‘This is the sort of stuff you buy for parties,’ whispered Tess as Fanny stuck more bottles in her trolley – half a dozen magnums of respectable old brandy, four dozen bottles of pink champagne – then scurried off towards the dips and salsas.
‘Or for wakes,’ said Cat.
She glanced down at the contents of her trolley, seeing all the bottles of expensive blood-red wine and plastic packs of blood-red strawberries, pots of clotted cream and boxes of exquisite cakes – the bite-sized sort you ate in just one mouthful – tiny scones already filled with cream and blood-red jam, puddings slashed with blood-red raspberry coulis.
She realised she felt sick.
‘Anything we can find for you?’ asked Tess, as Fanny dropped a giant box of savoury crackers in her giant trolley.
‘No thank you, darling,’ said Fanny with a twinkle. ‘All you have to do is follow me.’ Then she was off again.
‘I know she’s up to something,’ Cat told Tess. ‘She’s got that manic look, the one she had at Melbury Court when she was bossing me about that day.’
‘Or she’s stocking up her great big freezer?’ Tess picked up a box of little cakes. ‘You can freeze these babies. It says so on the pack.’
‘They can’t be for the freezer, or she’d have bought the ready-frozen versions, wouldn’t she?’ Cat looked worriedly at Tess. ‘What’s with all the lilies? They’re the sort you get at funerals.’
‘Or at Satanic rituals,’ Tess suggested ghoulishly.
‘God,’ said Cat and shuddered.
‘So maybe you were right,’ said Tess. She glanced across the store at Fanny who was out of earshot, busy hoovering up some trays of sushi and bresaola. ‘Maybe Fanny Gregory is a witch, and tonight she’s having a black mass. You’re going to be a human sacrifice. You’ll be lying naked on a bed of pure white lilies, bound and gagged. I saw this film a year or two ago. It was on Channel 4. I think it was Romanian or Hungarian, or Eastern European, anyway. When they lit these big black candles, they—’
‘Tess, don’t even joke about it, right?’
‘I’m not joking, mate.’ Tess grinned at Cat. ‘Your number’s up, your die is cast, your hour is come. I reckon this will teach you to enter competitions to win luxury dream weddings.’
‘Shut up, you fool, she’s coming back.’
Twenty minutes later they were at the checkout, with Cat and Tess unloading and repacking, and Fanny paying with her Amex Gold.
‘Five hundred quid, and that’s on food alone, not counting all the flowers and wine,’ said Tess, as they loaded everything into the BMW. ‘Who’s going to eat it all?’
‘God only knows,’ said Cat.
When they arrived back at the barn, Caspar welcomed them delightedly. Fanny put Cat in charge of flower arranging. ‘I want big, bold statements,’ she began, pushing a huge bunch of blowsy peonies at Cat. ‘Over-indulgence, overflowing gorgeousness, extreme extravagance – you understand?’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Cat, who was now wondering if this was yet another stupid dream, if this was the year of crazy dreams, if in fact she’d ever been awake, if she’d have to go to see that tantric disentangler guy in Catford after all.
Maybe she’d been in an accident and she was in a coma and none of this was happening? If so, maybe she could write a book about it when at last she did come round? She could get it syndicated in the Sunday papers, couldn’t she? She’d heard they paid a lot of money for that sort of thing.
As well as all the gorgeous flowers, Fanny had bought a dozen plain glass vases. Cat began to fill them, trying to arrange the flowers as Fanny wanted them, white lilies and pink peonies in heavenly-scented masses, spikes of mauve delphiniums with foaming greenery.
Where was Rosie, wondered Cat, as she stripped off big green leaves and snipped at ends of stems with a pair of flower arranger’s scissors which had been thrust into her hand. She was Fanny Gregory’s assistant, after all. So surely it was Rosie’s job to go to Marks and Spencer, buy food for Fanny’s freezer, do Fanny’s flower arrangements, things like that?
‘Come along, my angels, I’ll show you to your room,’ said Fanny, when the flowers had been arranged, the food all put away in two enormous silver fridges and the big American freezer, and the wines been left to breathe or chill.
