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HarperImpulse
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2018
Copyright © Charlotte Butterfield 2018
Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Charlotte Butterfield asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008302719
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008302702
Version: 2018-04-18
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Acknowledgements
Also by Charlotte Butterfield
About the Author
About HarperImpulse
About the Publisher
To Team P: Ed, Amélie, Rafe and Theo
Prologue
How to be the perfect bridesmaid. Rule number one: Start mourning the friend you love, because once she becomes entangled in wedding planning, she doesn’t exist anymore.
Gone are the easy chats about life, love and the universe, and in its place are endless one-sided monologues about whether it would be unreasonable to ask all the bridesmaids to pierce their ears so they can wear matching earrings (answer: yes). Evenings will be spent pondering the question of whether tulips are too cheap, orchids too expensive or peonies too try-hard. Who cares? They’ll either end up swept up with the confetti by an Eastern European cleaner on minimum wage in the morning, or carefully preserved in an airing cupboard by the groom’s granny. You know the friend that’s always been very supportive about your extra curves? Well, as soon as that sparkly solitaire gets slipped on her finger she’ll ‘accidentally’ order your bridesmaid dress a size too small forcing you to eat blended kale for a month before the wedding.
Let’s talk hen dos for just a moment. What a wonderful opportunity for some sisterhood solidarity, where dignity and self-consciousness are checked in with your coat at the door and the order of the day is friendship and fun. Wrong. Don’t even think about surprising the bride with an activity, theme or outfit she hasn’t approved. In writing. She may say that you have the power of attorney on this weekend, but she doesn’t mean it, she’s lying through her newly-whitened teeth – which brings me onto the subject of beauty. The role of a bridesmaid is to be pretty, but not too much. Save those fake eyelashes for another occasion, because God forbid you should have longer lash-action than the woman in white. By all means brush your hair, possibly even add a bit of bounce, but do not consider having an up-do that takes more than two minutes to construct. That’s her arena. The only part of your grooming routine you shouldn’t scrimp on is deodorant. You’ll need at least half a can sprayed into your armpits at all times to counteract the iron-woman training that you’ll be forced to do in the week before the big day. Fill your car with petrol, top up your oyster card, stash your heels for another day, and flex those limbs because good God are you going to be using them. Unless you are already a PA to the president of a small country, never before will you have been faced with a To Do List of the gargantuan proportions that you will soon be handed. And the best part is, you have to smile like Mary Poppins while cheerily crossing each item off. Hem curtains? Check. Polish floors? Check. Dog-sit for a fortnight? Che— Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.
Eve had no idea that her legs could even move that fast. Weaving in and out of office workers, shoving tourists out of the way, hurdling over open drains, and banging on the sides of open-top buses, she finally made it to the front of her friend Tanya’s apartment block. Steadying herself on the gate for a moment to let the burning sensation in her lungs subside, she silently offered up a little prayer that she wasn’t about to walk into the rotting carcass of a pedigree pug.
The stench hit her before the key was fully turned in the lock. Covering her mouth with her sleeve and trying not to retch, Eve slowly pushed open the door and braced herself for whatever sight she might find. The flat was still. Silent. Too still and silent for an apartment with a dog in it.
‘Coco, here girl, there’s a good girl.’ Eve wandered quickly from room to room, giving a small gasp at the doorway of each one at the carnage that assaulted her eyes. The thought crossed her mind that perhaps Tanya had been burgled, the flat ransacked and the dog stolen. It would certainly make explaining this slightly easier. But robbers wouldn’t chew the sides of sofas until their filling spilled out, or wee on the expensive dhurrie rug from Peshawar. The ridiculous thing was, Eve was actually a little heartened to see the mess that Coco had made, as it meant that at some point over the last three days she’d had enough energy to create this bloodbath, rather than spend her final hours festering into a pile of bones.
The door to the bedroom was ajar, and, not having fully shaken away her intruder theory, Eve approached it cautiously. ‘Coco? Coco?’ A shoebox lay open at the foot of the bed, its lid chewed off. The distinctive red soles of Tanya’s prized black patent Louboutin heels were thankfully unmarked by tiny teeth marks, but instead, they’d been used as a portaloo. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’
At the sound of her voice, a sleeping Coco eagerly jumped up from the satin pillows she’d been snoozing on and gave a yelp of sheer joy. Flinging herself at Eve, in all her stinky glory, she covered her with slobbery kisses, which Eve couldn’t help but tearfully return. ‘Oh God Coco, I’m so sorry, please don’t tell anyone,’ she picked her up, snuggling her face into her fur. ‘It’ll be our secret.’
