The Honeymoon Hotel (17 page)

‘Let me see.’ He pushed himself off the doorframe and sloped inside.

I folded my arms and watched him as he squinted at the various Post-Its. ‘Blue for groom, pink for bride, red stars one to five for “difficult behaviour”,’ I explained. ‘Gold star for single.’

He went to tug a ratty plait, remembered they’d all been cut off, stuck a hand into his hair instead, and frowned. ‘Does it
have to be this complicated? Can’t you just run a buffet and let them sit where they want?’

I didn’t dignify that with a response.

‘What if …?’ Joe went to move a Post-it, then stopped. ‘No. Hmm.’

‘See?’ I said, feeling vindicated. ‘Not so easy, is it?’

‘Hang on. I haven’t finished. What if … you moved this person?’ He peeled a Post-it off the plan.

‘What? No! That’s the groom. You can’t move him.’

‘And
this
person.’

I folded my arms. ‘Again, the bride. Not really movable.’

‘Why not?’ said Joe. ‘I reckon they’re the
most
movable. If you stick the bride and groom here at their own special top top-table …’ He picked up a pen from my desk, drew a small square by the French windows on the plan, and restuck Issy and Adam on it. ‘There. Frees up two whole places. One for the stepmother and another just in case Issy’s dad ditches his current wife and trades up again before the wedding. You did say Issy didn’t really get on with half the people at the top table.’

I stared at the plan. It was totally wrong, but at the same time, genius. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. An unexpected calm spread through my chest.

‘You want to say, “That’s brilliant, Joe”,’ Joe prompted me.

‘It’s very unconventional.’

He made an outraged choking noise. ‘What’s the point of convention if it doesn’t work? Lighten up.’

I half-smiled at him. It turned into a full smile, despite
myself: Joe looked so pleased with his solution. I couldn’t help myself. ‘You keep saying that.’

‘And I’ll keep saying it until you do,’ he replied with an even cheesier smile. ‘Without me having to remind you the whole time.’

*

Helen’s new man Wynn was so far from what I was expecting that when Dominic and I met at Jocques fifteen minutes late, as usual, I was relieved that we seemed to have got there before them.

It was only when I scanned the nearly empty restaurant and spotted Helen, leaning in very close to a man I’d have taken for Prince Harry if I hadn’t had my contact lenses in, that I realized Helen and Wynn had arrived. They’d probably been there for ages, but they wouldn’t have noticed if we’d been another hour. Or two. Or not arrived at all.

Everything about the way they were sitting screamed ‘honeymoon dating period’. The menus lay unread next to them, and their fingers were entwined as they gazed into each other’s eyes with that greedy, giddy eagerness that you get when you think you’ve chanced upon the one person in the entire world you were supposed to meet all along. My heart fizzed with a funny cocktail of emotions at how happy Helen looked. I was happy for her, but at the same time, I wished someone would look at me like that. I wasn’t sure anyone ever had.

Wynn said something to her and smiled shyly. Helen laughed, and as she looked up, she spotted us, and waved.

‘Dominic.’ I nudged him. He was already disputing some
spelling error in the signage outside with the bewildered girl at the door. ‘Dominic!’

‘… should have the apostrophe
after
the
s
. Is it the bar of Jocques? Or is it a collection of Jocques? What? Are they here?’ He frowned and I pointed. ‘Whoa. Are you sure that’s him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Blimey,’ said Dominic.

I tried not to stare as we made our way over, but I knew what Dominic meant. Wynn was the exact reverse of every single boyfriend I’d ever known Helen to have. He was gingery, chunky in a rugby-playing fashion, and had with him what looked like a zip-up cardigan. It might have been a jumper with a half-zip. Weirdly, whichever it was, he didn’t look terrible in it. He looked … reassuring. Not malnourished, wired, angry, tormented or dangerous in any form.

He also got up with a polite smile as we got nearer, and offered his hand to shake, which was a definite improvement on Seamus.

Helen leaped up as well, and introduced us with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for celebrity diners. ‘Guys, this is Wynn!’

‘
Guys
?’ muttered Dominic. ‘What? Are we in
Friends
now?’ but I rushed to shake Wynn’s hand.

‘Hello! I’m Rosie, and this is Dominic.’

‘Ah, the famous Dominic,’ said Wynn affably. He had a gentle Welsh accent, all daffodils and Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer. ‘I read your column every week. Very funny.’

