Sam looks from me to the rubbish skip and back again.
“Nope. You’re on your own.”
“Sam…” I have tried pleading. I’ve tried begging. I’ve even tried bribing her, but it’s no use. She cannot be bought. Even though technically, this is kind of her fault. I open my mouth to tell her this, and all she does is fold her arms across her chest and nod at the skip.
“You’re up, Angelo. Tick-tock – it’s half past already.”
“You’re going to make me climb into the hotel rubbish bins on the day of my father’s wedding. I’m his best-person-thing, and you’re making me go through the bins.”
“Mmm…yep.” She pulls at a strand which has escaped the giant bun she’s forced her hair into.
I try again. “My father’s wedding.”
Nothing.
Clearly my best friend has as much mercy as she does conscience.
“You know, you could at least offer to help.” I grab the top of the rubbish skip, level with my shoulders, and pull myself high enough up it to swing a leg over and drop into knee-high hotel garbage in my brand-new leggings. Luckily it’s not the kitchen bins that get emptied into this one, so it’s mostly bags of shredded paper – but still.
Sam’s voice is annoyingly clear over the sound of rustling paper and plastic as I start sifting through junk. “I could offer to help, but then you’d be missing the chance to really work through your issues.”
I kick a yellow plastic bag full of what looks like yesterday’s newspapers up and out of the skip. “I don’t have any issues. Other than the fact I’ve – no, wait, you’ve – managed to throw out all Bea’s schedules. That’s a pretty big issue right now.”
“It’s called an order of service when it’s for a wedding, Lexi.”
“I don’t care what it’s called. I don’t need to care what it’s called. I just need to find a bag full of them.”
There was something sticky on that last rubbish bag I picked up. I force myself not to retch. A bright blue bag, that’s what I want; a blue bag that I safely tucked under a table in the ops office, all ready to take up to my room last night. At least, it was safely tucked under a table until Sam picked it up and threw it out. This, however, is not the story that Sam tells. Oh no. In Sam-world, I asked her to throw out the blue bag and give me the orange one.
Which I did not.
At least…I don’t think I did.
Did I?
The look on Sam’s face when I discovered a bag full of used stationery and Bede’s crisp packets at the end of my bed, instead of Bea’s beautifully laid out and printed service sheets for the wedding, suggests that perhaps I might not be remembering that conversation as clearly as I’d like.
What can I say? It was late. I was tired.
Neither of these will cut it with my dad. Or Bea.
Hence: the skip.
“You found them yet?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, Sam. I found them straight away. It’s just that it’s so relaxing in here I thought I’d, you know, hang out for a while.” Was that a flash of blue? Right down at the bottom of the pile of bags?
The further I go down through the layers, the worse the smell gets. It’s not “rotten” bad, but it’s not exactly nice. More like…mouldy metal with a hint of stagnant pond, mixed with that weird smell you get on buses in the summer. Something damp falls sideways against my ankle and I make a mental note to throw my leggings in the bin the instant I get back to my room. If I didn’t have to walk all the way back through the lobby, I’d make the whole process several stages shorter and just leave them here – but I think that might be pushing our luck with the hotel staff a little too far.
Another glimpse of blue.
“I think I can see it!”
I burrow down through the rubbish…and there it is. My bag. Well, Bea’s bag. And it’s still tied shut and it’s not wet and it doesn’t have any non-specific ooze on it or anything.
“Victory!” I hurl myself at the side of the skip, waving my prize above my head. Sam reaches up and grabs it, leaving me peering out at her. “Hey!”
“I think I’d better look after that, seeing as you’re clearly set on sabotaging your dad’s wedding.” She says it with a grin, but it still stings. She was kidding. Of course she was kidding.
“I’m not sabotaging anything. You picked up the wrong bag, Sam.”
“Did I? Or did you tell me the wrong bag?” Somehow she manages to narrow her eyes and raise one eyebrow at the same time.
“Oh, go find someone else to practise psych on. What about Bede? He’s a writhing mass of neuroses – do him. You’d be able to get a whole essay out of him at least.” I shake my head at her and lean on the top of the skip. Mistake. So that’s my top going in the bin too then. “Any chance of a hand out of here, maybe?” I hold my arms out to her, but all she does is shake her head and clutch the bag closer to her chest – which is brave because, ooze or no ooze, I know where it’s been. She eyes me over the top of it.
“You said, ‘They’ve only been together a year, and they don’t even live together.’”
