‘No,’ said Joe flatly. ‘Not on this occasion.’
I met his gaze. I wondered if I should feel thrilled or guilty that I’d finally beaten Joe down to my way of thinking.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said, reading my face. ‘And then I’ll give her some peace and love, if you can’t face it.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ asked Gemma.
‘There’s not a lot we can do. We can’t force Flora to get married here,’ I said again. I got up and walked over to my Bridelizer, and yanked the photograph of Flora off the 20 June spot. She was the only one of my brides to have a professional picture, and it had encroached on poor Jessie Callum (May) and Violet Hartley (July). They both instantly looked a lot prettier without Flora’s million-dollar face next to them.
‘There you go,’ I said, passing it to Joe. ‘You can draw a moustache on it.’
He started to say he didn’t want to, then changed his mind and got a black marker out of my pen-holder with unseemly relish.
I turned back to the chart and sighed. Flora’s gap, marked with a trace of Blu-tack, seemed enormous. I was never going to fill that space now. Anyone planning to get married on 20 June would have booked it months and months ago. Last year I’d had loads of enquiries for June, all with a hopeful ‘I expect you’re already full’ note, and I’d had to turn them down. No one had asked about June since September.
‘Oh …’ I said.
It still hadn’t fully sunk in. It probably wouldn’t for a few hours. Like when you stub your toe and your brain generously gives you ten seconds’ thinking time to consider exactly how hideous the pain’s going to be when it arrives.
Maybe it was the novelty of Joe’s reaction that had distracted me, I thought. It was actually quite cheering to see him pissed off. It showed he cared about the hotel. I felt a gratifying warmth inside.
We all sat in silence for about two minutes; then Gemma gasped.
‘Oh, wait! I’ve had a genius idea!’ she exclaimed, clapping her hands together like a small child. ‘We could make it a prize! On the radio! We can offer the booking to someone who’s about to propose to their boyfriend – or girlfriend! – as long as they get married on that date in June!’ Her eyes shone. ‘It’d be brilliant publicity for the hotel! And it would be so romantic.’
I thought about it. ‘That’s actually not a bad idea …’
‘It’d make it pretty obvious we’ve had a cancellation.’ Joe looked up from his furious defacing of Flora’s photo.
‘People call off weddings,’ Gemma pointed out. ‘Everyone knows some flaky friend who’s bailed out at the last minute. I mean, like Stephanie Miller! Remember? The bride Joe talked to, and she called it off? It happens. It’s not the hotel’s fault people get cold feet.’
I looked at my feet. Joe looked uncomfortable.
I swallowed and said, as if I’d never experienced a jilting myself, ‘Stephanie and Richard have postponed. I’m sure that at some point they’ll—’
‘Yeah, postponed.’ Gemma rolled her eyes. ‘Saved them both a bullet there. I’m amazed it hasn’t happened to us before now. But really, the night before? Surely you know if you don’t want to marry someone? It’s not like it suddenly dawns on you …’
Ouch. This time I flinched, and though I pretended to check something in my day planner, I caught Joe looking at me. When our eyes met, he glanced away, but not before I’d seen some sympathy in his eyes.
My cheeks burned. There was a very good reason I hadn’t confided my secret in many people.
‘I’ll put that on the strategy list, Gemma,’ I said briskly. ‘Good thinking. If you have any more brainwaves, let me know.’
‘Maybe she could have a party here?’ Gemma was on a roll now. ‘Ooh. What about a baby shower? Maybe she got married quickly because she’s up the duff’
I held up the newspaper: Flora beamed out at us in her skinny white jacket. ‘If that oven has a bun in it, it’s a petit four.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Joe, pushing himself off his seat. ‘You two have finally driven me to a master class in bed-making. It’s that bad.’
‘If you have any brilliant ideas while you’re doing it, let me know,’ I said as he left.
‘Wow,’ said Gemma thoughtfully when he’d gone. ‘Joe’s taken that personally.’
I gave her a close look. ‘How do you work that out?’
