The Guest List

by Lucy Foley

Hannah’s room is at the end of the long corridor, I think. As I get closer, I realise I can hear the murmur of voices coming from inside, growing louder.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Han,’ I hear. ‘You’re being completely ridiculous—’

  The door’s open a crack, too. I creep a little closer. Hannah’s out of sight but I can see Charlie in just a pair of boxers, gripping on to the edge of the chest of drawers as though he’s trying to contain his anger.

  I stop short. I feel like I’ve seen something I shouldn’t, like I’m spying on them. I stupidly hadn’t thought about Charlie being in there too – Charlie, who I used to have that cringeworthy teenage crush on. I can’t do it. I can’t go up and knock on their door, ask Hannah if she’ll come for a chat … not when they’re half-dressed, clearly in the middle of some sort of argument. Then I nearly jump out of my skin as another door opens behind me.

  ‘Oh, hello, Olivia.’ It’s Will. He’s wearing suit trousers and a white shirt that hangs open to show his chest, tanned and muscular. I glance quickly away.

  ‘I thought I heard someone outside,’ he says. He frowns at me. ‘What are you doing up here?’

  ‘N-nothing,’ I say, or try to say, because hardly any sound comes out of my mouth, just a hoarse whisper. I turn to leave.

  Back in my room I sit down on the bed. I’ve failed. It’s too late. I’ve missed my chance. I should have found a way of telling Hannah last night.

  I look out through the window at the boats approaching: closer now. It feels like they are bringing something bad with them to this island. But that’s silly. Because it’s here already, isn’t it? It’s me. I’m the bad thing. What I’ve done.

  AOIFE

  The Wedding Planner

  The guests are arriving. I watch the approach of the boats from the jetty, ready to welcome them. I smile and nod, try to present a front of decorum. I’m wearing a plain, navy dress now, low wedge heels. Smart, but not too smart. It wouldn’t be appropriate to look like one of the guests. Though I needn’t have worried about that. It’s clear they have all made a big effort with their outfits: glittering earrings and painfully high heels, tiny handbags and real fur stoles (it might be June, but this is the cool Irish summer, after all). I even see a smattering of top hats. I suppose when your hosts are the owner of a lifestyle magazine and a TV star, you have to step up your game.

  The guests disembark in groups of thirty or so. I can see them all taking in the island, and feel a little surge of personal pride as they do. We’ll be a hundred and fifty tonight – that’s a lot of people to introduce to Inis an Amplóra.

  ‘Where’s the nearest loo?’ one man asks me urgently, rather green about the gills, plucking at his shirt collar as though it’s strangling him. Several of the guests, in fact, are looking worse for wear beneath their finery. And yet it’s not too choppy at the moment, the water somewhere between white and silver – so bright with the cold sunlight on it that you can hardly look at it. I shield my eyes and smile graciously and point them on their way. Perhaps I should offer some strong seasickness pills for the return journey, if it’s going to get as windy as the forecast suggests.

  I remember the first time we came here as kids, stepping off the old ferry. We didn’t feel seasick, not that I remember. We stood out at the front and held on to the rail and squealed as we soared over the waves, as the water came up in big arcs and soaked us. I remember pretending we were riding a huge sea-serpent.

  It was warm for this part of the world that summer, and the sun would soon dry us. And children are tough. I remember running down the beaches into the water like it was nothing. I guess I hadn’t yet learned to be wary of the sea.

  A smart couple in their sixties get off the final boat. I somehow know even before they come over and introduce themselves that they are the groom’s parents. He must get his looks from his mother and probably his colouring, too, though her hair is grey now. But she doesn’t have anything like the groom’s easy confidence. She gives the impression of someone trying to hide herself away, even within her own clothes.

  The groom’s father’s features are sharper, harder. You’d never call a man like that good-looking, but I suppose you could imagine seeing a profile like his on the bust of a Roman emperor: the high, arched eyebrows, the hooked nose, the firm, slightly cruel thin-lipped mouth. He has a very strong handshake, I feel the small bones of my hand crushing into one another as he squeezes it. And he has an air of importance about him, like a politician or diplomat. ‘You must be the wedding planner,’ he says, with a smile. But his eyes are watchful, assessing.

  ‘I am,’ I say.

