Queen bee, p.1
Queen Bee, page 1
QUEEN BEE
Ciara Geraghty
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
Copyright © Ciara Geraghty 2023
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
Cover images: Shutterstock.com
Ciara Geraghty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008496470
Ebook Edition © November 2021 ISBN: 9780008496487
Version: 2022-12-21
Dedication
This story is for you, menopausal woman.
You are not alone; there’s an army of us.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Queen Bee
Read on for an extract from Rules of the Road
About the Author
Also by Ciara Geraghty
About the Publisher
22 May, 4 a.m.
Symptoms: Insomnia, rage, resentment, night sweats, resentment
How’s that for starters?
What else?
Oh yes, resentment. Did I mention that?
23 May, 4 a.m.
Symptoms: Insomnia, boiling (heat and rage)
Brain fog: Does my phone number start with 086 or 087?
Also: Resentment
Everyone else in this house is fast asleep. My sons (like, hadn’t you two moved out?). My father, ensconced in the spare room, in the throes of his a-bit-late-in-the-fucking-day midlife crisis. And beside me in the bed, Luke has the gall to smile in his sleep. Like he’s dreaming about the hairy bacon and cabbage he’s cooking in the café tomorrow.
He’s also snoring.
He has no idea how close he is to being smothered with a memory-foam pillow.
24 May, 4 a.m.
Symptoms: Insomnia, rage, resentment, hot flush, resentment
Also: Repetitive. Like, I’m supposed to be a writer and I can’t even come up with new words for my symptoms
Also: Frustration. How is this supposed to help? This stupid symptoms diary? Riddle me that, Dr bloody Lennon
And no, I will NOT call you Susie. You’re my GP, not my friend.
Besides, I already find it difficult to take you seriously with your child hands and persistent air of hope.
Fuck you ‘Susie’.
25 May, 4 a.m.
Symptoms: Weary, sweaty
Also: Resentful. This is a complete waste of time, I could be watching First Dates. Or Gogglebox. Or Queer Eye
I could even be writing. Proper writing, I mean. After all, I am contractually obliged to deliver the first draft of my sixteenth novel to my editor in ten weeks’ time. Which of course I assured her was no problem during our last conversation:
ANNA: How’s the book coming along, Agatha?
ME: So, so, so good, it’s literally pouring out of me … like … I don’t know … lava! Out of a volcano!
ANNA: Wow! I’d really like to rea …
ME: NO! I mean … no. Not yet. It’s … not quite … you know …
ANNA: Is the deadline still working for you?
ME: YES! Definitely. I love the deadline. It’s so … do-able … you know?
ANNA: I wish all my writers were as disciplined as you.
ME: Hahahahahahahaha …
Pause.
ME: Yeah. That would be … nice.
MAM: See? Wasn’t I right, Agatha? Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive …’
Technically, it’s Sir Walter Scott who was right on that score.
Anyway, Anna’s been an editor for decades, surely she should be less gullible when it comes to writers and the stories (read: blatant lies) they tell?
26 May, 9.05 a.m.
Symptoms: Impatience
All anyone really needs to know about the new GP – Dr-Lennon-call-me-Susie – is, when I ring the clinic, she answers the phone. And, like, she has people for that. Receptionists and whatnot. She has probably given everyone the day off and a pay rise.
That place has gone to the dogs since Dr Hardiman retired.
Although he didn’t retire so much as die of old (read: ancient) age.
I miss Dr Hardiman. He was taciturn. Such an underrated characteristic. Consultations would take five minutes after which he’d shove a prescription for antibiotics across the desk, no matter what ailed you.
Until I caught a dose of menopause. Then he snapped his prescription pad shut with a snap.
DR HARDIMAN: You’re just menopausal. It’s part of the ageing process. You’ll be fine.
ME: When?
DR HARDIMAN (shrugging): Hard to say.
ME: I’ve heard HRT might help?
DR HARDIMAN: With your family history, you’ll most probably get breast cancer and die if you take HRT.
Thanks a bunch, Mam.
‘Susie’, on the other hand, thinks it’s good to talk.
‘Good morning, Hearty Healthcare, Susie speaking, how may I help you?’
That’s another thing about ‘Susie’. She sounds like she really, really wants to help.
ME: The writing down of menopausal symptoms isn’t helping.
‘SUSIE’: Think of it more like a diary.
ME: Do I seem like the kind of woman who keeps a diary?
She wasn’t sure what to say to that so she just sort of giggled. I could picture her smiling her angelic smile. The same one she probably uses when she pulls on her latex gloves. Her ‘this won’t hurt a bit’ smile.
This is definitely not a diary. It’s actually a You Can Quit notebook that Luke bought me a few years ago after the discovery of the nodule. How is anyone supposed to stop smoking when they discover that they might be riddled with cancer? Anyway, it was all benign and dandy in the end so quitting would have been a big waste of time.
‘SUSIE’: Give it a chance, Agatha, it’s only been four days.
ME: Four days is a long time when you’re menopausal.
