The Wedding Diary (Choc Lit) (26 page)

So Cat explained.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Fanny acidly. ‘Well, you’re a dark one, aren’t you?’

‘You really, truly didn’t know?’

‘My darling, how on earth could I have known?’

‘You know everything,’ said Cat.

‘Well, perhaps I had a little inkling.’ Fanny smiled her smuggest smile. ‘I’m quite good at inklings. Anyway, my sweet, I need to see some other people now. You must get back to Adam.’

‘Yes, I’m meeting him in half an hour,’ said Cat, pushing back her chair and standing up.

‘Before you go,’ said Fanny, ‘Rosie’s had an offer of a PR job in Paris for a year. She says she’d like to take it. I can’t blame the darling girl. She’ll have such fun in France and she already speaks the language. Then, when her sister finishes at Oxford, they want to start a PR and promotions business of their own.’

‘Yes, she mentioned that to me,’ said Cat.

‘Oh, did she really?’ Fanny smiled a steely little smile. ‘I’m going to have to watch my back with Rosie, I can see. She’ll be after all my smaller clients, and she can’t have the lot. So, anyway—’

‘You’ll want somebody else to boss around?’

‘I’ll need a new assistant, certainly. Angel, I was wondering if you’d like to work for me? It’s forty thousand basic, lots of tips and bonuses and freebies and sweeteners and samples – adds up to quite a package, all in all.’

‘No,’ said Cat.

‘At least consider it?’

‘I don’t need to consider it.’

‘What if we said forty-five and private health insurance?’

‘Fanny, I could never work with you,’ said Cat, refusing to allow herself to realise this was twice what Barry paid and was probably more than Adam earned. She hadn’t thought to ask what her new job with him would pay. ‘I’d sooner sweep the streets.’

‘I wondered if you might say that, my angel, but I thought I’d ask you, anyway.’ Fanny stood up too and held out one red-taloned hand. ‘I hope we can be friends?’

Cat stared for a moment, but then she started laughing, thinking that for sheer effrontery and blatant chutzpah Fanny Gregory could have no equal. She pitied Jack, but told herself it also served him right. So she shook Fanny’s hand.

‘We’re friends,’ she said.

‘Excellent,’ said Fanny. ‘So I’ll be in touch about the work.’

‘What work?’ demanded Cat. ‘Fanny, I’ve already told you I could never work with you.’

‘But you’re going to change your mind, my angel.’ Fanny allowed herself a little chuckle. ‘People always do. You and darling Adam – let me help you make some serious money?’

‘Fanny, I don’t want anything to do with you and money.’

‘We’ll see, my love, we’ll see.’

‘Fanny says she didn’t know that we met up in Italy,’ said Cat, when she joined Adam later in a Starbucks close to Fanny’s office.

‘Why should she have known about us meeting up in Italy?’

‘She’s a witch, she’s psychic, she knows everything,’ said Cat. ‘If she didn’t know about us going to Italy, and if she didn’t know we’d had a row, why did she invite you to her party? Why was she so keen to try to get you off with me?’

‘She invited me because I’d sourced some garden stuff and it was her way of saying thank you. I expect you were some sort of present, Cat, gift-wrapped in a Lulu Minto frock.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Oh, and because she thinks I’m the most gorgeous, sexiest man she’s ever met – she told me so herself.’

‘She must need contacts, then.’

‘Yes,’ said Adam, laughing. ‘Yes, she must.’

‘That’s not all she needs.’

Then Cat told Adam everything, and he frowned and muttered, and finally he said he thought what Fanny bloody Gregory needed most was locking up.

‘You can’t lock up our fairy godmother,’ objected Cat.

‘She’s not our fairy godmother,’ growled Adam. ‘As you said, the woman is a witch. But listen, when she said you owed her money, why didn’t you ask how much?’

‘I did,’ said Cat. ‘I tried to make her tell me. But she said she didn’t have the paperwork to hand. Then, when I said I had no money anyway, she said I’d have to work, and—listen, Adam, I know I should have gone to a solicitor. I wasn’t thinking straight. There was lots of other rubbish cluttering up my life. Jack and—’

‘Me,’ said Adam. ‘I’m so sorry, Cat. That night we came home from Italy – if only we’d gone back to yours, not mine.’

‘I should have listened to you properly, not got all angry, all upset. I ought to have believed you, not stormed off in a huff.’