After giving her some water and filling her bowl with dried pellets that promised they contained organic chicken, she grabbed her lead from th
e back of the kitchen door. The destruction of the flat could wait, it was more important to breathe air that hadn’t been contaminated by excrement.
Chapter 1
One month earlier…
‘No offence Eve, but I don’t like your ideas for the hen party.’
Any sentence that starts off with the words, ‘No offence’ could surely only ever result in the other person being immediately and instinctively offended, Eve thought. And how on earth did Tanya know what her plans even were as they were meant to be top secret? Every subject line of every email Eve had sent about the hen do had said so. In capitals. As if she had read Eve’s mind, Tanya followed up with, ‘Maggie forwarded me the emails.’
Maggie. Eve should have known. One of Tanya’s work colleagues, who Eve had not yet had the pleasure of meeting, had Replied All to every message, finding fault with each element.
‘I mean, a roller disco? What were you thinking Eve?’
‘We used to love the roller disco!’
‘When we were at university! I do not want to turn up to my wedding in a plaster cast!’
‘So I guess that you don’t want to go zorbing either?’
‘No, Eve, I do not. Honestly, I thought that you of all people would be able to come up with something original, fun, and safe for us all to do. It’s meant to be in three weeks’ time!’
‘What do you mean, me of all people?’
‘You work for a wedding magazine, Eve! If anyone should be able to pull a fantastic hen do out of a hat, it should be you.’
‘To be fair Tanya, it’s taken flippin’ ages to get everyone to confirm if they can come or not, then everyone had a different idea about what it was they wanted to do – you’d already vetoed any kind of cocktail-making, naked male bodies and making things.’
‘How many cocktail-making hen parties have you been to?’ Eve didn’t say so out loud, but Tanya had a point. ‘And I’m going to be looking at Luke’s naked body for the rest of my life, I don’t particularly want to see another one on my hen do.’
‘Which is why I made the plan I did, there’s not a cocktail or a penis in sight.’
Eve’s colleague, Kat, the magazine’s beauty director who sat at the adjacent desk to Eve’s, raised a pencilled-on eyebrow at hearing Eve’s last sentence.
Tanya wouldn’t let up. ‘So out of everything else in the world we could do, you chose roller disco and zorbing?’
‘And a meal out; believe me, finding a restaurant that would cater for a vegan, a coeliac, a lactose-intolerance, a shellfish allergy and two nut allergies, was pretty bloody difficult. You have very tricky friends.’
‘Yes, Maggie told me that you’ve booked a Lebanese place. I hate Middle Eastern food.’
‘Hate’s a pretty strong word Tanya, how can you hate an entire continent’s cuisine? I’m sure there’ll be something you’ll like.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Eve said, cradling the phone under her chin while she scrolled through the local dog shelter’s website for photogenic mutts for a feature she was writing on Instagram engagements. She had a lovely image in her mind of two cute dogs holding up a sign saying, ‘our humans are getting married’.
‘Are you being sarcastic?’ Tanya barked. ‘This is the only hen do I’m ever going to have, Eve, and I want it to be perfect. I want a country club, a few beauty treatments, lots of champagne and sushi.’
‘You said you wanted it to be a surprise.’
‘Well, I don’t. That’s what I want.’
‘You could have saved me about thirty hours of planning and phoning round if that’s what you had just said in the beginning you know?’
‘You’re one of my best friends, you’re meant to know what I’d like.’
Labelling the two of them ‘best friends’ was a bit of a stretch. Eve was starting to realise that being contacted by Tanya out of the blue to be asked to be her bridesmaid, a decade after they were at university together, had little to do with nostalgia or fuzzy feelings of friendship and more to do with Tanya wanting to take advantage of Eve’s little black book of wedding contacts.
Eve absentmindedly pulled another paperclip out of her stationery pot and added it to a long line of clips that was now stretching across her desk. ‘Fine. Leave it with me.’
‘Oh, and one more thing, do you have your ears pierced?’
That was an odd question. ‘No, why?’
‘Could you get them done before the wedding? I’ve bought all the bridesmaids the same earrings to wear on the day as your gift from me.’
This took the biscuit. ‘Um, not really Tanya, I’ve never liked the idea of it.’
Eve could sense Tanya’s lips pursing over the phone line, possibly accompanied by a hint of an eye twitch too. ‘Maybe you could think about it, Eve.’
