Now
It was only noon, and already the house was overflowing with guests. Most of them were staying in B & Bs and Travelodges scattered across nearby towns, but Bugle Hall had quickly established itself as the central meeting point. Mrs Willocks was rushing around offering everyone cups of tea and an assortment of biscuits from a tin, a dazed expression on her face.
My hair was still damp from the shower when I came downstairs to find Ethan surrounded by a gaggle of young women. Taylor and Madison were perched at either side, their limbs somehow even more tawny and coltish than before. They threw their heads back and laughed every time he said something, and the rest of the room quickly followed. It was like stumbling across the court of Henry the Eighth, minus the threat of beheadings. Although at that particular moment, I have to say I wasn’t completely opposed to the idea.
‘Ruby!’ Piper said, springing up from her seat. She grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me back into the hallway. I’d never seen her look so happy to see me. I was immediately suspicious. ‘Thank God you’re here. I’m having a total meltdown.’
‘What’s going on?’ Please God don’t let it be cold feet, I thought. I have traveled too far to have to negotiate a jilted groom.
‘The wedding coordinator is completely incompetent. I told her that I wanted duck-egg blue trim for the place settings and it’s definitely more like a sea green, and the florist has just called to say that she has a delivery of one hundred pink peonies waiting for me. Pink! I told her I wanted white!’
Organizational matters, however, were something I could deal with in my sleep. ‘Piper, calm down. I’ll handle it. Do you have the wedding coordinator’s number?’
‘No. Well, yes, but it doesn’t matter, because I fired her.’
I stared at her for a minute, dumbfounded. ‘You fired her? Piper, the wedding is tomorrow!’
Piper threw her hands up in disbelief. ‘Ruby, how can I trust a woman who doesn’t know the difference between duck-egg blue and sea green? And who orders the wrong color of peonies! She’s obviously an idiot.’
I sighed. I should have seen this coming. If there was one thing Piper loved more than having staff, it was firing staff. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere and anyway, even if we could magic up another wedding coordinator, there isn’t time for her to start! Who’s going to organize all the rest of it?’ My heart began its rapid trajectory into my knees: I already knew the answer.
Piper beamed at me. ‘You are, obviously!’
Jesus, take the wheel. I had calmed nervy clients about impending deadlines, I had soothed the ruffled feathers of sensitive creatives, I had even once redirected a plane for the MD of a Fortune 500 company. But I really, really wasn’t sure that I could meet my sister’s wedding expectations. ‘I’m not a wedding coordinator! I don’t know any of the people involved or the timings or anything!’
She looked up at me, green eyes wide and pleading. ‘But you’re so good at this kind of stuff – I mean, I know how much you love spreadsheets!’
‘This is not helping to convince me.’ It was true, though. I did love a spreadsheet.
‘You know what I mean! You’re, like, the queen of organization!’ Piper took my hands in hers. ‘Plus you’re my big sister and my maid of honor and honestly if you don’t agree to help me out with this I am going to flip out and then my face will break out from the stress and I’ll look disgusting in the photos and oh my God I cannot handle this right now so please just say yes?’
I sighed and pulled her in for a hug. I was surprised once again by how brittle Piper felt in my arms, how delicate. Despite how absolutely nuts she drove me, I could never refuse to help my little sister. ‘Of course,’ I said, a familiar resignation settling in. ‘Don’t worry about a thing – I’ll sort it all out.’
‘You’re the best,’ Piper sniffled into my armpit, and I made a mental note to remind her of that fact later when she was throwing a fit over origami cranes. ‘Okay,’ she said, pulling me into the drawing room. The rest of the women barely looked up, all of them engrossed in whatever Ethan was saying. She handed me an enormous three-ring binder. ‘This is the bible,’ she said. ‘It will tell you exactly what I want.’ I rolled my eyes and she looked at me sternly. ‘Do not deviate from the bible.’
I flicked through the binder, noting that each section was carefully tabbed and color-coded. I was impressed: this was some high-level organizational voodoo. ‘So you just need me to coordinate, right?’
‘Basically, I need you to go around kicking ass and taking names. Just make sure that no one’s slacking off or cheating me. Ruby,’ she said, eyes shining, ‘I’m trusting you with my life here. You can’t let me down.’
I thought back to all of the times that Piper had said that to me: when I covered for her when she broke Dad’s glasses, when she gave me her favorite Barbie doll to safeguard while she went to a sleepover, when I did her liquid eyeliner for her first high-school dance. There had been many, many life-entrusting moments between us. I smiled. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Great. Ethan, can you ask Vic to come pick Ruby up and take her to the castle?’
Ethan looked surprised to see that I was in the room. ‘Sure thing.’ I was relieved to have a reason to leave – at least coordinating the wedding meant I wouldn’t have to stand around here all day, feeling like a third nipple or a sixth toe.
Piper turned to me. ‘Okay, so you need to be back here by four p.m. because that’s when we’re all going to get manicures, okay?’ Group manicures. And so the nightmare begins.
I checked my phone. ‘But that only gives me two hours!’
‘That should be plenty of time!’
‘Can’t I just get a manicure on my own? I’m sure there’s a place in town . . .’
