by Wendy Holden
This had clearly not been the case in Britain; feature after feature about the wedding uploaded with picture after picture of the white-clad happy couple under a dazzling tropical sky. The ceremony had taken place on Coconut Cay in front of 200 of the couple’s closest personal friends including sundry washed-up pop stars and a sprinkling of rent-a-royals. It had all been very rock n’ roll. The couple had sung Bob Marley tracks instead of hymns and the celebrant, a local hash dealer, told them to say ‘yeah man’, instead of ‘I do’.
‘Whirlwind Willow Wooing Ends In Wedding’ was the Daily Mail headline. The speed of the nuptials had caused comment; it had clearly been a coup de foudre. Merlin had even broken off an earlier engagement; small headshots of the jilted fiancée, blue-eyed, smiling, with long blonde hair appeared in some of the stories. Her name was Rosie Grainger. She had a wide, pleasant smile and looked, Laura thought, much nicer than Willow, who was pouty and smouldering beneath wild dark hair. But Willow was better known; the Cambridge-educated scion of a famous acting dynasty, she was a rising star in tight black leather in kick-ass action movies. Her last, The Kalashnikov Protocol, had starred Orlando Chease, the actor who had crossed Laura’s path in the Hipster Weddings adventure.
Merlin was also in his family firm; he worked for the sustainable energy end of his father’s vast business portfolio. He looked quite sweet in the pictures, Laura thought; tall, thin and sloping-shouldered with messy dark hair and a long anxious face behind owlish round glasses. It was hard to imagine him leaving a girl in the lurch; obviously he had hidden shallows. Or perhaps it was nurture; a father like James Redmond probably wouldn’t encourage his children to consider others.
‘We call him Blow Job,’ Merlin’s best man and fellow Old Etonian Orpheus ‘Piggy’ Pigge was quoted as saying. ‘Because he’s always putting up windfarms.’ What a wit, Laura thought wryly. It was possible that poor dumped Rosie had had a lucky escape from the Redmond family, not to mention the likes of ‘Piggy’ Pigge. Although judging by Rose’s swollen eyes in a picture captioned ‘Jilted Rose Wilts at News of Nuptials’ she hadn’t seen it that way.
None of her business anyway, Laura thought. She was going to Coconut Cay to enjoy herself and relax, and how could she not, given how it looked? Excitement soared within her as she examined the island as shown in the wedding pictures, and others she called up; the Barack Obama chicken ones; some of Tony Blair kite-surfing in pink neon shorts. Behind and around the international powerbrokers kicking back, the island looked wonderful, all golden beaches, lacy white surf and acres of glittering blue sea. Laura could hardly wait to get there.
The flight was unlike anything she had previously experienced. Never before had she turned left to First instead of Right to Economy. The comfortable beds – actual beds – and unlimited free champagne seemed to her nothing short of amazing. Even so, it was clearly not enough for some people. Someone a few rows back was demanding whether Krug was the sole choice on offer, as intolerance issues meant she could only drink Dom Perignon. Laura smiled as she drifted off to dreamland for the rest of the flight.
At Barbados, a sleep-groggy Laura was greeted by a smiling Coconut Cay staffer in pressed white shorts and gold-braid epaulettes. He made no effort to move off, however. ‘We are waiting for two others,’ he explained, flashing brilliant teeth in his dark face.
Laura was puzzled. The piece was an exclusive, was it not? But perhaps the others weren’t journalists. Perhaps they worked for James Redmond.
He clearly had very entitled employees. As the missing pair finally presented themselves, Laura realised she had spotted one of them yelling at the airport staff. ‘Careful! It’s Vuitton, or can’t you read?’ she’d bawled as they took her vast suitcases from the luggage reclaim. She was a battle-axe with square yellow teeth, sunglasses pushed up into short grey hair and a blue pashmina over a very creased white linen shirt. Georgia the PR?
The other was the owner of the Krug issues, a gamine rock chick of no fixed age sporting a cheesecloth shirt, trailing cotton scarves, dangly earrings and rattling bangles. Her cut-off jeans revealed long, lean tanned legs and her look was finished with silver pool slides and a pencil twisting up her dark corkscrew curls. She could be Georgia too.
Laura extended a hand. ‘Hi. I’m Laura Lake. Deputy editor of Society.’
