‘This weekend will be a good distraction, won’t it?’ Charlie says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I hope so.’ This will be the closest we’ll have had to a holiday for a long time. And I really need one right now. ‘I can’t work out why Jules would choose a random island off the coast of Ireland,’ I add. It seems particularly her to choose somewhere so exclusive that her guests might actually drown trying to get there. ‘It’s not like she couldn’t have afforded to hold it anywhere she wanted.’
Charlie frowns. He doesn’t like to talk about money, it embarrasses him. It’s one of the reasons I love him. Except sometimes, just sometimes, I can’t help wondering what it would be like to have a tiny bit more. We agonised over the gift list and had a bit of an argument about it. Our max is normally fifty quid, but Charlie insisted that we had to do more, because he and Jules go back so far. As everything listed was from Liberty’s, the £150 we finally agreed to only bought us a rather ordinary-looking ceramic bowl. There was a scented candle on there for £200.
‘You know Jules,’ Charlie says now, as the boat makes another swoop downwards before hitting something that feels much harder than mere water, bouncing up again with a few sideways spasms for good measure. ‘She likes to do things differently. And it could be to do with her dad being Irish.’
‘But I thought she doesn’t get on with her dad?’
‘It’s more complicated than that. He was never really around and he’s a bit of a dick, but I think she’s always kind of idolised him. That’s why she wanted me to give her sailing lessons all those years ago. He had this yacht, and she wanted him to be proud of her.’
It’s difficult to imagine Jules in the inferior position of wanting to make someone proud. I know her dad’s a big deal property developer, a self-made man. As the daughter of a train driver and a nurse who grew up constantly strapped for cash, I’m fascinated by – and a little bit suspicious of – people who have made loads of money. To me they’re like another species altogether, a breed of sleek and dangerous big cats.
‘Or maybe Will chose it,’ I say. ‘It seems very him, very outward bound.’ I feel a little leap of excitement in my stomach at the thought of meeting someone so famous. It’s hard to think of Jules’s fiancé as a completely real person.
I’ve been catching up on the show in secret. It’s pretty good, though it’s hard to be objective. I’ve been fascinated by the idea of Jules being with this man … touching him, kissing him, sleeping with him. About to get married to him.
The basic premise of the show, Survive the Night, is that Will gets left somewhere, tied up and blindfolded, in the middle of the night. A forest, say, or the middle of an Arctic tundra, with nothing but the clothes he’s wearing and maybe a knife in his belt. He then has to free himself and make his way to a rendezvous point using his wits and navigational skills alone. There’s lots of high drama: in one episode he has to cross a waterfall in the dark; in another he’s stalked by wolves. At times you’ll suddenly remember that the camera crew is there watching him, filming him. If it were really all that bad, surely they’d step in to help? But they certainly do a good job of making you feel the danger.
At my mention of Will, Charlie’s face has darkened. ‘I still don’t get why she’s marrying him after such a short time,’ he says. ‘I suppose that’s what Jules is like. When she’s made up her mind, she acts quickly. But you mark my words, Han: he’s hiding something. I don’t think he’s everything he pretends to be.’
This is why I’ve been so secretive about watching the show. I know Charlie wouldn’t like it. At times I can’t help feeling that his dislike of Will seems a little like jealousy. I really hope it’s not jealousy. Because what would that mean?
It could also be to do with Will’s stag do. Charlie went, which seemed all wrong, as he’s Jules’s friend. He came home from the weekend in Sweden a bit out of sorts. Every time I even alluded to it he’d go all weird and stiff. So I shrugged it off. He came back in one piece, didn’t he?
The sea seems to have got even rougher. The old fishing boat is pitching and rolling now in all directions at once, like one of those rodeo-bull machines, like it’s trying to throw us overboard. ‘Is it really safe to keep going?’ I call to Mattie.
‘Yep!’ he calls back, over the crash of the spray, the shriek of the wind. ‘This is a good day, as they go. Not far to Inis an Amplóra now.’
I can feel wet hanks of hair stuck to my forehead, while the rest of it seems to have lifted into a huge tangled cloud around my head. I can only imagine how I’ll look to Jules and Will and the rest of them, when we finally arrive.
