‘Oh my God, so we do.’ His voice had gone all gravelly in a way she recognised. Lily was fairly sure that if she’d been standing her legs would have gone all weak at the sound of it.
‘We have to go,’ she said.
‘Mmm.’ Matt let go of her back and very gently pushed her hair away from her face. ‘You look beautiful. Mud suits you.’
Lily smiled at him. And then remembered the wedding again. ‘Matt, wehaveto go. There’s a wedding to save and we seem to be the only superheroes available.’
‘You’re right.’ Matt struggled to his feet and then held a hand out to Lily. ‘Come on, Wonder Woman.’
‘Coming, Mud Man. If no one else will save the wedding, then we must. New Wonder Woman quote.’ She put her hand into Matt’s and heaved herself onto her feet, and then they set off across the field, as fast as they could, slipping and sliding, but staying upright, and having way more fun than she’d ever have imagined.
‘What the chuffing hell have you been doing?’ Carole was on the front doorstep of Penelope’s house, wearing an insanely frilly pink nightdress and fluffy slippers. ‘What were youthinking? You’ve got to be ready for theweddingin only five hours’ time. It’s going to take longer than that to wash the mud off you.’ She stopped talking and looked over their shoulders. ‘Well, will you look at that? That’s some rainbow.’
Lily and Matt both turned round to look and simultaneously both put their hands up to shield their eyes.
From the sun.
‘It’s bloodysunny,’ Lily said. ‘And, actually, only bloodydrizzlingnow.’ The heavy rain had literally just stopped almost the second they’d knocked on Penelope’s door. ‘We need to check the forecast.’ She began the process of pulling her phone out of her jeans again. It was really difficult to get it out because the jeans were stuck so tightly to her. She glanced up as she grappled with it and caught Matt’s eyes on her bottom and had to try hard not to smirk.
Finally she had the phone out. She swiped through to her weather app. And the forecast had changed.
‘I don’t know whether to be pleased or not,’ she said. ‘There’s like a twenty per cent chance of rain for the rest of the day and even if it does rain it will probably be sunny at the same time. So it might not rain at all, and all of this—’ she gestured with her hands at her own and Matt’s mud-splattered bodies ‘—might have been for no good reason.’
‘If there’s a twenty per cent chance I think we have to assume it really could rain again,’ said Matt. ‘And there’s no way the mud bath in the restaurant field is going to have dried out by mid-afternoon. So yes it was worth it.’
‘I mean, no itwasn’t,’ Lily said. ‘We could just have waited until now and come up here in mild drizzle. Or Carole could have driven down to us given that she’s now awake. I mean,totallypointless.’
‘Worse than pointless, I’d say.’ Carole pointed both forefingers at them. ‘It’s going to take forever to get you cleaned up. How did you get so muddy?’
‘Tess got upset about the rain so we went to check the restaurant and discovered that the field where the reception was going to be is a mud bath and we couldn’t contact you by phone so the restaurant owner gave us a lift to find you to ask for advice and we had a crash and walked,’ Lily explained. It sounded quite simple when you summed it up but it actually felt like they’d had ahugemorning. Made way huger, if she was honest, by all the attraction that had been going on between her and Matt.
‘Obviously as it turns out, yes, it was completely pointless,’ Matt said, ‘but had we just driven straight here and found you it wouldn’t have been, would it?’
‘We need to send help to Aaliyah and Johanna,’ Lily said.
‘We’ll send Norm.’ Carole turned round and screeched, ‘Norm,’ at foghorn volume. Then she turned back to them. ‘Sounds like we all need coffee.’
When Carole had put on a feather-trimmed chiffon dressing gown over her nightdress and thumped Penelope’s coffee machine into submission, Lily and Matt – both standing barefoot on a plastic sheet in the middle of the kitchen – filled her in on the current state of the reception venue and the current state of Tess’s mind.
‘So in summary we either need to de-mud and protect the restaurant outside space or we need to find an alternative venue,’ Carole said, looking round Penelope’s enormous kitchen with an appraising eye. ‘Yes, I think we could do it here. Penelope permitting.’ Then she wrinkled her face. ‘And you two need to shower. And we don’t have a lot of time for all of this because we have to get ready for the wedding. Especially Lily.’ She opened her mouth and shouted, ‘Penelope.’
‘Yes, dear?’ Penelope must have been right outside the kitchen, because she was in there with them within about three seconds of Carole’s yell. She must also have been up since the crack of dawn because she was immaculate in another floral ensemble with her hair amazingly coiffed.
And within what couldn’t have been more than two minutes later, she’d volunteered up her whole house and garden – it turned out that she had several gazebos because she liked to throw parties all-year round – and had told Matt and Lily to follow her so that she could show them where to shower.
‘Matt, Lily,’ Carole said as they got to the kitchen door.
They both turned round and she said, ‘Say cheese,’ and took several photos of them. ‘Couldn’t resist,’ she told them. ‘Hilarious. We can show everyone later.’
Soon, Penelope was showing Matt and Lily together into an unoccupied ground floor spare bedroom and its en suite so that they could shower.
‘I’m going to find some clothes for you both,’ she said. ‘For underwear you can both borrow some of the new swimwear that we have for guests who unexpectedly want to take a dip, and for outer clothes you can wear some of mine, Lily, andyou—’ she turned to Matt, moved closer to him and stroked, literallystroked, his – nicely visible through his damp t-shirt – pecs ‘—will have to wear some of the gardener’s clothes, because my husband isn’t asbigas you.’ And then she stroked both his biceps at once. Her laugh could only be described as tinkly and coquettish and the look on Matt’s face could only be described as terrified. ‘I’ll just pop and find them while you’re in the shower. It’s a big one so you might as well go in together, but no naughty business—’ she lifted one of her hands from Matt’s arm so that she could wag a finger ‘—because there’s no time for it.’
Matt shook his head and said, ‘Not together,’ while Lily said, ‘No, no, we aren’t a couple.’
‘What?’ Penelope said. ‘I thought someone told me you were. Youlookgreat together. And you seem great together. As though you have a connection. Alright, well, it’s up to you whether you shower together or not. Might be nice though?’ She winked, gave Matt’s biceps one more long stroke, walked over to the bedroom door and left, turning to blow kisses at them as she went.
‘Wow,’ Matt said. ‘I’m no longer surprised by the waterfall phallus.’
