Happily Ever After (45 page)

AFTERWARDS, ELLE WISHED
someone could have told her in advance how mad this wedding was going to be. She wouldn’t have dreaded it so much had she known about the slight surprised pause as the vicar called Libby “Lizzy.” Or the “Wedding Wows.” Or the Yateses’ growling, furious bulldog, forced to wear a huge wine-red bow around his neck, or the fifty-minute wait outside the church for endless photos during which Libby’s pitch got louder and louder as she yelled instructions at people and Rory looked more and more disconsolate.

Or, back at Sanditon Hall, the rickety photo booth, the “book-themed” cocktails served at the reception, the six—SIX—bridesmaids, only three of whom Elle recognized, all in matching wine-red, a mean color on blondes and brunettes alike, and Regency-esque straw hats which they all donned for the photos outside, including the obligatory slightly-fatter-than-everyone-else bridesmaid, who was probably perfectly attractive in a nice pair of jeans and Topshop top but, when forced to pour herself into a Pronuptia raw silk floor-length shift resembled nothing so much as a quivering pork chop, all dimpled fat and blotchy purple.

As they were shepherded into the Orangery, she and Tom were handed a “Great Expectations” (cranberry, orange juice, and champagne).

“Cheers,” said Elle merrily. She clinked her glass against his. “Here’s to the happy couple. And the happy bulldog.”

“Oh, yes, Spot,” said Tom. He stepped closer, and said in a low voice, “I take it back about not liking weddings. This might just be the most hilarious thing I’ve ever been to. I think Libby’s gone totally mad, you know. Did you see the lobby? There are piles of Bookprint books arranged in a heart shape.”

“Hi, guys. Hi, there,” came Rory’s voice. “Hey, you! Hi!” He
was pushing his way through the crowd, to where Libby was waiting by the door, at the beginning of the receiving line.

“Oh, man,” said Elle. “I hate receiving lines. They make me—”

“Oh, I just remembered something. Excuse me a sec,” Tom interrupted, and suddenly disappeared. After a few minutes in line, Elle realized he wasn’t coming back.

“Sod,” she said under her breath. “Bloody sod.”

“I wondered who that was, swearing like an old navvy. Hello, old girl,” said a voice behind her, and a hand slid onto her shoulder.

“Jeremy!” said Elle with pleasure. “Hey!” She kissed him. “How are you?”

“I’m well, I’m well. You look great.” She blushed. Jeremy was exactly the same: tanned, gleaming white teeth, sparkling blue eyes. “We hear great things of you from the States. You’ve done us proud.”

“Aw, not really,” Elle said.

“It’s true,” Jeremy told her. “I absolutely loved that
Diary by Design
book, you know, we hope Richard and Judy might pick it next year. Either way it’s going to sell shedloads. Thanks to you we’ll make budget.” As they moved slowly towards the front of the line, Jeremy hissed in her ear, “Did you read that dreadful
Byron in Knossos
? Yet another Libby special, all hype and no substance. It’s sold about three copies, and we paid a fucking fortune for it—Hello!” he said, turning brightly towards the receiving line. “Yes, I’m Jeremy, I work with Libby and Rory, have done for years. You must be Mrs. Yates! Hi! Lovely to meet you. I love your hat, it’s amazing.”

“Congratulations!” Elle said, as she reached the bride and groom. “You look absolutely beautiful,” she said to Libby. “You too, Rory,” she added, with a smile.

“Thanks, Elle,” Rory said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Well, Elle,” Libby said, in a loud undertone, “I know one thing for sure!” Her voice was too loud. “If you’d been my bridesmaid, you wouldn’t have missed those typos, that’s for sure!! Bloody Annabel.” Her face was red, her lips contorted into a strange grin. Elle channeled all her acting energy, unused since a school production of
The Worst Witch
in 1988.

“What typos?” she asked. “I love your dress,” she added, as Libby opened her mouth. “It’s so pretty.”

“Thanks,” said Libby. She narrowed her eyes, an old Libby habit Elle recognized with a jolt. It meant she was running down her mental checklist. “Hope you like your seating position. Thanks again for coming,” she said, her voice softer than before. “I really am so furious with Annabel about those mistakes. I mean, we’re a laughingstock.”

