The Surprise Party. Sue Welfare

it, Suzie smiled to herself: actually, maybe going home wasn’t such a bright idea. There were almost as many jobs to do at home as there were at her parents’ house.

      Pushing open the kitchen door of her parents’ cottage, she made for the hallway and called up from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Hello? Liz? Are you going to be much longer?’

      Not a sound.

      ‘Lizzie, are you up there? How much longer are you going to be? Only Sam and I would really like to go home and get changed. Liz?’

      There was still nothing.

      Suzie climbed the stairs two at a time and knocked on Lizzie’s bedroom door. There was no answer.

      ‘Lizzie? You’re not still in the shower, are you? Liz!’ She knocked harder and then finally pushed the door open. Inside, her younger sister was lying spreadeagled on top of the bed wearing nothing but the skimpiest pair of knickers, basking under some kind of lamp. Her eyes were firmly closed, her head tipped up towards the light, with her iPod on and earplugs in.

      The sound of the door as Suzie slammed it shut made Liz jump, her eyes snapping open. She leapt off the bed and snatched up her robe.

      ‘What the hell!’ she shouted furiously, pulling it on. ‘What are you doing? Why didn’t you knock?’

      ‘I did. I knocked and I called and then I knocked some more. What are you doing?’

      ‘It’s my new holistic body therapy, it energises and revitalises your skin from the cellular level. I need to—’

      Suzie held up a hand to stop her. ‘What you need to do is to come downstairs and hold the fort while Sam and I go home and get changed. People will be arriving soon.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Look at me, I can’t go down like this, I haven’t done my hair or my make-up yet.’ Liz protested, tying up her robe. ‘I’m not ready—’

      ‘For God’s sake, Liz, you’ve been up here for ages. And don’t look at me like that. Sam and I haven’t stopped all day. You’ve had plenty of time to get ready, you swanned in and spread a little star dust around the place and basically you’ve done nothing else since.’

      Liz squared her shoulders indignantly. ‘That’s not true. I’ve paid for all—’

      Suzie spoke over the top of her. ‘I know exactly what you’ve paid for, Liz, we’ve chipped in too and we’ve done the lion’s share of the work, so please can you come downstairs and give me and Sam a hand?’ Suzie could feel her frustration bubbling over.

      ‘I’ll be down in half an hour,’ said Liz, sitting down at the dressing table.

      ‘But people could start arriving in half an hour,’ protested Suzie.

      ‘Well in that case it’ll be perfect timing then, won’t it?’ Liz snapped. As she was speaking, Liz opened up a Pandora’s box of potions, lotions and creams and started to unpack a selection of brushes.

      ‘I need to go home and get ready,’

      ‘Well, off you go then,’ said Liz, waving her away. ‘I’m not stopping you, am I?’

      ‘But—’ Suzie began.

      ‘But what? Oh for God’s sake, Suzie, stop being such a bloody martyr.’ Liz said furiously, spinning around to glare at her. ‘You’re not indispensable, you know. The whole world isn’t going to fall apart just because you’re not there to sort it all out. People can manage perfectly well without you. We can manage without you – now just go. It’ll be fine. Go!’

      Suzie was about to protest and then stopped and stared at Liz, all the words jammed up in her throat in a tight and angry knot. Finally, not trusting herself to say anything civil, Suzie stalked out of the room, down the stairs and out of the front door. Pulling her keys from the pocket of her jeans, she headed for her car.

      *

      In the grounds of the stately home, Fleur, who was hurrying along one of the gravelled side avenues, glanced back over her shoulder to see if Rose had had a fit of conscience and decided to come with her after all. When she saw nothing, and was out of sight, Fleur sank gratefully onto a stone bench beside a bubbling rill. She wondered if anyone would complain if she slipped off her shoes and stuck her tired, aching feet in the glittering tumbling water.

      The irony of today’s day trip wasn’t lost on Fleur. Ill-named, Fleur loathed everything to do with gardening and flowers – although it wasn’t just that that was worming away at her. Being a confirmed singleton, there was something rather grisly about being asked to help celebrate forty years of someone else’s happy marriage. Talk about rubbing it in.

      Fleur opened her handbag, took out her cigarettes and lit up – her last guilty pleasure. She blew out a long plume of smoke into the warm afternoon air and contemplated the present turn of events.

      Forty years; it seemed impossible that it had been forty years ago since her little sister Rose’s wedding. She remembered it as if it had been yesterday. She had been chief bridesmaid in a blue and white Laura Ashley print dress with puff sleeves and a floppy hat. After the wedding, a few hours after the happy couple had driven off for their week’s honeymoon in Devon, Fleur had boarded a train to Heathrow to catch a flight to Australia.

      Although Fleur had never said anything to anyone else, Rose getting married to Jack had been one of the factors that had finally convinced her to take the job in Australia.

      Her little sister Rose had always seemed to have life so easy. Whereas Fleur was big and clumsy, Rose had always been petite and pretty, with those great big blue eyes and a mass of curls. Unlike Fleur, who had a gift for telling it as it was, Rose was more circumspect about what she said and how she said it. Rose had always been sweet and obliging, always laughing and kind, the apple of her parents’ and everyone else’s eye.

      While Fleur had had to struggle every step of the way and work like a dog to succeed, things just seemed to drop into Rose’s lap. It all felt so unfair and it was difficult – even though she loved Rose with all her heart – not to be envious.

      So while Fleur had slaved away at college, and spent all her money on books and cookery courses, no one had been at all surprised that it was Rose who managed to bag Jack, tall, dark, handsome Jack. Jack who owned his own business, Jack with money and prospects, a house of his own and a car.

      Fleur sniffed; prospects – what an old-fashioned idea that was. While she had been working her fingers to the bone, no one would ever had said Fleur had prospects.

      Fleur had studied and worked all the hours that God sent, taking poorly-paid jobs in good kitchens, and made herself comfortable up there on the shelf. Rose made jewellery and painted things and sold hand-decorated bowls of bulbs on a market stall, and always got on with her parents, while Fleur didn’t. Sadly, they were both gone now, which meant that she had never had a chance to heal all those rucks and scrapes and scratches that they’d had over the years. She had known deep down that they were proud of her, always pleased to see her when she came home, but there was a part of her that always believed they were even more pleased when she left.

      Oh yes, Rose was most definitely their blue-eyed girl, but even so Fleur was expecting – hoping – that, when she announced she was considering going to Australia to take a job managing a restaurant, there would be someone in the family who would beg her to reconsider, tell her not to go, tell her it was a step too far, that they wanted her to stay. But – all caught up in plans for Rose’s wedding – no one had raised a single word of protest, not a single solitary word. Looking back at her younger self, Fleur knew she had come across as independent and bolshie, and that the lack of attention her family had showed was a matter of poor timing, not indifference. Nevertheless, even after all these years, it still hurt.

      Fleur backhanded away an unexpected flurry of tears. They had let her leave, just like that, all those years ago when she had wanted everyone to tell her to stay, wanted them to tell her that they loved her too much to let her go. They had said nothing.