She nodded at the cake stand, temptingly placed between my desk and the door. It held the samples for Sadie Hunter’s afternoon tea cake tasting; and it remained full, and untouched. ‘He didn’t try to nick a cake on his way out.’
She was right.
*
In the end I was on the phone to Julia Thornbury for over an hour, and said about twenty words in total, in the ninety seconds when she wasn’t screeching, wailing, or telling me what Flora’s father intended to do to Milo McBloodyKnight when he got hold of him.
(I heard a voice that sounded a lot like unwilling chief bridesmaid/younger sister Abigail’s shout, ‘Shake him by the hand and wish him luck’ at that point.)
As Joe had guessed, Julia had found out about the same time we had, having been away with friends all weekend, and she wasn’t best pleased, to put it mildly.
‘Of course I blame Flora,’ she assured me. ‘You’ve been nothing but efficiency itself throughout and I’m extremely sorry for the inconvenience she’s put you to. And Joe,’ she added, with a sigh. ‘Please apologize to dear Laurence for me. He’s been so helpful.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be as disappointed as we are. Maybe …’ I had a belated flash of efficiency. ‘Maybe he could take you out for lunch to see if there isn’t something we can do for Flora – you might throw her a little party perhaps?’
‘Oh, what a sweet idea. Maybe you could put me through to his PA so we can arrange a time?’
Fine, I thought, when I finally hung up. At least I could tell Caroline I’d got Laurence a lunch date out of all this.
*
I spent the rest of the day on the phone to the suppliers and – because I hated to see a job done badly – making a list of people who’d already saved the date for Flora, so she could get onto the stationers and commission a special ‘oops, we’ve already done it’ card. At least that might get me a sympathy mention in the gossip columns.
By five o’clock, I was thoroughly depressed, and called it a day.
Laurence had gone out for dinner with his osteopath, possibly in preparation for his lunch with Julia Thornbury, and Joe hadn’t been released from the iron grip of housekeeping, so at least I had the flat to myself when I let myself in. It was funny, but I barely noticed the décor now; it was soothing, like going back home to your mum’s house. It even smelled of someone’s mum’s house, I thought: biscuits and carpets and comforting blankets. No wonder it had resisted Ellie’s attempts to redecorate.
I changed out of my work suit, then opened the French door in the kitchen that led onto the balcony, to look out over the roofs of Piccadilly. The London skyline never failed to cheer me up, and the view from Laurence’s kitchen was special, especially after dark, when the panorama lit up like a movie-set version of London town.
It only just qualified as a balcony, being half fire-escape, and littered with the skeletons of Christmas trees ‘left to recycle naturally’ according to Laurence, but there was a solid rail to lean on and it felt like being on the prow of a ship, high above the city. I loved this secret side of the hotel: the plain windows dotting the rear walls, lit up yellow or darkened depending on whether the curtains were drawn, as well as the various roofs and flat spaces of the surrounding buildings. The streets were pure Regency elegance from the ground level, yet plain and unmade-up from here, angular and darkened like the underside of a car, all function and purpose.
I watched the red tail-lights move in stops and starts down the Mall, and reminded myself that Flora’s cancellation was just a hitch. That I could get round it. That something would turn up. But I still felt flat.
>
I was disappointed for Joe, too. He’d put in so much work, not just office hours but in the long personal conversations he’d had with Flora, trying to unravel what she actually wanted. I felt bad for being pleased at seeing him lose his cool. Lately I’d found myself trying to copy his approach, and annoyingly, sometimes it had helped.
I heard the door open inside, then the radio go on. I hoped Joe would leave me to my thoughts for a bit, but after a few minutes the balcony door opened, and then I felt something warm pressing into my upper arm.
Not just warm. Hot. Ow. Boiling hot, in fact.
I jumped and rubbed the burning sensation. It was a mug of … something.
‘Cocoa,’ said Joe. ‘It is cocoa you drink, isn’t it? Something from the nineteenth century, anyway.’
