The Honeymoon Hotel by Hester Browne
‘I was thinking, what if someone like you had made me and Anthony talk, before he decided to jilt me,’ I said in a rush. ‘Could we have worked things out like Stephanie and Richard did, if someone had had the guts to make him admit something was wrong?’ I stared at the waxy orange blossoms in the arrangement. I couldn’t imagine any of Anthony’s friends having the bollocks – or the imagination – to do what Joe had done. And we’d broken up so abruptly and completely that I couldn’t imagine even speaking to them now, let alone asking if they’d spoken to him before. But … ‘Maybe I could have made things right.’
‘Maybe,’ said Joe. ‘Or you might both have wasted another two years trying and trying to be something you weren’t, until he met someone else and left. And you wouldn’t have had your great story, and your drunken disco. And knowing how great your mum and dad would be in a crisis.’
‘But I’ll never know what I did wrong.’ Tears stung my eyes, hot tears that felt more angry than sad. I didn’t expect to feel them at all, not now, but suddenly I felt close to the younger me, stuck in that limbo of not knowing. I’d blocked all this out with Dominic, and work, but now …
‘Why do you need to know?’ he asked gently.
I looked at him. Joe made me question all this stuff. No one else ever really had. ‘Because my life could have been different.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Right. You could be stuck in a marriage with a man who doesn’t really talk to you, feeling dissatisfied but not quite knowing why, talking even less now you’ve somehow got a baby … instead of which you’re the best events manager in London, you’ve got the world in front of you, and you’re not even thirty.’
‘I’m thirty-one.’
‘Well, you don’t look a day over twenty-nine.’
‘Thanks.’
Joe sighed and ran a hand through his hair, then looked at me. ‘Bit of honesty coming up,’ he said. ‘Are you braced?’
I nodded. At least he warned people these days.
‘Maybe Anthony just realized he didn’t love you enough, and because he’s English and he’s a guy, he didn’t know how to put it in a way that wouldn’t destroy your confidence forever. It happens. He just chose to humiliate you in public instead. He looked like the knob. Not you. But people change,’ he said. ‘Thank God, we change, we grow, and we leave things behind. It’s one of the redeeming features of being human. Otherwise we’d be stuck trying to find the first person we ever fell in love with, for the rest of our lives. Can you imagine? Being forty, and desperately searching for that teenager you had a crush on at school?’
I managed a watery smile.
‘If Anthony came back now, you probably wouldn’t even give him a second glance, because thanks to the way you pulled yourself out of that crappy situation, you’re a better, braver, wiser person than the one he left,’ said Joe. ‘Don’t deny it. You’re strong, you’re independent, you’re so smart. Way too good for someone who can’t be honest with you. Or see what sort of woman you are.’
I was about to mumble ‘Thanks,’ or something equally eloquent, when he held my upper arms and looked straight at me. The intensity of Joe’s gaze took me by surprise; it felt as if he wanted to burn what he was thinking directly into my mind. I wobbled on my heels.
‘All I can tell you,’ he said slowly, ‘is that if Anthony didn’t appreciate what he was losing, then he can’t possibly have been good enough for you. You should thank every lucky star in the sky that you’re free, so someone else can feel like the luckiest man alive when he gets the chance to start a life with you.’
My lips parted to speak, but no words came out. Instead I just kept looking into Joe’s blue eyes, at his handsome, honest face. At the unselfconscious warmth and positivity that seemed to surround him. At his simultaneous familiarity and his tingly otherness.
He didn’t speak either. He just gazed at me.
And then the third amazing thing happened.
I realized with the sudden clarity of a curtain lifting in my head that I’d fallen in love with Joe Bentley Douglas.
The trouble was, I’d now spent enough time experiencing Joe’s peace-and-love beliefs to know without a shadow of a doubt that he would have said exactly the same thing to Gemma, to Helen, to any of the brides who walked into our hotel, as he’d just said to me, and have meant it just as much.
