Wedding Tiers (16 page)

Then she spotted Noah, who must have followed me, and smiled flirtatiously. ‘I can still do a high kick with the best of them,’ she told him, apropos of nothing. Grabbing Daisy’s arm, she began to lift one leg, before almost falling over and dragging her daughter with her.

‘I’m sure you can,’ Noah said, steadying Daisy, ‘but maybe it’s not quite the right time now for a demonstration?’

‘Mrs Martin, wouldn’t you like to go to the house with me and have a cup of coffee?’ I coaxed.

‘To hell with coffee!’ she exclaimed loudly. ‘Where’s Libby? Where’s my little girl? There’s something I want to say to her…’

She tried to pull away, but Daisy restrained her. ‘Now, Mum, you promised me you’d stick to non-alcoholic drinks! You don’t want to ruin Libby’s big day, do you?’

‘Oh, she’s always having big days. Never thinks of her poor old mother, stuck down in Brighton with a dried-up stick of a sour-faced daughter. No fun and frolics, no menfriends allowed or—’

‘I think it’s probably time we went back to the hotel,’ Daisy announced brightly. ‘Mum gets tired so easily these days. I wonder if you could help me get her to the car?’

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ Gloria declared. ‘Not unless this gorgeous man comes with me!’ She made a sudden lunge in Noah’s direction. ‘I know a nice gentlemen when I see one, one who’ll treat a girl right—like Libby’s father, he was a gentleman!’ She giggled and tapped the side of her nose, then leaned forward and whispered in my ear, ‘She and Tim have got more in common than they think, but mum’s the word!’

I stared at her. ‘What do you mean? Was Libby’s father—’

Daisy took her arm and said quickly, ‘Come along, Mum. You’re talking nonsense and it’s time to go home.’

When we’d seen them off, with Gloria protesting to the last, I led the way back indoors, out of the cold, but when I turned round Noah had vanished.

The Mummers of Invention were just about to start up again, having refreshed themselves with beer from the barrel they had brought with them. The drippy-looking girl who sang had been sitting with a strangely foxy-looking young man, but now got up and joined the others.

A large, warm hand suddenly grasped my shoulder and I turned to find myself inches from Rob Rafferty’s bright, intent blue gaze, not to mention all his other impressively sizzling attributes. ‘At last! I’ve been trying to find the most beautiful girl in the room for ages. Where have you been hiding, gorgeous?’

I looked around to see if someone else was standing behind me, but no, he was talking to
me
, Josie Gray. ‘N-nowhere,’ I stammered. ‘I mean…’

‘I’ve found you now, so why don’t we move somewhere a bit quieter so we can get to know each other better?’ he suggested with a bright, white smile.

Something funny seemed to be happening to my knees…

‘Rob!’ said Libby, suddenly appearing. ‘The Mummers are playing and everyone is dying to hear you sing with them again. There’ll be loads of time to talk to Josie afterwards.’

‘Right,’ he said, looking flattered. ‘Catch up with you later?’ he added softly, as he passed me. ‘I’ll sing the next one just for you.’

I nodded dumbly, fascinated and horrified in equal measure.

‘Honestly, Josie, I take my eyes off you for five minutes and there you are in the toils of the biggest womaniser in west Lancashire!’ scolded Libby. And where’s Noah? He’s supposed to be keeping an eye on you. I was
afraid
you might do something silly on the rebound, but I didn’t expect it to be with Rob Rafferty, of all people!’

‘I’ve no idea where Noah is.
He’s
the one who needs a keeper, not me. And I’m not about to do anything, silly or otherwise, with Rob Rafferty,’ I said with dignity. ‘I was just momentarily…well, to be honest,
stunned
that he took any notice of me. And he’s a bit overpoweringly gorgeous close to, isn’t he? Sexual allure seems to come off him in waves.’

‘I did tell you you looked lovely once you’d scrubbed up and put on a decent dress,’ she pointed out. ‘But Rob didn’t suggest
you go and find a quiet place so you could have a polite chat, you know.’

‘I suppose not. I’m a bit out of the habit of this kind of thing,’ I admitted, though in fact I’d never got
into
the habit, having always been with Ben. ‘Libby, before Rob waylaid me I was looking for you to tell you that Daisy’s taken your mum back to the hotel. She sent her love and said she hoped you had a lovely honeymoon and she would ring you when you got back.’

Libby looked relieved. ‘Oh, good. I don’t know what I’d do without Daisy looking after Mum. She needs a keeper. But if she’s drinking again, I’ll book her into an upmarket drying-out clinic and send Daisy on holiday.’

‘Stop worrying about everyone and just enjoy your big day,’ I urged her, and gave her a hug. ‘It’s all gone perfectly and Tim is a peach. You’ll be blissfully happy.’

