The group dispersed to see a very tall, wiry woman, with gym-honed arms and wearing vertiginous heels, struggling with an enormous black suitcase.
‘Sorry,’ said Rose. ‘We’ll get out of your way.’ They stepped back and let the woman past and then Wendy’s face suddenly broke into a huge smile of recognition.
‘Tamsin! It’s you, isn’t it? It is you! Oh, it’s so fabulous to meet you at last!’
Tamsin! JoJo felt shame again. She’d forgotten all about her! Because they weren’t meeting her until they got here (Tamsin was driving down from Islington, she’d told her by text message in the week) and they’d been having such a giggle on the train, JoJo had completely forgotten to message her and confirm their ETA. She really was slipping, she thought. This was not like her at all! Poor Tamsin, what must she think of them?
‘Wendy?’ queried the woman. She sounded very posh, thought JoJo. From the little she’d said, JoJo could tell her accent was old school Received Pronunciation, with bells on. Actually, Frederick’s had been, too, although his was much friendlier. His face was, too. Although it was remarkable how similar Frederick and Tamsin looked, really. Wendy had said Tamsin was a couple of years younger, but both were blonde, both had strong, handsome features . . . both were tall and rangy.
‘Oh, I recognise you from your photo,’ said Tamsin, without too much of a smile, and Wendy self-consciously grabbed the L-plates dangling from her neck and twizzled them round her body until they were shoved way behind her back. ‘It’s wonderful to meet you.’
Something was beeping from somewhere and Tamsin began reaching in the small, quilted handbag slung over her shoulder at the exact moment Wendy decided to launch herself at her future sister-in-law for an enthusiastic hug. Tamsin managed to get her phone free of her bag as Wendy’s arms flung round her, and held it aloft as Wendy subjected her to an almighty squeeze.
‘Sorry,’ she said, into the phone, ‘I’ve been on the road. Yes, yes, absolutely. By nine o’clock, yes. Absolutely no problem.’
Wendy clung on, undeterred, finally releasing Tamsin after a few seconds, but not before her victim appeared to think better of herself and patted Wendy’s back with the kind of absent-minded affection you’d give to a neighbour’s friendly dog.
‘You look so much like Frederick!’ Wendy exclaimed, the hug complete and those L-plates jangling at the back of her as though she were a slightly obscure one-man band. ‘I feel we are going to be the very best of friends!’
Tamsin looked unmoved. ‘I’m delighted you’re marrying my brother,’ she said, distractedly – she was giving her phone another quick glance before she slipped in back into her bag. ‘Have you all checked in?’
‘Yes,’ said Wendy, her face momentarily falling but then lifting again to a plastered-on smile. ‘I’m afraid we’re not on the Glamour Package any more, as mentioned in the invitation. We’ve been upgraded to something else,’ she said, throwing a wink in JoJo’s direction which her friend caught gratefully.
‘Fine, not a problem,’ said Tamsin stoically and she marched towards the reception desk, dragging her enormous suitcase behind her.
‘Well, she seems nice,’ said Wendy uncertainly.
‘Really?’ questioned Sal.
‘Yes!’ said Wendy.
‘She seemed a bit distant,’ offered Rose. ‘And possibly a bit uptight?’
‘We’ll reserve judgement,’ said Sal. ‘Thank God you’re not marrying her, though, that’s all I can say,’ she added. ‘Come on, let’s ask Miss Heidi for our room keys and then we can dump our bags and go exploring.’
*
Their rooms were absolutely gorgeous and did assuage JoJo’s guilt somewhat about booking the wrong package. Across the corridor from each other – with JoJo and Wendy in one room, Sal and Rose in another – they were more like suites than rooms: each had a bedroom, bathroom, dressing room and sitting room. They were heavenly, but not too over the top. There were no four-poster beds or overzealous drapery, just comfy, bounce-able beds layered with Egyptian cotton and soft, cosy-looking throws; padded, overstuffed armchairs in pale shades of lemon and raspberry; enough occasional tables to be useful rather than silly; and a deep pile, luxurious carpet underfoot, which JoJo was already looking forward to wiggling her toes in. The rooms here hadn’t come cheap, but JoJo had of course run the budget by her friends before she had booked (between them they were covering Wendy’s portion) and they had all agreed a spectacular blowout was what was needed, for all of them – and spectacular these rooms certainly were.