Dominic could never resist a reader. ‘Thanks.’

‘Bit worried we’ll end up in it this evening!’ Wynn glanced at Helen. ‘Helen did warn me that you write everything down.’

‘Wynn!’ Helen pretended to look cross, and nudged him. This time I boggled. Helen never pretended to look cross. She was either fine, or very cross, nothing in between.

‘You’re perfectly safe. Dominic only writes down the stuff I say,’ I said.

‘And only then if it’s funny,’ added Dominic.

‘In which case he passes it off as his own.’

Helen raised her eyebrows.

‘Ha-ha!’ I added, to make it clear that this was just lighthearted banter and not the aftermath of a tense conversation we’d had over breakfast about ‘Betty’s’ disdain for the wine list at a restaurant I actually went to quite regularly and liked, and which now refused to serve me ‘anything with a screw top.’

‘So, are you reviewing this place?’ Wynn asked as we settled into our booth. It was covered with tartan, with black leather trim.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Dominic, studying the menu, also tartan/leather-trimmed. ‘I’m going to have to make you two eat anything with a sauce, and a pudding each.’

‘Brilliant.’ Wynn flapped his (tartan) napkin over his knee. ‘I love a pudding.’

‘Wow! So do I!’ exclaimed Helen, as if they’d discovered their mothers grew up on the same street, had the same birthday,
and
had stood next to each other at a Wings gig in 1978. ‘What kind?’

‘Chocolate ones? And meringue-y ones.’

‘Me too! That’s amazing!’

‘Is it going to be like this all evening?’ Dominic muttered, while they did a ‘you, no you, no you’ routine over the warm rolls that arrived at the usual breakneck speed, with extra butter in a thistle-shaped pot. ‘In which case, can they bring me a tartan-trimmed bucket?’

‘Stop it,’ I whispered, already seeing how this might play out in the column. ‘And it’s lovely, so don’t spoil it.’

‘How can I spoil anything? It’s like we’re not here.’

‘Don’t be mean. I’m sure we were like this once.’

But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure that Dominic and I ever had been. Our early days had been above the table, all sparky repartee and spontaneous jokes, whereas Helen and Wynn were actually holding hands. Touching each other.

I reminded myself that at least the hands were where we could see them, unlike all of the double dates we’d suffered with Seamus and his ilk. Most of those might as well have been single dates for all the time Dominic and I spent twiddling our thumbs alone while Helen and the
chef du jour
‘went for a cigarette’ outside. Helen didn’t even smoke.

‘Everything okay?’ Wynn enquired. ‘What have you put about the place so far? Because this bread’s great. Very tasty.’

‘I love the
fleur de sel
on the butter,’ added Helen. ‘And the imprint. I might nick that for ours.’

‘I’m going to order some wine,’ I said, making the executive decision that Dominic and I would get a cab home tonight. I loved Helen, but I’d need a drink to get through three courses of this.

I looked up to see where our waiter had got to, but he seemed to be heading our way already.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Sorry to bother you, but do any of you own a black Smart car?’

‘I should hope not,’ snorted Dominic. ‘Do we look like the kind of people who drive around in oversize trainers with a steering wheel?’

‘Yes,’ said Helen. ‘It’s mine.’

Dominic stared at her, ignored my kick under the table, and said, ‘Oh, okay. That makes sense.’

‘Is there a problem? Someone hasn’t crashed into it, have they?’ Helen groaned. ‘I’ve only just got it back from the body shop. I’m not brilliant at parking,’ she explained to Wynn, who just smiled.

Dominic spluttered on his wine. ‘You can’t park a Smart car? Doesn’t parking a Smart car mean just stopping somewhere and turning the thing off?’

‘Ha-ha,’ I said as if he was joking, then narrowed my eyes quickly.
Not tonight
.

The waiter pointed towards the door. ‘Sorry, but you might want to get out there – it’s being towed.’

‘Where did you park it?’ asked Wynn.

‘Round the corner … by the skip?’

Dominic let out a groan, and I could sense his Parking Warden Fury monologue rising up in his head. It was one of his favourites and ended in a freestyle rant about parking fines being used to fund CCTV to generate more parking fines. I felt a flicker of irritation. I didn’t want to hear it tonight.
I wanted this evening to be about Helen and Wynn, not Dominic.

‘They’re quite fierce round here,’ explained the waiter. ‘We had one customer throw himself on the bonnet of his car to stop them ticketing it, but the parking warden just ticketed the customer.’

