Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4) Read online

  And, though she thought surely it must be her imagination, she felt behind her the little bump in Dymphna's stomach pressing against her back, radiating all the shame and sinfulness of the secret carried within the girl's womb, in a few months a secret to wagging tongues in Derry and the world no longer. Already two children born out of wedlock! Well, this third wouldn't be a bastard, as least. What was she to do with the shameless slapper?

  Zoë's eyes inspected Fionnuala across the coffee table through her Burberry frames, and the businesswoman leaned forward with nails manicured like scissors. She had an air of confidence that matched her furniture. But to Fionnuala, the sea of chrome and glass in which she was marooned was one of swanky brands she had never heard of, all style and no substance. The settee was hard on her arse. And, most peculiar of all, this snooty house smelled of...nothing. A sitting room that smelled of air. How was that possible?

  Fionnuala had seen the woman's scullery, her modern kitchen, with taps that didn't drip, window panes you could see through, and in here, the carpeting looked as fresh as the day it was bought. No dust, so that the things she saw were the actual colors she was seeing. What a peculiar, inhuman house!

  “Mmm, lovely tea,” Fionnuala murmured, though she could detect no difference from the jumbo packs of 100 she bought at the Top-Yer-Trolly superstore in the city center for £1.99. She was only paying lip service, making conversation. She had recently read in Chapter Two, Conversation Etiquette, it was the done thing in polite circles. Two weeks before, she had chanced upon a book under a pile of used beer mats at the market stall. Normally she recoiled from the printed word if it wasn't a hymnal; those at least had little drawings of the music that were interesting to look at. But as she stood there, shoppers' elbows poking her from all sides and the coasters in her hand, her brains cells had started to trundle. How To Be A Lady's cover had a cigarette burn, its pages were tattered, and it was a book, but it was only 50 pence. And there were drawings!

  She always knew she would have to go through this grand introduction to Dymphna's future mother-in-law at some stage and was dreading it; she didn't want to show herself up. She had had a lifetime of Proddy bastards staring down their noses at her. It came to her suddenly as she stood there in the market that the Heavenly Father himself must have placed the book on the stall for her benefit. Or for a minor task like that, He had probably just sent down some unimportant angel. She still offered up a quick prayer of thanks to Him as she handed over the 50 pee. She ignored the smirk of the drug addict behind the stall, and had a furtive flick through it on the mini-bus on the way home. She had roared abuse at the two Goth-type girls across the aisle who sniggered at her for having her nose in a book, and lately had been secretly reading it in the loo when Paddy was sleeping off the drink, a page a night. If they were being forced to include this horrid woman, this Zoë Riddell, in their lives, there would be years of fixed grins and thumbed pages stretching before her. She wanted to start as she hoped to go on. If she could stomach it. “Is it some special brand, this tea?”

  “Oh, yes, Panda Tea,” Zoë said, nodding enthusiastically. “The world's most exclusive, shipped in from China.”

  Fionnuala tasted sudden bitterness. The land of chinky Communist bastards! And she knew 'most exclusive' really meant most expensive. She placed the teacup down with sudden force, but still managed her smile and her comportment: sitting with a straight back as the book instructed in Chapter One, legs slightly folded and tilted to the left, ankles crossed, heels a bit under the sofa frame. It was a dainty, totally uncharacteristic pose, and difficult with her big bones. She had practiced this pose and more in the mirror of her bedroom before she had caught the bus. She didn't know if she had been disappointed or relieved to see there was no sugar bowl with cubes inside it and little tongs to serve them with. Zoë had offered her a selection of sugar and sweeteners in a sterling silver caddy instead, efficiency usurping tradition (though Fionnuala didn't put it like that in her mind). She cursed the 20 minutes she had spent training herself how to move the cubes from a bowl to a cup. Had she read the chapter instead of following the drawings, she would've learned it was the hostess' responsibility to serve out the sugar in any event. “Does this tea be special in some way? To make it so exclusive, I mean?”

  “Oh, my, yes. It's very environmentally friendly, and competitively-paid workers grow it in fertilizer made from panda, er, leavings in the Szechuan province. That's what gives it its distinctive—”

  “Ye mean...shite?” Fionnuala fought the urge to boke.

