‘Yes. We were at university together. Most of the people you’ll meet today are from university.’
‘And the groom?’
‘Jack. He’s lovely. He’s in the army. He wasn’t at university with us, Becca met him a few years ago in a pub.’
‘Who else will I meet?’
‘Oh God, literally everyone and his wife is going to be at the wedding,’ Eve said, then wondered if that phrase made any sense at all to Bruno, but decided to press on regardless. ‘My mum, Faye, will be there, and my brother Adam and his fiancé George, you’ve met both of them before I think.’
‘Yes, they are nice, but it is strange they are getting married.’
‘Strange how?’
‘It’s just a bit, I don’t know, bizarre.’
‘Because they are both men?’
‘Do you not think so?’
Eve couldn’t believe she was hearing this. ‘In no way whatsoever. Love is love. I’m all for anyone getting married if they want to. Do you honestly think it’s wrong?’
‘I didn’t say it was wrong. I said it was strange.’
Eve had an overwhelming urge to childishly reply, ‘Well I think you’re strange for thinking that.’ But didn’t. ‘And then there’s my personal trainer Juan, you’ll recognise him as he’ll be drinking mineral water and bench-pressing the bridesmaids.’
‘You have a personal trainer called Juan?’ There was no mistaking the steely tone in Bruno’s question.
‘Yes. He’s Argentinian.’
‘Is he homosexual, like your brother?’
Eve was still unused to such bluntness, so the question took her aback a bit. ‘Um, no.’
‘Married?’
‘No.’
‘I think perhaps we can find you a more suitable personal trainer, n’est ce pas?’
‘I think I’d like to stick to Juan,’ Eve muttered back before continuing her monologue leaving no pause for Bruno to interject further. ‘And there’s an annoying girl called Tanya coming—’
Unfortunately, the invitations had gone out before Eve’s bust up with Tanya, and there was no way to retract Tanya’s invitation, as much as Becca would have wanted to. Particularly as a few days previously Tanya had emailed, not even called, Becca to say that Luke was called away on a last minute business trip to Spain, and so she was flying solo for the wedding. Becca’s wedding breakfast consisted of picnic baskets in the meadow, so a no-show was no great catastrophe, but even so, if the shoe was on the other foot, Tanya would have gone apoplectic if two became one only days before her wedding.
‘Why is she annoying?’ Bruno asked, his interest piqued.
‘She’s been annoying since we shared a house at university, but she’s one of those people that if you met them now you wouldn’t be friends with, but because it’s been so long, you sort of still are. Although we had a big fight a few weeks ago and haven’t spoken since, so … sorry, can you just lean your head back so I can see if something’s coming? Thanks. Where was I?’
‘Annoying friend.’
‘Yes.’ Eve hesitated. She wasn’t going to mention Ben, but felt that she had to as they were now just fifteen minutes away from arriving, and sod’s law being what it was, Ben was bound to be the first person they would see.
‘Speaking of annoying, there’s a guy called Ben, who is meant to be coming. He shared a house with us too at university.’
‘One man and three women?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this annoying Ben, he was with annoying Tanya?’
The very idea made Eve want to simultaneously retch and laugh out loud. ‘No, not at all. He wasn’t annoying back then. Only now.’ Eve knew that if Bruno was in fact The One, she would have to tell him how important Ben once was to her, and at least now they were sitting side by side so she couldn’t see his reaction when she did.
‘Um, the thing is, Ben and I were sort of best friends the whole way through university, and afterwards. We dated for a while and we had planned to go to New York together, then he changed his mind, never turned up at the airport and went back to his ex-girlfriend, Kate, in New Zealand.’ Eve paused, waiting a few seconds for Bruno to comment, but he didn’t, so she carried on, recounting the facts but none of the feelings, it was better that way. ‘So I went to New York by myself, and stayed there for two years, forgot about him, moved back to England a couple of years ago and saw Ben again for the first time two months ago at Tanya’s wedding. So that’s that. Oh look, a thatched cottage. There’s an interesting fact about thatched houses – do you know the water reed can last for up to seventy years?’ Eve picked up her water bottle, one hand still on the steering wheel.