Tamsin, who had followed them up the silk-paper lined corridor with the royal blue patterned carpet, was two doors up from JoJo and Wendy and had said stiffly she was going to make some work calls and would see them downstairs for dinner. As she’d closed her door, Sal had made the ‘handbag’ gesture accompanied by the ‘cat’s bum’ face.
‘She’s all right,’ Wendy had insisted, although she looked a little worried. ‘I’m sure she will be. She’s a lawyer, like Frederick, that’s all, and lawyers are serious, aren’t they?’
‘That’s why I didn’t become one.’ JoJo smiled.
‘A lawyer, eh? Well, I don’t remember Frederick being quite like that!’ Sal said sniffily, as she inserted the key card into the door of her and Rose’s room. ‘He seemed quite good fun.’
‘Of course he is,’ said Wendy, waiting for the little green light that signalled she had successfully unlocked her and JoJo’s door, ‘and she might be, too. Give her a chance, Sal, and everyone, please. She’s Frederick’s sister. I love him and I’m sure I’m going to love her.’
‘Of course we will,’ said JoJo, and Rose had nodded.
‘For you, oh glorious bride-to-be,’ Sal had called, disappearing into her room with Rose trailing behind, ‘I’ll do anything.’
‘She looks a lot like him,’ noted Wendy as they walked across the lawn to have a nose at the swimming pool. Having dumped their stuff and done a spot of light unpacking, they were now exploring The Retreat’s house and grounds in the warm glow of the fading evening sun. JoJo didn’t think she’d ever seen anywhere more beautiful.
‘She really does,’ agreed Rose. They stood by the edge of the swimming pool in a row and looked down at the turquoise, crystal clear water.
‘What sort of lawyer is Tamsin?’ asked JoJo. ‘One in the science field, like Frederick?’
‘Criminal,’ said Wendy. The others nodded. ‘You know, seeing her, it was almost like seeing Frederick in a dress!’ she added. JoJo looked down the row to where Wendy stood at the end expecting to see her laughing, but Wendy was frowning. ‘He can be serious sometimes. Quite serious. And they are both so posh, aren’t they? Public school, privileged childhood and all that . . . High-flyers . . . and his parents are, too. I’m not sure what Frederick’s doing with me!’ She laughed now, but nervously. ‘How on earth will I fit in? I went to a bog standard comprehensive and don’t know a Barbour from a barber!’
‘Hey, don’t put yourself down!’ said Sal, bending down to place her fingers in the water. ‘Ooh, that’s lovely . . . You’re successful in your career, and nothing wrong with state school! Rose and I both went to one as well, remember? It was only JoJo that went to some fraightfully well-to-do eighties version of Malory Towers!’
‘Oi, don’t knock it!’ laughed JoJo, ‘My lacrosse and Latin skills have proved highly useful in later life!’
‘Ha, ha,’ said Sal. ‘You can’t beat a bit of lacrosse – not that I even know what it is. You use fishing nets to catch a ball or something, right?’
‘Something like that,’ laughed JoJo. She looked at Wendy and noticed she looked really quite crestfallen. She’d broken from the row and had stepped back a few paces, staring towards The Retreat. ‘Tamsin’s not Frederick, you know, and you’re not marrying his family, you’re marrying him. You don’t really think he’s too posh for you, do you, Wendy? Too good for you in some way?’
‘No, not really . . .’ said
Wendy. ‘Well, sometimes I do, I suppose.’ She curled a flame-coloured ringlet round her finger and gave a gigantic sigh. ‘We’re nothing alike, chalk and cheese . . . He’s all ordered and gentlemanly and goes about everything the right, proper, way; whereas I’m all crazy hair and unladylike and out-there colour combinations and scatterbrained, mad-scientist type.’ She gave an uncertain little giggle. ‘Although, I don’t think he fully knows yet just how crazy I am. It’s all been such a whirlwind . . . I feel there’s so much we still need to know about each other—’
‘Don’t be silly,’ interrupted JoJo. ‘He must feel he knows you, or he wouldn’t have asked you to marry him.’
