Never Too Late (72 page)

detail to do with the banqueting hall where she and Simon

were holding the reception. The wedding co-ordinator had

been strangely vague on the phone, muttering about ‘wanting

to make extra sure everything’s perfect’. Which meant another two hours gone driving into the city centre and back.

With Mary installed in The Duchess of Ormond hotel’s

airy reception sipping coffee, Evie followed the wedding

co-ordinator upstairs to the banqueting hall where bad

news was waiting.

A fire had damaged the very room Evie and Simon had

booked, the prettiest room with a terrace where the guests

could gaze out over the Dublin skyline and sip drinks

surrounded by Italian urns overflowing with white, star

shaped flowers. The only other option was the biggest

banqueting room, twice the size, very grand, but sadly a lot

too big for the small number of guests at the Fraser/Todd

nuptials.

‘We are so terribly, terribly sorry,’ the wedding

co-ordinator apologised for about the eighth time in a row.

‘We know you had your heart set on the Leinster Suite but

the Munster one is very nice and my superior says we’ll

only charge you half the corkage on the wine by way of

making things up to you.’

Evie gazed around the enormous, icy blue Munster Suite

and thought of how her guests would rattle around in it

like the last few matches in a box. Very formal, it wasn’t

anywhere near as nice as the cosy yellow room with the

elegant cornices picked out in gold and the marigold

coloured brocade curtains that fell in graceful swags to the

polished wooden floor.

‘There’s nothing else we can do,’ the wedding

co-ordinator said desperately, seeing the bleak look on

Evie’s face. He could hardly know that she wasn’t just thinking about the venue for her wedding. That she was, instead, thinking that this was just another terrible omen

for a day that seemed doomed.

‘It’s fine,’ Evie said, switching on to automatic pilot.

She decided not to tell Mary about the Munster Suite

disaster. If she had, they’d have had to rent a hotel room so

Mary could lie down for an hour and get over the shock. It

was hard to believe that Simon’s mother wasn’t that much

older than Vida. She was so vibrant and beautiful, loved

life and embraced it with a passion. She wouldn’t have

dreamed of moving into a granny flat with Max and his

new bride: if she was on her own at Mary’s age, she’d

probably book herself on a cruise, learn the Lambada,

collect a whole range of men friends to take her out to

dinner and decide to do a computer course.

‘Problems?’ asked Mary, hands fluttering nervously

about her bosom when Evie came to collect her.

‘Nothing,’ she lied easily.

She couldn’t lie to Simon. With his mother installed in

his dining room, waiting for the first course of the meal Evie

had flung together, she broke it to him. Simon, just home

from work, took his glasses off and spent three minutes

massaging the bridge of his nose tensely afterwards.

‘This is too much to cope with,’ he said, eyes blinking

myopically without his glasses. ‘Too much.’

His left hand began to flutter just like his mother’s. Up

and down, up and down. Just like Mary’s. Evie stared at it

in alarm. Had he done that before? Why had she never

noticed it until now?

‘Don’t panic,’ she said. ‘It’s only a room, Simon. It’s not

the end of the world.’

‘I’m so stressed at the minute,’ he said, voice rising.

His hand stopped fluttering and began to run through

his sandy hair, fluffing it absently into mad little tufts. ‘First

my mother doesn’t like the perfect house - and it was perfect. Now this. I don’t think I can take any more.’

You and me both, Evie thought, a little hysterically.

‘Simon,’ she said, ‘do you think we could have a bottle

of wine with dinner? I could do with a drink.’

‘Drink isn’t the answer,’ he answered in a shrill voice.

‘I’ll have a sherry then,’ she said grimly.

When Simon went inside to - stupidly, in Evie’s

opinion - tell his mother about the crisis with the

reception room, Evie drained her sherry and had another,

this one filled to the brim instead of halfway up the

Waterford crystal port glass.

This is terrible, she told herself, sticking a knife into the

potatoes to see if they were boiled. She was turning into a

lush. She was the one who usually gave out to Cara for

drinking too much, and in the past month she’d been

plastered once and consumed at least six glasses of wine on

her hen night.

