Groom and best man dashed for the door and onto the grand staircase that led down to the ballroom. Pushing through the doors, they watched helplessly as it all unfolded before them and it became more than obvious that the wedding Minty had scheduled so meticulously was very much not going according to plan.
Aldous was snuffling on the floor for the wedding’s bite-sized clotted cream and jam scones, which had proven too tantalisingly delicious for the little dog’s snout to ignore.
If anyone could have asked the mutt, he’d have explained it was the diet of rice and chicken he’d been on since Elliot saved his life many dog-years ago that had done it! Justhowwas a good boy supposed to live out his dotage without so much as a sniff of his old favourite scones?
But nobody was asking him. Instead they were all shrieking and saying his name in an angry way that made him tuck his skinny tail between his quivering legs and jump straight into Jowan’s arms to escape the lake of champagne that was pooling all over the floor.
The college boys were shamefacedly blaming each other.
One had popped the cork that hit the other’s silver salver, which made the stupid dog jump onto the table in the first place, and then there’d been the scramble to stop Aldous spoiling the trays of freshly baked canapés, and then somehow the whole thing (two trestle tables, thirty bottles on ice, all the yummy scone bites, and one hundred delicate glass flutes) had gone flying and then, horribly, stupidly,typically, tiny little Sam Capstan had stumbled backwards over the frantic Aldous (who had three mini scones safely in his jaws by that point), and she’d fallen right on top of the boxes stacked behind her on the floor and found they gave way beneath her, breaking her fall.
Minty was approaching the flattened boxes, with Sam lying helplessly on the floor beside them.
‘No!’ she was saying, as though this couldn’t possibly be happening. It simplywasn’tpossible.NotJude’s wedding cake! And then, as she lifted the bashed-in lid of the smallest box, everyone heard her whimper.
Three layers of the booziest, most fragrant, lovingly made wedding cake (that had been stirred for luck and everything), were hopelessly wrecked in their boxes, crumbs and once-pristine fondant icing everywhere.
Sam rose shakily to her feet, wiped her hands over her marzipan-smeared bottom and left the ballroom crying for her mum. Minty watched her go, her chest heaving heavily.
She lifted her walkie-talkie, even though Jowan was standing a few feet away behind Elliot and Monty in the doorway.
‘This is Commander One,’ she said weakly, her eyes still fixed on the cake. ‘Mop and bucket to the ballroom, please.’ She didn’t even say ‘over’ as she turned on her heel to survey the rest of the mess, broken glass crunching beneath her feet.
The catering students, to their credit, weren’t finding any of this amusing now. One was already crouching and lifting hopelessly splattered jammy scones from the floor.
‘Someone has to tell Jude,’ Monty told Elliot. ‘About her cake.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Elliot replied, pulling his phone from his pocket and stepping outside.
Suddenly inspired, Monty reached for the best-man book and offered the thunderstruck wedding planner one of its pearls of wisdom.
‘Says here, Minty, page nine, that no wedding is without its mishap. It’s how it’s dealt with that matters. Test of our wedding mettle sort of thing?’
Minty was not feeling philosophical. She fixed him with an incredulous open-mouthed look that had Jowan wisely on the move and inviting Monty to join him outside.
‘Come help me find that mop, eh?’ he said in a low voice.
Monty was pulled away, knowing his duties had expanded in the face of the disaster to include sweeping broken glass, mopping champagne and binning an entire wedding cake. The possibility of getting away to call Joy was momentarily out of reach.
While carefully shutting the remorseful Aldous in Leonid and Izaak’s rooms a few moments later, Monty’s phone bleeped a notification that made his heart sink to his shoes.
10.30AM: Gate 8 Exeter to Lisbon departing now
He’d set the live flight departures alert days ago, back when he and Joy were wrapped up under the covers dreaming about him visiting London this September, back when he’d promised to track their flights to and from Lisbon so he’d know when it was time to set off on his own journey across the country to Joy’s place.
What was he thinking? Even with a heartfelt apology, telling her he’d learned his lesson and how he’d do better in future, she wouldn’t want to talk. She’d left the country, and without phoning or messaging him. If she’d been missing him the way he missed her, she’d have called before getting on her flight. And why on earth would she do that? She had her daughter to consider, and he’d squandered the trust they’d both placed in him. He deleted the alert for their return flight and closed the door on Aldous.
All he could do now was focus on being this wedding’s best man.What a joke, he told himself. Best at nothing.
Chapter Thirty-one
Jude had taken Elliot’s phone call about the fate of her cake pretty well, considering. Her dad had cried, of course. Impossible not to. Not only was he giving away his little girl – he’d only just been rendered totally speechless when she emerged from the bedroom in her mum’s beautifully altered wedding dress; he’d had to be fanned with a newspaper – he simply couldn’t bear the idea of a Crawley wedding without a Crawley and Son wedding cake.
He’d cried all the harder when he’d packed Jude into his old bakery van, Diane. Jude had driven that old van all the way to Devon, where she was supposed to be holidaying in a bookshop for two weeks but somehow ended up with an English boyfriend and a new home.
Diane’s rusty blue paintwork, which still bore the legend ‘Crawley and Son’ across its side, was now shined up (as far as possible) and decorated with a big white bow and ribbons over its front grille.
Jude clambered in along with her mum and grandmother, saying they’d better get to the venue and see what exactly was going on. Daniel and Ekon were to follow in a cab behind them.
