The Honeymoon Hotel (25 page)

‘Come on, I won’t tell anyone,’ said Joe. ‘You must be doing all right. Dino was telling me he had to double the bar stock orders, because of all the weddings you’ve booked in this quarter.’

‘We’re ahead of target,’ I admitted. ‘Flora’s wedding makes up for Stephanie cancelling, because of the extras she’s booking, but it’s really more about generating publicity, as much as the money. I’ve been getting dozens of calls from people who’ve heard she’s having her wedding here. Our private dinner bookings are way up, and the afternoon tea’s really taking off.’

‘Wait till the dress gets out,’ said Joe. ‘There are three designers in the frame. One of them will be a big surprise, apparently.’ He wiggled his eyebrows in mock excitement, then laughed. ‘She thinks I’m joking when I have
no idea
who she’s talking about.’

I felt a surge of gratitude. I was very tired, but dealing with Flora would be a whole other tiredness on top. ‘To be honest, Joe, you’re the one making that happen, not me. You’re so patient.’

‘Hey, I don’t mind. Flora’s quite sweet once you remember that six years ago she was a foot taller than everyone she knew at Downe House and was called Roadrunner.’

‘Was she?’ I turned to him, and he nodded. ‘She told you that?’

Joe shrugged. ‘It’s like I said – if you don’t ask people stuff, how can you make the day what they want? It’s inevitable that you get to know them. You’re feeling your way round their dreams. Or you should be, if you want to help them experience what they really want.’

I felt he was making a bit of a point there, so I pressed my lips together and gazed out at the elegant room in front of us.

‘Isn’t this a magical place?’ I said. ‘A ballroom after midnight. All the ghosts, the secrets.’

‘I take it you’ve never seen
The Shining
then?’ he said.

‘Ha,’ I said. ‘Funny. You’re so lucky to have grown up somewhere like this.’ I watched the mirror ball spinning. ‘It must have been amazing as a kid – the corridors, the smells, the mechanics of it all behind the scenes. You’re a real-life Eloise.’

‘It was cool having a pool in the basement, and you could always get a milkshake, but other than that …’ He took a sip from his glass. ‘I was away at school for most of it. And I don’t know it did my parents’ marriage much good.’

‘But they both loved this place.’

‘They did, you’re right. But it meant there were always three people in the relationship, Mum, Dad—’

‘And the hotel.’ I knew Laurence had taken Caroline for granted. I’d never really thought about it from the boys’ point of view, though.

‘She’s a very demanding mistress, Lady Bonneville,’ said Joe ironically.

‘A special one, though?’ I waved a hand towards the dance floor, caught like an old photograph in luxurious grey and lilac shadows, with flashes of white from the flowers. ‘It’s more than just a hotel. It’s like … living in a bubble of history. Your family history.’

‘I guess one good thing you can say is that they both worked too hard to have affairs. I’m amazed Mum and Dad found time to have me and Alec.’ He topped up my coupe. We were getting through the bottle very quickly. ‘I know Dad would love me to take over, but …’ He shrugged. ‘I never want to let anything take over my life that much. It’s not healthy.’

Doh. Of course that was why Joe didn’t want to work here, I thought, with the clutch of embarrassment that really obvious realizations often bring. Was that why he’d left the country, rather than be guilt-tripped into working in a hotel that he associated with his parents’ marriage collapsing?

We said nothing for a moment or two; then Joe said, ‘Was that a factor, with you and Dominic? This place taking up too much time?’

The directness of the question didn’t surprise me by now. It might have been the fact that we weren’t looking at each other,
and the room was dark, or that the past few days watching mindless telly with Joe at the end of our shift were all combining to blur the boundaries between on and off-duty, here in the half-light.

‘Probably,’ I admitted, with a shiver at hearing myself say something aloud that I’d only thought before. ‘But Dominic had weird hours, too, when he was on a deadline. It wasn’t like he clocked off at five. He liked the fact that we were both night owls, you know, that we understood the same industry.’

‘But he was more important than work, surely? You loved each other.’

I stared at my feet, swinging against the edge of the stage. Sensible mid-heel almond pumps. Not the sort of shoes a woman of my age should be wearing on New Year’s Eve. I should be wearing sky-high platforms. Sparkly stilettos. Golden sandals. Sexy, flirty shoes. I pried the left one off with my right toe, then did the same on the right, and they clattered to the floor.

That was better. I could see my scarlet pedicure glinting through my tights. Sensible tights. Helen had given me the pedicure for Christmas, ‘to cheer me up’. And it had, sort of.

