The island laid out in front of us is smaller than it looked from the sea. To our right is the hill with the church on it, but even from here, it’s still disguised by trees. The rest of the land is made up of wide tarmac paths between masses of greenery with low-growing white flowers blooming on tall stems. There are gorgeous little cottages dotted around, a row of shops near the base of the hill to the church, and that’s about it. The paths snake right across the island, running between each cottage and to the edges of the cliff where you can probably get down to the beach, like a higgledy-piggledy picturesque postcard.
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It’s a tourist trap,’ Rohan says. ‘But, admittedly, I’ve seen uglier tourist traps.’
In front of us, there’s a rickety signpost with two arrows on it: ‘weddings’ to the right, and ‘accommodation’ to the left.
Rohan peers at it. ‘I don’t know how we’d have found our way around without that.’
There’s a woman pottering around in the garden of the nearest cottage and she waves at us. ‘Welcome to The Little Wedding Island!’ she calls over. ‘The B&B’s that way.’
‘Thanks!’ I shout.
‘How does she know we want the B&B?’ he hisses in my ear. ‘See, I told you they’re watching us.’
I try not to think about the shiver his mouth at my ear sends down my spine. ‘We’re obviously tourists and we’ve obviously just got off the boat. What else are we going to want?’
He mutters something unintelligible.
‘What was that? Yes, Bonnie, you’re quite right or something along those lines?’
He grunts but I know he’s joking.
The B&B isn’t far from where we’re standing, down a narrow path between the white-flowered plants. It’s much bigger than the cottages in this part of the island. There’s a wooden sign at the front that says ‘Edelweiss Island Bed and Breakfast’, and it has three storeys and multiple windows looking down at us. It makes me wonder how busy they get during wedding season. What if a bridal party of fifty guests turn up? Will they all fit in the one B&B? Or do people have to stay on the mainland and only travel out to the wedding?
I tried to do some research before I left the office, but no one seems to have any figures on how many weddings are actually held here. We know they offer one-stop wedding packages but no one seems to know what’s included. There was nothing online about the island, no contact number, no booking form, no pictures, no price brochures or comments from visitors. If they’ve invented the story of no divorces to drum up business, it seems an odd way to go about it. How can you drum up business for a place that doesn’t want to be found?
When we reach the door, Rohan darts in front of me and wraps his hand around the door handle. ‘Told you I’d open a door for you,’ he says with a wink.
I can’t help smiling at him as he holds it open and lets me go through.
‘Helloooo, my dears!’ a woman cries, making me jump. ‘Oh, what a chivalrous gentleman!’
Rohan nudges my shoulder as he closes the door behind us both. ‘See? I can be a chivalrous gentleman when you’re not carrying my luggage for me.’
The woman jumps up from the table she’s sitting at, and I get the feeling she was waiting for us. Maybe he’s right. Maybe they are all watching us.
‘What a lovely couple you are,’ she squeals, clasping her hands together and holding them to her chest.
‘Oh, we’re not a couple,’ I say in surprise. ‘We just met on the boat.’
She peers at us. ‘Are you sure?’
What an odd question.
‘Quite sure. Do you not think I’d know if I was dating someone this lovely?’ Even though Rohan’s tone is sarcastic, he says it with a smile and the woman fans a hand in front of her face.
‘You carry on like that and you won’t be the only one needing a barf bag,’ I mutter to him, even though something inside me has turned to goo.
‘I’m Clara,’ the woman says, coming over to give our hands a vigorous shake. ‘Welcome to The Little Wedding Island. I’m the owner of the B&B. I’ll be here for anything you need. Now, do come over here and let me get you checked in.’
We both follow her back to the table she was sitting at, and I get the impression it’s a makeshift reception desk, and all manner of diaries and appointment books are lying open and strewn across it. It doesn’t look very private… In fact, it looks like it might be a great way to get some figures for Oliver… Not that I want to go snooping. No, I’ll just ask her outright. I’m sure she’ll be all too happy to tell me how popular the place is.
‘May I enquire about the purpose of your visit?’ she says cheerily. ‘You’re not reporters, are you? We’ve had an influx of them coming in lately. I don’t know what they expect to find here, but they’re all sent swiftly on their way.’
Rohan hesitates for just a second too long. ‘No, we’re not reporters.’
I can feel his eyes on me and I give him a sideways glance. ‘No, definitely not reporters.’
I don’t like lying to this woman, but there’s a tone of anger in her voice and I get the feeling she’d kick me straight out if I told her the truth. I mean, it’s not a huge lie. When people say reporters, they generally mean tabloids. I’m on their side here. I work for a magazine whose readers are their target audience. I’ll talk to her privately sometime and explain the truth. ‘We’re just tourists.’