‘Do you still love him?’
Luckily his question came before she’d taken a sip or they’d both be covered in water.
‘No! Of course not! He’s incredibly annoying, and has more baggage than a Kardashian on a trip to Paris Fashion Week. I’m literally just giving you a rundown on who you’re going to meet. If you look to the right now, you’ll see a sign to Westward Ho! which, interestingly, is the only place name in the British Isles with an exclamation mark.’
‘Is he still with Kate?’
‘Is who still with Kate?’ As soon as the words were out of her mouth Eve wished they weren’t. She was being deliberately obtuse, of course she knew who Bruno was referring to, and by pretending she didn’t, she was making a big deal over something that really wasn’t that important. She risked a quick side-glance at Bruno who had folded his arms across his chest and was looking out of the window.
‘Kate died,’ Eve said quickly.
‘Oh great. So, it is not just this Juan I need to worry about then.’
If Bruno had said this with a light-hearted tone of voice, even a sarcastic one, it might have been a funny way to break the tension, but he delivered it instead in a deadpan monotone that gave nothing away. Eve was upset that there was none of the easy banter they’d had at dinner in France. His intensity that was so passionate and refreshing back then just came across now as serious and sombre. He was probably just tired, he’d been travelling since 4 a.m., and it was now eleven-thirty. Plus, they had the added barrier of language, which she kept forgetting. She could barely string a sentence together in another language let alone get the nuances and intonation right to crack jokes.
The gravel on the driveway crackled under their tyres as they veered to the left of Becca’s parents’ large farmhouse and ventured down a narrow dirt track. Tall, lush green trees ran alongside them, bending their branches over the lane. They had only driven a hundred or so metres before the path stopped at a metal gate. Eve jumped out to push it open. Beyond it a field had been made into a makeshift car park. One of Eve’s cousins was sat in a deckchair and briefly looked up from his phone to point to a space Eve should manoeuvre her Fiat into between a campervan and a Mini Cooper.
‘Is this a festival or a wedding?’ Bruno was only saying what Eve had said to Becca, but somehow when he did it, it annoyed her.
‘Just wait until you see where the wedding is, it’s beautiful.’ Putting together the moodboards and scheme for Becca’s wedding had almost, almost, made Eve consider being a wedding planner as she’d loved it so much, but that was probably due to how laid-back the bride was. Eve knew she wouldn’t be able to last five minutes with a perfectionist bride like Tanya, or even one like lovely Ayesha whose madcap ideas would have her reaching for the gin bottle. Becca had given Eve complete carte blanche to turn her ‘village fete’ wedding into reality, and it had been really fun. She’d used the column she’d written as a blueprint for the plan, and followed it to the letter.
‘You might want to carry your bag, not wheel it, it’s bit muddy down the path,’ Eve advised Bruno, getting out of the car and seeing him pull up the suitcase handle and prepare to drag it behind him. To his credit he didn’t say anything as he calmly pushed the handle down and picked up the bag.
‘This way.’ Eve pointed to a little opening in the
hedgerow at the side of the car park field, and like the tiny door in Alice’s wonderland, the garden it led into was beyond breathtaking. There was still an hour to go before the wedding started and people were bustling back and forth carrying flowers, rolling the big barrels into position and setting up the bar with pitchers of Pimms and elderflower cocktails. The field was small by farmer’s standards, but huge as a wedding venue. Wildflower arches and trellises zoned off the dancing area – with a stage formed from pallets and planks where the blues band had already set up their instruments – from the more chilled picnic area that had the all-important hay bales and blankets laid out on the ground. Becca and Jack hadn’t wanted a traditional meal or buffet, so had opted instead for woven baskets overflowing with salads, cold meats, cheeses, and antipasti to accompany the Cornish pasties and pies that a local company would be serving from their bunting-festooned food van that was already parked up. A lady was busy diligently writing today’s offerings on a blackboard that she had positioned outside the van.
