‘Everything’s going to be alright.’ Lily bent down to hug Tess and Tess screeched again.
‘Your nails. What’shappenedto them?’
‘Bit of a cross country hike.’ Lily put her hands behind her back.
‘We’ll sort those too,’ Aaliyah said. ‘I have nail things with me.’
‘But they need to be exactly the same colour as ours,’ Tess wailed.
‘They’ll be near enough.’ Aaliyah was clearly speaking through very gritted teeth. ‘Let’s go.’
Within a couple of hundred yards down the road towards the restaurant, Lily was really uncomfortable. Aaliyah didn’t look too happy either. Her hobble was getting more and more pronounced.
‘How’s your ankle?’ Lily asked. ‘I have a bikini of Penelope’s on under this and it’s a thong and it’s too small and walking’s causing what I can only describe as extreme chafing. And this top’s really nylonny and it’s bloody baking now and any minute I’m going to start sweating. Look at that sky. Not a cloud in sight. I can’tbelievewhat we did this morning.’
‘I know. We’re idiots. Although, in our defence, Tess did tell us to go and we didn’t know that Johanna would crash and it did look like it was going to carry on raining.’ Aaliyah hobbled another couple of steps. ‘My ankle’s quite sore.’ She looked at Lily and gave a snort of laughter. ‘Lily, the way you’re walking.’
‘Having to clench my bum cheeks. It helps.’
Eventually they were at the restaurant and being ushered through to the back by Johanna.
And there were Matt, Howard and Norm and a couple of waiters from the restaurant, lugging large boards around to cover the ground.
Lily stopped walking and juststaredfor a moment. Where she looked like a floral clown post Penelope-makeover, Matt looked absolutely gorgeous in the gardener’s clothes, especially bent over the way he was, with his back to her, the muscles across his back and shoulders flexing, and his thighs looking equally good.
‘You thinkingphwoar?’ stage-whispered Aaliyah. ‘Because I am and I’m very happily married.’
‘Yeah, no, just catching my breath after the walk.’
‘Yes, I can imagine it must have been very hard keeping up with me sprinting along on my sprained ankle.’ Aaliyah pulled a chair out and plonked herself down in it. ‘I’ll just rest my ankle here for a minute. You go and talk to Matt – sorry, I mean go and get on with the decorating.’
‘You know what?’ Lily said. ‘I’m thinking we just get some green tendrilly stuff and twist that round the poles at the corners of the gazebo and then maybe hang some terracotta plant pots from the ceiling and we’re away. We don’t need to do anything fancy. Wedoneed to make the floor completely flat, though, to make sure no one trips over,’ she said, moving towards Matt and Norm.
‘Got that covered,’ said Matt. ‘This is just a base layer to make things flat, and then we’re going to put much bigger sheets over that and weight everything down at the corners.’
‘Not just a pretty backside,’ Aaliyah shouted.
Matt turned round and shook his booty at her, while Howard did a surprisingly loud wolf whistle and Lily smiled and tried to push away the thought that, basically, shelovedit when Matt made her laugh. And she’d always loved it whenshemadehimlaugh. He had a great rumble of a laugh, and it always felt like a privilege if you were the person who’d caused the rumble.
It really hadn’t been very good for her spending so much time with him this morning. At this rate she was almost going to miss him when the wedding was done.
‘I think I can decorate it how you’d like.’ Johanna took out her phone. ‘Why don’t you give me your numbers and I can send photos for you to comment.’
‘Good plan.’ Lily nodded. It wouldn’t hurt to have some extra getting-ready time and she’d be a lot better off state-of-mind-wise not having too much opportunity to ogle Matt.
Three hours later, after a lot of showering and hairstyling and make-upping, a lot of stress from Tess, a lot of messages from Johanna and not a lot of opportunity for Lily to think about Matt but, despite that, quite a lot of obsessing done, they were ready. Ready for Tess’s big –huge– day to start properly.
‘There.’ The hairdresser gave a final tweak to Tess’s veil and moved backwards, and Tess stood in front of them.
‘Oh wow,’ breathed Lily. ‘Stunning.’
‘You look fabulous,’ Aaliyah said.
‘Beautiful.Iwant to get married.’ Meg’s voice was tremulous. ‘Ow.’ Lily looked down. Meg was rubbing her ankle. It seemed like Aaliyah had just kicked her with her good leg.
‘Tess’s actual wedding day,’ hissed Aaliyah. ‘All about her.’
‘Of course,’ Meg said, looking huffy. Well, at least Aaliyah was finally on board with the all-about-Tess thing. ‘Tess, you look insanely gorgeous.’
