Dominic scratched his head and swept his gaze over the garden again. ‘Dougie here?’
‘No,’ Patricia said in a stony voice before Emma had any opportunity to reply herself.
And while getting angry might feel good for a while, it wouldn’t change anything and so she’d vowed not to. She was annoyed, of course, but that was a different thing entirely. She was frustrated that Dougie had failed to see what today meant to her, and she was also sad that what meant a lot to her meant – if the evidence was anything to go by – absolutely nothing to him, because it meant she herself meant nothing to him.
She’d left phone messages and texts. She’d allowed herself, on the odd occasion, to imagine that he’d been genuinely held up, and she’d even aired the worry to her aunt that he might actually be in trouble (though Patricia had given that theory short shrift, reasoning that if Dougie ever had trouble Emma would be the first person he’d come to, expecting her to sort it out). In the end, even if he wasn’t able to get here for the setting-up, Emma could only hope he’d arrive with the rest of the guests in plenty of time for Elise’s surprise. She liked to think that, knowing this was important, he’d at least make the effort to do that much. But these days, Dougie doing anything that selfless was an increasingly vain hope.
‘I’m going to get changed if we’re done here,’ Emma said. ‘Mind if I borrow the spare room?’
‘Help yourself,’ Patricia said. ‘I’m going to freshen up too before the guests start arriving.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Can you keep an eye on things here while we get ready?’
‘If you can trust me not to start eating the food while you’re missing,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind telling you my stomach thinks my mouth’s gone on strike.’
Patricia gave the sternest, most comical mock frown. ‘Don’t you dare! I’ll know if so much as a slice of cucumber has gone missing!’
‘She will as well,’ Emma said with a laugh. ‘She nearly broke my fingers earlier when I went in for a carrot baton.’
‘In that case I’d better try and manage a bit longer,’ Dominic said. ‘But don’t blame me if you find me fainted clean away when you come back down.’
‘Honestly…’ Patricia said as she and Emma began to walk back to the house, ‘he should have been on the stage; he’s such a drama queen.’
Emma grinned, and then turned to shoot her uncle a face of sympathetic solidarity. He returned it with a silent shaking fist to his wife’s back and Emma burst out laughing.
‘I don’t need to ask to know what you’re doing!’ Patricia called blithely, not even bothering to look back.
Patricia and Dominic were amongst the handful of people Emma loved most in the world and she loved them at this moment just about more than anyone. It was moments like this that had made them so important to her, because after her mother’s death Emma had needed not only emotional support, but, as a child of only eight years old, she’d desperately needed to find some joy in her life again. Dominic and Patricia had given her that in spades. They’d supported her during her darkest days and they’d shown her light again when her shell-shocked father had been unable to. Emma’s dad had struggled to process even the smallest things his new life as a single father had demanded of him and for a while he’d become selfish, resentful, unwilling to acknowledge that anyone else’s grief might be as vast as his.
He hadn’t meant to be – Emma knew that now – but as a girl it had been hard to understand that he was expressing himself in the only way he was capable of – shouting into the void, demanding answers from a universe that refused to give them. His wife had been taken and he’d wanted to know why. Emma and Elise’s mother had been taken too, but Emma had often been so wrapped up in her dad’s needs that she’d been robbed of the time she’d needed to process that. She’d known that it hurt, but it had taken a long time to really understand why.
In the end, Patricia and Dominic had provided the space and time for her to do that. She and Elise had spent many weekends at their house, just being silly and spoiled and carefree and all the things kids were supposed to be. Her dad had got better as the years went on, but he’d never really been the same since Felicia’s death. And as adults, if ever Emma or Elise had needed support, it was Dominic and Patricia who had almost always provided it.
Up in the spare room Emma slipped on a long floral dress. It was baby pink and white and about as girly as she got, but it had been hanging in the wardrobe since she’d bought it on offer at the tail end of the previous summer and this was the first time since that the weather had been good enough to wear it. She didn’t need any more reason than that and had happily pulled it from her wardrobe this morning to iron it for its maiden outing.
