‘Nothing’s going to be happening at this time of night,’ said Sal.
‘We get emails at all times,’ said JoJo. ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ She stuffed her BlackBerry back in her bag.
A waiter swooped over, smile and notebook at the ready.
‘Can we order some cocktails, please?’ said Sal. She felt she didn’t need to consult the others – they’d all want one, wouldn’t they? When had they not? And Tamsin would just have to have what they were having; a cocktail might stop her from doing whatever lawyerly stuff she felt she ought to be doing.
‘Certainly, what would you like?’
It was the same handsome young man from the pool house, now dressed as a waiter. Very good-looking, noted Sal, looking him up and down, though far too young for any of them. And they were all taken, and not in the market for looking at men anyway, weren’t they? Except JoJo – hell would freeze over before that gorgeous woman would break off from her beads and her taffeta, for even an instant, to go on a date – and possibly Tamsin. Sal couldn’t imagine her with a beau in tow, somehow. Actually, was she, Sal, taken? She had certainly been taken, several times now, by Niall, but were they an actual item, her and Niall, or just a casual thing that could stop at any time? She really wasn’t sure. She liked to think it was a casual thing she could stop at any time.
Stop thinking about Niall, Sal told herself, he’s miles away. Concentrate on the job in hand – a fab night of copious food and drink. ‘We’ll all have mojitos, won’t we, girls?’ she said. ‘Tamsin, what’s your poison?’
‘A pina colada, please.’
Oh, now this was surprising, thought Sal. Tamsin didn’t seem like a pina colada sort of girl.
‘Ooh, I like those, too,’ said Rose. ‘Good choice.’ She grinned at Tamsin who gave her a small smile back.
‘Package?’ asked the waiter.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Was he inviting them to admire his? They couldn’t even see it; he had a black apron wrapped round him.
‘Which package are you on?’
Rose suppressed a giggle. Wendy and JoJo both smirked. Tamsin appeared to not get the joke; her hand was wandering down to her bag again, which was beeping.
‘We’re on the Health and Rejuvenation Package,’ said Sal merrily, ‘thank you – Luke,’ she added, peering at the badge on his black t-shirt. ‘We like to call it the H&R.’
‘Right,’ said Luke, looking rather embarrassed. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid in that case you can’t have cocktails.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Sal again, reaching for the drinks menu from the middle of the table. ‘I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Did you just say we can’t have cocktails?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s correct,’ said Luke, looking hesitantly round the table at them. He was clearly feeling quite uncomfortable; his hands had gone all fidgety. ‘You’re not allowed cocktails on your package. Regenerating, fruit-based, soft drinks, only. You’re supposed to be following a healthy regime . . . for mind and body. It does say. In the literature.’ He smiled uncertainly.
‘Are you telling me what drinks I can and can’t order?’
‘Yes, madam, I’m afraid I am. I’m so sorry.’
‘That’s bloody ridiculous!’ Sal would have stood up if it wasn’t farcical to do so. She would have thumped the table in a politician-like strop if it could have got her anywhere. And she wasn’t sure if she was more upset by the outright denial of cocktails or being called ‘madam’ . . .
‘Sal,’ cautioned JoJo, in a calm and measured voice. ‘It’s not his fault. And you can understand the logic, can’t you? If we’re supposed to be getting all cleansed and healthy, we shouldn’t really be chucking a load of alcohol down our throats!’
Wendy nodded. ‘I think we just have to go with it,’ she said, clearly quite disappointed.
‘Doesn’t seem we have much choice,’ agreed Rose.
‘OK, OK,’ said Sal. ‘I’ll toe the bloody line. I’ll sip water and bloody elderflower cordial all night. But I’m not happy.’ A booze-free hen weekend, how could she be? Hen weekends meant booze and lots of it, everyone knew that. She grabbed her fork and rapped the table with it to show just how unhappy she was. Then she thought that looked a bit unhinged so she laid it back down again. ‘I bet you’ve never been to a hen weekend without cocktails before, have you, Tamsin?’ she enquired, mock-pleasantly. ‘I expect this is quite a comedown for you.’
Tamsin looked up from her phone which she was frantically tapping into and met her eye. ‘I’ve never been on a hen weekend before,’ she said.
‘Nooo!’ exclaimed Rose. ‘How about a hen night?’
