Eight Perfect Hours: The hotly-anticipated love story everyone is falling for in 2021!

by Lia Louis

  Candice pulls a bar stool out and gestures to me with newly tanned arms and square, shiny manicured fingernails to sit down. ‘We’re spoiled, with you. Truly. Honestly, Steve and I were on your Instagram last night and I could barely contain myself. Your work is lush, Noelle.’

  ‘And you are way too kind,’ I say, and she wrinkles her nose at me and says, ‘Sit! Have some champers with us. Just a tiny bit, we won’t keep you.’

  We sit at Bar Prince inside the grand and glittering Balmoral Hotel and I can hardly believe I am here. It’s bustlingly busy, full of guests and diners and drinkers, chatter and laughter and the thick smell of sweet cocktails and charred meat. The Balmoral is as full and as alive as the grand, noisy city outside and I feel I could stand with my arms out and my eyes closed. This is where we used to dream of being, Daisy and I – a part of the world, lost in its busyness and noise and all the delicious nowness. I’m here. I am here.

  Steve and Candice hold hands opposite me, their fingers intertwined, and a barman slides a shining glass of bubbles across the bar to me.

  ‘So Martina, my wedding planner, has set you up in a little room just off the banquet hall in which we’ll get married and it’s fully air-conditioned meaning it’s cold enough to keep the flowers nice and cool. Is that right?’

  ‘Perfect. And did they say they had buckets?’

  ‘A few, but not many.’

  ‘OK, good, well I’ve ordered more from the suppliers anyway. I’ll go there, just after I finish this. I parked in the car park just up the road from here. But if there’s anything else you want, now is the time to say. I’ll just add it to my list.’

  Candice grins at me, her diamond studs glistening in the buttery lights of the bar. ‘Nope. I trust you. And your boyfriend is following you up, is he? Her boyfriend, Steve,’ she rubs his shirted forearm, squeezes it, ‘he’s coming up to help, after his shift has finished. He’s a doctor. Paediatrician.’

  ‘Oh, wow. Straight after a night shift,’ says Steve, champagne flute a ridiculous sight in his gigantic shovel hand. ‘That’s love, that is.’

  ‘Oh, well, he’s not really my––’

  ‘I always think that’s what true love really is,’ says Candice dreamily. ‘If they make time for what’s important to you, regardless of whatever they’d prefer to be doing.’

  ‘Aww,’ says Steve. ‘What about falling asleep with you on the bathroom floor when you’re too hung-over to move because Steve, don’t worry, it’s only two pina coladas and I know my own limit thank you? Does that count as making time for what’s important to you?’

  Candice laughs and slaps him gently on the arm. ‘Yep. Pina coladas are important to me.’

  I laugh, clink my glass to theirs, and say, ‘So come on, tell me how nervous you really are on a scale of one to ten …’

  When Ed arrives, it’s seven p.m. and I’m sitting cross-legged on the cool stockroom floor listening to music and making up a table arrangement. Blue hydrangeas. Gypsophila. Cream roses. I bound out to him, like an excited Labrador, desperately wanting to drag him into the Holyrood room, where Steve and Candice will be having their reception tomorrow. It’s enormous and grandiose, with ten round banquet tables, plus a top table, all of which are waiting for their decorations – their flowers – from me. Look at it! I want to say. Look at what I’ve made happen! We’re here! We’re in Edinburgh, we are somewhere in the world, because of me. Not you this time, but me!

  Ed looks pale and dishevelled, his hair damp with rain, but nevertheless, flashes that wicked grin at me across the pearly floors of the lobby and says, ‘Hey, Nell.’ He wraps his arms around me then says, ‘I’m fucked,’ in my ear.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Fucked,’ I say, pulling back.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ he asks. ‘Dilly sorted?’ And although there’s a part of me that wishes he would, I know he won’t apologise for refusing to go and be with Mum, and really, should he? He wanted to be here to help me, he said it himself. Of course that is more important to him than Mum. I just wish sometimes, there was more warmth with Ed. Less ‘This is A, this is B, and you should do C, the end’ and more ‘I understand. It’s not perfect and always logical, but it’s you, and I’m here.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Dilly’s almost home. Ian’s with Mum.’

