Chapter 18
18
‘I think you might have to entertain us with the latest news from Jacasta’s Instagram?’ Lucie told Zoe once they were back on the motorway and the smooth miles were rolling them towards Perpignan.
Zoe scrolled for a few moments before revealing: ‘Well, let’s see… Luckily the wedding stress hasn’t got to her and she’s still feeling “#blessed”. So, we have a photo of her and her “wedding girls” in yoga clothes in the garden, where they have been eating “nourishing granola” and “spending beautiful time together in meditative gratitude”.’
No, it wasn’t very nice, but Lucie couldn’t hold back her honk of laughter at this.
‘What else? Scroll back, we must have missed a few instalments with all our drama.’
‘Hmmm… so, we have some pictures of the “#enchanted” venue. Some photos from last night’s dinner captioned “thankful for the wonderful people around me”, although it does seem to be mainly pictures of her. Oh, and here she is in front of the food table “nourishing my friends with good food and good thoughts”. Wow,’ Zoe added, ‘that is a lot of salad… Many, many different shades of salad.’
‘Do you think this is going to be a salad-based wedding?’ Lucie asked.
‘Most definitely. Look forward to some harissa-flavoured grains and a handful of rose petals.’ After a pause, Zoe added, ‘I hope that doesn’t make too many people too angry, or should that be “hangry”?’
‘Oh, it will, no doubt about that,’ Lucie said, feeling just a little bit delighted at the thought, even though she had promised Zoe to be very nice about this wedding. ‘People will not want to have travelled all the way to the South of France from the UK, from New Zealand even, to be served a wedding-themed salad. Even Miles will not be happy with a wedding-themed salad. I don’t know how he stands it…’ she added, but quietly, not wanting to rile Zoe into leaping to his defence.
‘Some kind of two-seater bridal swing is being installed,’ was the next detail Zoe unearthed from the Instagram treasure trove.
‘In the bridal bedroom?’ Lucie didn’t want to ask but still did.
‘No! Mum! Please, I don’t want to think about that and neither should you! No, in the garden… Probably she and Dad are going to pose for photos on it.’
Lucie could not help herself from giving another burst of laughter. It was so ridiculous. How on earth had Miles been talked into all this? But then, she had thought over the years that Miles had become increasingly vain and full of himself. So maybe he was quite enjoying the social media attention from Jacasta’s army of followers. He’d certainly made himself much more insta-worthy. Every time she’d seen him lately, something else had been done or tweaked to his hair, face, even body. She suspected he’d had liposuction on his waistline. Either that or he was eating one heck of a lot of wedding salad.
‘How are you doing, Deva?’ Lucie called over to her nephew in the back seat. He pulled down his headphones and looked at her with slow and tired eyes. He’d had even less sleep than her, she remembered, and did finally seem to be feeling it.
‘Planning on a little disco nap,’ he said, then moved the headphones back in place. He was still in the exquisite dress. She wondered if he’d ever take it off. Maybe he would wear it to the wedding… So did that mean it would be forever melded into the shape of a slim twenty-year-old Glaswegian, who was still figuring himself out?
Maybe she should just give it to him. And just having that thought was weirdly liberating. Yes, she could just unpack those old boxes and give some things to Deva, some to Zoe, if she wanted them… and sell the rest. There was nothing about past burdens that she needed to hang on to.
‘You know, Mum,’ Zoe began, ‘we are being pretty mean about Jacasta, but that’s strictly between us, OK, just for laughs on this trip. Because you should know that I think she’s actually alright.’
Lucie tried not to mind how she felt about this revelation. Of course Zoe should think Jacasta was alright; that was the generous and right thing for her to think. And maybe one day, Lucie could think that about Jacasta too. But for now, she had to focus on not feeling too hurt or betrayed by Zoe’s admission.
‘It’s not the way you think it is…’ Zoe went on.
‘And what’s the way I think it is?’ Lucie asked, because she needed to hear from Zoe exactly what she thought was in Lucie’s head, before she began to argue or defend herself.
Zoe looked over at her mother. ‘Well,’ she began slowly, ‘I think… and look, I don’t blame you. I think you see her as someone who’s not completely serious, or not completely committed to Dad. Someone who might think there’s an advantage to marrying a pretty sussed businessman… even if he did almost go bankrupt. But they met when he was down, really flat on his back. He was crashing at a friend’s house… He hardly knew what to do with himself all day and he was broke.’
‘I don’t think so, Zoe. There was something he held on to, registered abroad that he didn’t want me to know about,’ Lucie said, deciding she would put it out there, all the cards on the table.