Like every other time she thought about that night, Evie

felt her legs weaken at the memory of making love with

Max. She couldn’t help it: it was an automatic reaction, the

same way she smiled when she saw a baby or gasped at the

very thought of a rat. Max, Max, Max. He still ran through

her head like Morse code, hanging out the same word over

and over again.

Simon came into the kitchen and leaned over the

saucepan, steaming up his glasses immediately. Would he

ever learn not to do that? Evie stifled the urge to thump

him. He irritated the hell out of her much of the time. And

she was going to marry him in two weeks and spend the

rest of her life with him, being irritated. Her legs felt weak

again and this time, it wasn’t from thinking about Max.

‘Here.’ She handed Simon two plates filled with the

tomato and feta cheese salad she’d made for the first course. She hadn’t bothered washing the iceberg lettuce.

No doubt Mary would discover half a slug in hers. ‘Take

these in, Simon, I’ll be right behind you.’

Mary decided to stay at Simon’s that night, which meant

that Evie couldn’t. It was a blessing in disguise, she knew,

because she wasn’t in the mood for a passionate encounter

with her fiance. Yet she was peeved that his mother’s

presence meant her staying over was out of the question.

‘It’s not as if we’d be having a one-night stand,’ she said

caustically. ‘We’re engaged to be married, Simon. We’re not

going to be at it like knives while she watches Antiques

Roadshow.’

‘I know, but my mother is very old-fashioned, very set in

her ways.’

Like her son, Evie reflected.

For Olivia’s dinner party on Saturday, Cara brought two

bottles of red wine, strawberry cheesecake from the delicatessen - and Phoebe.

‘I couldn’t leave her at home,’ she whispered to Olivia,

briefly explaining the story as they stowed Cara’s cheesecake

in the fridge.

‘You had to bring her, poor child,’ Olivia said, determined

to make Phoebe feel utterly at home.

‘Now,’ she said, arriving back in the sitting room with

wine, mineral water and fruit juice, ‘who wants what? I

know you probably want wine, Cara,’ she added teasingly

‘But I’m on the fruit juice tonight because I’ve a busy day

tomorrow.’

‘Me too,’ said Phoebe, seizing the excuse to avoid alcohol.

‘Wonderful,’ said Olivia cosily, ‘your bold best friend

here often makes me feel like a boring old dear if I don’t

get pissed with her. I love fruit juice and I’m not much of a

drinker.’

Phoebe smiled and accepted a glass of juice. When she

wasn’t looking, Cara shot Olivia a deeply grateful look.

Vida arrived with a fragrant bunch of Stargazer lillies,

several bottles of Frascati and some Amaretti biscuits. ‘I felt in an Italian mood,’ she said gaily, kissing Olivia.

‘Congratulations on your new show, darling,’ she added.

‘I want to hear all about it. Cara, hello. This must be your

flatmate, Phoebe? Hello, dear. Cara’s always telling me

you’re pretty and I can see she’s telling the truth.’

This was exactly the right thing to say. Phoebe, who’d

been looking out of sorts, beamed at Vida.

‘Let’s sit together and you can tell me all about my

stepdaughter,’ Vida said confidingly. ‘I want the whole low

down - men, money, and how many of those awful

chocolate ice creams she eats a week!’

Phoebe giggled into her fruit juice. Olivia and Cara

heaved sighs of relief. Vida always knew exactly the right

thing to say.

Rosie and Evie rolled up twenty minutes later, clutching

wine, mineral water and a huge container of Evie’s

homemade mushroom soup. The smell mingled with the

heavenly scent of Olivia’s famous seafood pasta bake

which was emanating from the kitchen.

‘I love that stuff,’ Phoebe said hungrily, sniffing the soup

container.

‘Sorry we’re late,’ apologised Rosie, who looked like she

was heading for a night on the tiles in a black Lycra catsuit

and suede boots. ‘My fault. I was late home from town.

