Gray gave a low whistle as he got out of the car. ‘You sure now how to treat a guy, Miss Adkins.’
Cleo couldn’t help but stare too, sliding her sunglasses down from where they were perched atop her pinned-back fringe; she had to – it felt like the crenelated turret of Withysteeple Hall was touching the sun. ‘Christ. Nora would love this for sure. Ooh la la. Very Downton Abbey.’
‘Completely,’ Gray agreed. ‘Why hasn’t she come out to see it?’
Cleo made a face. ‘She’s had to go see a venue with her family. Don’t ask. Long story. Involves God and her overbearing Irish-Catholic mother, who I believe has more power than the former. She said she’d come out here to meet with the wedding coordinator if I reported back it was worth the meeting.’
‘Well, if she’s looking to get married in the splendid manner of a Jane Austen heroine, then I already think, yeah, it’s worth the meeting,’ Gray laughed. ‘This place couldn’t be more stunning!’
Cleo hadn’t had Gray pegged for a regency-romantic – she smiled, filing that piece of information away – but she couldn’t help but agree with him. The manor house sat atop a gentle, natural mound – like it needed to look more impressive, Cleo thought, amused – beatifically crowning a thick carpet of surrounding meadow: fat columbines and forget-me-nots and creamy cow parsley, so dense you couldn’t see the grass.
Okay, so it wouldn’t be so gorgeous come the winter – perhaps it might even be a little gothic for some tastes – but Cleo could already imagine the tall windows of the house lit up with firelight from within, the swollen-globe lights that strung the path from the car park at the gates to the front door glowing comfortingly, perhaps even a few shining flakes of snow swirling gently down from a starry sky. The four bridesmaids, each with fat fur stoles across their shoulders. Nora, all in white, glowing in the half-light of a winter afternoon. Amazing. She hadn’t even seen the inside yet and she was pretty sold.
‘Ooh, the café is open,’ Gray interrupted her reverie, having clocked the delightfully renovated stables selling cakes and concessions off to one side of the main building. ‘I could murder a scone.’
Cleo laughed. ‘I did basically insist you drive me out to the countryside with fifteen minutes’ notice on a Saturday morning – a scone would be the least I could do! But really, thank you,’ she insisted. ‘You saved my arse. I really need to learn how to drive.’
Gray cocked a smile. ‘But then how would I keep in scones?’
‘Well, there is that,’ Cleo nodded. ‘I can’t believe my luck that you had nothing better to do!’
‘What could be better than driving out to the home counties of a weekend to play fake-fiancé with my best friend from work?’
‘Plus getting to eat scones,’ Cleo reminded him.
‘Plus scones, of course,’ Gray agreed solemnly. ‘Shall we?’ He made a move towards the stables’ courtyard.
‘Nora’s given me a pretty long list of things I need to check out.’ Cleo waved her phone. Nora had insisted that her bridesmaids all download a group scheduler app for just such a purpose. ‘So maybe let’s do the necessary inside, and then we can be a little bit more leisurely about our baked goods? After all, there’s no rush.’
Gray hesitated. (Oh. Oh.) And Cleo felt supremely stupid.
‘Except there is a rush,’ she corrected herself, smiling through the pressure of the awkwardness. ‘Sorry, that was … horrendously presumptive of me.’
‘Not a rush, as such, not at all,’ Gray rushed to assure her. ‘I can always see her later, or another night. I mean, it’s just a Tinder date. In fact, don’t even think about it. She’s not even the one I was most looking forward to going out with.’
Cleo goggled at him. ‘You’ve got another date lined up?’
‘God yeah! I’ve another one on Tuesday – just going to the cinema, casual, you know – and one on Wednesday – that’s the real stunner, I can show you her photo – and I might have another one going in for Friday night, I’ll see how I feel later in the week. Sometimes you just want a night in, you know?’
Cleo didn’t know. Most of her nights seemed to be nights in. She usually took the piss out of Daisy for being on Tinder and Badoo constantly, but maybe she was missing a trick here. She wondered if Daisy and Gray had ever ‘matched’ up on one of those things. It was a very disquieting image. Maybe she should be matching them up? Was she being a totally remiss friend here?
(Stop. That way madness lies.) ‘Okay, so, scones first?’ she managed, to Gray’s enthusiastic nods.
‘Mostly because I didn’t have breakfast,’ he admitted, falling into step with Cleo as she headed towards the swing doors into the café. ‘I›ll wolf it down, I promise.’ A bright-haired barely-teen with too much red lipstick greeted them at the threshold.
