Revenge of the Wedding Planner (22 page)

As it were.

It’s so good for taking your mind off your worries, painting walls with a gentle shade of chocolate. If you take it nice and slowly and really concentrate on getting the edges crisp and clean, you can
almost
forget your only daughter is in Australia and your boss is making a fool of herself with a younger man. Just before the shops closed, I nipped into town once more for some new light bulbs and a few decorative sachets of cinnamon and mixed spice. And then home to pick up our old sofa bed. By the time Julie did show up at the lighthouse the following afternoon, the office had been completely transformed. The walls were a luxurious pale chocolate colour and there was a matching rug on the floor. The desks had been placed closer to the main window and there was a big tasselly lamp standing on each of them. Lovely boudoir lamps with feathers and beads round the edges of the shade. And the bases were made of mottled brown glass. I’d brought in some dried grasses and twigs, and pots from home to fill up the empty spaces and there was a length of cream muslin wrapped round a gold-coloured pole above the big window. A huge bunch of fake white lilies stood in a tall glass vase by the
door and our small sofa bed (it was fine with a cream throw over it) was squeezed in too, for good measure. Luckily, it’s very light and comes apart easily so I was able to trail it up the stairs in three pieces. There were comfy beige velvet cushions on the office chairs and a small gold star-burst mirror on the wall. It was thoroughly gorgeous, I have to say: very sophisticated and comfortable. The acoustics were softened too. My voice on the telephone even sounded different, more sexy and authoritative somehow. There was enough paint left over to give the kitchenette a coat of Soft Truffle and I also put a bunch of twigs in there, on the counter beside the kettle and mugs. Oh, it was so much nicer than before, I can’t tell you. And with the cinnamon sachets dotted round the room, it smelt lovely as well. I dared Julie to say it wasn’t gorgeous and she didn’t disappoint me.

‘It’s
gorgeous
, Mags,’ she said, taking it all in. ‘Really it is. Absolutely gorgeous. You
have
been busy, thanks very much. The clients will love this. I suppose we should have done it years ago.’

‘Oh, great! Ta, Julie! You’re not just saying that to humour me?’

‘No, I love it. It’s very cosy. I’ve been spending a lot more time at my flat than before and all-white is a bit tiring on the retinas, I’ll be honest with you.’

She did look exhausted.

‘What is it, Julie?’ I said then. ‘Has Jay done a bunk with your DVD player?’

I can’t resist saying that – DVD player. It’s about the only gadget I can remember the name of.

‘No, Jay has not done a bunk with anything,’ Julie said
crossly. ‘Why would you say something nasty and mean to me like that?’

‘I’m sorry, Julie,’ I said at once. ‘I meant it to sound funny. What’s the matter?’

‘It’s worse than Jay scarpering with the hi-fi, actually,’ she suddenly admitted, slumping heavily onto the sofa bed and closing her eyes. I noticed she’d trowelled on the foundation that day, presumably to cover her under-eye shadows. ‘I think I could cope if Jay left me. I never thought he wouldn’t leave me some day. But that bikini wax I had yesterday drove him clean wild. We didn’t sleep once last night, not for a single minute. He was on his knees for hours. He said he loved me.’

I was a bit shocked, both with the mental image this confession conjured up and also with Jay’s insistence that he was in love with Julie.

Too much information, dear! I was trying not to get involved.

‘I forgot to tell you, Julie, we’re nearly out of envelopes,’ I said, interrupting her mid-flight. ‘Should I get onto our supplier and order some more? What about changing the shade to buff? That’s very
in
right now. And it would go with our new interior. We could have business cards made up with a little picture of the office on them? You know, like the card you got from the spa in Galway?’

‘Whatever you like! For heaven’s sake, it’s only stationery. Are you not listening to me, woman? Jay said he loved me, Mags. He must have said it a hundred times yesterday. He wants us – oh, you won’t believe this – but he wants us to get married. He knows I can’t have children but he wants us to get married straight away.’

‘Oh, Julie!’