‘Oh good.’ She nearly blinds us with a beaming smile. ‘I apologise for asking but I’ve had it up to here with reporter types telling me how much they can help me and how I should want to appeal to their audience to grow my business.’
I gulp.
‘There, now that’s settled, we can get you checked in,’ she says as she scribbles some notes and turns to Rohan.
‘Ladies first.’ He gestures to me, and backs away with a nod to Clara and a smile that could make chocolate spontaneously start melting.
Past the makeshift reception desk is a corridor that leads to a kitchen, judging by the glorious smell emanating from it, and the walls of the corridor are lined with plaques bearing quotes in swirling calligraphy. I watch Rohan as he wanders off, peering at each one.
‘Miss…’ Clara says, starting to fill out a form. She gives me a knowing smile when she sees where my attention has gone and I blush for no reason.
‘Haskett,’ I say. ‘Bonnie. Just Bonnie is fine.’
‘And how long will you be staying?’
‘Er…’ I stumble into an awkward pause. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t planned it out. I just thought—’
‘An open-ended stay,’ she says. ‘No problem. We see it all the time. People feel drawn to the island and catch the boat without making any further plans. You’re welcome for as long as you want to stay.’
I’m half-touched and half-amused by this odd attitude. In fact, I was wondering if they’d have space for me considering this trip wasn’t booked in advance. ‘Are you not busy?’
‘Not this early in the spring, dear. We’re fully booked at the height of wedding season in the summer, but you and your lovely gentleman friend are early enough to be our only guests for now. We’ve got a bridal party coming in next week so we might have to shimmy the rooms around then, but not to worry, we’ll make it work.’
‘I might start getting big-headed if I hear myself being called a gentleman any more, Clara,’ Rohan says, his footsteps echoing on the wooden floorboards as he comes back into the reception area.
She fans a hand in front of her face, her brown curls bobbing up and down. ‘Ooh, if I was thirty years younger and unmarried, I’d call you far better than that! Can I take your name, please?’
‘Rohan Carter.’
Rohan Carter. Even his name is sexy.
‘And are you booking in for an open-ended stay as well, Mr Carter?’
He looks at me and my knees go weak at the intensity in his light eyes. ‘I think I’d like that,’ he says without dropping his gaze, and I try to focus on staying upright. You read about knees going weak at just a glance in romance books, but it’s never, ever happened to me in real life before.
‘Lovely. I’ll put you in room six, Bonnie, and you’re in room seven, Mr Carter, both on the third floor. The bridal suite and the honeymoon suite are our only other bedrooms on that floor and both are unoccupied until next week so you’ll have plenty of privacy and the best views on the island, apart from at the church, and you aren’t going to see them from there unless you’re getting married!’
She chortles as she picks up the keys and bustles past us.
A little seed of dread starts growing in my stomach, the kind of seed that grows into a big plant known as ‘You’re going to be personally responsible for the entire staff losing their jobs and the end of Two Gold Rings magazine after more than two decades’. I try to stamp it down. Surely they’ll understand that an article in Two Gold Rings will be good for them? They’re wedding people and I’m a wedding person. They’ll be keen to reveal their secrets to me. Surely they will.
We follow Clara up two flights of stairs that are covered by blue and pink floral carpet that looks like it’s recently escaped from the Seventies, until she stops on a landing with clashing orange and pink flowery carpeting that looks like it lived through the Sixties – the Eighteen-Sixties. She hands us a key each. ‘Here we go, dears, rooms six and seven. Now, you must allow me to invite you both for dinner tonight. As you’re my only guests, it would be an honour to welcome you to our little island in the best way I know how. Do say you’ll join me at eight o’clock this evening?’
I look over at Rohan, who still looks pale and like his stomach is turning at the mere thought of food. He manages to put on a smile for Clara. ‘I’m in if Bonnie’s in.’
‘How could we refuse such a kind offer?’ I say to her. ‘Thanks, we’ll be there.’
She pats me on the arm. ‘Rightio. I’m downstairs if you need me. You can just yell and I’ll come running as fast as my arthritic hip will carry me. I’ll leave you two to get settled in.’ She waggles her eyebrows as she leaves, and I wonder what and why she thinks there’s anything going on between us, and what exactly ‘settling in’ is supposed to be an innuendo for.
‘Well, I suppose we should…’ I wave the key towards the door of my room.
‘Yeah. I can’t wait to see what the rooms are like. If I didn’t already have a headache, this carpeting would’ve given me one.’
I unlock the door of room six and push it open, trying to think about something other than Rohan next to me, turning the key in his lock.
Inside, the room is small. There’s a dark brown plain carpet, a double bed, and a wardrobe and dressing table. All of them look like they’ve been here for a century too long. There are vases of artificial flowers and bowls of potpourri on every available surface, ornaments of children playing and dead-eyed animals, and framed pictures of couples kissing hung on the walls all round the room.