‘Welcome to Withysteeple Hall!’ She pressed glossy brochures into their hands faster than they could grasp them. ‘Fuel stop?’ She carried full-steam on before anyone had a chance to answer. ‘Unfortunately you’ve missed the first guided tour of the house, but there are ones on the hour, at one and at three. We have Marshall Pickworthy exhibiting in the main hall, of course; he’s the chap that choreographs an interpretive dance based on the story of your relationship. On the South Field you can see Everlasting Love Equestrians – they train ponies and small horses to be ring-bearers: only the thoroughbreds, of course, grade horses don’t really have the intelligence. And in the ballroom we have a selection of our recommended caterers exhibiting, so make sure you leave some room for the samplers!’ She leaned in conspiratorially. ‘The shots of chilled vichyssoise are the talk of the fair!’
Cleo blinked, clutching the shiny brochure to her chest.
‘You … you don’t say,’ Gray managed.
‘So, how long until the Big Day?’ the girl asked, managing somehow to imbue the words with requisite capitalisation.
Despite having said earlier in the car that he wouldn’t be fazed, Gray immediately blushed. ‘Oh, we’re not--’
‘We’re here for a friend,’ Cleo interrupted bluntly.
‘Yeah, we’re not dating,’ Gray clarified.
‘Which apparently puts me in the minority,’ Cleo couldn’t help but mutter to herself.
* * *
‘Okay, so …’ Bea flipped through the paperwork the bruise-lady had given her to read through, referring to the checklist on her phone in the other hand. ‘Nora needs to know about capacity, availability, corkage, catering, parking, accommodation, references from recent brides – Christ, really? – and what the chairs are like. Apparently.’ She blinked. ‘Wow. Oddly specific …’
‘What the chairs are like?’ Eli echoed, puzzled. ‘Well, they’re hardly going to be armchairs, are they?’
‘You’d hope.’
They were settled in a staging area – a billowy but surprisingly unromantic cream marquee – to the back of the main barn, awaiting the events coordinator. Eli paced the small distance, peering into all the stacked storage crates. Bea scanned through the papers again.
‘It’s a whole new world this,’ she muttered. ‘Who the fuck thought there’d ever be regulations concerning confetti?’
‘It’s a wedding venue!’ Eli agreed, nodding. ‘Why would they have any beef with confetti?’
‘Not the foggiest. Okay, so, are we carrying on with pretending this is for us?’ Bea asked; they’d agreed in the car that they were likely to get straighter answers if that was the case.
‘Yeah, but you’d better do most of the talking. I’ll give us away in a heartbeat. She’ll ask us where we met and I’ll panic and tell her we’re second cousins, or something.’
Bea burst out laughing. ‘No, don’t you remember? We met at an AA meeting,’ she suggested.
‘On a nudist beach,’ Eli countered, grinning.
‘At the GUM clinic. We swapped tips on how best to manage our flare-ups of genital warts.’
‘Wait …’ Eli pretended to look thoughtful, ‘wasn’t it actually on the online message forum for that fetish club that we met?’
‘Yeah. Because you’ve got that thing where you dress up like a sexy My Little Pony,’ Bea shot back.
‘Hey, whatever gets you off, babe,’ Eli countered without missing a beat.
‘Okay, okay!’ Bea held her palms up in defeat. ‘Point taken. I’ll do all the talking. Do you think she’ll actually bother asking us how we met? Look at her job! She must have stupid engaged couples and their stupid stories coming out of her ears.’
Eli shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s acceptable small talk, isn’t it? Maybe we can distract her by going straight in with the whole chair controversy?’
‘Good plan. If she does ask, though, I’ll just stay safe with ‘we met online’.’
‘No, wait.’ Eli looked at her, his eyes soft. ‘We met at school. And we were best friends for years until one day, when the time was right, we fell in love. And here we are.’
Bea tried to smile at the romanticism, but the taste of it caught at the back of her throat and she had to look away. He’s not done it on purpose, she knows that, but moments from him and from that night began flashing all the same: how the taste of sweat on his skin was sharp; how he’d complained that her toenails were too long and had scratched him as she wrapped her legs up and around his hips; the horrendous trip to the pharmacy for the morning-after pill the next day, ignoring calls from Nora on her phone, sick with shame and the worst hangover of her life.
‘Bea?’ Eli prompted; she’d obviously hesitated too long. ‘You know, like Harry and Nora? We might as well adopt their story in this instance, don’t you think?’
Bea rallied herself and swallowed back the past. ‘Okay. Whatever. She’s really not going to need any intimate detail, though, surely?’
‘Am I interrupting?’ The promised events coordinator beamed at them, so entirely perky that she even put the Goodie Bag Lady of Super-Duper fame to shame.
‘Elliott,’ Eli thrust his hand out and returned the jaunty shake with enthusiasm. Bea got to her feet a little slowly – this day was starting to really take it out of her.
‘Bea,’ she introduced herself in turn, catching Eli’s eye as she did so, wrinkling her nose at him. ‘We met at school.’