The Wedding Diary (Choc Lit) (21 page)

As Cat and Tess drew up in Tess’s ancient Peugeot – Cat’s even older Honda Civic was out of circulation at the moment – they saw at once that Fanny’s barn was gorgeous.

It was built of local flint and weathered, blush-red brick. Its narrow, arching windows sparkled in the summer sunshine, and its pantiled roof was mossed and lichened to perfection. The original doors had been removed, and now one side was glass.

It was huge, as well. She wondered how much life she’d spend emulsioning and glossing this gigantic place as she repaid her debt to Fanny Gregory and Supadoop Promotions. Maybe she should go to a solicitor, after all? But what would a solicitor cost? She didn’t have any money to waste on going to see solicitors.

Maybe getting some experience of DIY would stand her in good stead? She was ashamed to realise that apart from toe and fingernails she’d never painted anything in her life.

‘Good morning, ladies!’ As Cat stood there wondering, debating with herself, Fanny came striding from the barn with Caspar at her heels, and Cat saw she looked different today.

She wasn’t in her usual business suit. She was wearing smart designer jeans and an expensive Chloe shirt that Cat had seen in
Vogue
and coveted. She wasn’t wearing any obvious make-up. She looked casual, happy and relaxed, and ten years younger, too.

‘Cat of course I know,’ she said, ‘but you are?’

‘Tess,’ said Cat. ‘She works with me, and she’s come to help me with the painting. I hope that’s all right?’

‘The more the merrier, that’s what I always say,’ chirped Fanny brightly. ‘Well, I sometimes say it. Politicians, civil servants, tax inspectors, social workers, union representatives – the fewer of people like them we have, the better, obviously. Well, girls, don’t just stand there, come inside – I’ll show you round.’

Cat and Tess exchanged a shrug, a raising of the eyebrows and a widening of the eyes, then did as they were told. They followed Fanny and Caspar down a hallway into an enormous atrium, full of sunlight pouring in like honey through the arching windows, and they gasped.

‘Fanny, this is wonderful,’ breathed Cat.

‘Yeah, it’s amazing,’ Tess said softly, like somebody afraid to break a spell.

‘Do you think so, darlings?’ Fanny grinned. ‘I’m so glad you like it. I must admit I had some tiny doubts about the atrium. But now it’s nearly finished I’m quite pleased with it myself.’

She laid her small white hand on her black greyhound’s sleek dark head. ‘Caspar loves it, don’t you, angel?’

Caspar looked at Fanny with adoration in his lovely eyes, as usual rapt by every single word his mistress spoke.

‘Cool dog,’ said Tess.

Cat hadn’t expected Fanny to be there.

She’d supposed she and Tess would be alone, that there’d be instructions somewhere, maybe saying the keys were with a neighbour, that the paint and stuff was in the garage, and to get on with it.

On the way they’d stopped off at a supermarket, where they’d bought some food they could eat cold – little pots of salad, pasta, yogurts, cakes and cookies (Tess had insisted on the cakes and cookies) and a big box of organic muesli (Cat had insisted on the muesli and forbidden Tess to buy a box of sugar-coated, additive-rich rubbish). They’d also bought some fruit, some smoothies and, in case there happened to be a kettle, some teabags and a couple of pints of milk.

They had been expecting to sleep on bare stone floors – they’d brought their sleeping bags – and the best they’d hoped for in the way of luxury was water, electricity and a roof over their heads.

The kitchen had been finished, Fanny told them, and so had all the bathrooms. But there was still an awful lot to do – all the painting, naturally, and the carpeting, and buying lots of lovely china, pictures, rugs and furniture. She’d have to ask a stylist, see what he could suggest. She knew most of the influential ones. She would go to Liberty because they had the most amazing things.

‘I’ve coffee on the hob,’ she added, as she led them into the most luxurious, biggest kitchen Cat had ever seen. ‘Yes, my darling girls – as of today I have a functioning stove at last! Oh, the bliss, the bliss!’

‘Where do you want me to start working?’ Cat asked Fanny, as she poured them coffee from a very expensive-looking pot.