‘Thanks,’ I said. My voice cracked. ‘I’ve never … I’ve never talked about this with anyone before. I’m sorry if it’s a bit …’
‘Don’t. No need to say it.’ He looked at me for another few, long seconds, then said, ‘I mean what I said.’
And then, just as my heart was looping a slow somersault around my chest, Gemma arrived with the pink phone of pre-wedding panic, and I was right back to sacking another bridesmaid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Chloë and Magnus (or Tweedledee and Tweedle-Shut-Up-I’m-Talking, as Helen called them), came in twice more during early May to check over the arrangements for Benily’s June celebrity wedding.
They really didn’t need to; I had the spreadsheet to end all spreadsheets covering every possible circumstance. And I really didn’t want them to, because every time they started squabbling I had to fight the urge to send them to Joe to be lovingly psychoanalyzed into a dinner date, but I couldn’t risk any details of the Benily wedding getting out till the last minute.
But Chloë and Magnus came anyway, probably because, like me, they were copied in on the constant emails arriving from Missy the agent, whose latest request was for Nevin to outline all potential photo angles to her, in order to ensure there’d be no potential eating/drinking shots. Plus I think Chloë felt she had a responsibility to make sure there wasn’t going to be a beer fountain at the reception.
Maybe she was as sick of them as I was, but in the middle of May, Emily asked if she could call me while she was in her trailer between takes, so I could ‘show’ her the preparations via the video-calling function on my phone.
‘I so wish I was there!!!’ she emailed. ‘It feels so weird getting other people to organize my wedding!!! It’s kind of like being in a film! If you know what I mean!!!’
Even without all Emily’s exclamation marks, I was nervous before our scheduled call. Flora Thornbury – I can’t even tell you what Helen called her since her elopement and subsequent total silence – was famous-ish in London, but she wasn’t that different from the other posh brides I dealt with, being skinny, welded to her phone and blissfully ignorant of the price of a pint of milk. Emily, on the other hand, was a proper star. In the last few weeks I’d started to notice her heart-shaped face popping up in the celeb pages of magazines, as the publicity for her even-more-famous fiancé’s new Dark Moon film began to build, and on the morning of her call I got up an hour early so I could blow-dry my hair.
The plan was to ‘walk her around’ the courtyard by walking about with my phone, then chat about the details I’d arranged for the cake and flowers and the fun things that all brides liked to discuss, even Hollywood ones.
I’d been lurking around the hall between the hotel and the gardens, waiting for her to ring, and ducking into the alcove whenever Gemma or Laurence wandered past, when Joe appeared. He had his ‘looking for something’ expression on, and when he saw me, his eyes lit up as if he’d just found it.
‘Hey!’ he said, and waved.
My stomach flipped. Since my moment of realization, my stomach flipped every time I saw Joe, but since I honestly didn’t know what to do about my crush – work colleague, flatmate, boss’s son, how many bad ideas did you need? – I was learning to live with it, the same way you get used to having a sprained knee or a wheat allergy.
When he got nearer, he said, ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ (my stomach did a double flip), and pointed at me.
I realized he was pointing at the folder I was clutching, and it unflipped.
‘Is that Helen’s reception folder?’ he went on. ‘She asked me to have a look at the drinks menu. I’ve had some
‘Leek brandy?’
‘Very good!’ He peered at me more closely. ‘You look different this morning. More … coloured in?’
‘I’m wearing lipstick.’
‘You look nice.’ Joe smiled approvingly, then raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘No! I mean, no? I just like to look nice for work.’
Before he could reply, my phone rang and I fumbled it out of my pocket, trying not to let the caller show. ‘Um, I should get this.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Joe. ‘I need to ask you about something else.’
‘I might be a while,’ I said with an unconvincing casualness. ‘I’ll come and find you later?’
Immediately he was intrigued (although not as intrigued as Helen or Gemma would have been), and hovered by a painting of his great-great-grandmother, pretending to check his own phone.
Awkward.
I walked out into the garden, but Joe followed, and I had to shoo him away.
He looked at me strangely and mouthed something with a questioning expression.
Was it Dominic? I couldn’t tell. Maybe Who is it? I shook my head, and walked to the far side of the gardens, and when I looked back, he’d gone.