  ‘Good,’ he says, simply, then he snakes his arms around me. ‘Come on then, let’s go see this room of ours. I need bed. And room service. Like, the biggest steak they’ve got. Dessert. Cheese. Everything.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I’m midway through the table arrangements.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, come on, take a break with me, Nell––’

  ‘I can’t. If I come with you now it means I’ll be working late tonight and I want to make sure I get it all done, get it all perfect––’

  Ed kisses me then, stops the words in their tracks with his soft lips, and it’s a proper kiss this time. Slow, purposeful, his teeth grazing my bottom lip ever so slightly as he pulls away. ‘God, you look good,’ he rumbles against my mouth. ‘Seriously, you––’

  ‘Look, why don’t you go upstairs to the room,’ I swoop in, ‘have a sleep and then maybe in a few hours you can – Ed, for God’s sake, we’re in a public place.’ He nuzzles into my neck, lips against the skin sending an involuntary shiver down my spine. ‘I need to work.’

  ‘Fine,’ he groans. ‘Work me to the bone why don’t you? At least let me get a coffee first.’

  Forty-five minutes later, Ed is splayed out on the floor of the stockroom holding ribbon between his teeth. ‘Are we done yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let’s just go upstairs. Look. I helped.’

  ‘For about half an hour!’

  He groans again, pokes the arrow on my Spotify list. ‘I don’t know why you still listen to bloody Keane.’

  ‘I love Keane.’

  Ed takes the hessian ribbon from his teeth and holds it in his hand. ‘It’s mental all this stuff, though, isn’t it?’ he says.

  ‘What, the flowers?’

  ‘Just – well, they better be paying you loads for this. For sitting on a floor in a cold, dark room.’

  ‘Well, it needs to be a cold, dark room, to keep them fresh,’ I say, shortly. ‘But it looks good doesn’t it, so far?’

  ‘If you like flowers.’

  I look over at him, something sinking inside of me, like a rock, and he grins as if rescuing himself last minute. ‘They look amazing, you know they do.’ He sits up and brushes hair out of my face, fingertips grazing my cheek. ‘Like you.’

  ‘Smooth.’

  ‘I mean it.’ He leans, kisses me deeply, perfectly, well-rehearsedly, and works his hand under my top, warm fingers skimming the wire of my bra. ‘Can we go upstairs now,’ he says into my mouth.

  ‘Let me finish this,’ I say. ‘But then we’re coming back down tonight.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s why you’re here remember.’

  ‘Mhmm.’ Ed’s mouth smiles, his lips on mine. ‘It’s why I’m here.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I knew it would happen. We were kissing. Kissing a lot when we got back to the hotel room. Then Ed had showered and tried to coax me in there with him, but I’d said no, and I’d sat looking out to the busy city streets below as the water showered onto the stone tiles next door and Ed sang to himself. ‘You wanted this more than anything,’ said that voice in my head. ‘And now here you are. In a beautiful place with Ed. So why aren’t you happy?’ Ed had then appeared, a towel knotted at his waist, drops of water peppered across his toned stomach, and he tried it on again, as we waited for the soft knock at the door from room service, kissing me at first, then moving his hand to my thigh, moving up, up, up, until I moved away, sliding across the duvet.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m here for work.’

  ‘But Nell, look at this place,’ he’d said, as if a beautiful hotel room and king size bed were wasted if it
wasn’t shagged in at least once.

  ‘I know, but – that’s not why I’m here.’ Then we’d eaten cross-legged on the bed watching some boring quiz show, my eyes constantly on the clock, and when he’d kissed my neck I told him to stop and stood up.

  ‘I thought we were away together,’ he said, shaking his head, and I had absolutely no idea what to say, so I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and showered. I let the water hammer my face, as if to somehow shake the thoughts in my head loose, arrange them into some sort of comprehensive order. But it didn’t work. I suddenly felt panicked, like I needed to shove the door of the glass shower cubicle open, escape. I put on a face of make-up, took my time with the eyeliner flicks, with the smoky eye, and pinned my hair back, into some sort of messy up-do, thinking the entire time, as I looked into my own eyes in the large, hotel bathroom mirror, about what the fuck was going on – about what I was doing. Here, with him. He was all I ever wanted. I dreamed of this – of him coming back, of him realising we’d made a mistake, and going out together, into the world. So why didn’t I want to be close to him, to have sex with him? Why doesn’t it feel like I thought it would – should. It feels different. It feels wrong.