The colour was delicate but it suited her winter complexion – though she’d have loved to wear them, stronger colours overpowered it. Her mousey hair had been given a helping hand to something more impactful with the aid of a bottle of blonde hair dye, but the sage green of her eyes was the same as her mother’s and aunt’s. She had a figure so straight up and down that an unkind classmate had once teased her she could iron clothes on it, to which another had added that she’d look like a boy with short hair – and in a world of Kim Kardashian-style booties it was deeply unfashionable. Still, she’d got used to the way her body looked and she’d even learned to love it; if only she’d been born in the roaring twenties she’d have made one hell of a flapper girl, cutting a dash at all the best parties. Perhaps a little unconsciously, to redress the balance somewhat, she tended towards ultra-feminine looks, wearing all manner of soft pastel fabrics and leaving her hair in loose curls.
She gave herself one last glance in the mirror now, fluffed her waves, touched up her lipstick and hurried back downstairs so she’d be ready and waiting to direct the first guests to their hiding places.
Patricia was already in the garden, looking gorgeous in wide-legged linen trousers and a vest top that showed off a figure earned by daily yoga. Her features mirrored those of her nieces in the uncanniest way; the same features that Emma recognised from old photos of her mum. These days, photos often felt like the only way she could recall what her mum had looked like – as the years had gone by Emma had struggled more and more to picture her, no matter how hard she’d tried to hold on to the memories.
Her aunt looked up from an extension lead she was plugging in. ‘You look lovely.’
Emma smiled. ‘I was just going to say the same thing to you.’
Dominic came out from the kitchen and handed her a drink. ‘Thought you might like a nice G&T to get you started. You’ve certainly earned it today.’
‘I feel as if I have.’ Emma took the glass and sipped, savouring the ice-cold crispness of a perfectly mixed drink. ‘It’s not even my party but I’m as nervous as hell. I suppose I just want it to go well.’
‘Everyone knows how much you care about Elise,’ Patricia said. ‘It’s understandable you’d want her send-off to be perfect.’
There was a sound from the garden gate and they turned to see three girls trying to undo the latch. The guests had been instructed to come straight round the side of the house to the garden, so Emma and her aunt and uncle weren’t surprised to see Elise’s university friends letting themselves in.
‘Hi!’ Emma dashed forward to give them a hand undoing the gate before ushering them in. ‘I’m so glad you could come! You found us OK?’
‘The taxi driver did,’ one of them said with a light laugh. ‘We wouldn’t have had a clue.’
‘Well, however you found us, we’re glad,’ Patricia said. ‘Elise will be thrilled to see you.’
‘Yes,’ Emma agreed, ‘it’ll mean a lot to her that you’re here.’
‘Oh, we wouldn’t have missed this,’ another girl said. Emma vaguely knew them as Abigail, Sana and Olivia; she only wished she could remember who was who. ‘Even if Little-Miss-First-Class-Degree did show the rest of us up.’
The third girl laughed. ‘I think that might be something to do wit
h her actually working and us having too many mornings in bed.’
‘Oh yeah,’ the second said with a grin. ‘That’ll be it.’
Emma’s proud smile grew. Elise had worked hard but she was clever too – and nobody minded admitting she was the brains of the family.
As Patricia started to fill the girls in on the plan for the afternoon, two more guests arrived – tutors from Elise’s sixth-form college days. They were quickly followed by more family members (cousins from their dad’s side) and colleagues from the restaurant Elise had worked at to finance the last year of her studies. Then came Elise’s geography teacher from school and his wife – Elise had always said had it not been for Mr Baker firing her interest in the physical landscapes of mountains and lakes and the way the earth had been formed, she would never have gone on to her degree course in earth sciences, and she wouldn’t currently be about to embark on her dream job as a volcanologist.