  “Dung, yes. But, darling, I think many fertilizers—”

  “Look, Mammy!” Dymphna brayed from behind her back. Fionnuala jumped. She had forgotten the girl was there. Why the bloody feck was the daft bitch lurking behind her head? It wasn't for lack of space; Zoë's sitting room could have hosted a soccer match, locker rooms, concession stands and all. “Here's the guest list for the wedding.”

  “Ahh! The wedding list!” Zoë's hands made little claps of joy. “Very special, I'm sure you agree. You must be enthralled. I know I was. How do you feel, Mrs. Flood?” Zoë asked it with genuine interest, her eyes shooting back and forth behind the lenses.

  Truth be told, Fionnuala felt ill at ease, sat in her threadbare cardigan surrounded by the alien knickknacks, cold and godless, that lined the glass shelves, even aware of the rattiness of her knickers, the saggy elasticated band on them, as though the lenses of Zoë's Burberry's were x-ray. Worse, she felt a traitor, lounging in an Orange Proddy bastard's house in their encampment across the river.

  But her unease at where she found herself, and even the disgust in the back of her throat from her tea, couldn't mask the excitement she felt as she prepared to read the wedding list on the paper before her, a swanky type, heavy in the hand and silky to the touch.

  It was the list every mother counted down the days to in her mind: the guest list for the first of her children to take the plunge up the aisle towards holy matrimony, exchanging vows with her loved one, her soul mate, her lifetime partner, there at the altar in the sight of the Lord and ridding Fionnuala's house of another mouth stretching itself open to be fed. Though, really, Dymphna had already moved across the river yonks ago and shacked up with her Proddy fancy man. Fancy boy.

  Fionnuala struggled to make her way through the names and match them to people she knew in real life. It had less to do with Dymphna's poor penmanship and creative spelling and more to do with the names written there.

  “Who in the name of God Almighty are all these flimmin people? I don't know em from Adam, sure!”

  “Sorry, Mammy, I've given ye the wrong list. Themmuns was the Riddells.”

  As another piece of posh paper was pushed into her fingers, Fionnuala was taken aback. Somehow, all those times she had made such a list in her mind, it had never occurred to her the groom would have friends and relatives there. The son-in-law had always been some shadowy, slightly malevolent presence lurking in a corner just out of sight. She struggled to rearrange some brain cells, as it was now obvious that these strangers would be gatecrashing her daughter's wedding.

  “There's all the Flood guests,” Dymphna said from behind the sofa, nodding down at the paper. Fionnuala had to crane her neck to see her, and this was especially difficult given the configuration of her legs. Then it hit her. Dymphna was hiding the bulge of the new baby in her belly behind the sofa! Since Fionnuala had walked in, her daughter had been engaged in a variety of slouches, and there had been strategically placed cushions and magazines, a teacup that had never left her navel, and now there was a whole sofa to shroud her. Had she not told Zoë? Or Rory? “And yer lot, the Hegartys, and all.”

  Fionnuala filed that alarmed thought away for inspection later on, looked down and immediately felt comforted. There, on this sheet, was the entire Heggarty clan: her mother, Maureen, her brothers (she had no sisters), her nieces and nephews, with many cousins and second cousins thrown in for good measure to make up the numbers and ensure the pew
s would be heaving, as Fionnuala's brothers had all left Derry and probably wouldn't come. Then she flipped the paper and saw all the Floods, her husband's family. They were all written down there as well, his brothers and sisters, Cait, Roisin...

  “I've still to add all the bridesmaids and pallbearers and what have you,” Dymphna said.

  “I think you'll find, darling, that pallbearers are more for funerals,” Fionnuala heard Zoë say, but it was if the voice came from many miles away. She was too busy staring in horror at a name on the list. She jerked, and one of her painfully arranged knees hit the table. Her teacup clattered to the carpet. Zoë screamed as if a rusty screwdriver had been plunged into her breastplate. She fell to her knees, clutching at the shag of the cream carpet, where blotches materialized and began to spread.

  “My Fendi carpet!” she shrieked in horror. “Have you any idea how much—?! Dymphna! Damp rag!”