‘SUSIE’: Give it two weeks.
Fuck sake.
27 May, 11 a.m.
Symptoms: Writer’s block
Whenever any aspiring authors ask me for advice about writing, I always say, ‘Get in the chair. Look the blank screen square in the eye. Sit there. Stay there. Something will occur.’
So there I was, at my desk in the attic. Usually, I find it a comfortable space to be. Even comforting in its way. I bought it with my second advance from the publishers. The first advance was a paltry affair and meant I had to keep doing my ‘proper’ job. Giving the Irish history tours around Glasnevin Cemetery hadn’t been that bad, really.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for the tourists, I might have even liked it.
The second advance was the jackpot.
Jackpot might be overstating it. It facilitated:
One attic conversion;
A long weekend in Naples with Luke;
A telescope for Aidan (birds and stars);
A camera for Colm (early-adaptor selfies in the main);
Me, no longer having to remind tourists not to walk on the graves. Fine, I roared at them. But come on, who the hell walks on Luke Kelly’s grave? Tourists, that’s who.
So yeah, pretty life-changing in its way, I suppose. The attic office was my favourite bit. I’d never had a room of my own before. Me and Bart shared a room as kids. I got my nose into the ‘spare room’ for five minutes when I turned thirteen until Mam started taking in students. They were mostly Spanish, dispatched to Dublin to learn English. We referred to them as ‘foreign’ and taught them all the swear words we knew.
Then I lived in a grubby flatshare in East Wall with Carol for a few years.
Then me and Luke moved in together. And Carol. Since it didn’t seem fair to leave her in that damp, shabby flat.
Then I signed a second contract with my publisher and got a room of my own.
Virginia Woolf was right. A woman really should have cash and a room of her own to write stories.
Although once I got the room of my own, I no longer had money.
But still, I wrote stories.
And now look at me, sitting here, staring at the walls. And they’re staring right back at me, with what feels like … disappointment.
Which is way worse than anger or disapproval.
It’s my own fault for covering the walls so liberally with my ‘achievements’.
The covers of all my books, framed and hanging along the walls. Luke insisted. He said, if I was having a bad writing day, I could
Which, up until now, worked a treat.
Then there’s my noticeboard. Mam bought me that.
MAM: Didn’t I have to? You were a disaster with your torn-out scraps of paper and whatnots scattered about the floor.
ME: They’re flashcards and photographs and snippets of articles actually. And they were strategically and carefully arranged across the floor.
The noticeboard is full to bursting with ideas for the book I’m not writing. I distinctly remember feeling excited about Ellen and Clara, my sixteenth-century protagonists, accused of witchcraft. It was to be a treatise on feminism, religion, patriarchy and, of course, that old chestnut, misogyny, wrapped up in an edge-of-your-seat thriller ride of a story so that men felt okay about reading it too.
It was my favourite part of the process. The first stirring of the idea. Trying to reach for the strands. Convince it to land in my head, stay a while so I could write it down. It’s a bit like twirling with your arms outstretched and your face turned towards the sky when you’re a kid. It makes you so dizzy, you’ll probably puke afterwards. But the sensation when you’re doing it. Like everything in the world is yours for the taking. The blank page, giving me those ‘come here to me’ eyes and me up to my gullet in research, filling up the noticeboard with photographs of who might play my witches, Clara and Ellen, in the movie (Rachel Weisz for Clara and Jessie Buckley for Ellen). Florescent Post-it notes all over it with random words. ‘Copenhagen’, ‘Bridget Cleary’, ‘Galleon’, ‘tsukimono-suji’.
12 p.m.
Nothing has occurred.
So far, I have:
1) Eaten half a packet of Raspberry Creams.
2) Made a pot of peppermint tea.
3) Poured the peppermint tea into the – possibly dead? – yucca plant in the corner. Because, you know, you have to keep plants watered, etc. Also, peppermint tea tastes vile.
4) Googled ‘Is mint good for plants?’
5) Made a pot of Barry’s Tea.
6) Opened the file ‘Novel No. 16’.
7) Rearranged Mam’s collection of Agatha Christie novels in order of cause of death: bludgeoning, drowning, poisoning, shooting, stabbing, strangulation, etc. It didn’t take as long as I would have liked. Also: I seem to have absorbed some of Mam’s encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Agatha Christie.
8) Finished the pot of Barry’s Tea.
9) Rearranged my fifteen published novels in order of sales. It’s just as I suspected. My star is most definitely in the descendent.
10) Googled ‘Are the Nolan Sisters still alive?’ (Answer: some.) Like, how did they manage to make it so big with those dance moves?
11) Paused for nostalgia: me attending Miss Lyle’s Academy For Young Girls. It sounds so quaint now. And a tad groom-y now that I’ve written it down. Everybody was surprised that I could dance. I was thirteen when I started the class. A broad, tall and awkward thirteen-year-old with a killer glare. These traits are underappreciated but come in handy when you’re dancing the paso doble.
