‘You packed?’
‘Nah, I’ll shove a couple of black T-shirts into my bag on Saturday morning.’
‘We’ll miss you,’ I said as I handed him another glass. Declaring this collectively, on behalf of the shop, felt less intense than admitting it was me, personally, who’d miss him.
‘Will you?’ he said, wiping his hands on the tea towel.
‘Course. Although I won’t miss tidying up after you,’ I added, and because I was tipsy and it seemed like a good idea, I scooped up a palm of bubbles and blew them at him.
Zach laughed, wiped them off his cheek and then we smiled at one another just long enough for it to feel weird. My cheeks went hot, and it was as if all the air in the small galley space had been sucked out of it.
‘Come on, got to finish this lot,’ I said, turning back to the washing-up bowl, embarrassed, feeling as if I had to look anywhere apart from at him.
‘Why are you with him?’ he said quietly.
‘What?’
Zach didn’t answer immediately. He just looked at me in the same way as before, the way which made me feel as if he could almost see inside me. ‘With Rory. Why?’
‘What do you mean? Because he’s my boyfriend, that’s why. Come on, dry this.’ I handed him another wine glass.
He dried it in silence while I swished suds over a plate, trying not to feel awkward. From upstairs came the muffled shouts of Norris and Eugene belting out ‘Joy to the World’.
‘The guy is a selfish jerk.’
‘Zach…’
‘Where is he now?’ he asked, spinning to face me. ‘If he’s so great, why wasn’t he here tonight? Why is he never here for you?’
‘Zach, I’m not a child that needs a minder. He’s got work.’
He clenched his fists and growled. ‘Jesus, Florence, you just deserve so much better. You’re too good for him, and I wish you could see that.’
‘Zach—’
But he ignored me, his voice getting louder. ‘You think that he’s everything you want because he dresses like an Edwardian and talks like a despotic medieval king. But he’s going to squash you.’
‘Zach, seriously, this is very dramatic,’ I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. I could sense my fear of any difficult, emotional conversation flex itself inside me.
‘I’m going away on Saturday, I’ve got to be dramatic! Listen, when I first met you, I thought you were the weirdest, most uptight person I’d ever come across.’
‘Thanks very much.’
‘You’re welcome. But then I got to know you, and I realized that underneath that weirdness and your genuinely astonishing obsession with mugs, you were also the kindest, sweetest, most loyal person I’ve ever met. And he’s taking advantage of that.’
‘Zach—’
‘You don’t love him, do you?’
I glanced at the lino floor, sticky with slopped coffee stains, and made a mental note to mop it on Monday. ‘I… I’m not… I don’t know.’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t, I know you don’t.’
I felt a flare of anger. ‘Why are you saying this all now?’
‘Because I can’t watch him eat away at you.’
‘He won’t, he doesn’t. He’s just busy. He’s got a serious job instead of—’
‘Instead of what? Taking pictures? Working for his uncle?’
‘I wasn’t going to say that, course I wasn’t,’ I mumbled, shamed by Zach’s hurt expression.
We were interrupted by my phone vibrating in my pocket with a message. Leaving office now and heading back to mine. Hope this evening was a veritable triumph. See you tomorrow my darling. R
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, suddenly desperate to get home to my own bed.
‘Florence, please just think about you. And what you want for once.’ He reached out and grabbed my arm, his fingers pressing into it.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I repeated, shaking his hand off.
‘Fine,’ he said, tersely. ‘See you when I get back.’
I spun in the doorway, anguished at the idea that Zach and I could leave things like this, but also stuck, unsure what else I could do.
‘Have a good trip,’ I said, waving pathetically before running upstairs, saying goodbye to the others, who were slurring their way through ‘Good King Wenceslas’.
Bursting out of the shop, I drew in large gulps of cold, December air. It was dark, nearly midnight, and the pavements were black with rain, but I walked the whole way home, rolling lines of the conversation around my head.
