CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Summer always passed in a whirl of confetti and honeymoon-suite white linens for me, and this year was no different. A warm July and a sultry August saw the hotel full of sighing wedding guests nearly every weekend: the old cool room downstairs was constantly filled with white lilies and roses for the tables and arrangements, clanking crates of champagne were wheeled in and empty bottles wheeled out, and Fiona, the harpist, was here so often she was dating one of the barmen by the end of August.
My Bridelizer was making steady progress towards the target, and I was dropping regular hints to Laurence about how much of the general manager’s job I was now doing in the hope that he might get bored and just offer me the job early. Meanwhile, in the events office, Joe was fielding most of Flora’s more whimsical calls about butterflies and whether it was okay to cull guests on grounds of weight gain, while I dealt with Julia Thornbury and the nitty-gritty details, like how many people she would be inviting. Life was good. But I couldn’t enjoy it as much as usual, because in the space of one painful evening, my beautiful friend Helen had gone from a poised and confident restaurant manager to a lovelorn zombie.
True to her word, the day after the awards dinner, Helen gave Seamus his marching orders, and he was happy enough to march, the rat. One of the kitchen porters let slip to me that he’d moved straight in with one of the wine buyers for a big West End restaurant chain – not that I told Helen.
Instead, I took her out for dinner – usually to McDonald’s, since most London restaurants had bad associations now – and tried to keep her busy in as much social life as Laurence let us have, but the fact remained that the pair of us were condemned to celebrate other people’s happy relationships at least once a week, and smile constantly while we did it. I tried to relieve the grisly irony by reintroducing our old favourite, Wedding Bingo – three guests in identical Coast dresses; Hungover Ushers; Fake Tan Lines; Spot the Exes – but Helen didn’t want to play any more.
‘Why is the moral high ground so boring?’ she moaned to me through gritted teeth and waterproof mascara. ‘Why is it so lonely? Why is doing the right thing so – so unbelievably painful?’
‘You’ll find someone else,’ I assured her, as I did about four times a day, more on wedding weekends. ‘You’ll never meet Mr Right if you’re shacked up with Mr Wrong.’
‘But how am I going to meet Mr Right?’ She rolled her eyes towards the Paris-themed wedding reception of childhood sweethearts Callum and Eithne Riley. ‘Even if I found a single bloke under the age of fifty here, I’d have to fight off the three single friends of the bride who were invited specifically to scrap it out over him. I never realized how like The Hunger Games weddings are.’
I took the croquembouche discreetly out of her hands. She’d started to pick viciously at the spun sugar. ‘The right man will come along,’ I said, ‘when you least expect it. What’s meant for you won’t go by you.’
Seriously, I should have been painting these thoughts onto pebbles and selling them to brides as wedding favours.
Over by the champagne table, two women in strapless prom dresses started having a very obvious standoff, next to a sheepish-looking bloke.
‘Leave them to it,’ I said. ‘He’s the best man’s boyfriend.’
‘Ha!’ said Helen, and stalked back to the kitchen.
*
The Indian summer of Post-Seamus Gloom rolled on in London until the last week in September, and then suddenly one morning I woke up and autumn had arrived. The air changed – there was a crispness about everything, and people started to walk a little faster down Piccadilly in the mornings.
Something had changed in the hotel, too.
We’d had a weekly wedding meeting, in which Joe had brought us up to date with Flora’s latest ideas for a wedding dress made entirely from rose petals and Love Hearts sweeties (she’d actually found someone mad enough to make it, too), and he and Gemma had gone off, under protest, to remove all the red Smarties from Catriona Hale’s fifteen pounds of sweets for her ice cream bar. That left me and Helen to run through Delphine’s cake schedule for the rest of the year.
Down in her pâtisserie cave, Delphine created beautiful bespoke wedding cakes, but lately she’d started modelling very ‘realistic’ toppers of the bride and groom, some of which had actually upset the brides, who’d been under the impression that their efforts on the 5:2 diet had been more successful than Delphine apparently thought.
‘Helen.’ I nudged her. ‘You were going to talk to Delphine about being a bit less Parisian and a bit more generous in her sugar paste.’
