‘Susie! What about her?’
‘Are you having an affair with her?’
‘Susie’s married!’ said Jason. Susie was married! Why had Jason never told her that? Why hadn’t she ever asked? ‘Didn’t I ever tell you that?’
‘No. And there’s no one else?’ It had only ever been Susie Rose had been worried about – she hadn’t room in her imagination for anyone else, but if it wasn’t Susie then perhaps it could be any number of other, imaginary, gorgeous women – who looked great in PE knickers and didn’t resemble an old battered armchair which had seen better days. Just because it wasn’t Susie didn’t mean she was wrong about him loving someone else.
‘For God’s sake, no!’
He looked cross. He looked sincere. God, Rose hoped he was sincere.
‘What about the hotel?’
‘What hotel?’
‘The hotel in Phuket. The romantic week away.’
‘How do you know about that?’ He didn’t look angry; he just looked surprised. And, to Rose’s despair, he somehow looked more devastatingly handsome at this moment than he had for years. She almost couldn’t bear it.
‘I looked at your emails. I was checking the details of that concert Louisa’s going to.’
‘Oh, Rose.’
He took the envelope that was in his left hand and slid his right thumb along the flap, opening it. What was he doing?
‘You can’t open their wedding card!’ protested Rose.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said Jason. ‘This isn’t a wedding card.’ He pulled a folded piece of paper out of the envelope and held it in his hand. ‘Your text totally shocked me,’ he said. ‘An affair! It made me realise how bad things have got between us, how distant. So distant that you could think I could be doing something like that. At the same time, it didn’t shock me at all,’ he said sadly. ‘Because we are distant, aren’t we? There’s far too much space between us.’
Rose nodded. ‘We’re ships that pass in the night,’ she said ‘and you dock somewhere else. You have a whole other life I’m no part of.’
‘That’s going to change,’ said Jason.
‘How?’
‘My next Hong Kong contract will be my last.’
‘What?’ Rose nearly knocked over the two glasses in front of her. Jason steadied them for her and handed her the Pimm’s, which she gulped at gratefully. Then he reached out a hand to her, the hand she hadn’t held for a long time, a hand that felt so welcoming, so familiar, yet it still had the power to shoot thrilling sparks of electricity up her arm and around her body. She’d missed him; she’d missed him so much. His last contract? She couldn’t believe it.
‘The heart of my life is with you and the girls,’ said Jason. ‘I’m transferring back to the London office at the beginning of October. To the Docklands projects. I’m coming home, Rose.’ He unfolded the piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘But not before you and I have a long overdue holiday. This is a hotel booking for you and me. A week in Phuket. I’ve had this in my jacket pocket the whole flight and I couldn’t wait to show it to you. I didn’t know you’d already seen it.’ He attempted a grin. ‘I’m taking you. Once you’ve flown out to Hong Kong and spent ten fantastic nights out there with me, we’ll be going on to Phuket, for a week at the beach.’
‘I’m flying to Hong Kong?’ Rose’s heart started thudding in a totally different way now. Not with dread and terror, but with relief and excitement and happiness. Did he mean it? Did he mean what he was saying?
‘Yes, first class. Champagne, the works. All the magazines you could possibly dream of. A whole lot of that “me” time you’re always going on about.’ He was teasing and she liked it; they hadn’t had that nice teasing element to their relationship for a long time.
‘I can’t believe it,’ stuttered Rose. ‘I couldn’t have been more wrong! I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Jason, smoothing his thumb down the back of her hand in a really quite sexy way. ‘I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you at all. But everything’s going to be OK now, I promise. Things are going to change and I’m going to change. I’m going to make so much effort you’ll get sick of just how wonderful I am!’
Rose laughed. Her heart was soaring; she still didn’t dare believe what he was saying to her. This was like a dream. A fabulous dream starring her and her husband.
‘Did you marry me because I got pregnant with Darcie?’ she blurted out.
‘No!’ said Jason. He placed the envelope on the bar and took both of her hands. ‘I married you because I love you. Darcie was a wonderful bonus. All our girls were. And together, we’re going to whip those daughters of ours back into shape! Get everything back on track. Be a proper family again. Do you want to?’
‘Yes, I want to,’ whispered Rose. ‘More than anything.’ And Jason leant forward and kissed her gently on the lips, kissed her how he used to kiss her, once upon a time.