  Dymphna and a cushion raced off toward the kitchen. She quickly came back with a pristine rag and a can of something and knelt between her mother's knees and the coffee table, scrubbing away as Zoë heaved pants and gasps. Fionnuala couldn't help but snipe, “If ye didn't want shite on yer carpet, ye shouldn't've served it in yer tea.”

  “Gently!” Zoë barked. “Gentle strokes, girl.” Fionnuala had dismissed the stain as quickly as she did those in her own home, and was back to the list.

  “What,” she sputtered, a shuddering finger jabbing at the paper, “is that tight-fisted toerag yer auntie Ursula doing on this list?”

  Still scrubbing away, Dymphna looked up at her mother in disappointment. “Och, Mammy! I thought surely youse two had made up! If ye mind, she saved us all from being blown to bits from that bomb in the Top Yer Trolly the other year, and she give me that check for wee Keanu.” Long since poured down Dymphna's throat, Fionnuala had no doubt. “Ye know she's me favorite aunt, and Jed's me favorite uncle—”

  “When ye've loads of me own brothers to choose from?”

  “Ye've nothing against me uncle Jed anyroad. And he's daddy's best mate and all.”

  “Was! Yer auntie Ursula be's worse than yer woman here,” Fionnuala said, a wave in Zoë's direction, “staring down her nose at me like a pile of shite on the heel of her shoe.” Even in her anger, she remembered her new Manners. “No offense, like,” she said with a quick nod to Zoë, who by this stage was back to an ice maiden. Then she barked down at Dymphna's shoulder blades, “Winning the lotto, keeping all the money for herself, snatching yer Granny Flood's caretakers allowance for herself, buying the family home, though that burned down, and...” she sputtered her anger. Long was the list of offenses she blamed her husband's sister for.

  “And ye must admit ye were relieved when she didn't die in that hurricane in Puerto Rico last year. Ye told me so yerself.”

  “Aye, that but,” Fionnuala snapped, her face not knowing whether to drain with color or turn beet red, “was only as...” Here she turned apologetically to Zoë, “I'm wile sorry, I know I'm not meant to whisper in front of ye, it's not the right thing to do, like; what I've to tell me daughter, but, ye're better off not hearing. It's for yer own good, like.” She hissed into Dymphna's ear, “That was only as I don't want any more dead Catholics, and yer auntie be's a Catholic same as us. I only want more dead Proddy bastards in this world. One more living Catholic makes wer percentage higher...even if it's the misfortune to be that flimmin awful Ursula.”

  “Might I suggest,” Zoë broke in, eying a tiny watch that clung to her skinny wrist and sparkled, “the two of you discuss this matter on your own time? Mine is not only expensive, it is also limited. I have meetings, you understand. Important ones. I've given you a window of opportunity in my busy day to plan this wedding. I suggest we get down to it now.”

  Fionnuala jerked back in surprise as the woman revealed from somewhere a pile of thick, glossy magazines and one of those slim, silver contraptions that was an entire computer shoved into a quarter-inch thick piece of metal—she didn't know how it was possible, but they existed, the ones with the apple with the chunk bitten out of it. She had seen ads for them on the telly. Zoë flicked it open and turned it towards her. To add to all the other luxuries, this house was one of the blessed few to have the Internet humming around inside it. But of course it did. The minted bitch probably had one of those phones that connected up as well, Fionnuala thought, so she could waltz around the streets of Derry taking the Internet with her everywhere she went, hogging it up for her own personal use.

  “We can go through the magazines later, they are marvelous sources of inspiration, but right now I want to show you something I drummed up the other day. So that we can begin planning the wedding on a theoretical, meta-level.”

  She thrust the computer under Fionnuala's nose and her fingernails clacked lightning-speed over the keys. The screen burst into life. How did this woman know all about technology? Fionnuala wondered. Surely they were the same age, as their wanes were a similar age. Why did Fionnuala feel so much older? And Fionnuala knew she certainly looked it, as the smarmy creature had bags of money to cheat time.

  “This,” Zoë said, “is a virtual mood board. You see, it allows us to take items from all different aspects of the wedding, and, indeed, from every source available to us on the Internet, drag them in, and arrange them together so that we can bla bla bla...”

