I feel very lucky that she’s not more angry at me, but I’m also worried about her: I think this news has tipped her over the edge. ‘Is Sam here?’ I ask. I’m scared of facing him but I want him here to look after her.
She nods. ‘We were just talking about whether we should go to the County Clerk’s Office or fly to Vegas and try and have a party for everyone later. But everyone’s here now, and we wanted all our friends and family to be there …’ Her eyes start brimming over. I can feel mine pricking as well.
‘Alice, I’m going to fix this.’
‘Thanks,’ she says, laughing and wiping her eyes. ‘That’s sweet of you, Lily, but you can’t.’
‘Yes I can!’ I spot a pile of pink paper napkins with ‘Here Comes the Bride’ on them and hand one to her. ‘I said I would help you with the wedding and I will. I’ll find somewhere. Just give me your contact numbers and I’ll do all the work. From now on, I am your wedding planner, and I’ll do a good job. I promise. I’m sorry I’ve been so awful, but please, please let me make it up to you.’ I’m so desperate for her to believe me, I’m almost in tears as well.
‘How are you going to do that?’ a voice says behind me. ‘You don’t even know the city.’
It’s Sam, his hair damp from the shower, in jeans and bare feet, pulling on a white T-shirt. He pokes his head out of the T-shirt, and gives me an unfriendly look. I have to say, although he’s frightening when he’s in a bad mood, he is also rather sexy. Off-topic, Lily.
‘Well – couldn’t you have it at someone’s house? People have massive houses here.’ I’m actually thinking of Brock Wilson’s place, but I don’t mention that. I try to think of the other famous names I saw on the guest list. ‘What about Luther Carson? Would he let you use his place?’
‘Luther?’ Sam says dubiously.
‘I think he would, you know,’ Alice says to Sam.
‘You think? It seems like a big ask …’
‘As long as it wasn’t any hassle, I think he’d quite like it,’ says Alice. ‘It would make him feel like the star of the show.’
‘That’s all we need,’ Sam says. ‘I guess I could call him …’
‘No, I’ll call him,’ says Alice, jumping off the sofa and looking more like herself.
After Alice leaves the room, I start clearing up while Sam sends messages on his BlackBerry, ignoring me. I’m relieved that the whole topic of Ruth and the crafting evening seems to have been shelved, but I’m not going to push my luck.
Minutes later, Alice comes back beaming all over. ‘Luther said it’s fine. We can have the ceremony in the back yard, and there’s room for the reception there too. We just need to organise chairs and tables. Oh, and catering.’
A back yard doesn’t sound so promising – it makes me think of some poky little area where they keep the bins and empty milk bottles. Seeing my expression, Sam says, ‘It’s about five acres, with ocean views. Anything else?’
‘Yes, he said Jenna can do my make-up. Isn’t that lovely? That’s Luther’s wife,’ Alice explains to me. ‘She’s a make-up artist.’
‘That’s great!’ I was hoping Alice would let me do her make-up myself. But this isn’t about me, it’s about Alice.
‘He’s given me his housekeeper’s number, and he said we can make arrangements with her. So I suppose we call everyone and tell them to go there instead?’ She looks at Sam.
‘Let me call people,’ I plead. ‘The officiant and caterers and guests and everyone. I’ll make an extra column in the spreadsheet to keep track of who I’ve called and to confirm they know. And I’ll see if we need a special licence or anything. In fact, let’s make a list now of everything I need to do, and then you can go back to work. What about parking at Luther’s place? I can look into that …’
I look at them both, pleading silently with them to give me a second chance. Sam doesn’t seem inclined to give me any such thing. But Alice says, ‘OK.’
‘I guess we don’t have any choice,’ Sam says ungraciously. ‘Wait a second, though. How are you going to manage without being able to drive?’
I take a deep breath and look at them both. ‘I can drive. I have my licence with me, and I can hire a car. I’ll be absolutely fine.’
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I left Jesse’s place, and I’ve realised I’m going to have to face my fears and start driving again at some point. Mum would be the first person to tell me that. And I owe it to Alice to step up and do it now, if I’m going to be any use to her at all.