‘I mean, the age gap is silly and we’ve known each other only two minutes but Jay said he’s found his soulmate. And that would be bad enough, but so does Gary. I mean, Gary wants us to get married as soon as possible. All last night he was going on and on about the meaning of life, et cetera. He says he doesn’t want a big expensive wedding now, after the trauma of the car accident and all. And he forgives me for having a silly little flirtation in Galway. Thanks for telling him about that, Mags, by the way. Not! He says the car crash made him realize life is short and we should live every day as if it’s going to be our last. He wants us to get married in a quiet ceremony and go away on an extended honeymoon as soon as we can arrange it. And until his leg is better he can’t work with the horses anyway so what are we waiting for?’

‘Oh, Julie.’

‘Is that all you can say? Advice please, Margaret! I have two men wanting to marry me and proposing to me on a daily basis. What should I do, Mags? I’m getting all confused and I’m never out of the shower these days, what with all the hanky-panky. My hands are shrivelled away to raisins, look!’ She showed them to me. ‘What will I
do
? My engagement ring keeps falling off. Is that a sign I should leave Gary, do you think? I mean, I only stayed with him out of sympathy, and guilt. I mean, he only broke his leg because he was speeding down to Galway to rescue me from having an affair.’

‘Julie Sultana,’ I said carefully, ‘I have absolutely no idea what you should do. No idea at all. No idea
whatsoever
.’

‘Oh, now, Margaret Grimsdale, don’t be coy, you must
have some opinion! You’re the most opinionated person I’ve ever met in my entire life. You’ve often said you could set the world to rights if you were left in charge for just one day. So come on, advise me. Should I be clever and agree to marry sensible-head Gary and go straight out to Saintfield and finish with Jay today? Or should I leave Gary for good like I originally planned, and live with Jay in the apartment for a while and get to know him better? Or should I go completely mad and marry Jay and just see what happens? Although I’ll make him sign a pre-nup first, of course. I’m quite a wealthy woman, you know. Or should I leave both of them and stay single for a while? You know, live a celibate existence? That’s very zen right now. Get into meditation? Give my bits and pieces a chance to recover? I’m starting to chafe down below. How on earth do prozzies manage, I wonder. I suppose they go a bit numb after a while and the drink’s bound to be a comfort.’ And she made a face at me to show she was in considerable discomfort in the ‘intimate feminine area’ as they always describe it on advertisements for sanitary towels, tampons, panty-liners, moist wipes and so on.

God, I do wish they’d stop all this in-your-face ‘bodily function’ advertising. And ban the babies’ nappies and that silly blue water, while they’re at it. Most upsetting to see ads that remind you of blood and urine (and the rest) when you’re trying to relax of an evening. They irritate me, those ads. Which is why I probably spoke out of turn to Julie.

‘Celibacy would be a tough call for you, Julie,’ I said quietly, thumping some keys on my computer. ‘Your nether regions might go into shock.’

‘What do you mean by that, you cheeky monkey? Are you implying I’m some sort of bad woman? Are you, Mags? You’re not going all saintly on me, are you? Because I couldn’t stand that, I’ll tell you now. I’m not working with a moralistic bore. I couldn’t bear it!’

‘No, actually, I’m not a moralistic bore, Julie. You can do what you like with Gary and Jay. Introduce them to one another and have a threesome, if you fancy a change. It’s a free country. Mind you, I don’t think pre-nups are valid in the UK. Each case is tested on its own merits, so I believe. So you might want to make an appointment with a good solicitor before you run off and marry your toy boy. Just give me a bit of notice, will you? Because I’m going to book myself two weeks’ holiday on a desert island to get away from Gary Devine. He’ll blame me for all of this, you know? For not telling him.’

‘Mags, are you cross with me?’ Julie asked then, her lovely face creased with hurt and confusion. Maybe I’d been a bit too sharp with her, I decided, remembering Charlotte and Sidney’s crazy antics many years before. ‘Have I done something to annoy you?’