Some old school friends came next, followed by more family members, and soon the garden was buzzing. As people who knew each other chatted and those who didn’t got acquainted, Patricia checked her watch and then hurried over to Emma.
‘They’ll be here in five minutes!’ she said. Emma didn’t need to ask who she meant and couldn’t help but note that her aunt, who’d been calm all morning, was now showing almost as much excitement and nervousness as Emma. ‘Shall we get everyone in position?’
Emma glanced around the garden. ‘It might take that long to get everyone organised so perhaps we ought to, just to be on the safe side.’
‘And knowing Elise she’ll decide to turn up early.’
‘There’s that,’ Emma agreed.
After calling three times for everyone’s attention, Emma and her aunt finally got started. They directed one giggling group to the summer house (and if Elise didn’t hear them giggling when she walked in then she probably needed a hearing aid because they didn’t seem to understand the concept of quiet or surprise). When the summer house was full they sent another group to stand in a gap between it and the fence behind it. The third group were directed to the far end of the garden to hide behind a wall of fruit trees, and the last ones stood around the corner of the main house. People continued to giggle and whisper and while Emma could hardly go around telling them to shut up, she hoped they would calm down before Elise arrived.
The one notable absence, Emma observed with a mixture of sadness, disappointment and anger, was her boyfriend Dougie. She didn’t even know why she was sad about it; she ought to have been used to being let down by him. When she thought about their relationship, her memory often played tricks, so that, in her mind, the slide into indifference was never quite as fast as it had been in reality.
In the early days he’d been so attentive, but the change had begun pretty soon after he’d hooked her. It had started with little things like being late to a date for no apparent reason, or making arrangements and changing them to suit him (despite the fact it really put her out), and then moved on to cancelling them altogether at the last minute. That had progressed further until he was missing events he was supposed to be attending with her entirely. He’d had a job in the beginning, a decent one at the council, but then he’d been made redundant. That had been followed by a bust-up with his parents that had seen him thrown out of the family home, and Emma had felt sorry for him. She’d moved him into her house and he’d promised to pull his weight as she was paying the mortgage, but it hadn’t taken him long to start going out when he was supposed to be waiting in for workmen or to conveniently ‘forget’ chores Emma had asked him to do while she was at work and he was home.
In short, he’d started to take her for granted and today proved it was only getting worse. Though now was hardly the time to pose the question, Emma had to ask herself again why she continued to hope he might once again become the man she’d fallen for. They were engaged too, and she wanted to believe that their eventual marriage might change things for the better – but when she really forced herself to face the cold hard facts, why would it?
Yet, despite all this, the thought of being without Dougie scared her. For reasons she didn’t even understand, she loved him. At least, she was fairly certain she did. But it was about more than love; he was her constant, her anchor, the one person in her life who was always there (except when he wasn’t). With Dougie she at least knew where she was, even if that was quite low on his list of priorities.
It wasn’t always bad either. During the good times he made her laugh and he brightened her days. He was cute and good-looking and they liked the same things – same TV, same radio stations, same takeaways on a Friday night. If only she could get him to understand that when he let her down it cut deeper than him just missing a date or leaving workmen scratching their heads on the doorstep, things with Dougie could be perfect. And if not perfect, good enough to make her content with the life she had. She wasn’t like Elise – she didn’t need to chase a dream or adventure. She only wanted to feel safe and valued – she just needed to feel solid ground beneath her feet.
But there was no time to dwell on any of this now, because if Elise took one thing seriously it was timekeeping, and, true to form, she arrived at the allotted hour almost to the second.
Emma went to meet her and their dad at the gate. Elise was asking why they were going straight to the garden instead of knocking at the front door to be let in, and her dad was struggling to give a convincing excuse.
‘Emma… Hi!’
Elise greeted her sister and then her gaze was drawn to the garden as they walked in. She took a moment to note the tables set for food, the bunting and balloons, and, as understanding began to change her frown into a look of illumination, everyone leapt out.