‘It’s you, Rose, it’s always been you. You’re the love of my life.’ He kissed her more passionately, with more urgency. She loved it. She loved him. She was the love of his life. ‘You look wonderful today, absolutely gorgeous. I’m sorry I ever stopped seeing it.’ She had stopped seeing him too. She’d only been seeing the worst of him. ‘Can I stay in your hotel room tonight? Can we get it on? I’m going to sort the snoring thing, too,’ he added, looking so cute and earnest. ‘I promise. I’ll go to one of those sleep clinics and get wired up to a machine and be cured.’ Rose laughed as he kissed her. ‘We aren’t going to sleep in separate rooms, not any more. Rose, Rose.’ He kissed her again. ‘Can we please get it on?’
‘We can get it on,’ said Rose happily, kissing him back and noticing people beginning to troop into the marquee now, including her three fellow bridesmaids who were looking over in her direction and nudging each other in delight. ‘We can get it on for the rest of our lives.’
Chapter Twenty
JoJo
‘And that is why I love my crazy scientist,’ said Frederick. ‘I was just a lonely, rather too posh, public school toff before she came along and made my life complete.’ A cry of ‘awww’ echoed round the marquee and Frederick, smiling, lapped it up.
Standing at the centre of the top table, his rainbow bow tie spinning, he was halfway through his speech. He’d said some lovely things about Wendy, things JoJo had known he would. How much he adored her; how wonderful she was. How perfect she was for him. He smiled and cleared his throat. ‘Mum, Dad, I’m sorry that I didn’t go for Barbara with the pearl necklace—’
‘Oi oi!’ A heckler at the back of the reception, beside himself at such a heckling opportunity, raised a pint of beer high in the air, sloshing some over his own bald head, which he then wiped off with a napkin.
‘Watch it, Cobblestone!’ said Frederick good-naturedly. ‘And go easy on the beer, we’ve all seen what you’re like after ten pints and it isn’t at all pretty . . . Where was I? Yes . . . right . . .I think you’ll agree, Mum, Dad,’ he continued, looking at his parents, ‘Babs wasn’t quite right for me, despite the trust fund and the pony.’
Frederick’s audience – a packed marquee of guests at white linen tables laden with a near-city skyline of glasses and bottles and centrepieces of the most beautiful multicoloured wild flowers – cheered. The four bridesmaids, sitting at a round table nearest the top table, laughed and Tamsin, who clearly had knowledge of this infamous Babs, grinned and shook her head.
‘She also had a face like the back end of bus, and a terrible temper,’ she whispered to them. ‘I’ve never seen such foot stamping, apart from the pony,’ she added, and the others laughed.
‘I’m sure you’ll also agree, Mum, Dad,’ continued Frederick, ‘that I’ve made an excellent choice in Wendy.’
‘Hurray!’ went the audience, most breaking into more cheers and a few into spontaneous applause; a couple of Big Bang Theorists stood up and gave Wendy a salute. JoJo looked around at the others
on the table and they smiled at each other in complete and happy agreement.
‘Hear, hear,’ said Frederick’s father, once the cheers had died down – a tall, wiry man with a thatch of white hair perched on the top of his head. He nodded emphatically and clinked a fork against a wine glass, before winking at Wendy, who blushed and looked delighted. Then Frederick’s mum, a plump lady with gorgeous, fluffy silver hair and a peach twinset, beamed and reached a hand down the table to take Wendy’s.
‘We’re really happy to have you as our daughter-in-law,’ JoJo heard her say, and Wendy beamed. See, JoJo thought, Wendy had nothing to worry about after all! It seemed Frederick’s family knew what was good for them, and what was good for them was Wendy.
‘Thank you for sorting the extra flowers, Mum,’ said Frederick, nodding at the multicoloured arrangements.
‘My pleasure,’ came his mother’s reply, and she and Tamsin shared a smile.
‘So it just leaves me to say,’ said Frederick, taking his champagne glass and raising it, ‘could we all please stand and raise a toast to my beautiful wife, Wendy. The bride.’
‘The bride!’ chorused a room full of voices: half, deep and rumbling, half, high and sing-song, and all of them in varying degrees of drunk.
Frederick sat down. JoJo saw Wendy lean over and whisper in his ear. He immediately stood back up again.
‘Right,’ he said, looking quite sheepish. ‘It seems I’ve forgotten the most important thing! My good lady wife—’
‘Waahay!’
