Well Groomed (95 page)

‘It’s Zoe Goldsmith’s daughter!’ Sally let out a surprised laugh. ‘It’s India. India Goldsmith.’

The motorised drive of the
Cheers!
camera had started to clash with Roger’s Phillip Glass composition, which was getting thoroughly carried away now and had reached an extraordinary movement that sounded as though he was hitting the piano keys with a mallet. Cowering beside Penny, Enid the Dalmatian started to howl with distress.

At the top of the aisle, Niall was shaking so much that the best man had to take his hand and root it to a chair for support.

‘She’s here. She looks terrific. You’re about to be married. Good luck.’

Niall finally managed to look around, dark eyes swimming with pride. ‘Jesus, she’s beautiful, isn’t she? Utterly beautiful. I can’t believe she’s going to be my wife.’

At the rear of the hall, Lisette was watching the bridal train with increasing suspicion and listening avidly to the conversation in front of her.

‘I must say Tash has put on a lot of weight again,’ Cass was saying. ‘She looks terribly squat – shorter, if that’s possible.’

‘That’s not the dress I saw in Paris,’ Sophia gasped. ‘She must have positively porked out recently – she can’t fit into it anymore, I bet. That must be hired.’

‘Jolly thick veil, too. D’you think she’s developed spots?’

‘Bound to, she was always prone to them. She must be stooping or something – she almost looks shorter than Em.’

‘Was she looking fat at Badminton then?’

Sophia turned around so sharply that the brim of her hat poked her aunt in the eye once more. Behind her, Ben was almost floored as it smacked him simultaneously on the forehead ‘That’s the odd thing – she looked rather slim then. It’s hardly possible to pile it on in a week, is it?’

‘My dear, we are talking about Tash here.’

‘True.’

Lisette watched the bride pass and grew even more suspicious. Standing to the right of Niall and his strangely familiar best man, Hugo suddenly craned around and caught her eye in the briefest of winks.

Lisette looked from him, to Niall, to the
Cheers!
photographer and then the bride. Something about the stance was uncanny; the way she walked reminded her of someone. Then she caught sight of the neurotic, bow-decked dalmatian at Penny Moncrieff’s feet, positively gyrating with recognition as the bride passed, and found herself starting to smile. Dear, theatrical Niall had finally found a woman who could match him in the imagination stakes. Moments later, to the astonishment of all around her, she started to laugh out loud too.

Niall wasn’t marrying Tash French at all, she realised. He was marrying the woman that her last-ditch tabloid story had accused him of sleeping with for the past month. The woman with whom he was hopelessly in love. Niall was marrying Zoe Goldsmith.

She was way ahead of the rest of the guests in her mental gymnastics. When the veil went back, there were a few exclamations that Tash had gone blonde. When the best man twisted a long neck around to check for the ring in a waistcoat pocket, there were a few more intakes of breath, and confused murmurings.

But it was not until the registrar cheerfully announced that they were gathered together to watch Niall being united in marriage with Zoe that the communal gasps seemed to suck all the air from the room, and the
Cheers!
photographer got so thoroughly carried away that his camera fell off its tripod.

‘I don’t know the bride from a bar of soap,’ Alicia told Etty loudly as she fed Thug yet more choc drops. ‘But I know the best man – friend of Hugo’s. Nice chap, can’t remember his name . . .’

When the new bride and groom retired to the ante-room to sign the register, Rory Franks was prodded hard in the ribs and realised that this was his cue. Fumbling and swearing for a few seconds as he searched for his photocopied words under his chair, he finally clambered over Niall’s agent and staggered to the front, tripping over several bridesmaids.

Tall, hugely attractive but utterly wasted by booze and drugs, he scanned the page with his reddened eyes and, finding that he couldn’t focus, threw it over his shoulder and trusted to memory. He was supposed to be reading ‘He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven’, but didn’t know that by heart, and resorted to Shakespeare instead. Shooting Franny a top-shelf wink, he started to recite in his gruff, feral voice:

‘Oh never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seemed my flame to qualify!

As easy might I from myself depart,

As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:

That is my home of love; if I have ranged,

Like him that travels I return again

Blah blah blah blah . . .’

