Chapter Eight
Desperate for someone to talk some sense into her, Bo tried contacting Willa the next day, but she was on location for the movie she was currently filming and so Bo’s frantic calls kept going through to her voicemail.
“If you don’t call me back in the next twelve hours, I’m going to fuck Mr Two out of Ten again,” Bo warned.
“This is a best friend SOS, Wills. Like, my Titanic is about to hit his iceberg, he’s Amelia Earhart about to fly into my Bermuda Triangle, he’s the asp to my Cleopatra .
. . you have to call me back and stop this from happening.
I can’t maintain professional boundaries with this guy, I just can’t.
Call me back, call me back, call me back. ”
When she came out of the audition — an audition which emphatically did not go well — there was a missed call on her phone. It wasn’t from Willa though.
No, it was from her sister.
With a sigh, Bo called Lisa back. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Lisa, because she did.
Bo adored her older half-sister with all her heart.
It was simply that Lisa Armstrong, successful, intelligent and efficient to the point of being insufferable, picked at the holes in Bo’s lightweight lies about her apparently happy and thriving life in London until even Bo wasn’t sure what was truth and what wasn’t.
Lisa was too good a journalist, Bo often thought.
So good that even her younger siblings weren’t immune to her sharp investigative skills.
“Hey,” Bo said when Lisa immediately answered her call, stepping into a nearby park to sit on a bench in the sunshine. “Are you okay?”
“Busy, but yes, I’m good,” Lisa replied. “I was just calling to check on you. I haven’t heard from you in a couple of weeks.”
Bo frowned. She should have messaged Lisa back after getting her last WhatsApp, instead of leaving her on read.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy.” Bo chewed on her nail. “Auditions. You know how it is.”
“No, I don’t actually.” Lisa sounded impatient. “Did you get any of them?”
Bo took a deep breath. “No. One of them I came close though. Really close.”
“Close doesn’t pay the bills, Bo.”
“No, but my work at Ida’s does, and my work for Geoffrey does too.”
“Geoffrey? Didn’t he die?” Lisa asked, and Bo could hear the confusion in her voice.
“Oh, yes,” Bo rapidly tried to explain. “But his nephew has moved into his house. The house he inherited. He’s asked me to stay on for a few months and keep tending to the garden and house and stuff.”
Lisa didn’t need to know what “and stuff” had entailed last night, Bo decided, mentally adding “new batteries” to her shopping list for later.
“Hmm.” Lisa sounded thoughtful. “I didn’t know Sir Geoffrey had a nephew. He wasn’t in any of the obituaries I read. Or in ours. We printed one in our paper, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” Bo replied. She had very little interest in any of the publications her family owned.
She wasn’t gifted with words like her sister and brother, and nor had she inherited her father’s talent for business or interpersonal skills.
She was an Armstrong in name only, with just her looks to get her through life.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t had the chance to learn.
When she was little, her father had taken her to the office a few times.
He’d been proud and patient, eager to show her the hum of the printing presses, the glowing monitors of the computers, the busy reverence of a newsroom in action.
He’d wanted her to see what the family did, to understand the business that bore their name.
To set her on the same path as her older sister and brother.
But her mother had stopped it before it ever became a habit.
“Baby,” Margot had said with that sharp, pitying smile she reserved for the hopelessly misguided. “You don’t need all that. You’re beautiful. Leave it to your father. Leave it to Lisa and Nick. They’re the clever ones.”
A week later, Bo was enrolled in another beauty pageant, and once again under her mother’s training to sparkle rather than think.
Now, she chewed on her nail again as Lisa’s words sank in. “You mean, there was no mention of a nephew at all? That’s odd.”
“It is odd, isn’t it?” Lisa paused. “I thought it was just him and an ex-wife who died a few years back. I felt quite sad for him. But you say there’s a nephew?”
“Yes. Max.”
“Well, it’s good to hear the old boy wasn’t entirely alone. I’m glad he had someone to leave all his worldly possessions to.”
