The Honeymoon Hotel (30 page)

I glanced at the phone. ‘Really?’

‘Well, edited highlights.’

‘Good! Lovely!’ I found myself leaning forwards towards the phone. ‘Lovely!’

Oops. No. Awkward. I sat back and found myself wishing that Joe would walk past so I could lean on his charms to smooth these two down.

Then I remembered no one else could know about it. Bollocks.

‘Em’s hoping to be back next month.’ Chloë’s face lit up, and she looked excited for the first time. ‘She’s been reshooting a tiny part she had Benedict’s film, so her schedule’s up in the air, but fingers crossed she’ll make it back. It’d be a shame for
her to miss out on the fun bits like the cake tasting.’ She held up her crossed fingers.

I held mine up too, and smiled.

Maybe the shooting helicopters only delivered half a wish. The rest you had to work on yourself.

To everyone’s surprise, but mainly mine, Helen and Wynn’s wedding ceremony at the end of May wasn’t going to take place in the hotel, even though Laurence offered to give them free venue hire, use of the honeymoon suite, and also the services of a top wedding planner (me) as his gift.

Instead Helen accepted the generous offer of the top wedding planner, but told me that they’d decided to get married in a hidden-away Welsh chapel in the City, ‘where there will be decent singing,’ according to Wynn, and beautiful backdrops for the photographs, according to Nevin, who was giving them a mates’ rates package.

‘It’s sweet of Laurence,’ Helen explained over our first official wedding planning lunch in a pub round the corner from the chapel, ‘but I already feel as if I’m a bit married
to
the hotel as it is. I don’t want to be married
in
the hotel. And Wynn’s mum wants him to have a proper Welsh service. The whole family’s coming on a bus. And there’ll be a choir.’

Wynn nodded. He’d taken the morning off to choose wedding bands and already looked as if he’d reached the outer limits of his interest in the process. But being a good-natured bloke, he
was hiding it by nodding a lot and (probably) thinking about his stag do, which Helen had agreed would be a rugby international match of his choice.

‘And you’ll be pleased to know,’ he added to me, as our lunch arrived, ‘that Helen’s selected her retinue. No open auditions or weight testing required.’

‘It’s just going to be you and Joe,’ Helen confirmed, tucking into her steak pie. ‘And possibly Gemma, if she promises not to cry like she does at everyone else’s weddings. I’m thinking
bridesmates
. I’m trendsetting here. What?’ She looked up at me, fork poised over the shortcrust pastry.

‘Nothing. You’re just the first bride I’ve seen who eats
more
after the engagement,’ I observed.

Helen snorted, and reached for the tomato sauce. ‘It’s been a long morning. I’m hungry. What’s the point of going on a stupid diet just when I need the energy most? We’re in March already, the wedding’s in under ten weeks. I’m hardly going to lose much between now and then. I don’t want to be like that girl you had to sew into her dress and force-feed baklava, only to have her pass out on the wedding cake.’

Wynn looked startled.

‘Delphine was furious,’ I explained. ‘You can’t easily repair a cake with a whole face imprint on the top layer.’

‘Still, the French swearing brought her round quickly enough.’

‘And I want to marry the beautiful woman I met in the first place,’ said Wynn. ‘Not some too-skinny, fake-tanned version.’ He stopped smiling at Helen long enough to give me a stern
look. ‘Helen’s been telling me about what happens to women when they get onto this wedding conveyor belt thing. It’s your job as chief bridesmaid to stop her changing at all, please.’

‘Aw, thanks, babe,’ said Helen, and grabbed his big hand.

‘Please stop,’ I said faintly.

*

Wynn left us to head back to his surgery, and Helen and I caught a bus through the City. It was a lovely spring day, the sort of day when London feels fresh and positive, the pigeons gleam with reflected sunlight, and people smile as they barge each other off the pavement.

‘You’re in a good mood,’ Helen observed when we alighted at Leicester Square and walked through the crowds of tourists towards Piccadilly and the hotel.

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, you are.’ She scrutinized me. ‘And I know why.’

‘Why?’ I smiled benevolently at a motionless Japanese tourist and didn’t tell him that the first rule of walking in London is never ever stop walking ever, not even if it means going round in a giant circle.

‘It’s because you’re over Dominic.’

The certainty in Helen’s voice surprised me. I’d been expecting her to say, ‘Because you’re doing well at work,’ or ‘Because Tiffany Noakes’s wedding was in the back of
Tatler
.’ But actually … she was right. It was days since I’d read one of Dominic’s columns, digging my nails into my palms whenever the word
Betty
appeared. I’d actually forgotten that today was one of his review days.