  When I finally left the bathroom, Ed was passed out on the bed, and I’d felt relief that I didn’t have to look at him or my feelings in the eye any more. I slipped out.

  The Balmoral’s lobby is jam packed full of black ties when I step out of the elevator and I feel better now, lost in the noise and the din of a Friday night in the city. Tens of people in sharp, pressed suits and expensive dresses, shrouding the place in aftershave and perfume and raucous laughter file slowly into the banquet hall opposite where Candice and Steve will get married tomorrow. They are meeting some of their guests tonight and having drinks in the bar, and they invited Ed and me to join them, if I’m finished with the flowers early enough so I wanted to be prepared – nice dress, nice make-up. Plus, I don’t really want to be walking through somewhere as beautiful as this, in my cruddy tracksuit bottoms. The Balmoral is too grand, and I am far enough from home to feel like it’s a special occasion. I never get to dress up, but tonight is different. I blend right in, like I could easily slip into one of these little circles, titter a little laugh, and fit effortlessly into the conversation.

  Outside in the car park, the drizzle has stopped and the autumnal sky is an amalgamation of pastel colour, as if the sky gods were inspired by fruit-salad sweets, and I stand for a while, against the little hire van, looking up at it. Daisy. I always think of Daisy when I see a pretty sky, when I’m doing something new. She loved taking photos of the sky. She loved talking about all the people who are under it right now, and ‘isn’t it weird, Elle, to think the people we’ll fall in love with are under this sky right now’ she’d say. What would she think now, if she could see me? Would she be proud? What would she think about me being here with Ed? Everything feels so confused and like a hundred loose ends, untied. I wish she was still here. I wish things were simple. I wish I wasn’t me. I wish I wasn’t so confused, and I wish I didn’t feel so scared. To live. Because I am, I think. I’m afraid to live too loudly. And I wasn’t always like this, but I don’t know how to get back there. I was definitely there the night we buried the time capsule, the moment Daisy took that photo of Ed and me. And I’d felt it so surely in my heart that my forever was in that photo. Not just Ed and me, but that photo was proof that I had forever, or what felt like it, ahead of me. My future was so bright. It was mine for the taking. The stars in the sky behind us just goading us to go ahead, take what we wanted, with both hands.

  Two women walk by me holding hands. One of them says something to the other, and they tip their heads back, laugh, fingers spread at their chests, and I feel that pull. Sam. Sam always laughs at me. Nothing I’ve ever said has shocked him, embarrassed him, prompted him to try to fix it or change it. Sam. Ugh. All my thoughts end up back at bloody Sam Attwood. And to think – he’s somewhere nearby. OK, he’s right, it’s a big place, but I like knowing that we’re in the same city, that the same tufty, fire-tinged clouds above my head are floating over his too.

  I open the van and pull out the buckets I picked up from the supplier. I bet Candice feels like the world is hers right now. Everyone racing around, for her, the brand-new chapter of her life just waiting for her when the sun rises tomorrow. And I think that’s why I wish I had the camera, more than anything. So I could see photos of myself again, of who I used to be. That Noelle who dared to hope for bigger things. Before I almost died and accepted that I should be grateful for anything I was handed. Even if I didn’t want it, it was better than not living at all, right? Daisy would give anything to still be here, like me. ‘Daisy doesn’t know she isn’t here,’ Ed would say to me and it helped and hurt all at once. Daisy believed in the afterlife. Daisy believed you were bigger than just bones and a beating heart. I close my eyes. Are you there? Send me a sign that you’re there. I miss you. I’m sorry I don’t do this enough, I’m sorry I don’t talk about you, but I miss you every day, and I don’t know what to do. I feel lost. I feel alone.

  I open my eyes, lock the van, sniff back the hot tears that are desperate to fall. I make my way back to the hotel. A group of women pile out of a taxi at the entrance screeching with laughter. I think of Candice, of those beautiful flowers waiting for me inside, to be made into something to be admired, to be photographed and remembered. I have dreamed of this for so many, many years, and I’m here. I’m actually here. I stop on the pavement. I can’t sabotage this, ruin it for myself. This wedding. These flowers. This opportunity. Now. Now, not then. That’s what matters.