“You’re bringing that up now?”
“Well, you did.”
“And they had. And they don’t. And that was a couple of months ago, so…”
“It was the way you said it. I know you, Lexi.”
“I didn’t say it like anything! Jesus, Sam…”
She watches me, and I watch her watching me and I know what’s going through her mind. I’d probably be thinking exactly the same if I were in her position and she was the one rifling through a rubbish skip. Although, come to think of it, I’d probably be too busy laughing.
Which Sam isn’t doing.
“You really believe I’d do something to spoil my dad’s wedding?” My voice comes out small and fragile because I don’t even want to give the words shape, never mind weight. “You’re not serious?”
“No. Not, like, on purpose.”
“Sam!”
“I just think…” She pulls at another strand of hair. If she’s not careful, that whole topknot is going to explode like a firework and there’ll be hair everywhere. “I just think that maybe, on some level, you kind of wish it wasn’t happening so soon. That’s all.”
“Sam?” I half-climb and half-fall back out of the skip. It’s not elegant, but at least it gets the job done. “I promise, I’m okay. I know everyone thinks I have to be a bit not okay, but I really, really am okay. The wedding’s okay, my dad’s okay, Bea’s okay. It’s all okay. Okay?”
“You have…something…in your hair.” She reaches for it, whatever it is, to pull it out – then changes her mind. “No. I think I’m just going to…mmm.”
“D’you think I’ve got time for another shower?” I ask hopefully, and watch as she looks me up and down, sniffing.
“If we have to, we’ll make time for you to have another shower. It’s not optional.” She pats the bag under her arm. “I’ve got these. You get” – she waves a hand in my general direction – “that.”
Back in the shower in my hotel bathroom for the second time in an hour, I scrub my hair to remove all lingering echoes of Eau de Skip. But that look on Sam’s face still bothers me. She really is sure she picked up the bag I asked her to – and it’s not like her to get something like that wrong.
I’ve tried and I’ve tried…but I can’t remember what I said.
Maybe it was late. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I was just distracted?
Maybe, however much I try to talk myself into it, subconsciously I’m just not ready for Dad to get married. Will I ever be?
By the time I’m showered, dressed and ready and have tracked my father down in the hotel lobby, one of my shoes is already rubbing. I can feel it every time I pick up my foot. That doesn’t bode well. I clear my throat and tap my watch – which, being bright pink rubber, doesn’t go with the blue-dress-and-big-swooshy-net-petticoat Bea has somehow persuaded my dad I should wear today – but it’s no use. Dad’s still engrossed in his conversation with the director in the middle of the lobby.
“Dad.”
Nothing.
“Dad.”
He laughs at a joke the director makes, then starts telling the story about the time he lost a rubber prop head at a photo shoot… I know this story. It goes on for ever.
And all the while, his future wife – the second Mrs Max Angelo – is waiting for him at the registry office ten minutes’ walk away.
“DAD!”
He glances at me the way he always does when I shriek at him during a convention – a quick look to make sure my hair’s not on fire and I’m not on the verge of death – and then blithely back to his chat…except then he does a double-take and looks back again. I think the lack of clipboard and the presence of the floofy petticoat probably did the trick.
“Sorry, Johan. Lovely to chat, but I’ve really got to get on. Give me a call next week?” He pats Johan’s arm like he’s got all the time in the world; like he’s not wearing a suit and tie and like I’m not standing there looking like an enormous blue cake.
“Daaaaa-aaaaad.”
“All right, Lexi. I heard you.”
“Really? Because I’m sure you said that five minutes ago, right before you went into screening room two to adjust the projector.”
“It needed doing.”
“That’s why I spent quarter of an hour last night showing Nadiya how to do it.” And believe me, she wasn’t happy about it.
“Well, now it’s done and I don’t have to worry about it.”
“You didn’t have to worry about it before – that’s why Nadiya was looking after it. See the pattern?” I attempt to flatten the net petticoat again. I fail. I hate this dress – I hate most dresses, but Bea was insistent that I had to wear one for the wedding…and then picked out one that makes me feel like I should be stuck on top of a Christmas tree.
Aidan’s going to see me in this thing.
Aidan’s going to see me.
I’m going to see Aidan…
Focus, Lexi.
Oh, and Bea has also made me personally responsible for making sure Dad gets to the registry office on time.
Fail.
He starts patting down his suit pockets. “Did I give you the rings?”
