CHAPTER 20

Petunia’s was a restaurant nestled in the middle of the main street of Winston, which – despite the slightly cloying name – was regarded as palatial by the town’s standards. But that was simply because it boasted an upstairs and a downstairs seating area. It retained a reliable if stodgy menu, one of the last balconies in the town not directly attached to a bowling green that welcomed smokers, and still included an unpredictable microphone in the space’s rental cost. It was the natural venue for the wedding reception.

Dylan and Claudia had been paying for it in small instal­ments for eleven months, with the understanding Petunia’s had absolutely no responsibility for how it would look on the night. Claudia could find no wedding decorators, only wedding ‘stylists’, within a 180-kilometre radius – a distinction that seemed to mean they charged three times as much as decorators would for filling the space with empty jam jars and molasses-scented candles. In yet another boundlessly optimistic act of delegation loosely agreed upon since the initial booking, the seemingly simple job of deciding the final destination of flowers and tablecloth patterns had fallen to Claudia’s brother and sisters.

George had arrived that morning at ten in an effort to at least ensure some decorating got done. The move was largely sparked by a chance encounter with one of his old schoolmates, who had stopped his Hilux, laden with his battered tinny, at a service station several days beforehand. After some small talk about Cedric’s fishing trip, George glanced into the bow at the plastic bucket holding the mud crabs frantically scuttling over each other in a futile bid for freedom beyond the white curved walls. The sight instantly led George to an ungenerous but probably accurate comparison with his children’s organisational capabilities and his realisation that he’d have to step into the interior-decorating role.

He nodded to the owner as he walked past the front counter without saying a word and began his ascent up the curved stairs. He could hear his children before he saw them.

‘I’m her sister; I know she will love it.’

‘I’m her brother and that means jackshit. When was the last time you saw which flowers were in her house?’

‘She said we could do whatever we wanted with the flowers.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think she envisioned we would try to dye them blue.’

At the top of the stairs, George was confronted with twenty bare tables and what he assumed were twenty pale pink table­­cloths thrown carelessly in the corner. He knew they had been dry-cleaned and folded before pick-up. However, one of his offspring who had escaped any kind of relationship with an iron had failed to consider what happened when they were simply emptied out of the plastic bags onto the ground instead of put on the tables. He allowed himself a deep sigh. It was exactly as he expected.

In the middle of the room, Poppy was holding a bunch of daisies as a prop in one hand while gesticulating wildly to Phinn, who was standing forlornly beside a table bearing hundreds of brown paper packages of the same blooms.

‘Dad!’

Poppy was excited to see George emerge, assuming he was a natural ally. George gingerly made his way through the tables and hugged his daughter, patting Phinn on the head.

‘Hey Dad, welcome to the floral derangements,’ Phinn quipped to his darkening old man.

Before George could respond, Poppy had already started on him. ‘I’ve had this amazing idea. Remember when we were kids and we used to dye the flowers blue each week? Wouldn’t it be incredible to dye the daisies for Claudia, as a surprise?’

George paused as Phinn shot back at his youngest sister, ‘Wouldn’t it be incredible if we just did what we were supposed to do?’

Eyebrow arched, George surveyed the room and realised the tables were not in any kind of formation and the sound system remained in the box. Before he could referee the brewing argument, the door from the kitchen swung open and Nora walked in with her head still facing the kitchen entrance.

‘Thank you! You’re very kind!’ she called back to a staff member hurrying out of sight.

In an effort to be as unthreatening as possible, she had made the concession of wearing denim shorts cut off just above her knees. With her leather loafers and ironed cotton T-shirt the overall effect was still more Nice, France, than nice-and-placating, but she was trying. In her hands was a cardboard tray of styrofoam cups, some bearing the small browning stains from the trip up the stairs. She turned her head to the small crew and called out sunnily, ‘Good morning! I thought you might like some help. I’ve brought coffees.’

Phinn rushed over to take the tray from her hands while George broke out into a smile and finally broke his silence. ‘Nora, that’s very kind!’

‘I didn’t know what you all drank but I figured a tray of lattes would be safe, and there’s sugar in here too.’

It might have been her optimistic survey of the room that led Nora to miss Poppy’s deepening scowl. The youngest Carter threw down her handful of daisies and edged around one of the tables.