‘No, not one of those either,’ said Tamsin simply, and she lowered her eyes to her phone again, which Sal interpreted as ‘subject closed’. There was a pause. Fancy not ever going on a hen night! thought Sal.
‘Not everyone likes hen weekends,’ said Wendy kindly, though she did look surprised. ‘I even tried to avoid having one myself!’
‘There was no chance of that—’ JoJo smiled ‘—and I’m so sorry, everyone, once again, that I booked the wrong package. I can see I’m never going to live this down,’ she added, with a rueful smile. Then she turned to the waiter. ‘A large jug of water and five elderflower cordials with ginger and ginseng, please’ she said to him sweetly, whilst reading off the menu she had taken from Sal. ‘Thank you.’
*
A sober hour passed. Sal was cheesed off, but was trying to suppress her annoyance as she didn’t want to upset Wendy or JoJo. She made do with shooting loaded looks across the table at Rose, who could only grin at her sympathetically in return. Things had gone from bad to worse. After they’d ordered their drinks, Luke had informed them they were on a different food menu to the other packages at The Retreat, too. There was to be no saddle of beef and chocolate fondant. No scallops. No bacon. They had to choose between vegetable and pine nut salad, turnip cassoulet, rissoles of rhubarb in a cauliflower glaze and some other such nonsense. It was bloody awful. Sal could tell it had taken a lot of effort to put these complicated, extremely healthy dishes together, but they weren’t to her taste – the turnip cassoulet she’d made the mistake of ordering because at least it had some carbs in it had almost made her gag. She craved steak and chocolate and double cream, not rabbit’s food.
‘Frederick loves turnips,’ observed Tamsin casually, as the plates were cleared away. She hadn’t been on her phone for at least ten minutes. ‘It must be the Norfolk in him.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Wendy, gathering up the side dishes for the waiter.
‘He hasn’t made you his world-famous turnip gratin yet?’ asked Tamsin.
‘No, not yet.’ Wendy smiled. ‘I guess I’ve got that to look forward to.’
‘But you have seen his turnip?’ quipped Sal.
‘Of course I have,’ responded Wendy equally cheekily.
They all laughed, including Tamsin, but her smile disappeared as her phone started creating again. There had been brief moments, during the meal, of the hilarity they were all so used to, but they couldn’t quite be themselves with the hen-weekend virgin at the table. Wendy’s laugh wasn’t quite as loud as usual; Rose didn’t giggle so much; JoJo was noticeably quiet. It was not relaxing; the whole thing was not relaxing, so far. The food was hard work, the conversation was hard work and they weren’t allowed a drink; Sal wished she was back in her pub with the whisky on tap and a hot man in her bed.
She wondered what Niall was doing right now – sweating in the kitchen, no doubt. Chopping like a demon, his lovely, searching fingers flying over shiny, bulbous aubergines and slippery slivers of mixed pepper; stirring velvety, unctuous sauces with a big wooden spoon; pounding a piece of meat with a firm, hard pestle . . . She liked to admire him as he worked. Secretly, usually, pretending she was just checking on something; bustling in with a tea towel or a stray plate, to sneak a look at him at work. He had a lovely bum, with th
e apron strings tied above it. God, she fancied him. He was delicious. If she could press a button and be back in that kitchen with him, right now, she’d do it. She’d make a pass for him over the pass and, after service, he would service her with her just deserts . . .
They were waiting now, for dessert. They’d all given up trying to decipher the complicated, ultra-virtuous pudding menu and had ordered the same thing: raspberry sorbet. At least that was semi-normal. At least that was something rabbits might not enjoy.
Sal drummed the edge of the table with her fingers. She was bored. No one was talking. The atmosphere was as dead as a dodo. She had a sudden urge to liven things up quite considerably, and sod Tamsin if she didn’t like it, in fact, all the better if she was downright horrified.
‘I’ve been sleeping with Niall for two months,’ she announced, apropos of nothing, and in a very loud voice. ‘It wasn’t just a one-night stand.’
‘What?’ said Rose, snapping her head up from idly perusing a flyer about The Retreat’s full body massages they wouldn’t be receiving. ‘Have you?’
‘Yep,’ said Sal proudly, ‘and it’s been bloody fantastic.’
She swiftly looked round the table for everyone’s reactions. Wendy’s mouth was hanging right open; JoJo was smiling, but her eyes were wide in surprise. Rose looked delighted and Tamsin had placed her phone back in her bag; she was leaning forward with her chin on a right-angled hand and looking amused.