‘But we only arrived half an hour ago!’ wailed Helen, scrabbling under the table for her bag. ‘How can they have ticketed it and got it towed already?’

‘Did you park it
in
the skip?’ Dominic inquired.

‘No need to panic, I’m sure we can sort it out.’ Wynn pushed his chair back and pulled his cardi-jumper back on. ‘Let’s go and have a word with the tow company. Calm down, lovely. Nothing to get het up about.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Dominic honked, but Wynn just smiled pleasantly.

‘I’m used to dealing with anxious individuals at work,’ he said. ‘You learn to calm people down when you’re holding a drill.’

I watched in amazement as he escorted Helen out of the restaurant, his hand on the small of her back as she shoved her hands into her blonde hair and flapped her hands in panic. By the time Wynn was opening the door for her (he was opening the door for her!), the flapping had calmed down to a light flutter.

Dominic and I stared after them, but sadly the frosted glass in the door prevented any amusing visions of Smart cars being hoisted into the air.

‘Well,’ said Dominic, once the waiter had brought us another complimentary basket of tiny rolls. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You told me we were coming out for dinner with Helen and her new boyfriend, but we seem to have come out for dinner with Helen and her accountant.’

‘No,’ I said in equally pretend patient tones, ‘Wynn’s definitely her boyfriend.’

‘No. Helen’s boyfriend is a melodramatic speed-freak chef.’

‘Dominic! Don’t you listen to a thing I tell you? Helen
dumped
Seamus after that business at the awards ceremony. Wynn is—’

‘No, no, no.’ He held up a finger to stop me. ‘No, no, no. Not just Seamus.
All
Helen’s boyfriends are (a) melodramatic, (b) off their tiny chumps on something or other, and (c), because of the above, usually chefs.’ He made a sweeping gesture towards the door. ‘
This
man is normal and quiet.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘And that’s a good thing.’

He sat back in his chair, giving it his full ‘
pantomime despair
’. ‘Well, I give it two weeks.’

‘I don’t,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Why do you have to be so negative? Helen says she didn’t realize how exhausting it was to be with someone as high-maintenance as Seamus until she met Wynn. Wynn looks after her.’

‘Yes, but the novelty of that’ll wear off. Women like Helen thrive on drama.’

‘Seriously, Dominic, stop being negative for the sake of it. No woman
likes
drama. They just put up with it. It’s an annoying
by-product of going out with certain kinds of men.’ I evil-eyed Dominic him, and this time I wasn’t pretending.
Women like Helen
. That sounded kind of … sexist to me.

‘What are you saying?’ he asked, playfully popping another roll into his mouth, and for a weird, wavering moment, it almost broke out of me:
Why can’t you be more like Wynn?

I stuffed it back in. I loved Dominic because he was spiky and acerbic and a writer. That’s what I’d fallen for. You couldn’t have all that
and
gentle hands on the small of your back.

Could you?

‘Can you imagine what Seamus would be doing now if his car got towed?’ Dominic asked with relish. ‘If he’d managed to get his licence back, of course. Ha! That was quite a night. You have to hand it to Seamus, there was never a dull moment. Happy days.’

‘No, Dom, not happy days. Stressful days.’ I could feel something turning inside me. I wasn’t enjoying the way Dominic was deliberately not listening to anything I was saying.

‘Oh, come on,’ he went on with a cackle. ‘Who wants to tell their kids about the time Mummy’s friend filed his VAT return on time? Eh? Like that friend of my mother’s who tells us about the drunk vicar at her daughter’s wedding every single time we see her. That’s not an anecdote! That’s a
non
ecdote.’

I stared at the door, straining my neck to catch a glimpse of what was going on. ‘There’s a happy medium, Dom. Helen works long hours; she needs someone to cosset her, appreciate her—’

‘She’ll get bored with nice,’ insisted Dominic. ‘Girls always
say they want back rubs, but that’s what sports masseurs are for.’

‘No, they don’t,’ I said, staring straight at him. ‘Sometimes they like men who bring them flowers and tell them they love them.’

He stared back at me. ‘Is that what you want?’

I felt as if I were falling down a deep well. Down and down and down. Of course it was. ‘Do I even have to answer that?’

He didn’t have time to respond because Helen and Wynn were weaving their way through the tables. Wynn looked relaxed; Helen seemed bewildered, but in a good way.