‘I have thought about it Tanya, and I don’t want to do it. I’ve got long hair anyway, so you wouldn’t even see them.’
‘Well, I want you to wear it up, nothing fancy like mine’s going to be, just a simple ponytail.’
Eve wanted to say more, to inject her friend with a hearty dose of realism and perspective right into her toned behind, but instead took a deep breath. ‘A ponytail is not a problem, the ear piercing is. But I promise you it’s not going to ruin your day.’ Eve hung up the call and slammed it down on her desk.
Kat looked up from a row of carefully-ordered pink lipsticks that were standing sentry on her own desk for a feature called Kiss-proof lipsticks that will stay on your lips not your groom. ‘Which one of your bridezillas was that?’
‘Tanya. Taking bridezilla-dom to another level entirely. I now have to find a country hotel that can fit twelve women in for beauty treatments in three weeks’ time. And a Japanese restaurant that doesn’t use shellfish and delivers to the arse end of nowhere. Oh, and she wants me to mutilate my body in order to accept my present which has quite clearly come from the heart.’
Sighing, Eve turned back to her computer screen. Her Dear Eve inbox was heaving under the strain of the many unread emails that had come in over the weekend. As well as writing three or four features for Your Wonderful Wedding per month, Eve was also the magazine’s resident agony aunt. But as wedding magazines were beautiful and aspirational, and not angst-ridden drama sagas like her last magazine, What a Life!, most of the questions were about how to stop the groom’s buttonhole from drooping, rather than anything more gritty. It made a nice change to be writing about the highest point in someone’s life rather than their lowest. Writing features with headlines like Blooming lovely, or Love at first blush certainly beat ones like My nephew is also my uncle or Why our 50-year age gap doesn’t matter.
Hi Eve!
I’m torn between wanting a French manicure for my day or a dusky pink to match the roses in my bouquet and the bridesmaid dresses. My mum thinks that a pink will be better, but I’m worried it might chip and look more obvious? At least if a French manicure chips, you can’t really see it. What should I do?
Thanks,
Helen, Staffordshire.
Eve was only meant to select the best five emails for the monthly Q&A page and to ignore the rest. Print-worthy, this one was not, but as she could sense the desperation in Helen from Staffordshire’s email, Eve replied nonetheless.
Hi Helen,
Firstly, congratulations on your big day, and well done for choosing such an on-trend colour for your wedding, dusky pink is a timeless choice. The best solution would be to wear the pink varnish and ask one of your bridesmaids to carry a spare bottle of the matching colour in their clutch bag to solve any chipping disasters.
Enjoy your day!
Eve xx
It wasn’t strictly what she was paid to do, and Eve knew that her editor, Fiona, wouldn’t approve of her taking time out of her working day to personally reply, but it had taken all of fifteen seconds to stop Helen from Staffordshire losing any more sleep.
Eve’s phone buzzed again. It was another university friend, Ayesh
a, who was getting married a month after Tanya. ‘Babe, where can I buy lawn flamingoes?’
Eve looked heavenward. ‘Lawn what?’
‘Flamingoes.’
‘That’s what I thought you said. What are lawn flamingoes?’
‘You know, big sculptures of flamingoes that stand on your lawn. I thought it would be really nice to have one for everyone coming to the wedding and you have to find the one with your name on it and it’s got your table number on it too.’
Eve had to take a deliberately slow breath in before replying in case an expletive slipped out. ‘Um, Ayesha. I thought the theme for your wedding was The Wizard of Oz? At what point in the film were there flamingoes?’
Ayesha laughed. ‘Oh, there weren’t silly, I just really really love flamingoes, and I thought that getting lots of dwarves to stand on the lawn dressed like Munchkins might be in really poor taste. Unless you don’t think so?’
Not for the first time, Eve questioned her choice in friends.
‘You’re too nice.’ Kat remarked as soon as Eve had put down the phone. ‘If I said yes every time one of my friends asked me to help them with their weddings, I’d never have time for anything else.’
‘Welcome to my world,’ Eve muttered.
‘How many weddings do you have again this summer?’
‘Five.’ Eve pointed to the noticeboard that hung on the wall above her desk, which was crammed with save the dates, invitations and gift list registry cards. A couple, like Tanya’s, were classically white with embossed words while others, like Ayesha’s, were colourful and contemporary. Regardless of their style or size of swirly writing, all Eve could see when she glanced at them was the potential of stress and financial ruin.
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