“I promise you no one will remember it,” Elle said, squeezing her hand and taking this as her cue to move on. “See you later.” She kissed her again, drawing her close. Libby’s swelling bump pushed against her own stomach.

“Shame about the typos in the order of service, eh, Eleanor?” came a resonant voice. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have missed them!”

“Hello, Felicity,” said Elle. She couldn’t kiss her, it’d be too weird, so she shook her hand instead. Next to her, her new daughter-in-law threw her a look of flustered annoyance, and Elle felt a stab of sympathy for her.

“Eleanor Bee,” said Felicity, in booming tones. “Hello, dear.”

“It’s lovely to see you again,” Elle said, suddenly shy. After all these years of thinking about her, to be standing in front of Felicity again was overwhelming. She was decked out in raw silk of a violent bright blue and looked exactly the same, even if her hair was a little grayer. She nodded briskly at Elle and arched her firm black brows.

“Yes. Lovely to see you too. I am Catherine de Bourgh, as you may have heard.”

“No,” said Elle, shaking her head.
Oh, dear,
she thought.
She’s lost it
.

“Anyway, I expect we’ll talk later.” She turned to Jeremy, saying, “Whom have we here? Aha! Good afternoon, Jeremy,” with a great big smile, dismissing Elle with a nod.

That was the end of the line, and Elle was left on her own. She looked around, but couldn’t see Tom, or anyone else she knew. She stood on one leg, then the other, and then she downed the rest of her Great Expectations, as a waiter hoved into view.

“What else have you got?” she said.

“Well, this is an Animal Farm—” said the waiter, removing a hand from the tray and pointing at one drink.

“What’s in it?”

“Mint, vodka, something,” he said disconsolately.

“That’ll do,” said Elle, taking a glass. “Thanks a lot.”

There was a small sighing at her elbow, and she turned round. “Oh,” she said. “Hi, Annabel. Good job there.”

“Oh, hi, Elle, how’s things,” said Annabel, tightly clutching her glass of champagne. “I’m so pissed off,” she added, as if she’d last seen Elle yesterday, and not almost three years ago. “Libby’s been really horrible to me about the order of service, and it’s so not my fault, you know?”

“Oh, dear,” said Elle sympathetically. “Well, at least you’ve told her. It gave us a laugh, if that’s any consolation.”

“Which one?”

“Oh…” said Elle. “Well, Wedding Wows instead of Vows was pretty funny.”

“What?” Annabel cried. “I didn’t even notice that one. Oh, my GOD. This is fucking awful, Libby’s never going to speak to me again. I hate myself.”

“Don’t say that,” Elle said, resisting the urge to laugh. “It’s a lovely day and everyone’s enjoying themselves. She’s just a bit tense, she’s in a delicate situation, you know.”

“So how are you?” said Annabel, ignoring this and sighing, so that her pig’s-snout nose flared and her top lip fluttered. “You’re like, amazing over there, people keep saying you’re like bloody running the company, it’s so great for you.” She made this sound as though it was a criticism. “It’s really hard over here, you know, UK publishing’s much harder, because of the…” She paused. “You know, because the market’s more sophisticated and all that, and the discounts are SO BAD.”

Elle thought of the front table at one of the biggest and best bookstores in Manhattan, the Union Square Barnes & Noble, which regularly had the most obscure literary books on glorious display so they were the first things you saw. She thought of the lovely little paragraphs in the backs of her favorite hardcovers: “A Note on the Typeface in This Text,” the history of the font in which the book was printed, and why they were using it. The paper on US paperbacks was cut from sheets on the grain, so that the spines flopped open in a smooth, silkily satisfying way, instead of sticking up awkwardly and rolling over. These things, the care and attention that made her remember why she loved books.