They climbed the spiral staircase which rose up from hallway and ended in a gallery which was full of natural light. ‘It’s this one on the left,’ said Fanny proudly, opening a huge oak door and leading them inside.
‘Do you like the bed?’ she asked, as Cat and Tess stared open-mouthed at the enormous double, an elaborate French affair complete with ivory inlay, marquetry and half a dozen gilded nymphs. It was easily big enough for both of them, but still—
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Cat.
‘Yeah, gorgeous,’ Tess said faintly. ‘But—’
‘Tess, don’t look so horrified,’ said Fanny, opening a door to show them into a much smaller room which held a single bed made of plain pine, a single wardrobe and a Lloyd Loom chair. ‘I was just expecting Cat, you see. But you’re both very welcome.’
‘You can have the big bed,’ Cat said graciously.
‘No, you have it.’ Tess glanced at the little room. ‘I’ll be fine in there.’
‘Sort it out between yourselves, my angels.’ Fanny turned to leave. ‘The en-suite bathroom’s just through there,’ she added. ‘The power shower works. Or it had better work, considering what I paid for it. I haven’t tried it yet. So come along then, girls. We need to get our skates on. There’s a lot to do before tonight.’
‘What do you reckon now?’ asked Tess, as Fanny clattered down the spiral staircase.
‘I don’t know what I reckon.’ Cat shook her head and sighed. ‘Something’s going on. But we won’t be doing any painting. I’ll bet my boots on that.’
‘You mean your L.K.Bennett black with gold-tone hardware boots?’
‘Yes, if I must.’
As Cat and Tess went back downstairs, a van drew up.
Two men got out and carried several trestle tables through the hallway into the huge atrium, then drove away again.
‘Along the wall, my angels,’ Fanny said, and then she disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, tapping on her phone.
‘It looks like it’s a party,’ Tess observed, as she and Cat set trestle tables all along one wall and hoped it was the right one.
‘Yeah,’ said Cat. ‘Godammit.’
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘I’ve just pinched my finger in a hinge.’
‘It doesn’t matter about your sodding finger, Moaning Min. Listen, I don’t have anything to wear. My hair’s a mess. I need my roots done. I didn’t bring any make-up. My nails are a disaster. I haven’t shaved my legs.’
‘What makes you think that we’re invited?’
‘Why else would we be here?’
‘Come on,’ said Cat, ‘engage your brain.’
Opening a cardboard box the men had left, a box which held white linen tablecloths, she took a couple out. ‘She’s probably going to make us wait on everybody – pour their drinks and take round trays of canapés and stuff. I heard her muttering on the phone a minute or two ago, and I’ll bet you anything she was hiring uniforms for us. Black skirts, white blouses, frilly little aprons—’
‘Well, she can stick her uniforms,’ said Tess. ‘I tell you what, mate – when we’re done in here, we’ll bugger off. We’ll find a pub. Or we’ll go back to London. Look out, here she comes.’
‘All finished, girls?’ chirped Fanny as she bustled in, Caspar at her heels and her mobile in her hand.
‘Almost,’ Cat replied.
‘Excellent,’ said Fanny. ‘Now, what are you two going to wear tonight? We’ll need to find you both a couple of nice – o
h, hang on a moment, there’s someone at the door.’
‘Come on, mate,’ said Jules. ‘Stop behaving like you won the lottery and someone pinched your ticket. I’ll tell you something, Adam – Maddy was bad news, and you’re well rid.’
‘It isn’t Maddy,’ Adam told him, wishing Jules would go away, go out, drop dead, do anything provided he’d stop hanging round the place like last night’s curry, looking like a bloodhound with a migraine.
He was missing Gwennie, who had gone to see her parents in the sticks, and probably wishing he had tagged along, even if Gwennie’s mother had decided he was better than her doctor – more sympathetic, knowledgeable and more up to date – when it came to discussing medication for her problems down below. ‘I’m over Maddy,’ he insisted. ‘She and I are finished.’
‘I’m sorry Gwennie let her in that time,’ continued Jules, who wasn’t listening, who blundered on regardless as he dished out good advice like some agony aunt on crack cocaine. ‘I told her, send a text – tell him she’s turned up again, she’s camping in his room. But Gwennie, she said no, it would be better, it would be more romantic, if you got a big surprise.’