‘But what about Pia?’ she said anxiously. ‘I think she’s starting to like Tim, but she’s barely spoken a word to me all day and—’

‘I’ll talk to Pia, but I don’t think she’s sulking, just preoccupied! She’s got her eye on Jasper Pharamond.’

It took me a while to find Pia, but she seemed pleased to see me and immediately asked my advice. ‘I fancy the socks off Jasper Pharamond, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. He’d much rather talk history with the vicar than to me!’

She sounded astonished, but she is very pretty, so I suppose being ignored by men was a novelty.

‘Well, he’s studying history and archaeology, so that figures. And by the way, I saw you flinging yourself all over Noah Sephton earlier.’

She giggled. ‘Poor Uncle Noah! He looked quite shocked.’

‘Surprised, certainly, but I told him you were doing it to try and catch Jasper’s attention—though he’s certainly not the type of boy to be impressed by that sort of tactic.’

‘You’re right, he didn’t even notice. I don’t think he likes me at all,’ she said gloomily.

‘I simply don’t think you’ve registered on his consciousness yet. According to his mother, his main interest is in what our ancestors ate and drank, and everyone loves to talk about their pet subjects, so if you have any thoughts along those lines, you could try that angle.’

‘What our ancestors ate and drank?’ Pia stared blankly at me for a minute, then squared her shoulders and marched away. A few minutes later I saw her gazing earnestly up into Jasper’s face with an expression of the utmost fascination.

From what his mother had told me earlier, there was a good chance he was telling her, in great and enthusiastic detail, what had passed through the digestive system of the Vikings and exactly how modern-day archaeologists knew so much about it.

Sooner her than me.

Noah reappeared in time to see Rob Rafferty wink at me from the stage and murmured as he passed me in the direction of the bar: ‘Pot calling the kettle black!’ So I expect he now thinks I am a heartless philanderer too—off with the old boyfriend and in search of a new one.

However, it was clear that wild horses wouldn’t drag Rob off the stage while he had an appreciative audience, which was a relief, really. I’d never had to cope with the Rob Raffertys of this world and I didn’t think I was ready to start just yet. Things were getting a bit blurry anyway. Perhaps someone had topped my glass up again when I wasn’t looking.

Libby and Tim must have gone back to the house to change at some point, for they reappeared in ordinary clothes and Nick clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the car is at the door to whisk the happy couple away, if you would all like to say goodbye.’

A private plane awaited them at John Lennon airport to fly them off to Pisa and their honeymoon. What it is to have rich friends!

We all trooped out—or staggered out, in my case, for something
odd seemed to have happened to my legs as the cold air hit me, though I’d felt absolutely fine until then. The late afternoon was rapidly turning dark, but the carriage lights around the courtyard were lit and a few feathery snowflakes drifted aimlessly down through the warm circles of light.

‘Mummy!’ Pia called, running out of the barn, and throwing herself at Libby in the abandoned way she used to when she was a little girl, and they hugged and kissed. Then Pia let her go and pushed her in Tim’s direction before going back to stand at Jasper’s side.

Libby paused as she reached the car to toss her bouquet over her shoulder. Hazily, I watched it describe an arc and then, rather suddenly, drop straight into my arms—or rather
arm
, for I was still holding a champagne glass in one hand. Pollen went up my nose, and I sneezed.

‘Bless you,’ Noah said gravely, materialising from the darkness beyond the nearest lantern.

Everyone else returned to the warm barn, laughing and talking, while I stood there in the darkness holding a bridal bouquet and thinking I was the last person who should have got it: it wasn’t an omen of my future fortunes, more fate’s last, ironic taunt.

But I had caught it and now I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Wired flowers didn’t last long, that was for sure. Should I run across to the cottage and put it in water?

Really, I should unwire the poor things, but I wasn’t sure if my hand-eye co-ordination was up to it…Still, I couldn’t just go back into the barn and leave it in a corner to wilt, so I set off for home at a brisk stagger.

The pavement undulated more than I remembered. The council really should do something about that. It was only as I reached my door and fumbled for my keys in the little Dolly bag looped over my wrist that I realised I was still holding my half-f glass. The sensible thing to do seemed to be to drain it, which
I did—and then a hand came over my shoulder and removed it from my grasp.

‘I saw you leave, a bit like the vanishing bride fleeing the scene,’ Noah’s voice said. ‘Only, since it seemed there was no young Lochinvar—or even Rob Rafferty—to whisk you away, I thought I’d better make sure you got home OK.’

‘I’m fine—and I’m no fleeing bride, that’s for sure,’ I said darkly, trying with immense concentration to insert my key into the door. I could see the key and I could see the keyhole, it just seemed terribly difficult to bring the two together. ‘I came home to put this bouquet in water, before the flowers died.’

