by Mike Gayle
‘I look like an idiot.’
‘True,’ said Yaz practically speechless with laughter, ‘but you won’t be alone.’ She put on her own T-shirt and hat, pulled a camera out of her bag and took a photo of Helen. ‘There,’ she said, checking the photo on her camera’s tiny screen, ‘if that isn’t one for your Facebook page I don’t know what is!’
Helen wondered how she might have spent this weekend had she not succumbed to the pressure to have a hen do. Although she was looking forward to The Manor, with a week to go before the wedding and so many unchecked items on her to-do list, the thought of it all made her feel as though she was drowning in a sea of uncompleted tasks.
From the moment Helen confessed to her friends and co-workers that she and Phil were finally getting married, the question of the hen night became paramount. Given the disaster of her previous hen night, Helen had been keen to forgo the tradition completely, but every time she attempted to explain her stance to those around her she received the same ‘I don’t get it’ blank stare. ‘It’s because most of us are in our late thirties and haven’t been to a hen party for years,’ explained Yaz, when Helen commented on her friends’ reaction, ‘and if anyone’s in need of an excuse to let down their hair and blow off some steam it’s got to be our demographic all the way. This isn’t just about you H, it’s about them. Your friends need a hen do.’
Although Yaz’s tongue was lodged firmly in her cheek throughout much of this speech, Helen conceded she had a point. Lots of her friends who were married – with or without kids – would love to have some time to themselves without having to feel guilty. Relenting, Helen handed Yaz a list of the people she wanted to invite and gave the go ahead for what she hoped might be a modest get-together at a local posh pizza place in West Bridgford, followed by an evening of cocktails and dancing. One week and several phone calls later those plans had morphed into a two-night stay at a five-star luxury hotel on the edge of the Peak District.
‘I know I’m being a right bossy old cow,’ said Yaz as the two friends made their way into the kitchen, ‘but it’s only because I want you to have the most amazing weekend, babe.’
‘I know it is,’ said Helen hugging her friend, ‘And while I might not always look like I appreciate all the effort you’ve put in I really do. It can’t have been easy sorting all this out while juggling the kids.’
Helen sat down at the kitchen counter idly flicking through a magazine while Yaz went to the loo. Then she washed up a dirty plate and mug, turned on the burglar alarm and locked the front door. With great effort the two women managed to drag Helen’s luggage to Yaz’s dark blue people carrier aka The Mum-mobile and loaded it in the rear of the vehicle.
‘Right,’ said Yaz starting up the engine as Helen buckled her seatbelt, ‘I’ve got the bride to be and her extensive luggage now all I need to do is pick up the girls and this weekend has officially begun!’
‘The girls’, to be accurate, were three women, Lorna, Dee and Kerry, who formed the inner core of Helen’s friends. Helen had known Scottish-born-and-raised Lorna since first moving to Nottingham when she had been an overworked and underpaid stylist at one of the city’s coolest hair salons and the only woman who Helen would let within an inch of her hair. Back then Lorna was constantly broke and had a serious unsuitable boyfriend addiction. Now she was still the only woman Helen would allow to cut her hair but she was also solvent and happily co-habiting with Dez, her boyfriend of three years. She was also the owner/manager of Revival, an up-market salon in the centre of Beeston catering to the great and the good of its well-heeled constituency.
Next there was Dee, a previous next-door neighbour, a big-hearted, plus-sized, Abba-loving ball of energy and English teacher. Dee and her husband Johnny had been the couple that Helen and Phil socialised with most after Yaz and Simon. Then Johnny left and everything changed. Now single, Dee worked for a Nottingham-based adult education outreach agency and when not going on teeth-grindingly awful internet dates her favourite thing was to regale Helen with tales of teeth-grindingly awful internet dates.
Finally, there was twenty-six-year-old Kerry, the baby of the group, whom Helen had known since Kerry’s first day at Radio Sherwood as a single, timid, fresh out of university trainee broadcast assistant. Seeing more of herself in Kerry than she liked to admit, Helen had taken her under her nurturing wing. Five years on and recently engaged, Kerry had worked her way up the ranks to become the producer of Helen’s revamped afternoon show and had done such a brilliant job that the show had been nominated for its first ever Sony Award.
