Gemma had rather hoped that her father wouldn't wait up for her. After all he's only just come back from a week-long trip with his golf club, so he must be tired. That's why she texted him that she wasn't coming home until later.
"Oh, hi Daddy!" she says, stepping into the hall, "Did you have a nice trip?"
"Very nice, but I've missed my favourite young lady. Shall we have our vermouth?"
"Vermouth… yes, of course!"
After the day she's had Gemma is wondering how much of a good idea that really is. Part of her is craving a glass, but that is precisely the part of her that is best kept under control. What if that vermouth makes her crave the next vermouth, the way one chocolate biscuit leads on to the next? The way one drink on a stressful day leads to the bottom of a swimming pool? One should only ever drink when happy, or at the very least positively engaged. One should never ever have a drink because one "could use" a drink.
x
"I'm sorry to say this, darling, but you do look like you could use a drink," her father says, locking arms with her on the way to his study. He feels her small weight lean into him with grateful abandon. He's at least as grateful for her abandon as she is for the support of his arm, but he's also worried about her. He leads her to the Chesterfield in his office, which he's thought of as hers ever since she's been able to clamber onto it.
Mr Woodhouse sets to preparing their drinks, and with his back turned to her he remembers his daughter as a bossy two and a bit-year old, her blond hair almost white, eating rusks sat on this leather throne with her squishy little legs splaying out of her bloomers, her soft tummy sticking out, and staring earnestly at him while he read or spoke on the phone. She never went near the fire, or messed with his books or papers or tried to open the pretty drinks cabinet. She sat and ate and stared, and after a while she either fell back and into sleep right there, fists thrown up above her head, or else she left him to go and cry for Mrs Weston, the nanny.
Later she would sit with one of his papers, still with one dribbly rusk in each hand, and she would screw her little face into a serious expression and pretend to read while he worked. Not that much later, looking more serious than ever she started actually reading his papers, though no one knew how she'd learnt to. Sometimes she ate a chocolate digestive, sometimes an apple, or the dry end-slice of a loaf of bread, but she was very neat about it: no crumbs, no crunching noises. It wasn't until she went away to school that all that awful smiling started. Cost him a good deal of money too, this absurd teaching his daughter to smile all the time, and not eat.
"So how was Gleneagles this year?" she is asking and, he fears, smiling. He answers her, truthfully, that the golf was excellent and, euphemistically, that so was the company.
She nods as he turns back to hand over her drink, and for the briefest, most precious moment her eyes are those of the silent, hungry, defiant toddler who used to sit in her place.
"But how about you, darling? Have you been busy with the French warehouse company? Are you going to do business with them?"
x
"Oh yes, we've been very busy…" Gemma says, her head spinning as she watches him walk away to take his seat opposite her. She remembers that she'd better up her enthusiasm levels before he faces her again. Also, this will be easier to say without having to look him in the eye:
"In fact, we already signed the purchase order!" she smiles, just as he turns around.
Mr Woodhouse winces as he sits down, and she worries that his back is aching again.
"Too much golfing and long train journeys aren't good for your lumbar spine, Daddy. Is the osteopath coming soon?"
"Hmmm? Oh no no, I'll be fine."
"Do… you think we shouldn't have signed that purchase order?"
"What? No, of course I don't think that, Darling!"
x
Mr Woodhouse's back did twinge as he sat down, that is true. But it's probably nothing to do with either golf or travelling. More likely, it's something else entirely, something which until yesterday he'd not attempted in decades, and is in many ways more demanding than he remembered. In any case, what just made him wince wasn't his back but his daughter's face. Why should she doubt herself for a second?
"Didn't my clever daughter negotiate an incredible discount?"
"Well, they did give us a very good price..."
Mr Woodhouse knows he is tired. He did almost retire without waiting for Gemma to come home. And now his back, it is true, does not feel quite right. But what is all but killing him, is seeing his daughter like this.
It's not that she's working too hard: Mr Woodhouse remembers doing that himself when he was her age, before they invented fancy notions like mental health and burn-outs. What he can't bear isn't how drained she looks, it's that she won't give herself credit for what she's achieving.
"Darling, it sounds to me like you bagged a bargain, and that's well worth raising a glass," he says.
She does, but takes an almost reluctant sip:
"If you ask me, vermouth never tastes better than when you've really earnt it, does it now?"
"It's delicious," she nods, and now he's certain that there's something else. It's not that she's tired – though clearly she is. It's not that warehouse deal either – though those big investments are always stressful, especially across borders. There's something else and, by God, if that blasted Irish boy's been stealing her thunder again…
x
Gemma looks from the shimmering golden-green of her crystal glass back up to her father. She tries upping her smile and taking another sip to appease him, but either his back really is playing up, or he knows she's hiding something - or very likely both.