‘Having trouble? Dear me, somebody seems to have rehung your door upside down while you were at the wedding,’ he said with awful irony, removing the key from my hand. ‘Let’s try it this way up, shall we? Ah, yes, that seems to have done the trick.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said with dignity, then spoiled the effect by tripping on the doorstep and falling headlong into the kitchen. I might have measured my length if he hadn’t grabbed me at the last minute: it was like an old clip of a torch dance I’d seen once on TV in which a man in a striped jumper kept throwing his partner away and then catching her. Someone gave a mad giggle as he reeled me in.

‘Were you laughing?’ I asked, frowning up at him, my chin pressed against his chest.

‘No, it was you.’

‘It can’t have been. I don’t
do
giggling.’

‘You probably don’t usually drink a bottle of champagne on an almost empty stomach, either,’ he said, still firmly holding me upright. He might be slender, but he was surprisingly strong.

‘Oh, I’m fine, absh…’ I paused, and with dignity got a grip on my unruly tongue. ‘
Abs
olutely fine,’ I assured him. ‘And you’re squishing Libby’s bouquet.’

He slowly released his hands from my arms and stepped back,
but although the room wavered a bit, I was perfectly steady on my legs as I reached out and switched on the light.

When I turned, he’d closed the door, though unfortunately with himself on this side of it, and was looking round in some surprise. ‘You know, my gran’s kitchen looked just like this!’

‘It
did
? But I thought you were this terribly posh urban type,’ I said absently, laying the bouquet on the table and getting out a vase and scissors, though I didn’t let go of the vase until I was certain it had made contact with the surface.

He laughed. ‘My grandfather was a poor Cazzini cousin. He had a small ice-cream business in St Helens and married a local girl. We’ve all got to come from somewhere, and whatever I may look and sound like now, my roots are in this area, just like yours. In fact, it wasn’t until I came back up for that photoshoot a few weeks ago that I realised how much I missed it. It felt like…well, like where I
belonged’

I wondered if Ben would miss it, this place where he’d always said his roots and his inspiration were.

My legs suddenly gave way and I sat down with more haste than grace on the nearest chair, reaching for the champagne glass that Noah had put there. It was empty. ‘You’ve drunk my champagne!’ I said indignantly.

‘No, you managed to do that yourself’.

‘Oh…then would you mind fetching me a bottle of wine from the rack under the stairs before you go back to the party?’ I asked, enunciating carefully. ‘Top left—the apple and damsh…damson.’

‘Wouldn’t you rather I made you a nice, strong cup of coffee?’

‘No.’

He looked at me for a moment, one quizzical eyebrow raised, then did what I asked.

‘If you want to pour yourself one too, the bottle opener’s in that left-hand drawer next to the stove and there are glasses in the cupboard above it,’ I said when he returned.

I began to unpick the bouquet. This is a fiddly job even if you haven’t got tanked up first, though champagne doesn’t have quite the mind-numbing qualities of my apple and damson wine. As soon as I’d finished with the bouquet and got rid of Noah, I intended drinking the rest of the bottle myself until I reached the nirvana of complete oblivion.

Meanwhile, he seemed quite at home in the cottage, even if he did look like a refugee from
Four Weddings and a Funeral.
He undid his collar, took his jacket off and hung it over a chair, then stoked up the range, opened the wine, and sat down at the table with me. After watching me for a moment, he took a flower and began to unwire it.

‘What is this stuff?’ he said after a cautious sip from his glass. ‘It has a kick like a mule.’

‘Just apples and damsons—but that’s nothing; you should taste the peapod. You’d never find your way to the door after a couple of glasses of that, let alone back to the party.’

Actually, I’ve a really hard head for alcohol, plus
I
wasn’t knocking it back at the reception like lemonade either,’ he said. ‘I’m not mad about champagne.’

‘I prefer sparkling elderflower,’ I agreed, dreamily. I was starting to feel quite warmed all the way through, and much better now I was sitting down and things weren’t swaying about so dizzyingly ‘Violet Grace makes a mean rhubarb wine, the one kind I don’t make, because we haven’t got rhubarb. It’s about the only edible thing they’ve got in their garden. It’s a lovely pink colour.’

‘Which one was Violet, again?’

‘Pale, mauve lipstick, blue velveteen coat and a home-made peacock-feather fascinator. Pansy was the one with red lipstick, black eyebrows, grey hair and a scarlet wool jacket with matching pill-box hat and Lily was in navy and white with a sort of tri-coloured velvet turban. They’re my friends…my good, good friends.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘Where’s your camera?’ I asked, peering at him.

‘I went and dropped it off at the gatehouse earlier.’

‘I thought I hadn’t seen you for a while after Daisy and Gloria left.’

‘I’m flattered you missed me. I thought your eyes were glued to the stage,’ he said, and I gave him a scathing look and carried on with the fiddly task in hand.