‘Surprise!’
Elise let her mouth fall open, and then her eyes began to fill with tears.
Emma laughed. ‘Oh my God. You’re not supposed to cry.’
Elise looked round at everyone. ‘This is for me?’
Dominic put an arm around Patricia, who stood next to him. ‘Well the sign does say “Good luck Elise”, so I think your clue might be there.’
Elise wiped a hand across her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to say!’
She didn’t have to find anything either, because a second later friends and family began to crowd round to offer hugs and kisses and words of congratulations and warm wishes for her new venture. Emma stepped back and went to stand with Patricia and Dominic to give them all time. Patricia smiled fondly as she watched.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Phase one went as smoothly as could be expected.’
Emma nodded. ‘Didn’t it? I think it’s going to be a lovely evening.’
‘Me too.’
It was going to be more than lovely, Emma thought. Perhaps it would be close to perfect, if only it hadn’t meant she was shortly about to say goodbye to her little sister.
By 8 p.m. almost everyone in the garden was well on their way to drunkenness, even Emma, who, despite getting more annoyed at Dougie’s absence as every hour went by, had decided that it wasn’t going to ruin her afternoon.
She’d just looked at her phone again, thinking about leaving another angry message for him, before deciding against it, when Elise came up behind her and flung her arms around her neck. Emma whipped round and smiled when she saw who it was.
‘I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you all afternoon,’ Elise slurred. She was looking bleary and very much like someone who’d had a drink pressed into her hand by everyone she’d spoken to that day.
‘You’ve been a bit busy,’ Emma said, smiling. ‘I’ll forgive you this once.’
Elise waved her arms around with about as much control as a streamer in the breeze. ‘I can’t believe how many people you managed to get here without me knowing a thing about it!’
‘It wasn’t easy – but it was worth it.’
‘Thank you for making the effort…’ Elise stumbled slightly over her own foot and Emma caught her with a laugh. It was hard to ima
gine how she’d managed to trip over without actually walking anywhere, but perhaps it said a lot about just how drunk she was.
‘And you’re supposed to be climbing up mountains – you can’t even stay on your feet on flat ground.’
‘No… no…’ Elise landed a barrage of heavy pats on Emma’s arm. ‘Listen… I love this party. I couldn’t love you any more for doing it.’
‘I can’t take all the credit – though I do appreciate the sentiment. Patricia and Dom did a lot, and Dad was in on it, of course.’
‘You’re all too good… I don’t deserve all this fuss.’
‘Of course you do!’
Emma regarded her sister with a swell of love. Though she was closer to thirty and Elise only twenty-two, they didn’t look so different. Elise’s cheeks were perhaps a little plumper and the faint beginnings of crow’s feet tellingly absent, but the sisters shared the same eyes, a shade of green closer to grey, and the same willowy figure. Where Emma dyed her hair blonde, Elise had opted for a bright copper to cover her mousey locks. Not knowing that there was a party planned in her honour, Elise had turned up in a pair of black jeans and a fitted T-shirt but she still looked incredible. Around her neck she wore a pendant fashioned from a piece of volcanic rock – her favourite thing ever, she often said – that Emma had given to her on her twenty-first birthday. Emma had never seen her without it since that day, which made her happier than she could say.
Elise kissed her lightly. ‘I’m going to miss you so much. You’ll come and visit, won’t you?’
‘Come to Iceland? Why ever would I do that?’
Elise laughed. ‘It’s not always cold, you know.’
Emma smiled. ‘Of course I’ll visit. You just try keeping me away.’
‘Good,’ Elise said with a violently wobbly nod. She glanced around again. ‘Where’s Dougie, by the way?’
‘He’s… running late,’ Emma said. She could have launched into a rant about the truth of his absence but that was hardly going to improve her mood and would put a damper on things to boot.
The Hotel at Honeymoon Station : A totally heartwarming romance about new beginnings Page 2