‘Niall’s my chef,’ she said to her, awaiting her reaction. ‘I own a pub. He works for me. It’s really unprofessional.’
‘But not illegal,’ said Tamsin in a measured voice, but with a big grin threatening at the corners of her mouth. Damn! She wasn’t reaching for the smelling salts or anything. Sal was quite disappointed.
‘No, not illegal!’ repeated Wendy, looking all excited. ‘Tell us more, Sal. When did it first happen? Why did it first happen?’
‘Yes, come on,’ said JoJo. ‘Spill the beans. All of them.’
Sal smiled to herself, feeling that lovely tingle she always felt when Niall’s face, body, everything came into her mind. It really hadn’t taken long for her and Niall to get it on; in fact, it couldn’t have been quicker. The moment he had appeared for his interview two months ago, looking all swarthy and handsome and brandishing a cute little tote bag of ingredients to cook, to show her what he could do, she was a goner.
He’d been wearing jeans, and a Foo Fighters’ t-shirt and he had little turn-ups on the sleeves of his t-shirt, which exposed his biceps, and his hair was all mussed up into a kind of sexy half-Mohican and he had one hand in his back pocket, and if she was the swooning type she would have swooned. Instead, she’d just said, ‘Hello’ and he’d said, ‘Hello’ back and his mouth had crinkled into a smile. He had the most amazing green eyes framed by magnificent eyebrows and . . . well, wow. Just wow.
He’d made her a beautiful dish of poached chicken and chargrilled vegetables, with a gorgeous fondant potato, and then they’d sat at one of the pub tables and talked. They’d talked about food and puddings and garnishes and jus and stuff then Sal had asked him if he wanted a drink; they had a new whisky they were selling and it would be good to get a second opinion on it . . .
It was a fine whisky. Very nice indeed. They had one glass and then another. Then Niall asked, jokingly, if folks were still allowed to play cards in this new trendy pub of hers, and she’d not only said ‘of course’, but had produced a pack of cards a punter had left from behind the bar and challenged him to a game of Gin Rummy. They’d played three rounds, and drunk the best part of a bottle of the Highlands’ finest.
Things had got very quickly drunken, and slurry, and blurry. Within an hour she couldn’t see straight. By 10 p.m., Niall was just about the best-looking man she had ever met. And at quarter past eleven, just after closing time, things had taken on a new, very sexy dimension when Niall had gone to make them both a sobering cup of coffee which neither of them had wanted, or indeed drank. He brought over to the table Sal’s Male Strip mug – one where you pour boiling water in to make the clothes fall off the man on the side, revealing a naked hunk – and, as the mug was full of hot coffee, the hunk’s clothes were off.
‘Interesting,’ Niall had said, his gloriously thick eyebrows raised.
‘Yeah,’ said Sal, ever so drunkenly, and in a purposeful (as purposeful as you can be when blind drunk) way that said ‘seduction’ in big neon letters above her head. At that moment all she could think of was Niall in an apron with nothing on underneath. She then winked at him. Actually winked. ‘I got it in Tenerife one year,’ she said, slurring like an on-heat Mae West – she was Sal, the seductress, her elbow slipping off the table, her morals slipping off the radar. ‘It’s big – the mug, I mean. It holds a lot of coffee.’
‘I see.’ The air was suddenly charged. Heady. Crackling. Sal felt quite faint. Drunk. Everything. He’d sat down, then he’d looked her right in the eye and asked if he could kiss her. Well, actually, what he’d said, which was far more sexy, was, ‘I want to kiss you,’ and she’d looked right back into his eyes, pissed and unsteady and full of lust and had said, ‘All right.’
It had been bloody marvellous. Sexy. Intense. A quarter-full tumbler of whisky had got knocked over and neither of them had cared. They’d kissed and kissed and kissed, like teenagers. He’d intertwined his fingers in her hair; she’d stroked one of his biceps. She’d been absolutely hammered by then, and she really, really fancied him. Then she’d uttered those magic and un-retractable words, ‘Do you want to come upstairs?’ and, with her heart pounding and her mind exploding with the possibility and sheer excitement of what was about to happen, she’d led him up those stairs by the hand . . .
