Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward sat back on her couch and lifted a china cup to her lips for a short sip of tea. "Perfect as always, Parker."
"Will you be needing anything else, milady?" the Cockney-accented driver asked.
The table held a small spread of biscuits, crumpets, and cucumber sandwiches—more than she would ever eat. Her mobile phone chimed,but as it was not the compact connected to International Rescue's comms systems, she deemed it unimportant and waved Parker off. "I'm fine for now. Go put your feet up."
Parker grinned. "Yes, milady."
When Penelope looked down at her phone, she almost called Parker back, but the fact Mrs. Tracy had used a private phone line and not the normal IR comms made her hesitate. Best see what this was about first. She hit the connect button and saw the Tracy matriarch's holo-projection hover over the small screen.
Penelope smiled at her. "Mrs. Tracy, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
The old woman's voice was upbeat despite being timbered with advanced age. "I need a favour on the Q.T." She winked, which was a little comical with the number of wrinkles around her eyes.
"Of course. What do you need?"
Mrs. Tracy shot a covert look right and left. "We should discuss it in person. When is a good time for you, dear?"
Penelope's first inclination was to drop everything and have Parker fly her in FAB 1 out to Tracy Island. The matriarch's health was declining more than anyone seemed ready to admit and she shouldn't have to travel unnecessarily. But if she wanted this kept secret from her grandsons, then meeting on Tracy Island was probably out. "I'm free right now. Shall I have Parker come fetch you then?"
"Oh, I think asking one of the boys to drop me off for tea and some girl-talk wouldn't arouse too much suspicion. International Rescue is slightly" her holo-projection illustrated the minuteness of this word with a thumb and forefinger nearly touching, "less busy at the moment. Would half an hour from now work okay?"
"Perfect. I'll see you then." She alerted Parker to add a little to the spread he'd already prepared, so it was fit for a guest. On the way back, she pressed the proper buttons so that one of the Thunderbirds could land on her manor's circular driveway without setting off one of Parker's new security alarms.
No longer the excitable puppy he once was, Sherbert the pug slept in a sunny bay window as was his usual for an afternoon at home. He didn't need to be awake for a visit from Mrs. Tracy, so Penelope left him sleeping.
****
Sally Tracy set the phone aside and heaved a deep sigh. She should have done this years ago, but had never been ready for the change. Leaving things as they were, even when she knew deep in her heart it wasn't ideal, had always just felt easier. It had indeed been better not to look for new house staff immediately after the tragic death of their last cook and housekeeper, Kyrano. Jeff couldn't bring himself to think of hiring anyone else with the wound so fresh. How might it have looked to Kayo? Her father was not some robot who could be replaced like a mechanical gizmo Brains put together. Kyrano had always been family. So family, specifically Sally herself, had taken over most of Kyrano's previous tasks. It was supposed to be temporary, a stopgap measure to give them all some time to heal. But then Jeff's accident happened and made another household change unthinkable.
Mentally, Sally knew she would always be loved as Grandma, for who she was and how much she'd contributed to International Rescue, both in occasional dispatching to free up John, and in mentoring all the youngsters, but there was a niggling little part of her brain that always insisted that cooking and laundry and cleaning were how she made herself not merely loved, but useful to the family.
Teaching the youngsters to do household chores for themselves had been important life lessons, but Kayo and the boys truly no longer had the time or energy anymore to devote to anything other than their important work. They really should be eating better, she often thought to herself. Yet she knew her terrible cooking was the major reason they didn't eat well. It had to stop.
Resisting the change had become worse than the upheaval it was probably going to cause. No one lived forever and her doctor had just informed Sally that she was living on borrowed time. She couldn't put this off any longer.
Alan was asleep in his room, but Thunderbird 3 was a poor choice for a trip to London anyway, so she didn't wake him. Kayo and Scott were out on missions. Piano melodies lilting gently from the living room meant Virgil was not on a mission or sleeping,so Thunderbird 2 would be the logical conveyance. Gordon was sitting in the sunken circular lounge, watching "Into the Unknown with Buddy and Ellie" with the volume turned up so he could hear over the piano. It was too bad Sally had to interrupt the piano and not the silly webcast.
"Virgil, would you mind terribly flying me out on a little excursion?" She rested her hand on his shoulder.
Although it probably annoyed him more than he would admit, he halted his playing and gave her a smile. "Sure, Grandma. Where to?"
