The summer wedding, p.18
The Summer Wedding, page 18
The girl was soon glazing over as Jacinta moved on from her arthritis, through diabetes to her weak heart and two recent mini-strokes. Her hearing-aid battery packed up somewhere between asthma and glycaemia, but she didn’t notice, launching into the details of her recent gum disease.
The girl was incredibly relieved when the arrival of another tequila round signalled a new inter-course show, this time the fortune teller, who swept into the room so dramatically that her headdress took out a light fitting. ‘Well, it sure as hell isn’t a trained parrot.’ She giggled.
Unable to hear much at all now, Jacinta eyed the new arrival rheumily, inclining her head towards her pretty companion. ‘The old parrot doesn’t learn to talk, as we say in Spain.’ She offered a bag of Werther’s. ‘Toffee?’
‘Look to the SKIES for your FUTURE!’ The seven-foot bird waved her wings about in front of a mildly amused Iris. ‘Trust the WORD of the Phoenix. The SKY holds the secret of HAPPINESS. You may see a CLOUD in the shape of your talisman or a STAR that burns more brightly than the others. You must trust that SIGN and follow it, even if it changes your PLANS.’
‘You paid for this shit?’ one of the hens hissed at Chloe.
Chloe cleared her throat. ‘I was led to believe it would be more of an intimate palmistry and tarot sort of a thing.’
‘She sounds like Robert Peston on a bad day.’
‘There is a WOMAN close to you who gives WISE advice!’ the Phoenix carried on, in an accent that kept jumping from Greece to somewhere in Eastern Europe, then back again. ‘You must LISTEN to her. She will say it only ONCE.’
Beneath the mask Laney winced, realising she’d now veered into an ’Allo ’Allo! impersonation. At this rate, she’d have to resign the post of godmother. ‘She may not be in your LIFE much longer. I can also see a MAN. A man you cannot TRUST. A centaur. Avoid him. He will bring RUIN.’
Iris was starting to look mildly irritated.
Laney flapped her wings again, making a few nearby hens duck. She was aware she was losing authority. She had to pull out a trump card.
Squaring her huge feathered shoulders, she tipped her head back so her beak pointed upwards. ‘I can see a WORD forming in the SKY. It is above me now. A name… it looks foreign. S-U-E-N-O. Sueno?’
‘It’s a place!’ Iris gasped, eyes widening before narrowing suspiciously, and she shot Chloe a sceptical look, sensing a plant, but Chloe was genuinely staggered. The Devonshire family kept Sueño secret: it was the Spanish hacienda buried deep within the Andalucían hills, incorporating farmland that had once belonged to Leo’s grandparents. Jacinta had been born there. The tranquillity and calm of Hacienda Sueño had long provided a bolt-hole for the family to escape to, and the press remained unaware of it, as did all but the closest of family friends. Indeed, most of the hens were looking blank.
‘That is a SAFE place,’ Laney said, accent heading towards Hungary. ‘Away from the CENTAUR.’ She wondered if it would be too much to add that Durham University was a good bet too. Deciding it was, she cast around for a few fortune-telling stand-bys. ‘I see a tall man.’
‘That’s Dougie.’ Iris sighed.
‘TALL man,’ Laney repeated, flapping her wings. ‘Dark and handsome. He has a limp and… a scar shaped like an… er… arrow.’
‘Who is he?’ Iris was taking more interest.
‘He will bring good FORTUNE.’ The accent was more Polish builder than Aegean goddess now, but at least she had everybody’s attention. ‘Do not deny him the chance to fill your heart with the courage of a LION. Remember, look to the SKY! ¡Buenas noches!’
Electing to quit while she was ahead, she swept out of the room, shedding colourful tail feathers everywhere and popping several balloons with her headdress.
Her dramatic exit was then somewhat hampered by Chloe barring her way while she fumbled in a bag for the envelope containing the Psychic Phoenix’s fee for the evening.
‘I cannot accept payment!’ Laney insisted. Taking money felt deeply dishonest given the lies she’d just spun. ‘With messages this CLEAR it is my DUTY to pass on predictions.’ She spread her wings wide to make the girl back off.
But Chloe had faced far more frightening fowl in her veterinary placements and calmly tucked the envelope beneath a golden shoulder pad. ‘I added in the fifty-pence-per-mile travel expenses from High Wycombe you asked for.’
Able to study her at close range through her mask, Laney was struck by how like her father she was. Her skin was darker than Hope’s, closer to Oscar’s Jamaican tones, but with extraordinary dark blue eyes and freckles across her cheeks, nose and chin. Like Hope, she had wild bedsprings of dark curls and deliciously plump lips, along with that distinctive cleft chin.
