This morning I met Debbie Turner, daughter of Mrs Turner with the purple hair and Mr Turner who picks up dog shit, wedding planner extraordinaire.
Supposedly Debbie and I have met before, and she claims she remembers me, but I don’t remember her. She’s a tall, skinny woman with wild hair – dark-brown, crispy-looking curls that I wouldn’t like to try and run a brush through. Imagine a brunette Merida from Brave, living in a humid world with no conditioner and that’s our Debbie.
We started off having a catch-up, with Debbie telling us all about her kids, how well they’re doing at private school and a comprehensive list of all their sporting achievements to date. Most impressive. But then, as she ran us through the list of things we’ll need to consider for our big day, she asked a question I didn’t have an answer for: what was our wedding budget? The truth is that we haven’t really talked about that yet. Sure, we have more spare money since I took this job, but it’s not like I’m getting a regular salary. This is a one-time payment, and when the money from this job runs out, I don’t know for sure that I’ll have another to replenish the money with. Even though I made good money writing movies, between my extortionate rent and my lavish lifestyle, my outgoings were high. It was fine at the time, because I’d finish one movie and get to work on another, so the money was always coming in, but when I lost my job and moved back here, without an income, I began blazing through my savings quite quickly. If I’d thought there was even the slightest chance I could’ve lost that job, I would’ve been more careful. It just goes to show, you should never feel truly safe and secure anywhere. Always have a backup plan.
The biggest shock of the morning came when Debbie told us how much the average couple spends on their wedding. She reckons £30,000 on average, including the honeymoon. Thirty-fucking-thousand pounds. On one event. That’s, like, a year’s salary for some people – who are doing well. I’ve spent lots of money on things in the past, but I’ve only really spent money on big things that hold their value.
‘It will be the most stupendous day of your life, though,’ Debbie explained to me, in an attempt to retrieve my jaw from the floor.
Leo whistled at the price in disbelief, but quickly added that, no matter how much it was going to cost, it would be worth it. Very sweet of him to say so, but we could do so much with £30k – think of the things we could do to the house with that money.
Debbie arrived to meet us all sickly sweet, but then, as soon as she realised I wasn’t your typical blushing bride, I could see her enthusiasm draining by the second. I think I put the final nail in our relationship coffin when we were saying goodbye and she asked if we had any questions.
‘Why do they call the meal a wedding breakfast when it’s almost always in the afternoon?’ I asked. It turns out she meant did we have any questions relating to our wedding plans, and not did I have any childish curiosities. Debbie said she would make some appointments for me to attend to try and work out what I wanted, and we left it at that.
Now I’m back in London, back at Dylan’s house, back to my wedding-free safe space.
‘You look stressed,’ Dylan points out.
‘You look… drunk,’ I reply.
‘Very perceptive,’ he laughs.
I know I don’t know him very well, and that I’m just here to work for him, but if we were friends, I’d ask him about his drinking. I know he’s a rockstar, but he’s drunk way too often.
‘I met with a wedding planner today,’ I tell him. ‘She was one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met. Everything is “stupendous” and her enthusiasm for wedding stationery was, frankly, troubling to me. How could someone get so excited about embossed lettering on invitations.’
Dylan laughs.
‘Did you have anything to do with planning your wedding?’ I ask. It’s a cheap technique, and I’m relying on the booze to open him up a little, but I need to get him talking about his marriage at some point.
‘I ain’t talking about it, babe,’ he says, grabbing a beer from the fridge before heading back to the living room. I grab my Dictaphone and follow him.
‘Tell me a random tour story,’ I insist. ‘Let’s get things flowing.’
‘Just need to figure out one that I remember,’ Dylan laughs, plonking himself down on the sofa. He makes himself comfortable for a second before sitting back up and patting the sofa next to him. ‘Sit here.’
I take a seat next to him, placing the Dictaphone down on the coffee table in front of us.
