Reading Online Novel

Shopaholic to the Stars(128)



‘Mummy, Ladeeeee!’ Her joy is so infectious that I find myself beaming, and saying, ‘Yes, darling! Lady! Isn’t that lovely?’

The whole ‘Lady’ thing began because we had to keep Minnie’s meetings with Elinor a secret from Luke, and we couldn’t risk her saying, ‘I saw Granny Elinor today.’

I mean, they still are secret. This meeting today is secret. And as I watch Minnie and Elinor gazing at each other in delight, I feel a sudden fresh resolve. This rift is stupid and sad and it has to end now. Luke and Elinor have to make up. They have family together.

I know Elinor said something tactless, or worse, about Luke’s beloved stepmother which he was upset by. (I never got the exact details.) That’s how this whole argument began. But life can’t be about holding on to the bad things. It has to be about grabbing on to the good things and letting the bad things go. Looking at Elinor as she opens the jigsaw with an ecstatic Minnie, I know she’s a good thing. For Minnie, and for me, and for Luke. I mean, she’s not perfect, but then, who is?

‘Can I offer you some tea?’ A drifty girl in a linen apron and baggy white trousers has come up so silently, she makes me jump.

‘Oh, yes please,’ I say. ‘Lovely. Just normal tea for me, thanks. And milk for my daughter.’

‘“Normal tea”?’ the girl echoes, as though I’m speaking Swahili. ‘Did you look at the tea menu?’ She nods at a booklet on Elinor’s lap which seems to be about forty pages long.

‘I gave up,’ says Elinor crisply. ‘I would like hot water and lemon, please.’

‘Let’s just have a look …’ I start to skim through the booklet, but before long my eyes are blurring with type. How can there be so many teas? It’s stupid. In England you just have tea.

‘We have teas for different needs,’ says the girl helpfully. ‘We have Fennel and Peppermint for digestion, or Red Clover and Nettle for skin complaints …’

Skin complaints? I eye her suspiciously. Is she trying to say something?

‘The white teas are very popular …’

Honestly, tea isn’t supposed to be white. I don’t know what Mum would have to say to this girl. She’d probably produce a Typhoo teabag and say, ‘This is tea, love.’

‘Do you have a tea for making life totally brilliant in every way?’ I say, just to wind the girl up.

‘Yes,’ she says, without missing a beat. ‘Our Hibiscus, Orange and St John’s Wort tea promotes an improved sense of wellbeing through mood enhancement. We call it our happy tea.’

‘Oh,’ I say, taken aback. ‘Well, I’d better have that one, then. Would you like that, Elinor?’

‘I do not wish to have my mood enhanced, thank you.’ She gives the girl a stern look.

That’s a shame. I’d love to see Elinor on happy pills. She might smile properly, for once. Except then she’d probably crack, it occurs to me. White powder would fall from the corners of her lips and suddenly her whole face would disintegrate into plaster dust and whatever else they’ve patched her up with.

The girl has given our order to a passing guy in what looks like a Tibetan monk’s outfit, and now turns back.

‘May I offer you a complimentary reflexology session or other holistic therapy?’

‘No thanks,’ I say politely. ‘We just want to talk.’

‘We’re very discreet,’ says the girl. ‘We can work with your feet, or your head, or the pressure points in your face …’

I can see Elinor recoiling at the very idea. ‘I do not wish to be touched,’ she says stiffly. ‘Thank you.’

‘We can work without touching you,’ persists the girl. ‘We can do a tarot reading, or we have a humming meditation, or we can work with your aura.’

I want to burst into giggles at Elinor’s expression. Her aura? Do they mean that chilly cloud of disapproval that follows her around like her own atmosphere?

‘I do not possess an aura,’ she says, her tones like icicles. ‘I had it surgically removed.’ She glances sidelong at me and then, to my utter astonishment, she gives the faintest of winks.

Oh my God. Did Elinor just make a joke?

At her own expense?

I’m so gobsmacked I can’t speak, and the girl seems a bit nonplussed as well, because she backs away without trying to press any more therapies on us.

Minnie has been surveying Elinor intently throughout all of this, and now Elinor turns to her.

‘What is it, Minnie?’ she says, uncompromisingly. ‘You shouldn’t stare at people. Aren’t you going to sit down?’