The wine sank in the bottle and the bouquet, unpicked, was finally in the vase. At my suggestion we decamped to the sitting room so Noah could sample one or two more of my home-made wines, especially the peapod, though I
had
warned him about it. I think it was pure bravado on his part.

‘And you’re missing the party,’ I pointed out. ‘They’ll probably go on for hours. The Mummers are known for having to be dragged off stage once they get going, so long as there’s beer.’

‘They seemed to have a whole keg of the stuff, so that should keep them going for a bit,’ he agreed, then held his glass of peapod wine up to the light. ‘This isn’t bad at all!’

His light grey eyes looked strangely shiny and silvery, but that was probably because I’d only put on the wall lights.

‘I feel fine—you exaggerated its lethal properties.’

‘Just you wait,’ I said, sipping my glass more cautiously.

‘Tell me, do you always drink like a fish, or is it because you’ve broken up with your partner?’ he asked curiously.

‘It’s none of your business, but I just felt a need to kick over the traces tonight, that’s all.’

And probably tomorrow night, and the one after, and the one after that…

‘So you’re not drowning your sorrows, just letting your hair down? That figures. You’ve looked so calm and composed all day, that I didn’t think it could have hit you hard, whatever Libby said.’

‘No, it didn’t.’ I managed a casual shrug…I think. My brain and my body seemed to be drifting out of connection.
‘The relationship had just fizzled out, really, but I hadn’t realised it until he’d left. What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, Libs said she’s never seen you with the same girl twice.’

‘That’s a slight exaggeration.’ His silvery-grey eyes met mine. ‘But it’s true I’m not looking for any kind of deep relationship, just…fun. No-strings-attached fun.’

‘Fun?
I tried to remember what fun was like. And then I wondered what having sex with anyone other than Ben would be like—with, for instance, the stranger opposite…The absolutely no-strings-attached stranger opposite, who now looked much less unapproachable and distinctly attractive, with his silk shirt undone at the neck, his short dark hair ruffled and a hint of five-o’clock shadow.

He was absently pouring himself another glass of the peapod wine and three was way,
way
too many.

‘Too much peapod. Try the elderberry 2006 instead,’ I suggested. ‘Thash…that’s nice.’

‘No, I think I’ll stick to the peapod,’ he decided, not slurring his words at all.

‘On your own head be it, then.’ Somewhat to my surprise, I found that I was sitting close to him, his arm around me and my head on his shoulder, quite cosily.

‘No-strings fun sounds like a good idea to me, Noah—and I really don’t want to be alone tonight,’ I murmured suggestively.

‘I don’t think you’re in a fit state to know what you want,’ he said, looking down at me with a grin.
Or
who…though actually, you don’t really strike me as a no-strings-attached kind of girl. So that’s probably not a good idea…or not tonight, Josephine.’

‘That was a dreadful joke,’ I said severely.

‘I know. Come on, I’ll help you upstairs and then I’ll go.’

He stood up first and staggered. ‘Bloody hell!’

I giggled again. I seemed to have turned into someone totally
different from the usual Josie, but she appeared to be having quite a good time, whoever she was. ‘I did warn you—you’ve been peapodded!’

‘Stop laughing, you terrible woman! Nothing prepared me for
this
!’ He hauled me upright and, entwined, we staggered up the stairs, making rather a lot of noise.

‘Shhh!’ I turned to him halfway up, putting a finger to my lips. ‘Harry might be back, and he’ll hear us.’

‘Who’s Harry? Not the boyfriend?’

‘No, my uncle who lives next door—the man with white curly hair at the wedding?’

‘Ah, yes—I took a picture or two of him. He looks quite a character.’

‘He is, and he’s also all the family I’ve got left. I’m
all
alone in the world, all alone…’ I said sadly, like Little Orphan Annie, as Noah lowered me onto the brass bedstead.

He sank down next to me with a thump. ‘I haven’t been this paralytic since I was too young to know any better,’ he groaned. ‘What have you done to me, you witch?’

The mad Josie, the one who’d taken me over and seemed to be having fun, laughed and said brightly, ‘I told you, you’ve been peapodded!’ then reached out for him. ‘You’d better sleep it off…here with me.’

He stood up, but with an effort. ‘Look, Josie, that’s really not such a good idea.’

‘No?’ I got up too, not without some difficulty, and stood close to him. ‘Then, if you really have to go, could you unzip my dress, first?’ I asked innocently. ‘I can’t reach.’

He sighed and turned me round. The dress, undone, slid down in heavy folds to pool around my feet. I’d forgotten I was wearing Libby’s choice of lacy undies rather than my own solidly unexciting ones, so there wasn’t a lot between us, other than Noah’s unexpected scruples.