‘Oh, sweetheart, don’t you worry about work! Or not right now, at any rate.’ Fanny twinkled merrily at Tess. ‘This girl, you know, she’s quite obsessed with work! Fanny, she says, I have to go to work. Fanny, I have a job. Fanny, I can’t take time off. So conscientious – I hope her boss appreciates it. Do you work together, did you say?’

Tess was saying nothing. She was gazing round in awe like someone in an abbey or cathedral, taking in the huge American appliances, the polished granite surfaces, the gleaming chromium fittings and the snow-white porcelain sinks.

‘Sit down, darlings,’ Fanny told them, sitting down herself at an enormous kitchen table. Cat guessed it must have come from France, from some old farmhouse in the Lot or the Dordogne.

Or maybe it had come from China? You could get some brilliant stuff from China nowadays, and not even Barry could always tell the genuine from the fake or reproduction.

Last week, he’d almost bought some chairs which he had been convinced were genuine Victorian balloon backs. But when he had upended them to check, he’d found them stamped with Chinese characters.

‘The milk is in the frother, and there are some biscuits in that yellow box,’ continued Fanny. ‘I had them from a client yesterday, so they should be all right. They won’t be going soft yet, anyway.’

She took a couple of sips of coffee, dunked a biscuit, took a bite. ‘Why do you look so jittery, my angels?’ she enquired. ‘Cat, my sweet, stop staring at the ceiling. There are no hidden cameras there, you know.’ She twinkled merrily again. ‘Do you think, my love, with your suspicious mind, you ought to work for MI5?’

‘I’m sorry, Fanny.’ Cat had just been wondering how long it would take to paint the bloody ceiling, not looking for cameras or bugs. ‘This is delicious coffee, by the way.’

‘Thank you, Cat. It comes from Italy. You were probably drinking something similar yourself a week or two ago. That’s if you went to any decent restaurants, of course.’ Fanny sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in Italy nowadays – I really don’t. Italians have the best cuisine in Europe, but there are American fast food outlets everywhere. When I was last in Rome, there was one right opposite the Pantheon – talk about putting diamond buttons on a pair of ghastly chain store jeans. I was so relieved when someone told me it’s not there any more.’

‘What’s the Pantheon?’ Tess asked Fanny, making Fanny sigh again and roll her big blue eyes.

‘Google it, my angel,’ she told Tess.

Cat was hoping coffee would help her to relax a bit before she started painting. But before she and Tess had finished drinking, Fanny was on her feet again.

‘My darlings, we must dash,’ she said. ‘We need go to Marks and Spencer straight away.’

‘Do they sell paint?’ asked Cat.

‘I don’t think so, sweetie pie.’ Fanny frowned and looked at Cat in puzzlement. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I thought – why are we going, then?’

‘I need to buy some food,’ said Fanny, in the tone of voice some people used when talking to the stupid, very young or elderly bewildered. ‘Luckily for us, the biggest M and S in Europe’s down the road in Camberley. You girls can come and help me. You can push the trolleys, angels – that’s if you don’t mind?’

She stroked her dog’s dark head then took his face between her hands and gazed into his amber eyes. ‘Caspar, darling heart,’ she whispered, ‘they won’t let you into Marks and Spencer. So you’ll have to stay and guard this place for us. We won’t be very long.’

‘We’ll bring you back a treat, mate,’ promised Tess.

‘You said she was a cow,’ said Tess, as they got out of Fanny’s gorgeous purple BMW and headed for the trolley park.

‘I never, ever told you that,’ hissed Cat. ‘So keep your voice down, can’t you?’

‘But you made me think she was a bitch.’ Tess released a mega-giant-size trolley and pulled one out for Cat. ‘I was expecting some horrible old vampire, with yellow teeth and hair like frizzy orange candyfloss and liver-spotted hands like rotting claws. But she’s really pretty and she’s very nice as well.’

‘I dare say even Stalin had his less psychotic days.’

‘She calls us angels, too.’

‘She calls everybody angel, darling, sweetheart, love, even when she’s tearing out their throats, my loves, and barbecuing their livers on her flash new high-speed grill, my angels, sweethearts, darling girls.’

‘I say Fanny Gregory’s all right. I like her dog, as well.’

‘We’re not in dispute about her dog.’

‘I think you’re over-sensitive,’ said Tess. ‘You should be less defensive and less prone to take offence. You should have done that psychic test and analysed your personality. If you could only understand yourself, you would be less likely to have such extreme reactions to everyone you meet.’