  ‘Good, good,’ he says. ‘Got us a seat at the front of the chapel, I hope?’ On his son’s wedding day it is to be expected. But I think this man would expect a seat at the front of any event.

  ‘Of course,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll take you up there now.’

  ‘You know,’ he says, as we walk up towards the chapel, ‘it’s a funny thing. I’m a headmaster, at a boy’s school. And about a quarter of these guests used to go there, to Trevellyan’s. Odd, seeing them all grown up.’

  I smile, show polite interest: ‘Do you recognise all of them?’

  ‘Most. But not all, not all. Mainly the larger-than-life characters, as I think you’d call them.’ He chuckles. ‘I’ve seen some of them do a double-take already, seeing me. I have a reputation as a bit of a disciplinarian.’ He seems proud of this. ‘It’s probably put the fear of God in them, catching sight of me here.’

  I’m sure it has, I think. I feel as though I know this man, though I have never met him before. Instinctively, I do not like him.

  Afterwards, I go and thank Mattie, who’s captained the last boat over.

  ‘Well done,’ I say. ‘That all went very smoothly. You’ve done a great job synchronising it all.’

  ‘And you’ve done a fine job getting someone to hold their wedding here. He’s famous, isn’t he?’

  ‘And she has a profile too.’ I doubt Mattie’s up to date on women’s online magazines, though. ‘We offered a big discount in the end, but it’ll be worth it for the write-up.’

  He nods. ‘Put this place on the map, sure it will.’ He looks out over the water, squinting into the sunlight. ‘It was easy sailing this morning,’ he says. ‘But it will be different later on, to be sure.’

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the forecast,’ I say. It’s hard to imagine the weather turning, with the blustery sunshine we’ve got now.

  ‘Aye,’ Mattie says. ‘The wind’s set to get up. This evening is looking quare bad. There’s a big one brewing out to sea.’

  ‘A storm?’ I say, surprised. ‘I thought it was just a little wind.’

  He gives me a look that tells me just what he thinks of such Dubliner naïveté – however long we’ve been here, Freddy and I, we’ll forever be the newcomers. ‘You don’t need some forecast fella sitting in a studio in Galway City to tell you,’ he says. ‘Use your eyes.’

  He points and I follow his finger to a stain of darkness, far out, upon the horizon. I’m no seaman, like Mattie, but even I can see that it doesn’t look good.

  ‘There it is,’ Mattie says triumphantly. ‘There’s your storm.’

  JOHNNO

  The Best Man

  Will and I are getting ready in the spare room. The other guys should be joining us in a sec, so I want to say the thing I’ve been planning first. I’m bad at stuff like this, speaking about how I feel. But I go for it anyway, turning to Will. ‘I wanted to tell you, mate … well, you know, I’m properly honoured to be your best man.’

  ‘There was never anyone else in my mind for the job,’ he says. ‘You know that.’

  Yeah, see, I’m not totally sure that’s true. It was a bit desperate, what I did. Because maybe I was wrong, but I got this impression that, for a while, Will’s been trying to cut me out of his life. Since all the TV stuff happened, I’ve hardly seen the bloke. He hadn’t even told me about the engagement – I read about it i
n the papers. And that stung, I’m not going to pretend it didn’t. So I called him up and said I wanted to take him for a drink, to celebrate.

  And over drinks I said it. ‘I accept! I’ll be your best man.’

  Did he look a bit awkward, then? Difficult to tell with Will – he’s smooth. After a short pause he nodded and said: ‘You’ve read my mind.’

  It wasn’t totally out of the blue. He’d promised it, really. When we were kids, at Trevellyan’s.

  ‘You’re my best mate, Johnno,’ he said to me once. ‘Numero uno. My best man.’ I didn’t forget that. History ties us together, him and me. Really, I think we both knew I was the only person for the job.

  I look in the mirror, straighten my tie. Will’s spare suit looks like shit on me. Hardly surprising, really, considering it’s about three sizes too small. And considering I look like I was up all night, which I was. I’m sweating already in the too-tight wool. Next to Will I look even more shit because his seems to have been sewn on to his body by a host of fucking angels. Which it has, in a way, because he got it made to measure on Savile Row.

  ‘I’m not at my best,’ I say. Understatement of the century.