To Laney’s ongoing frustration, Chloe had always refused to have anything to do with her half-sister, and Oscar didn’t attempt to encourage contact between them, even less so Chloe’s embittered mother. Laney, though, had enough insight into Chloe’s clever mind and warm heart from the girl’s long friendship with Iris to remain certain there was a way forward. Tonight, however, was regrettably not an opportunity to unmask and suggest a family day out to Legoland.
For a moment, as Chloe stared deep into the beak, Laney was convinced she’d been rumbled and felt ice-cold sweat drench her, but Chloe simply smiled and said, ‘Thanks. That was the highlight of the night. I might book you for my mother’s fiftieth.’ Was it Laney’s imagination or did she detect the ghost of a wink before Chloe turned away?
The whole event had left Laney drained and desperate for another stiff drink. Wings drooping, sequinned talons scuffing, she trailed back across the rowing club car park.
The driver of the Mini that screeched in through the exit was travelling far too fast to account for a giant multi-coloured bird in her path. Laney only had time to throw up her arms with a swish of six-foot, golden-tipped wings as brakes screeched and rubber squealed. Certain she was roadkill, she shut her eyes in horror.
The car shuddered to a halt just in front of her, engine ticking.
Opening her eyes again, the first thing Laney saw was the metallic advertising sign stuck to its driver’s door: PSYCHIC PHOENIX, FORTUNE TELLER EXTRAORDINAIRE.
‘We should both have seen this coming,’ she muttered weakly.
The driver was cowering in the Mini, disbelieving eyes peering at her.
‘Are you OK?’ Laney asked kindly, aware that being addressed by a seven-foot mythical bird was unlikely to help anybody suffering from shock and whiplash. ‘Shall I call anybody?’ She felt around in her costume for the phone she knew was in there.
‘I am s-so sorry!’ came a muffled yelp from inside the car. ‘I know I’m a phoney! I know I took your name in vain. Please spare me the fire!’
Laney tried to take off the mask and headdress to reveal her face and reassure the driver, but it had a lot of complicated ties at the back of the neck that Simon must have knotted tighter than macramé, because the thing stayed put as she thrashed about in the car park clutching her head, wings flapping. The terrified fortune teller selected Reverse and careered back at breakneck speed, executed an amazing handbrake turn and belted out of the car park entry gates.
With a shrug of wings, Laney headed back to the Mercedes and set about folding herself inside. Tail feathers poking out of the door, she fished in her plumage to extract her phone from her bra.
How did it go? Mia’s latest text demanded.
So-so, she replied. Let’s say I planted a seed, but the wedding bouquet’s already in full bloom.
Thank you for trying. xx
Simon had sent several picture texts from home that evening, clearly laying into the winebox as he did so. The most recent one made her yelp. In it, he appeared to have set light to Red Gables’ crumbling conservatory. The accompanying message read: My heart is burning for you.
It was a long time since he had thrown a big strop. The last one – staged just after they’d remarried, at a time when the press were being particularly spiteful – had been a drunken tantrum involving smashing his entire Lalique collection, and she’d seen that one coming. This one seemed out of the blue, but she’d been insufferably moody of late and feared she must have pushed him over the edge.
Driving back in a blind panic, she ignored the sat-nav’s back route and stuck to the main roads. As she swung too fast around one roundabout, she spotted the familiar white, blue and yellow livery of a Thames Valley Police car appear in her wing mirrors. It flashed its lights for her to pull over.
‘Late for a party?’ asked the first officer, when she’d cut the engine in a lay-by and handed over her keys. ‘Faster to fly.’
‘Keep your wings on the steering wheel where we can see them,’ said the other as he checked her ID. ‘Any relation to that Montmorency bloke off the telly?’
‘Wife.’ She tried not to think about the ‘burning’ text or her flame-ridden house.
‘Avoiding being recognised, I take it. Do you often drive about dressed as a golden eagle?’
‘It’s a phoenix, actually. It’s not my usual look.’
‘Could you step out of the car for a breath test, please, madam?’
She could hear the blood thundering in her ears as she more or less fell out of the car, wrestling with her wings, ready to be breathalysed. Terrified that the gin she’d consumed earlier that evening would take her over the limit, she puffed hard into the tube. The headlines swam before her eyes: LOVELY SIMON DM’S WIFE LETS HIM DOWN AGAIN, their beautiful wreck of a home burning while she racketed around drunkenly behind the wheel.
When she was given the all-clear, she wanted to weep with gratitude. Then they started a long-winded kerbside lecture about speeding, official cautions and automatic set fines. ‘I’m so sorry I was speeding. It’s just that I think my house might be on fire,’ she explained, and reached back into the Merc for her phone to show them the evidence.
‘Why didn’t you say so earlier?’ The officers forced her back through the driver’s door as though they were jamming a ten-kilo Christmas turkey into a small oven. ‘We’ll radio for back-up.’
