Cathy Kelly - The Honey Queen

Freya checked her watch. Eight o’clock. Time to grab some toast and leave for school.

She clicked off her inbox, unplugged her phone and picked up her schoolbag. This rucksack contained her life, although it hardly looked the part: a greying canvas thing inherited from her cousin David, she’d decorated it with butterflies interspersed with gothic, dangerous-looking faerie creatures, all painstakingly coloured in – often in lessons – with felt-tip pens. She skimmed down the narrow stairs, light on her feet, racing past the second floor where her cousins’ old bedrooms were. Opal and Ned’s bedroom was the biggest, but it was still small compared to Freya’s old home. Not that she cared. Twenty-one St Brigid’s Terrace might be cramped and shabby, but the difference was that in this home she felt loved. Beloved. Something she hadn’t felt for a long time with Mum.

Opal was standing at the cooker in the kitchen that she, Ned and Freya had painted Florida sunshine yellow last Christmas.

‘Too bright?’ Opal had said doubtfully in the paint shop, as the three of them had looked at the colour chart.

Freya hated to see even the faintest hint of worry in her darling Opal’s face.

‘No such thing!’ she reassured her with a hug. ‘Yellow makes people happy, you know.’

And Opal, who would have done anything to make Freya happy, was satisfied.

The tiles on the kitchen splashback were a riot of citrus fruits far too fat to be normal and Opal herself had run up a pair of yellow gingham curtains on her old sewing machine.

‘Freya, love, good morning,’ said Opal now, her face creasing up in a smile as her niece flew into the kitchen. A small, plump woman with a cloud of silvery, highlighted hair, Opal had one of those faces that made everyone want to smile back at her. It didn’t matter that, as she neared sixty, her face was wreathed in wrinkles or that she didn’t walk as fast as she used to because of her arthritis. She was still the same Opal.

Freya had long since decided that her aunt was one of life’s golden people: someone from whom goodness shone like light from a storm lantern on a dark night. Someone who brought the best out in everyone.

‘Morning, Opal,’ Freya said and bent over to give her aunt a kiss on the cheek.

Freya wasn’t tall herself but Opal was really tiny.

Foxglove the cat, a black-and-white scrap that Freya had rescued near the allotments two years ago, sat on the radiator licking her paws. Freya gave her a quick stroke, which Foxglove ignored as usual.

Almost instantly Opal began to fret about Freya’s breakfast. It was a routine that the two of them played out every morning.

‘Look, pet, it’s after eight and you have to get going. You haven’t had a bite to eat or a drink of water, nothing. Honestly, I can’t let you out the door like this. You know they say that young people have to have a proper breakfast in them before they can study. Now I was doing eggs for your Uncle Ned and I can easily pop in a bit of toast and give you some …’

Opal went back to the cooker where she was stirring an ancient saucepan with a wooden spoon. Opal’s scrambled eggs were better than anyone else’s, fluffy clouds glistening with butter. But Freya had neither the time nor the appetite this morning.

‘Sorry, Opal,’ she said, popping a piece of toast out of the toaster, grabbing a knife from the drawer and spreading a hint of butter on it. She took a few bites and set it down on the table without a plate while she filled her water bottle from the tap, then reached into the fridge and snagged the lunchbox she’d packed the night before, stuffing it into her duffel bag. Finally she picked up the toast again. ‘Have to go, Opal, can’t be late.’

Opal sighed the way she did pretty much every morning.

‘Pet, I don’t feel I’m doing my job if you’re not eating properly,’ she began. ‘Your four cousins never left the house without their breakfast – and that includes Meredith and I have to say she was fussy about her food. But the boys …’

Freya gave her aunt a quick hug to stem the tide of how Steve, David and Brian could vacuum up meals at Olympian speeds.

‘Have to go, Aunt Opal. I know, the boys ate everything you put in front of them and still do. Don’t worry, I won’t starve. I made lunch last night. I’ve got to race in.’

‘Don’t forget to brush your hair, pet,’ Opal called after her niece.

As she swung out of the kitchen, Freya caught a quick glance of herself in the old mirror in the narrow hall. Dark eyes and the same long slim nose as her mother. Wild dark hair that reached to her shoulders and probably would have hung halfway down her back if it had ever gone straight in its life. She ran her fingers through it quickly. Brushing only made it worse. The top button of her shirt was open and the knot of her tie was too low. Someone in school would give out to her about it, but she’d deal with that when she got there. Freya didn’t worry too much about being given out to. There were certain people in life who felt their day was lacking something if they hadn’t remonstrated with at least four people. The vice-principal, Mr McArthur, who hovered perpetually just inside the main door of the school, was one of them. Freya was used to it now. She didn’t mind. Words didn’t really matter. Actions were what counted. And people like Opal.

‘See you this evening, Opal. This is my late day at school, don’t forget,’ she roared as she shut the door behind her.

The house was bang in the middle of a terrace of tall, skinny red-brick homes and to make up for the postage-stamp-sized patch of garden at the back, there was quite a sliver of front garden.

Opal had worked her magic there too. Pink was her favourite colour.

‘I’ve loved pink ever since I was a girl,’ Opal admitted bashfully to Freya when she’d moved in.

It had been summer then and despite how shell-shocked Freya had felt after the six months that had followed her father’s death, she’d noticed that her aunt’s garden was a riot of every shade of pink. From the palest roses tinged with sun-blush to outrageous gladioli with their vivid crimson flowers. There was no grass, only a scatter of gravel amongst which grew a selection of herbs and alpines. There were a few varieties of sedum here and there, busily colonizing entire areas, creeping towards the roses like marauding drunks at a party. The rose bushes were Opal’s pride and joy. This early in the year there were only tiny green shoots on the stems. During the winter months the colour in the garden came from the many varieties of shrubs that Opal and Ned had collected over the years. There were laurels, glamorous plants with dark green glossy leaves and heathers with golden fronds. When the boys had lived at home, Opal told her, they’d been heavily involved in the garden. Freya was pretty sure this wasn’t because they loved gardening but because they loved their mum. When she said, ‘Will someone go out and take the weeds from between the gravel,’ the boys would groan good-naturedly and do it. Now of course they lived two streets away in a three-bedroom rented townhouse that couldn’t hope to contain all their mess. Opal would go over once a week and get them to tidy it up and Freya kept trying to persuade her that this was a terrible mistake.

‘Aunt Opal,’ she would say (Freya only called Opal Aunt when she was remonstrating with her), ‘Aunt Opal, you are not doing the boys any favours. They need to learn to organize themselves. How else will they develop into clever wonderful men who will make marvellous husbands?’

‘Well, Brian’s going to make a marvellous husband already,’ Opal would insist. Brian was getting married at Easter to Elizabeth, a primary school teacher. ‘And you know what Steve’s like, God love him. He’s hopeless with the washing machine.’ Given that Steve was a computer programmer, Freya felt this was a particularly feeble excuse.