He paused as he forgot a few lines, but such was his magnificent presence that only a few guests noticed. Striking up again with a wide smile, he went on:

‘Never believe, though in my nature reign’d

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so prepost’rously be stain’d,

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:

For nothing this wide Universe I call,

Save thou, my Rose: in it thou art my all.’

‘I THINK NIALL WAS weeping with joy when he said “I do”,’ Penny sighed dreamily. ‘That is
so
romantic.’

‘I was crying too,’ Gus grumbled. ‘That dog of Tash’s smells so high, all our eyes were watering.’

Posing for
Cheers!
photographs on the rear lawns of Fosbourne Holt House, Tash stood beside Niall’s mother for a brief moment. At first hysterical, then struck dumb and finally apoplectic at the bridal switch, Ma had now been pacified by several large tots of Bushmills from her own case and was crying openly once more, delighted that her son appeared to be so deliriously happy with his new bride.

‘She seems a sweet thing, so she does,’ she wept, giving Tash a huge kiss on the cheek, leaving a great smear of lipstick that would be immortalised in photographs for generations to come like a strawberry birthmark. ‘But you could have warned me, child. I’ve given yourself and Niall a decanter with your initials engraved on it. D’you think you can change a T to a Z?’

‘Easily,’ Tash assured her.

Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t,’ Ma eyed her sagely. ‘You may yourself marry a man whose name begins with N.’

‘I doubt that.’ Tash spotted Hugo watching to see that she was okay.

‘Ah, well.’ Ma pulled the cigarette from her husband’s mouth and re-did his tie as the photographer started barking orders. ‘I might be able to give it to another couple if not. I ’clare, I go to enough weddings, but none quite like this.’

Sally and Sophia were gathering the bridesmaids and pageboys together, most of whom were either in tears, riot or revolt.

‘You
will
smile for the camera, Lotty, or all your teeth will fall out,’ Sophia told her wailing daughter.

Sally removed Tom’s Nintendo and tried to stop Tor from stuffing her rose head-dress up her skirt.

‘I always think we girls should wear hats and no knickers,’ she told her, plonking it back on her head and turning to Sophia. She was thoroughly overexcited by the day’s events.

‘Did you have any idea?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Well, I was rather amazed that they were going through with it all, and I had guessed something was awry,’ Sophia told her, pulling up Josh’s trousers by picking the little boy up by the waistband and waiting for him to drop further into them. ‘But I never would have believed this, no. I mean, is it legal?’

‘Apparently Niall sorted it all out last week – although I think several cases of champagne changed hands to speed things through. It’s not like church where one has to call the banns and all that religious stuff – one just reapplies for a licence, warns the registrar to say a different name in the ceremony, and you’re hitched.’

‘Gosh.’ Sophia kissed Josh on his curly blond head and let him go. She squinted across to Zoe who was being blissfully calm and serene as she was introduced to most of Niall’s confusing, bickering, hard-drinking extended family. ‘What’s she like? I’ve hardly met her.’

‘Lovely,’ Sally sighed, glancing briefly towards Matty. ‘Perfect for Niall. I think she’ll calm him down without knocking the spirit out of him. Very strange cook.’

‘Jolly attractive, though,’ Sophia sniffed rather resentfully. ‘Cass was so shocked that she walked straight into the gent’s loos after the ceremony by mistake.’

‘I know.’ Sally giggled. ‘Apparently Rory Franks was in there sniffing coke. She thought he was stooping over a mirror because he’d lost a contact lens and offered to help him find it, telling him he hadn’t a hope of spotting it with “that dusty-looking glass”. The next moment she’s whipped it off him and wiped it clean with a hanky. He’s distraught.’

To the front of Fosbourne Holt House, glowering beneath a flower-strewn harness, Snob was waiting on the impressive gravel carriage sweep, pawing angrily at the pebbles with a front leg and glaring belligerently at all around him. His pink nose bobbed as he flicked flies from his twitching ears, and he snapped at the harsh driving bit, loathing its presence in his mouth.

The whites of his eyes rolled menacingly as the bride and groom approached.

