Christmas Belles (Gillies Ridge)

Chapter 3

“M UM, wake up.” Banging on her door brought her to wakefulness.

She pulled the eye covers off her eyes and sat up. “Where's the fire?”

And groaned as her daughters barged into her room and flopped across her bed. None of them said anything as Pom passed her the morning newspapers.

She sighed and scanned the headlines. The national, the financials and the weekend rags all carried the same story.

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H EIR TO THE BUCHANAN Fortune Contributes to a Good Cause at Annual Charity Auction . Not too bad, she thought.

The Belle Foundation benefits from a donation of a hundred-thousand-dollar bottle of whiskey made by international award-winning master-distiller and biochemist, Jacqueline Belle, mother of the Belle Foundation’s CEO, Frederika Belle.

Rumour has it Buchanan and Belle have a history that goes back to her mother’s bootlegging past, where mother and daughter Belle sold sly grog over their back fence to make ends meet.

But like all rumours, we’ll never know the whole truth, or will we? Several highflyers attending last evening’s gala event swore there were sparks reigniting between the philanthropic pair.

And with more Erika Whiskey yet to be sold, we have it on good authority negotiations between Buchanan and Belle are only just beginning.

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S HE OPENED HER MOUTH to speak but nothing came out.

“Is it true?” Ali asked finally. “Was Granny Belle really a bootlegger?”

Pom thrust an old Times Magazine down on the bed. “I found this in the library downstairs,” she said. “Stuffed behind three dictionaries.”

Rika didn’t need to look to see the magazine with her mother on the cover. Nor read the feature article on her mother’s life story. It didn’t matter to her what her mother did with her life.

Except her daughters were staring at her. Waiting. Giving her the benefit of the doubt.

Like she had a perfectly logical explanation for not telling them their grandmother had passed away.

And now it was too late.

“I read the article.” Pom broke the silence that stretched between them. “Granny Belle was a biochemist, and she had a reputation as one of the finest distillers in Australia. The article didn't mention the word bootleg once.”

“I don't know what your grandmother became.” Rika reached for her dressing gown and wrapped it around her as she sat up in the bed. “I was busy with my own life. With you girls.”

Grace scanned the article. “We visited her once,” she said. “I remember picking flowers. And mixing magic potions.” She frowned. “In a little stone building hidden behind lots of vines. You found us and made us leave. But I was having fun and didn’t want to go. It’s the only time you ever raised your voice.”

“Magic potions?” Ali passed Rika a cup of tea. “Like whiskey potions? Were we criminals, Mama? Like Granny? Is that why you made us leave?”

Rika reached for the cup of tea. “Your grandmother didn’t care that you were children or that what she was doing was illegal. She preferred to call it a family tradition.”

“We never went back, did we?” Grace dropped the magazine onto the bed beside the open newspaper. “And now the whole world knows our secret. We’re infamous.”

Rika took a sip of her tea. “Your grandmother was very good at what she did.”

“Good?” Pom opened her phone, typed a quick search, and turned it towards her mother. “Have you read any of the reviews of the stuff she made? She was fucking brilliant.”

Grace snatched the phone off her sister. “I don't think we’re talking sly grog exactly. The Erika Whiskey is a discerning drop only a fine palate—and rich wallet—can afford.”

“Richard Buchanan gets a mention,” she continued. “He’s the distributor for Belle's Whiskey and a stack of other boutique distilleries in Australia. He enters each distillery’s best whiskey into competitions. And then buys up the winners for his private collection.”

Ali took Rika’s hand and cupped it in hers. “It's okay if you don't want to tell us, Mama. But it was kind of romantic last night him coming to claim you after all this time.”

“Claim her? Like she was a lost coat?” Pom slapped her sister's hands away and took her mother's hand in own. “We can take a restraining order out on him, Mum?”

“Did he hurt her?” Grace’s gaze narrowed on her mother’s. “I thought he was kissing her?”

“He was,” Ali said. “I saw him.”

“And she was kissing him back,” Grace said.

Pom took back her phone and tucked it into her jeans pocket. “Mum, I think it's time you told us what’s going on.”

Rika took a breath. “Richard Buchanan was my first love. I thought—” she paused. “It doesn't matter what I thought. It didn't happen. I came to the city, met your father and I have the three of you. End of story.”

