‘No, we’ll check what’s missing later. Right now, you need to get out there and carry on.’ His mouth is a straight line and his jaw’s set. He nudges me and points out from under the table. ‘Look, everyone’s getting their coats on. It’s time to go outside to do sparklers.’ He may be right. If I discover I’ve trashed the family groups, the meltdown I’m having now would be minor in comparison to the one I’d have then.
I crawl out from under the table, then sink down on the floor with my back against the chair and my hands over my head. ‘I’ve screwed up. I can’t go out and face them knowing I’ve fed their photos to the dog. This is exactly why I’m not a bloody wedding photographer.’
He’s glaring at me. ‘Youdidn’t screw up. This one’s down to me and Hetty. No one will blameyoufor it. But they will if you don’t get your butt onto that balcony this second and take the sparkler shots. So you get out there and take the pictures of your life, okay? And we’ll sort the rest as soon as we leave.’
I’m not going to argue when he’s growling through gritted teeth. ‘Okay.’ As okays go, it’s pathetic. If there’s one good thing about this total wimp-out, it’s that he’s seeing me as I truly am. Any mental image he has of me in Wonder Woman pyjamas will be blasted forever. If I wasn’t so gutted about losing the pictures, I’d be whooping about that. As it is, I’m going to have to screw every bit of courage together and see if I can make the tiniest amends for letting Nancy and Scott down so badly. Although how I’m going to do that, I have no idea, when my heart is lurching like a car with three wheels, my knees have turned to mush. My hands are faltering so much I have no idea how I’m going to hold the camera, let alone press the right buttons. I push my arms into the sleeves of my fake leopard, but even my lovely snuggle-in coat can’t save me from this stuff-up. I’m almost through the door going out onto the balcony when Rory’s fist hits my arm.
‘What?’ I turn to see what he wants.
His arm comes round and he squeezes my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, HB. Really, I’ve got this.’ He’s swinging my spare camera in his other hand.
‘Thanks.’ In terms of watery smiles, mine is fully diluted. However overinflated his sense of self-importance is, he can’t have ‘got’ anything. Nothing he can do will help me out of this.
He’s staring again, this time at the hair straggles, blowing horizontally across my nose. ‘It’s freezing out there. Don’t you have a hat?’
As the wind slices off the sea, I pull my coat closer and listen to the sound of the breakers crashing up the beach. I shiver and stick my chin up, and say the first bullshit that comes into my head. ‘Hats are for wimps.’ I know as the biggest wuss here I should be a fully paid-up member of the hat wearers’ club. Although everyone knows with my hair, hats give me helmet head every time. In my normal, proper, balanced everyday existence, mostly there’s central heating anyway. And talking of normal life, I can’t wait to get back to it.
Beside us, guests are spilling out into the night, with unlit sparklers and lighters, jostling shoulders, as the strings of lights fly above our heads.
As Rory eases back across the deck, he’s still swinging my spare camera. ‘Remind me, I’ll get you a hat for next time.’ He has to be joking.
Next time? ‘Seriously, I’m not sure I’ll be doing this again.’ The great thing is, when word gets out on a stuff up this huge, no one will want me within a mile of their wedding. They’ll definitely make other arrangements.
‘Rubbish. You can’t give up on anything this much fun.’ As he raises the camera to eye level, his finger is on the shutter button. ‘Okay, one for the archives, to celebrate a mostly fabulous day. Big smile, Holly Berry.’
But I’m not smiling because my face is screwed into a ball as I’m trying to get my head around this. ‘What the heck are you playing at, Rory?’
He gives a shrug. ‘Same as I’ve been doing all day. Following you around with your camera, second shooting for you. With luck I should have caught something to patch over your – er – gap.’ He grins. ‘The photos might not be perfect, but so far I haven’t fed mine to the dog. How have you not seen?’
I could say ‘How have you not told me?’ but I don’t. I’m torn between fury that he didn’t think to mention it and relief that the lost card disaster might just be fixable. Instead I say, ‘Maybe because I’ve had all my attention on my first solo shooting? Just saying.’
That goes straight over his head, but he’s right back anyway. ‘Talking of which, have you seen the moonshine on the water?’ Whereas some of us have been dumbstruck ever since the dog trauma, Rory won’t shut up. ‘You couldn’t have a better backdrop for a newlywed pose, so we’ll work that in before the first dance. Although we’ll have to watch the waves. Have you brought your wellies?’ Even if his enthusiasm is getting right up my nose, he’s right about the reflections off the sea. And annoyingly unstressed enough to have had time to notice.