‘It was a surprise all right,’ said Adam, angling his laptop so Jules wouldn’t see his screen saver.
This was the photograph of Cat with petals of white roses in her hair. He didn’t want any comments from his friend, not even complimentary ones, and certainly no questions like – who’s that fit bird then, mate?
Then he e-mailed last minute instructions for the foreman he had left in charge at Melbury Court and touched base with all his other clients before it was time to throw some stuff into a case and go to catch the train to Aberdeen.
On Sunday morning, he’d be met by Mr Portland’s driver and taken to the castle on which he would be working off and on for six months, eight months, perhaps a year or more.
This was if he could keep his sanity, and he’d realised this was going to be his biggest challenge. Mr and Mrs Portland were becoming more demanding and ridiculous all the time. It was clearly going to be a nightmare heading Mrs Portland off and trying to convince her that a Texan ranch-style kitchen would look out of place in a Victorian Gothic castle.
The last time they had spoken, she’d asked him if he could create a cocktail lounge of the sort more suited to a beach house in Bermuda than a castle in a wooded glen near Aberdeen.
But he was still determined to do this job in Scotland. He was confident – or fairly confident, at any rate – that Mrs Portland would eventually be persuaded Scottish Baronial Gothic was a better look for Aberdeenshire than Bermudan Toddy Shack.
This was his big opportunity, his chance to prove he was a brilliant and inventive project manager, up there with the best. If he couldn’t get it right with women, he was going to get it right with work. If he couldn’t have a wife and family, he was going to have a great career.
As for work – he knew that he was working much too hard. But working hard was helping him to take his mind off Cat. Well, just a bit. Well, not at all, if he was honest, he still thought about her almost every minute of every day.
He’d called, he’d texted and he’d e-mailed. He’d made a thorough nuisance of himself. Soon, she’d set the police on him, complain she had a stalker. Then he would be arrested and he didn’t want that. So maybe it was just as well he’d soon be off the scene?
Jules was still hovering, still looking like a collie which had had its feelings hurt but had decided it wouldn’t bear a grudge or do its business on the rug.
‘Listen, Jules,’ said Adam in quiet exasperation, ‘I’m honestly not hankering after Maddy. So please can you accept it and stop going on about it, right?’
‘What’s the matter, then?’ Jules turned off the television, plonked himself down next to Adam, sighed like someone’s mother when you’d left the front door open, letting robbers, opportunist one-off murderers and career serial killers walk straight in and get your blood all over the new suite.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Adam, making sure he kept his eyes fixed on his laptop screen.
‘Something’s wrong, I know it.’ Jules clapped his hand on Adam’s shoulder in a caring, sharing, male-bonding sort of way. ‘You’re my best mate,’ he said. ‘You always have been, always will be. It chews me up to see you looking so hacked off, so bloody miserable. Why don’t you go to Aberdeen tomorrow? Come and get drunk with me and Gaz tonight? Mate, it’s time you met another woman.’
‘Jules, please shut up. I need to finish something here and then I have to go and get my train.’
‘Only Gwennie wondered if you ought to go and see a doctor, if you need some medication? You know all those magazines she reads? They’re full of stuff about relationships and what to do when one goes belly-up. Yeah, it’s a load of boring girly nonsense, most of it. But about the medication – she could have a point.’
‘Jules, you’re in the industry. Why don’t you go and get your case of samples? We could have a little private party – pick and mix.’
‘Now you’re being stupid, mate.’
‘I thought you were going to the pub?’
‘I’m not going to be a maid tonight,’ Tess muttered crossly as Fanny Gregory went to get the door.
Cat couldn’t think of anything to say. It looked as if a couple of maids were just what she and Tess were going to be.
‘I’m not handing round champagne to Fanny’s hideous mates,’ continued Tess. ‘I’m not going to have my bum pinched by their foul old husbands. So if Fanny Annie thinks—’
‘Please, Tess, do this for me?’ Cat looked beseechingly at Tess. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I swear to God. You can have my Jasper Conran boots, my Warehouse skirt, my Birkin bag—’
‘Your Birkin bag’s a fake.’