“Except we could have been the daughters of aristocracy if you’d married your first love.” Ali's eyes lit up. “It says your Richard is from old money. That’s what they call snotty rich people, isn’t it?”

“No, silly,” Grace said. “If Mum had married old money we would have been drowned at birth. Only sons matter in old money families.”

“Isn’t that a bit outdated?” Ali said. “I thought daughters were allowed to inherit nowadays.”

“People in the Buchanan’s world have arranged marriages,” Pom joined in. “It’s like a secret club and you’ve got to be filthy rich with inherited wealth to be part of it. Haven’t you noticed we don’t get invited to join Brisbane’s premier clubs? We may be rich but ours isn’t old money. Isn’t that right, Mum?”

“Richard was expected to marry well and I didn’t quite make the grade.”

The three girls fell silent at her words.

“Because Granny was a bootlegger?” Ali grinned at her sisters. “Sounds kind of romantic to me.”

“And me,” Grace said. “The little stone building at the bottom of Granny’s garden must have been her cellar.”

“The scene of the crime,” Pom said. “Every good bootlegger needs somewhere to stash their booty.”

Ali’s gaze turned dreamy. “We should go visit the farm.”

“And raid Granny’s stash,” Grace added wickedly.

“We could sell it and make a fortune.” Pom began counting the profits on her fingers.

Rika cut in quietly. “You don’t need to raid your grandmother’s stash. Or sell it, unless you want to. Your grandmother left you the farm—and all its chattels—in her will.”

“What?” Grace started but Ali shushed her with a glance.

Rika forced herself to continue. “I think you should sell it.” Or burn it down. “But Richard thinks you should see it before you decide.”

Silence.

“In case any of you want to carry on the family tradition.”

It wasn’t often her daughters were lost for words. She couldn’t remember a single time when one or the other of them didn’t have a quip or a fast comeback.

She pushed on, keeping her tone light. “Anyone want to become a bootlegger?”

Ali shot up her hand. “Me.”

“No, me,” Grace dibbed. She tried and failed to push her sister off the bed.

“I’m the oldest,” Pom said. “I get first right of refusal. None of that old boy inheritance shit in our family.” She shot a sideways glance at her sisters. “If you’re nice to me I’ll share the booty with you.”

“I’ve got an idea.” Ali flipped off the bed and stood. “We should go to a dingy dive bar—for research purposes. If we want to be bootleggers, we need to know the lay of the land.”

“A dingy dive bar?” Pom’s eyes lit up. “A perfect location for our Belle family Sunday brunch.”

“I know a few dives,” Grace said. “Mum, what do you say? Want to go slumming it with your daughters on a sunny Sunday morning? And thumb our collective noses at the gossips?”

Rika hesitated. Belle Corporation prided itself on its luxury suites and condos. Slumming it in inner-city dive bars wasn't exactly their style.

Grace continued. “I do a bit of street art in The Valley. The place is rocking with sleaze. Pom, this may be our next Belle venture. A speakeasy hidden in a dodgy hole-in-the-wall back lane.”

Ali punched a sister. “What about our reputation,” she said with mock horror, holding her hands up in front of her and opening her eyes wide. “What would happen to our next Charity Auction if we asked everyone to dress as their favourite gangster? We could have jazz and sly grog and gambling.”

“Count me in,” Grace said. “Sounds like fun after all the stuffed shirts we’ve had to put up with over the years. By the way, Pom, who won your hand for dinner this year?”

“Gerald Abernathy,” Pom said. “Ninety if he’s a day. Give me a gangster with a quick draw any day.”

Grace rolled onto the floor and kicked to her feet. “It’s settled. We’re hitting the town, speakeasy style. Mum, you can be the matriarch of our mob.”

“Mob,” Rika said faintly.

“It’ll stop your beau, and his stuffed-shirt romance story, in his tracks,” Ali promised.

“By the end of today he’ll wish he’d never messed with the Belle family.” Grace winked and tucked an imaginary gun into the waist of her pjs. “We have ways of looking after our own.”

“Let's do it,” Pom said. “I’ll email the papers with a press release.”

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B ELLE CORPORATION ACKNOWLEDGES the truth of the current rumours circulating that their millions were made from sly grog.

The Belles are in the process of scouting Brisbane’s alleyways and backstreets for suitable locations for their chain of discreet speakeasy establishments, forthwith known as Belle’s Bootleg Breweries.