‘Good idea, Lil,’ Alice says, smiling at me. ‘I think you’ll be fine as well.’
After we’ve spent half an hour hashing out a plan of operation over coffee, I finish cleaning up and Alice goes to have a shower. Sam’s about to leave too when I stop him.
‘Sam, there’s something else I’ve got to … confess. It’s sort of the reason I was late …’ Before I lose my nerve, I come clean about the entire Brock Wilson fiasco. I even tell him about filching the script from his bag; there’s no point in leaving anything out as it’ll only make things worse if it comes out later. Which, knowing my luck, it will.
Once I’ve finished, Sam regards me silently for a long time.
‘Tell me something,’ he says eventually. ‘Do you think you can take all this … manic determination that you have, all this ruthless scheming and plotting, and channel it into working on our wedding? Because that would be good.’
I nod frantically. ‘I promise.’
‘What made you write that email to Ruth?’ he asks abruptly.
‘Oh.’ I look down at my hands, noticing that my nails are bitten to pieces. ‘Because she was being horrible to Alice. She was giving her extra stress and making her feel that her wedding was inconvenient.’
I’m realising now how stupid that sounds, given that I’m the one who ruined the craft evening. But Sam stays quiet, which makes me ramble on even more disastrously.
‘And I thought, nobody messes with my family. Sort of … Accept this justice as a gift on my cousin’s wedding day.’ Then I kick myself. He’s probably not in the mood for my Marlon Brando impression.
To my surprise, Sam laughs. ‘You’re a Godfather fan?’
‘They’re my favourite films! I’ve watched all of them, with my dad. He loves them.’
He smiles, and I begin to feel better for the first time since I made Alice cry. ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘Nobody messes with our family.’
Feeing weak with relief, I decide that Sam, like Alice, is an incredibly nice person. Unlike his stupid cousin.
For the next four days, I live, breathe and sleep wedding. Instead of it being a nightmare, I love it. It’s hectic, but also very satisfying to tick things off the list, and figure out practicalities like signs to show people where the loos are, and who’s going to put up the marquee and pack away all the chairs at the end of the night. It’s no different to producing a play, except we don’t even have to sell tickets. Best of all, I feel as if I’m finally helping Alice instead of sabotaging her. I love giving her regular updates about all the things that are sorted and that she and Sam don’t have to worry about.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind me deciding things without you?’ I ask her doubtfully, when we’re talking about what time to serve dinner.
She shakes her head. ‘We’d prefer it. Sam only cares about the ceremony, and I only care about the ceremony and my dress. And my hair,’ she adds sheepishly. ‘Everything else is over to you.’
One of my main jobs is to be a buffer between Alice and her future mother-in-law. Cynthia’s not pleased at first to be dealing with the monkey instead of the organ-grinder, but I flatter her by asking advice and channelling her energy with every spare task I can think of, from organising car pools to collecting the last RSVPs. She and Diane have very strong feelings over the height and number of the flower arrangements, so I just ask them to give me a shopping list.
I put Sam’s younger brother, Nick, in charge of favours. He’s quite camp an
d very sweet and enthusiastic, and he’s obviously very proud to be a groomsman. He’s been poring over wedding websites and blogs, and he keeps trying to test me on minor points of wedding etiquette.
‘What about escort cards?’ he asks, when I’m at their rented apartment dropping off the baskets of favours.
‘Are you serious? Who are you planning to give those to?’
It turns out that escort cards, instead of being ads for dubious services, are like name cards that people pick up when they get to the venue. We’ve already got place cards for the table, and a seating chart, so I decide we can do without those.
‘Really? I saw some cute ones on Pinterest. And I think my mom will be bummed if we don’t have them.’
‘Then let’s not tell her,’ I suggest. God, it’s fun to make decisions. I wish I got to do more of it in my normal life. As I rush off, I hear him muttering happily, ‘This wedding is going to be the death of me.’
Then there’s flower shopping with Sam’s younger sister Melissa, who I like a lot. She’s very pretty and spends lots of time texting her boyfriend and staring into shop windows, but she’s also very laid-back and easy-going. When I ask her what she does for work, she rolls her eyes and says, ‘Oh my God, don’t even go there. Beyond boring.’ She’s so laid-back, in fact, that when Alice tentatively asks her if she’d like to be a bridesmaid, and wear a dress she hasn’t even tried on, she says, ‘Sure.’
