Twenty
Grace’s hen night didn’t work out quite as Hope had planned, but everyone enjoyed it nevertheless. Due to the vicar being ill and the wedding rehearsal being postponed until that very afternoon, Griff and Russell and Archie had decided not to go to London after all. Instead, they were going to spend the evening with Tom in a rather posh hotel in Folkestone and have dinner and drinks, and wait until the hen night was over, whatever time that might be. And thanks to the rehearsal being further delayed due to Hanna’s announcement, the new plan made even more sense to everyone.
‘I’d rather sleep in my own bed, if that’s okay with you, darling?’ Griff asked Grace at the wedding rehearsal.
‘Of course it is. I’d rather not spend the night without you anyway.’
‘I have a feeling Russell won’t let Hanna out of his sight for long tonight either,’ added Griff.
‘I had no idea she loved Russell, or that he loved her. But I’m so happy for them. They look good together don’t they?’
‘They do.’
‘How would you feel, Grace,’ asked Hope, ‘if we had the hen night as planned, but then invited our men to join us later, at say, midnight?’
‘I think that would make it the perfect night,’ Grace said.
Which meant that the male dancers Hope had hired for the hen night had more competition with the ladies at the end of the evening, than they might have ordinarily been used to.
But Vera and Rita Boot, and Daisy Copeland, and Granny Joy, and even Barbra Brimble, had a thoroughly enjoyable time.
Jemma made a few notes on her phone while the hen night was in full swing and before her boyfriend Greg joined her at midnight, with the other men.
‘I think it’s time some of the older women in my books had a bit more, shall we say, fun?’ she told Hanna, laughing. ‘At the moment it’s mainly the younger ones who have wild and passionate sex, but judging by these women here tonight, it’s never too late to admire and enjoy the male form.’
The village gossip the following day had, of course, been about how Hanna and Russell had declared their love for one another in St Gabriel’s church, and had even said the words, ‘I do’, which must mean that it wouldn’t be long before they did.
But they weren’t the only ones, tongues were wagging about. News had quickly spread about how, at Grace’s hen night, Barbra Brimble had tried to remove a pair of gold, sparkly pants from one of the male dancers with her teeth. Sadly, she hadn’t applied enough denture adhesive to keep her gnashers in place, and the man had danced around the Great Hall of Betancourt with a pair of dentures attached to his gold, sparkly pants, while the owner of said dentures crawled after him on her hands and knees.
Her long-suffering husband, Bernard, who had listened to his wife’s sharp and wagging tongue all their married life, was not best pleased by this gossip.
And neither, it must be said, was Barbra.
But she did retrieve her teeth. Eventually.