  ‘That’s your comeuppance,’ Will says, ‘for forgetting your suit.’ He’s laughing at me.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m such an idiot.’ I’m laughing at me, too.

  I went to get my suit with Will a few weeks ago. He suggested Paul Smith. Obviously all the shop assistants in there looked at me like I was going to steal something. ‘It’s a good suit,’ Will told me, ‘probably the best you can get without going to Savile Row.’ I did like how I looked in it, no doubt about it. I’ve never had a good suit before. Haven’t worn anything all that smart since school. And I liked how it skimmed my belly. I’ve let myself go a bit over the last couple of years. ‘Too much good living!’ I’d say, and pat the paunch. But I’m not proud of it. This suit, it hid all that. It made me look like a fucking boss. It made me look like someone I am definitely not.

  I turn sideways in the mirror. The buttons on the jacket look like they’re about to ping off. Yeah, I miss that belly-skimming Paul Smith wool. Anyway. No point in crying over spilt milk, as my mum would say. And not much use in being vain. I was never much of a looker in the first place.

  ‘Ha – Johnno!’ Duncan says, barrelling into the room and looking very slick in his own suit, which fits perfectly. ‘What the fuck is that? Did yours shrink in the wash?’

  Pete, Femi and Angus are close behind him. ‘Morning, morning chaps,’ Femi says. ‘They’re all arriving. Just went and accosted a load of old Trevs boys down at the jetty.’

  Pete lets out a howl. ‘Johnno – Jesus. Those trousers are so tight I can see what you had for breakfast, mate.’

  I hold my arms out to the side so my wrists stick out, prance around for them, playing the fool like always.

  ‘Christ and look at you.’ Femi turns to Will. ‘Like butter wouldn’t fucking melt.’

  ‘He was always a bad’un that looked like a good’un though,’ Duncan says. He leans over to ruffle Will’s hair – Will quickly picks up a comb and smoothes it flat again. ‘Wasn’t he? That pretty boy face. Never got in trouble with the teachers, did you?’

  Will grins at us all, shrugs. ‘Never did anything wrong.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Femi cries. ‘You got away with murder. You never got caught. Or they turned a blind eye, with your dad being head and all that.’

  ‘Nope,’ Will says. ‘I was good as gold.’

  ‘Well,’ Angus says, ‘I’ll never understand how you aced those GCSEs when you did no fucking work.’

  I shoot a look at Will, try to catch his eye – could Angus have guessed? ‘You’re such a jammy bastard,’ he says now, leaning over to give Will a pinch on the arm. Nah, on second thoughts he doesn’t sound suspicious, just admiring.

  ‘He didn’t have any choice,’ Femi says. ‘Did you, mate? Your dad would have disowned you.’ Femi’s always been sharp like that, reading people.

  ‘Yeah,’ Will shrugs. ‘That’s true.’

  It could have been social leprosy, being the headmaster’s kid. But Will survived it. He had tactics. Like that girl he slept with from the local high school, passing those topless Polaroids of her all around our year. After that, he was untouchable. And actually, Will was always the one pushing me to do stuff – because he knew he could get away with it, probably. Whereas I was scared, at least in the beginning, of losing the scholarship. It would have destroyed my parents.

  ‘Remember that trick we used to play with the seaweed?’ Duncan says. ‘That was all your idea, mate.’ He points at Will.

  ‘No,’ Will says. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’ It definitely was.

  The younger ones, who it had never been done to before, would lose their shit while the rest of us lay there listening to them, cracking up. But that was how it was if you were one of the younger boys. We’d all been there. You had to take the shit that was thrown at you. You knew that in the end you’d get your turn to throw it at someone else.

  There was one kid at Trevellyan’s who was a pretty cool customer when we put the seaweed in his bed. A first year. He had a weird effeminate name. Anyway, we called him Loner, because it fitted. He was completely obsessed with Will, who was his head of house, maybe even a bit in love with him. Not in a sexual way, at least I don’t think so. More in the way little kids sometimes are with older ones. He started doing his hair in the same way. He’d sort of trail around after us. Sometimes we’d find him lurking behind a bush or something, watching us, and he’d come and watch all our rugby matches. He was the smallest boy in the school, spoke with a funny accent and wore these big glasses, so he was a prime candidate for shitting on. But he tried pretty hard to be liked. And I remember actually being quite impressed by the fact that he survived that first term without having some sort of breakdown, like some boys did. Even when we did the seaweed trick he didn’t bitch and moan about it like some of the other kids, like that chubby little friend of his – Fatfuck, I think we called him – who ran off to tell Matron. I remember being pretty impressed by that.