Bo stayed silent. She wasn’t ready to tell Lisa yet about her inheritance of 13 Orchard Drive.
“I saw your mother last week, by the way,” Lisa added, and now Bo winced.
“Did you?”
“Mm.” Lisa sounded distinctly unimpressed. “She wanted to borrow money.”
“Oh.” Bo felt mortification slide through her. “Sorry.”
“It’s nothing to do with you,” Lisa insisted firmly. “You of all people know what your mother is like. Money runs through her fingers like the high-priced hair oil she uses.”
Bo said nothing, an ingrained and probably undeserved but natural loyalty to her mother at war with her love and loyalty to the older sister who’d half-raised her. She heard Lisa sigh.
“Anyway, I thought I’d check you were okay for money too. I know you send most of your pay cheque to her. You should stop that, by the way.”
“She’s my mum.”
Bo heard Lisa sigh. “Yeah. She is. But she doesn’t need you to support her. She’s more than capable of supporting herself.”
Bo doubted that. She took a deep breath. “I’m fine for money. I work. I like working.”
“I know.” There was a new warmth to Lisa’s tone. Bo knew her sister; knew how proud she was of the famous Armstrong work ethic. “I loved the last pictures you sent me of those bouquets you put together for that wedding. Forget acting; you should go into floristry full time.”
“Maybe I will,” Bo agreed, and even though her sister couldn’t see it, she smiled.
A career in floristry was something she’d considered once or twice before but always dismissed as an impossibility.
She’d done the research, talked to Ida and knew that starting a business from scratch needed investment and tools and months of work and preparation.
Bo’s salary from her work at Ida’s and what Geoffrey paid her had just about covered her day-to-day living expenses, and what she had left she handed over to her mother without question.
Living in London was expensive, even if she did live rent-free in Geoffrey’s garden, and her money didn’t stretch much further than the basics.
So, Bo was perpetually living a hand-to-mouth existence, without any ability to save for the future, rainy days or post-existential-crisis career changes.
Her inheritance from Geoffrey would change all of that.
“It’s a good idea,” Lisa agreed. “So, you’re sure you’re okay? Anytime you want to come home, say the word. I’ll cover your flight back, you know I will.”
“I know. But I’m okay for now.”
“For now.” Lisa gave another sigh. “I miss you, you know. Nick is in one country, you’re in another and I’m here with only your mother and mine for company — oh, and the copious number of bouquets our brother buys me from his favourite florist.”
“Nick has a favourite florist?”
“He does. Some old woman he’s been visiting at Sydney Flower Market for years and years. Every week without fail I get a bouquet sent to me, even now, when he’s off living his not-quite-best life in Singapore.”
“That’s nice,” Bo commented, and she heard Lisa sigh.
“I’d rather have him home than a bouquet of flowers. I told you; I miss you both. I bought two tickets for a concert the other day, and I have no idea why. One would’ve done. A hundred dollars wasted on a seat for my bag.”
“I miss you too,” Bo admitted. “What’s the concert?”
“Why, think you can make it?”
Bo laughed. “For the right act I might.”
Lisa laughed too. “I won’t get my hopes up then. It’s a classical concert. Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto.”
Beethoven. Once more, Bo was reminded of Max’s smile and Max’s smell and the look that had been in his eyes as he’d bent to kiss her.
“Beethoven was a deaf virgin,” Bo remarked blankly, and she heard Lisa laugh.
“Who told you that?”
“Hey, I like classical music,” Bo argued, and she heard her sister scoff.
“Since when?”
Since Max showed me how sexy and magical it can be, she silently thought. She didn’t dare tell Lisa that though.
“I don’t know, but I like it. I’ll come with you,” Bo offered on a whim. “To your concert. Keep the ticket for me.”
There was a beat of a pause from Lisa. “Okay,” her sister conceded. “I’ll keep the ticket for you. Just in case.”