Although Helen saw the girls individually, they also met up every couple of months for a seemingly innocent meal which would inevitably morph – several drinks in – into the kind of evening that required a frenzied exchange of phone calls the following day to piece together exactly what had happened.
‘What’s taken you so long?’ exclaimed Dee wrenching open Kerry’s front door before Helen had finished making her way up the path. ‘Somewhere out there is a swanky room with my name on it that’s going to waste while we sit watching daytime TV!’
Helen hugged her friend tightly with one hand while holding on to her hat with the other. ‘Rest assured Yaz will have her foot to the floor the whole way. No one wants to be at that hotel faster than she does. That’s why she refused to let me drive.’
Dee wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s because you drive like my Nan! In fact scrap that, you actually drive worse than her because bless her, while she’s convinced that if she goes over forty she’ll end up in outer space, at least I have seen her do thirty-one in a thirty-zone on a couple of occasions.’
‘I’m a law-abiding citizen!’ protested Helen.
‘More like a law-abiding senior citizen!’
Realising that it was highly unlikely that she would ever win this argument, Helen changed the subject.
‘Yaz is going to go bonkers when she sees that lot!’ said Helen pointing at the mass of weekend bags, miniature suitcases and designer logoed carrier bags at her friends’ feet. ‘She gave me a hard time and it’s my hen-do!’
‘What’s your hen do?’
Yaz, who had been making room for the girls’ luggage in the car, was standing in the doorway wearing a quizzical expression on her face and holding the carrier bag containing the pink hats and T-shirts.
‘Nothing,’ said Helen. She shuffled next to Kerry and Lorna in the hope of hiding the bags from view. ‘We were just chatting.’
‘Why are you all yakking instead of getting the weekend started? Is this how it’s going to be? Me organising and you lot goofing off all the time?’
‘You love it really.’
‘Well,’ said Yaz, ‘That’s as maybe but it doesn’t mean you have to take advantage of my good nature.’ She handed out the hats and T-shirts. ‘Before you start moaning like this one did, you don’t have to wear them all weekend but they are compulsory in the car at all times.’
‘She’s not joking,’ said Helen, ‘my hat fell off on the way over and she pulled over and waited until I’d put it back on.’
‘I know it all sounds a bit draconian,’ said Yaz, ‘but you’ll thank me once the weekend’s over and all you have is memories.’
Lorna laughed, ‘Is that an actual command or are we allowed to thank you of our own free will?’
‘She doesn’t care as long as we do,’ said Kerry fluttering her eyelashes sweetly.
The girls put on the T-shirts and hats while Yaz, as predicted, told them off for over-packing. It took the best part of half an hour to pack all the luggage into Yaz’s people carrier and even then there were multiple handbags and carrier bags left which in the end Dee, Kerry and Lorna had to have on their laps as punishment.
Soon after loading up they were slipping Never Forget: The Ultimate Take That Collection into the CD player and journeying their way towards the A52, belting out the lyrics to A Million Love Songs at the tops of their voices and feeling like they didn’t have a care in the world.
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4.
The blazing summer sun was high in the sky as Yaz slowed the car and pulled in between the grand limestone pillars at the entrance to The Manor. Reaching the dashboard she turned down the volume of the music that had accompanied them for the entire journey to a bare minimum and wound down her window to take in the unmistakable sounds and smells of the English countryside – Beeston, this was not.
‘Hey, Yaz!’ called Helen as she too wound down her window, ‘this place is so up-market that even the Mum-mobile crunching on the gravel sounds classy. If I close my eyes I can almost imagine we’re in a Rolls-Royce heading up to our country pile for the weekend.’
The driveway was long and winding, not only to make the most of the surrounding countryside but also to heighten the anticipation of arrival and it did both extremely well. Straining to get the first peek at the place that would soon be home, Helen and the girls were literally on the edge of their seats until round a sharp bend there it was: a beautifully constructed, architecturally imposing, white stone country house looking out over a wide shimmering reed-lined river.