Blimey.

‘See?’ Helen pointed at me. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘You might be,’ I said, and realized that I was happy about it. Or rather, I didn’t feel sad any more. It was like a scab had fallen off, to reveal perfectly smooth healed skin underneath.

How had that happened? How had that low ache of misery suddenly worn off … almost without me noticing? ‘I thought it’d take longer than this,’ I mused aloud. ‘Huh.’

‘I know why, too,’ Helen went on.

We’d reached the pedestrian crossings at Piccadilly Circus, waiting for the lights to change so that the slow ribbon of black taxis and red buses would stop to let us cross, and we could be mown down by cycle couriers instead.

‘And why’s that?’ I glanced across at her. ‘Actually, don’t tell me – I know. It’s work. I’ve been too frantic with meetings to think about Dominic and his stupid reviews. But that’s a good thing, for once, so don’t give me the You Work Too Hard, Get a Life lecture.’

Helen gave me a withering look normally reserved for waiters who couldn’t manage more than three plates at a time. ‘What? No, of course it’s not that.’

‘It is.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake … of course it isn’t.’

‘Well, what is it then? Are you going to say it’s because I didn’t really love Dominic in the first place?’

So far, Helen hadn’t sunk to the usual depths of most smug fiancées when it came to extolling the joys of finding The One, but there was always a first time.

She looked at me for a long moment; then the green man appeared above the crossing. ‘If you don’t know,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to work it out for yourself.’

‘What? What’s that supposed to mean?’ I stared at the back of her immaculate French pleat as she strode across the zebra crossing, but when I caught up with her, Helen changed the subject and insisted on talking about birdcage veils and whether it would be a classy Grace Kelly move to learn her vows in Welsh to surprise Wynn.

*

And so as March turned into April, the flowerbeds in our paved wedding garden burst into life, and the hats got smaller and the shoes got strappier as we headed towards the peak weekends of May and June.

The eager women I’d first met in the autumn were now blooming into fully fledged nutjobs as their big days hove into view: Jessie Callum had taken my suggestion to choreograph a dance so seriously that she and her fiance were now doing ballroom classes, and Daisy Wallace had gone on such a radical diet/makeover since our first meeting that it was a good job I had a photo of her on the Bridelizer, or else I wouldn’t have recognized her at the cake tasting. (I had to taste the cake for her and describe it.) Thanks to Ben and Emily’s Hollywood budget, and a few last-minute parties I squeezed into the events diary, I was still on track to make my target, just. I’d started to look for studio flats I could afford when I had my bonus in my hand, but it was a little half-hearted. To be honest, I wasn’t in a hurry to move out of the staff quarters.

Laurence, Joe and I had got into an easy flat-sharing routine, made even easier by Laurence’s frequent evenings out at either his friends’ clubs or his various medical treatments. I saw more of Joe, though his trips to the gym and my hours in the office meant that we tended to bump into each other quite late in the evenings, when he was working his way through seasons of various TV series that had passed him by while he was in the US. We piled the DVDs in a stack by the television, moving them up and down according to their rank in our Chart of Box Sets. I didn’t mind watching television with him, explaining key cultural details he’d missed during his years out of the UK while we ate pizza on the sofa. He didn’t seem to mind being around me either, and although we never mentioned my jilting or the Girl Who Broke His Heart again, the understanding between us grew, often when we both winced simultaneously at an on-screen dumping, or an awkward goodbye – and said nothing. Sometimes friendships are more about what you don’t say than what you do.

In short, life just felt easier. I couldn’t put my finger on why. It could have been the weather, which was mild for April and caused an outbreak of unseasonal shorts in Green Park. It could have been two different 2012 brides calling me to tell me they’d had babies and asking whether I could arrange christening parties at the Bonneville. (Of course I could! We offered discounts for that sort of thing.) It might even have been – and don’t laugh – down to the fact that I now automatically wished for good things every time I saw an air ambulance shoot across
the London skyline when I was standing at the kitchen sink washing up. And God knows there are always plenty of those, thanks to the rich tapestry of London nightlife.

Whatever was causing this streak of sunshine in my life, it peaked at the end of April, when three things happened unexpectedly.

The first thing was a strange call Gemma took for me, from a bride who called herself Janet.

‘Janet?’ I frowned. ‘Really? I don’t think we’ve ever had a Janet …’

‘She sounded like she knew you, though,’ said Gemma. ‘Asked for you specially. She wants to meet you at the Wolseley, at a time that suits you tomorrow.’