If she had expected a smile, she was disappointed. Both women looked at her in apparent horror. The battle-axe was the first to recover. She flared wide, red nostrils. ‘You’re a journalist? I thought you were the PR.’
Laura smiled. ‘I thought you were.’
‘Me?’ The battle-axe’s eyes bulged. ‘I’m Kate Swinepool, editor of Luxury Living. I’ve been promised an exclusive on Coconut Cay!’
‘So have I!’ cut in the rock chick, looking daggers at Laura and Kate Swinepool over her artfully smudged eyeliner. ‘I’m Candice Lacey, editor of Billionaire Traveller.’
There was a brief, angry silence. ‘Oh well,’ Laura said eventually, placatingly. ‘Someone’s obviously made a mistake.’
‘Yes, that bloody stupid PR,’ snarled Kate Swinepool, crossing a pair of meaty red forearms. ‘Where is she, anyway? She should be here, greeting me.’
‘You mean us,’ Candice grumpily pointed out. ‘She’s probably hiding, and with good reason.’
‘Utterly useless,’ Kate stormed. ‘This is outrageous. I’ve never been treated like this in my life.’
‘Disgusting!’ Candice agreed.
‘Appalling!’
‘Horrific!’
Laura hastened to de-escalate the situation. ‘Look, worse things happen at sea. We’ll just have to make the best of it.’
The others turned to stare at her indignantly. ‘If there is a best to be made,’ Candice snapped.
The staff member led them to a golf buggy and drove them off. They rolled out of the airport into the warm West Indian sun. Laura blinked at the almost painful brightness; the reflected light blazing off the sides of the private jets. As the buggy slowed to a stop beside a plane with its steps down, she felt butterflies of excitement. She glanced at her companions; surely they would dismount their high horses now!
But the other two surveyed the aircraft with pursed lips. ‘Only a JetSoar?’ Candice’s voice was scornful. ‘You’d think James Redmond could afford better.’
Kate tapped her sweat-beaded nose. ‘I hear he’s overstretched himself a bit. Well, a lot. That’s what people are saying.’
‘I’ve heard that too.’ Whether she had or hadn’t, Candice was evidently not to be outdone. ‘That’s why he’s opening up Coconut Cay – to make money. There’s a lot riding on this new hotel.’
Kate pursed lips that were plastered a wildly unflattering pink. ‘Shame for him then that his PR’s ballsed it up already. Asking three people on an exclusive! Being conspicuous by her absence at the airport! Redmond’ll be getting the world’s worst review from me.’
‘And me,’ Candice grimly agreed.
‘Hang on,’ Laura said. ‘We haven’t even got there yet.’
Georgia had not been especially charming on the phone to her either, but given the situation here it was hard not to feel sorry for her. It was all so terribly unlucky. Even if she’d tried she couldn’t have invited a more pompous, spoilt, self-important pair of journalists. Three, if Carinthia had come too. That Laura had come instead was probably Georgia’s only hope. When would they see her, Laura wondered. Georgia couldn’t hide for ever.
Billionaire Traveller’s gamine and elfin editor was first up the plane’s steps. Laura followed Kate in her wake. The Swinepool chinos, as chinos are wont to, did nothing to minimise the large square Swinepool bottom. And, as they were cut off at their widest point, they only emphasised the thick red Swinepool calves. Kate’s Birkenstocks made her broad white feet look broader still.
The much-derided private jet was beautiful, Laura thought, taking in the polished wood fittings, the deep-pile silvery carpet and the seats of dove-coloured suede. The air was sc
ented with something citrus and delicious and they sat down to the pop of a champagne cork.
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ she said pleasantly, hoping to encourage the others to make the best of things. This provoked patronising titters.
‘Entry-level amazing, that’s all,’ sniped Candice, flipping one elegant tanned leg over another. ‘Real amazing is the Met Ball in New York, or a trip aboard the Cavalli superyacht for a five-day jolly during the Cannes film festival.’
‘Or the Amfar gala where Leo diCaprio was auctioned off to accompany the highest bidder on a ride into space,’ put in Kate – who, presumably, had not been that bidder, Laura guessed. You’d need big rockets to get Kate off the ground.
A young woman now appeared in the aisle. She wore a simple black shift dress and had short-cropped brown hair. Behind her modish large-framed glasses were a pair of apprehensive dark eyes. ‘Hi!’ she said, nervously bright. ‘I’m Georgia.’