‘Now that,’ said Yaz, ‘is what I call a hotel!’ She turned to Helen. ‘What do you think then? Still wishing we’d stayed at home?’
‘It’s amazing,’ said Helen as the drive swept over a bridge and up towards the house. ‘Come check-out time on Sunday they are literally going to have to prise me kicking and screaming from my room.’
‘This is going to be one of the best weekends of my life,’ said Helen as they came to a halt at the main entrance and a young man, in a dark grey shirt and trousers, handsome enough to be a model, descended the stairs. ‘It’s too perfect for words.’
The porter greeted Helen and her friends warmly and pointed them in the direction of reception while he began unloading the luggage. Not needing to be told twice, the girls made their way to the reception desk where they were welcomed by a pretty French girl, also dressed in the hotel’s dark grey uniform. She allocated their rooms, handing out slim, black key cards inside stiff white card wallets. None of the rooms had numbers, instead they were all named after the different types of trees that could be found in the hotel grounds. Yaz’s was called Bird Cherry, Lorna’s was Larch, Dee’s Chestnut, Kerry’s Bay Willow and Helen’s the Sycamore room.
‘Right then,’ said Yaz, after the receptionist had given them directions to all the rooms, ‘according to my schedule it’s free time from now until seven thirty when we’ll meet in the Silver Lounge, for cocktails.’ Stifling her competing desires to both mock and hug Yaz for having made a schedule, Helen made her way to the lift.
Despite having spent many idle moments in her studio poring over the artfully fashioned photos on the hotel website, Helen was astonished by how much better the reality was than its two-dimensional counterpart. As she stood in the doorway to her new home for the next two nights she could hardly believe her eyes. There were glossy magazines on the Danish coffee table in the lounge area, a beautifully presented bouquet of freshly cut flowers on the dressing table, and a small box of handcrafted Belgian chocolates on the bed. And as for the room itself, everything from the antique French chandelier to the vintage satin cream duvet cover resplendent across the super-king-sized bed, from the state of the art Bang and Olufsen TV through to the Ligne Roset floor lamp screamed luxury to such an extent that Helen wondered if she had slipped into the pages of Elle Decoration.
As a rule Helen’s favourite part of any posh hotel experience was the bathroom. Yes, she appreciated tastefully chosen furnishings, and attention-grabbing colour palettes but nothing quite got her going like an exquisitely decorated bathroom and so it was with no small degree of trepidation that she approached the only door in the room she had yet to open.
She was not disappointed. It was perfect, absolutely perfect. Four times the size of her own bathroom, presented in a classic dove white and decked out with a twin sink, a zinc-floored walk-in shower with a huge rainfall showerhead, and a roll-top bath to die for. It was beyond her wildest bathroom imaginings.
But even so, as she unwrapped one of the individual rose petal soaps she observed that without the sound of Phil in the other room, flicking through the TV channels and bemoaning the price of a bottled beer from the mini-bar, she might as well have been in a fifty-pound-a-night Novotel. Maybe that’s what love means, she thought as she began drawing herself a bath. You can only be happy in paradise if the person you love is there with you to share it.’
It was a little after six when a wet-haired Helen, encased in one of the hotel’s super fluffy towelling robes and matching slippers emerged from the bathroom and opened up her case. Her excitement at the prospect of getting ready for the evening ahead was tempered by a slight feeling of stress. Having had barely any time to plan her outfits during the week, she had spent a frantic afternoon in Nottingham city centre purchasing half a dozen tops, two pairs of trousers and four different hair accessories, most of which she knew she would be returning unused first thing on Monday morning. In her work life Helen was the very definition of decisive but standing alone and faced with so many sartorial options she felt the complete opposite.
Deciding to leave her choice of clothes until later Helen picked up her hairdryer and as she did so there was a sharp knock at her door.