They’d heard all about the proposal. How Frederick had whisked Wendy off to Paris, in a helicopter of all things, and had proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower, in a sudden rainstorm. How Wendy had taken the ring, held out to her and nestled inside a black velvet box, placed it on her finger and said, ‘Yes,’ whilst tears had run down her face along with the rain. How Wendy couldn’t help but break into a mad few seconds of a spontaneous victory dance – a joyous hybrid of ‘Gangnam Style’ meets the Running Man, apparently – around the top of the tower, which she’d attempted to bring to an embarrassed halt, but an American tourist had taken her hands and enthusiastically tried to join in with her whilst whooping and shouting, ‘Hey! This lady just got engaged!’ in a really loud voice (Wendy was mortified about that part and said she would probably skip it when recounting the story to the grandkids). And how, once the American had finally stopped whooping and had left the tower to get a ‘cup of corfee and some of those swell French pastries’, she and Frederick had stood there, looking out over Paris in the rain, for an hour, just holding each other and kissing and saying how happy they were.
It had all sounded ridiculously romantic.
‘I suppose so,’ said Wendy. ‘I can’t believe he did ask me! And a week tomorrow I’ll be marrying him . . . It all seems like an incredible dream – I really hope he’s not making a mistake!’
‘Of course he isn’t, you silly cow,’ said Sal. ‘What are you like? Now come on,’ she added, taking Wendy’s arm, ‘let’s have a look at this pool house malarkey. I can spy padded sunloungers and a massage chair.’
What must it be like? JoJo wondered, as they stepped through the double doors of the pool house, to have someone ask you to marry them? It was something she’d never experienced. She couldn’t even get a man to stay with her after she got pregnant with his child, let alone make a lifetime commitment, and now she didn’t want anyone to ask her. Ever.
It was gorgeous inside the pool house. Sun streamed through the massive windows onto a dazzlingly blue, kidney-shaped indoor pool, punctuated at one end with a very inviting looking Jacuzzi. A handsome, twenty-something pool attendant in yellow and red shorts was crouching by the side of the pool and fiddling with the filter.
‘Good afternoon, ladies.’
‘Good afternoon,’ trilled Sal and they had to stop themselves from giggling and making a forty-something show of themselves.
‘Wow, amazing,’ said Rose. ‘I think Jason’s got something like this below his building, in Hong Kong. And a squash court.’
‘His building?’ enquired Wendy. ‘Doesn’t he stay in a hotel when he goes out there?’
‘No, not now. He goes so often they put him in an apartment. He kind of lives there, really,’ Rose said sadly. She gave a big sigh. ‘Hong Kong is his second home, isn’t it? And now he’s actually got a second home there. I keep asking him for photos of it, but he keeps forgetting to take any.’
‘But it’s not for ever, right?’ asked JoJo.
‘No,’ said Rose miserably. ‘I expect it’s not for ever.’
She looked so sad, JoJo wanted to give her a cuddle – so she did, but the cuddle took Rose by surprise and she ended up tripping over a pool chair and landing them both in an undignified heap on the ground. Wendy laughingly pulled Rose up by the arms and the pool boy dashed over to help JoJo.
‘Thank you,’ she said, trying to avoid looking at his young, handsome face she was so embarrassed; he must think them a couple of middle-aged lunatics.
‘No worries,’ he said, before wandering back over to the filter.
‘Oh my God, you two,’ Wendy said, giggling like crazy. ‘What are you like? Rose, you’re a disaster area!’
‘I know!’ agreed Rose, looking bashful. ‘I think I’ve brought you all down with me at one time or another! Sorry, JoJo.’
‘It’s OK,’ said JoJo. She hadn’t really minded the feel of that young man’s strong arms on hers. And the bruise on her bum would go, in time.
‘Right!’ said Wendy, looking at her watch. ‘What time is dinner, does anyone know?’
‘Table booked for nine-fifteen,’ said JoJo. ‘We’ve got twenty minutes to have a quick gander at the lake and get changed.’
‘Perfect,’ said Sal. ‘You got something right then. I’m so glad you factored in the sustenance we’ll need for sodding obstacle courses and white-water rafting . . . I’m kidding!’ she cried, punching JoJo playfully in the side. ‘I had a look at the menu, actually,’ she continued. ‘It was in the room. Wild scallops with coriander and bacon, followed by saddle of beef with seasonal veg and potato dauphinoise and chocolate fondant for pudding. That’s what I’m having, anyway, but it all looks amazing. I might get some good ideas for the pub while I’m here.’
‘For Niall, you mean,’ teased Rose. ‘Are you going to sleep with him again?’