‘Jesus, I’m not getting in that thing with him in front.’ Niall regarded him in terror. The borrowed trap, despite its lick of polish, was desperately woodwormed and rickety, and Snob looked far too eager to rev off the grid and race everyone to the reception party.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Zoe told him, letting Enid jump into the trap first, her green bow tattered from being chewed by Wally during the ceremony. ‘Gus slipped him a huge tranquilliser in his morning feed – I saw him. He’s tottering around like a seaside donkey.’

Niall looked disbelieving but, as promised, when Gus climbed up in front to drive them back to Fosbourne Ducis, Snob set off at a steady if grumpy amble, shooting Tash a resentful look as she stood alongside with the cheering wedding crowd, throwing confetti and swallowing most of it as it flew back in her face.

Watching them go, Tash realised that her cheeks were streaming with tears. She looked around for Hugo, but before her eyes could search him out, found herself catching sight of Lisette hastily dabbing a tear from her own cheek, her back turned so that only Tash saw. It was so utterly unexpected that she stared in amazement. Looking up, Lisette suddenly smiled and moved forward until they were standing just a foot apart. Her huge, luminous eyes were glittering with emotion.

‘You must loathe me, Tash, and I can’t say I blame you.’

Tash shook her head. ‘Why should I loathe you? If it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Lisette groaned, closing her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve made you terribly unhappy, haven’t I?’

Tash blew her nose. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life,’ she said truthfully.

‘I’ll get my solicitors to sign my share of the horse over to you first thing next week,’ Lisette was muttering. Suddenly the huge eyes opened wider. ‘Did you say you were happy?’

Tash was gaping at her too. ‘Did you say you were going to sign Snob over to me?’

‘My half of him.’ Lisette nodded. ‘And the money he won at Badminton – I certainly didn’t earn it, and after today I don’t think I’ll need it. But I have a condition to attach.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Tash asked shakily. She knew only too well how unpleasant Lisette’s conditions could be.

‘You know how Hugo feels about you, don’t you?’ Lisette suddenly smiled. It was such a sweet smile and so totally without malice that it transformed her face entirely.

‘Yes.’ Tash sucked her bottom lip.

‘And you feel the same way about him?’

‘Yes.’ Tash sucked her top lip too, heart hammering.

‘In that case, I want you to add a line to your best man’s speech.’ Lisette suddenly took hold of her hand and squeezed it. ‘I think I owe Hugo a favour, and this might just be it . . .’

Guests were milling about on the gravel now, offering or begging lifts, gossiping like mad about what had happened and telling each other the quickest route to the farm.

There was a small press pack prowling around too, originally there just to get a few celeb shots of Niall for the Sunday supplements and gossip columns, but now snapping everything in sight – especially Tash – and barking into mobile phones as they realised they were on to a wonderful front-page splash.

Trying to hide behind a bay tree, she found herself standing next to Matty who was both hugely put out that he wasn’t in on the secret and hugely relieved that his friend had married a woman of whom he thought the world, not his feckless sister.

‘I owe you an apology for not coming clean.’ Tash scuffed her black brogues on the gravel as she mindlessly covered up the hoof slides. ‘But we thought the fewer people who knew the better.’

Matty nodded, stroking Linus’s fine, silken hair and squinting across the park to the largest of the sun-drenched lakes.

‘Mother knew, I take it?’

She grinned. ‘We tried to keep it a secret from her, but you know what she’s like. If she’d still thought I was marrying Niall this morning, she’d have drugged me to keep me away. She guessed that I’d changed my mind, but Niall got into such a panic that everything snowballed and we left it far too late to explain to everyone. The only thing we could do was ask for her help. And Daddy’s.’

‘But not mine?’

‘The more people who knew, the messier it was going to become. It seemed much easier to do it this way. We didn’t tell Sophia either.’

‘Oh, c’mon!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Credit me with a bit more sense than her. I’m one of Niall’s oldest friends.’

‘Who hasn’t called in weeks,’ Tash reminded him. ‘Listen, you’re one of the reasons that Niall noticed Zoe in the first place.’

‘I what?’