Chapter 14
Simon had shipped several more gins and the best part of two bottles of red wine, so the sight of a large golden bird driving through the Red Gables gate followed by a police patrol car with its blues flashing was deeply disconcerting. Then, panicking that his wife must have had an accident, he wove up the slope of the gardens that swept down to the river. In front of him, Kensington and Chelsea barked furiously, still battling for the stick they had wrestled from the pyre before it was lit.
Down by the river, a huge inferno of pallets and demolished partition walls roared beneath a haze of sparks, its golden glow reflected in the many broken panes in the decrepit conservatory nearby, a mock-Victorian contrivance linked to the main house by a long walkway which had once served as the stage school’s dance studio. Photographed from beside the mammoth fire, the whole building would certainly have seemed to be alight. Witnessed in person, however, it was simply a sagging mirror to a jolly waterside pyre.
‘Isn’t it rather late at night to have a bonfire, sir?’ asked one of the uniforms.
‘I wanted to welcome my phoenix home in a blaze of glory,’ he explained cheerfully, lurching sideways.
Laney finally rustled up, wings bent totally out of shape. Her first thought was for Hope.
‘What are you doing out here when there’s a small child in the house?’ she demanded. ‘You know how lightly she sleeps. What if she’s woken in tears again?’ She turned to run inside, but tripped over her sequinned talons and fell into a flowerbed.
‘She’s fine!’ He reeled after her. ‘Here, let me help you up. You stay here – that outfit will frighten her to death. I’ll go and check on her.’ He pitched sideways again and landed in a large peony beside his wife.
While the Demons flailed amid the perennials, one inebriated and the other trapped by her costume, the main door to the house flew open and a slender, determined silhouette appeared in a very short dressing gown and pink Crocs.
‘Hope is fast asleep,’ announced Malin, casting the police an angry look as she marched across the gravel and stooped to haul Laney upright. She ignored Simon, who seemed quite happy lying down, wrestling with his black dogs and laughing.
‘Thank you, Malin.’ Laney mustered her dignity. ‘Could you possibly fetch me some scissors? I want to cut my head off.’
Simon found this hugely funny.
‘Pissed as a newt,’ the officers agreed as they drove away. ‘Wait till I tell the wife. She thinks the sun shines out of him.’
‘Strange pair.’
‘Nice house. Must be loaded. The au pair’s well fit. Bet he’s banging her.’
Chapter 15
Late on the same night, Griff Donne touched down on British soil for the first time in almost a year. He’d not returned since the Sudan kidnapping scandal that had blighted his career, although the British media had cast him more as victim than perpetrator. A huge cry had gone out for interviews, but he had avoided them all, preferring to stay away from his home country and ridicule.
Tanned, clean-shaven and muscular, he was a far cry from the gaunt, bearded figure in the photograph that had lined every news-stand upon his release from captivity. Now he headed to the nearest car hire desk. As he took possession of a set of Volkswagen keys, he asked, ‘I don’t suppose you know where I could hire a hot-air balloon around here?’
In LA, Dougie was ready to party. Never one to let an opportunity go to waste, he’d spent the afternoon calling all the contacts he had in the city, dropping his future father-in-law’s name heavily. ‘Yeah, I just had lunch with Leo. Great guy. We want to do some work together… I think we might get Iris on board too, for the right project, a family thing. She’ll be in LA in a week’s time.’ He found that using the Devonshire name bypassed switchboards and opened doors faster than the FBI on a raid.
Feeling sky high after such a successful day, he headed to the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank to meet up with an old girlfriend who boarded her horse there and who was now part of a crowd of rather Sloaney expatriate Brits based in Tinseltown, many of whom were Dougie’s former partying cronies. Having dumped her somewhat ignominiously for Iris, he was surprised by how eager she was to see him again, but he guessed that was the Devonshire magic.
Having dutifully admired her stringy-looking horse, he was introduced to two more glossy-maned girls in the West Coast horse fraternity, charming them with wild tales of filming alongside Con O’Mara in the Ptolemy series. But it was his engagement to that series’ leading actress that was the cause of most interest.
‘Is she as highly strung as everybody makes out?’
‘Was she fired from The Raven’s Curse or did she quit?’
‘Are you guys going to live in LA?’
‘Is she really giving up her career?’
Piling into a spotless white Range-Rover, they drove along the Ventura Freeway and into Forest Lawn Drive, a tarmac artery that divided concrete, pylons and wasteland to their right from the unfeasibly lush hills to their left as they cruised past huge mortuaries and green fields studded with memorial plaques.
‘Where Hollywood buries its dead,’ one of the girls said, crossing herself.
‘Now contains more plastic than your average landfill,’ drawled Dougie’s ex.
They took a narrow bridge across the Los Angeles River into a Warner Brothers parking lot to pick up a make-up artist friend who was working on a sitcom there.
As she climbed in, Dougie’s phone rang and he found himself talking to Abe Schultz’s assistant, calling to set up a meeting.