Gemma knows she's not looking like herself right now, and how could she, but she really can't begin to tell him what a mess she's made of Queen Bees. So she tells him about the other mess instead, about the argument with Dylan. She keeps Frank and Jane's parts in it to herself, but she does tell him how she and Dylan argued over Hari and Martin and Vikas. She tells her father how she couldn't have known about Vikas and Patrick, but how wrong she was, in retrospect:
"… so you see it really was all my mistake, Daddy."
"And over this Dylan is… ghosting you? Is what you young people call it nowadays?"
She nods with a feeble smile.
"I don't know what you ever saw in that great lumbering oaf in the first place. And after everything you did for him …"
"Me? What did I ever do for him?"
She's thinking of Helvellyn again, and of the countless thrown bets and coffees in Mayfair, and it's hard.
"You helped him set up his hedge fund, for a start."
"I did not, he showed me his business plan, that's all. I hardly changed a thing."
"That's right, only the bits that mattered. And you introduced him to his seed capital."
"He sort of knew them already, Daddy, I just re-introduced them."
"And who looked after him when he went and hurt himself flying a kite? Who picked him up from hospital?"
"That was literally one evening of my time."
"Who breaks their bones flying a kite in the first place?"
… when they've just dropped out of an ultimate frisbee competition in order to do so? Only Dylan, that is true. Oh but what fun they had that night! Dylan half-drunk is one thing, but Dylan on co-codamol… He took it into his head that he had to have his favourite curry, except of course he couldn't begin to make it with his shoulder in a sling, so he tried telling her what to do and the results were, predictably, catastrophic.
After she cut a finger the second time they ordered Chinese takeaways and ate them in front of Three Idiots, which is actually a fun film, though some of the songs do go on a bit. And that Aamir Khan sure is cute, if way too old for the role.
And then Dylan's Mum arrived the next morning to take over and that's the first time she or her husband made the now well-worn joke about what a Gem of a friend she was and "if only her parents were from the Punjab, what a perfect wife she'd make, haha!", and though it's hard to tell with Dylan's skin tone she's almost sure he blushed.
Or it could have been the pain, or the co-codamol.
"None of that matters now anyway…" she says, stirring the ice at the bottom of her glass as she stares into the empty fireplace.
"Too right: a clean break, that's what we used to call ghosting in my day, and a jolly good thing a clean break is too. It'll do you a power of good."
"Will it?"
"Trust me, in a week's time you won't be giving it another thought. You'll be signing with Montage, and travelling to gay Paris to set up your new warehouse and your sales contracts. Paris in the Spring, and with that handsome young Frenchman too: you'll be having the time of your life!"
Gemma's stare darkens and she gives up smiling. In a week's time if she's extremely lucky she will still be stalling, so she won't yet have signed Queen Bees' soul over to Montage. In the meantime she will lie to Frank about what she knows, pretend everything is fine to Agnes and Hari too of course and right now, in the first instance, she will continue to lie to her own father.
Dylan was right about her: she is both an idiot and a coward, and therefore she has to be a liar too, and therefore a bad friend, daughter and an all-round bad person. Why Dylan stuck with her for this long is anyone's guess, but he is well rid of her.
x
Mr Woodhouse stares at his daughter.
She is tired, yes, but with that healthy exhaustion he remembers from his own days running a business. It's this almost overwhelming tiredness that seizes you when you finally reach grasping distance of a long-fought-for goal, to stop you for a moment, and remind you how far you've come and why you've got to keep on going.
Now, at last, the look in her eyes is the fighting look of her toddler days, and he knows she's going to be fine.
"What do you say we turn in, Darling?"
Naturally Gemma does very little sleeping that night. She spends the entire weekend poring over Queen Bee's accounts and bank statements, looking for money she knows is not there, pulling at threads and getting nowhere. It's hopeless.
It's lucky for her that Agnes has just received her first batches of bee venom from Kisoro, and has been busy playing with them in the lab. Gemma doesn't have the heart to tell her, yet, that whatever she comes up with will never hit the shops.
Let Agnes dream. She's asked to borrow Hari for help, to try cheer her up most likely, and Gemma is only too pleased to have them both out of her way. Let them dream while they still can. Personally, she would settle for just catching a little sleep.
To this effect she hits the gym on Tuesday evening. She's eschewed her usual lunchtime classes to avoid bumping into Frank there, so it's especially vexing to do so on her way out. She tries giving him a wide berth in case he hasn't noticed her, but he waves at her across the lobby:
"Gemma, what an unexpected pleasure!"
"Indeed," she lies.
"I thought you were more of a lunchtime gym person."
"Special times call for special measures," she says vaguely, and attempts to smile at him as if she didn't hate him as she's never hated anyone or anything before.
Frank, despite the fact that he's knowingly ruined both her relationship with Dylan and her business, doesn't seem to be struggling to smile back at her. She thinks of all those weeks he's kept it up, smiling at her and flirting down the gym while…
"So I expect we'll be signing soon? When's Geoffrey coming back again?" she asks with a more sincere, if even more bitter smile. She called Rob on her way over and knows for a fact that Montage still haven't got hold of more warrants. What excuse will Frank come up with to delay signing this time?