‘My gorgeous wife,’ he added, looking extremely chuffed, ‘has reminded me to thank, and to toast, the most important people in the room. The bridesmaids.’ A cheer went up. A loud one. And there were a couple of wolf whistles, which JoJo rather liked. ‘Thank you to our very special bridesmaids: Sal, Rose, JoJo and my dear sister, Tamsin. You all look absolutely stunning, you’ve been an incredible help and I know Wendy couldn’t have got through today without you.’
She couldn’t have got to today without us, thought JoJo drily, smiling to herself, and thank God she had. Just look at her! She had never seen Wendy so happy.
‘So I have a little gift for all of you.’
One of Frederick’s cute little cousins, in a miniature dinner suit, appeared from the side of the marquee, completely engulfed by flowers – a florist’s shop on legs. He staggered over to their table and, with a bit of help, offloaded a stunning bouquet to each bridesmaid, then pulled a posh, cardboard bag from his wrist where it had been dangling and gave them a small, duck-egg blue box, which they were delighted to discover contained a Tiffany bracelet.
‘Thank you,’ said JoJo, leaning forward to give the boy a kiss on the cheek. ‘And you have a rose petal in your hair.’ As she pulled it out and placed in on the table in front of her, she was surprised to catch the eye of a rather handsome man across the room, about three tables away. He was early fifties, with very attractive, close-cropped silver-grey hair and a touch of the Martin Kemps. He was smiling at her as though he knew her. She gave him a quizzical look and a brief smile in return, thanked the cute nephew again and returned her attention to Frederick, whose champagne glass was high in the air.
‘Please, everybody rise, as we toast the bridesmaids. The bridesmaids!’
The whole room rose to their feet and Sal and Rose and Tamsin and JoJo beamed at each other and did mock bows in their seats.
‘We have been rather brilliant,’ commented Sal, raising her glass of water to the middle of the table. ‘Well done, all.’ They clinked glasses as they joined in the toast and, as JoJo leant forward to kiss her glass against Tamsin’s, the handsome man from across the room caught her eye once again and this time she was sure he gave her a small wink. Oh, cute, she thought, and he was rather cute. He’d seen her radar, hadn’t he? It must be flashing like a Belisha beacon. Still, he wasn’t a bad one to attract; he could cross her street if he liked . . . She couldn’t help but smile back at him.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Rose.
‘I’ve got no idea,’ replied JoJo, shrugging her shoulders.
‘Ooh,’ said Rose. ‘Get in there, JoJo. He’s a dish.’
JoJo rolled her eyes good-naturedly at her. Her friend looked all girlish and excited – her eyes shining and her cheeks all rosy – and she’d looked that way since Jason had shown up. During the meal, she and Jason hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other – in fact, they’d been in their own world since they’d sat down. Jason kept gazing into her eyes and stroking Rose’s left arm, Rose kept shuffling her chair closer to him and JoJo was sure Rose’s hand was on Jason’s knee all the time, as she had eaten one-handed.
Everything was sorted. When Jason, and Tamsin’s boyfriend, Hugo – a burly sort of chap, who clearly adored Tamsin and who, JoJo noted with interest, she’d been rather proud to introduce – had gone to the bar just before they’d sat down, and Wendy and Frederick had been swept into the reception to tumultuous applause as Mr and Mrs Donnington-Black, Rose had told them with a giant grin that the hotel in Phuket had actually been booked for her all along.
‘You bloody idiot!’ Sal had groaned, as they’d taken their places at the table. ‘I knew it!’
‘I’m so pleased for you, Rose,’ JoJo had said, grabbing Sal’s knee through the tablecloth to give it a rather stern squeeze. ‘That’s the best news ever.’
‘Well done, Rose,’ Tamsin had said kindly. Rose had voiced her concerns about the whole matter again at dinner the night before and Tamsin had been very kind, saying nothing was certain until all the facts were in hand and that she was sure nobody could possibly be as stupid as to cheat on Rose.
‘Thank you, everyone,’ Rose had said at the table, as she’d unfolded her napkin with a huge, beaming smile on her face, ‘and I know I’ve been a bloody idiot, Sal. I should have listened to you all.’