I dump my bag on the bed and before I have a chance to get any further, there’s a knock on the open door and Rohan’s standing in the doorway.
‘So, is this “charmingly romantic” or just an old lady who hasn’t found the way to the tip yet with all her junk?’
I can’t help snorting at him. ‘Aw, she’s got to put her own stamp on the place, bless her. It’s cute and kitschy.’
‘There are people on the mainland who’d pay a fortune for this stuff.’
‘Antiques dealers?’
‘Scrap disposal merchants.’
It makes me laugh again and he backs out onto the landing and beckons me over with his finger. ‘Look at that,’ he says when I join him on the landing. He’s pointing to another door with a little metal sign on it that says ‘bridal suite’, and then his finger moves towards a staircase in the corner with a sign that says ‘honeymoon suite’.
‘I’d love to see what counts as a honeymoon suite in this place. Can you imagine? It’s probably got bright red carpet and pink walls and rose petals everywhere. There’s probably even a waterbed that will spring a leak halfway through the night and gradually drown your downstairs neighbour. That bloke at the harbour did say it was overpriced here. Do you think they charge extra to keep cockroaches to a minimum in the honeymoon suite?’
‘There are no cockroaches.’
‘Let’s meet in the morning and reassess that assumption.’
I laugh nervously because even though it’s a joke, the idea of meeting him in the morning for any reason is not an unwelcome one. Even if it’s to discuss cockroaches or lack thereof.
‘Well, I suppose we’d better…’ he says, trailing off, and I tell myself I’m imagining that he sounds as disappointed as I am at the thought of not spending more time with him.
‘Hang on, I’m still wearing your coat.’ I shrug it off my shoulders. ‘Thank you so much for the loan of it. You must’ve been freezing coming up here in only a T-shirt.’ I refuse to let my eyes wander to the way that dark T-shirt clings around his bicep muscles.
‘No, not at all. Look at me, I’m all sweaty. I’m still too hot.’
Oh, you can say that again.
I bundle the coat in my arms and hand it back to him, trying to ignore the dash of heat as his arm brushes against mine.
‘Well, thank you for your babysitting-the-seasick services, ma’am,’ he says, tipping an imaginary hat in my direction.
‘My pleasure. Thank you for not throwing up on me.’
‘Ah, I’m a chivalrous gentleman. Clara said so. Chivalrous gentlemen don’t throw up on people.’
I want to laugh but I try to keep it serious. ‘Are you going to be okay now?’
‘Yeah. There’s nothing I can do to get myself out of here any quicker, and that guy on the dock didn’t exactly fill me with hope, so I’m going to go and lie down and have a nap.’ He glances at me. ‘God, that’s really rock ’n’ roll, isn’t it? You must be looking at me and thinking, “Look at this fun and exuberant young guy and what an exciting thrill ride of a life he leads.”’
It makes me laugh again. ‘Actually I was thinking a nap sounds perfect.’
‘Well, I’d ask you to join me, but that would be overstepping the mark. So…’ He leans around the doorframe and peeks into my room. ‘Look, our headboards are in the same place on the adjoining wall, so it’ll be almost like we’re napping together. Look at how young and vibrant we are with our afternoon naps. I don’t suppose you brought a bingo game and a knitting pattern, did you? We could really show some pensioners how to have a good time.’
I’m trying to suppress laughter because all I’ve done today is laugh at him and it’s got to be bordering on abnormal by now. He must think I’ve got a massive crush on him, or that I’m really nervous, or that he’s the funniest guy in the world, or d) all of the above. All it does is make my face contort as I try to hold back the laughter, which is about as successful as trying to stifle a yawn.
‘So I’ll see you for dinner tonight?’ he says.
‘Yeah. How nice is that? That’s so sweet of her to do that.’
‘Yeah, right. You check it for rat poison, I’ll run through the bill to see how much she’s charged us for it.’
‘Oh, stop being horrible,’ I say, whacking the coat he’s still holding, ostensibly whacking him. ‘She was very sweet. She’s probably lonely if she hasn’t got any guests in.’
‘Her husband’s probably chopped up in the freezer ready to go in stews she serves the guests.’
I can’t stop myself laughing again and I have to walk away before I make his ego any bigger.
‘Bonnie?’
I turn back to look at him and he meets my eyes, sudden seriousness in his. ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’ Then he smirks. ‘Even if it’s stew with unidentified meat.’
Oh my God, this guy. I close the door behind me and lean against it, trying to breathe without laughing at something he’s said. The butterflies in my stomach are more like 747s, and I cannot stop smiling. He’s kind, and sweet, and hilarious. He loves his mum, he’s chivalrous, I’m sure he’s single, and he seems to like me too.
Could The Little Wedding Island somehow have found my Mr Right and thrown us together on the same boat with a twist of fate?