‘In your place, I’d have stormed off, too,’ said Adam.

‘But you don’t seem the storming kind,’ said Cat. ‘You’re always so composed, so calm.’

‘Oh, I can storm,’ said Adam. ‘Or do things I never meant to do and wouldn’t have done if I’d been thinking straight.’

‘You mean like telling Mr Portland you wouldn’t work for him?’

‘No, as time goes by I realise it was a godsend, dumping him. He and that wife of his – between them, they’d have driven me mad.’

‘We can’t have you going mad, it isn’t in the schedule.’

‘You’re absolutely right.’

Cat looked at him and was reminded of Mr Rochester and Mr Darcy and Mr Jackson Brodie all blended into one.

She thought it must be time to get his shirt off.

‘Adam, let’s go back to mine,’ she said.

‘We messed up big time, didn’t we?’ said Cat, as she and Adam lay in bed together in her flat. ‘I mean, before we met each other, before we got it right?’

‘We did,’ said Adam. ‘I thought I knew Maddy through and through, but I didn’t know anything at all. I had this image in my mind, of Maddy in some country cottage, making jam and growing vegetables and keeping chickens, going on family holidays in Tuscany with half a dozen children. But the woman in the country cottage wasn’t Maddy, and it was never going to be like that.’

‘I was on a mission to rescue Jack,’ said Cat, and sighed. ‘He always said he didn’t have a family, that he’d never had a real home. So I decided I would give him both. Of course, he always was a dreamer, fantasist and liar. I didn’t know the real Jack. I only knew a phantom. I knew the tortured genius I’d created for myself.’

‘He’s history now,’ said Adam. ‘What about the future, you and me?’

‘The future, that’s a big and rather terrifying prospect.’ Cat looked hard at Adam. ‘I didn’t know Jack at all. Do I know you?’

‘I think you know too much,’ said Adam, laughing. ‘You know about my moodiness, my awkwardness, my total inability to learn a foreign language—’

‘Your kindness, generosity, honesty—’

‘Stop it, Cat, I’m blushing, and it doesn’t suit me. But anyway, you wanted to get married. You dreamed about it, planned it. I’m offering you the chance to live your dream.’

‘You’re asking me to marry you – again?’

‘It seems a shame to waste a wedding opportunity and deny our mothers their chance to wear some really horrid hats.’

‘Well, if you feel we should.’

‘So that’s a yes?’

‘I think it must be,’ Cat replied.

‘I hear that note of hesitancy in your voice again. It’s always there when I ask you to marry me.’

‘Well, obviously there are terms, conditions.’

‘What are they?’

‘We have to get married at the Melbury Court Hotel.’

‘Where else would we get married?’

‘You agree?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Adam.

‘We’ll have to tell her ladyship, you know.’

‘You mean Fanny Gregory, I suppose,’ said Adam, shrugging. ‘Why do we have to tell her anything? She’ll only interfere.’

‘If we don’t let her know, and do it now, she’ll very soon find out.’

‘How will she do that?’

‘She’ll get out her cauldron, drop in bits of frog and newt, brew up a magic spell.’

‘Magic, huh,’ said Adam. ‘I wouldn’t put it past the bloody woman to have had us bugged. Perhaps we’d better get new mobiles? You ought to check the lining in your bag.’

‘Yes, perhaps I should. God, I’m so tired,’ Cat said, yawning. ‘It must be all that partying.’

‘The private party isn’t over yet,’ said Adam, turning out the light.

When Cat told Fanny she and Adam were going to get married, she said they had to come into her office straight away.

When they called in that evening, she told them she’d decided she didn’t want Ant and Bee to do a thing for the promotion, except of course the getting married bit.

‘You’re so much more attractive, much more charismatic, darlings,’ she said wistfully. ‘If you’d do a tiny little bit of work for me in lead-up to your wedding, I could make it really worth your while. I’m assuming it will be just months?’ she added, frowning. ‘You’re not thinking of a long engagement stretching into years?’

‘No, we’re not,’ said Cat. ‘But those two other people, won’t they want to do promotions, and won’t they want to be in magazines?’

‘I’ll think of things for Ant and Bee to do to keep the sponsors sweet,’ said Fanny. ‘You don’t need to worry about them.’