  I tune back into the others. I feel like I’m coming up from underwater.

  ‘It was always the rest of us who got hauled up for it,’ Duncan says, ‘who ended up having to do the lines.’

  ‘Me most of all,’ Femi says. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Speaking of seaweed,’ Will says, ‘it wasn’t funny, by the way. Last night.’

  ‘What wasn’t funny?’ I look at the others, they seem confused.

  Will raises his eyebrows. ‘I think you know. The seaweed in the bed. Jules freaked out. She was pretty pissed off about it.’

  ‘Well it wasn’t me, mate,’ I say. ‘Honest.’ It’s not like I’d do anything that would bring back memories of our time at Trevs.

  ‘Not me,’ Femi says.

  ‘Or me,’ Duncan says. ‘Didn’t have an opportunity. Georgina and I were otherwise engaged before dinner, if you get what I’m saying … certainly had better things to be doing than wandering around collecting seaweed.’

  Will frowns. ‘Well, I know it was one of you,’ he says. He gives me a long look.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  ‘Saved by the bell!’ Femi says.

  It’s Charlie. ‘Apparently the buttonholes are in here?’ he says. He doesn’t look at any of us properly. Poor bloke.

  ‘They’re over there,’ Will says. ‘Chuck Charlie one, will you, Johnno?’

  I pick one up, little sprig of green stuff and white flowers, and toss it to Charlie, but not quite hard enough to reach him. Charlie makes a sort of lunge for it and doesn’t manage to catch it, fumbles around on the floor.

  When he’s finally picked it up he leaves as quickly as possible, without saying anything. I catch the others’ eyes and we all stifle a laugh. And for a moment it’s like we’re kids again, like we can’t help ourselves.

  ‘Fellas?’ Aoife calls, ‘Johnno? The guests are all here.
They’re in the chapel.’

  ‘Right,’ Will says, ‘how do I look?’

  ‘You’re an ugly bastard,’ I say.

  ‘Thanks.’ He straightens his jacket in the mirror. Then, as the others go ahead, he turns to me. ‘One other thing, mate,’ he says, in an undertone. ‘Before we go down, as I know I won’t get a chance to mention it later. The speech. You’re not going to totally embarrass me, are you?’ He says it with a grin, but I reckon he’s serious. I know there’s stuff he doesn’t want me to get into. But he doesn’t need to worry – I don’t want to get into it either. It doesn’t reflect well on either of us.

  ‘Nah, mate,’ I say. ‘I’ll do you proud.’

  JULES

  The Bride

  I lift the gold crown on to my head, with hands that – I cannot help noticing – betray a tell-tale tremble. I turn my head, this way and that. It’s the one capricious element of my outfit, the one concession to a romantic fantasy. I had it made by a hat-maker’s in London. I didn’t want to go for a full flower crown, because that would be a bit hippy-child, but I felt this would be a stylish solution. A vague nod to a bride from an Irish folktale, say.

  The crown gleams nicely against my dark hair, I can see that. I pick my bouquet out of its glass vase, a gathering of local wildflowers: speedwell, spotted orchids and blue-eyed grass.

  Then I walk downstairs.

  ‘You look stunning, sweetheart.’

  Dad stands there in the drawing room, looking very dapper. Yes, my father is going to walk me down the aisle. I considered other possibilities, I really did. Obviously my father is not the best representative of the joys of marriage. But in the end that little girl in me, the one who wants order, who wants things done in the right way, won out. Besides, who else was going to do it? My mother?

  ‘The guests are all seated in the chapel,’ he says. ‘So everything’s just waiting on us now.’

  In a few minutes we will make the short journey along the gravel drive that divides the chapel from the Folly. The thought makes my stomach do a somersault, which is ridiculous. I can’t think of the last time I felt like this. I did a TEDx talk last year about digital publishing to a room of eight hundred people and I didn’t feel like this.