The Old Ducks' Hen Do, page 1
THE OLD DUCKS’ HEN DO
MADDIE PLEASE
To Jane, who has been there every step of the way.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
More from Maddie Please
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Maddie Please
About Boldwood Books
1
‘Denny, I have the most exciting news. I’m getting married!’
I put my tea down on the worktop and stared blankly into the far distance for a second. But of course I knew that voice, I recognised that chuckle. It was just the message that confused me for a moment.
‘Juliette!’ I said at last. ‘Did you really say you’re getting married?’
She laughed again. I could almost imagine my sister – well, stepsister if I was being accurate – with her feet up on her leopard-print sofa, a gin and tonic in one hand. My much-married mother had left both chaos and the two of us in her wake when she ran off with her fourth husband.
‘Yes, me! Married!’ Juliette said. ‘Isn’t it amazing? You have to be there. I won’t take no for an answer.’
‘Married to Matthew,’ I said, ‘just to be sure I’m up to speed?’
You never really knew with Juliette. In the past, she had been a first-class flirt, which meant the man of the moment might be consigned to history the next.
‘Of course I’m getting married to Matthew, you twit! You know how lovely he is, despite the tweeds and the shooting stick. And the bristly moustache. There are only two men on the planet with a moustache who are attractive, in my opinion, and Matthew is one of them.’
‘And who is the other?’
‘Tom Selleck, of course.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Well, this is incredibly exciting,’ I said, ‘when did this happen?’
Juliette gave a little squeak of delight. ‘Last night. I know we make an odd couple, but oh, Denny, I’m so happy!’
‘You sound it,’ I said, smiling. ‘And when is the big day? Are you off to Vegas? Or a beach in the Caribbean? Oooh, you need to be careful, it’s hurricane season there in the summer, but you might get lucky and avoid them.’
‘Don’t be daft. This is me and sensible Matthew, not me and some random celebrity with too many tattoos and a drug habit. We’re hoping to book a day in June, because he’s heard the church has had a cancellation. There are benefits to being the church warden. Lucky for us, eh? Although not so lucky for the local farmer whose fiancée stayed on in Brixham after her hen weekend. Who knew trawler captains could be so gosh darned attractive? But that’s not the only reason I’m ringing. I’m already planning a hen weekend. Well, a hen week, actually. More like a hen ten days. Let’s just call it a hen holiday. Last night, as soon as I said yes, I started looking through the internet and this morning I have found the most glorious villa to rent on Mallorca. Sea views, a pool and level walking distance to restaurants. Four bedrooms, four bathrooms. My treat. And I want you to be there. You have to be there. You’re one of my closest relations left now. Do you realise we are now the older generation? The ones who normally get stuck on the boring table at weddings talking about our ailments? Well, that’s not going to happen this time, I’ll make sure of that. It wouldn’t be the same without you there. Do say yes.’
Juliette rambled on for a while, telling me about the villa on the Mallorcan coast, the date, the first ten days in April, and the flight possibilities. She wanted to fly from Birmingham, which was incredibly convenient and anything that avoids a trip to Luton or Stanstead is a plus in my opinion.
I had to admit that her enthusiasm was infectious, but also a bit unsettling. All the years we had both been – for various reasons – effectively single, we’d been able to commiserate with each other about the various men with whom we had been in and out of relationships. Now she was moving on, to a new place which I couldn’t really understand. Of course I was happy for her, but even so, I felt a bit – well – left out, I suppose.
I gave myself a mental slap for my rather selfish thoughts, and focused back in on what she was saying.
‘And we will each have our own bedroom, and from the pictures on the website there isn’t a dud one with bunk beds, a box of Lego under the bed and a loo in the cupboard that doesn’t flush properly. Villa Gloriosa is right in the middle of the cutest little fishing village. Cobbled streets, ancient church, boats, sea views, the lot.’
‘It does sound wonderful,’ I said when she stopped to draw breath.
I hadn’t done anything exciting for months and the winter seemed to be going on forever. This sounded like a terrific opportunity for some fun before Juliette dived back in to married life.
‘I’ll send you the link,’ Juliette said. I could hear her fingers tapping away on her laptop and a moment later there was a corresponding ping from my inbox.
‘Oh, my goodness. It looks fantastic! Who else is coming?’
‘The other Old Ducks, of course. You’re old enough to be invested into the order now you’re sixty. And Kim and Sophia will want to be there. Anita would too but I know she is off with one of her dance groups on a tour of Scotland. It’s been booked for months. She has two new dresses, she said they needed their own suitcase, the skirts are so full. We are going to have such fun.’
I looked out of the window at the winter rain, which seemed to have been falling for days, if not weeks. I really needed to go out and get some milk, my tea consumption was rising to epic volumes now that I had retired. I had eaten my last KitKat yesterday too. Perhaps I needed to restock. And perhaps have some proper food instead of just snacking. Actually cook a meal. But then it always seemed too much of an effort, spending hours chopping vegetables and stirring and messing about in the kitchen just for me. And then it never looked like the illustration on the packet, so what was the point?