12) Googled Miss Lyle to see if she’s still alive.
13) Lit a candle for Miss Lyle, RIP.
14) Sentimentality must be catching because after I was done feeling sad about Miss Lyle, I got to thinking about Carol and our Thursday nights samba dancing in Wigwam before she was headhunted by the Californians. I can’t really blame Carol for leaving. Who could have said no to such gloriously sun-kissed, white-toothed creatures?
15) Envy. Such an ugly trait. Left a sour taste in my mouth. But Carol is an easy woman to be envious of. When we were young, she never had a long-term boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Just a series of short ones. Not the boyfriends or girlfriends. They were tall. Or sometimes average height. Always beautiful.
Short-lived is what I mean.
She always said she’d never get bogged down by boys or girls or babies.
When Aidan and Colm were born, I’m ashamed to admit I felt a bit sorry for Carol. That she would never experience the ferocity of that final push. The unstoppable force of it. How savage it was. And how tiny the baby in my arms afterwards. How protective I felt about those strange creatures curled against my chest.
And it wasn’t like I was one of those mothers who closed her eyes and inhaled her baby’s head. But I must admit that sentimentality has a way of sneaking into a postpartum mind, cleverly camouflaged by the tide of hormones that flood your body.
I miss hormones.
And I miss Carol. Maybe I’ll phone her.
16) Googled ‘What time is it in LA?’
It’s 4 a.m. there. She’ll be asleep, the lucky cow. Even though Carol is a good six months older than me, I’m pretty sure she’s not menopausal.
She’d tell me if she was.
The only person I’ve told is Dr Hardiman and he doesn’t count because he’s dead.
Of course,‘Susie’ knows. Dr Hardiman must have scribbled it in my file and she had to go and read the thing.
She thinks she’s so good at her job.
I hate the word ‘menopause’. Something battered and forlorn about it, like a pulpy, dog-eared paperback in a charity shop.
It’s like saying you have an ingrown toenail. People wince.
Carol’s probably sound asleep, wrapped in a warm cocoon of oestrogen and progesterone with a subtle side of testosterone to keep the home fires burning.
Still, maybe it’s best that I can’t ring her. Because, however depressed I am, my life will seem even bleaker after Carol regales me with her LA tales. Including – but not limited to:
Yoga at dawn;
Breakfast meetings with fellow vice-presidents where nobody eats chocolate croissants;
Lovers (many and varied);
Another promotion;
Plans for the weekend (to include convertibles, lobster bisque, fringe theatre, a thrilling and slightly dangerous altercation with an international spy or a jewel thief, a sunrise swim, a discovery of buried treasure).
Like, does she never have any laundry to do?
17) Got a fan letter!! Well, it was a tweet from a history professor who declared the last novel that I actually wrote, Exile, to be ‘quite a satisfying read’ and described my depiction of the soup kitchen as ‘not inaccurate’.
No doubt about it: Reviewers were kinder back when they had to lick the back of a stamp and traipse to a post box.
18) Lay on couch for a brief nap. Woke up an hour later, the witch trials book I’m reading stuck to one side of my face. Pretending not to be menopausal while not writing a historical fiction novel is exhausting.
19) Experienced acute spasm of anxiety. Like, I’m supposed to be writing a book, not pretending to write a book. Although it’s just as bloody time-consuming. I told Luke not to worry about the roof job that needs doing on the café. ‘I’ll sort it when I get paid for the manuscript.’ I even remember the tone I used. A light breeze of a tone. Like it was nothing. Me, writing a novel. Delivering it. Getting paid and using that advance to replace the café’s leaky roof.
Simple.
I made it sound so simple.
And Luke, nodding. Like he thought it was simple too. Just a simple matter of me saying something and then going ahead and doing it.
The way things used to be.
20) Chain-smoked two cigarettes in the back garden to alleviate stress.
Dr-Lennon-call-me-Susie claims cigarettes do not alleviate stress.
I told her about Dr Hardiman who smoked a pack of Benson & Hedges right up until lunchtime on the day of his death.
‘SUSIE’: I’m pretty sure your stress is related to menopause. Have you considered HRT?
I tell her what Dr Hardiman said.
‘SUSIE’ (joyful): No, HRT has really improved, Agatha. Your chances of getting breast cancer are much reduced.
ME: So you’re saying Dr Hardiman was full of shit.
‘SUSIE’ (hurt): Of course not!
ME (genuinely contrite because it felt like I’d kicked a puppy): Sorry.
‘SUSIE’: What I am saying is that the risk of breast cancer amongst people who take HRT is much lower than previously believed. You could do some research into it.
ME: I can’t even research Ellen and Clara.
‘SUSIE’: Who are Ellen and Clara?
ME: Witches.
‘SUSIE’: Oh.
The two back-to-back cigarettes didn’t alleviate as much stress as I’d hoped. I put it down to the rain and the sizeable hole in the golf umbrella I found in the side passage. A Woodie’s DIY one. One of the sponsors Colm got for D.I.Guy.