‘I thought Claudia just asked us to decorate,’ she said in place of a greeting.

‘Yes, well, she mentioned to me that you would all be here this morning and I thought maybe I could make it easier.’ Nora now weighed up Poppy coldly, with the latter quickly realising that she had heard about the beach the day before. Claudia must have been upset.

Poppy silently picked up a coffee while Phinn sucked his gut in and threw his arm around his sister’s friend.

‘There’s plenty of work for you to do. You can actually settle a, uh, contest of ideas we are having.’

Nora shrugged Phinn’s arm off and stepped towards the corner with the tablecloths.

‘Are these clean?’

‘Do you think we should dye the daisies blue?’

Nora turned back to Phinn, startled. ‘The daisies blue? Those daisies? The daisies for the wedding?’

‘Yes.’

Poppy had flinched each time Nora uttered the flower’s name, her harsh inflection on the first syllable gradually rising.

‘How would you dye them blue?’

Poppy rolled her eyes and interrupted. ‘It’s very simple, you put blue dye in the water of the vases.’

‘Why would you dye them blue?’

‘Well,’ Phinn said, raising his coffee to his lips, ‘why indeed.’

Poppy struggled to maintain an even tone. ‘Claudia would love it; we used to do it when we were kids – it was so much fun.’

Nora seemed to weigh the response and everything she knew about manners and diplomacy in the seconds that followed, before her eyes brightened at a welcome new distraction heading across the floor.

‘Zoe! Rachel! Hello!’

‘I’m going to find an iron,’ George said, heading towards the kitchen as he scooped up a pile of the tablecloths in his arms. He didn’t turn at any point.

Rachel and Zoe picked their way through the chairs from the stairway with the matriarch leading the way in tight white trousers and a hibiscus pink top that made no pretence at her being coy about her figure. By contrast it appeared that Zoe, in a light-blue T-shirt dress, hair tied back from her face and stepping out in Nike joggers, had taken cues from Nora’s breezy style, while also trying to dress for the menial tasks of the day. She looked at Nora uneasily and then to Poppy.

‘Hiiiiiiiii, I didn’t know you were decorating too, I thought it was a …’ She bit her lip. ‘A family thing.’

‘Well, Claudia told me about the decorating and I thought I could come and just see if you needed help.’

Rachel grabbed a bunch of daisies.

‘I see my ex-husband is here as well.’

Poppy finally spoke. ‘Our dad is here, yes,’

‘These daisies are pretty. They’re not the only flowers though, are they?’

The flowers had officially been marked for battle. In one corner were Nora and Claudia’s current tastes; in another corner were Poppy and Claudia’s tastes from long before there was ever her friendship, adulthood, distance, independence. And creating another battlefront was Rachel, who simply couldn’t see past her own taste to bother considering what Claudia might prefer.

Rachel picked up a few of the daisies and sniffed them. ‘Do they seem a bit old to you?’

Phinn volunteered. ‘We watched them being picked this morning; they couldn’t be fresher.’

‘Did anyone think to get some baby’s breath? That would be lovely with the daisies. And we need some colour. Do you know what’s in season? Gerberas – Claudia loves them.’

Claudia had bought gerberas weekly for her room for an entire spring when she was fifteen. The phase seemed to end with the close of that one solitary season and she had never mentioned or paid for them again, but it didn’t matter. She had been doomed to receive bunches of the gaudy flowers every birthday since.

Nora physically stopped herself from gasping. ‘I don’t think we can have gerberas at a wedding.’

‘Actually Mum, I agree on the colour thing. I was just saying we could dye the daisies blue, remember like when we were kids?’

‘Yes, I showed you how to do that!’

It was really George who had dyed the flowers with them, but everyone knew better than to correct the record, given the current Cold War dynamic between the parents. Poppy was talking to her mother, who could be relied on for reinforcement when they were not personally warring, but all the time kept her emboldened gaze fixed on Nora, daring this relative outsider to disagree. Daring her to try to prove she knew what was best or who loved Claudia more. No matter how much she was told it wasn’t a competition, Poppy was determined to win against her sister’s chic shielding interloper.

‘I think the baby’s breath is a really good idea,’ Nora finally responded, sparking a staccato burst from Rachel.