‘What?’ She jumped and frowned, then smiled in a spacey way. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’
I eyed her. This was a different kind of distracted from the usual heartbroken zombie face. ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded, but only stayed focused for about two nanoseconds before drifting back into her private daydream. Her eyes weren’t smiling at me. They were smiling at a non-specific point about two yards to the right of my head.
I clicked my fingers in front of Helen’s face to try to get her to concentrate. ‘Helen? You haven’t been eating anything out of the commis chef’s biscuit tin again?’
She shook her head and smiled. Again, not at me.
‘Don’t make me throw this glass of water over you,’ I warned her.
Helen pulled herself together. ‘Guess what?’
‘What?’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Please don’t tell me Seamus has come back? Whatever he’s done, Helen, think about those bunny rabbits that you thought were for pets but were really—’
‘No, it’s not Seamus.’ Helen looked scornful. ‘That loser? Forget him. No, I’ve met someone else.’ She glanced down, as if having a private thought of her own, and her usual poise was suddenly, and rather beautifully, disrupted by a very goofy grin.
‘Really?’ An odd sensation rippled through me. ‘That’s … that’s brilliant! When?’
‘Last week.’
Last week? I felt a bit hurt. ‘When were you going to tell me?’
For the first time, she looked a little shifty. ‘Um, soon. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t having one of those weird rebound-goggles episodes.’
‘So, who is he?’ I nudged her. ‘How did you meet? Come on, I want to know everything!’
Helen blushed. ‘It’s really corny, but it was in the restaurant. He came in at ten to, reservation for two people at one o’clock, so I seated him, did all the usual stuff, didn’t take much notice because we were busy. He was on his iPhone, so I thought, fine … then I realized at ten past one that he was still on his own. And no one had come by quarter past, so I sent Rita to ask if there was a problem, he said no, but he’d finished the bread—’
‘Yadda yadda,’ I prompted, rolling my hands, because much as I wanted to know all the details, my schedule wasn’t going to allow for a real-time re-enactment.
‘Anyway, a little after half past Rita took a call from someone called Lou, to let Wynn Davies at table three know she wasn’t going to make it. Could we pass on the message?’ The pink flush on Helen’s cheek deepened. ‘I always pass on phone messages like that myself, in case it’s something personal, so I went over to tell him, and he looked crushed, poor guy, and it turned out …’
Finally.
‘… that he’d been set up on a blind date, and he’d been stood up. I didn’t ask, he just blurted it out. I don’t think he meant to tell me, but he’d been sitting there for over half an hour, eating bread.’
‘Awkward,’ I agreed. ‘So, what did you do? Offer him the specials menu, and tell him to hurry up?’
Helen tutted. ‘Of course not. I gave him a glass of champagne on the house. He’d made an effort too, I could tell. Nice suit, new haircut. And we’re not a cheap first-date restaurant, either. I thought that said a lot about him.’
‘And …?’
‘And then we sort of got chatting, and he, um …’ Helen shyly curled a strand of hair round her f
inger. ‘He asked if he could take me out for dinner, or if that was the worst thing you could ask a restaurant manager? And I said, no, it wasn’t, actually, and that I’d been dying to try that place Dom reviewed last week.’
‘The Fulham Rigger?’
‘No, the other one.’ She frowned. ‘The Coach and Horsemen.’
‘I don’t think I’ve been there.’
‘You have. In Canonbury? Betty was there – she had some tart comments to make about the butter.’
I hadn’t been to Canonbury in over a year. ‘Nope, haven’t been. You’ll have to tell me what it’s like.’
‘It’s very nice, actually. We’ve actually, um, had the date.’ Helen hugged her knees.
‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought you might think I was moving on a bit fast. From Seamus.’
Privately, I didn’t think Helen could move on too fast from Seamus, not even if she was speeding away from him with a jetpack, but I just made a wow! face. ‘Of course not! So tell me all about him! What does he do? Where’s he from?’