Chapter Eleven
ON SATURDAY MORNING, IN room number 432, I heard the hotel door click shut and Ruby climb into bed next to me, burrowing under the duvet covers like a wriggly child. It was still dark. There must be hours of night left. I closed my eyes again. No point in spending the night in Claridge’s, in a bed as soft as candy floss with ninety-three pillows, only to be woken up early.
‘Flo,’ she hissed.
I ignored her.
‘FLO!’
‘Mmm.’
‘You awake?’
‘No.’
‘I need to tell you something.’
I sighed and rolled over. ‘What? Where have you been?’
‘In Jeremy’s room.’
Jeremy was one of Hugo’s ushers, an American who looked like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger: big forehead, wide mouth. After last night’s wedding rehearsal in the ballroom, the wedding party (my family, Hugo’s family, plus select guests) had gathered in the bar for drinks. Hugo’s family had left for dinner elsewhere while mine remained drinking. It wasn’t a late night – we’d ordered bar snacks and decided to call it a night just after 10 p.m. All, that is, apart from Ruby, who was by that point sitting at a corner table with Jeremy, also staying in the hotel having flown in from New York.
I guessed that it was around 4 a.m. and didn’t feel I needed to know the specifics of Ruby’s escapades with Jeremy the usher right now. ‘Can’t it wait until morning?’
‘It is morning.’
It couldn’t be. It was as dark as a coal mine in that room.
Ruby turned on a lamp. I clapped a hand over my eyes.
‘Look,’ she said, and I peered through my fingers to see her phone screen. It was 7.32 a.m. I glanced at the windows; the blackout blinds had tricked me.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I need to tell you something.’
It was like sharing a room with a hyperactive 5-year-old. ‘What?’
Ruby suddenly looked very solemn. ‘I slept with Jeremy last night…’
‘I guessed.’
‘No, but that’s not what I need to tell you.’
I frowned. ‘What? You’re freaking me out.’
She winced at me. ‘He had a video on his phone.’
‘O-K…’
‘Of the stag. A video someone took in Prague.’
‘Hugo’s stag?’
She nodded.
‘Of what?’
She winced again. ‘Of this,’ she said, offering me her phone.
I pressed play and heard rowdy male shouts and someone panting. The picture was blurry so I held the phone screen closer to my face, then grimaced and held it back out to her.
‘Ruby, this is porn. Why are you showing me porn at seven thirty in the morning?’
‘It’s not porn, look!’ She held up the phone to me and that was when I realized. It was Hugo, sitting in a chair, while a woman in a very small pair of red sequinned knickers rubbed her bottom against his groin.
‘What’s wrong with her nipples? Why’s she got corn plasters on them? I can’t watch this.’ I tried to hand the phone back again.
‘You have to!’ instructed Ruby.
Reluctantly, I dragged my eyes back to the screen as the dancer turned to face Hugo and pushed one of her breasts in his face.
‘What’s she doing?’
‘Watch it!’ said Ruby, nodding at the phone.
I tutted as Hugo’s hands reached around and clasped her b
ottom, pulling her towards him, then the dancer stepped back again to laddy cheers.
‘They’re marshmallows,’ Ruby explained. ‘On her nipples. Look, they’re gone now. Hugo bit them off. But keep watching.’
‘Do I have to? I need a coffee.’ I looked around the room as if a waiter with a cafetière would spring up from behind a piece of furniture. This wasn’t the wake-up call I’d envisaged.
‘Yes, look.’ Ruby nodded at the phone again as the woman in the spangly knickers dropped to her knees between Hugo’s legs and unzipped his flies. She lowered her mouth and I flung the phone on the duvet as if it had scalded my hand. ‘Rubes, I’m not watching that.’
From the end of the bed, as the video continued, I could still hear the laddy cheers floating towards us.
Ruby reached for the phone, pressed stop and we both sat frozen on the bed.
‘Quite impressed Hugo had it in him, to be honest,’ I said, after a few beats of silence. ‘But does it… I mean… does he…?’
‘Finish?’ said Ruby, as if she was discussing a running race. ‘Yes, he does. And then, well, sorry Flo, but it gets worse.’