Helen’s immediate thought revealed much about the negative nature of her psychology, for she assumed that the knock heralded the arrival of a member of the hotel’s staff to tell her there had been a hideous mix-up and that she would have to leave her room immediately and stay in a nearby bed and breakfast. When she opened the door to see Yaz, Lorna, Dee and Kerry brandishing a condensation-covered bottle of Cava, and carrying piles of clothes, shoes, and make-up bags, she was both relieved and cheered.
‘It was all her idea,’ said Yaz pointing at Dee.
‘And I’m not ashamed of it either!’ grinned Dee, as unbidden the girls all made their way into Helen’s room and closed the door behind them. ‘Getting ready for a big night out is the best part of an evening!’ Her face fell. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Mind?’ said Helen, ‘I’ve never been so bloody grateful to see you lot in my life! Dee you open the Cava, Lorna you find some glasses, Kerry, put some music on, Yaz, well . . . you can just make yourself at home and I am going to blow-dry my hair into submission, then with your help throw together a killer outfit, paint my face to within an inch of its life and leave this room for dinner tonight looking like a million dollars!’
The hour and a half that followed was like a montage from a chick flick. Not just any chick flick montage. The ultimate chick flick montage with the best bits from Dirty Dancing, Thelma and Louise, Beaches and Mamma Mia with all the associated tears, laughter, lip-syncing dance sequences and gratuitous displays of female bonding that such a description implies. And at the end of it all as Helen admired herself in the mirrored wardrobe in her new sleeveless embroidered black top, skinny leg trousers and black heels, standing next to her impeccably dressed and beautifully made-up friends as the final chorus of Relight My Fire played loudly from the wall mounted stereo system, she knew it would be a night to remember.
The five friends were still laughing and joking with each other when they emerged from the lift and clicked their way across the marble tiled lobby until they reached the Silver Lounge.
Again the Manor website photographs didn’t do justice to the true opulence and sophistication of the Silver Lounge. Perfectly air-conditioned, with walls alternately painted in a gun-metal grey and brilliant white, furnished with sumptuous velvet sofas arranged around low gloss white tables and with lighting so subdued that even seven thirty on a summer’s evening could have passed for three in the morning, it was every inch the perfect place for the five friends to start their evening.
Spreading themselves across two of the huge velvet sofas the girls pored over the cocktail menu before jointly making the decision that they would each order something different. Drinks orders were taken and then taken
again because half the group had changed their minds before the waiter had even left their table and then the girls settled into a quarter of an hour of gentle banter before their drinks and several small platters of olives and nuts were presented to them.
‘We should have a toast,’ said Kerry raising her glass. ‘Here’s to our girl Helen, one of the best friends a girl could have!’
Clinking glasses, the girls ploughed headlong into more laughter and conversation while exchanging sips of cocktails with each other along the way. This resulted with almost indecent haste in a table full of empty glasses and a call to the waiter for the return of the drinks menu. He arrived to the eruption of a cacophony of screaming and laughter that could only mean one thing: more of Helen’s weekend hen party guests had arrived.
The three new arrivals were friends who for one reason or another (most often a clash of schedules) Helen rarely got to see. There was Dublin-born Ros, a tall and elegant Cambridge-based former magazine journalist turned web-developer who was currently in the middle of a divorce. Then there was Heather, a Bournemouth-based former paediatric nurse now a happily married full-time mum of four who Helen knew from her sixth-form days. Finally there was Carla, a part-time social worker and single mum of two who she’d known since they both started Brownies together at the age of eight and with whom she had recently reconnected via Facebook after a fifteen-year gap.
Helen raced over to the girls, hugged them and ushered them over to the sofas to be introduced to the rest of the party.
‘Everyone,’ said Helen eagerly, ‘this is Ros, Heather and Carla.’ The girls all waved their hellos. ‘Ros, Heather and Carla, meet the girls!’
As she caught up with everyone’s news Helen remembered the reservations she had had about the weekend. Surrounded by some of her oldest and closest friends, watching them all laughing and joking together, it seemed impossible that she had entertained such thoughts. This weekend couldn’t be more different from that raucous night in Liverpool all those years ago. More importantly, this time she wasn’t marrying an egocentric idiot who would break her heart.