‘I’m going to get some blue dye and order some gerberas. Where is the seating plan? I haven’t signed off on it. I kept asking Claudia for it but she must have forgotten to show it to me.’ Rachel was a bright pink blur speeding towards the kitchen when the doors swung open to reveal Phinn with tablecloths draped carefully over his arms. He leaned towards his mother to kiss her, then started on the first useful task of the morning.

The girls watched in silence as he laid a cloth across a table and moved around it to even out the sides. Nora put her coffee down next to the dreaded daisies and, hoping it was a neutral task, walked over to take one of the cloths for the next table.

‘Are you a tablecloth expert now as well?’ Poppy almost spat.

Zoe, who had been waiting for the inevitable boil-over as soon as she had seen Nora, quickly moved towards appeasement.

‘She’s just trying to help; she’s here for our sister.’

‘She’s here because she thinks she’s an expert in Claudia and everything else. We’re her sisters; this is our job.’

Phinn rolled his eyes. ‘You’re obsessed with this sisters thing, like it gives you some special magic. It’s just fucking DNA and chromosomes.’

Zoe and Nora both caught their breaths. Nora, without the aforementioned biological bonds to Poppy, was already fed up. Poppy seemed to share her mother’s propensity for intense moods and the dog-like faith that she knew what was best, without it being tempered by Rachel’s consideration for others (George notwithstanding). Nora’s new strategy was simply to ignore the youngest Carter. She couldn’t give a solitary flying ibis if her presence riled her anymore.

‘Look, Claudia asked for daisies, shouldn’t we just get daisies?’ she said mildly.

‘We need more tablecloths,’ Phinn said emphatically, head­ing towards the kitchen doors they had all last seen Rachel enter. Momentarily distracted by his self-loathing at getting involved in the women’s squabbling, he had actually forgotten he had passed his mother on the way out. So it took him by surprise when he opened the door and heard her voice. Contrary to his usual instinct, instead of noisily making himself known this time, he paused.

Rachel was trying to speak in a low voice but it was beyond her capabilities. Her son’s ears pricked up at the sound of his uncle’s name.

‘He has a right to be there, you know. It’s supposed to be a family dinner and he is family, and I haven’t seen Mary so happy in so long. And you know what, I couldn’t care less what you think; you just have to deal with it. She deserves to bring a partner and he is your brother.’

Phinn could see his father through the stainless-steel shelves on the kitchen island, looking down as he concentrated fiercely on the edges of a tablecloth with his iron.

‘He’s going to be there, anyway.’

Rachel reached over and patted George on the shoulder, purposefully making him flinch as Phinn stepped forward, letting the door slam noisily behind him.

‘I’ve got to go sort out these flowers now,’ Rachel said as way of farewell. ‘Hello son.’ She breezed past Phinn, who watched his father shake his head slowly, dourly. Without a word, Phinn ducked down to pick up the newly ironed tablecloths but, to his surprise, it was his father who broke the silence.

‘What’s going on with the flowers?’

‘Uh, Claudia wants daisies, Rachel wants gerberas, Poppy wants to dye the daisies blue.’

George had watched his children acquiesce to Rachel’s interminable whims and demands for years; he knew come Saturday night which flowers would be on the tables.

‘Well, that would be something blue, and it sounds like your aunt Mary is bringing something borrowed,’ he said as Phinn hurried out.

In the dining room, the table of daisies sat untouched as Nora and Zoe stood on the other side holding one of the round tables between them. Zoe was gingerly stepping backwards while Nora guided her with what seemed to the Carter girl a very boring version of the ‘Time Warp’: ‘step back and to the left, there’s nothing behind you yet, now just wriggle it a little to the right, hmmm maybe to the left again’.

Zoe followed obediently but her uncertain steps still gave the impression of a five year old attempting to waltz with her grandfather. That would be the closest thing to a traditional wedding trope we’ll be seeing around here, Phinn thought, as he hauled the tablecloths over.

‘Are you sure that table is okay there?’ Poppy, arms crossed, leaned against another table so heavily she was almost in a combat crouch.

‘Take one more big step back,’ Nora said to Zoe as a way of response.