The silence between me and Joe was growing but it wasn’t uncomfortable. I could feel him sipping his champagne next to me, his lips on the delicate glass. I wondered if he was looking at my toes and seeing a glimpse of the scarlet pedicure under the sensible tights.

I realized I wanted him to see that. To see I wasn’t always To-Do List Rosie. I wondered if he’d noticed my red toenails
around the flat, the way I knew about the little tattoo on his shoulder.

‘Was Dominic Mr Right, though?’ asked Joe. ‘Really?’

‘No,’ I said, and there it was, out there. ‘No. He wasn’t Mr Right.’

I had to face it: Dominic’s reluctance to share his social life should have told me something. And the way he got so uncomfortable around weddings, and the way he … I flinched inside. The way he never told me he loved me unless he was hammered. I was a flatmate. With benefits. And I was lucky to have got out before we signed the mortgage.

‘Well, then you’re a step nearer finding the right Mr Right.’

I snorted. ‘Aren’t we a bit old for believing in Mr and Ms Right?’

Joe went to refill his glass but the bottle was empty. He shook it, then put it down on the stage.

‘You don’t think there’s one perfect person out there for you?’ he asked, without looking round.

‘No. I think there are lots of people out there who could make you happy. But not one single perfect person. You’d drive yourself mad, like all the crazy girls I see every day who think if they don’t get the exact shade of lilac for their colour scheme, their marriage is doomed.’

‘You’re very unromantic for a wedding planner.’

‘
Events
planner.’

‘Events planner, whatever. Have you never imagined getting married yourself?’

The room was so intimate, the light was so low, the champagne
was so comforting and Joe’s voice was so gentle, that I nearly said yes.
Yes, I have been engaged. I was very nearly married. I got as far as the big pillar behind the vestry, within five minutes of ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ starting up. I had the blue garter, the bouquet ready to throw, the table plan, the list of presents at John Lewis that all had to go back
.

All that rose up in my head like a conga line of rowdy guests. I hadn’t thought about my non-wedding in ages. I’d managed to stack up lots of other stuff in front of it.

I wondered, in horror, whether Laurence or Caroline had said something about it to Joe. He’d have mentioned it, wouldn’t he?

I mentally restacked all the other stuff in front of that embarrassing tableau: work, hotel, bouquets, deadlines, Dominic.

Dominic. I stacked more stuff in front of him: Flora Thornbury, Laurence’s target, Caroline’s projects. I was failing badly on that front.

I liked Joe. I didn’t want him to know about that Rosie.

‘No,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

I assumed Joe would say no, too, but he didn’t reply, and when I turned my head to see what his face was doing, he was staring out across the empty dance floor. He looked lost, and there was a flash of vulnerability that took me by surprise.

‘Sorry,’ I started, at the same moment that he said, ‘I think if you meet that perfect person …’

We both stopped talking, awkwardly.

‘And have you?’ I prompted, struck by an equally unexpected pang of … something.

Joe didn’t reply. The glitter ball carried on turning, and I wondered if I’d touched on something too personal. Maybe it
was too close to his parents’ marriage. I’d never thought what it must have been like for Joe and Alec in the middle of it all. Living in the flat with Joe had tipped my perceptions of the hotel on their side; I was starting to see an off-duty side not just to Joe but also to the Bonneville. I was seeing a home, not just my place of work.

Then he jumped off the stage, and I was jerked back to reality.

My head swam as the manic activity of the last few days caught up with me all at once. ‘Shouldn’t have had that last glass of champagne,’ I said thickly.

He held out a hand. ‘Come on, Cinderella.’

‘Are you asking me to dance?’ I joked.

I didn’t know how to dance, but I would have, in that moment. Joe in his dinner jacket, his bow tie undone, his hair rumpled, standing there in black-and-white, like a partygoer from the 1979 Farewell come back for one last turn round the dance floor.

He gazed up at me, and my stomach did a slow, drunken loop. In a nice way.

‘No, you idiot, I was giving you a hand off the stage, since you seem a bit tipsy,’ he said. ‘Did you want to dance? We could …’ He made twisting actions – joking, ungainly. Not romantic waltzing ones. The moment burst and vanished like a soap bubble.

Romantic waltzing ones? I could feel my face turning red. Why had I thought that?

‘No need, I’m fine.’ I lowered myself to the floor and felt around, rather too carefully, for my shoes. My boring shoes.

‘You know what your New Year’s resolution should be?’ said Joe.

Suddenly I really wanted to go to bed. To fall into the spare bed upstairs and not think about any of the unwelcome wedding-guest thoughts now barging around my subconscious.