I try not to roll my eyes. I fail. “Yes. They’re in my bag. And you’ve asked me that twice already.”
“Just checking. Do you really need to bring that bag? Don’t you have one of those little clutch things, or…?”
“We need to go!” I hustle him down the steps and out of the hotel’s front door, onto the sweeping gravel drive outside.
“Lexi. They can’t start without me.”
“Knowing Bea, I wouldn’t be so sure…” I link my arm through his – mainly because I’m in heels and I never wear heels, just like I never wear dresses, and the gravel is unbelievably awful to walk on and I don’t want to roll up with a broken nose or ankle or both – and tow him through the hotel gardens to the gate.
“Is it this way?” he asks, immediately trying to go the wrong way down the street.
“No. This way – we’ve got to cross the river.” I pull him in the opposite direction.
Unbelievable.
This is a man who can plan a year’s worth of conventions in a phone call; a man who can chat with film stars and huge directors and artists and authors…but who, this morning, has quite clearly lost his grip on reality.
My dad all over.
I did ask why they couldn’t get married in the hotel, seeing as they’re having the wedding reception there – but this was apparently the trade-off. Bea agreed to the reception, but she wouldn’t budge on the actual wedding. I guess the threat of a bunch of LARPing wizards charging through the middle of their vows was probably a deal-breaker. Personally, I’d have thought it might liven things up a little. But instead, Bea insisted on the registry office, which means peeling Dad away from the convention while it’s actually running. Bede laughed so hard when I told him that his face turned purple. It turned an entirely different colour when I told him that seeing as he and Nadiya weren’t coming to the wedding, it meant they were going to be in charge of the convention’s ops for the day, though…
Hurrying across the footbridge over the river, a gust of wind pulls at the petticoat of my absurd outfit. I slap it back down with my free hand – and almost twist my ankle. I cannot wait to get back to the hotel and change into my usual clothes. Shorts and a T-shirt, that’s me. Trainers, not heels, thank you very much. Right now, I feel like I’m in fancy dress; like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not – like I’m going to be found out any moment. By the time we’ve made it over the bridge, through the car park on the other side and onto the street with the registry office, Dad’s actually starting to look nervous.
“Lexi?” he asks as we reach the white-painted porch. At the end of the road, I can just make out the tops of York Minster’s towers peeping over the roofs.
“You look great, Dad.” I straighten his tie. It doesn’t really need straightening, but it feels like something I’m supposed to do anyway. Ceremonial, somehow.
“Thank you. For being here. For being…”
“Dad. She’s waiting.”
He reaches out a hand like he’s about tuck my hair behind my ear – but then he stops himself. Instead, he just stands there, looking at me – and then he takes both my hands and holds them between his. It feels like there’s nobody else for miles around; there’s no traffic, there’s no convention, there’s no Bea. Nothing. Just me and my dad.
And then he lifts my hands and drops a kiss on the back of my knuckles, squeezing my fingers and smiling at me.
“I suppose we’d better get on with it.”
“Don’t let her hear you talking like that. You’ll be divorced before you even finish getting married.”
Through the glass in the door, I can see Sam lurking in the entrance. She spots Dad coming up the steps and flaps wildly at someone just out of sight. Dad pauses on the top step, right before he pushes the door open…and his back straightens and his head lifts and there’s so much joy in the next step. I can feel it, even from the pavement.
My dad is getting married, and he’s happy.
Which is just the way it should be – so my floofy dress and I follow him inside.
“Come on, come on, come on…” Sam practically shoves me into the ceremony room after Dad.
“Where’s Bea?” I hiss, plastering a smile across my face as everyone turns in their seats to look at us. Dad nods like this is exactly how he planned it and strolls calmly down the aisle to the registrar’s desk where his buttonhole – a cornflower – is sitting waiting for him.
“She’s in the garden, having a cup of tea.”
“Is she annoyed?”
“You’re only five minutes late. I’m disappointed – I had a fiver on you being at least ten minutes late.”
“You were putting bets on it?”
“We’ve got a book running.”
“Whose idea was that?”
She nods at Jules, one of Dad’s long-time convention friends, who’s looking at her watch and grinning. I should’ve known.
“Hang on. Five minutes? But we’re…”
Relief washes over me in great big, warm waves as I remember setting my watch ten minutes fast last night for exactly this situation. We might have had a hiccup with the service sheets, but I have managed to deliver my father to his wedding on time (more or less). I am a genius.
Sam looks me up and down, and wags a finger at the dress.