She was happy with her defence mechanism. Nora the Ignorer. Just like cartoon Dora the Explorer’s sullen little sister, who cared for neither exploring nor remonstrating with a kleptomaniac fox.

The two women put the table down and Nora turned and surveyed the room. ‘We don’t want the tables lined up perfectly; it works much better if they are kind of scattered so it doesn’t look so regimented.’

Phinn dropped the two ironed cloths on the table. ‘Do you want to lay these out now or wait until the tables are arranged?’

Behind him thunder crossed Poppy’s face as he waited for Nora’s verdict.

‘Lay them out now so they stay nice and smooth.’ Nora care­fully pulled on the cloth to start spreading it across the table and before Phinn could start helping her Poppy had the other side.

‘These are rectangular tablecloths; we should make them square so they look even,’ she said, lifting the edge.

Nora narrowed her eyes and gave a little tug on the other side.

‘The rectangle is fine; as long as it covers the entire table, nobody will notice. If we make them square it will be easier for them to ride up.’

‘It’s okay,’ yelled Phinn. ‘This marriage is literally all about round pegs in square holes! All marriages are! It’s what makes the speeches interesting.’

Poppy ignored both Nora and her brother and began folding the other side.

‘Don’t fold that! You will just cause another crease.’ Nora pulled back the cloth to try to get the other side out of Poppy’s reach, but she had a surprisingly tight hold of it. Poppy gave a violent pull back.

‘The square will look better,’ she said defiantly.

Suddenly Nora went from Ignorer to Warrior. ‘Can you just let us put the fucking tablecloths on the tables without making it a statement about your fucking influence?’

As soon as she had said it she looked taken aback at her own swearing.

If Poppy was shocked she didn’t show it. Instead she planted her feet squarely for maximum effectiveness and she yanked back on the cloth fiercely. Nora, ready for it, dipped her shoulders and pulled back at the exact same time, leaving the two held upright only by the tension of the (now-not-just-creased-but-twisted) tablecloth as they both jerked on it.

Phinn’s jaw dropped to create an exaggerated ‘O’ as he stopped and gaped, while Zoe put her hand over her chin, first to stifle her gasps and then her giggles. The wide-eyed brother instantly thought of the shared silence of wildlife documentary makers trying to record a big cat bringing down a buffalo as he stood still next to his sister in a bid to take in the spectacle while desperately hoping not to be the next target.

It wasn’t an inaccurate analogy: by now a visibly agitated Poppy had scrunched up the corners at her end into balls so she could get a better grip, while Nora’s mouth was set in a determined line as she refused to cede an inch of her side.

‘Did … did she just growl?’ Phinn whispered to Zoe.

Zoe grabbed her mouth in a bid to stop her silent giggling fit.

Poppy and Nora refused to break eye contact as they each violently pulled on their side of the tablecloth.

‘Just let it go!’

‘What is your fuckin’ problem?’

‘Ooh good swearing,’ murmured Phinn.

‘Old school, dropping the “g” there,’ Zoe replied under her hand. ‘Loike it, mate, loike it.’

‘I swear to God!’ Nora bellowed.

‘Why are you even here?’ her opponent shrieked back.

A deeper voice joined the fray, booming behind them. ‘What are you doing to that tablecloth?’

Nora jumped, momentarily missing a step as her foot landed behind her, but still did not drop the cloth. Poppy didn’t even turn to face her dad. Her hands ached.

George stood with four other tablecloths carefully draped across his arms, which were raised to stop the sheets trailing on the ground. He shook his head and asked again.

‘I said,’ he yelled before softening slightly, ‘what are you doing to the tablecloth? I just ironed that.’

The girls both let go; Nora, turning the colour of beetroot, tried to delicately smooth the edges on her side.

Phinn finally answered for them. ‘It’s like a brawl in King Arthur’s Camelot, Dad,’ he said before comically drawing himself up to full height. ‘Welcome to the fights of the round table. For some reason these two think Claudia will care if the tablecloths are folded into squares or a hexagon or something like that.’

His father opened his mouth and then thought better of it and turned back towards the kitchen in preparation for more ironing.

‘I guess,’ Zoe smirked soberly, ‘this is what Ma meant at the engagement party when she got drunk and told us Carter marriages are really a vicious circle.’