‘Worse? How can it get worse? How can there be anything worse than discovering a video of our almost brother-in-law getting blown off by a woman who looks like a lion tamer on the day he’s getting married to our sister?’
‘Shhhh,’ she said, inclining her head at the adjoining door to the room where Mia was, hopefully, fast asleep. She held the phone up but I batted it down.
‘I’m not watching any more.’
‘OK, but…’ she stopped.
‘What?’
‘Rory’s in it too.’
‘WHAT?’
‘Shhhhh!’ Then she tapped at her phone again and I saw a flash of the lion tamer grinding herself into Rory before I looked in the other direction.
‘Rubes, I really can’t… I just don’t want to see.’
The room went quiet again.
‘How does she get the marshmallows to stay on?’ I mused.
‘Seriously? That’s your main question.’
‘No, not my main one.’ I glanced at her. ‘I presume Rory, er, gets there too?’
She nodded. ‘And you can hear him shout “Cowabunga!” Do you want to see?’
‘No, I really don’t,’ I said, sighing and leaning back on the suede headboard. ‘OK, a few questions. Firstly, how did you find out about this?’
‘Jeremy was drunk and he thought it would be funny to show me.’
‘What a comedian. But how have you got it on your phone?’
‘From his phone this morning. He was passed out so I held his finger to the screen.’
‘Top work, Agatha Christie. OK, and my second question is, do we show Mia?’
‘Yes, obviously.’
‘On her wedding day?’
‘We’ve got to, haven’t we? You’d want to know, right?’
I sighed again. ‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Are you going to say anything to Rory?’ she asked more gently. ‘Are you all right?’
I pressed my lips together and thought for a moment. I was waiting for a wave of anger, of sadness at the knowledge that my boyfriend bit a sugary snack off another woman’s breast before she gave him a blow job. But I didn’t feel particularly angry. Instead, I just felt the tiniest twinge of relief. All the anxiety, all the obsession with keeping hold of him suddenly felt absurd. I’d done everything I could – seen a love coach, worn uncomfortable knickers, put on a blindfold, pretended that I’d enjoyed myself at his parents’ house, gone to that awful ball, listened to him shout ‘Cowabunga!’ again and again but none of it was right. That was the very simple, very evident truth, and all it had taken was a naked woman wearing a pair of sequinned knickers for me to realize. The revelation made me snort with laughter.
‘What’s so funny?’ said Ruby, frowning at me.
‘You’ll see,’ I said, leaning across for my own phone, charging on the bedside table. I found Rory’s name and hit the green button.
It rang a few times before he answered, groggily. ‘Morning, my little chou-fleur, you’re up early.’
‘Please don’t chou-fleur me,’ I said coolly. ‘What happened in Prague?’
I heard the sound of sheets rustling in the background and Rory coughed to clear his throat. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you or did you not get…’ I paused, unable to say it aloud. What was the least bad expression? ‘Oral sex from a stripper?’
‘Florence, darling. How can you possibly think that I wou—’
‘There’s a video.’
His voice went up an octave. ‘What video?’
‘Hugo’s friend Jeremy has it,’ I replied, trying to stay calm. ‘Of you and Hugo cavorting about like a pair of FUCKING TEENAGERS.’
The anger had started to hit; Rory’s arrogance, the audacity to deny it and his feeble protestation all seemed so tawdry.
He paused at the end of the phone. I could almost hear his thoughts processing: how do I get out of this? How do I calm her down?
‘Florence, I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘It was a very foolish thing to do. Boys being boys. Can you forgive me?’
‘I don’t think so.’
His voice became more serious at this. ‘Florence, it was a stag weekend. These things happen.’
‘Oh, these things happen, do they? That’s interesting. Because what I don’t understand is how someone who’s so desperate to be prime minister would allow himself to be filmed getting fellated by a stranger in novelty knickers?’
Beside me, Ruby punched the air with her fist.
Rory’s voice went up another octave. ‘Florence, please don’t do anything silly. I mean it!’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘Just… just… just please can you delete that video? I’m sorry, it was a mistake. A silly, silly mistake. Hugo made me do it.’