"Lady Penelope invited me to her place for tea." It was more like she'd invited herself, but Virgil didn't need to know that. She shot a glance at Gordon. Usually, any mention of Lady Penelope piqued his interest. Trying to stop him would only invite suspicion, so Sally decided she'd let Gordon tag along if he insisted, but she really needed to have some privacy, so it would be better if he didn't come.Virgil wouldn't try nearly as hard to join in on the girl-time and he'd be much easier to distract via some invented mechanical problem on FAB 1 if they got desperate. Gordon didn't look up from the Pendergasts' webcast. With the volume so high, he evidently had not heard the magic words and his "squid sense", if such a thing even existed, didn't seem to work anywhere but underwater. When Sally returned her full attention to Virgil, she could see he'd had the same thought.
He stood up from the bench, quietly closing the piano's key guard. "Let's sneak out before Squidboy over there tries to horn in on your party."
"Good idea," Sally whispered.
Thunderbird 5 called Thunderbird 2 into action just as they landed at Creighton-Ward Manor. Although Sally hated to let him go alone, her meeting with Lady Penelope was too important to delay any longer. Virgil promised to come pick her up after his mission in the Swiss Alps.
Thunderbird 2 jetted off into the sky before Sally had the chance to think about how she was going to get up all those stairs. Her doctor told her she should be using a cane all the time now, but the staircases on Tracy Island had nice, solid handrails, so she had never quite got around to buying a cane. Thankfully, Parker opened the door and guessed her dilemma. "May I offer you assistance, Mrs. Tracy, ma'am?"
Having one's body give out was such a drag, but falling here would have been embarrassing and painful, so she breathed a tiny sigh of relief. "That would be appreciated, Parker." Lady Penelope's driver was getting up there in years too, although not nearly as old as Sally. He extended his elbow and let her use his strength to steady her slow but steady ascent.
Lady Penelope and Sally both said "Thank you, Parker" in unison when they reached the door.
The food and tea were excellent, as always, but Sally could hardly enjoy them with the burden of what she had to say weighing on her. Lady Penelope dismissed Parker and he excused himself out of the room,shutting the door as he left.
"Well, I must say, you have me curious," Lady Penelope said.
"Sorry to be so cryptic," Sally replied, stirring her tea constantly to give nervous hands something to do. "I want to hire a home health aide, but Scott is so leery of outsiders ever since that pilot turned on us. I know he's going to be resistant to the idea. I came to ask if you could pre-screen applicants for us, so he can't complain."
"I can't promise to mitigate all of Scott's fears, but I can certainly help you find some excellent candidates. Only the best will do for the Tracys."
"She has to be a decent cook too."
"She? Are you excluding males from consideration?"
Sally nodded. "For the personal stuff I need done, I just feel more comfortable with a woman." She locked eyes with her tea companion, hoping this cultured aristocratic lady who spent a good deal of her time with a male driver would infer the delicacy of an old lady's medical situation without having to spell out the degrading details. A knowing look passed between them that said it all. She understood.
That said, there was another reason Sally wanted a female, but it was considerably less respectable to admit, not to mention super-wishful thinking to harbour a desire for the possibility of future great-grandchildren out of this whole deal. However, it was probably better to just get that silliness out in the open. She adopted a playful tone to mutter under her breath, yet loud enough not to mistake: "Wouldn't hurt if she was single either."
Lady Penelope's eyes widened. "You want me to play matchmaker?"
"Oh, goodness no. Just...maybe...finagle things a teensy bit so that if one of the boys just happens"and here the two women exchanged another significant look, "to be interested in a romance, he won't have some silly excuse not to pursue it. Would it be so bad to keep your search limited to unencumbered twenty-to-thirty-five-year olds instead of equally-qualified forty and overs?"
The young blonde chuckled. "No, of course not. Is that why you want her to be a good cook?"
"No, cooking is critical apart from any—" she curled her fingers in air quotes, "matchmaking we might be doing." She remembered something Parker often said and it fit, so she hastily added: "Allegedly."
Lady Penelope grinned, her blue eyes sparkling with youthful mirth.
Sally sneaked a quick sip of tea and continued. "The cooking side of it is actually more important than I want you to let on with the boys. The fact I need a home health aide is not a lie, but it's also a bit of a pretext. It's long past time we found a replacement for Kyrano—not that anyone could replace Kayo's father in our hearts, of course—but I am getting too old" and too worn out, she mused silently, "to do everything he used to do for Jeff and the boys." Not that she'd ever matched Kyrano's skills in the kitchen to begin with, but that was another matter entirely.
"I see." The big question burned silently behind her eyes: It's been years, so why now? Bless her rock-solid British manners for not voicing it. Much as Sally yearned for someone she could spill her heart to, and much as she knew she could trust Lady Penelope to keep her secret, it simply wouldn't be right to tell her before she told Kayo or the boys.
The London agent set her teacup down with an air of finality. "So, will a dozen candidates be enough for you to choose from?"
She scoffed lightheartedly. "I don't need that many. Narrow it down to the top three for me, would you, dear?"
"Anything for you, Mrs. Tracy."