‘And so we’ve just carried on,’ finished Sal, having summed it up for them in not quite so much wonderful detail. ‘Doing it whenever we can. Doing it wherever we can’ – this, for Tamsin’s benefit. Sal still wasn’t getting the required reaction. In fact, Tamsin was leaning forward, all ears, and didn’t look disgusted in the slightest.
‘So you really like him,’ said Rose, nodding slowly. ‘This is a first, since Guy.’
‘I didn’t say I really liked him,’ said Sal, ‘I just said I’ve been sleeping with him a lot. There’s a difference.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Wendy.
She really did enjoy sleeping with him. Right from that first time. And the morning after had been pretty perfect, too. She had been downstairs, wiping some tables, when there had been a creak on the stairs. She’d let Niall sleep in, in her bed.
‘Morning,’ he’d said.
A skimpy white towel – one of hers, from the airing cupboard – was tied round his waist. He had tanned skin and a cheeky smile. A mop of tousled, jet black hair, with lovely salt and peppery bits, at the temples. He was gorgeous the night before and the morning after. Sal had actually gulped.
‘Good morning, Niall. I’m guessing you slept OK?’ Her voice sounded weird; she didn’t like it. With an unprecedented breathiness to it, she sounded like a simpering wench who needed to be wearing a mob cap and a frilly apron. She was surprised she hadn’t added, ‘kind sir,’ to her entreaty
‘Wouldn’t anyone?’ he replied. ‘After last night.’ His voice had been so low and rumbling, she almost hadn’t caught what he said, but his words had rendered her speechless and Sal was never speechless. She had stood looking at him, in her imaginary wench’s outfit, her bosom heaving under her imaginary laced-up bodice. Her mouth wouldn’t open, her voice now didn’t work. ‘Sorry,’ he added. ‘I can sleep for England and you have a really comfy bed. Is it all right if I have a shower?’ God, his voice was deep. So manly. Flashes of some of the things he had said in bed to her last night careered around her brain like snippets of songs. She caught scattered refrains of a, ‘You’re gorgeous’, the hint of an, ‘Ooh, yeah, baby,’ and a soupçon of a ‘That’s it, down a bit.’
‘Go ahead,’ she said, finding her real voice, and
in a way that she hoped made her sound alluring . . . hard to pull off when she was wearing her real outfit of an ancient pair of jeans with a hole in each knee, a grubby ‘Purple Rain’ t-shirt and a non-wench-like plastic pinny. ‘I see you’ve found a towel.’
He pinged the waistband. It had looked in glorious danger of falling off.
‘I did, thank you.’ He had turned to head back up the stairs. She’d admired the back of his calves. ‘Care to join me?’ His head whipped back round, his cheeky grin was full wattage and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest and straight into the pocket of her plastic apron, next to the notepad and pen and a couple of dog-eared beer mats.
‘Another time,’ she’d said hopefully, and he’d grinned and gone upstairs. Fifteen minutes later, he’d reappeared. Jeans, boots, Foo Fighters t-shirt; she remembered how she’d relieved him of the lot, last night. He approached her and gave her a kiss, and he smelled deliciously of her raspberry body wash.
‘See you next week,’ he’d said.
‘Next week?’
‘When I start work. I presume I got the job.’
‘You cheeky git,’ she’d said and she’d swiped him one with a damp Jeye cloth. Of course he’d got the job! His skills in the kitchen and elsewhere were clearly second to none.
‘And that’s it?’ said Rose, ‘Now you’re just bonking each other, at every opportunity?’ She gave a huge sigh. ‘Well, I don’t mind admitting I’m really jealous. Not much bonking goes on in my house at the moment. Well, none, actually. None whatsoever.’
Sal caught Tamsin giving Rose a sympathetic look.
‘Well, I’m horrified,’ said JoJo, mock seriously. ‘What a tramp!’
‘You should try it sometime,’ said Sal. ‘You might enjoy it.’
JoJo smiled and shook her head. Sal knew what she was saying: JoJo didn’t have time for anyone in her bed and was more than happy about it.
‘Well, I think it’s fabulous!’ said Wendy, extracting one of her curls from the edge of the dish of sorbet that had just arrived. ‘Well done, Sal! And it’s quite romantic, too. The Landlady and the Chef . . . Let’s just hope you don’t find anything wrong with him, eh?’ She winked.
Four Bridesmaids and a White Wedding: the laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of the year! Page 6