a face like a badly worn moccasin, whereas in Liz’s profession one slip, one slide, one filler session gone wrong, and you could find yourself hosting an afternoon car boot show. Once you reached a certain age it was easy to glide from golden girl to Granny’s collectibles in one short step, and while Lizzie actually felt that she was at her peak and had several good years ahead of her yet, it was important to be ever watchful, to keep herself in shape, keep up with those facials and not let time get the upper hand.

The gym, Botox, fillers, Gregor and his diabolical machines were going to be an occupational hazard for as long as she wanted a face and figure that fitted on prime-time TV.

For her parents’ party, Liz was planning to go with a subtle but sexy local-girl-made-good-comes-home look. Dewy, bright, natural-looking skin, pink, pearly lips, bright but subtle eyes, her hair lightly styled and looking very slightly windswept.

Laid out on the dressing table was a palette and selection of brushes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an artist’s studio. Liz leant in a little closer to check how she was doing – looking natural and girl-next-doorsy was the toughest look of all to pull off.

Her stylist at Starmaker had sorted out three possible outfits for the party: a little Victoria Beckham number with its trademark full-length zip, a Hervé Léger bandage dress and something from Burberry that Emma Watson had worn to some daytime thing, although this one was in jade not grape. While the outfits had looked just fine in London, looking at them now on their hangers with the shoes standing underneath, Liz suspected that they were all too dressy for West Norfolk. For the girl who styled her at Starmaker, Camden was probably her idea of rural.

It all looked way too show-bizzy – and those Louboutins were going to be a complete nightmare on the grass. Liz took a deep breath and tried not to let Suzie unsettle her. ‘Calm, calm,’ she murmured. ‘Deep breaths, inner strength. Do not let her get to you.’

Just why the hell should she be expected to rush when she’d paid for almost all of the party?

Liz picked up a make-up brush, closed her eyes and took another calming breath. Breathing; for the last six weeks Liz had been paying her yoga teacher a small fortune to teach her something she had been doing all her life without giving it a moment’s thought. She tried to visualise being at one with the open plain, the rolling woodlands, the mighty ocean, the whole of creation – but all she could think about was getting one over on Suzie.

Bloody woman, bursting in her telling her what to do. Had she any idea how much a marquee cost? Half an hour, my arse, Liz thought furiously. It was going to take her that long to get her foundation right. And no one was going to show up this early, surely?

Breathe.

Anyway, Suzie was such a control freak, Liz couldn’t see her being away for very long. After all, how long did it take to have a shower and towel-dry an unstructured bob for God’s sake?

Liz made the effort to concentrate on her breathing and inner peace and radiant beauty, imagining her body was light as a butterfly and suffused with joy and contentment, at one with the universe.

From somewhere downstairs Liz heard the doorbell ringing.

‘Bugger it,’ she spat as her eyes snapped open.

*

‘My new shoes have got to be here somewhere,’ said Suzie, coming up for air after a prolonged hunt under her side of the bed. ‘This is absolutely ridiculous. Where the hell are they? They can’t just have disappeared. I put them in the bottom of the wardrobe, I know I did.’

‘So why are you looking under the bed?’ asked Sam, who was busy towelling his hair dry.

‘Because they’re not in the wardrobe, I’ve looked.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve had everything out,’ she said, pointing to a jumble of things piled up on the bedroom floor. ‘They’ve got to be here somewhere; shoes just don’t vanish.’

The family cats sat on the bed and watched with considerable interest as Suzie folded back the duvet and dived under the bed again. So far she’d found a stray trainer, a vacuum cleaner attachment, a sprinkling of coat hangers, some spilt cotton buds, enough fluff to re-carpet the sitting room – but no shoes. Still wrapped in her towel, Suzie sat back on her heels.

‘They’re brand new, they’re in a box, they’re peacock-blue silk. I mean, where the hell could they have got to?’

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ said Sam, busy sorting out his own clothes. ‘I’m not into high heels.’

‘They’re not that high,’ she said, not bothering with the joke. ‘They’re just gorgeous and I bought them specially and I haven’t got anything else that goes with my new dress.’

He looked at her sceptically. ‘You must have something else you can wear . . .’

‘Well, I haven’t. All I’ve got are flip-flops, sensible dog-walking shoes, gardening boots and wellies. The only other pair of going-out shoes I own are the ones I wore with my going-away dress, and how many years ago was that? They’re so out of fashion I’m expecting a call from the V&A any day now.’

‘Don’t have a go at me, I was just saying,’ Sam said, sounding hurt as he headed back towards the bathroom, making Suzie feel guilty that she had snapped at him. She sighed; if she was honest, it wasn’t only Sam’s fault that things weren’t great between them. She had too many secrets to make life easy for either of them.

Suzie also knew that if she had worn her old shoes to the party, Sam wouldn’t have said a word, and even after all these years she couldn’t decide whether that was because he just didn’t notice or he just didn’t care. He always used to say that he loved her just the way she was, which in one way was wonderful, but as time had gone on – and particularly at the moment, when things between them were so tense – Suzie had begun to feel less certain. There was a very fine line between acceptance and indifference.

Giving up on the shoes, she took her new outfit out of the wardrobe and held it up against herself. It was a rich Persian blue, beautifully slimming, beautifully cut, column dress, with a little matching jacket that had cost a small fortune even though it had been in the sale. She ran her fingers over the fabric. With her job and the girls growing up it had been so long since Suzie had bought anything really nice for herself. She turned to look in the mirror to gauge the effect. The colour brought out the deep blue of her eyes and looked lovely against her lightly tanned skin. It had been a great choice.

And okay, so it was more than twice what Suzie had ever paid for an outfit before, but she had needed something new, something special for tonight and Sam could hardly complain – she was earning her own money these days, proper money, not peanuts. Now that she was more successful it was time she started to make more of an effort, that was what Matt had said. ‘Dress for success,’ he had said, and if this dress was anything to go by, success was a foregone conclusion.

Seeing her sister Lizzie, even when she was dressed down, had made Suzie feel dowdy and plain, so she was even more pleased that she had made the effort to find something special to wear for the party.

She and Sam had been together so long that she wondered if he still really noticed that she was a woman. Not that Suzie had ever been a girlie girl and these days working in the garden all day meant that she had a lot of checked shirts and jeans and hands that said more about manual labour than manicures.

But all that was going to change if Matt had his way.

Matt. She sighed.