‘To cut down on my drinking?’

‘No, to loosen up.’ Joe’s voice echoed in the cavernous room. He didn’t sound as drunk as I felt, but then he’d probably been stuffing himself with canapés all night. ‘Let your hair down. See what the universe brings.’ He paused. ‘Stop making lists, and start living in the moment.’

Target, promotion, flat. That was what I needed to focus on.

Not living in the moment. And definitely not love.

I frowned. Love? Where had
that
come from?

‘Rosie?’

I found my shoes, shoved them on, and began walking towards the door. They were pinching me but I wasn’t going to let it show.

‘I’m going to start this year as I mean to go on,’ I said. ‘With three hours’ sleep. I’ve got work in the morning.’

You get to know people quickly when you’re sharing a fridge. Even if you barely see them, thanks to your ridiculous working hours, one shelf can tell its own story. In Laurence’s case, it was an entire shelf devoted to four different probiotics. In Joe’s, it was a secret stash of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.

Joe wasn’t, it turned out, the complete health nut I’d assumed he was when I first met him. That, or he’d fallen off the wagon spectacularly on rediscovering British chocolate. I also discovered, through the bedroom wall adjoining mine, that we shared the same taste in sixties singer-songwriters; that he did seventy-five press-ups before getting in the shower (I honestly wasn’t listening, he counted aloud and the walls were
thin
); and that like me he was weirdly specific about loading the dishwasher.

‘It’s in the rinsing,’ he insisted. ‘You’re the first girl I’ve met who really gets the
pre-rinsing
.’

(I should add that he left the bathroom looking like a bomb had hit it, and never replaced a loo roll. The dishwasher was an isolated non-slobby instance.)

It wasn’t what I’d imagined for my new year, new start, but somehow it did feel like a fresh start. I’d dreamed about settling
into a flat with Dominic, planning out our new life. Instead, I was back to sharing fridge space and arguing about how to squeeze out a tea bag properly. But, oddly enough, even though I was flat-sharing with my boss and a colleague, I didn’t feel half as awkward as I’d assumed I would.

I
think
Laurence and Joe felt the same. At least, they were too polite to say anything.

*

The good news was, as I inspected it on the first proper Monday morning of the new year, that the Bridelizer was already ahead of schedule, mainly thanks to Flora Thornbury. I had deposits banked for weddings right up until October, and my appointments book was so full I was having to turn away prospective brides. Just after Christmas, one of Flora’s potential blonde bridesmaids turned up in a background role in a live (well, live-ish) reality show called
The Queens of Knightsbridge
, and spent most of her January airtime banging on about her supermodel mate’s amazing bridal suite, and how she was down to ‘the last three’ for the role of hen night planner.

Joe claimed never to have heard of
The Queens of Knightsbridge
, of course. He also claimed to be disgusted at the torrent of freebies that began to arrive in my office after New Year, although that didn’t stop him working his way through the chocolates.

‘Do they think we don’t
have
pink champagne?’ he said, inspecting a box with silk rose petals glued all over it. It had been hand-delivered by a runner from the PR agency, along with a gushing invitation for me to meet them and ‘chat with
us about the brand, which Flora is a big fan of.’ ‘I mean, we are a hotel. With an entry in
Secret Hotel Bars of the World
.’

Laurence (or rather, Dino) had moved Joe from catering to the lovely old oak-panelled bar, and Joe had been spending some time learning the arcane ways of the cocktail. He could now mix a very passable Bonneville Martini, following some after-hours tuition. One advantage of living above the shop was that I was now invited to these ‘tasting sessions’. Detoxing wasn’t on my list of resolutions, fortunately.

‘Oh, so Dino’s been telling you about that, has he? Did he give you the Dean Martin story?’

‘Yup. And the Duke of Edinburgh story, and the secret tunnel to Fortnum and Mason story, and the gold hidden in the icemaker during the Blitz story. He still won’t give me the full recipe to the Honeymoon Night cocktail, though.’

‘I don’t know that, and I’ve been here
years
.’

‘I think it’s bubble bath,’ he said. ‘Or possibly Night Nurse. So are we supposed to give this champagne to Flora?’

‘No! You can have it,’ I said, without turning round. ‘You’re the one who has to deal with her twice a week.’

I was trying to find room to pin Cressida Connor’s details into the second weekend in October on the Bridelizer. She wanted a hundred and fifty guests, a fairground theme, and ‘whatever wedding cake Flora Thornbury’s having!’

‘You must be way past your total now,’ Joe observed. ‘Are you aiming for a wedding every weekend?’