‘Cormorant!’ Charlie shouts, pointing. He’s trying to distract me from my nausea, I know. I feel like one of the children being taken to the doctor’s for an injection. But I follow his finger to a sleek dark head, emerging from the waves like the periscope of a miniature submarine. Then it swoops down beneath the surface, a swift black streak. Imagine feeling so at home in such hostile conditions.
‘I saw something in the article specifically about cormorants,’ Charlie says. He picks up his phone again. ‘Ah, here. They’re particularly common along this stretch of coast, apparently.’ He puts on his schoolteacher voice: ‘“the cormorant is a bird much maligned in local folklore.” Oh dear. “Historically, the bird has been represented as a symbol of greed, bad luck and evil.”’ We both watch as the cormorant emerges from the water again. There’s a tiny fish in its sharp beak, a brief flash of silver, before the bird opens its gullet and swallows the thing whole.
My stomach flips. I feel as though it’s me that has swallowed the fish, quick and slippery, swimming about in my belly. And as the boat begins to list in the other direction, I lurch to the side and throw up my cream tea.
JULES
The Bride
I’m standing in front of the mirror in our room, the biggest and most elegant of the Folly’s ten bedrooms, naturally. From here I only need to turn my head a fraction to look out through the windows towards the sea. The weather today is perfect, the sun shimmering off the waves so brightly you can hardly look at it. It bloody well better stay like this for tomorrow.
Our room is on the western side of the building and this is the westernmost island off this part of the coast, so there is nothing, and no one, for thousands of miles between me and the Americas. I like the drama of that. The Folly itself is a beautifully restored fifteenth-century building, treading the line between luxury and timelessness, grandeur and comfort: antique rugs on the flagstone floors, claw-footed baths, fireplaces lit with smouldering peat. It’s large enough to fit all our guests, yet small enough to feel intimate. It’s perfect. Everything is going to be perfect.
Don’t think about the note, Jules.
I will not think about the note.
Fuck. Fuck. I don’t know why it’s got to me so much. I have never been a worrier, the sort of person who wakes up at three in the morning, fretting. Not until recently anyway.
The note was delivered through our letter box three weeks ago. It told me not to marry Will. To call it off.
Somehow the idea of it has gained this dark power over me. Whenever I think about it, it gives me a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach. A feeling like dread.
Which is ridiculous. I wouldn’t normally give a second thought to this sort of thing.
I look back at the mirror. I’m currently wearing the dress. The dress. I thought it important to try it on one last time, the eve of my wedding, to double-check. I had a fitting last week but I never leave anything to chance. As expected, it’s perfect. Heavy cream silk that looks as though it has been poured over me, the corsetry within creating the quintessential hourglass. No lace or other fripperies, that’s not me. The nap of the silk is so fine it can only be handled with special white gloves which, obviously, I’m wearing now. It cost an absolute bomb. It was worth it. I’m not interested in fashion for its own sake, but I respect the power of clothes, in creating the right optics. I knew immediately that this dress was a queenmaker.
By the end of the evening the dress will probably be filthy, even I can’t mitigate that. But I will have it shortened to just below the knee and dyed a darker colour. I am nothing if not practical. I have always, always got a plan; have done ever since I was little.
I move over to where I have the table plan pinned to the wall. Will says I’m like a general hanging his campaign maps. But it is important, isn’t it? The seating can pretty much make or break the guests’ enjoyment of a wedding. I know I’ll have it perfect by this evening. It’s all in the planning: that’s how I took The Download from a blog to a fully fledged online magazine with a staff of thirty in a couple of years.
Most of the guests will come over tomorrow for the wedding, then return to their hotels on the mainland – I enjoyed putting ‘boats at midnight’ on the invites in place of the usual ‘carriages’. But our most important invitees will stay on the island tonight and tomorrow, in the Folly with us. It’s a rather exclusive guest list. Will had to choose the favourites among his ushers, as he has so many. Not so difficult for me as I’ve only got one bridesmaid – my half-sister Olivia. I don’t have many female friends. I don’t have time for gossip. And groups of women together remind me too much of the bitchy clique of girls at my school who never accepted me as their own. It was a surprise to see so many women on the hen do – but then they were largely my employees from The Download – who organised it as a not entirely welcome surprise – or the partners of Will’s mates. My closest friend is male: Charlie. In effect, this weekend, he’ll be my best man.