‘Thank God she said yes,’ Alice says. ‘Otherwise we would have had an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen.’ It’s the day before the wedding and we’re getting our nails done at a very chi-chi little place in Santa Monica, where they serve bubble tea and fortune cookies. Melissa was invited, but she overslept and couldn’t make it.
‘And darling, everyone knows the wedding isn’t legal unless you have an even number of bridesmaids and groomsmen,’ Poppy says, teasing her. Poppy is great. She and Charlie flew in a few hours ago, but she’s wearing the most incredible pink vintage Chanel jacket with faded blue skinny jeans and high heels. She can also raise one eyebrow, which is something I’ve never managed.
‘Well, it made Cynthia happy,’ Alice says. ‘This is her only chance at a traditional family wedding. Melissa will probably get married on the beach in flip-flops. Nick will have a big white wedding, but not quite the kind Cynthia wants. He told me he’s going to have “We Found Love” by Rihanna for his first dance.’
‘They’re probably just relieved Sam’s not marrying some airhead actress,’ says Poppy. ‘Oh. Sorry, Lily.’
‘That’s OK,’ I say, amused. I haven’t actually thought about acting or checked Spotlight in days, just because I’ve been so busy.
‘I’m still not clear, though. Why can’t Ruth make it exactly?’ Poppy asks.
Alice and I exchange glances. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say for the millionth time.
‘It’s genuinely fine.’ Alice explains to Poppy about my email to Ruth, and says that she called Ruth to apologise. ‘And she actually said she was sorry too. She’s been a little jealous because her boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet. She admitted they were broke and flying here was a stretch for them, so I said not to worry about it. So I’m genuinely glad you emailed her, Lily,’ she finishes. ‘Honestly. Otherwise we would have been resenting each other, but this way we cleared the air.’
Poppy is looking at me with a mixture of fear and amusement.
‘Talk about Ruthless. It sounds like you have been busy,’ she says, as we walk over to the pedicure station. ‘Anything else happen this week that we should know about?’
‘Not really,’ I say, crossing my fingers.
‘In other news,’ Alice says, ‘Sam’s cousin Jesse has broken up with his fiancée and it’s caused a massive family handbag. Oh Lily, you’ve spilled your tea.’
My hands are shaking, but I recover myself slightly while Alice goes on.
‘The family all loved her, and they’d set a date, and Jesse’s mother and Wendy – that’s the fiancée – had been dress shopping together and all sorts,’ Alice is saying. ‘Poor Jesse. It must be so hard to call off a wedding, but all Diane can talk about is their deposits and how they’d already sent their STDs.’
‘Excuse me?’ says Poppy, raising one eyebrow.
‘Save-the-date cards, sorry. Wedding lingo. It’s all a nightmare, especially since Jesse’s father is in prison.’
‘What?’ Poppy and I say in unison.
‘Yes – oh dear, that’s very indiscreet of me. Don’t mention it, obviously. He’s doing four years for tax evasion. I do feel sorry for Diane, but she’s not making it any easier – she keeps talking about how this was the only thing she had to look forward to, and the one good thing happening to their family … I must say, I’m glad she’s not my FMIL.’
‘FMIL?’ asks Poppy.
‘Sorry: future mother-in-law.’
I stare blankly at my feet in the soapy water, thinking: poor Jesse. He obviously wasn’t lying after all. And no wonder he’s so law-abiding – or was, before I got him drunk. Oh my God: imagine if we’d been arrested on the beach for public indecency or something!
‘Didn’t Jesse mention any of this to you?’ Alice asks me. ‘He drove Lily around the other day,’ she adds to Poppy.
‘Did he now,’ says Poppy, giving me a sly look. ‘Was that fun?’
‘Did something happen with you and Jesse?’ Alice asks, almost knocking her magazine into her footbath. ‘That’s great! Tell me more!’
‘Ye-es,’ I admit. ‘He’d already told me about breaking up with the fiancée. But we were both drunk. No big deal.’ I would normally be more open with Alice, but I don’t want to run the risk of her or even Poppy saying anything to Sam that might get back to Jesse.