Piper was appalled. ‘Of course not! Everyone’s nails have to be the same shape and color for tomorrow, which means we all have to do them together. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ I could feel a tension headache beginning to press at my temples.
‘Don’t forget to call the restaurant to confirm that they have a gluten-free option for the rehearsal dinner tonight. There is no way I’m going to be bloated tomorrow.’
‘All right, all right! Jesus,’ I muttered as I hefted the binder under my arm. I waved goodbye to the rest of the room as I headed out of the door, but no one seemed to notice.
Vic was already waiting in the driveway, which made me wonder if he was hiding in a thicket of trees at the end of the road, just waiting for Ethan to snap his fingers. He tipped his cap and opened the back door. ‘I think I’ll ride up front with you, if that’s okay,’ I said. I’d spent years being driven around New York by faceless taxi drivers, but I’d actually spoken to Vic now, so it felt weird to have him chauffeur me around. (Yes, I knew that was his job title, but still).
‘Ruby! Wait!’ I was about to climb in the passenger door when Ethan hurried up to the car, his jacket tucked under his arm. ‘Do you need a hand with anything?’
I looked at him gormlessly. ‘What, you mean the wedding?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, running a hand through his hair. I could feel my fortress crumbling and struggled to shore up the walls. ‘I mean, I could come along with you to the castle, if you want. I’m the best man and everything, so I should help.’
‘That’s very gender-equality-minded of you,’ I said, ‘but I think I can manage to arrange a few peonies on my own. Besides, I wouldn’t want to take you away from your adoring audience.’ I am an ice queen, I thought to myself. I am some sort of lofty and elusive bird. Perhaps a swan.
He looked slightly stricken. ‘I’m just trying to help.’
‘You really don’t have to,’ I said. I am a lush tropical island, inhabited only by me. And with that, I slammed the door shut and waited for Vic to drive away. Which, embarrassingly, he didn’t do until Ethan gave him the nod.
There was a tense silence in the car as we drove to the castle. I busied myself by thumbing through Piper’s wedding bible, speculating on the exorbitant cost of the wedding favors (hand-engraved heart-shaped photo frames, each containing a black-and-white photograph of Piper and Charlie, and each encased in its own decorative pale-pink birdcage). All of this work – it must have taken her months. Where would all of Piper’s energy go when the wedding was finally out of the way? Into making babies, I guessed. And then, after that, little pale-pink or pale-blue baby-shower favors, each encased in its own decorative birdcage.
I let out a sigh. Somehow, Ethan offering his help had been even more upsetting than him ignoring me, or watching him be fawned over by the bionic twins. That sort of solicitousness was so typical of him, or at least of the guy I used to know. He was so incredibly thoughtful when we were together, surprising me with little gifts and writing notes that he hid for me to find later, after he’d left. But now I knew it was just knee-jerk politeness, nothing more. I felt like someone’s granny who needed help crossing the road, or an old mutt who’d got stuck down a well.
Vic glanced over at me. ‘Rough day?’ he asked.
‘Sort of,’ I admitted.
‘Weddings can be very stressful,’ he said with a sympathetic nod.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ You don’t know the half of it.
‘Anything else getting at you, love?’ Or maybe he did. I looked over at him, surprised by the kindness in his voice. ‘Go on, you can tell me. I’m like a bloody priest. I’ve been driving for twenty-odd years now, and the things people have told me would put hair on your chest. I can promise you’ll not say anything that could shock us.’
‘I’m fine, honestly,’ I said, slightly more tersely than I’d intended, and immediately felt a stab of guilt. I knew that Vic was just trying to be nice, but that was exactly the problem. He was another man, looking at me pityingly and offering kindness. I didn’t need kindness – I didn’t need anything. I was a lone panther stalking through the jungle. I was an iron-clad torpedo shooting through the – I felt tears prick behind my eyes. ‘Sorry,’ I said quietly. ‘I guess it has been a hard day.’
‘Say no more, love. I’ll leave you in peace.’
‘I’m just a little on edge, that’s all. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, it’s just – well, I don’t think I can bring myself to talk about it right now.’ I knew that if I said another word on the subject, I’d burst into tears, which was an unacceptable and very un-fortress-like thing to do.
‘No worries at all, we’ll leave it at that. Now, have you seen Bamburgh yet?’
I saw that he was trying to change the subject, and swelled with gratitude. ‘I saw it from the beach on my run this morning, but that’s it. It looked . . . imposing.’
‘You’re not wrong there. Finest castle in the county, in my opinion, and gilded like the proverbial lily. Your sister will be over the moon when she sees it all done out for the wedding tomorrow.’
‘You don’t know my sister,’ I muttered. Unless there was an actual coronation awaiting her, complete with coronet and sceptre, Piper would feel underwhelmed. And it was now my job to deliver it to her.
‘Right,’ Vic said. ‘Where are we going first?’
I flipped through the binder. ‘Looks like it’s a florist called Bloomin’ Gorgeous?’
‘Christ, she’s mad as a bat, that woman. Watch yourself, pet, she’ll peck your eyes out if you’re not careful!’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Just great.’ But as I sat back in my seat, a little smile played at my lips. It was nice to feel useful. Besides, I was spoiling for a fight, even if it was with a crazy florist.