‘Oh, Hugo made you do it, did he?’
‘Yes, yes! I didn’t want to, honestly.’
‘Rory Dundee,’ I started, ‘you are a spineless, self-obsessed, selfish wanker.’
‘Florence…’
‘I hate your poncey clothes.’
‘Florence, please…’
‘I hate your snobbery and your pretentious friends.’
‘Florence, come on, I don’t thi—’
‘I think you’re arrogant and smug and I would never vote for you to be prime minister. And I still don’t even really understand what the home secretary does! Don’t even think about coming to this wedding. COWABUNGA YOURSELF!’
I hung up and chucked my phone on the bed, my heart hammering under my T-shirt like a war drum.
Ruby whooped. ‘Flo! I’ve never seen you like that. I’m proud of you.’
I laughed and put a hand to my chest to try and calm it. ‘Yeah, I’m quite proud of myself. That felt good. I feel good.’
‘So you should.’
‘Right?’ I paused, trying make sense of the thoughts racing through my head. ‘I suppose everything I told him had been dawning on me for a while – he was pompous and selfish, and those stupid, stupid clothes – but I was too hooked on having someone.’ I looked up from the bed to her face as if for guidance. ‘I guess I was too hooked on having a boyfriend?’
She nodded and was about to reply when the double doors between our room and Mia’s crashed open.
‘What’s all this shouting on my wedding day?’ she said, stretching in the door, a Claridge’s sleep mask pushed back on her head.
Ruby made a panicked face at me.
‘It’s my wedding day!’ Mia said again, her arms still in the air, waiting for us to applaud her.
‘Hurrah,’ I bleated. Ruby stayed quiet.
Mia laughed and lowered her arms. ‘Thanks for the excitement, guys. Oh, I nearly forgot, hang on.’ She turned back into her room and then skipped back towards us with two cellophane packets. Tucking one knee underneath her and sitting on the end of our bed, she held them out
. ‘I got you these.’
We opened them in silence. They were silky pink dressing gowns with ‘sister-of-the-bride’ embroidered on the back.
‘You like?’
We both nodded.
‘Good. But Jaz and the make-up artist are arriving in about an hour so if you want breakfast, order some now. I can’t eat a thing but can someone order me a coffee?’
Ruby lowered her dressing gown. ‘Mia, can we talk to you about something?’
‘What?’
‘I got talking to Jeremy last night.’
Mia clapped her hands together. ‘Did you? I thought you’d like him. Apparently his apartment in New York is insane.’
‘I’m sure, but ca—’
‘I think he’s sitting next to you at dinner, actually, I can’t remember the exact seating plan but I think he might be.’
‘Mia, forget the seating plan.’
‘Or maybe I put you next to Dan. Did you meet Dan last night? He’s the one who’s got quite a big nose but I don’t think you should be put off by that because apparently he’s got the most enorm—’
‘MIA! Can you listen?’ shouted Ruby.
‘What? Don’t shout at me on my wedding day.’
Ruby took a deep breath. ‘I got talking to Jeremy and he showed me a video.’
‘What kind of video?’
‘From the stag. From Hugo’s stag.’
‘Of what?’
Ruby glanced sideways at me as if for help.
‘It’s of a club,’ I went on. ‘At least I think it’s a club. It’s not that clear because the picture’s fuzzy. It could be a bar. Or a restaurant. Or maybe it was in a hotel r—’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ interrupted Ruby. ‘I’m just going to show it to you.’
She held out her phone and Mia watched the video in silence while I winced at the repetition of all those cheers.
‘Mia…’ started Ruby, when the video finished. But she held a hand up in the air.
‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘But wha—’
Mia held Ruby’s phone back out to her and looked at her watch. ‘Flo, you should get in the shower.’
‘WHAT?’ shouted Ruby. ‘Aren’t we going to discuss this?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it on my wedding day. Don’t ruin it for me, Rubes. Flo, shower.’
The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020! Page 31