I can’t help wondering if Jesse’s announcement has something to do with me. Though if it did, surely I would have heard from him by now? Oh well. Even if he didn’t live on the other side of the world, his life must be complicated enough at the moment, and he’s completely on the rebound. All in all, I decide it’s just as well that we’re not talking.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ asks a man in work boots and a hard hat.
‘She is,’ Nick says, pointing at me.
‘What is it?’ I ask, panicked. It’s the morning of the wedding and we’re well behind schedule. The chairs aren’t set out yet, the caterers are late, and the canopy where Sam and Alice are meant to be saying their vows still looks like scaffolding. And now there’s someone in a hard hat who seems to think I’m his foreman.
‘We’re trying to put up your marquee, but the ground here doesn’t match the plan we were given. We don’t normally work to a plan, and this one makes no sense.’
I look at him blankly.
‘What do you want me to do about it? I don’t know anything about marquees. Just put it up whichever way you think will make it stay up.’
‘We thought you wanted it done,’ he points at his piece of paper, ‘according to this plan.’
‘I don’t know anything about a plan! I’ve never put up a marquee in my life! Just please put it up and make it stay up!’
‘Lily!’ Poppy yells out of an upper window. ‘They want to do your hair.’
‘Give me five minutes!’ I have to get this canopy up before I do anything else. I climb up the stepladder I borrowed from Luther’s housekeeper and start wrestling with the poles, instructions in one hand. I didn’t know the bloody thing would come in pieces; it’s worse than Ikea furniture. Why oh why didn’t I put it up yesterday instead of getting my nails done? Nobody will notice my nails, but they will notice if Alice and Sam have to get married on a pile of sticks.
‘Do you want a hand with that?’ says a voice behind me. It’s Jesse, not in his suit yet. He’s obviously come by to help. My heart thuds at the sight of him and I wish I’d been able to wash my hair this morning, or put on make-up, instead of keeping myself a blank canvas for the hair and make-up people. I must look a fright.
‘God, yes please.
Thank you. Um … great. Thanks.’ I’m too nervous to say anything else, so I thrust the instructions into his hand and race off across the lawn and into the house.
Luther’s crib, a gigantic mock-colonial mansion, is both massive and thoroughly pimped, with a vast hallway with marble floor and Gone with the Wind stairs, long silk curtains everywhere and tall windows that overlook the Pacific. I hope I’ll be able to find my way to the Bridal Prep Command Centre without the help of GPS.
‘We’re in here,’ Poppy calls from a landing. I do a double-take: her hair is looking three times its normal size, and not in a good way.
‘I know, I know,’ she says. ‘I’ll fix it when he’s gone. But wait till you see Luther’s bedroom. There are mirrors on the ceiling!’
‘Is everything OK?’ I ask, sliding into the room. ‘Oh, Alice. You look gorgeous.’
Her hair is in a beautiful low chignon twisted at the back of her neck – very Old Hollywood. She’s wrapped in a dressing gown and Jenna is doing her face; there’s a lot of glow and dew going on and her eyes look enormous.
‘How’s it all going out there?’ she asks anxiously, talking out of the corner of her mouth as Jenna blots her lipstick.
‘Perfect! All good. Zen, Zen.’ I wave my hands to indicate peace and calm. ‘How are you?’
‘I feel sick,’ she says in a small voice. ‘And I’ve just realised I have nowhere to put my lipstick or my concealer.’
‘It’s OK, I’ll grab you for touch-ups when you need it,’ says Jenna. Contrary to what I was expecting, she’s a real earth-mother type, very calm and capable and gorgeous. She’s also a size fourteen or thereabouts; it makes me think more highly of Luther that he’s married to a non-lollipop.
‘Do you want some more tea, darling?’ says Aunt Emily, coming into the room looking smart in a bottle-green silk suit. She arrived yesterday, having left her flight until the last minute in case my cousin Erica had her baby early. ‘Are you sure you won’t have a banana? Lily! How are you? Help me persuade Alice to have a snack.’
‘Mum, please, stop asking me.’
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