This was the cue for a torrent of complaints. ‘Since when has “exclusive” meant giving it to three people at once?’ ranted Kate.
‘Criminal incompetence!’ snarled Candice, which seemed to Laura to be overstating things. There were greater misdeeds in the world than inviting people to free pampering in a palm-fringed location.
She decided not to add to the litany of criticism and smiled gratefully when, having borne the brunt of the others’ calumny, Georgia appeared with champagne in cut-glass flutes. Her hand shook as she passed it over and behind her spectacles, her eyes looked red. Laura’s heart swelled in sympathy.
‘Hope this isn’t Krug,’ Candice sniffed.
After what seemed a mere few minutes since take-off, the sound of wheel touching runway announced that they had arrived. The door opened on a single-strip tarmac runway leading right on to the beach. Laura stepped out into brilliant sunshine and a punch of heat that, after the private jet’s aircon, almost knocked her sideways.
It was exactly as she’d imagined a paradise island to look. Exactly like the many photographs of them she had seen in Society’s travel pages following Carinthia’s peregrinations. She had assumed they were touched up but saw now that you needed no filters or post-production tricks to make this sort of place look perfect.
Palm trees with glossy green leaves edged a white beach lapped by a sea of speedwell blue deepening to indigo at the horizon. Above stretched a hot turquoise sky. Laura dodged, laughing, as a brilliantly coloured bird flew past.
‘Ugh!’ said Candice, batting it away. ‘Filthy thing!’
‘Rats with wings,’ agreed Kate.
Like a pair of Ugly Sisters to Georgia’s Cinderella, they had clearly come to complain about everything. In which case I’ll be the Fairy Godmother, Laura resolved. The Fairy Journalist at least. Find everything delightful. Starting with that flamingo over there.
‘Look!’ And here came some gorgeously colourful butterflies, their iridescent wings shimmering in the sun. ‘Look! Look!’
‘Didn’t realise we were with David Attenborough,’ said Kate sourly to Candice.
‘I didn’t realise I was with anyone,’ Candice returned darkly. They both looked meaningfully at Georgia.
Another golf buggy drew up and their luggage was piled into it by another smiling driver in crisp white shorts. The vehicle set off along a narrow road which wound up through a green, lush hillside. In a prominent position with a commanding view of the sea was a large wooden pavilion with low, wide pitched roofs and wooden decks ranged with sun-loungers. This, Georgia explained, was the main hotel building. Scattered around it, at a discreet distance, were smaller pavilions surrounded by palm trees. These were the rooms. Every guest had their own private luxury lodge, each a charming variation on the same vaguely Balinese design as the main house.
‘Lovely,’ said Laura.
‘Looks like a theme park,’ Candice sniffed.
‘Centre Parcs,’ Kate agreed meanly.
Georgia looked cowed.
They had reached one of the lodges now. It had a wraparound veranda fronted with a glittering blue horizon pool. A wooden deck was ranged with white-padded day-beds. The buggy drove smoothly through a manicured garden of neon-green grass studded with bright flowered bushes. A sweet scent rippled through the warm air.
‘This is your villa,’ Georgia smiled nervously at Candice, who looked unimpressed. Georgia glanced at the others. ‘Want to come and look inside?
Kate shrugged and stayed where she was, but Laura scrambled out to see.
The villa was beautiful. Beyond an airy taupe sitting room cooled by a big teak ceiling fan was a bedroom whose minimalist four-poster was draped gracefully with dazzling white linen. This lifted gently in the breeze coming through open floor-length windows offering a view of the blue Caribbean.
‘Wow,’ breathed Laura.
‘No personal butlers?’ huffed Candice. ‘In Mustique last week I had two.’
Georgia hurriedly took a new white iPad and iPhone from a nearby glass-topped bamboo table. ‘These are your butlers. Just order what you like on them. Ask for anything. We want you to feel like a rock star.’
‘Rock star!’ Rock chick Candice snorted rudely. ‘What self-respecting rock star would come to a dump like this?’
She stomped off to inspect the bathroom. What Laura could see of it looked wonderful; a roll-top white tub on a dark teak plinth, shelves of temptingly-packaged beauty products, a waffle bathrobe and a mountain of white towels. Candice clearly did not think so, however. ‘I was at the Viceroy Estate recently and they had hand-carved rain showers and rock crystals that absorbed negativity.’