  Fionnuala was paying the woman's high-minded babbling no mind. She was thinking of something else. As she gazed down upon things on the screen her eyes couldn't make sense of, she was resolving to make a plan. There was no way on God's green earth that invitation would ever reach Ursula and Jed's mailbox in what Fionnuala was sure was their luxury lotto mansion in Wisconsin. Never!

  The planning began in earnest.

  CHAPTER TWO

  From somewhere above the Artemede Mercury suspension light fixture (which resembled mini UFOs to Fionnuala), they heard sounds of small forest animals in pain.

  Fionnuala looked up in alarm. The corner of a biscuit fell to her lap. Zoë and Dymphna seemed merely resigned; they had apparently heard this caterwauling before. Was it some fancy new wildlife-type alarm system in this strange house?

  “Och, Keanu and Beeyonsay wants changing. Or feeding,” Dymphna said. Zoë nodded, and the girl slipped upstairs. That left Fionnuala with the Proddy bitch and the peculiar things on her computer. Alone together amongst the modernity that was hurting her eyes. Fionnuala wondered where her grandchildren were being kept, what posh wonderland they were being brought up in on the second floor. And, with only the two of them in the sitting room, she realized now that Zoë wasn't sitting properly, not following the drawings in How To Be A Lady, and that she hadn't been since Fionnuala had entered. Far be it from Fionnuala to suggest that Zoë was a fake, a fraud of her income bracket, but she smiled a secret smile of superiority. Then she tried to focus on what the woman was showing her. She still couldn't make sense of it.

  “And the mood board...special internet sites...and magazines, one for cakes, one for hair, one for accessories, one for...”

  Fionnuala thought back to her own wedding with a feeling of sadness, the notion that something had been missed out on. It had been a rushed affair at St. Moluag's, every expense spared. Her head banging from the hen party the night before, which had turned into a boozy pub crawl filled with slurred insults and violence, she had tugged on her favorite velor hot pants, adjusted her camel toe, then slipped into her knee high boots, shoved a floppy hat on her head, and that had been that. She had taken the mini bus down to the church. With a fistful of dandelions she had plucked from the neighbor's front garden in case Paddy forgot to get flowers, which of course he had. How different from Dymphna being coddled over by her future mother-in-law, a magazine, a website for each of all the matrimonial minutia.

  But then, Fionnuala considered, this woman had only one child, and a lad at that. Zoë Riddell could bestow all her maternal feeling on one being. Whereas Fionnuala had seven at last count. She didn't have unlimited love
to spread around, nor the funds, and so had to parcel both out piecemeal, carefully, and many times not at all.

  Zoë's lips continued flapping: “We can drag these images onto the board and see how it makes us feel. You understand, the point is that the color will dictate the atmosphere of the wedding. I wonder if you've given it any thought. Rory doesn't care, men wouldn't, and I've asked Dymphna, and she said to leave it up to you. Have you, Mrs. Flood, any suggestions about the color of the wedding? What color would you like it to be?”

  Fionnuala stared at the woman as if she'd taken leave of her senses.

  “Not yer Proddy Orange, I can tell ye that straight off. Green!” Fionnuala barked the color.

  In Ireland, the religious factions had appropriated colors of the national flag for themselves. Green was Catholic, and Orange was Protestant. Neither side seemed interested in claiming the white.

  “Leaving religion to the side for the moment, there needs to be a color scheme. It can be green if you want, of course, but we have a wide array of colors available to us. All the colors of the rainbow, if you will. For the flowers, the cake, the stationary—”

  “Stationary?!” Fionnuala looked stricken. “What sort of writing will we have to be doing?”

  “By stationary, I'm talking about the invitations to be sent out. And there are many other things to consider. There's the reception décor, the clothing of the wedding party, the—”

  Fionnuala's brow wrinkled with incomprehension. “Doesn't the reception be the party, but?”

  “No, by 'party' I mean, the bridesmaids, the maid of honor, the best man and what have you. Those closest to the bride. The bridal party. The clothing of the party should be coordinated so that—”

  “Would ye stop calling people parties? A party doesn't be a person. It be's an occasion where ye drink and dance and maybe unwrap a gift or two. Ye're doing me head in.”