The Honeymoon Hotel (35 page)

Joe pulled a face. ‘Not really. Well, come on – it has to be bad if he’s not out here hobnobbing with Meryl Streep.’

‘It’s not Meryl Streep,’ said Gemma. ‘It’s—’

‘Gemma, you know I don’t care who these people are,’ he said.

‘Joe, there’s a problem, the registrars are late. You’ll have to say something,’ said Helen. ‘You’re second in command, after Laurence.’

Second in command?
What did that make me?
Third?
After all the work I’d done?

That did it.

‘No, if anyone’s second in command, it’s me,’ I said, and marched towards the front. I thought I heard Helen mutter something about that being the way to spring me into action, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to risk Joe getting up there and … I put the thought out of my mind, and concentrated on walking without falling over in my new higher-heeled shoes.

That was all well and good until I got to the front, and about the first five faces I saw I recognized from the sides of buses and
Heat
magazine. Forget what they say about celebs being
airbrushed and styled. They look like that in real life, too. It’s
really
unnerving.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ I began in a croaky voice, then cleared my throat. ‘Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid we have a slight delay in proceedings, due to a technical problem with …’

I saw several people slip their phones out of their pockets. My heart sank. I’d told Gemma to persuade people to put their phones in the special baskets. Emily didn’t want back-of-row-12 photos appearing on the internet.

‘A technical problem with …’

Someone took a photo of me, and I flinched. Funny how my worst wedding nightmare had always been the one where Anthony didn’t turn up. It had just been overtaken – by a country mile – by this one, where I was centre of attention all over again.

My throat went dry, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as every face in the crowd turned my way, expectantly. Oh God. My whole head had gone blank. All I could hear was a buzzing in my ears that had nothing to do with my fascinator.

To my horror, Joe was walking up the aisle. But he was walking in a completely different way: loose-limbed, professional, in charge. Towards me.

He smiled as he joined me at the front, and then I felt a hand on my arm. A hand that patted me, then firmly moved me bodily to one side.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Joe, with the same confidence that both Caroline and Laurence had at their fingertips. ‘I know
it’s traditional for the bride to keep everyone waiting at ceremonies of this sort, but today I have to apologize profusely on behalf of the hotel. We’re currently missing a pair of registrars. What can I say? I’m sure you’ve all seen enough Richard Curtis films to know that London transport likes to play a part in Hollywood weddings!’

I slid my eyes sideways in horror. Ironically, very much the same way that Emily had slid her eyes sideways in the big mirror when Contessa Vittoria shapeshifted up behind her in the last film.

‘So, anyway, while we’re waiting.’ He’d actually started to sound like Hugh Grant now. Or Colin Firth. I looked around the assembled guests, now openly staring at the pair of us, as if we were about to break into a song and dance version of ‘Love and Marriage’. ‘There’s something I would like to say – to the bride and groom.’

And then I knew that this day could not get any more out of my control, so I gave up.

The entire congregation fell silent, and unexpectedly, I suddenly felt very light, as if I was observing all this from three rows back in the congregation. I could almost see my own horrified face.

This was it. Not only was Joe Bentley Douglas about to torpedo my chic and sophisticated wedding ceremony with some half-baked universe-based guff, he was probably going to tell beautiful, famous Emily that he was still in love with her. Maybe not on purpose, but it would be so obvious to everyone from his body language that he might as well strip off and throw himself at her feet.

Some higher instinct seized me. St Ramada, goddess of the hospitality industry, maybe. I had to stop him. I just had to stall until Freda arrived.

‘Um, no, it’s fine.’ I coughed. ‘I’ve, er, I’ve thought of what I was going to say.’

I looked up, and at the back of the garden, Helen covered her face with her hands, unable to watch. So I stared at the windows of the hotel out of everyone’s sightline. ‘Before we begin, I wanted to say a few words about love.’

Joe looked at me sideways. ‘So did I.’

‘Well, my … thing about love is … better!’

I would tell you I was dying inside, but the weird force seemed to be holding me up. The congregation tittered. It probably looked as if we’d been practicing this tedious stand-up routine on purpose, just to give Emily and Ben’s wedding a ‘worst Oscars ever’ touch.

Joe was opening his mouth to argue; I had to get on with it. With luck the registrars would arrive before I had to get too far into anything more complicated than ‘Marriage is like a packet of Hobnobs,’ or whatever it was that vicars normally came out with before the main event.

But what to say? What was marriage like? Apart from Hobnobs.

I gripped my clipboard, and had a sudden brainwave.

