by JL Merrow
Gary gave me the puppy eyes and put a hand to his heart—the left hand, so his wedding ring would show up nicely, because with Gary, that was never going to get old. “Would I?”
“Anyhow,” Darren put in heavily before I had a chance to make a comeback. “Are we gonna talk about my mate or what?”
“Fine, go ahead.” I didn’t roll my eyes because I was too busy glaring at Gary.
Darren puffed out his chest. “Okay, so I used to know her as Dinky Delilah, but these days she’s going by Lilah Parrot.”
“You used to know her as— So, uh, she’s an ex-colleague?” I swallowed. Darren’s a market trader these days, hawking fruit and veg in St. Albans every Wednesday and Saturday and who knows where the rest of the week, but in his younger days, he had an apparently flourishing career in the sphere of dwarf porn.
Any remarks as to what a small niche that had to be were likely to get the commenter a swift nut in the nadgers.
“Yeah, me and Lilah, we made some great films together.” Darren gazed off into space with a fond smile.
“I never knew you did straight stuff,” I said without thinking, then snuck a glance over at Gary. He didn’t seem bothered, although I wasn’t certain I’d have been so easygoing if Phil started getting all misty-eyed about his sex life with, say, the bloke he’d been married to before he met me, let alone any past acquaintances of the female persuasion.
Then again, for Darren, it really had been just sex, hadn’t it? Not even that. Just work. I wondered if he’d had a bloke back then, and if said hypothetical bloke had minded what Darren got up to in the course of his nine-to-five. Gary, if anything, seemed proud of Darren’s X-rated past, so maybe any significant others back then had been too? I tried to imagine being chuffed about Phil shagging other men for a living, and failed dismally.
“Course,” Darren went on, and I forced my attention back to the here and now. “Lilah was strictly on the executive side by then. Never in front of the camera. Dunno why—she’s still got it. Had plenty of offers, she has.”
“Is she still in the business? What about the husband?” Maybe they’d got together on the job. In all senses of the phrase.
“She is. Has her own company now.”
I had to wait to find out what line of business the husband was in, because at that moment I got collared by the photographer for wedding-party shots, meaning everyone in either a penguin suit or a floofy dress. These were swiftly followed by family shots. Followed by group shots. By the time the mini blonde dictator in the trouser suit finally let us finish saying ecclesiastical, because apparently cheese wasn’t godly enough, my face had permanently seized up into a manic grin and my eyes were watering from forcing myself not to blink at the wrong moment.
I was trying to dab at them discreetly—wouldn’t want people to think I was the soppy sort who cried at weddings—when Cherry grabbed me into a hug that nearly knocked my top hat off, looking none too dry-eyed herself. “Oh, Tom, isn’t it all lovely?”
Well, at least she seemed to have forgiven me for my phone ringing. I patted her back awkwardly, public hugging not really being a Paretski-family thing. Course, she wasn’t a Paretski any longer, was she? The lady currently sniffling into my wing collar was henceforth to be known as Mrs. Cherry Titmus.
It felt weird, thinking about her that way. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but was still trying to get my head round why it made a difference what she called herself, when she pulled back and fixed me in the eye. “Now, promise me you’ll look after Mum and Dad at the reception. And Mike, obviously.” Mike Novak that was, being my actual dad and Mum’s dirty little secret from thirty years ago. Cherry left a significant pause. “But not together.”
They’d invited Mike along to ease him into family gatherings in advance of my wedding, which we’d be celebrating in a worryingly few months’ time. Did I say worryingly? I meant excitingly. Course I did. But anyway, the point was, this was the first social gathering Mum, Dad, and Mike had all been together for since, well, ever. Far as I knew, Dad and Mike had never even met before. And I wasn’t, to be honest, all that keen for them to meet now. I mean, how exactly do you introduce the bloke who raised you to the man his wife cheated on him with?
God knew how we were going to manage the photos at Phil’s and my do. Or the seating plan for the reception.
Gretna Green was looking tastier by the minute.