‘Okay, have it your way,’ muttered Cat. ‘Come on, she wants to get her shopping.’

So Tess and Cat pushed trolleys round the store, and Fanny filled them up with food and wine and bunches of delicious-smelling white and pink and cream and purple flowers.

‘This is the sort of stuff you buy for parties,’ whispered Tess as Fanny stuck more bottles in her trolley – half a dozen magnums of respectable old brandy, four dozen bottles of pink champagne – then scurried off towards the dips and salsas.

‘Or for wakes,’ said Cat.

She glanced down at the contents of her trolley, seeing all the bottles of expensive blood-red wine and plastic packs of blood-red strawberries, pots of clotted cream and boxes of exquisite cakes – the bite-sized sort you ate in just one mouthful – tiny scones already filled with cream and blood-red jam, puddings slashed with blood-red raspberry coulis.

She realised she felt sick.

‘Anything we can find for you?’ asked Tess, as Fanny dropped a giant box of savoury crackers in her giant trolley.

‘No thank you, darling,’ said Fanny with a twinkle. ‘All you have to do is follow me.’ Then she was off again.

‘I know she’s up to something,’ Cat told Tess. ‘She’s got that manic look, the one she had at Melbury Court when she was bossing me about that day.’

‘Or she’s stocking up her great big freezer?’ Tess picked up a box of little cakes. ‘You can freeze these babies. It says so on the pack.’

‘They can’t be for the freezer, or she’d have bought the ready-frozen versions, wouldn’t she?’ Cat looked worriedly at Tess. ‘What’s with all the lilies? They’re the sort you get at funerals.’

‘Or at Satanic rituals,’ Tess suggested ghoulishly.

‘God,’ said Cat and shuddered.

‘So maybe you were right,’ said Tess. She glanced across the store at Fanny who was out of earshot, busy hoovering up some trays of sushi and bresaola. ‘Maybe Fanny Gregory is a witch, and tonight she’s having a black mass. You’re going to be a human sacrifice. You’ll be lying naked on a bed of pure white lilies, bound and gagged. I saw this film a year or two ago. It was on Channel 4. I think it was Romanian or Hungarian, or Eastern European, anyway. When they lit these big black candles, they—’

‘Tess, don’t even joke about it, right?’

‘I’m not joking, mate.’ Tess grinned at Cat. ‘Your number’s up, your die is cast, your hour is come. I reckon this will teach you to enter competitions to win luxury dream weddings.’

‘Shut up, you fool, she’s coming back.’

Twenty minutes later they were at the checkout, with Cat and Tess unloading and repacking, and Fanny paying with her Amex Gold.

‘Five hundred quid, and that’s on food alone, not counting all the flowers and wine,’ said Tess, as they loaded everything into the BMW. ‘Who’s going to eat it all?’

‘God only knows,’ said Cat.

When they arrived back at the barn, Caspar welcomed them delightedly. Fanny put Cat in charge of flower arranging. ‘I want big, bold statements,’ she began, pushing a huge bunch of blowsy peonies at Cat. ‘Over-indulgence, overflowing gorgeousness, extreme extravagance – you understand?’

‘You’re the boss,’ said Cat, who was now wondering if this was yet another stupid dream, if this was the year of crazy dreams, if in fact she’d ever been awake, if she’d have to go to see that tantric disentangler guy in Catford after all.

Maybe she’d been in an accident and she was in a coma and none of this was happening? If so, maybe she could write a book about it when at last she did come round? She could get it syndicated in the Sunday papers, couldn’t she? She’d heard they paid a lot of money for that sort of thing.

As well as all the gorgeous flowers, Fanny had bought a dozen plain glass vases. Cat began to fill them, trying to arrange the flowers as Fanny wanted them, white lilies and pink peonies in heavenly-scented masses, spikes of mauve delphiniums with foaming greenery.

Where was Rosie, wondered Cat, as she stripped off big green leaves and snipped at ends of stems with a pair of flower arranger’s scissors which had been thrust into her hand. She was Fanny Gregory’s assistant, after all. So surely it was Rosie’s job to go to Marks and Spencer, buy food for Fanny’s freezer, do Fanny’s flower arrangements, things like that?