‘Now, Julie, you listen to me,’ I said kindly but firmly. ‘You’re my best and dearest friend and I love you like a sister. More than a sister, actually. Because my sisters can be a bit touchy sometimes on the subject of marriage and children. And I can talk to you without worrying about saying the wrong thing every time. But I am not, repeat
not
getting emotionally involved in this situation with yourself and Jay O’Hanlon and Gary Devine. I’ve just buried my father and seen Alicia-Rose off to Australia, and my eldest son’s girlfriend is in a psychiatric hospital
at death’s door from anorexia. And he’s dropped out of a top course at university and is now spending his days putting toilets together, wearing Bill’s old overalls. I’m missing my sisters like mad, and Bill and I are almost broke after forking out in advance for a stonking great Celtic headstone complete with Gaelic engraving. Basically, I have more than enough to contend with at the moment, and I’m worn out styling this blessed bob properly every morning but, if I don’t style it, it looks like a wild hedge in a storm. So you do what you think is best regarding Gary and Jay but please, please,
please
don’t ask me for advice. Because whatever I say will be wrong, total rubbish, absolutely irrelevant and I’ll get the blame if anything disastrous happens. All I’ll say is this: we cannot legally release live bats at the wedding of the century. So I’m planning to commission some art students to make fake ones and we’ll get some puppeteers to raise them up on invisible threads from a purpose-built platform, which will have to be concealed behind a round tower or whatever high wall we can find when we
eventually
select a venue. Okay?’

Meaning, when Julie stopped bunking off work to shag Jay O’Hanlon, and helped me for a change.

‘So you’re not going to give me any advice at all, then?’

‘I’m sorry, Julie, but no, I’m not.’

‘Right,’ she said, flinging her handbag onto the desk. ‘Let’s get down to business. If that’s the way you want to play it! Double-check with our clients they don’t mind having fake bats at their wedding, then give the students the go-ahead and make sure you get receipts for the
materials, construction of the platform and the puppeteers’ expenses. And do make sure you get planning permission for the platform before you do anything else. I’ll go through these brochures again and settle on a venue today, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘You do that.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I will.’

And a grim silence descended upon us.

14. Gary

I know it makes no sense now in the cold light of day but as October and November drifted into December and the nights were getting long and icy and full of Christmas promise, I got rather used to Julie’s juggling-two-sets-of-balls routine. Logic dictates it couldn’t have gone on like that for ever but sometimes living in a fantasy world of your own creation is a hell of a lot easier than being a grown-up. I treated Jay O’Hanlon like a sitcom on the telly. He was always
there
in the background but he wasn’t really
real
, if you know what I mean? On a day-to-day basis work was running relatively smoothly. Julie was pulling her weight in the lighthouse (we were taking more wedding bookings than ever) and we hadn’t had a single snag or complaint. She didn’t tell me quite so many of the intimate details of her love life with Jay and I didn’t ask her searching questions any more, like, where will it all end? I suppose we both became complacent.

I was expecting a full house for Christmas, what with the terrific news my two sisters would definitely be jetting in from Sydney for the holidays. They said they fancied spending a bit of time with me and the family, and that they hadn’t had enough time to see us properly during the funeral and all. And, thank God, Alicia-Rose was coming home too. I’d paid for her ticket with a second
credit card Bill knew nothing about. Well, men do get a bee in their bonnet about personal debt, don’t they? Whereas women know that some things are far more important than sky-high interest rates. Like seeing your beautiful daughter again and being able to put your arms round her and squeeze her like a cobra. And besides, I thought to myself, the way global warming is going I might not live long enough to have to pay the credit-card company back.

I’d bought a new luxury sofa bed for the drawing room, for Ann and Elizabeth. And Bill had covered the shelves of video games with French shutters to make the space seem more homely. Emma was also being granted Christmas leave from the clinic and she’d surprised us all by writing to Alexander to ask if she could come to us for the holiday fortnight. She said she didn’t want to go to her own home because her two sisters had three babies between them and she didn’t want to be reminded of the miscarriage. Of course, Alexander was only too happy to have the chance to spend some time with Emma again. Though Bill did warn him not to get his hopes up, that Emma might just want to be friends with him this time. We decided she should have the guest room so she could have some space and privacy. (Which is why my sisters were going to be sleeping in the drawing room.) We made Emma’s room as nice as we could, with a portable television and a small floral armchair and matching footstool. There was a pale blue patchwork throw on the bed, some novels and magazines in a wicker basket, and a cute little pink radio on the bedside cabinet. The room was also fully stocked with brand-new towels and toiletries, and
there were some pink paper tulips in a wire basket on the window sill. I’d bought those tulips for my own bedroom but what can you do? I wanted Emma to feel at home after all the horrible things I’d said to her in the university.