Charlie and Hannah are on their way over now, the last of tonight’s guests to arrive. It will be so good to see Charlie. It feels like a long time since we hung out as adults, without his kids there. Back in the day we used to see each other all the time – even after he’d got together with Hannah. He always made time for me. But when he had kids it felt like he moved into that other realm: one in which a late night means 11 p.m., and every outing without kids has to be carefully orchestrated. It was only then that I started to miss having him to myself.
‘You look stunning.’
‘Oh!’ I jump, then spot him in the mirror: Will. He’s leaning in the doorway, watching me. ‘Will!’ I hiss. ‘I’m in my dress! Get out! You’re not supposed to see—’
He doesn’t move. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have a preview? And I’ve seen it, now.’ He begins to walk towards me. ‘No point crying over spilled silk. You look – Jesus – I can’t wait to see you coming up the aisle in that.’ He moves to stand behind me, taking a hold of my bare shoulders.
I should be livid. I am. Yet I can feel my outrage sputtering. Because his hands are on me now, moving from my shoulders down my arms, and I feel that first shiver of longing. I remind myself, too, that I’m far from superstitious about the groom seeing the wedding dress beforehand – I’ve never believed in that sort of thing.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I say, crossly. But already it sounds a little half-hearted.
‘Look at us,’ he says as our eyes meet in the mirror, as he traces a finger down the side of my cheek. ‘Don’t we look good together?’
And he’s right, we do. Me so dark-haired and pale, him so fair and tanned. We make the most attractive couple in any room. I’m not going to pretend it’s not part of the thrill, imagining how we might appear to the outside world – and to our guests tomorrow. I think of the girls at school who once teased me for being a chubby swot (I was a late bloomer) and think: Look who’s having the last laugh.
He bites into the exposed skin of my shoulder. A pluck of lust low in my belly, a snapped elastic band. With it goes the last of my resistance.
‘You nearly done with that?’ He’s looking over my shoulder at the table plan.
‘I haven’t quite worked out where I’m putting everyone,’ I say.
There’s a silence as he inspects it, his breath warm on the side of my neck, curling along my collarbone. I can smell the aftershave he’s wearing, too: cedar and moss. ‘Did we invite Piers?’ he asks mildly. ‘I don’t remember him being on the list.’
I somehow manage not to roll my eyes. I did all of the invitations. I refined the list, chose the stationers, collated all the addresses, bought the stamps, posted every last one. Will was away a lot, shooting the new series. Every so often, he’d throw out a name, someone he’d forgotten to mention. I suppose he did check through the list at the end pretty carefully, saying he wanted to make sure we hadn’t missed anyone. Piers was a later addition.
‘He wasn’t on the list,’ I admit. ‘But I saw his wife at those drinks at the Groucho. She asked about the wedding and it seemed total madness not to invite them. I mean, why wouldn’t we?’ Piers is the producer of Will’s show. He’s a nice guy and he and Will have always seemed to get along well. I didn’t have to think twice about extending the invitation.
‘Fine,’ Will says. ‘Yes, of course that makes sense.’ But there’s an edge to his voice. For some reason it has bothered him.
‘Look, darling,’ I say, curling one arm around his neck. ‘I thought you’d be delighted to have them here. They certainly seemed pleased to be asked.’
‘I don’t mind,’ he says, carefully. ‘It was a surprise, that’s all.’ He moves his hands to my waist. ‘I don’t mind in the least. In fact, it’s a good surprise. It will be nice to have them.’
‘OK. Right, so I’m going to put husbands and wives next to each other. Does that work?’
‘The eternal dilemma,’ he says, mock-profoundly.
‘God, I know … but people do really care about that sort of thing.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you and I were guests I know where I’d want to be sitting.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Right opposite you, so I could do this.’ His hand reaches down and rucks up the fabric of the silk skirt, climbing beneath.
‘Will,’ I say, ‘the silk—’
His fingers have found the lace edge of my knickers.
‘Will!’ I say, half-annoyed, ‘what on earth are you—’ Then his fingers have slipped inside my knickers and have begun to move against me and I don’t particularly care about the silk any more. My head falls against his chest.