‘Not here? Not in the hotel?’ This was weird.

‘That’s what she said. Call her back and arrange it.’

I did. But it turned out that Janet wasn’t a bride. She wasn’t even called Janet. She was called Mary Waters, and when I met her at a discreet corner table, I discovered she was the HR director of the hotel that had catastrophically double-booked Emily and Benedict’s wedding.

‘I know you’re a busy woman so I’ll get to the point, Ms McDonald,’ she said briskly, ordering a large black coffee, no sugar, eggs Florentine, no muffin, sauce on the side, no butter, all without looking at the waiter. ‘We’ve just had to say goodbye to our events manager, Loren Symons. Very sad, new pastures, fresh challenges, blah, blah.’

Sacked, in other words. Sacked from a great height. Plus, she actually said ‘blah, blah.’ That’s how furious Mary Waters was
about her hotel losing the high-profile Quayle/Sharpe wedding – or ‘Benily’, as Gemma’s magazines referred to them.

‘I’m pleased to say that I’ve been tasked with finding a candidate who can kick our event portfolio up a gear,’ Mary went on, waving away the bread basket as if it contained used tissues. ‘Someone with a strong vision and ambition for our international profile going forward. I’ve long admired what you’ve been able to achieve at the Bonneville with a – don’t take this the wrong way – woefully limited resource set and second-division budget constraints. We’d be able to offer you a different class of hotel to play with, plus a larger dedicated hospitality team, a bigger salary, and, of course, a bonus incentive.’

I felt giddy with excitement. No one had ever headhunted me before. Also the coffee here was
much
stronger than at the Bonneville.

‘Would I be overseeing the whole events programme?’ I asked in a calm voice that didn’t sound much like mine. My mind whirled with the possibilities: I’d been to a wedding at this hotel with Dominic, and it was an amazing location, for any kind of event. Three ceremony rooms, a fully equipped conference suite with cinema, capacity for several hundred guests, a whole dedicated nursery for the hotel’s flower requirements, a Michelin-starred restaurant …

I saw Mary’s face, and faltered. ‘Or just weddings?’

‘You do seem to have a knack for delivering a particular kind of wedding,’ said Mary. ‘It’s all in the details. Obviously, we keep tabs on our competitors, and your details are absolutely
pin
-sharp. You really
run
events.’ She gave me a conspiratorial nod. ‘I’ve been talking to some of your very satisfied brides.’

‘Really?’ I just stopped myself asking,
Which ones?

‘Of course. They’re the best referrers. I’m surprised your ears weren’t burning. In fact, more than one said how you made it feel as if she didn’t have to make a single decision.’ She nodded approvingly. ‘You’ve clearly got excellent client management skills. Nothing worse than a bride ruining a spectacular wedding by making emotional decisions.’

I smiled, but my buoyant mood was suddenly brought up short.

A bride ruining a spectacular wedding by making emotional decisions?
What?

It sounded so controlling. And mean. And yet it was something I knew I’d said to Helen before now. I’d said it to Joe, too: it was better to guide the bride into the decision I could see was best for her, rather than have her make some sugar-deprived snap judgement. I’d been joking, obviously, but …

I started to feel a bit cold. Mary sounded so pleased with herself. Was that what I sounded like?

But Mary didn’t seem bothered at all. Her food arrived, and she began to dispatch it efficiently, still talking. ‘The directors would be very keen to have an informal chat with you about the possibility of your taking on this role within our organization,’ she said. ‘As you know, we have sister hotels in New York and Paris, so there’s the possibility of travel.’

I shoved my misgivings to one side. For the time being. I’d changed my wedding style over the year. Well, not changed. Evolved.

‘And could I bring any of my team with me?’ I thought of Gemma and – yes – Helen and Joe, too. Even Delphine. They made the Bonneville weddings what they were. They understood my shorthand. They knew my discreet hand signals for ‘drunk bridesmaid’, ‘lost usher’, ‘bridal loo emergency’.

I had a flashback to the hysterical bride in the huge crinoline who’d overdone the champagne but couldn’t fit into the loo cubicle. Helen had had the brainwave of getting Ripley’s old potty from Laurence’s flat. The chief bridesmaid had volunteered to hold it in return for front-row positioning on the bouquet tossing. Thank God the bride had seen the funny side.

Mary’s voice snapped me back to the moment. ‘We do have specialists within the department,’ she said, and I heard a no. I also heard,
hotel that probably wouldn’t have a Teletubbies potty to hand
.