‘No, three a month, max. I don’t want us to look
too
available.’ I stood back, running my eyes over the variety of brides
and colour swatches. Grey was a big theme this year. Grey attendants, bone-white macaroons and picture frames made of flowers were in; tans, crafts and pastel cupcakes were out. It was already looking a bit Miss Havisham around May/June, with four brides in vintage lace. I made a mental note to steer Jessie Callum back towards rose pink.

‘You should double your stakes.’ Joe leaned back in his chair and put his feet on my desk. He was wearing green Converse, which were not my idea of office-appropriate footwear for planners handling wedding budgets equivalent to the cost of a Zone 4 flat.

I frowned, but he ignored me. ‘Meaning? And get your feet off my desk. And get some more appropriate shoes.’

‘Oh, so it’d be fine to have my feet up here if they were brogues?’

‘Yes. I mean it. This hotel merits proper shoes and a decent suit.’

Joe left his feet where they were. ‘I think you should ask for an additional bonus, plus a guaranteed job offer, if you hit the target early. It looks confident.’ He put his hands behind his head: the image of confidence. ‘If you want him to take you seriously for the role of manager, you need to look confident.’

I pressed my lips together, thinking. It
would
look confident. And I needed a bonus to boost my deposit on a studio flat, maybe even to upgrade to a nasty one-bedder. Much as living upstairs was convenient (and cheap), I knew I couldn’t stay forever. ‘What if it doesn’t come off? What if someone cancels?’

Joe shrugged. ‘Give yourself the challenge, then you’ll make
sure it does. Works for me. I went to LA with nothing, and I had a business within six months.’

‘That’s you, though.’ I stared at him over the desk. I found myself confiding in Joe more lately, sometimes without meaning to. ‘I’m more of a planner than a gambler.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘I told you what your resolution should be for this year. Go with the flow more. Let the universe do its thing. It’ll help you do yours.’

I did need something. There’d been a couple of moments lately when things hadn’t quite gone to plan: I’d double-booked a rehearsal dinner, and accidentally misquoted for a wedding reception, which annoyingly we were now legally bound to honour. The whole Dominic thing had dented my confidence; I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on his ‘they’re all idiots!’ support.

‘You can do it, Rosie,’ said Joe earnestly. ‘You’ve got to believe.’

‘Thanks for that, Oprah,’ I said. I’d developed a tolerance for Joe’s mess in the bathroom but not for his irritating platitudes. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, the universe doesn’t seem to have done its thing about the chairs for Laura Southwell’s reception. And get your feet off my desk,’ I added in a ‘confident’ voice.

Joe put his feet back down.

It was a start. And it obviously worked, because when I put the proposal to Laurence, he said yes, pretty much straight away. Which made me wonder if he thought I was up to the challenge – or more likely, that I wasn’t.

*

In the great division of Flora Thornbury labour, Joe had the madness but I had the maths. And believe me, there’s more maths in a wedding than you’d think. Guests divided by tables, multiplied by canapés, all over one and a half bottles of wine … it’s endless. Especially when you have a bride who keeps remembering friends she owes invites to, or – in the case of my worst wedding last year – a bride who sends out two hundred save-the-dates, but only a hundred and fifty invitations, leading to a embarrassed knot of extra guests arriving on our doorstep, clutching presents like the additional Wise Men Mary wasn’t that keen on and only gave an evening invite to.

Luckily, I enjoyed spreadsheets; I found their lack of hysterics about ribbon width soothing. And the Thornbury spreadsheet was already a thing of epic complexity. Julia Thornbury hadn’t ended up with diamond earrings the size of ice cubes without keeping her eye on the maths, and she’d asked me to supply her with running totals of where her substantial budget was going. With the wedding now five months away, deposits had been taken for the flowers, catering, the two floors of rooms booked in the hotel for guests, the unbelievably elaborate stationery, the band … My spreadsheet totals were already way over what most brides spent on their entire event, and we hadn’t even got to the rehearsal dinner.

It was now the beginning of the second week in January, and I was deep in boring data entry about Flora’s table linens when the door to my office burst open and Helen waltzed in.

‘Good afternoon!’ she sang. ‘And a very Happy New Year to you!’

I hadn’t seen Helen since before Christmas. She’d taken her remaining days off and allowed Wynn to sweep her off on a romantic holiday to a mystery destination, which he’d refused to let her pay for or plan.

‘Happy New Year to you too!’ I said, putting my pen down. ‘And where did your romantic mystery tour take you? We were trying to work it out when you texted on New Year’s Eve. I thought New York?’