This is not like me at all. I am not the sort of person who gets engaged only a few months into knowing someone … or married only a few months after that. But I would argue that it isn’t rash, or impulsive, as I think some suspect. If anything, it’s the opposite. It’s knowing your own mind, knowing what you want and acting upon it.
‘We could do it right now,’ Will says, his voice a warm murmur against my neck. ‘We’ve got time, haven’t we?’ I try to answer – no – but as his fingers continue their work it turns into a long, drawn-out groan.
With every other partner I’ve got bored in a matter of weeks, the sex has rather too quickly become pedestrian, a chore. With Will I feel like I am never quite sated – even when, in the baser sense, I am more sated than I have been with any other lover. It isn’t just about him being so beautiful – which he is, of course, objectively so. This insatiability is far deeper than that. I’m aware of a feeling of wanting to possess him. Of each sexual act being an attempt at a possession that is never quite achieved, some essential part of him always evading my reach, slipping beneath the surface.
Is it to do with his fame? The fact that once you attain celebrity you become, in a sense, publicly owned? Or is it something else, something fundamental about him? Secret and unknowable, hidden from view?
This thought, inevitably, has me thinking about the note. I will not think about the note.
Will’s fingers continue their work. ‘Will,’ I say, half-heartedly, ‘anyone might come in.’
‘Isn’t that the thrill of it?’ he whispers. Yes, yes I suppose it is. Will has definitely broadened my sexual horizons. He’s introduced me to sex in public places. We’ve done it in a night-time park, in the back row of a near-empty cinema. When I remember this I am amazed at myself: I cannot believe that it was me who did these things. Julia Keegan does not break the law.
He’s also the only man I have ever allowed to film me in the nude – once, even during sex itself. I only agreed to this once we were engaged, naturally. I’m not a fucking idiot. But it’s Will’s thing and, since we’ve started doing it, though I don’t exactly like it – it represents a loss of control, and in every other relationship I have been the one in control – at the same time it is somehow intoxicating, this loss. I hear him unbuckle his belt and just the sound of it sends a charge through me. He pushes me forward, towards the dressing table – a little roughly. I grip the table. I feel the tip of him poised there, about to enter me.
‘Hello hello? Anybody in there?’ The door creaks open.
Shit.
Will pulls away from me, I hear him scrabbling with his jeans, his belt. I feel my skirt fall. I almost can’t bear to turn.
He stands there, lounging in the doorway: Johnno, Will’s best man. How much did he see? Everything? I feel the heat rising into my cheeks and I’m furious with myself. I’m furious with him. I never blush.
‘Sorry, chaps,’ Johnno says. ‘Was I interrupting?’ Is that a smirk? ‘Oh—’ he catches sight of what I’m wearing. ‘Is that …? Isn’t that meant to be bad luck?’
I’d like to pick up a heavy object and hurl it at him, scream at him to get out. But I am on best behaviour. ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ I say instead, and I hope my tone asks: Do I look like the sort of cretin who would believe something like that? I raise my eyebrow at him, cross my arms. I am past master at the raised eyebrow game – I use it at work to fantastic effect. I dare him to say another word. For all Johnno’s bravado, I think he’s a little scared of me. People are, generally, scared of me.
‘We were going through the table plan,’ I tell him. ‘So you interrupted that.’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘I’ve been such a bellend …’ I can see that he’s a little cowed. Good. ‘I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten something pretty important.’
I feel my heart begin to beat faster. Not the rings. I told Will not to trust him with the rings until the last minute. If he’s forgotten the rings I cannot be held responsible for my actions.
‘It’s my suit,’ Johnno says. ‘I had it all ready to go, in the liner … and then, at the last minute … well, I dunno what happened. All I can say is, it must be hanging on my door in Blighty.’
I look away from them both as they leave the room. Concentrate hard on not saying anything I’ll regret. I have to keep a handle on my temper this weekend. Mine has been known to get the better of me. I’m not proud of the fact, but I have never found myself able to completely control it, though I’m getting better. Rage is not a good look on a bride.