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“I ’LL POST TO THE SOCIALS .” Ali made camera shapes with her fingers.

Grace and Pom linked arms and sang in their best Roxy voices as Ali lined up her fake camera.

“He had it comin’, he had it comin’.

He’s only got himself to blame.”

“I don't think anyone will believe you,” Rika said dryly. “Belle Corporation is synonymous with six-star luxury, not two-star sleaze.”

Ali dropped her fingers. “Don’t worry, Mama. Sleaze is the new black. We’ll be on-trend. Where do you think Pom disappears to every weekend when she thinks we’re not looking?”

“Make it West End,” Pom said, ignoring her sister. “It’s still in the process of being gentrified. Plenty of hole-in-the-wall places that are the real deal.”

“I’ll graffiti Buchanan’s ass on every alleyway wall.” Grace painted the air with her finger. “Here lies the body of Richard Buchanan.”

“Naked,” Ali said.

Grace drooped her index finger. “Micro penis.”

“A message not to mess with the Belles,” Pom intoned, dipping her imaginary hat over one eye and pulling her dressing gown tight across her body.

All three girls struck wide-legged poses, hands on hips, and took a collective bow in front of Rika.

The four women laughed together, although Rika was having trouble getting past the naked Richard part. Stop it . He was the cause of this PR debacle. He deserved to be painted naked. Even if Grace the size of a certain part of his anatomy all wrong.

“Why are you blushing, Mama?”

“I’m not.” Rika busied herself gathering up the newspapers and tossed them in the wastepaper basket.

Liar. His anatomy was printed on her brain.

She had no trouble remembering every part of him. Hard. Muscled. Handsome as sin. Richard Buchanan had had it all when they were teenagers.

And now he was back.

She tucked the Times magazine into her bedside drawer, and if her daughters noticed that her heightened colour took way too long to dissipate, they didn’t say anything.

Just like she didn’t notice their sidelong glances as she busied herself tidying the room.

“It's Sunday,” she said briskly. “Our one day off and we’re allowed to do what we want with it. So, a dive bar in West End it is. Do dive bars do brunch?”

“They sure do,” Grace said, “I know the perfect place to start.”

Rika didn’t keep tabs on her daughters out of work hours, but she’d heard about Grace’s night forays into the less salubrious parts of town. By day her daughter designed luxury condos, and by night she decorated alleyways and derelict railway sidings with her signature graffiti.

More than one piece of her art had found its way to Rika’s attention. People were starting to talk. And not in a good way.

At least Richard and his whiskey had given the gossips a new direction.

Rika closed her eyes to the problems of Belle Corporation. It was Sunday. She had her daughters to herself for the whole day.

Hadn’t they assured her that doing a speakeasy crawl required brunch, lunch and dinner? Which left no time to think about the man who had turned up in her life uninvited.

No time at all.

If her daughters could dismiss him as being of no consequence, so could she.

Wasn’t Christmas a time for make believe? She’d make believe that Richard Buchanan stayed firmly in his world, and she stayed surrounded by her daughters in hers.

“Lead the way,” she said.

She was in control.

Totally.

Not.

The first problem, her daughters explained, was her clothes. Apparently, to attend a dive bar, she needed to dress appropriately. The suits she’d worn as an armour for the last thirty years didn’t cut it. Instead, Rika found herself donning waist-high skinny jeans and white sneakers.

“Arms up.” Ali dropped a white T-shirt over her head.

Rika felt the soft cotton fall over her torso. How had she forgotten how comfortable jeans and a T-shirt could be?

“No make-up,” Pom ordered, snatching Rika’s trademark red lipstick out of her hand. “And don’t worry about your hair because we’ve got you a fedora.”

“Perfectly perfect.” She didn’t know which one of her daughters had spoken, or whether all three had spoken at once. Because they were bustling her out of the condo without a single glance in the mirror.

She felt naked.

Exposed.

“Let's do it,” she said, her voice not quite even.

Ali slipped her arm through hers. “We’re going to have the best day, Mama. Gin Slings for brunch.”

“Fluffy Ducks for afternoonsies.” Grace pressed the elevator button.

When the elevator arrived, Pom guided Rika inside and pressed the down button. “And Harvey Wallbangers for dinner.”

They were all laughing as the elevator opened and they poured out into the foyer.

Straight into the path of the man Rika was trying to forget.