Greg and Cherry’s reception, like every other social event they hosted, was held at the Old Deanery, which was where Greg, and from henceforth until death do them part, Cherry, lived barely a stone’s throw away from the cathedral. Not that Greg—or, presumably, the bloke upstairs—would look kindly on anyone throwing stones near those stained-glass windows. It was a buffet affair, with chairs only for the most decrepit, which solved the who-to-seat-where problem nicely but meant it was less of a formal do and more of a free-for-all.
I finally got a chance to talk to Phil over a Buck’s Fizz and some homemade quiche. Made, I hasten to add, not by my sister’s fair hands or even Greg’s, but by one of his army of widows and spinsters of this parish. Plus a good few married ladies who’d got fed up with waiting for him indoors to pop his clogs and got on with doing what they wanted anyway. They could usually be relied on for a tasty, if not very imaginative, spread.
“Did Darren speak to you?” Phil asked before I could get a word in edgewise.
“You mean about the runaway bridegroom? Yeah.”
“Husband, not bridegroom. They got married over a year ago. So are we doing it?”
“What, here and now? Don’t think it’s that kind of party.”
Phil huffed a laugh. “The mate’s missing husband. And you know it.”
I supposed that meant he was all right with it, but it still felt dodgy to me. “You sure it’s okay? Misleading the lady about how we find the bloke—assuming we do find him?”
“From what Darren says, she wants to be misled. What’s it matter so long as we get results? She’ll get her old man back, we’ll get paid, and she’ll get to brag to her mates how a psychic found him for her.”
“Great. Just what I need—even more people knowing about my little party trick.” I’d have to admit I felt a minor sting of betrayal. Time was, Phil was as keen as I was to keep it all low-key.
Phil shrugged. “That ship’s sailed. All you can do now is take a running jump on board. Get what you can out of it.”
He had a point. “Guess I’m game if you are. Long as you don’t mind playing second fiddle to my thing.”
Phil raised an eyebrow but, sensibly given we were out in public, decided to ignore the innuendo. “Anything’s better than another cheating-partner case.”
I had to sympathise. Besides being a sad reflection on society in general and the sanctity of the marriage vows in particular, infidelity cases had to bring up a few painful memories for Phil. You might be forgiven for wondering why he’d become a private investigator in the first place, seeing as tail-the-spouse jobs seem to be your basic bread and butter for people in his profession, but then you probably aren’t as well acquainted as I am with the stubborn git who’s my beloved.
“Fine. Tell Darren he can set up a meeting with the client. But, oi, you’ve gotta be there too. Not my area of expertise, this.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there to hold your hand.”
I could think of something I’d rather he’d be holding, but right then old Edie Penrose doddered up to say a quavery hello and I never got to tell him about it.
There were speeches—Dad mumbled something rambly and incomprehensible, then Greg said something touching and heartfelt that had Cherry blushing bright pink and the rest of us staring into our glasses, equal parts moved and embarrassed. And just when we were bracing ourselves for a speech from the best man, who was one of those tall, pale Church of England types I mentioned earlier and who looked like he could bore for England, the bishop stepped up. His speech was so polished he could have gone on the after-dinner circuit
with it—actually, come to think of it, maybe that was where Greg and Cherry had found him. He had us all in fits with a short selection of hilarious but inoffensive ecclesiastical anecdotes and topped it off with a hearty toast, and an invitation for the happy couple to cut the cake.
There were two wedding cakes—a traditional fruit one, because you could get a shedload of little slices out of it, plus a croquembouche, one of those gravity-defying towers of profiteroles they like to make them do on Bake Off, for the photos and the favoured few. (And yes, since you ask, I was one of them.) Apparently Greg had been to a wedding in France at an impressionable age and never quite got over it. Not that I’m complaining. It was well tasty.
Soon after that it was time to say goodbye to the bride and groom, and we all trooped outside to wave them off in a taxi. Greg and Cherry had not only chosen a winter wedding, they’d decided for some incomprehensible reason to honeymoon in Scotland. In February. Hopefully they’d packed their skis. And their thermal undies, which had to be a bit of a mood-killer on honeymoon. I’d mentioned as much to Phil a while back, with a heavy hint I’d want us to be looking for somewhere a lot warmer for our own postwedding getaway.
