The Summer Without You (3 page)

The bride was on the dance floor – veil shed like a snake’s skin – and had changed into a strapless miniskirted version of her wedding dress, the groom nowhere to be seen. She
was standing with her hands on her hips, a gaggle of nervous ushers variously trying to persuade her to dance/drink/take a seat. But the more solicitous they became, the more her eyes narrowed.

Ro’s gaze quickly skirted the room for the groom too. She couldn’t see the maid of honour anywhere either, and from what she’d glimpsed earlier . . . Oh dear, this wasn’t
good, not good at all.

She walked quickly round the perimeter of the ballroom. Everyone was waiting for the first dance so that they could get on with hitting the dance floor themselves, and the absence of the groom
and maid of honour was becoming more conspicuous by the minute.

Ro reached the doors and looked out into the hallway. Some smaller rooms had also been reserved for the wedding – cloakrooms, bathrooms – including a modest, quiet conference room
that had been set up specifically for interviewing the bride and groom’s friends and families for the video that Ro would splice and edit back in the UK.

She padded silently across the hallway in her rubber-soled shoes. A few of the older guests were already collecting their coats, some men checking their texts on the way back from the
toilets.

She was passing a mobile photo booth when a sprinkle of flirtatious laughter stopped her in her tracks. The curtain was drawn, the light popping as shots were taken. Just in sight – though
she’d almost walked straight past them – she saw a white shirt and a pair of black trousers had been stuffed round the back of the booth.

Ro hesitated. Kicking out below the curtain was the distinctive blue silk hem of a bridesmaid dress. Oh no. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. No way was this marriage imploding on its
very first day. There could be no break-up until
after
she’d been paid.

Looking around her quickly to check that no one was watching, she bent double, searching for the pair of legs that must be, now, trouserless, and in the booth too.

They were.

She heard more laughter from behind the curtain, a low buzz of muted voices. ‘No!’ a female voice screeched delightedly, clearly meaning ‘yes’, as the light popped
again.

Ro rolled her eyes and reached down for the discarded clothes – how reckless? – just as she heard the furious rat-a-tat-tat of stilettos on the marble floor behind her.

She looked down at the clothes balled in her hand and turned in the same instant she switched them behind her back, a frozen smile on her face.

‘Have you seen my husband?’ the bride demanded, her eyes scanning the empty spaces of the corridors like a sparrowhawk hunting mice.

Without visibly moving, Ro threw the clothes behind her, hearing just a soft, muffled
thwump
as they fell to the floor of the booth. ‘Uh, no . . . now you mention it, I
haven’t seen him recently. I was just in the loos and he wasn’t there.’ The bride scowled. ‘In the bathroom, I mean . . . obviously.’

The booth began to hum, vibrating softly, and the bride looked behind Ro, her attention diverted. She looked at the drawn curtain. ‘Who’s in there?’

‘In there?’ Ro echoed, her voice an octave higher than usual. ‘Um, no one.’

‘The drape is drawn.’ She bent to the side. ‘And I can see legs. Someone’s in there.’

Ro looked down. At least the legs she could see were encased in black trousers again. ‘Oh yes, of course. And, uh . . . you’re right. Obviously someone’s in there. It’s
just not . . . your husband.’

The bride’s eyes narrowed suspiciously again.

A sudden whirring started up and they both looked down as a strip of photos slid out. The bride reached for them, but Ro got there first, whipping them away before either of them could set eyes
on the images. ‘Uh . . . I can’t let you see those.’

‘Why not?’ the bride demanded furiously.

‘Because—’

But the bride wasn’t hanging around to hear Ro’s story and in the next instant she had flashed open the curtain. Her jaw dropped at the sight of her maid of honour and the waiter who
had fed Ro only twenty minutes earlier smiling back at her, a sign hanging from the bridesmaid’s neck.

‘What the . . . ?’ the bride stormed.

The waiter locked eyes with Ro, who was looking on, open-mouthed with shock. They both knew he was going to get fired for this.

‘It’s not what you think,’ Ro said, hurriedly closing the curtain again, much to everyone’s astonishment.