‘He’s called Wynn, he’s thirty, he’s from Swansea, he’s …’ Helen’s sunny expression wavered a little. ‘He’s …’
‘He’s what? A sous-chef?’ Helen rarely dated anyone beneath chef status, but she’d sometimes settle for a talented sommelier. ‘Another restaurant manager?’
‘Don’t laugh,’ she warned me. ‘It’s not the most exciting job.’
I racked my brains. ‘He’s not a … baker?’
‘No, he’s a dentist.’
I did a double take. ‘A dentist?’
‘I know it’s not a very sexy profession, but I thought it could be a good idea to get away from the food industry for a bit.’
‘Well, I suppose dentists deal with the … aftermath of the food industry.’
‘You’re pleased?’ She looked at me anxiously. ‘It’s not just rebound insanity?’
Helen looked like a new woman. Well, not a new woman. Her old self. Her old, glowy, confident, Scandinavian goddess self.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Truthfully, it’s the best news I’ve had all year.’
‘I think so too.’ She beamed sunnily, and opened her diary. ‘So, when are you and Dominic free for a double date?’
*
As usual, Dominic insisted on taking Helen and Wynn out on a reviewing mission for our double date.
‘It kills two birds with one stone,’ he protested when I found he’d booked us into Jocques, ‘Fulham’s exciting new ground-breaking Scottish-French fusion concept’. ‘And this new bloke of Helen’s is bound to have some good insider gossip.’
He’d rung me up to tell me, but I could hear the eagerness in his voice; there was nothing Dominic loved more than access to foodie gossip. One of his main complaints about Seamus was that he was too high-minded – or high – to pass on kitchen scandal.
‘I hate to disappoint you, but I doubt it. Not unless their salted caramel is causing root-canal traumas all round Chelsea.’
‘What?’
‘Wynn’s a dentist.’ I tucked the phone under my ear and stuck the Post-it note with Bride’s Babysitter onto the new seating plan in the one remaining place it could go, between Groom Uni Friend and Mrs Bride’s Boss. There. Done. Issy Livingstone’s feud-riven, multi-married, half-mad family, all seated.
I stood back and surveyed the plan with some pride.
‘So that’s settled,’ said Dom, clearly not listening to me. ‘I’ll see you both there at half past seven.’
‘But, hang on, what sort of place is this? I don’t know if he eats meat or—’
‘What kind of weirdo doesn’t eat meat?’
‘Plenty. I don’t eat a lot myself.’ Lately I’d been picking Dominic up on some of his casual rudeness. Ever since the awards fiasco, it had stopped being charming and started to, well, sound plain rude.
‘You know something, Rosie, you’re beginning to sound like someone’s mother,’ said Dominic tetchily. ‘Not mine. She didn’t nag me quite so much.’
‘This isn’t nagging,’ I pointed out. ‘This is just manners. You could at least—’
But the line had gone dead. He’d hung up on me. I stared in mute fury at the phone. That was the third time he’d hung up on me this month. Our theoretical mortgage had finally come through from the bank, but the prospect of taking another step towards our own flat wasn’t filling me with the unbridled joy I’d expected it to.
‘I hate it when you hang up on me, you charmless nerk!’ I yelled into the receiver, just as Joe walked in.
‘Was that Issy?’ he asked. ‘Bit brisk?’
‘No, it was bloody Dominic,’ I said, then frowned at myself. I hadn’t meant to tell Joe that. ‘Could you knock, by the way? Before you come in?’
Joe leaned against the doorframe. ‘Why? Would I have overheard something that might have shocked me? More covert matchmaking for my mother? Date reports about my dad?’
‘No, I …’ Urgh. My mind went blank. ‘But I often have brides on the phone. And they don’t appreciate doors opening and shutting, and interruptions.’
As I spoke, the Chief Bridesmaid Post-It peeled slowly off the plan and fluttered to the ground, closely followed by Groom’s Stepmother.
‘Oh, you’re kidding me,’ I groaned. The groom’s stepmother had been stuck to the back of the chief bridesmaid all along.
‘What?’
I showed him the offending Post-its. ‘Seating plan. My least favourite part of a wedding.’