The ceremony was going to be held at the parish church down a small lane running alongside the field, and Becca was to be married by the same vicar that had christened her thirty years before. As Eve and Bruno stood under the first archway looking at the scene in front of them, at all the villagers and neighbours pitching in to help string up the fairy lights, lay out the last jam jar lanterns and adorn the blankets with cushions and beanbags, Eve suddenly understood the reason why Becca had flung open the doors of her wedding and announced it a free-for-all. Why wouldn’t you want to share this moment of such magic with as many people as possible? Her parents had lived on this farm all their married lives, and Becca’s maternal grandparents before that. They were part of a community who were just as excited about this wedding as the bride and groom.
‘I have never seen anything like this,’ Bruno gasped.
‘I know,’ Eve replied, bursting with happiness and pride at the small part she’d played in it. It would be impossible to conceive of a more romantic setting unless you crawled inside a packet of lovehearts. She knew all Bruno’s misconceptions would evaporate as soon as he saw it.
The enigmatic Frenchman smiled, reached for Eve’s hand then wrinkled his nose. ‘It looks pretty, but smells like cow dung.’
***
‘He came! He actually came!’ Ayesha squealed, grabbing Eve’s hand by the posh portaloos just after everyone came back from the ceremony to find their spots on the picnic blankets. ‘And he’s even more gorgeous than I remembered! How’s the big reunion going? Have you sneaked off to your tent yet and done the deed?’
‘No! We haven’t been to the tent yet, he wanted to iron his shirt again, so we got changed in the farmhouse – in separate rooms.’
‘This is so exciting, I’m so envious of you, having a first time again. It’s been years since I saw a new naked body.’
Eve played along, smiling in all the right places, but the truth was that she didn’t feel the same connection to Bruno as she had in France, and so was already dreading the end of the evening when they both had to sleep with their bodies pretty much on top of each other in her small two-man tent. She knew that she didn’t have to go through with what Ayesha was politely calling ‘the deed’ tonight, but she did have to share the space of a coffin with him regardless of whether anything rude happened.
Eve had just left him in the very capable, and embarrassingly fawning, hands of Adam and George, who were busy complimenting Bruno on the flattering cut of his suit as she’d slipped away. She hadn’t seen Ben yet, but as she’d arrived at the church with Becca, Eve had missed the pre-ceremony drinks with everyone at the pub next to the church, so hadn’t had a proper chance to see all the other guests yet. She looked around the field trying to spot her mum, or woman-hating Juan, who didn’t know anyone else. Possibly a wedding wasn’t the best place for him right now either, which would explain why he was nowhere to be seen. Eve had glimpsed Tanya, although Tanya pretended not to see her, quickly looking away and laughing extra loudly at whatever the group she was attached to were saying.
Walking back to the party Eve saw Juan leaning against the side of the pie van. Ironic, Eve thought as he was probably the only guest not to partake in one.
‘Hey Juan,’ she said, walking up to him. ‘Thank you for helping me fit into my dress,’ she gave a little twirl in her floaty knee-length pale green dress as if to prove the point that the zipper had gone all the way up to the top.
‘You look great,’ he said, giving her a lopsided smile. ‘And it was all your hard work, not mine.’
‘Believe me Juan, if I wasn’t absolutely terrified of you screaming at me three times a week for the last few months I wouldn’t look any different to the way I did at Christmas.’
‘I’m not that scary, am I?’
Eve considered this for a moment. ‘You know when Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk? Well…’
They both laughed. ‘I think I’ve been a bit grumpy lately,’ he admitted. ‘Thank you for putting up with me.’
Eve shook her head. ‘Nonsense, it’s fine. You had a lot going on. Is it ok, you know, being here, or is it a bit weird?’
‘It’s not weird because it’s a wedding, I like it, everyone is so happy – but it’s a bit strange because I only know you, and your brother a little bit.’
‘Ok, come with me and I’ll introduce you to everyone.’
Eve brought Juan into the Bruno, George and Adam group, that had grown to include Faye as well.
‘Everyone, this is Juan. You already know Adam, this is George, his husband to be, my mum Faye, and my, erm, this is Bruno.’