‘I left my gumboots at Glastonbury in 2005.’ There’s not much call for them in lovely London. And ideally, that’s the way I’d like to keep it.
He’s not listening because he’s gone onto crowd-control mode. ‘Okay, two lines either side, bride and groom in the centre, stand by to light those sparklers everyone …’ If he wasn’t so annoying, you’d have to say he was a natural at this. Maybe even better than Jules. Somehow due to his sheer enthusiasm, he manages to give his orders without people feeling bossed around. For a second he stops waving his arms, drops his voice and looks down at me. ‘In that case we’ll put wellies on the shopping list too. Snow’s coming in for next weekend. Looks like we’ll be shooting a white white wedding at the Manor.’
The good news just keeps coming, then, and for once I let the royal ‘we’ flow over me. With any luck, by next week Rory should be safely back in his very own Brewer’s Yard. What everyone’s forgetting is, I came here for a quiet time. Snow has to be the last complication on the horizon. Doesn’t it?
Chapter 19
Sunday 10th December
In the attic kitchen at Brides by the Sea: Pension schemes and home improvements
‘You hit the laptop and I’ll get the hot chocolate, Berry.’
As we finally arrive in the little attic kitchen on our way back from the Old Lifeboat Station, I’m still panting from rushing up four flights of stairs with a bag of cameras on my shoulder. But Rory is already over by the hob, clanking saucepans with surprising gusto given how late it is. Although that might have something to do with the fact he just picked up Immie’s message saying the kids were fast asleep and she and Chas were hunkering in at Home Brew Cottage for a night of baby-sitting and Bond movies.
A cosy nightcap with Rory wouldn’t have been my first choice. In fact, it would be pretty high up on my to-be-avoided list. And I’d usually prefer to argue a bit more, rather than doing just what he says. But right now, seeing that finding out which pictures are missing is my first priority, I’m happy to agree to all of the above. It’s hard to believe that we were having breakfast at this same table only a matter of hours ago. Because after the day we’ve had this morning seems like light years away.
‘I didn’t want to stop for pizza, but now we’re back, I’m glad we did.’ As I pull out a stool and push up my screen, however much I grumbled outside the restaurant, I know now I’ll concentrate much better with a delicious meal inside me. Despite Trattoria Remo beingyet anotherplace, owned byyet anotherof Rory’s numerous mates, Remo turned out to be entirely lovely. With a Cornish accent rather than an Italian one, he was a welcome distraction from what was sitting across the table from me. It’s the weirdest feeling to suddenly be living out my most secret teenage fantasies. Back then being whisked away to eat pizza by Rory seemed so out of reach I only allowed myself to picture it occasionally, in the darkest part of the night, with my head completely buried under the duvet. Luckily the goats’ cheese and caramelised onion pizza I had with the crispest green salad drizzled with virgin olive oil was beyond yummy. Concentrating on that stopped me cringing at the memories. Let’s face it, there’s no rational explanation for dodgy taste in guys as a teenager. And when I think about the crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled at me as he topped up my low-alcohol wine, I can kind of forgive myself.
Surprisingly Rory dipped out of the ‘boy’s usual’ of every single hot topping, plus extra chili, and instead went for prosciutto, olives and buffalo mozzarella. Then he let me eat a lot of his as well as mine.
‘Although I still say it was mean of you not to let me scroll through my pictures in the café or the car.’ The arguments over that pretty much obliterated my current favourite relaxing playlist for the entire journey. Seeing I was allowed to play my music all the way home, Rory has to be feeling guilty about something. Although the arguing might have been a deliberate ploy on Rory’s part to shut out Lana Del Rey and Christina Perri and what he calls my ‘vommy love songs’.
He swings open the fridge and pulls out the milk. ‘Be honest, if you’d been looking through pictures, would you have eatenanyof your pizza?’ His grin over his shoulder tells me he’s not expecting an answer to that. ‘Remo would have been mortally offended if you’d left it. And anyway, it’s way better to do the work back here where you can concentrate properly.’ All shockingly logical, considering who’s talking. I’ve also noticed he’s letting his grin go much more freely since he talked about Paris and ring fenced himself in that place he calls ‘unavailable’. Which is hilarious, given he’s the last guy in the area I’d touch with a long stick, even if he does have really lovely teeth. And the kind of mouth it’s hard to take your eyes off. Especially when he’s biting it. In fact, all things considered, it’s good that Luc’s taking up all my emotional energy.