  I stand tall, look up at the gorgeous autumnal sky one last time, then carry the buckets up through the hotel doors, aware of how weird I must look in a tea dress and full make-up, carrying metal buckets like some sort of dusty labourer, but not giving a single shit. Yup. This is me. Noelle Butterby. Wedding florist. Flower designer, don’t you know.

  The lobby is jam packed, like the bar before a concert, with people standing around chatting. Through the double doors of the banquet hall, I see others seated, wine buckets in the centre of their tables, the room bathed in indigo disco lights.

  A group stand before the doors chatting, all black tuxes and deep voices, and low music floats out from the inside. There’s a stand beside the entrance, a crisp white page slotted inside the frame. ‘Climbing for Causes’, it says. I stop, my feet on the shiny floor, a bucket at each side.

  Climbing for Causes.

  Climbing for Causes.

  Oh my God.

  And –

  There he is. Sam. And of course he is. In the group of tall, black tuxes, Sam looks up, and before I can even register that he’s there, our eyes meet, locking into place like two magnets. I feel like I want to cry at the sight of him. You’re here, you’re here, you’re here beats my relieved, racing little heart. His face freezes, perfect pink lips parted in mid conversation, as if straight from a photograph, and as if perfectly synchronised, we both break out into smiles. ‘What the fuck?’ he mouths eventually. ‘I know!’ I mouth back.

  Of course. Of course Sam is here. And as much as it is completely ridiculous that he is actually here, in this same hotel, it also feels unsurprising. Here we are, yet again in each other’s paths, and for what reason, I really don’t know, other than – this is meant to be. Isn’t it?

  Sam breaks away from the group, all back slaps and hard nods, and approaches me, his dark eyebrows knitting together, a white, stunned and lopsided smile on his handsome face. My heart bangs. My whole body feels as if it’s just been slowly dunked into cold water. A mist of tingles and prickles across my skin. He looks gorgeous. He looks so gorgeous.

  ‘The wedding,’ he says, gesturing to us both, and I stand, buckets at my side and look up at him.

  ‘The charity event,’ I say. ‘Y-you said it was a – club?’

  ‘It moved. Venue flooded, so we moved here – it was mini-bus mayhem let me tell you an
d – you – you have buckets,’ he says.

  ‘I have buckets.’

  He flashes a playful smile. ‘Noelle, you look …’ His dark eyes drift to my dress, then back to my face. I see his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. ‘You look – beautiful.’

  I swallow too because I feel like something is swelling, blocking my airwaves, because I can hardly bear to look at him. He’s the sun. He’s the fucking sun. ‘And you … you really do suit a – well, suit.’

  He grins at me, and seeing him like this, somewhere new, miles away from everything, from Farthing Heights and stuffy launderettes, and in this glittering hotel beneath antique chandeliers, surrounded by noise and life and glamour, him in that suit … it feels too much. As if it’s a glimpse, somehow, of what could be, in another life, in another world. Me in my dress, him in his suit, here together. And I think he feels it too, because we both just stare at one another, for a moment, speechless. Then he steps forward and slowly, purposely, puts his arms around me, and it’s the first time. It’s the first time I’ve been this close to him, properly, slowly, feeling his warm, strong body against mine, his hands against my cold bare back. He holds me. He really holds me, not just like he did when he was consoling me in my mad Moomin pyjamas. Properly. Like a perfect slotting together. And I don’t even know if I’m breathing, if I’m even here but I never want to let him go.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey, Attwood, what’s going on here?’

  We pull away as a large hand lands on Sam’s shoulder, slapping him twice. Sam’s face breaks into a smile. ‘Clay, this is Noelle.’

  Clay stands next to Sam, the total surfer dream boy, with floppy blond hair and tanned skin. Daisy would’ve fancied him. Charlie definitely pre-Theo, would’ve ridden him into the sunset and back again (then totally broken his poor little wave-chasing heart). ‘Holy shit,’ says Clay. ‘Noelle from the traffic jam?’

  Sam’s cheeks colour for the first time ever and he gives a deep nod. ‘Yup. That’s right. Noelle, this is my buddy Clay––’