‘Why is . . . why is my maid of honour standing in that booth with a
waiter
and wearing a sign that reads—’

‘It’s a surprise!’ Ro blurted out. ‘For the video.’

The bride blinked at her.

‘Yes, uh . . . I mean, it may not work, but . . . we thought we’d give it a go and . . . if it doesn’t work, I’ll leave it out. It’s just good to have options,
that’s all.’

She nodded frantically, smiled manically, her fingers threading through the strap of the camera round her neck.

‘But what—’ At that moment, the groom appeared from the men’s bathroom, fiddling with his cuffs.

‘Where have you been?’ the bride shrieked as he walked over, taking in the testy scene. ‘Everyone’s waiting for our first dance.’

‘Well, I’m ready when you are, baby,’ the groom shrugged, as his bride grabbed him by the elbow and steered him back to the ballroom.

‘Hayley!’ the bride snapped over her shoulder. ‘Are you
coming
?’

The maid of honour peeped out through the curtain, giggling nervously and mouthing ‘thanks’ to Ro as she skittered past.

A moment later, the waiter peered round the curtain. ‘Is it safe to come out?’

‘Just about.’ Ro turned back to him.

‘I don’t know how to thank you. You saved my ass for sure,’ he said, buttoning up his shirt and hurriedly tucking it back into his trousers. He reached over and picked up the
tray she hadn’t noticed sitting on a side table just a short distance away. ‘You don’t know how badly I need this money.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, I figure one good turn deserves another.’

‘Here. By way of thanks,’ he said, pulling something from his back pocket.

‘What’s this?’ she asked as he handed her a small card. She noticed a smudge of dark pink lipstick near his ear.

‘A friend’s having a party tomorrow night. Just tell ’em, “Shaddywack”.’

‘Huh?’

But he was already back on duty, walking towards a group of guests with his tray.

She looked down at the card he’d handed her:

She shook her head, slightly baffled, before remembering the photos still in her other hand. She looked at them and squinted in disbelief: the maid of honour was variously pouting and laughing
at the camera, her hands in her hair, the waiter bare-chested with a buttonhole rose behind his ear, nuzzling her neck. Ro looked at the hand-painted sign round the bridesmaid’s neck and
sighed: ‘Get Humped this summer.’ What did it even mean? And, more to the point, how the hell was she going to work it into a wedding film?

Eight p.m. and the city was out for the night. Ro leaned against the wall, pretending to text, as the clique in Brooks Brothers suits stopped at the door ten metres further up
and spoke in lowered tones to the doorman. Rowena followed them with her eyes, her gaze fixed on the magnums in their hands. They were the sixth group to pass her so far brandishing premier cru by
way of identity. She thought of the ridged glass jar in her pocket. How, in all seriousness, could she hand that over by way of hers?

Ro sighed and looked away. She’d been standing here for twenty minutes now trying to work up the courage to go in, but she’d seen enough to convince her there was little point. She
pushed herself back to standing and stared down the long avenue. Tail lights glowed red into the distance even though the traffic lights were green. The milky sky she could only glimpse in
fragments was leaching into a shadowy dusk, and everyone clearly had somewhere to be, except her.

She turned a circle on the spot, not sure which way to go. She couldn’t go back to the hotel room, not without losing her sanity. She’d spent eight hours in there already today,
downloading yesterday’s wedding images onto her laptop and whittling out a first edit, but she couldn’t really scrutinize them until she got them under the magnifying loupe back home.
There was a gym in the hotel basement, but she had long taken the view that being a DD cup was God’s way of saying she shouldn’t exercise. And she felt too conspicuously alone to sit at
a restaurant table reading a book and pretending that it was fine, that it was her choice.

A couple of women, deep in animated conversation, were walking towards her, or rather the door just past her – gold foil bottle-tops clearly visible through their closed fists – and
she turned in the opposite direction, not wanting to come face to face with what she wasn’t. She wasn’t slick and metropolitan, the kind of woman to walk alone into a party. She
wasn’t like Matt, bold and adventurous, somewhere in the Cambodian mountains, living his dream and trekking in the Elephant Mountains for fun
.