‘I’m a wedding planner,’ I began, ‘and I’ve got a checklist of everything I need to do to make the wedding perfect. The seating plan, the RSVPs. The groom’s here – check. Rings here – check. And, er, the bride
is
here, by the way, just in case anyone was wondering …’

There was a murmur of amusement, which I gratefully acknowledged while I glanced at the door. Still no sign of Freda and/or Jan.

‘I might have hit a snag on
my
checklist with the registrars,’ I said desperately, ‘but Emily and Benedict have ticked every box on theirs. Emily was telling me only yesterday that her wedding gift from Benedict was a season ticket to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Now, if a woman’s prepared to sit through an entire five-day
test, she’s obviously ticking patience, understanding and the very highest form of love!’

It was corny, but the congregation laughed. I was going to move on to something about bowling maidens over when I felt Joe shift me to one side.

‘However,’ he said, ‘the point
I
was going to make is that despite Rosie’s laudable efforts to make everything perfect for Emily and Ben, today isn’t perfect, and that’s a good thing.’

‘I – what?’

‘I’ve met a lot of brides in my short but colourful career as a wedding planner,’ he informed the crowd, conversationally, ‘and they’re all dead-set on one thing – having the perfect day. Much to my colleague’s horror, I’ve tried to talk them out of that, with varied success. Because, being a bloke, I’ve always been a big believer in human
im
perfection. It makes us interesting, and it makes us open to growth.’

I closed my eyes and tried to stay calm, while racking my brain for something funny to say. We were two breaths away from the universe and/or some terrible John Lennon quote, but at least this didn’t sound like an attempted coup on the groom. So far.

‘I definitely didn’t think the perfect woman existed,’ he went on. ‘But then, like Benedict, I met a woman who is everything I’d ever imagined a woman could be, and it blew me away. Funny, clever, thoughtful, smart, and movie-star beautiful.’ As he said it, I wanted to crawl away and die. But I couldn’t. I was trapped on a stage in front of two hundred people, and I had to keep smiling like a demented newsreader while Joe described
Emily again, with that hypnotized expression I remembered from Valentine’s Day. The
she’s perfect
one.

No one had ever said that about me.

‘She’s not perfect in a
boring
way,’ Joe explained, as if anyone cared. ‘She’s got her hang-ups and bad habits. She drinks way too much coffee, for a start. And she won’t surf because she thinks she might get slammed in the face with the board and lose all her teeth.’

The congregation laughed. I didn’t. I thought that was totally reasonable. Sensible, even, for a movie star. It was why
I’d
never surfed, and I only needed my teeth for eating, not flashing in
Vogue
shoots. Emily and I had so much in common. We could have been friends if we’d met at school.

‘If anything, this incredible, intelligent,
indescribable
woman is so obsessed with everything being perfect that she completely misses how great she is already, imperfections and all. The only thing that could make her even more amazing than she is now would be if she’d only let someone into her life to mess it up a bit.’ Joe ruffled his hair sheepishly, and despite the leadenness of my heart, I felt a lurch of desire. I would miss him.

‘Apparently that’s what boyfriends are for,’ he added, and everyone laughed. ‘Husbands, even more so.’

Joe was really winning the crowd over, I thought, looking around. Some couples had slipped their hand into each other’s; a few were leaning their heads on their husbands’ shoulders, fancy hats permitting.

I’d never felt so single in my life.

He coughed, and I guessed he was getting to the point at last.
‘So when I look at Emily and Ben today, even though they’re famous and successful, and from the outside everyone will imagine their life is perfect, I hope that they’ll each have the little imperfections that, when put together, will make their relationship last a lifetime. Like the lumps on jigsaw pieces, or the patterns on tyres that help them stay on the road. Imperfections are what help us stick together. To give us room to breathe, to heat up and cool down. To grow.’

He stopped and looked at me, and I glared back, thinking,
Why are you looking at me with that dozy expression like I’m supposed to say, yes, go for it, run off with her like in
The Graduate.

‘I just hope this perfect woman I know will let someone in to do the same for her,’ he said.

Someone in the crowd went, ‘Aaaah.’ And then a few more did.

Joe smiled tentatively, and did a sort of prompting nod, as if he’d expected a reaction from me by now.

‘What?’ I hissed, a bit ungraciously, I will admit.

‘I mean you,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘You daft cow.’

He meant me. Joe was talking about me.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. (Thank God.)

Joe nodded gently, his gaze never leaving my face. ‘Definitely you.’

And my heart filled with a sudden rush of happiness, then seemed to burst out of me, rising into the air like a helium balloon, or a Chinese lantern, or a white dove. Up, and up, and up, past the tree, past the windows, up past the honeymoon suite balcony. I felt so light, looking into Joe’s eyes, that I could have floated right away.