I took a deep breath and picked up the video call, and the shock I got when the face appeared at the other end nearly made me drop the phone.
This wasn’t the Emily I’d seen on Google. This face had red eyes, a long black wig that reached down to her waist, and a small pair of horns at the outer edges of her forehead.
‘Hi!’ it said, and waved. ‘LA calling!’
I must have looked a bit startled, because she squinted and said, ‘Oh, God, sorry, I’ve still got the lenses in! Sorry! I’m supposed to be in a shapeshifting state! It’s how they tell! Just ignore them! As much as you can!’
Emily’s exclamation marks weren’t limited to her emails.
‘It’s lovely to talk to you,’ I said. ‘Thanks so much for making time.’
‘I know!’ She broke out a dazzling but friendly smile. ‘Although I feel like I already know you through your emails! They’re so funny! And thoughtful! I love that you’re really thinking of everything, and giving me the easy stuff to decide!’ The exclamation marks dropped for a second. ‘I have to tell you straight off, Rosie, I am so grateful for all the effort you’re making for us, when we landed this on you at such short notice. It could have been a train wreck, but it’s sort of fun. I mean, the emails I get from Chloë … I should let you read them one day.’
I couldn’t place Emily’s accent. It was a smooth mid-Atlantic blend, although the longer she talked to me, the more English she sounded.
We – well, I – walked around the garden where the wedding would happen (under our special canopy if wet); then I took her through the Palm Court, into the pretty orangery, and – after sending Dino down to the cellar for a hastily invented wine request – a whistle-stop tour of the hotel lounge, which I’d booked for their post-wedding celebrations.
Emily didn’t speak for a moment or two, and when I checked the phone, a smear of red make-up gave away the sneaky tear she was wiping away.
‘Sorry, sorry, Ben always says I get over-emotional,’ she gasped. ‘It’s so perfect! It’s like I was meant to get married here all along? Like we were meant to go through all that stress with the other place! It’s weird how things turn out. Thank you so, so much.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said. I honestly hadn’t expected Emily to be so nice. She was a whole lot easier to deal with than most of the everyday brides I had to handle.
I heard a knock at her end; she turned and spoke to someone offscreen, then leaned forwards to me.
‘I have to go. That’s my call. Listen, I’m stuck here with a crazy reshoot schedule that seems to change every day, but if there’s any way I can fly back early and maybe call in to see things for real, can I do that?’
‘Of course,’ I said, mentally flicking through the weddings I had booked in between now and then. ‘If you give me some notice so I can arrange security …’
‘Oh, there’s no need for that.’ She looked sheepish. ‘Missy’s done one of her lists? I guessed she would. She’s got a job to do but … You can smuggle me in as a waitress or something. I’ve done enough waitressing to pass myself off as one.’
‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Just let me know.’
‘Sure! Thanks again! I’m going to be recommending the FaceTime wedding planner to anyone who asks me out here!’ Emily smiled, popped her fangs back in, and she was gone.
I stared at the phone, still buzzing with adrenaline, and grinned to myself.
If I’d needed a sign that I was right to turn down Mary Waters’ Big Job Offer, that was it.
*
Emily’s crazy schedule meant she didn’t manage to fly over in time to see Sadie Hunter and Jamie Thomas’s vintage wedding the following week, or Jessie Callum and the Honorable Walter Fitzgerald’s My-Fair-Lady wedding the week after.
I was sorry she missed those, because they had gorgeous sunshine, a harpist and an Irish piper respectively, and some of the best flowers I’d ever seen. Having said that, I wasn’t sorry she missed the sight of me accidentally catching Jessie Callum’s bouquet, then immediately throwing it back in the air as if it were on fire, only for Joe to catch it. Joe then lobbed it in the air in a panic, and Gemma half-dived underneath it as if she were playing beach volleyball and ended up spiking it to the intended recipient, Jessie’s best friend and chief bridesmaid.