‘So take a look at the details, I’m going to contact the others next, and force them to come. It’s a shame Anita is away, but I know Kim will be up for it. She’s a great laugh. Do you remember her? The maths teacher. Both of her kids are still trying to move back in with her, and she’s talking about changing the locks yet again. What she really needs is a moat and drawbridge, but you can’t really do that in Kidderminster, you’d never get planning permission. And Sophia – you haven’t met her, have you? She lives on Rhodes with the handsomest man. She met him there. Wouldn’t it be nice if you met someone in Mallorca? A gorgeous Spanish noble, or a backpacking billionaire?’
‘I don’t think I want to,’ I said.
Juliette chuckled. ‘Take my word for it, that’s when it always happens. When you’re not looking for someone. Look at me, I met Matthew in the queue for the ice cream van at the village fete. The old biddies around here will be livid when word gets around we are engaged, I can’t wait to tell them. It’s quite possible the parish councillors will explode with fury when Matthew books the church. And when the banns are read there will be newsletters and false teeth all over the place.’
I laughed. ‘Troublemaker.’
‘You know me. So you’ll come?’
‘Oooh, I don’t know,’ I teased, ‘let me have a look at my diary.’
‘That shouldn’t take long,’ Juliette scoffed.
No, she was right, it wouldn’t. I had retired just before Christmas, my department head made me an offer no one would have refused, and I had somehow gone from being frantically busy with meetings and appointments to a desert wasteland of empty weeks.
Of course, at first it had been great, to wake up when I felt like it. Go out or stay in when it suited me. Not have to stress about deadlines or other people’s inability to send coherent emails. But now, a few months in, I was beginning to feel I needed something more to fill my days. I’d spent decades, my whole working life, being sensible and disciplined. Suddenly, if I was honest, I was beginning to feel a bit rudderless. Yes, I was happy, but I was beginning to realise there’s only so much satisfaction that can be gained from pleasing oneself all the time.
I went back to the conversation.
‘I can cancel the trip to Cannes for the film festival if I have to, and the Buckingham Palace tea party…’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Of course I’m kidding,’ I laughed. The excitement was beginning to grow as I took the news in properly. ‘Congratulations! I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Married!’
‘Then you’re definitely coming,’ Juliette said. ‘Good, because if she found out there was a spare place, my daughter would be angling to come, if nothing else so she could get a week away from the twins. Or worse than that, she might want the twins to come too. Much as I love Melissa and her kids, and I do sympathise with her problems with potty training, I don’t think it would be the same with them there. But then she was nearly forty when the twins were born. Perhaps she doesn’t have the energy I did at twenty-two when I had her? I will send you over all the details when I get them. Flights and that sort of thing. We could travel together. And you’d better make sure your passport is up to date. I’m going to start a WhatsApp group for us as soon as I hear from the others. Right, I must go. I have a hundred phone calls to make. Perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration. Speak soon! I’m so excited!’
With a last happy squeak, Juliette rang off and my house suddenly seemed very quiet and peaceful again. Perhaps too quiet.
I sat with my mouth open for a few moments, taking in the news. So my stepsister was, after all these years, taking the plunge into marriage again.
That was a surprise. Gary, her first husband, had been a disaster; handsome, charismatic, untrustworthy, unfaithful, and ultimately unlikeable. Enough to put anyone off a second attempt. He had left her with a daughter ten years after they had married and gone off to find everlasting love with his secretary. And after that fell apart, some other poor woman with more money than sense. I’d lost track of him. Although I did occasionally see him on Facebook, showing off about something.
It had reinforced my subconscious belief that marriage didn’t work, had probably never been a good idea and definitely wasn’t for me. I had been wise to avoid it.
So there I was at sixty, retired, reasonably healthy, just about financially secure, and looking for the next chapter in my life. I needed to find a new challenge. Or perhaps discover a new skill? Maybe take up a hobby? I had no idea what that would be.
I’d become so immersed in work that I hadn’t had time for hobbies. And I hadn’t had a proper, getting-on-a-plane holiday for ages. I hadn’t had a satisfactory relationship for years.
I’d enjoyed being retired at first, I’d even tidied the airing cupboard, and the drawer in my desk with all the cables and adaptors. Well, I had wrapped them into coils and shoved them all back in because everyone knows the minute you throw one away it’s the one you need. But I had to admit the novelty of not going to work was beginning to wear off. I needed to do something different.
I suddenly had the awful feeling that something was happening to me. I was starting to behave and live and think like an old person. Eating the same meals all the time, wearing the same clothes each week. And in my head, I wasn’t old at all. I was just the same me as I had always been.