“Somewhere you get blue sky more than once a summer. Where . . . where lemons grow on trees. I can’t remember the last time I saw a lemon on a tree, instead of in a tray in the supermarket.”
Phil had pointed out that the average honeymooning couple had other things on their minds than the ready availability of freshly picked citrus fruit, and outdoor temperature was unlikely to be an issue either.
He was probably right, I reflected with a last wave at the happy couple. I was pretty certain that Sis at least had been saving herself for her wedding night. Much as it pained me to think about it, all those decades’ worth of pent-up passion wasn’t likely to be deterred by anything short of a tungsten carbide chastity belt.
I shuddered. Enough of that, ta very much. Time to worry about more pressing concerns, like where the hell had Mike got to?
A lot of the guests toddled off after the hosts had gone. Fair dues, many of them were already out past their bedtime, it being well after teatime and them not exactly in the first flush of youth or even middle age. Close family, however, got to stay and help clear up the mess. And Mike was staying with me—I mean, with me and Phil—so I knew he hadn’t gone anywhere.
Or rather, he shouldn’t have gone anywhere. But he wasn’t in the front room, the back room, the kitchen, or the loo. And neither was Dad.
I was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
After poking my head around upstairs, a bit warily as if anyone would be rude enough to sneak into Greg’s holy of holies for an illicit nap or heavy petting session (and bloody hell, I was never going to get the picture of Dad and Mike in the latter scenario out of my head), I looked in the study. Strictly speaking, it was supposed to be out of bounds for the duration, as most of Greg’s “family” of taxidermied animals had been moved into there to prevent any smaller guests from getting too handsy or trying to feed them wedding cake.
So of course, that was where Dad and Mike turned out to be hiding out.
Together.
Nestled in with Buster the dog, Greg’s surprisingly large badger, and sundry other woodland creatures who’d probably never imagined themselves ending up so far from home, Mike and Dad were comfortably settled on office chairs holding half-drunk mugs of tea. Talking about something that involved a lot of vigorous hand-waving on Dad’s part.
Oh crap.
I was wondering whether I should break it up or steer well clear, but Dad spotted me and waved me over with his gesturing hand. It was the one holding a half-eaten custard cream, and a couple of crumbs fell off onto the carpet. I glanced automatically at Buster, being used to mates’ dogs acting as impromptu hoovers, then remembered he was already stuffed. “There you are, Tom. We were just talking about you.”
Oh double crap.
Mike nodded seriously. “Yes. Gerald tells me you don’t plan to dress up for your own wedding.”
They were on first-name terms already? I s’pose it wasn’t like they didn’t have anything in common . . . I shuddered internally and squashed that line of thought pronto. “I’ll be wearing a suit.”
“But not the top hat and the tail coat?” He waved at my current ensemble, in a gesture unsettlingly like Dad’s.
“Uh, no?”
“But why not?” Dad demanded, and turned to Mike. “I haven’t seen him look this smart since he was five years old—he was a page boy back then, at his cousin Robin’s wedding. Or was it my cousin Hilary? Barbara would know. Tom, see if you can find Barbara, will you? No, wait, don’t bother, I remember now. It was my godson George’s wedding. You had a paisley waistcoat and bow tie. Quite the little gentleman, you were. I hardly recognised you. Until you ate too much cake and were sick all down yourself. So why not?”
“Why not what?” My head felt like someone had used it to smash open a bottle of champagne.
Dad rolled his eyes at Mike. “Morning coat. Top hat. Why not?”
“Uh . . . It’s not a church wedding. Wouldn’t be suitable. Gotta go.”
I legged it.
I found Mum rearranging vol-au-vents with some of Greg’s cathedral ladies, mixing in the chicken mayo ones with what was left of the more popular prawn cocktails ones. “Don’t go in the study,” I warned her. “Dad and Mike are in there. Conspiring.”
Mum’s face, which had been a rosy prawn-cocktail colour, paled to a chicken mayo hue. She swallowed. Then she straightened her back and pasted on a smile. “It’s good that they’re getting on together. It’ll make things easier for the summer. I’ve been meaning to ask you, actually. I know neither of you is really the bride, but seeing as Phil’s father is no longer with us, I assume you’ll be the one who’s given away?”