She looked at her watch; it was, to her surprise, already nearly three o’clock. If she were in New York it’d be ten in the morning. She’d be up already, perhaps walking to meet Marcy and Steven for brunch at Lucky Strike or somewhere in the Village. Perhaps Mike would be with her. Perhaps afterwards they’d walk through Soho, and she’d buy a top in Anthropologie, and some cute new mugs at that homeware store on Thompson Street, and then she’d get a manicure at New Model Nails on Bleecker while Mike ran some errands, and then they’d queue for lunch at the Spotted Pig and wander
up through Chelsea, as far uptown as they could go before she flaked out and got in a cab. Last month, they’d walked all the way from hers up to the Upper West Side and across the park, to Mike’s place on East 77th. She’d begged Mike for a rest in the Sheep Meadow, but he’d made her go on till they got there. Then out in the evening to Happy Endings, her new favorite bar in the East Village, so-called because it had been a massage parlor before. Or perhaps a film—

“Elle?” Annabel was staring at her. “Did you hear me?”

Elle came back to the present with a thump, looking round the elegant Georgian room, filled with polite people decked out in pastels, the sun shining through the windows. “Oh,” she said. The heavy scent of lilies and perfume flooded her nostrils. “Sorry. I was miles away. Jet lag. Any more bridesmaid’s duties you have to fulfill?”

“I’ve got to make a speech, and I’m just
really dreading it
? Because you know now Libby’s furious with me and I really want her to be OK with it.” Annabel pulled the tight winered silk up and around her, wiggling into it. “These dresses are really uncomfortable?” She stared at Elle accusingly, as if Elle had personally requested they be like this. “I really like Elizabeth Forsyte, by the way. Just wanted you to know.”

“Thanks,” said Elle. “I’ll tell her.”

“She’s bloody brill.”

“Oh, thanks. She doesn’t really have an editor in the UK because she’s got me, but—I’ll tell her.”

Annabel looked at her with a sort of disdain. “I don’t mean like that, actually. God. I was just saying I liked her.”

Elle flushed red, to the roots of her hair. She didn’t seem to understand what her fellow countrymen meant anymore. She didn’t get Tom’s sarcasm, she didn’t understand that Annabel was just trying to be nice. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand English these days.”

“Right,” said Annabel, clearly thinking she was being rude again. “Look, see you later then,” and she stamped towards her fellow bridesmaids, who were also drinking champagne and looking terrified together in a corner. Elle was left thinking that while everyone else had stayed the same, she had changed. Someone cleared their throat nearby; she turned round gratefully. “Hello,” said a strange man standing next to her. She stared at him: he had a black suit and was wearing black gloves. “Which card, miss, or should I say madam, is the queen of hearts? Don’t know?”

He slid a pack of cards into a crescent fan and thrust them under her nose. “Oh,” said Elle, staring at him distractedly. “I don’t know, no. Sorry.”

She turned, looking for Tom, but then the gong rang for supper, and a large, barrel-chested man in some kind of footman’s garb said, in an awful, booming voice, “My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen. The wedding breakfast will now be served, in the ballroom. Please consult the table plan to find out where you are sitting… and
who you are
,” he finished with a flourish, as people looked puzzled. The bridesmaids giggled with excitement in their bridesmaids’ corner.

“Oh, get a grip,” Elle murmured, under her breath. The incessant theming was starting to get on her nerves. Someone touched her shoulder.

“I’m Frank Churchill,” Tom said, jabbing his thumb at the table plan. “I can’t wait for you to find out who you are.”

MARY BENNET. SHE
was Mary Bennet, the sodding ugly plain know-it-all sister. As Elle sat down at her table—
Pride and Prejudice
—she was fuming. In fact, there were two tables called
Pride and Prejudice,
because there weren’t enough Jane Austen novels to go around. The top table was
Pride and Prejudice 1
, with large name cards in sloping script denoting Libby as Lizzy Bennet (perhaps that typo wasn’t a typo, then?), Rory as Mr. Darcy, Felicity as Lady Catherine de Bourgh (so
that’s
what she’d been talking about), and Libby’s rather shy parents as Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Elle was on the second-tier
Pride and Prejudice
table, with the Maria Lucases and the Mr. Collinses. She realized now that Libby’s dress was Regency style not just to hide the bump but because this was a themed wedding, like it or not. Everyone had a piece of paper and a prop on their table. The paper was a quote about their character from a Jane Austen novel, beautifully printed as if to be framed. The prop was, in Elle’s case, some small antique glasses, about the size of a thumb.