‘Oh,’ said Joe, as if it had jogged his memory. ‘Issy was trying to get hold of you. She left a message to say that her stepmother thinks she will come after all, so can we fit her in? Top table, ideally, otherwise she’ll have one of her dos, whatever that means.’
I stared at the top table, already overloaded with the bride’s father’s three previous wives, all at very carefully spaced distances from one another. I’d worked it out with a ruler and sightlines so none of them had to look at each other directly. In the end, I’d had a brainwave and asked the florist to make an extra, very thick, freestanding arrangement to block one out.
‘There’s no room for another Mrs Livingstone,’ I said. ‘Not unless we put a hammock over the top table and stick her in that.’
Joe wrinkled up his nose as if I were just making a big fuss about nothing. ‘Oh, it can’t be that bad.’
‘Hello?’ I waved in defeat at the plan.
‘Let me see.’ He pushed himself off the doorframe and sloped inside.
I folded my arms and watched him as he squinted at the various Post-Its. ‘Blue for groom, pink for bride, red stars one to five for “difficult behaviour”,’ I explained. ‘Gold star for single.’
He went to tug a ratty plait, remembered they’d all been cut off, stuck a hand into his hair instead, and frowned. ‘Does it have to be this complicated? Can’t you just run a buffet and let them sit where they want?’
I didn’t dignify that with a response.
‘What if …?’ Joe went to move a Post-it, then stopped. ‘No. Hmm.’
‘See?’ I said, feeling vindicated. ‘Not so easy, is it?’
‘Hang on. I haven’t finished. What if … you moved this person?’ He peeled a Post-it off the plan.
‘What? No! That’s the groom. You can’t move him.’
‘And this person.’
I folded my arms. ‘Again, the bride. Not really movable.’
‘Why not?’ said Joe. ‘I reckon they’re the most movable. If you stick the bride and groom here at their own special top top-table …’ He picked up a pen from my desk, drew a small square by the French windows on the plan, and restuck Issy and Adam on it. ‘There. Frees up two whole places. One for the stepmother and another just in case Issy’s dad ditches his current wife and trades up again before the wedding. You did say Issy didn’t really get on with half the people at the top table.’
I stared at the plan. It was totally wrong, but at the same time, genius. I cou
ldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. An unexpected calm spread through my chest.
‘You want to say, “That’s brilliant, Joe”,’ Joe prompted me.
‘It’s very unconventional.’
He made an outraged choking noise. ‘What’s the point of convention if it doesn’t work? Lighten up.’
I half-smiled at him. It turned into a full smile, despite myself: Joe looked so pleased with his solution. I couldn’t help myself. ‘You keep saying that.’
‘And I’ll keep saying it until you do,’ he replied with an even cheesier smile. ‘Without me having to remind you the whole time.’
*
Helen’s new man Wynn was so far from what I was expecting that when Dominic and I met at Jocques fifteen minutes late, as usual, I was relieved that we seemed to have got there before them.
It was only when I scanned the nearly empty restaurant and spotted Helen, leaning in very close to a man I’d have taken for Prince Harry if I hadn’t had my contact lenses in, that I realized Helen and Wynn had arrived. They’d probably been there for ages, but they wouldn’t have noticed if we’d been another hour. Or two. Or not arrived at all.
Everything about the way they were sitting screamed ‘honeymoon dating period’. The menus lay unread next to them, and their fingers were entwined as they gazed into each other’s eyes with that greedy, giddy eagerness that you get when you think you’ve chanced upon the one person in the entire world you were supposed to meet all along. My heart fizzed with a funny cocktail of emotions at how happy Helen looked. I was happy for her, but at the same time, I wished someone would look at me like that. I wasn’t sure anyone ever had.
Wynn said something to her and smiled shyly. Helen laughed, and as she looked up, she spotted us, and waved.
‘Dominic.’ I nudged him. He was already disputing some spelling error in the signage outside with the bewildered girl at the door. ‘Dominic!’
‘… should have the apostrophe after the s. Is it the bar of Jocques? Or is it a collection of Jocques? What? Are they here?’ He frowned and I pointed. ‘Whoa. Are you sure that’s him?’
‘Yes.’