‘No,’ said Sal quickly. ‘No, I’m not. What kind of pub owner would that make me? What kind of highly professional pub landlady? A very slutty one with no morals, that’s what. Now, come on . . .a quick look at the treatment rooms we won’t be setting foot anywhere near then it’s grub time.’
Chapter Six
Sal
They knocked for Tamsin before going down for dinner. As she opened the door to them, Sal was surprised to see the bed behind her covered in reams of papers, an open laptop and several heavy-looking textbooks. That explained the massive suitcase, then, she thought.
‘I see you’ve had to bring your work with you this weekend,’ she observed, slightly regretting the cat’s bum and the handbag.
‘I’ve got a lot on.’ Tamsin smiled, as she closed the door. She’d got changed, too. She’d swapped her charcoal shift dress and heels for a long sweeping jersey column dress and bejewelled, expensive-looking flip-flops. ‘Good evening, everyone,’ she said, somewhat formally, looking around at them all. ‘You all look really nice.’
‘You, too,’ gushed Rose. She was looking excitable in a new dress – red, with kimono sleeves. JoJo was wearing black, flowing linen trousers and a crisp white t-shirt. Wendy had on a beautiful, rainbow-coloured swishy panel dress. And Sal had changed into a clean t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and ditched the new painful ankle boots for Converse.
‘You look lovely,’ added Wendy, ever eager to please. ‘Absolutely smashing.’ Smashing? Had Wendy ever even used that word before? She seemed desperate to be great friends with unknown quantity Tamsin and was now trying to slip an arm through hers. Tamsin looked a little taken aback but eventually let her do it.
‘Thank you,’ replied Tamsin, and Wendy beamed. Although it was obvious why she was being this way with Frederick’s sister, Wendy was always eager to please everyone. She’d always been that way and Sal wished, not for the first time, she would please herself a bit more. Wendy always said ‘yes’, she always ‘went along with it’, she always told people what they wanted to hear without setting too much store on what they said back to her. Sal wondered if the big white wedding was a case in point. When they were younger, Wendy had always said she’d fancy a laid-back and colourful registry office wedding, with a meal afterwards in an Italian restaurant where they would all drink red wine and dance on tables, and that vision couldn’t be further from the massive, conservative affair in the family pile she was about to get swept up into. A
family that, so far, seemed to be calling all the shots, and Wendy had only met Tamsin so far: Frederick’s parents, the Donnington-Blacks (how posh?) – a CEO father and a Professor of Sociology mother, no less – lived in the Dordogne and wouldn’t be arriving in the UK until the morning of the wedding.
‘Shall we go?’ said JoJo.
They took the lift down to The Retreat’s main restaurant; the manor house also had a bar, elsewhere, where breakfasts and afternoon teas were served, something the five of them would soon find out they were banned from partaking in. The restaurant was beautiful. It had floor-to-ceiling windows, which overlooked the twinkling lake behind it (a pretty amazing lake, they’d thought, when they’d looked at it earlier, with its ducks, its cute wooden bridge and its pretty and rustic lake house), and was festooned with fairy lights and white linen and table centrepieces of pale roses in square glass vases. Sal felt like she’d just stepped into someone’s wedding reception, and the smells that wafted round were delicious.
‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘It’s stunning in here.’
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it, Tamsin?’ said Wendy.
‘Very nice,’ said Tamsin approvingly. ‘I love the fairy lights.’
‘You can sit next to me,’ entreated Wendy cheerfully and they all sat down. Tamsin placed her black clutch bag in front of her and pulled her phone out from it, then placed it on the table with a little tap and gave the screen and its many icons a quick swipe from side to side. JoJo, the other side of the table, was delving into her bag for her BlackBerry.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Sal asked her.
‘What?’ replied JoJo, wide-eyed. ‘I was going to check it quickly, just in case. Tamsin’s got her phone out,’ she added.
Sal knew she was resisting a pout. ‘Tamsin’s not banned,’ said Sal.
‘Sorry,’ said Tamsin, looking a little embarrassed and picking up her phone again. ‘I can put it away. It’s just that I’ve got a lot on.’ She placed it back in her clutch bag and set the bag on the floor beside her. Sal gave JoJo a look, which JoJo returned with a shrug.
Four Bridesmaids and a White Wedding: the laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of the year! Page 5