“I know…” I mutter.
She shakes her head. “No. This. This is good. You should…” She waves a hand at my outfit again. “…This…more often.”
“I feel like a loser.”
“Maybe. But you look amazing.”
“Shut up.”
Sam holds her hands up. “Truth. Now, I’m going to tell the blushing bride that you’ve managed to get him here.”
“I can’t believe you were betting.”
“Don’t tell your dad, but Bea had him down for being twenty minutes late.”
I’m not sure if that reflects worse on me or my dad…or whether it just means that, actually, Bea really does know exactly who he is – and she’s marrying him in spite of it. Because of it.
“Sam!”
She sticks her head back through the door. “’Sup?”
“You look pretty amazing yourself, you know.” She does; the wrap dress she’s wearing is bright, acid yellow and – with her beautiful curly hair and scarlet lipstick – she looks like she belongs on the cover of a magazine.
“Oh, sure I know,” she says – sticking her tongue out at me and disappearing through the door to fetch Bea.
When I turn around – still laughing – there he is, looking back at me from the third row.
Aidan.
My heart leaps from my chest and wedges itself halfway up my throat. I haven’t seen him since that day in June; since I chased him to the station and missed him anyway. Not in person, at least – because between then and now, Aidan’s face has been everywhere. Or Haydn’s has, anyway.
I’ve seen him in magazines; on posters pinned to the ends of bookshop shelves and alongside tables piled high with brand-new hardbacks with his name on. I’ve seen online fan art of him, of Jamie, Ali, Lizzie and the Curator and all the other Piecekeepers. And I’ve seen endless selfies people have taken with him at signings. I’ve read the reviews as though my life depended on it, and I’ve sworn at any of them that didn’t give him…his book…a good rating. I’ve even read the fanfics – and sent him links to the good ones.
I might not have seen him in person, but Aidan has been in my head and in my dreams and in every single beat of my heart. I’ve felt him under my skin, and heard him in every line of every email, every message. I’ve seen his smile in every voicemail he’s left; and if I closed my eyes when I talked to him on the phone, I could almost feel him whispering into my ear. And now, after seeing him and not seeing him for so long, he’s here, in the same room as I am, and we’re breathing the same air, and somehow it doesn’t feel real.
His eyes lock onto mine across the room and he smiles and everything else in the world is just a blur.
He’s wearing a suit. I’ve never seen him in a suit before.
I’ve never even imagined him in a suit before. Not actually wearing it, anyway…
He winks at me and gives me a thumbs up, then points at his tie – which is exactly the same colour as my dress.
Suddenly, the floofy blue monstrosity doesn’t feel so stupid. But how did he know what I’d be wearing?
Bea.
Bea and my dad.
That’s how.
I’m equal parts embarrassed and…something else. Happy, I think.
I almost skip down the aisle to stand beside my father, and I can sense Aidan’s eyes on me the whole way. As I pass him, I can feel the touch of his fingers on my arm before they so much as brush my skin.
And I try really, really hard not to notice what appears to be a tea stain on the front of the order of service sheet in his other hand…
When she comes, Bea doesn’t walk down the aisle, she practically floats. With every step closer to my dad, she seems to glow a little brighter. I’ve never seen her like this – not Bea – and I poke Dad to make him turn round and see her, but he won’t.
He doesn’t need to, does he?
He already sees her like this.
That’s why we’re all here – because to him she looks like this every single day.
Finally, when she’s almost reached him, he takes a deep breath and he turns and he sees her and he smiles.
It should be weird. It should be wrong-er, somehow, than it feels. Because she’s come out of nowhere and he’s fallen head over heels for her – my dad, who’s all about control and planning and lists and being organized, and never taking risks. This should be a risk, but to him it isn’t.
Or maybe she’s just worth taking the risk for.
They smile and laugh the whole way through the ceremony. And then suddenly it’s over and everyone applauds. Dad and Bea hold hands while they sign the register – and they’re only halfway back down the aisle before Dad sweeps Bea up into his arms and carries her the rest of the way, to cheers from everyone in the room. I half expect him to wince and complain about his back – but I guess thirty years of lugging big boxes of books up and down hotel stairwells have paid off.
The newlyweds disappear outside to the garden at the back of the registry office for photos, while – true to convention form – most of their guests make a beeline for the trays of champagne.
“Hello,” says that familiar voice behind me. There he is, holding an empty champagne glass. “Nice dress.”