I was mortified, but it made for some funny photos, according to Nevin. I checked his memory card afterwards and sneakily deleted the picture he’d got of me. The expression on my face – and the way my eyes had slid sideways to fix on Joe – was a bit of a giveaway.
Needless to say, I hadn’t done or said anything about my messy feelings for Joe, which were not wearing off as I’d hoped, but which were instead intensifying with every tag-team wedding meeting or cosy pizza night in with catch-up box sets at the flat.
I still hadn’t moved out. I couldn’t afford to, not having reached my bonus-triggering target yet, but more than that, I didn’t want to. And neither Laurence nor Joe seemed to be in any hurry to evict me.
Helen, of course, had noticed immediately. She claimed she’d noticed months ago.
‘You’ve got to say something,’ she told me for the millionth time. ‘Or else I will. And you realize that today I can do almost anything I like and no one will stop me?’ she added, with more glee than was really befitting someone being laced into a wedding dress.
We were perched on stools in her tiny flat, while the make-up artist and hairdresser finished turning Helen into the perfect bride. They’d managed to smooth my hair into a mini up-do and given me immaculate fifties cat-eyes flicks; I wasn’t unaware that this was the prettiest I’d ever looked, and I’d be spending most of the day standing next to Joe, doing the ‘bridesmate’ duties of handing out orders of service and explaining which loo was the gents to the non-Welsh speakers.
‘I don’t understand why you can’t just say something,’ she said, also for the millionth time. ‘It’s not the nineteenth century. And he likes you. It’s so obvious.’
‘But Joe likes everyone, it’s his Sagittarian thing, man,’ I groaned. ‘And there are so many things that could go wrong. Work. My living situation. What people might think if I got promoted afterwards—’
‘Shut up, Rosie,’ said Helen. ‘Listen to me. If I’ve learned one thing this year, it’s that if you’re constantly looking ahead to what’s about to go wrong, you really stand to miss what’s already going right.’
‘I bet that sounded better on the original fortune cookie.’
She ignored me. ‘Joe’s not going to be working here forever. Laurence can hardly give him the job you’re already doing, can he? And what happened to his six-month stay? He’s only still here because he likes ‘doing weddings’
‘Well …’
Helen tilted her head so the hairdresser could pin the chic birdcage veil onto her signature French pleat, and gazed at me through it. ‘Can’t you just let yourself be happy for once? Take a chance. I am going to throw the bouquet at you this afternoon, and by the time Wynn and I leave for Paris tonight, I want you to tell me you’ve seized the moment with Joe.’
‘But how?’ I tingled at the thought of seizing the moment. I’d seen couples ‘seizing the moment’ most weekends for the past five years – weddings were like a cocktail shaker for hormones.
‘You’ll think of something,’ said Helen, and stood up, smoothing her satin gown, ready for her Rolls-Royce downstairs. ‘You usually do. And if you don’t, there’s always champagne.’
*
Wynn and Helen’s wedding was beautiful, even though I didn’t understand half of it. In fact, it was the bits I didn’t understand that made me cry most. That and the singing. We all cried at the singing. The Welsh could have guarded the border with England just by singing at them and then stealing their weapons while they blubbed uncontrollably.
Afterwards, the new Mr and Mrs Davies emerged blinking into the sunlight outside the chapel in a shower of confetti and rose petals, started by me and Joe. Our fingers touched as we both reached into the basket of petals at the same time, and an electric shock tingled up my bare arm.
Say something, I told myself, but I couldn’t think of anything. I just smiled dopily, and he smiled back, and everything about the world suddenly felt absolutely right. I really didn’t want to ruin that moment, so I didn’t.
Nevin ran through the photographs in double-quick time, and then Geraint and the ushers loaded us onto the red London bus hired to take us back to the hotel for the reception. It had a white ribbon on the front, and disposable cameras and mini bottles of champagne on the original checked seats. Once Joe and I had clattered up to the top deck like excitable schoolkids, we discovered that Helen had reserved the front seat for us. The ride back through the oldest streets of the City in the Routemaster, sipping champagne like ghost tourists, was magical. Another moment I didn’t want to spoil.