Adam and George greeted the new addition with a flurry of hugs and back pats, Faye blushed as Juan kissed her hand, and Bruno hung back. He had a look of disinterest mixed with pure hatred on his face. She should probably have sidled up to the Frenchman, staked her claim, batted his concerns away with a seductive kiss or coquettish cuddle, but she really didn’t feel like it. She remembered some advice from the dog trainer she once took the family retriever to when she was a teen: make clear what you find acceptable and what you don’t early on, that way he’ll know the rules from the beginning. Don’t reward behaviour you don’t like by giving them attention, save that for when they do something good.
Eve knew Bruno wasn’t a mutt from a rescue centre, but she felt the same guidelines might still apply.
Chapter 31
Ben looked aloof and pensive all through the picnic, after finally making an appearance. The thought had crossed Eve’s mind that this might be the wedding that he turned up with a plus one. He’d made it quite clear that they had no claims on each other’s affections any more. But thankfully he seemed to be alone today. Eve didn’t know why she might have been uneasy about seeing him with another woman – like she said to Bruno in the car, the idea that she was still in love with him was preposterous. The only feelings she had towards him now was sadness that a decade-long friendship had ended up like this.
Ben had given a cursory nod to Eve as he sat down moodily on the blanket a few metres away from her. She didn’t know if he’d clocked that the good-looking man next to her was her date for the weekend. For some reason, she hoped he had.
Tanya certainly had, which was immensely gratifying. Bruno may be a closet homophobic, and an antisocial, jealous zealot but he was incredibly nice to look at, which, when it came to Tanya, was all that mattered. Tanya kept looking over at them, correction, Bruno, in a cartoon-character-type way where her jaw was comically trailing on the floor while bright red love hearts had replaced her pupils. Barely married for two months, Tanya certainly seemed to be out of the lust-struck honeymoon period – well, with her new husband anyway.
‘Your mother is a very attractive woman,’ Bruno was saying to Eve, opening a pot of olives from the basket and popping one in his mouth. ‘It is good for me to see what you might look like in twenty years.’
Eve was not sure that this relationship was necessarily going to last t
wenty days, let alone twenty years, but smiled politely, shaking her head at the proffered olive pot.
‘You don’t like olives?’ Bruno asked.
‘No, never have.’
‘But that’s crazy, they are delicious. Have one.’ He jiggled the pot in front of her.
Eve shook her head again. ‘No thanks, I really don’t like them.’
‘I have never met anyone that does not like olives.’
‘Well, now you have.’
A shadow cast across them, and Eve turned around to find Tanya standing just behind them. ‘I thought I’d come over and say hello. To show you that I don’t have any hard feelings.’ Tanya stretched her hand out to Bruno. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’
Bruno, ever the gent, scrambled to his feet to shake her hand, while Eve stayed sat down silently seething at Tanya’s magnanimous greeting. Was Eve supposed to be grateful that Tanya was so forgiving when it was clearly her that was in the wrong? Life really was too short to spend it getting the positivity sucked out of her by someone like Tanya.
While Bruno and Tanya talked, standing up so that she was sat next to their legs, Eve glimpsed out of the corner of her eye that Faye had run up to Ben and was giving him a hug. There was nothing unusual about that; he wasn’t just her daughter’s ex, he was also the cheeky friend that had made one of Faye’s kitchen chairs his own, stretching his long legs under her table and scoffing down whatever home-cooked meal Faye had put in front of him. When Ben and Eve had started dating years later, it seemed like the most natural progression in the world. Her mum and dad, Adam, Becca, Ayesha, they’d all said that it was just a matter of time before Eve and Ben knew what everyone around them had known for years.
‘Eve?’
Bruno bent down. ‘I just asked if you wanted more Pimms, I am getting Tanya one.’
‘That’d be great, thank you.’ Eve really hoped that Tanya was going to go with Bruno to the bar, but instead Tanya made a big show of folding her skirt between her legs and attempting to sit down alongside Eve as elegantly as possible, stretching out her tanned legs in front of her, while Eve was keeping her pale pasty legs tucked underneath her.
A Beautiful Day for a Wedding Page 23