It didn’t smell like any cocoa I’d ever made. I didn’t know what Joe had poured boiling water onto, but it seemed chocolatey, and I took it, more to warm my hands than anything else.
He joined me, leaning over the railing. ‘We used to love sneaking out here as kids. Mum banned us when Alec tried to Spiderman down the side one summer. Got as far as the rooms below before he ran out of sheets.’
‘How high up was that? God. That must have given your parents a shock.’
‘Not as much as it shocked the guests in the room below.’
I laughed, and gazed out at the city. ‘I love it up here,’ I said. ‘All those windows. You get a real picture of just how many different lives there are going on under this one roof. Every room with a different guest, a different reason to be here, a different life …’
‘Little did the guests know,’ he said in a movie trailer voice, ‘that the deputy duty manager was watching their every move …’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m just weighing up how long we could stow Flora’s body out here before anyone noticed.’
Joe laughed. ‘I got a text this morning – of her wedding ring, would you believe? She says she’ll pop in to show you herself when she’s next in town. I honestly don’t think she gets how much chaos she’s caused.’
‘I’m sorry. You worked really hard. It’s not fair. But it happens.’
Joe leaned his chin on the rail. ‘I guess so. It’s probably karma, getting me back for lecturing you about letting clients be romantic and follow their hearts, not their heads.’
‘That’s a very generous way of looking at it.’
‘Something will turn up,’ he said, turning his head to look at me. ‘You’ve got to put your faith in the universe.’
‘Ha! I don’t think so. That’s the one thing I don’t put any faith in.’ I sipped suspiciously at the cocoa. It had a funny tang of curry powder. ‘In my experience, the universe specializes in doing exactly what you don’t need, at the exact moment when you haven’t time to deal with it.’
‘So it’s all down to you?’
‘It’s all down to me.’
‘Maybe you should leave a bit more space for the universe.’
Before I could even think of a reply sarcastic enough, Joe reached out and pointed to something moving over the skyline.
‘Look! Quick, there!’
‘Where?’
He waved his finger. ‘Shooting star. Quick, wish on that.’
‘That’s not a shooting star,’ I scoffed. ‘That’s an air ambulance.’
‘No, it’s a shooting star,’ Joe insisted. ‘Make a wish.’
I started to tell him what a ridiculous idea that was – especially when the shooting star had a red flashing light – but something in Joe’s expression stopped me. Mingled with the earnestness I’d come to tolerate over the past few months was a flash of self-deprecation, as if he was only acting like this because he thought I expected it.
‘Don’t make me say universe again,’ he warned. ‘Humour me here. Like I humour you about folding loo paper into shapes.’
I felt a funny twist in my stomach, and looked quickly up at the sky. The ‘shooting star’ was heading for St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, but who was I to argue?
‘Wish outrageously,’ said Joe. ‘Don’t hold back. Be greedy and ambitious, let your subconscious guide you, and—’
‘Okay, okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going along with your ridiculous shooting-star thing, but I’m still British.’
I closed my eyes and wished for another high-profile, big-budget wedding to fill that prime June slot Flora had just abandoned. I wished for the hotel to be filled with happy laughter and well-dressed guests, the smells of perfume and wedding cake and rose-petal confetti in the foyer. I wished for cute flower-girl bridesmaids in ballet shoes, Rolls-Royces pulling up outside, the clink of glasses and the click of cameras, the hotel gleaming and sparkling, a buzzing after-party in the hotel bar, and, at the centre of it all, I pictured myself, keeping everything under calm control, ticking off every secret list.
Me and Joe.
I frowned. The image in my mind’s eye was of me and Joe. I tried to move him offstage, but he wouldn’t. He was there next to me, smiling at the guests, telling me to calm down and relax and all the other annoying things he came out with, just when I really didn’t want to relax. But now I did feel relaxed. A comforting, positive feeling swept over me, as if things would be all right. Something would come along.
The Joe in my mind’s eye slipped his arm around my waist and smiled at me, and I felt my mouth smiling back. My real mouth, in real life.
I snapped my eyes open in surprise.
