Cathy Kelly - The Honey Queen

So Seth added age to the list of things he and Frankie didn’t discuss any more.

Age, the house, the state of the garden, and how it was no use him even trying to get a job, because who would want to employ him? That in particular drove her insane. She refused to accept that losing his job had transformed him from a man with a career to a man with nothing.

It was so enormous, so emasculating. Frankie simply didn’t understand. The discovery of Lillie’s existence was all the more wonderful, because at last they had something they could talk about.

When Lillie’s son responded to their email by saying that his mother didn’t do emails, and that a letter would be the best way to talk to her, Frankie had flung her hands up in despair.

‘A letter,’ she groaned. ‘Nobody writes letters any more.’

‘Lillie probably does,’ said Seth, smiling. He wondered whether his sister’s handwriting would resemble the curling, light hand of their mother, as though an angel had danced across the page. And then he realized that, without his mother to teach her, Lillie probably wouldn’t write like that. Wasn’t handwriting a product of environment?

‘We’ll ask her to stay,’ Frankie went on. ‘He doesn’t mention whether other members of the family would be interested, but we should invite them too. We’ll have them all,’ said Frankie, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘Let’s start with Lillie,’ Seth said firmly.

His wife had always been generous and enthusiastic. Frankie’s glass wasn’t just half-full, it was brimming – and she wanted to share it with everyone. It was what made her so good with people and so good at her job. Nobody could resist an HR boss like Frankie.

It didn’t make her so easy to live with when you didn’t have a job, though.

He knew she couldn’t help contrasting his handling of the situation with the way she’d behave if her job was suddenly snatched out from under her. Frankie would go at it like a whirling dervish, turning everything upside down, tossing aside any obstacles that planted themselves in her path.

Her enthusiasm for Lillie’s visit had swept aside Seth’s reservations. But now that the time had arrived, they were starting to creep back into his mind. After all, this wasn’t a long-lost relative returning after a time away. This woman had never known her birth father and mother. She had been cast out of her homeland and sent to the other side of the world for adoption. What was she going to make of Seth, the child her mother had kept close?

Seth drove slowly into the airport car park, took the ticket from the machine and circled the floors of the multi-storey until he found a parking spot. He did everything slowly now. It was as if life itself had wound down. During the day, he watched TV and there’d been a programme on redundancy and its effect on people. He had all the worst symptoms and then some. With nothing being built because of the recession, nobody had any use for an architect, especially a fifty-four-year-old one. Even if a job did appear on the horizon, he was far too old and too qualified to start somewhere new and was, therefore, unemployable.

Slipping the parking ticket into the pocket of his navy corduroys, he walked towards arrivals. He was early enough to get a coffee and a paper, to sit and wait. Lillie’s son had emailed him a photograph so he would know what she looked like. It had been taken at a family gathering. Two strong Celtic-looking men – his nephews, he realized with a jolt – were standing beside their parents. Lillie appeared to be as tall as Jennifer had been and with similar colouring; she was standing beside a man who must have once been tall but looked to have shrunken, turned in on himself. He was smiling though.

Dad’s only been dead six months, Martin had said in his email. We think this is wonderful for Mum – finding you and going to stay with you. It’s really generous of you. Obviously, it’s been painful for everyone since Dad died, but particularly for Mum. They were married over forty years. I hope it all works out. Just email or phone if there’s any problem or if Mum gets upset. We’ll fly her home in an instant. I know you said she can stay indefinitely, and thank you for that. Mum wants to recompense you both for her visit.

Don’t worry, Seth had replied, we’ll take care of her, I promise. She can stay as long as she likes and I won’t hear of her paying anything. She’s family.

He hoped they’d be able to fulfil the promise of taking care of Lillie. Now that she was nearly here, he hoped he’d be able to love her. But it would be strange.

He’d read his paper from cover to cover and the coffee cup had been dispatched into a litter bin by the time people started trailing through the arrivals gate. Seth scanned the faces, wondering if he’d recognize her from the picture. He had made a sign with Lillie Maguire

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