‘I don’t like that thing, man. It makes me think I’m talking to a journalist. Journalists don’t treat me like a human, I’m just a source of money to them. If they can trick me into saying something fucking stupid they win the lottery. Sometimes I just want to feel normal. Like, Mitch and my publicist are next door in my office having a meeting about me at the moment. I’m never alone.’
‘OK, so we’ll ditch the Dictaphone,’ I say, in an attempt to make him feel more comfortable. ‘We’ll just talk and I can just write things down later. That’ll be much more relaxing, right?’
Dylan nods.
‘OK, so this is a story no one knows,’ he starts, swigging his beer. ‘In fact, maybe don’t put this one in the book. We’re just chatting.’
‘OK, sure,’ I reply. I kick off my shoes and pull my feet up onto the sofa, like a child ready for story time.
‘So this is a long time ago, man. We’re on the tour bus, on the way back from Glasgow, I think, and there’s me, Mikey, Taz, our drummer and Kelly, who used to be our bassist. Well, his name was Jamie, but we called him Kelly because he looked like Kelly Osbourne did in 2002, with his black and pink spikey hair. Fucking weird kid, man. Then we had Mitch, our driver, dunno his name, and my buddy Nicole who used to tour with us sometimes. So it’s late, it’s winter – I dunno what year it was, but it was when we had those crazy snowstorms, remember?’
I nod. I don’t remember at all, though, I was probably sunning myself in LA at the time.
‘So we break down in the middle of nowhere. It’s the middle of the night, the bus is fucked, there’s no heating or nothing. Driver tells us we passed a sign for a town. Lundsgill, or something like that. So, I drop a tweet like “All right, we’re stranded in Lundsgill, anyone wanna help us out?” and my Twitter blows up like it always does. But as I’m scanning the replies, there’s this one girl – mate, she was a fitty n’all – who goes “I live here, you can come stay with me”. So, great, we’re in there, I’m in there, and it’s all going to be fine. So she DMs me where she lives and we turn up there, and she lives on some farm with her family, and she looks nothing like her profile picture, not even close, man. Not cool at all. But her parents are friendly and they’ve got all these spare rooms so we decide it’s best to stay there – the whole country is at a standstill pretty much, so it’s here or the freezing-cold tour bus that’s broken down in the middle of a long, lonely road.’
‘Shit,’ I blurt, hugging my legs. ‘What happened next?’
‘So this fan, she’s, like, in love with me, but she’s young and she’s not even a little bit hot…’ Nice priorities, Dylan. ‘So I ask my buddy Nicole to pretend to be my bird, thinking she can share a room with me and this chick will leave me alone, but her parents are old-fashioned and poor Nic has to room-share with this fan – she said there were pictures of me all over the walls, one with lipstick on. Like, it’s funny until you’re snowed in there, right?’
I nod, completely captivated.
‘Next morning the dad wakes us up early, gives us all farm duties. Says we’ve gotta pay our way, it’s only fair – weird as shit, man. So later in the day, the wife cooks. We’re all eating lunch when we realise Kelly has vanished. And I’m thinking, we’re staying on this farm where they make meat, but you don’t see no animals, and I’ve taken a little something to take the edge off, so I’m tripping big time and I figure they’ve killed Kelly and we’re eating him…’
My jaw drops so hard, I hear a pop in my ears.
‘You thought you were eating your bassist?’
‘Well, he was the fattest, so if you were gonna eat one of us…’ He laughs. ‘So I tell everyone and they think I’m just a bit messed up from the drugs, but they don’t wanna risk it, so we wait until it gets dark and we sneak out – we were badass, sneaking out of this farm unnoticed, but I’m just motivated by this fear for my life. I’ve never been so fucking scared. So we make it to the bus, get on and then there’s Kelly, asleep under a pile of clothes. Lazy git just didn’t want to do any work. The weather was much better by morning, and I guess someone from the label sent 4x4s for us to get us home safe. Weird 24 hours, though.’
I blink a few times. My God, why did I turn my Dictaphone off?!
‘That’s… I don’t even know what that is,’ I reply.
‘It feels good to tell someone,’ he replies. ‘What else do you wanna know?’