‘My new Oasis top, those Office shoes you said you loved – you can have anything you like. You know she’s got a hold on me. You know I signed her bloody form. I wish I’d never seen that competition. I wish I’d never entered it. But I—’
‘Here we are then, girls.’ Fanny swept into the atrium, followed by a tall and glamorous woman who looked like Meryl Streep. They both carried great armfuls of clothes in plastic covers, and Fanny introduced the newcomer as Lulu Minto, darlings.
‘The famous Lulu Minto?’ whispered Tess. ‘The Lulu Minto who dresses the celebrities and royals?’
‘The very same,’ said Fanny, whose hearing was as sharp as any lynx which had had its ears syringed that very afternoon. ‘I told darling Lulu there’d be only one of you. But luckily you’re similar sizes, so you should find something here to fit.’
She glanced at Tess and then she smiled her vixen’s smile. ‘Tess, my flower, why do you look so horrified – again?’
‘I’m not horrified,’ said Tess. ‘I mean, I don’t—I don’t know what I mean.’
‘Fanny, are these for us?’ asked Cat, who could see a mass of glitter, glimmer, shimmer, sparkle on expensive fabrics. She could make out beading, lace and ribbons. She realised that whatever was inside these plastic covers could not be waitress uniforms.
As Tess and Cat stood silent while Lulu took the covers off and laid a row of perfect dresses on the trestle tables, they heard someone walking down the hallway.
‘Rosie with the glasses, and about time too,’ said Fanny. ‘I was beginning to think I’d have to go down to the village shop and buy a box of straws. Darlings, do excuse me just one moment.’
When Fanny came back in again with Rosie, followed by Rick the boy photographer with all his cameras round his neck – Cat wondered if he ever took them off – every cocktail dress had been revealed in all its gorgeous glory and Tess and Cat were drooling.
‘Lovely, aren’t they?’ Fanny smiled at Lulu. ‘But don’t get too attached to them, my angels. You’ll have to give them back tomorrow morning, obvi
ously. Darling Lulu, did you bring some shoes? I was only guessing about sizes, but I’d say four or five. Rosie, darling heart, my indispensable assistant, you pick something, too.’
‘The pink one,’ Rosie said immediately, homing in on draped and beaded salmon-coloured satin which Cat could see was perfect for her dark, dramatic colouring.
‘Cat?’ said Fanny. ‘Come along, my angel, do speak up.’
But Cat was so overcome with lust she couldn’t speak. She merely pointed to a vision with a green and gold and beaded bodice and a tiered pale green chiffon skirt.
‘Tess?’ continued Fanny.
‘You mean I can choose anything?’ said Tess, who still looked poleaxed by all the gorgeousity on display.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Fanny genially. ‘You choose away, my angel – ask, and it shall be given.’
She turned to smile at Lulu, then at the girls again. ‘You haven’t lived, you know, until you’ve worn a Lulu Minto dress. The cut, the quality, the finish—’
‘The blue one, then,’ said Tess, then added, ‘please’.
Fanny sent the three of them upstairs to use her huge, luxurious bathroom, said to take whatever they could find and make themselves look beautiful, while she and darling Lulu had a catch-up and a drink.
‘This is getting seriously weird,’ said Tess, as she opened cabinets and cupboards, ferreting and searching frantically. ‘God, where does this woman keep her razors?’ But it didn’t look like Fanny Gregory used anything as common as a razor. ‘I mean, what is she playing at? Why all this stupid cloak and dagger stuff? Why didn’t she just invite you to her party, tell you to bring a mate?’
‘God only knows,’ said Cat.
‘I’ve got a lady’s razor,’ Rosie told them, opening her own enormous washbag and tipping several dozen samples out on Fanny’s bed. ‘I’ve also brought shampoo and mousse, the ordinary stuff that Fanny never thinks to buy, because she never does her hair herself.’
‘You’re a heroine,’ said Tess. She grinned at Rosie. ‘Do you think we could have a little rummage?’
The Wedding Diary (Choc Lit) Page 22