She went on to explain that Cat and Adam’s schtick would be two lovely, smart but ordinary people – I’m so sorry, darlings, but you’re very ordinary, you know – getting married on a shoestring in these very difficult, recession-burdened times.

‘
Amor vincit omnia
and all that jazz,’ she added, tapping like a woodpecker with OCD, already busy roughing out their schedule.

‘God, more stuff from sundials,’ muttered Cat.

‘I beg your pardon, angel?’

‘I dare say that was Latin, wasn’t it? You and Adam here, you’re such a pair of intellectuals. He’s always quoting Latin at me, too. What does that bit mean?’

‘Love conquers everything,’ said Fanny airily. ‘Didn’t you go to school at all, my princess?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t learn any Latin. I did Business Studies and IT, which are very much more useful in the modern world.’

‘On the contrary, my love, you can’t get anywhere in life without A-level Latin. I’m living proof of it.’

‘You might have a point,’ conceded Cat.

‘Of course I do. So – are you going to help me out, my angels? Listen, I’m going to get you on the telly. You’ll be famous, you’ll be huge on YouTube, a thousand hits a minute, and I’ll share the advertising revenue with you.’

‘What percentage?’ Adam asked.

‘Eighty–twenty, in my favour, obviously,’ Fanny told him, as she twinkled at him merrily.

‘Come on, Cat, we’re leaving.’

‘Just hang on a moment, sweetheart. Let me have a little think. Shall we say sixty–forty?’

‘Fifty–fifty.’

‘Fifty-five to forty-five,’ said Fanny.

‘Yes, all right,’ said Cat.

‘Adam, darling?’ wheedled Fanny.

‘I suppose so.’

‘Excellent,’ said Fanny, and once again she smiled her vixen’s smile.

‘But there’ll be no formal contracts tying us to Supadoop,’ said Adam. ‘We’re not signing anything that isn’t in our favour.’

‘Of course you’re not,’ said Fanny. ‘This will be an equal partnership, and anyway I trust you absolutely. Cat, will you be able to get some time off work at Microsoft?’

‘Barry will probably let me work part time while this is going on.’ Cat crossed her fingers, hoping Barry might.

She’d have to tell him that she would be leaving to go and work with Adam, anyway. So if he got another office manager fairly soon, perhaps the two of them could work in tandem, Cat training up the newbie and the newbie taking over while Cat was busy doing stuff for Fanny?

Yes, it should all work out.

Fanny milked every cash cow dry, exploited every opportunity. She made them keep a video diary which she flogged to cable. She had them blogging, Facebooking and Tweeting dawn to dusk.

Although she had accepted they ought to keep their day jobs – it makes you seem more real, my angels, shows that you’re a-man-and-woman-of-the-people, it’s the Susan Boyle effect – she still sent them travelling miles and miles around the country to be interviewed by local radio stations, local newspapers and to pose for photographs for regional and national magazines.

People came to stare at them because they were that couple off the telly. Phones and cameras clicked, and cyber-images of Cat and Adam sprang up everywhere, like cyber-mushrooms, overnight.

Who would design Cat’s wedding dress? Fanny ran a competition in a magazine. Of course, it had an entry fee. She wasn’t doing this for nothing, darlings. She had overheads.

Much to Cat’s astonishment, eight thousand people entered, sending in a sketch or jpeg of the perfect gown. ‘When you were a little girl, didn’t you love drawing brides?’ asked Fanny as she and Cat and Rosie sat sorting through the entries, many of which looked like they were the work of five-year-olds.

Fanny had been schmoozing with a host of possible designers, mostly young and hungry ones, but Lulu Minto loved one sketch enough to make the gown. Cat found she loved it too, and agreed the sketcher must be invited to the wedding. ‘So everybody wins,’ said Fanny smugly, sweeping a great pile of cheques into a dark green Harrods carrier bag.

‘Especially you,’ said Rosie as she picked up the bag.

‘Well, of course,’ said Fanny. ‘Especially lovely me. Get those to the bank today, my darling. Cat, you’re the sort of person who mixes with the common herd, so tell me, why do people still use cheques when God has given us Paypal?’

She got them an audition for a television commercial advertising laxatives, which meant they would be dressing up as constipated monkeys, man and wife, and which she said would be a lot of fun, and tremendous tie-in for their wedding, if they could square it with those spoilsports from the actors’ union who wanted real performers to play any speaking parts.