I don’t get why Will is friends with Johnno, why he hasn’t cut him out of his life by now. It’s definitely not the witty conversation that keeps him hanging in there. The guy’s harmless, I suppose … at least, I assume he’s harmless. But they’re so different. Will is so driven, so successful, so smart in the way he presents himself. Johnno is a slob. One of life’s dropouts. When we collected him from the local train station on the mainland he stank of weed and looked like he’d been sleeping rough. I expected him to at least get a shave and a haircut before he came out here. It’s not too much to ask that your groomsman doesn’t look like a caveman, is it? Later I’ll send Will over to his room with a razor.
Will’s too good to him. He even, apparently, got Johnno a screen test for Survive the Night which, of course, didn’t come to anything. When I asked Will why he sticks with Johnno, he put it down to simple ‘history’. ‘We don’t have much in common, these days,’ he said. ‘But we go back a long way.’
But Will can be fairly ruthless. To be honest, that was probably one of the things that attracted me to him when we first met, one of the things I immediately recognised we had in common. As much as his golden looks, his winning smile, the thing that drew me was the ambition I could smell coming off him, beneath his charm.
So this is what worries me. Why would Will keep a friend like Johnno around simply because of a shared past? Unless that past has some sort of hold over him.
JOHNNO
The Best Man
Will climbs out of the trapdoor carrying a pack of Guinness. We’re up on the Folly’s battlements, looking through the gaps in the stonework. The ground’s a long way down and some of the stones up here are pretty loose. If you didn’t have a good head for heights it would do a number on you. From here you can see all the way to the mainland. I feel like a king up here, with the sun on my face.
Will breaks a can out of the case. ‘Here you go.’
‘Ah, the good stuff. Thanks, mate. And sorry I walked in on you back there.’ I give him a wink. ‘Thought you were meant to save it for after marriage, though?’
Will raises his eyebrows, all innocence. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jules and I were going through the table plan.’
‘Oh yeah? That’s what they call it now? Honest though,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry about the suit, mate. I feel like such a tool for forgetting.’ I want him to know I feel bad – that I’m serious about being a good best man to him. I really am, I want to do him proud.
‘Not an issue,’ Will says. ‘Not sure my spare’s going to fit, but you’re welcome to it.’
‘You’re sure Jules is going to be all right about it? She didn’t look all that happy.’
‘Yeah,’ Will waves a hand. ‘She’ll be fine.’ Which I guess means she probably isn’t fine, but he’ll work on it.
‘OK. Thanks, mate.’
He takes a swig of his Guinness, leans against the stone wall behind us. Then he seems to remember something. ‘Oh. By the way, you haven’t seen Olivia, have you? Jules’s half-sister? She keeps disappearing. She’s a little—’ He makes a gesture: ‘cuckoo’, that’s what it means, but ‘fragile’ is what he says.
I met Olivia earlier. She’s tall and dark-haired, with a big, sulky mouth and legs that go up to her armpits. ‘Shame,’ I say. ‘’Cause … well, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?’
‘Johnno, she’s nineteen, for Christ’s sake,’ Will says. ‘Don’t be disgusting. Besides, she also happens to be my fiancée’s sister.’
‘Nineteen, so she’s legal, then,’ I say, looking to wind him up. ‘It’s tradition, isn’t it? The best man has the pick of the bridesmaids. And there’s only one, so it’s not like I have all that much choice …’
Will twists his mouth like he’s tasted something disgusting. ‘I don’t think that rule applies when they’re fifteen years younger than you, you idiot,’ he says. He’s acting all prim now, but he’s always had an eye for the ladies. They’ve always had an eye for him in return, lucky bastard. ‘She’s off-limits, all right? Get that through your thick skull.’ He knocks my head with his knuckles.
I don’t like the ‘thick skull’ bit. I’m not necessarily the brightest penny in the till. But I don’t like being treated like a moron, either. Will knows that. It was one of the things that always got my back up at school. I laugh it off, though. I know he didn’t mean it.
‘Look,’ he says. ‘I can’t have you blundering around making passes at my teenage sister-in-law. Jules would kill me. She’d kill you, too.’
‘All right, all right,’ I say.
‘Besides,’ he says, lowering his voice, ‘there’s also the fact that she’s, you know …’ he makes that cuckoo gesture again. ‘She must get it from Jules’s mum. Thank God Jules missed out on any of those genes. Anyway, hands off, all right?’