Helen had always wanted to see the ball drop in Times Square. She’d tried to persuade Seamus to go for years, but he’d always ducked out, probably because he’d never have got past the sniffer dogs at Heathrow.

‘No!’ she said, as if I’d suggested something insane. ‘Why spend all the time on a plane? No, we had a lovely time in Wales.’

‘In Wales?’ I blinked. It had rained for most of the holiday. All over the UK, but especially in Wales. I’d seen news footage of sheep being rescued in kayaks.

‘Mmm. Cosy hotel, log fires, amazing food.’ Helen looked very dreamy for someone who’d probably contracted trench foot by New Year’s Eve. But that was love, I reasoned. It kept you very warm. And dry.

‘Brilliant. So did Wynn give you something nice for Christmas?’ I asked.

‘You could say that.’ She perched on the edge of my desk with a serene smile, and then it broke down into a broad schoolgirl grin. ‘I’ve got gossip. Guess what?’

‘You found Delphine hanging upside down in the cold walk-in again?’

‘No.’

‘Laurence has discovered he’s got the plague? No, wait – I think he’s had that. What hasn’t he had? Foot-and-mouth?’

‘No! Rosie, it’s much better than that.’

‘I give up.’

Helen was wafting her hands around her face like someone trying to mime a very complicated film, jiggling her eyebrows meaningfully.

‘You’ve had eyelash extensions?’ I hazarded.

‘No! Are you doing this on purpose?’ she demanded, and slammed both her hands down on either side of my keyboard. ‘Oh, hang on, it’s slipped round. It does that.’

She fiddled with something, and the resulting sparkle from the diamonds on her left hand almost blinded me. It looked like three sugar lumps stuck together. It was even bigger than Flora’s, and hers was half a carat short of needing its own bodyguard.

‘Whoa!’ I blinked. ‘Is Wynn a secret millionaire dentist?’

‘What? Oh, it’s not real. It’s just a fake one he got to propose with. The real one’s a family heirloom. He was waiting to make sure I said yes.’ She smiled down at the ring, then looked up at me. Her face was shining brighter than the fake sparklers.

I felt a tug of envy in the middle of my happiness for her, but pushed it away. ‘Congratulations!’ I said, getting up to hug her. ‘So come on, how did he do it?’

‘Oh, Rosie, it was so romantic. We were staying in this beautiful hotel in Abergavenny, and it stopped raining one day for,
like, half an hour, so we went for a walk. Seriously, who knew walking was fun? Anyway,’ Helen went on, seeing my
don’t push it
expression, ‘we’d got to the top of the hill, and the sun was setting over the mountains, and I said, “Oh, Wynn, I’m so happy right now,” meaning, “Thank God I’m not running a dinner service with a bunch of psychos,” and Wynn turned to me and said, “I’m so happy right now too. Would you consider making me this happy forever?”’

She blushed. ‘And he went down on one knee, and he had the ring in his pocket all ready! He said he’d had it for weeks, but he wanted to pick a perfect moment, so we’d always remember it. Just us. Privately.’

It took a lot to impress me where proposals were concerned – I’d heard everything from flashmobs to rings in trifles to flower beds planted six months in advance to spell out Will You Marry Me in tulips – but this one sent a proper lump to my throat. I put my hands to my face. It was sweet, and genuine, and I could hear Wynn saying the simple words in his gentle Welsh accent, gazing up at Helen with that unexpectedly passionate look he gave her when he thought no one else could see, the one that said,
You. Just you. Nothing else
.

‘And you said?’

Helen’s voice was an emotional squeak. ‘I said yes.’

‘That’s wonderful!’ I really meant it. ‘I’m
so
happy for you.’

Helen grabbed my hands. ‘I wanted to tell you first. I mean, because you’re my best friend, but also … I know it’s not a great time for you.’

‘It’s a brilliant time for me,’ I insisted. ‘Because you’ve found
a good honest man who makes you happy. And that makes me happy too.’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘That it’s very quick. And it is quick. But Wynn’s the man I’ve been waiting for all my life. I don’t have to try to make things right with him, I just feel like the best possible version of me, all the time. We fit together, not in some big dramatic way, but in little, practical ways. And I’d never have found him if I’d carried on looking in all the places I thought I
should
be looking – it’s like love found us.’ She paused, and squeezed my hands. ‘I just – I want you to be as happy as we are. I’m sorry I encouraged you to waste time on Dominic, like I wasted time with Seamus, because it doesn’t have to be like that. Something amazing is out there for you, I just know it.’