Shopping.’ She did a twirl. ‘Ł39.99 in Miss Selfridge.

Whaddya think?’

‘If it’d fit me, I’d love to borrow it,’ Cara said enviously.

‘It’ll never fit me now,’ Phoebe added miserably, hand

going to her non-existent bump.

‘Nonsense! You have naturally good bone structure,’

Vida said briskly, patting Phoebe’s hand. ‘You’ll never have

a problem with your figure.’

The dinner party was great fun and the food and drink,

though marvellous, were secondary to the conversation.

Sasha, theoretically in bed but allowed to sit up and be

petted by her adoring aunties, showed everyone the doll’s

house her daddy had bought her and then produced a

painting that showed ‘Mummy and Daddy living all in the

same place.’

Olivia’s eyes filled with tears as Sasha proudly showed

her painting to everyone, but they weren’t sad tears. When

Sasha was back in bed with her cuddly toy menagerie, Cara

soon had everyone in knots over how she and a half

undressed Ewan had hidden under the computer desks in

her office when they’d heard Bernard Redmond pounding

up the stairs.

‘Penny must have been waiting outside the door while

we were there. She kept insisting to Bernard that there was

nobody else in the room and he kept insisting he hadn’t

seen me go out so I had to be there!’ Cara recounted,

laughing till it hurt. ‘Ewan stuffed his shirt in my mouth to

stop me from giggling out loud. I bit a hole in it! He didn’t

mind, but he said he’d only bought it new that day to

impress me.’

Olivia told them all about her prospective new programme:

an hour-long afternoon chat show where she’d

interview people, with some pre-recorded stuff on local

events from a roving reporter. Nancy Roberts had heard

about it through the grapevine and had smashed the glass

coffee table in her dressing room by dropping her wine

cooler on to it in a fit of rage.

‘It was priceless,’ Olivia said, wiping away tears of

laughter. ‘Nita, her assistant, ran out for fear Nancy was

going to stab her with a sliver of glass and nobody else

would dare go in to clean it up because she was ranting

and raving like a banshee, so Kevin locked her in until she

calmed down.’

Rosie had lots of tales of similar tantrum-throwing at the

Wicklow location where Mia Koen had taken to refusing to

get into costume every day until after Max arrived.

‘She’s such a tart,’ Rosie said scathingly. ‘She’s got this

see-through white dressing gown and prances around in it

with no underwear until he gets there and sees her. Then she goes into the costume van. You can’t move for technicians on set every morning, hoping for a glimpse of her tits.

Not that she’s got any.’ Rosie sniffed.

Vida noticed that the only person who didn’t convulse

with laughter at this was Evie. Remarkably quiet during

the meal, she’d stiffened at the mention of Mia Koen and

stopped eating, pushing pieces of succulent cod and fat,

juicy mussels round her plate aimlessly. She’d lost weight

too, Vida realised. She’d also lost the sparkle in her eyes

that had been so blindingly obvious when they’d all been

on holiday in Spain. The reason had to be Max.

Vida hated interfering but she suddenly decided that it

was far too important not to let poor Evie throw herself

away on that nice but drippy Simon if she was actually in

love with Max. Some not-so-subtle prodding would do the

trick.

‘How are the wedding plans going, Evie?’ she asked

brightly.

‘Thrilling,’ Evie said tonelessly. ‘Simon’s mother Mary

doesn’t like any of the houses he keeps picking, and to be

honest, neither do I. The wedding reception is going to be

in a different room, a horrible room, because there was a

fire in the one we’d booked. I daresay the wedding dress

shop will be struck by lightning and the isle of Crete will

sink mysteriously into the sea, just so the dress and the honeymoon will be ruined too, to balance things up.’

Nobody spoke for a moment.

‘More wine, girls?’ asked Olivia in desperation.

Vida waited until Evie went to the bathroom to say her

piece. Following her, she pulled her stepdaughter into the

blue-and-white-tiled room and shut the door.

‘We’ve got to talk.’

Evie was silent. Talking was beyond her. She felt as if