The real Joe was an arm’s length away, leaning next to me on the balcony, and he was watching my face. And the feeling was still there. The gauzy, cashmere-blanket feeling of comfort, wrapping me up lightly in its cosy embrace.
My cheeks burned; I wondered if he’d somehow been able to see what had just gone across my mind. I hadn’t thought it on purpose. It was just like one of those random dreams, when you find yourself doing unspeakable things to your optician and then feel odd when you polish your glasses for reasons you don’t want to think about.
‘Did you wish for something nice?’ Joe asked, and his voice sounded different.
I shivered, and it was nothing to do with the February air out on the balcony. ‘Er, yes.’
He smiled slowly, and the edges of his eyes crinkled. ‘I hope you didn’t just run a series of budget proposals past that shooting star,’ he said with a nod towards the sky.
I didn’t know what to say. A fluttering had started in the pit of my stomach.
‘Did you wish for something?’ I asked instead. ‘On the shooting ambulance?’
He looked at me, and his expression became slightly more solemn. The fluttering spread up towards my chest, making all the little hairs on the backs of my arms stand up.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did.’
We looked at each other, and I could feel the breath stop in my throat.
‘Joe? Joe! Joe!’ yelled a voice inside the flat.
It was Laurence. I recognized that note of panic.
‘It’s your dad,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Joe, without taking his eyes off me.
‘He sounds a bit panicky.’
‘I probably left the fridge open.’ Joe bit his lip, as if he was trying to work out how to say something, and I shivered again at his lovely square white teeth and the way they pulled at the soft pillow of his lower lip. ‘Rosie,’ he began.
‘What are you two doing out here?’ Laurence appeared at the balcony windows. ‘The fridge was wide open! I’ve got temperature-sensitive vitamins in there.’
‘That wasn’t what I wished for, by the way,’ said Joe, still looking into my eyes.
Every hair on my skin tingled. He was even more handsome in the half-light of London. And he was still in love with someone else. Something tore inside me, with regret and longing. Fate was showing me a man who knew how to fall in love with a woman – but I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him myself.
‘I know,’ I said, and went back in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THR
EE
Obviously, I believed in the wish-granting potential of the universe about as much as I believed in the proposal-predicting power of a randomly chucked bouquet and the divorce-preventing properties of a blue garter and a sixpence in the shoe.
So I was really not expecting the call I got from Charlie Nevin, wedding photographer, on Friday morning.
I was actually making a to-do list for a new bride I’d signed up for a winter wedding in December, and had just reached ‘Photographers: a selection’ when Nevin’s own face came up on my phone.
‘Nevin!’ I said with delight. ‘Just the man.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I think?’
Nevin was my favourite of the wedding photographers we used, and the one I recommended most often. He shared my belief in planning, to the point where he had fully thought-out strategies for thunderstorms, power cuts, light rain, heavy snow, and various key personnel not turning up. Part of his contract was that he be allowed to attend my early meetings to ‘run through’ (i.e. vet) the bride’s requirements; he had the sort of polite but remorseless focus that cut through the dithering of more indecisive couples. If he was in the area and at a loose end, I sometimes asked him to drop in anyway, just to sit in meetings and firm up bridal decisions more quickly.
‘I don’t suppose you’d like to come in and have a chat with a delightful couple planning a December wedding, would you?’ I asked.
‘It would be my pleasure.’ Nevin also had the mother-of-the-bride-friendly trait of sounding as if he’d wandered off the set of Pride and Prejudice. ‘But I was calling because I’ve got a favour to ask of you.’
‘If it’s another wedding reshoot, that’s a yes from me. We love the overtime and the chance to dress up here.’
‘Ha! But no. This is rather cheeky,’ he went on, ‘but it’s for a special client – long story short, she was booked into another hotel – full package, honeymoon there, full ceremony, no expense spared – but there’s been some kind of mix-up, complete freak-out, and now she and her chap need to find somewhere else, asap. I don’t suppose you’ve got any dates free in June, have you?’