I felt I’d come home.

The registrars arrived at the moment he took my hands and led me off the little platform, but apparently no one even noticed.

*

‘That was very bad form,’ I said, once the service was under way and the crowd was listening to a top soprano from the Royal Opera House sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’. It was awful, but I didn’t mind. It was Emily’s mother’s favourite song. ‘Hijacking someone else’s wedding like that.’

Joe didn’t seem unduly bothered. ‘Oh, they love it, actor types,’ he said. ‘Bit of drama. Someone will be commissioning a screenplay about it, just watch.’

‘I hope they get someone glamorous to play me,’ I said.

‘No, they’ll get a sitcom actress doing her first film,’ said Joe affectionately, picking a stray petal off my hair. ‘One that scrubs up well, though.’

We were sitting under the tree, in a corner of the garden where no one could see us but where I could keep an eye on any major disaster that might unfold. Not that I cared about that either. I didn’t care about anything, apart from Joe’s hand holding mine. He’d been holding it for ten minutes now, and our skin was getting a bit clammy, but again, it didn’t even register. A happy serenity had come over me.

‘I should probably have told you I was going to say something,’ he went on thoughtfully, ‘but I didn’t plan it. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’

‘You don’t think Emily minded you stealing the limelight at her wedding?’

‘To be honest …’ Joe screwed up his face. ‘It’s her own fault. I got this letter from her while I was at Mum’s – she basically said everything you’d said—’

‘Which was everything you’d said to me.’

‘But she said it in a kinder way? That everyone needs a fling like the one we had in their past, to show them how incredible a strong everyday love is.’ He reached into his pocket, as if he was going to show me the letter, and I made
no no no no
gestures. ‘What she actually said was that having a Ferrari for a fortnight on set made her appreciate how much she liked driving her regular car that always started and fit her real life.’

‘And you were like the Ferrari?’ Emily was so nice.

More to the point, she’d described her film star husband as a regular car? I’d have to tell Gemma that. Or maybe not.

‘I was. Well, I can see the comparison. But …’ Joe turned my face to his, with his finger under my chin, and gazed at me with a glint in his eye. ‘I got the letter, and it was exciting for about ten minutes, then I suddenly realized that I wanted to tell you about it. And you weren’t there. And then I
really
had a moment.’

‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I think I had the same one.’

‘Wragley Hall seemed pointless without you there. The country-side, pointless. Hotels, pointless. Meals, pointless. I wanted you to be there, telling me how it could all be better, or different, or whatever.’

‘Nagging.’

‘Not nagging. Sharing. Living.’ His lips parted slightly as his eyes locked with mine, and I felt a shiver run through my whole body.

My heart was really thumping now, making me feel vivid and alive and aware of every single breath I was taking.

‘I’ve been stupid,’ said Joe. ‘But I’m learning. Can you put up with my many imperfections in the meantime?’

‘Your useless hospital corners? Your messy eating habits?’ I reached my hand out and touched his ear, the tanned skin of his chin. It was thrilling to have unspoken permission to touch him at last. I had to force myself not to trace his cheekbones, his long nose, his wide mouth. Those tattoos on the base of his spine. Those long, golden-haired legs with the lean muscles. ‘I think so. The rest is pretty fine.’

Joe took my hand and pulled me nearer to him, sliding his arm around my waist. ‘I didn’t want to do this up there,’ he said. ‘I mean, I don’t hold with all your ridiculous wedding etiquette but I do know
this
is bad form.’

With each word he’d leaned a little closer until now our noses were almost touching. A tiny gap of air was all that separated our bodies, and it fizzed and sparked with electricity. I could feel his warm breath on my face, and my heart was beating so hard in my chest I was surprised I couldn’t see it.

‘What’s bad form?’ I breathed.

‘For two people to kiss at a wedding before the bride and groom,’ he whispered, and slowly he bent his head to mine, closing his eyes and touching his lips against my surprised mouth. His lips were warm and soft, but then more insistent,
and I let myself sink into a kiss that felt both familiar and strange, as the nearness of his body, the heat of his skin through the fine linen shirt, overwhelmed all my senses at once. He was delicious. Perfect and delicious.

‘Flora Thornbury’s in the pool,’ said someone about a million miles away. Gemma, I think.

‘What? In the pool here?’ said another unfamiliar voice.

‘Yes, completely naked!’

I should really do something about that
, I thought.
Send Tam down with security, or call Missy, or Laurence. Or someone
.

Then I thought,
No. I’ve got better things to do
. And I tangled my hands in Joe’s thick blond hair and pulled him closer, so I could kiss him again.

THE END
(Roll romantic credits; top opera singer to sing song)