The Honey Queen Read Online Free PDF

the man we all aspire to be,’ then raising his glass, ‘quietly professional, dedicated and loyal.’
    Loyalty hadn’t gone both ways it seemed. Seth wasn’t a full partner, but on a high wage, so his name was at the top of the redundancy list.
    If she was shocked, then Seth had been devastated.
    ‘I’ve failed you,’ was all he could say. Despite his years of hard work for the company he’d only been given the statutory legal pay-off. There was no vat of cash to help fund the work on Sorrento Villa. They had savings but it would be madness to plough them into such a project. ‘How will we manage financially?’ Seth asked in despair. ‘With the new house …’
    ‘We’ll manage,’ said Frankie, magically switching on the same positive tone that had worked so well during the children’s teenage years. ‘We’ll manage somehow.’
    But inside, her stomach was churning with fear. How could they survive on only one salary? If only they’d stayed in their modest old house instead of thinking they were the sort of people who should own a detached Victorian red-brick villa on a half-acre site in Redstone. Christmas had been just over a month off, both children were staying away – Emer in Australia, Alexei in Japan – and she and Seth had to face a dark and depressing festive season on their own. Three months later, they were still far from managing.
    Coping with
anything
had turned out to mean a husband who sloped around in sweatpants and could barely summon up the energy to walk to the crossroads for a daily newspaper. He’d lost his zest for life when he’d lost his job. All the great plans for the house now lay untouched under a mound of bills at one end of the kitchen table.
    Redundancy had settled over their house like a heavy grey storm cloud.
    Frankie, who had been responsible for setting up counselling sessions for Dutton employees following a series of redundancies at the company, now saw the problem from the other side of the table. Her husband was in despair.
    Work doesn’t define women in the way it defines men
, she remembered telling her team in the HR department at the time.
Men find it hard to cope with being out of work.
    Platitudes delivered straight from the most basic HR psychology books.
    Those words were certainly mocking her now as she lay beside this shadow of the man who had been her husband, waiting for sleep to claim her. Sleep didn’t come.
    It was the Sleep Theorem, she told herself. The number of hours you lost sleepless in bed was always in reverse proportion to the amount of work you had to do the following day. Eventually, she drifted into an uneasy doze filled with nightmares involving Emer and Alexei in danger, when she couldn’t run fast enough to save them. And darling Seth, once her mainstay in life, was watching all and seemed paralysed into indecision.
    At six the alarm went off. She woke exhausted and decided that, at that precise moment, the word for the day was
shattered.
While Seth carried on sleeping, she showered, dressed and had some muesli for breakfast before heading into work.
    As she pulled into the underground car park of Dutton Insurance at seven twenty-five on that clear but cold February morning, Frankie felt a low drag of anxiety in the depths of her belly. Steeling herself for the day ahead, she grabbed her briefcase, got out of the car and strode towards the lifts.
    The doors closed behind her with a satisfying swish. The inevitable muzak drifted into her head. She hated that music. The lifts from the car park were workmanlike and industrial. Important visitors to Dutton Insurance parked in a designated section of the car park and made their entrance through much more glamorous lifts. She pushed the button for the lobby, the lift shuddered and brought her up. She used to make it her business to run up the stairs at least once every day but these days she was too tired.
    ‘Morning, Mrs Green,’ said the fresh-faced security guard as she slid her