‘Sorry for saying that,’ Sal said. ‘I didn’t mean it. But even if you were a bit of an idiot —’ she’d grinned ‘—it’s not as though the rest of us exactly have our relationships sussed! Well, you might, Tamsin – Hugo’s really nice; you’ve done well there, keep hold of him . . .’
‘I will.’ Tamsin had smiled. ‘I’m making time.’
‘. . . and you don’t have a relationship, JoJo, which is bloody wise and extremely sensible, if you ask me.’ At one time JoJo would have smiled smugly at this; she now thought it made her sound vaguely pathetic. ‘So, well, I’m talking about me, obviously. I have judged mine completely wrong!’ Sal concluded bitterly.
‘Oh, Sal,’ Rose said. ‘I’m sure Niall will come round eventually.’
‘No, he won’t,’ Sal had replied. ‘He won’t come round. He won’t be coming round, or turning up to the pub, or anywhere near me, ever again. But it’s OK. I’ll sail this ship alone.’ And she had patted her stomach and picked up a menu card to peruse whilst the others had shrugged at each other in dismay.
Sal was quite chipper, really, thought JoJo now, as the applause for Wendy’s bridesmaids faded away and the wedding guests took their seats again – considering – although she knew most of it was just a front. Sal was gutted about Niall, they all knew that; it had been the first time since Guy she’d laid her heart on the line to somebody and her heart had been squished, big time. It must really hurt. But she had the baby and she was determined to be happy; that was Sal – you couldn’t keep her down for long. And they would all be there for her. JoJo, in particular, knowing exactly what it was like, would be there for her.
The coffee and the chatter in the marquee were interrupted by the sound of a fork frantically chiming against a wine glass and JoJo looked up to see Wendy standing behind the top table. Gosh, she looked beautiful. She was utterly resplendent in her beautiful white dress and the fabulous contrast it made with her red curls, one of which had tumbled free of its pin and was drooping prettily over her left eyebrow.
‘Order, order!’ Wendy cried bizarrely, like she was Judge Rinder. Was she a bit pi
ssed? JoJo hoped so. Every bride had to get tiddly on their wedding day, surely? ‘I just want to say a few words,’ she said. ‘If that’s OK . . . I know you all have the bar to get to . . . though some of Frederick’s old school friends may have already drunk it dry.’
‘Wahaay.’ A good-humoured roar went up around the room. One table even started spontaneously doing a Mexican wave, but it didn’t catch on, which JoJo was a little sad about – she liked a Mexican wave. She was also actively trying not to look over at the handsome man three tables down who she was sure was still looking her way. Time to lower the radar a little, she thought. Don’t get carried away.
Wendy clinked her glass again then continued speaking. ‘I’d like to thank my dad, for being there, always – don’t set me off again, Dad, or we’ll both be blubbing in a corner; we can do that another day . . .’ Martin gave his daughter a salute, she patted him on the shoulder then kissed him on the cheek ‘. . . Frederick’s parents for welcoming me into the family so wonderfully. Not many of you will know, but today is the first time I’ve actually met them, and they couldn’t be more lovely. I look forward to having them as in-laws and getting to know them better.’ Frederick’s parents both looked thrilled. Frederick’s mum dabbed at her eyes with a pink hanky and gave a watery smile. ‘I’d like to thank Frederick’s lovely sister, Tamsin, for everything—’ she grinned at Tamsin and Tamsin grinned back ‘—she really is a wonderful sister-in-law and I couldn’t be happier to have her as a very, very welcome addition to my life.’ Wendy stopped, and took a deep breath. ‘And, lastly, my friends.’ Her voice broke a little at this point and tears rushed to her eyes. ‘My friends,’ Wendy repeated, trying to steady her voice. ‘I feel like I’m leaving you, which I’m really not – I’m just being ridiculous, as usual, but I just want to say how very, very much you all mean to me and that you’re the best friends anybody could ever have, ever.’
‘Aww,’ went the room, mostly the women.
‘Sal,’ said Wendy. Sal closed her mouth and sat up to mock attention. ‘You’re one of the funniest, most forthright and most amazing people I’ve ever met. One of the strongest, too.’ Sal looked bashful and tried to counteract it by making a fist and flexing a bicep, which made everybody laugh. ‘Seriously,’ continued Wendy, ‘I know in the next chapter of your life you’ll be absolutely brilliant and we’ll be with you all the way.’
Four Bridesmaids and a White Wedding: the laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of the year! Page 25