‘Yeah… Dad did tell me about that and he also said that’s how you would see it.’
Lucie shot Zoe a look. Really? Miles had told her about this. Had he told Zoe the truth, or had he told her the version he hoped Zoe would pass on to her?
‘He kept one office block off the books when you got divorced. That’s a fact,’ Zoe began.
‘An office block?’ Lucie repeated, astonished. ‘A whole block ?’
‘Pretty small block, I think. But, at the time, he thought it was criminally undervalued and he had a massive mortgage on it, so selling it would have caused an even bigger hole in the finances.’
‘Nice of him to share all this with you… and not me.’
‘I know, Mum. And I haven’t known about it for long. In fact, I kind of dragged it out of him because I was trying to understand why you were still so angry with him.’
‘You know, we ended up losing everything, including our home and my business too. Do you not think I’m entitled to hold on to a bit of anger about that?’ Lucie said, gripping the steering wheel tightly.
‘He did his best,’ Zoe countered. ‘He didn’t mean for it all to play out like that.’
‘He could have told me much sooner what was happening.’
‘Maybe he was trying to protect you, or not worry you, or maybe you wouldn’t have been very understanding, maybe you’d drifted too far apart by then… I don’t know.’
‘OK…’ Lucie could see that there was a chance for both of them to get very upset and she didn’t want that, so instead she hoped she could calm them both by saying, ‘Look, time has passed, we’re all getting over it. So why don’t you just explain about the office block and I promise to keep calm and listen. OK?’
Zoe’s shoulders seemed to lower with relief at these words, so she went on. ‘He hung on to this thing, scraping together to pay the mortgage on it, asking everyone he could think of for help. But no one wanted to help. And he decided to just keep on asking, literally everyone he could think of, then two people did turn up for him – one was some old friend and the other, all he said was “an unlikely source”. Maybe someone on Jacasta’s side – I don’t know. And this office block, and keeping hold of it, this is what’s really turned things around. It’s making him decent money now, it’s worth much more, so he can refinance. But my point is, Jacasta met him when he was broke. She took him in, bought the groceries, even bought him a suit to wear for his meetings, according to him. She’s definitely not a gold digger and she’s not at all as fluffy as she comes across on Instagram. They do seem very happy together.’
‘I see…’ Lucie said finally, trying to take it all in. The successful office block, the younger woman who’d helped him get back on his feet – and now she was a jangling mix of emotion. She recognised jealousy in there, a lot of jealousy. She wanted to be much more back on her feet too. Why wasn’t she starting a new business? Or looking out for a new companion for herself? Or just in general getting on with her life, instead of watching from the sidelines while Miles got on with his? Well, there was her dad, of course. But even very committed daughters could still find the time to get on with their lives… couldn’t they? And she knew that was exactly what her dad would want to see.
‘I think he knows that he owes you something from that building…’ Zoe added.
‘Well, half, I think you’ll find.’
‘Probably not, Mum, because when you two divorced, it was worth minus money. So it would have taken away from what you were left with. He sort of protected you from that.’
‘OK, I’m not sure I want to talk about this any more, Zoe,’ she said finally. ‘Thank you for trying to explain it. Hopefully, at some point in the future, Miles and I will be able to talk it through – with or without our lawyers – and come to some kind of agreement over it. Right… how much longer do we have to go?’
‘One hour and twenty-two minutes with some orange and red bits ahead,’ Zoe told her. ‘It’s going to be really tight to get there on time. Dad will be chill… but Jacasta probably not so much.’
As if on cue, Deva pulled down his headphones and looked at his phone, which had just buzzed.
After reading the message, he told them: ‘Uh oh… Message from Jacasta asking if we’re going to make it, or if she has to make another arrangement for the wedding song.’
Lucie looked at the dashboard clock… 2.28p.m. and the wedding was due to begin at 4p.m. If they made it in the one hour and twenty-two minutes promised by the satnav, that gave Zoe and Deva only ten minutes to change and get to the ceremony. It wasn’t exactly the ideal amount of time you’d want to give yourself to prep for being a wedding guest, let alone the singer, but it was doable… in a crisis.
‘Can you change in ten minutes?’ she asked Deva and her daughter. ‘Or could you change in the car?’
‘I’ll start putting on my makeup,’ Zoe decided, reaching down into the footwell for her handbag.
Deva pulled a face. ‘Change in the car? I mean, I’ll try but I’m not a gymnast. So long as you two don’t mind being enveloped in a cloud of No 5… Actually, as this is a formal event, with my mother present, better make it Pour Monsieur . ’