No. She was standing outside a skyscraper that had a party at the top and she was too scared to go in and chat, even to pretty much the only person who’d talked to her in the three weeks
since Matt had left. She hated that she couldn’t make herself go in, hated that she was even contemplating it in the first place. Was she really that desperate? How could she be this pathetic
without him? Since when had she blurred into his shadow, losing her own angles and borders, merging into him and becoming subsumed?

A cab pulled to the kerb ahead of her and she saw the woman inside handing over notes from the back seat as she continued a seemingly intense conversation she was having on the phone, head
bobbing frantically in profile. Ro ran over and waited patiently for the busy girl to get out. She didn’t care where she went; she just had to get out of here.

The door opened and one lean, toned leg swung out with a stiletto heel at one end and a sharp pencil skirt at the other. Ro looked down at her own boyfriend jeans and jade-green hi-tops. Was she
actually the only woman in New York not wearing heels?

‘No, no, that’s not working for me. The pitch is already maxed as it is.’ The girl glanced disinterestedly at Ro as she got out, reaching back for a large A1-sized portfolio
with her free hand as she kept her other hand – and the phone in it – clamped to her ear. ‘Well, if they can’t go up, they’ll have to go down. There’s no other
way. They certainly can’t go out.’

The portfolio behind her jammed between the door frames, pulling her back towards the cab, and she tugged at it, the rigid leather sides bowing slightly. Ro leaned forward to nudge it free at
one side, seeing – to her astonishment – the far door open on the other side of the bench seat and a pair of dark grey flannel legs bending in.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, straightening up to make furious eye contact with the legs’ owner above the cab, but he was already sliding in. She quickly bent down again, just as the
pointed, metal-capped corner of the portfolio suddenly came unstuck and jabbed her hard in the eye.

She gasped and reeled backwards, tripping over the kerb and banging her head against a lamp post as she went down. Just for good measure.

‘Oh what? Goddammit!’ she heard the girl mutter. ‘Jerry, I’ll have to call you back . . . Yeah, yeah . . . Hey! You OK?’

Ro, her hand clamped like a patch over one eye, shook her head, trying not to cry. She was seeing flashes of red behind the shut lid as her eye began to stream. It was her ‘working’
eye, the one she used to peer through the lens.

‘What were you
doing
? Couldn’t you see I hadn’t gotten out?’ the girl demanded in a tone that suggested this was Ro’s fault.

‘I was helping you,’ Rowena spluttered. It was impossible to open even the ‘good’ eye: that one was streaming too.

‘Helping? You were
helping
a stranger in Manhattan? What are you, crazy?’

‘English, actually,’ Ro replied petulantly.

‘That figures.’

They fell into silence, but even with her eyes shut, Ro could tell the girl was still there, crouched by her. Horns were hooting in frustration at the hold-ups further down the street, and Ro
could hear people muttering as they had to dodge her on the pavement. How inconvenient of her to hold them up like this . . .

‘I suppose the cab’s gone,’ Ro said, trying to scramble to her feet with both her eyes scrunched shut. She felt the girl’s hand on her elbow, lightly guiding her back
up.

‘Yeah. Shall I get you another? Least I could do.’ The girl’s tone was slightly more friendly as Ro’s enduring distress became more evident.

‘Thanks,’ Ro mumbled, turning her face down and removing her hand from her eye, but the moment she opened it, it was like being lasered by a sharp white light and she winced in pain.
She reached out for the lamp post for support, swinging wildly for it and still missing.

The girl placed a hand on her arm. ‘Dammit, you can’t get in a cab if you can’t see where you’re going. Not in this city. And definitely not with you being
English
,’ she muttered under her breath, making Ro’s Englishness sound like an impediment. Ro heard her whistling through her teeth, trying to work out what to do. ‘Look,
I’m headed just over there anyway. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll take a better look inside? You can get some warm water on it, do a salt bath . . .’

Ro thought she might be pointing the way, but with both eyes weeping copiously, she couldn’t be certain. She nodded silently, letting the girl take her arm and lead her towards wherever
‘there’ was. It wasn’t like she had a lot of choice.