But Adam put his foot down. ‘I’m not having anything to do with it,’ he said. ‘I’m not a chimpanzee or a baboon.’

Fanny darlinged him and angeled him, but even she had realised when he meant it, when his dark eyes narrowed, flashing warning fire.

Cat was both astonished and amazed to find that anybody could refuse to do what Fanny wanted and not be blasted by a thunderbolt.

The only dampers on her happiness were Adam’s absences on projects up and down the country. She couldn’t shake the feeling that each time he went he might decide he wasn’t coming back.

‘Of course I’m coming back,’ he said, when he finally got her to admit she was afraid the pressure would begin to get to him, that he’d do a Jack and disappear.

‘Where are you going this week?’

‘Wolverhampton, Middlesex and Dorset.’

‘Melbury Court, you mean?’ she asked. ‘You’re still working on the stables, are you?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Adam found some photographs and got them up on screen. ‘Look, here’s the sauna and the plunge pool and a couple of the treatment rooms.’

‘Scroll back a bit,’ said Cat. ‘Oh – isn’t that the fountain? Why is everything wrapped up in sacking and blue plastic?’

‘That’s to protect its pipe work from the elements while we’re trying to get its rubbish plumbing sorted out.’

So Cat relaxed a bit, because when Adam went away at least he kept his phone on all the time, and he called home often.

Their reunions were wonderful – and partly filmed, of course. Carrying their camcorders around became an automatic reflex, and Fanny was delighted with the footage they produced.

She said they’d have some lovely moments they could show their children. That sequence where they had a fight with shaving foam, when they’d squirted it all round the bathroom – darlings, so hilarious, Fanny told them. ‘I laughed until I cried,’ she said. ‘It’s already had a couple of thousand hits on YouTube, and the advertising revenue is pouring in. You’re a pair of naturals, Cat and Adam. You’ve missed your vocations as a double act of circus clowns.’

‘When all this is over, that bloody camera’s going in the landfill,’ muttered Adam, who hadn’t even known the bloody camera was recording. Cat had put it on the bathroom windowsill, and she’d accidentally left it running. She’d handed in the footage without checking.

So Adam saw himself on television streaked from head to foot with shaving foam, and his friends went on and on about it, having a laugh at his expense for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Adam’s friends – Cat found she liked them all, almost as much as she liked him. Jules and Gwennie turned out to be lovely. A heavy but attractive man of Adam’s age and a dark-haired girl, when they met Cat they gave her a big hug and said they were delighted that Adam had at last found somebody to take him off their hands.

‘We’re so looking forward to the wedding,’ Gwennie told them when they met up for dinner at a restaurant in town.

‘I’d love to be a bridesmaid,’ added Jules, and then he glared at Adam, mock-offended. ‘Lawley, don’t you look at me like that! I’ll get my hair done, and I promise to shave my legs.’

‘Sorry, all the bridesmaids must be girls,’ said Adam firmly.

‘I play the piano,’ Gwennie told Cat later in the evening, when they’d had a lot to drink and were feeling like they’d known each other all their lives. ‘I’ve been taking some refresher lessons recently. I’d love to play for you. As you’re coming in, I mean, and going out again.’

‘Thank you, Gwennie,’ Cat replied. ‘That would be really kind.’

Cat had never known a man could be so good at presents.

Lovely things and silly things, unusual things, all tiny but desirable, found their way into her washbag, handbag, got underneath her pillow, were slipped into the pockets of her coats.

A Japanese ivory netsuke of a little bride and bridegroom, a Victorian silver locket to go on her silver chain, and of course a ring, a band of gold with amethysts, carnelians, tourmalines – she didn’t know where he’d got it, and of course he wouldn’t say, but she was sure it had to be unique.

Adam often had to go to Melbury Court to check up on the progress of the work for which he’d been commissioned, the rebuilding and conversion of the Georgian stables.

Cat always asked about the fountain in the forecourt – was he doing any work on it right now, and did he think she’d ever see it play?

‘It’s a major project,’ Adam said. ‘We’re gradually sorting out the plumbing, but it will take months – or maybe even years – of restoration before we can try it out again. It’ll also be quite difficult to find exactly the right shade of marble to replace the bits that have been lost.’

‘One day, maybe, Adam?’ Cat asked him wistfully.

‘Maybe,’ Adam said. ‘On our golden wedding anniversary, perhaps, when you and I have lost our marbles, too.’