Perhaps I would think about all this in Mallorca. I hugged myself with excitement. A real break from routine, with Juliette and her friends, in the sunshine. I hadn’t been abroad for ages; not since the disastrous trip to Texas with Hal. If I was going to be looking around somewhere new, I’d rather it wasn’t in one hundred degrees of heat with someone complaining about the humidity affecting his hair.
Perhaps this time I would be able to relax and enjoy myself. If Juliette was there, we were bound to have some fun.
I Googled the little town where we would be staying. There were pictures of cute cafés and restaurants. Wine bars with twinkling lights. Music and friendly locals smiling at the camera, who would show us where the best markets were. And I’d heard all about their last trip to Rhodes. Hopefully Juliette wouldn’t get arrested this time.
My mother had married her third husband – Juliette’s father – when I was twelve and Juliette was sixteen. So I went from being an only child to the kid who hung around her, getting in the way and being annoying. I’d been brilliant at that – Juliette had locked me in the garage at least twice when she couldn’t put up with me any longer – but I couldn’t imagine how that particular talent might be useful during my retirement.
Juliette had liked classical music, and I preferred T Rex and David Bowie. By the time Juliette went to university to study music, we had learned to at least tolerate each other. She was always the cool, talented one, with loads of friends in colourful clothes who lolled around in Juliette’s room or smoked out of the window, talking about composers I’d never heard of.
I was the school kid with lank, mousy hair and spots, who never quite got to grips with fashion. The four-year age gap between us seemed to gradually widen into an unbridgeable crevasse. And she was on the other, more interesting side with boyfriends and tales of all-night parties and people growing pot on their windowsills.
But then as soon as she had got her degree, Juliette was pregnant and married to Gary and all her vivacity seemed to drain out of her. I, meanwhile, was off to university to study politics and economics, and unexpectedly I was the one with possibilities ahead of me.
By then, our parents’ marriage was foundering – predictably, because my mother needed more excitement and male approval than Juliette’s father – or, let’s be honest, any man – was able to provide – and two years later they were divorced. But funnily enough, that was when Juliette and I became real friends.
Perhaps she had at last been able to see me as an adult, with a character and ideas and a life of my own, not just an annoying stepsister who borrowed her clothes without asking. Who had rifled through her make-up, spritzed myself with her Aqua Manda perfume and fused her heated rollers, hoping to transform myself into Farrah Fawcett.
When her fifteen-year-old daughter Melissa went on her first school trip to Florence, I’d taken Juliette away for a weekend in Paris as a treat. I’d been busy and quite successful by then and was rising through the ranks of the government department where I worked.
‘It’s all right for you, working in a building filled with men. I think I’m going to be on my own forever,’ Juliette pouted as we shared a bottle of wine at a café with a spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower.
That day had been bright and warm, and the air was filled with the particular scent and excitement that was Paris in the spring. It hadn’t seemed the day for sadness or pessimism.
I thought about some of the men I worked with. They all seemed rather pedestrian for someone as extrovert as Juliette, and most of them wore the same suits every day which predictably held the faint whiff of body odour.
‘Trust me, the men I work with are not a deep dating pool. Jules, you are thirty-seven. Not one hundred and seven,’ I’d said. ‘You’re bright, funny, clever, and good company. And you look terrific.’
She perked up a little. ‘That’s the cosmetic surgery, there’s nothing like bridgework and a boob job to lift your spirits. I’m thinking of getting a face lift when I’m fifty. Anyway, I’ve not met anyone yet. No one halfway decent, anyway,’ she’d replied. ‘Are you still working on obscure papers for the government? Are you sure you haven’t got any nice, single friends you could introduce me to?’
I’d thought about it. My own dating history was pretty unsatisfactory, and I’d never dated a co-worker. Alasdair from Health and Safety had asked me out once, he was reasonably attractive in a Clark Kent-meets-mad-scientist sort of way, but all he ever talked about was pie charts and he liked to do an annual analysis of his year using details he had logged in his diary. The largest slices of that particular pie seemed to be work and dental flossing. I suppose he did have quite good teeth.
Back then, I didn’t seem to have the time or the will to commit to anyone. Perhaps it was seeing my mother’s example? Perhaps realising how Juliette’s life had changed once she married and had a child had put me off?
Once, long ago, there had been someone I’d loved, so I knew I was capable of love, I knew what that felt like, but not since then. The magic had never happened again.
I sighed. ‘Not really. Most of the men I meet are off the market or desperately unattractive. Unless you are looking for a man with good dental hygiene. And look at me, I’m thirty-three and no significant other. There are worse things in life, you know. I can do what I like without asking permission or treading carefully around someone or listening to the details of their various allergies and ailments. And so can you. I don’t have to worry about babysitters or playdates. I can afford to live a comfortable life doing a job I enjoy. And I’m hoping for a promotion soon. There’s plenty of time for all the rest of it.’