"Oh my God: about that…"
"What?" she cries, as if she were surprised.
"I was going to call you,"
Funny how Frank is always just about to call her.
"Why, what happened?"
"There's been…"
There's been a need to come up with another pathetic excuse?
"There's been a terrible accident."
"Oh my God, is Geoff OK?!"
Did she just overdo it? No, Frank seems to be buying it:
"It's not him, it's his…"
"Not his wife?"
"Worse, it's his daughter," Frank says, because as already established he has absolutely no shame, so why merely drag Geoff's wife into it, when he can go for the man's own flesh and blood?
"Not one of those awful jetski accidents?" Gemma suggests.
What do you know: she's right!
"Those things are so, so dangerous!" Frank nods, either for emphasis, or to show off his burnt blonde hair to its best advantage, or both.
"Oh my God, is she alright?"
"Oh no. No, it's very very serious. She's in a critical condition so they can't fly her home at the moment, not until she's better, so he and his wife are stuck out there with her."
"Oh dear, that's so terrible," Gemma says, as in it's a really terrible, bald-faced, utterly shameless lie. The only thing that might possibly make Frank a little less hateful right now, is if Geoff doesn't actually have a daughter and he's lying about that too.
"I know but, oh Gemma, I'm so sorry! I know how stressful this must be for you and Agnes. I was going to call you tomorrow morning to explain. Geoff actually emailed me to ask me to apologise to you – not that I wouldn't have anyway."
"Oh that's just so considerate of him, in the circumstances."
"Hey, that's the kind of guy he is."
She smiles a bitter smile, but Frank does not appear to know any better. Bitter smiles are coming to her quite easily tonight, as it turns out. Perhaps it's the hour of hard HIIT, but you do have to see the funny side of this. After all right now she's the one stringing Frank along, for a change. There's no telling how long she'll be able to do that, so she'd better enjoy it. Dylan would definitely approve.
But seriously, the cheek of Frank! The lean, clean-shaven, post-workout glowing cheek of him! And then, just when she thinks he can't get any more brazen:
"Frankly I don't know that I want to wait that long, Gemma – does that sound really awful?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Oh come on, Gemma, how old are we? I don't want to wait until Geoff's daughter is better to kiss you again. There. Is that so awful?"
It is. It is so, so far beyond awful, and look at him: anyone who didn't know any better would think he's overcome by emotion of a loving kind right now. Perhaps by irrepressible desire. At the very least by a moment of the hottest, fiercest most loin-grabbing lust. So yes, it's god-awful of him to pretend that it's any of this, when all he's feeling right now is mild anxiety as to whether she's buying his pathetic bull-poo.
Which she's not. And now is as good a time as any to let her face show how she really feels about him:
"Of course," he says, shaking his perfect hair again,"you're pissed off with me because I sent that picture to Jane."
"I am, yes."
As in: I'm pissed off about that too.
"I'm sorry, Gemma. That was a dick move."
Too right. One of many.
"You've got to believe me I was just trying to get her off my back. I didn't think she would…"
"Send it on to all my friends?"
"I'm really sorry Gemma. I guess Dylan's mad, right?"
She pouts and shakes her head. Like hell she's going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he's ruined that as well.
"Nah, we're cool."
He nods:
"I'm glad."
He might or might not be lying about that too – who even cares by now?
"Did you know Vikas was gay?"
"What?"
"Vikas – Hari's in pieces over him. Did you know all along he was gay?"
"Well I did suspect, but…"
"But you happily threw them together the whole evening in Paris."
"Only so I could have you to myself."
So that he could take incriminating pictures to ruin her life with? How romantic of him.
"I'm so sorry, Gemma. Things really haven't turned out as they should. Could I… by way of apology, that is… and also because I'd really really like you to… you see I have this lovely blanquette de veau I made yesterday, leftover. It always tastes even better the next day, I swear. So I know we're not supposed to and it's a big ask after I've made things so complicated for you, but I'd really love it if you were to come over to mine and help me finish it."
Wow.
Gemma stares up at him because there literally are no words in her vocabulary for that level of shameless manipulative behaviour. Is this guy actually trying to get into her pants? Now? As well as scaring her friends off and robbing her of her life's work? Does he think she's actually going to fall for this rubbish? He's nice looking, granted, extremely good looking but…
But hang on.
Hell, why not? What would Mata Hari do? It might throw up something useful, or it might not, but it's worth a shot. Hell, at this point, what has she got left to lose?
"Oh, Frank, why not? I'm so famished, I've hardly eaten all day!"
That last part is actually true.
"Well then?" he says, gallantly offering his arm.
She pinches her lips for the briefest moment before offering hers back.
A Bee in her Bonnet is Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved.