‘Kalani, that’s overly harsh, even for you,’ Laurie chided. ‘Deirdre looks fab. You look fab! Well, apart from the spray tan, maybe. But that’ll tone down in time.’
‘I know she looks fab but, Deirdre, howdareyou undergo a makeover with anyone apart from the Gals?’ Kalani appeared genuinely upset. ‘Did one of those drones from your boring job go with you, because if you’d trusted us, we’d never have let you end up looking like a pumpkin. And I know your mum had nothing to do with it; no offence but her taste got stuck back somewhere in the fluorescent eighties.’
‘Saying no offence doesn’t stop it being offensive,’ Laurie interjected.
‘Well, sorry, but it’s a lot less offensive than going for a makeover without us! My incredible taste is one of my biggest strengths and if I’m no good for that, then what’s the point of being friends with me? Who else in this village is a better shopper than me?’
‘No one!’ Deirdre practically yelled back. ‘No one is. We all know you could have your own TV show transforming boring women like me into something… not so boring. But I wanted to do this without you, okay? Without all of you.’
‘So who did go with you?’ Laurie asked, trying not to sound hurt.
‘Is it so impossible to believe that I did this myself?’ Deirdre cried. ‘It wasn’t about the haircut, or the nails or what lipstick suits me best. The point was I got off my backside, made some decisions and started taking control of my own life, for once. And yes, I know I look like an overripe apricot, there’s no need to keep going on about it. I’d rather get a disastrous spray tan than never do anything, ever. Besides, Kurt Frinton in the butcher’s told me I looked hot, with a capital H, and slipped a free chorizo in with my chicken breasts.’
‘I’ll bet he did.’ Kalani smirked.
‘I think it’s brilliant,’ I said, and couldn’t have meant it more. ‘How are we going to ever know what we like, how we want to present ourselves to the world, if we don’t experiment a bit along the way? It’s absolutely good different. You should be really proud of yourself.’
‘Thanks, Soph!’
‘Anyone else made any positive changes since last week that they’d like to share?’ Hattie asked.
‘Yes, actually,’ Kalani said, causing us all to turn to her, expectantly. ‘I spoke to my parents.’
‘Don’t you call them every Monday after Pilates?’ Laurie asked.
‘I drove over on Sunday and I told them that I’d been groped.’ She paused, then tried again. ‘That I’d been sexually assaulted by a lecturer at university. See? I’m getting better at saying it out loud. I told them everything.’
‘How did that go?’ Hattie asked.
‘Mum was a bit freaked out. She went into the kitchen and started bashing spices into smithereens in her pestle and mortar. Dad…’ She stopped to gather herself. ‘Dad gave me a hug and told me he was sorry, and it wasn’t my fault, and he wished I’d felt able to tell him sooner but understood why I hadn’t. He… he cried. Then Mum came back and she cried, too. It was really hard to see them so upset, especially when Mum asked if that’s why I haven’t got married. It was awful, but positive at the same time, if you know what I mean. I feel a little bit lighter –cleaner– than I have in years. I’ve got the details for a support group and thought I might try it some time. See if that helps, too. Because ever since I made that bloody collage, I’ve been having the worst nightmares, and it’s ruining my complexion. Besides, I think I might want to trust Tye enough to properly get to know him, and I can’t do that unless I dare let him get to know me, too.’
‘I knew you were dating Tye!’ Deirdre crowed.
Laurie went on to tell us that she’d signed up to do online food shopping. ‘To be honest, it took longer than driving to the supermarket in person, and I forgot so many things I ended up going there anyway. But it’s a start.’
‘Albeit a rubbish one,’ Kalani said. As usual, she was harsh but truthful.
‘Maybe today’s art will help,’ Hattie said, encouragingly. ‘It’s a three-part project so there’s plenty to think about. Firstly, you’ve got fifteen minutes to paint your animal from last week. Then, I’m allowing you half an hour to create something that represents your home. As it is, not as you pretend or hope it to be. Take a moment to honestly think about what your home means to you. How do you feel when you are in there? Create that.’
‘What about you, Hattie?’ Deirdre asked. ‘Are you ever going to join in with this?’
‘I completed mine last night,’ Hattie said, gesturing to an easel in the corner. We quickly clustered round to take a look at the large canvas.
‘Wowzers,’ Laurie said, which summed it up as well as any of us could.
Hattie had created the Riverbend estate. She’d painted the main house in thick, yellow oil paint, then added real twigs and leaves to cleverly represent the trees. Moss denoted the lawn, and there were tiny petals dotted in the flower beds. The river was in the forefront, stunning swirls of blues, greens, greys and purples. She’d stuck on tiny feathers, adding beaks and eyes in black pen to turn them into ducks. Flapjack was a patch of yellow fluff with a pink tongue and a piece of feathery yellow grass for his tail. She’d sketched the chapel and the boathouse, decorating them with dozens of tiny sequin hearts.
It was stunning, beautiful. Shimmering with peace and life. It summed up Riverbend perfectly.
That was, except for the top floor of the house. This was slathered in dirt and grit. Blobs of black paint. Splatters of blood red. A rusting razor blade and two nails were embedded in the mud. I even spotted a dead worm. Somehow, she’d swirled the black paint and the dirt so that it looked like screaming mouths. My bones shivered in revulsion.
Hattie was a genius artist. Thank goodness she usually stuck to woodland creatures.
‘Okay, enough gawping at mine. Time to get on. Like I said, we’ve a lot to do.’
With a strict time limit, it was a sorry bunch of slumpy, shabby so-called homes we brought over to the beanbags later that evening. To be fair, I don’t think mine would have been much better had I spent all week on it.
The newly confident Deirdre went first.