“What, like an unwanted Christmas present? Cheers, Mum. No. I’m pretty sure no one’s getting given away.”
“Oh. Well I suppose that does make it simpler. It’s such a shame, though.”
“It is?”
“Well, I suppose you won’t have any bridesmaids either. The wedding party is going to look awfully funereal, all men in dark suits.”
Great, Mum. Way to imbue my forthcoming nuptials with a sense of gloom and foreboding. “Yeah, but you’ll brighten it up, won’t you? I mean, you’ll be wanting to wear this again, right?” I gestured down at her burgundy mother-of-the-bride outfit, which had probably accounted for a sizeable portion of the wedding budget all on its own.
“Oh, no. I couldn’t wear this again. Besides, this was for a cathedral wedding.”
Uh-huh. “So what, it’s going to be jeans and a T-shirt for me and Phil’s bash?”
“Don’t be silly, Tom. I never wear jeans. Or T-shirts. I’ll find a smart skirt and top.”
The way she said it, I wondered where she’d be looking. The darkest recesses of her wardrobe? A car boot sale? “It’ll be July, Mum. You should get yourself a posh summer frock.”
Mum frowned at the vol-au-vents. “Are you sure? It’s not like it’s a . . .” She paused.
I bristled. “What, a proper wedding?”
“Church wedding, I was going to say. Do people dress up for civil ceremonies?”
“Are you telling me you’ve never been to one before? Haven’t you got, like, mates who’ve divorced and remarried?”
“In my day, you got married for life.”
Didn’t stop you having a bit on the side, though. I didn’t say it, because I’m only literally a bastard, but Mum turned as red as her outfit anyhow as if the thought had crossed her mind too. I coughed. “Mum, it’s the twenty-first century. People wear what they want. And seriously, you and Dad need to have a chat about this. He seems to think we’re going to be tarted up like the House of Lords. And he’s got Mike agreeing with him.”
“Oh.” Mum looked faintly queasy, then rallied. “Well, it would be nice to have a new dress. And perhaps a hat.”
&nb
sp; Great. Apparently I was going to be shoehorned back into the penguin suit whether I liked it or not.
I broke the bad news to Phil over a last glass of bubbly (for me, not him, as he was the one driving today). He took it like a man who’d had Darren and Gary bending his ear about it already, which was rich seeing as how they’d worn normal clothes to their own do. “The idea’s growing on me,” he said, giving me an appreciative once-over, and if he kept that up, it wouldn’t be the only thing that was growing. “So it’s all happy families now, is it?” he went on. “Water under the bridge?”
“Dunno. I didn’t dare ask.” I glared at his expression. “Like you’d have been any braver.”
He laughed. “Maybe not.”
“Anyway, don’t change the subject. Are you seriously okay with all of this?” I gestured up and down at my over-the-top attire, then frowned. “What did you wear first go around?”
“Just a suit.” Phil’s face cut off any further questions on that thorny subject. He never seemed keen to talk about his first husband, the Mysterious Mark, who’d cheated on him, hurt him, then as if that wasn’t enough, died on him. Fair dues, it wasn’t exactly my favourite subject either. Then he heaved a sigh. “Look, I’d better warn you, Mum’s going to be comparing. So yeah, anything that makes our do different—better—it’s got to be a good thing.”
I wasn’t so sure I liked the idea of what I wore on my wedding day being dictated by my fiancé’s ex. Then again, it was being dictated by every other bugger, so maybe it was only fair to give the dead bloke a shout and all. “Right. Fine. Tell you what, how about we cut our losses and take Mike home?”
Mike seemed worn out by all the excitement. He didn’t say a lot on the drive back to my house. Sorry, mine and Phil’s. We’d been living together for a whole week now, me and Phil, and I still found myself forgetting.
Originally, the plan had been for him to move into mine in time for Christmas, but like a lot of plans, that one had ganged well agley. My fault more than his, and don’t think that hadn’t led to a few uncomfortable conversations.