“You have to say that, seeing as you’re dressed to match.” I slip my finger under his tie and flip it up to make my point. I can feel the warmth of him through his white shirt.
He looks good. He really, really does.
“Not great with compliments, are you?”
“They make me suspicious. They’re normally followed by someone asking for something.”
“Oh.” He looks away. “That’s a shame.”
“What’s a shame?”
“Because now I feel like I can’t ask you if you want to go out sometime. Properly – seeing as you pointed out that your dad’s wedding didn’t count.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
“Well, I mean, asking that is fine. Obviously.” I eye the tray of full champagne flutes the waiter’s carrying – and then I get a full-colour mental image of me lunging for one and falling over my stupid shoes, knocking over waiter, tray, glasses and everyone in the room like some kind of human domino run. I stay right where I am.
“So?”
“So what?”
He laughs and everything about him softens and warms. His face is the most familiar face in the world and I can’t imagine what my life was like before he was in it. “Not good at answers either, are you?”
“Oh. Sorry. Yes. Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, all right then.” He twiddles the stem of the glass between his fingers, then sets it down on a shelf and sticks both hands in his trouser pockets.
I raise an eyebrow at the glass. “You drank that pretty briskly. Anything I need to know?”
“What, that? No, there wasn’t anything in it. I asked for an empty one.”
“Why?”
“Needed something to do with my hands.” He pulls a hand out and holds it in front of him, palm down. It’s trembling – a lot. When he’s sure I’ve seen, his hand disappears back into his pocket. “Didn’t think I could pull off asking you out like that, you know? Shaking hands don’t exactly suggest cool, do they? Anyone would think I was nervous or something.”
“And that would be totally the wrong idea, would it?”
“Obviously.”
“You could always have tried shameless sucking-up first.” I try not to smile. Not too much, anyway.
“I thought that didn’t work on you? Or are you helpless without your clipboard to shield you?” He grins at me.
“Don’t push your luck, Mr Big-Shot Writer.” I give him a playful shove, and he steps back to catch his balance – and I wonder what we look like from the outside, to other people. To the kind of people who would post their photos with him on the internet; the kind of people who would ask him to sign their arms so they could get his mark tattooed on them for ever.
But he’s already left a mark on me, hasn’t he?
“There you go again, calling me a big-shot.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Dad had wanted to get a car to drive them back to the hotel, but Bea told him not to be so daft – so we walk, in convoy, back the way he and I came earlier. They’re in the lead, arm in arm, and people stop in the street to congratulate them and smile and wave – which does make me wonder whether that’s precisely the reason Bea refused the car…
Aidan walks with me, holding my hand, and at first I panic, thinking it’ll be so uncomfortable, especially with all Dad’s old friends who’ve known me since I was a kid watching us… But that isn’t how it is at all. It feels so perfectly the opposite of that. Perfectly comfortable. More than I ever thought it could. And all those thoughts about what we look like from the outside, they vanish like smoke. I am here with Aidan, and everything else evaporates.
“What’s this?” Sam buzzes up alongside me, beaming.
That lasted. “Go away, Sam.”
“You two are so cute!”
“Go. Away. Sam.”
She holds up her hands innocently. “I’m just saying…”
“Well, can you go and say it somewhere else?” I manage to tell her without moving my mouth. I don’t know whether this makes me sound serious or insane. Probably both.
Sam gives me a smile made almost entirely of teeth, screwing her eyes shut for comic effect; I haul her out of the way of a guy walking his dog and steer her around a lamppost, although if I had any sense I’d let her crash into them. It’s what she deserves. Aidan smiles and shakes his head, releasing my hand so the poor dog-walker can get past. My palm aches from the loss of his touch.
“What’s the plan when we get back?” she asks, completely oblivious to the fact I’ve just saved her from certain death – or a nasty trip, at any rate.
“I’ll pick up the walkie from ops, but other than that Nadiya and Bede have said they’ll take care of anything needed. We’ve got a couple of extras covering for health and safety, that kind of thing…”
“Not the convention, you loser. The reception party. Is there food? I’m starving. And then there’s you, isn’t there?” She nudges me. “You and Aidan. What’s the plan there?” Thankfully she’s lowered her voice, because Aidan’s right on the other side of me, staring out at the river.
“I…don’t know.”
Because I don’t. There’s no schedule that tells me how this will go, this me-and-Aidan thing. No lists of names and times. No clipboard can save me now – not from this. Just for once, I have no idea what comes next.