They’d need a lot of those, Laura thought, to absorb all Candice’s.
‘Each guest had an algorithmic shampoo formulated to their own individual star sign. Their spa did ear candling, sound baths, abdominal kneading and Himalayan salting.’
Laura saw Georgia swallow visibly. ‘Right. Well, your pool has a wave machine. The iPad controls it. Do try it, it’s very relaxing.’
Candice’s only reply to this was a shrug. ‘It’s so bloody windy here,’ she complained, as the scented breeze softly lifted her crinkled hair.
The golf buggy rolled on to the next port of call, high on a great bright outcrop that seemed all boulders and birdsong. A pair of heavy wooden doors led through a white-sofa’d sitting room to a wooden deck where two birdcage chairs, suspended from the ceiling beams, twirled in the warm air. The view was stupendous. It was like being on the top of the world.
‘This is yours,’ Georgia told Kate. She indicated the hot tub sunk into the middle of the turquoise swimming pool beyond the deck. ‘You can sit there at night and watch turtles arriving in the bay.’
Kate folded her red, meaty arms. ‘Seen one turtle, you’ve seen ’em all. You’ll have to work harder than that to impress me. The way things stand, given all the cock-ups, you’re going to get a stinker of a write-up.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Laura said to Georgia, as the buggy drove off. ‘She has no right to be so rude to you.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Georgia’s voice was quiet and flat.
‘Yes it does,’ Laura insisted. ‘This is an important launch for you. A crucial one, by the sounds of things.’
Georgia swallowed nervously.
Laura smiled at her. ‘Have you always been a PR?’
She meant only to be conversational, and was surprised when Georgia’s face went blank. The other girl was obviously shocked, for some reason. ‘Yes,’ Georgia muttered, eventually.
‘How do you get into this sort of thing?’ Laura went on, conversationally. She didn’t know much about PR, the sort of career path you followed.
‘Um, kind of one thing leads to another. Let me show you the stereo system, it works by remote control.’
‘Thanks, but I probably won’t use it,’ Laura smiled. ‘I’ll just listen to the birdsong and the sound of the sea. But tell me,’ she added conversationally, ‘how did you meet James Redmond? He seems quite an... interesting chara
cter.’
A strangled noise came from the driver at the front. So quickly was it disguised as a cough that it was difficult to know whether it was a laugh or a wail. Or maybe it really was a cough.
‘Just at the agency,’ Georgia said distantly. ‘He came in for a meeting.’ She looked pale; perhaps she was travelsick. She had her back to the driver, after all.
‘Are you okay?’ Laura asked, adding, as Georgia gave a stiff nod, ‘Tell me more about Mr Redmond. He likes to entertain people, I gather.’
‘I think so,’ Georgia said, but did not elaborate.
‘Barack Obama, Tony Blair,’ Laura went on, taking out her trusty pencil and notepad. ‘And of course there was his son Merlin’s wedding, with all those royals and pop stars.’
Another noise from the front. Georgia gave her a thin smile. ‘You know far more about it than I do.’
‘Not really. I wish I did know more about it though. It all seems rather... interesting.’
Her journalistic dander was up. It was telling her that perhaps Merlin Redmond and not his father’s hotel was her story. Now that there was no exclusive about Coconut Cay, she should concentrate on the whirlwind wedding. A paradise island; a sudden, wild romance; a jilted bride. All perfect ingredients for a Society feature.
‘What was the name of the bride?’ Laura glanced at Georgia, who did not seem to be listening. ‘Who was the woman who married Merlin Redmond?’
Georgia’s narrow shoulders went up and down in a shrug. ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.
Laura stared. Didn’t know? How hopeless was that? Even by Georgia’s standards this was useless. She worked for the family, after all. But perhaps nausea was interfering with her memory, or her ability to reply.
As the buggy glided along the tarmac, Laura looked out at the sunny green hillside and knit her dark brows. What was the woman’s name? Saffron? Tamarisk? Something sort of plant-y. ‘Willow,’ she said eventually. Was that it?
Possibly not, as Georgia did not react. The driver, however, gave another delighted cackle over his shoulder. ‘Miss Willow! She sho looked good on her big day. Great wedding! Big party!’