They bandied ideas around. Half-serious notions of party boats down the Thames, chocolate-making in a Cornish castle, and paintballing, were all suggested and shot down – Who in their right mind would ever go paintballing at any time? mused Rose – and then finally JoJo had said to leave it to her. Organised JoJo, she would know what to do, they all agreed, and when the immaculate invitation had plopped through her letter box, Rose had felt little champagne bubbles of excitement rise inside her. She was also thrilled to discover Jason was actually going to be home that weekend and she wouldn’t have to arrange for her parents to have the girls.
Thank you for the invitation, JoJo, Wendy had messaged on the ‘Wendy’s Hen Do’ chat, the same morning she’d received her invitation in the post and been duly added to the group. Erm . . . didn’t I say I didn’t want a hen do?? She’d added one of those emoji things, the one with the bared-teeth grimace and Rose remembered looking at it and thinking it strange how Wendy hadn’t been up for a ‘hen’: she loved a night out and a good old dance – she was always first on the floor for a bit of Whigfield ‘Saturday Night’ or old school ‘YMCA’ (Wendy was a sucker for those cheesy, formation dance songs) and she also adored their London nights away and any opportunity for them all to get together.
Yes, you did, but we couldn’t let such detail stop it from happening, JoJo had replied, embellishing her sentiment with three smiley faces, a thumbs-up, and a martini in a cocktail glass.
Wendy had put another grimace. Then the devil’s face. Rose, online at the time whilst taking a lunch break from fumigating the girls’ bedrooms, had pictured Wendy tapping furtively away on her phone whilst at work in her lab. Wendy was a scientist, in Kent, and did something to do with aphids none of them understood. Her massive red curls would have been contained off her face in a hairband and a rainbow scrunchie – Wendy had huge hair: think Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, sans hooker wig, and times her hair by about ten – and her ever-colourful clothes hidden, as usual, under her white coat. Rose had imagined Wendy shaking her head as she leant over the pure white, shiny scientist’s workbench and typed out a response.
Do we have to? Oh look, the scream emoji. Always a good one.
Yes! Rose had written, plonking herself down on Louisa’s nail varnish-splattered bedroom chair and interrupting their messages. It sounds brilliant! Thanks for organising, JoJo! She’d put three bunches of flowers, the tropical cocktail, the chocolate bar and the dancing lady in the flamenco dress. And, later that night, Sal, no doubt standing at the back door of her pub and enjoying a quick, sneaky shandy between covers, had rsvp’d, too with a whoop, and a woo-hoo, flagged by capitals and lots of those faces that blow a red kiss.
Wendy’s hen do was happening and it couldn’t be happening to a nicer person, Rose thought, as her taxi rumbled up Station Road, but, all the same, she allowed herself a huge, envious sigh as it came to a stop outside Hinklesworth Station and she paid the driver. Wendy was so, so lucky. This was all just the beginning for their friend, after all this time.
Rose got on the Metropolitan Line, travelled four stops, then got off at Baker Street to change for the Hammersmith & City Line. As she got off the Tube at Paddington, she mentally told herself off for sighing over Wendy and Frederick’s romance; jealousy was not an attractive trait and she was in short supply of those, these days, as it was.
‘Rose! Rose, over here!’
She was at Paddington Station at last and there was Wendy, waiting under the departure board, her curls voluminous and three-feet wide, her tall, willowy body draped in a gorgeous, multi-print maxi dress. Rose felt so happy to see her. Ecstatic even. Those champagne bubbles of excitement filled her again as she walked over to her old friend to give her an enormous hug.
JoJo
JoJo closed the door of Boutique Brides behind her and indulged in a lingering glance at its beautiful window display before she resumed her walk to Paddington Station.
Three dresses – the three most beautiful of her collection – were displayed on calico dressmaker’s mannequins: the pale ivory princess-cut gown with the sweetheart neckline and the tiny beads of diamanté hand-sewn into the bodice; the white Grecian column dress with its silky pleats and belt made of intertwined feathers; the long-sleeved, high-necked, intricate lace dress with the magnificent, breath-taking train. Each immaculately pinned and tucked and draped, each shimmering under exceptionally pretty and strategically placed white fairy lights. Even the floor the dresses’ embellished hems tumbled onto was sublime: reams of lace and silk cascaded in elegant folds to form a pretty carpet, which was sprinkled with tiny, gossamer, mother-of-pearl buttons.
She knew it was perfection; her staff knew it was perfection; all her prospective brides and their mums and their excited, supportive friends knew it too. It was the kind of shop window to elicit gasps and the occasional excited and happy tear. It was a window that said ‘come on in, sit on a pretty, jacquard silk chaise longue, enjoy a chilled glass of champagne and see all your dreams come true’.
It was a display that promised happy-ever-afters.
Boutique Brides was a beautiful shop and it was all hers. She’d just been inside to check on a few things before she set off for the weekend. She couldn’t resist – the shop in Little Venice was practically en route from her house in Maida Vale to Paddington – and, while inside, she’d attempted to follow her best friends’ instructions to lock her BlackBerry in the desk at the back of the shop, so she couldn’t take it with her on Wendy’s hen weekend. However, she’d failed spectacularly in her mission. The BlackBerry had stayed in that drawer all of five minutes.
‘Not a workaholic, not a workaholic at all.’ Tinks, her eminently capable assistant, had smiled as she’d watched JoJo pull the BlackBerry back out of the drawer and slip it into her embroidered carpet bag.
‘Bang to rights.’ JoJo had grinned. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. I couldn’t possibly leave this baby behind.’ She’d patted the side of the bag and smiled sheepishly, but not that sheepishly. She didn’t care, actually – the shop was her second baby and babies needed close monitoring, didn’t they?
‘Boutique Brides will be absolutely fine without you for a couple of days, you know,’ Tinks had added, with a warm but business-like shaking of her head. ‘You can trust us.’
‘I know I can. You’re all amazing. You and Josie and Ayda are all brilliant.’ They were; her assistant and Tinks’ assistants were all fantastic at their jobs. She’d been very, very careful when she’d hired them; the interview process for each of them had gone on for days.
JoJo had smiled and pulled the belt of her Burberry raincoat tighter. There had been light summer showers all day, so far, but with any luck they would clear for tonight, at least in Wiltshire – she quite fancied a wander around The Retreat’s boating lake at some point this evening. She’d leave her BlackBerry in the room for that, definitely, of course she would . . .
‘No need to even have your phone on.’
‘It’s on vibrate.’ She had both a phone and a BlackBerry, which was better for emails.
‘Right. And don’t rush back on Monday.’
‘I’ll try not to.’ The return train to Paddington was booked for 10.31. JoJo and her friends would be back in London for 11.45 and she was planning on heading straight to the boutique.
‘You didn’t need to come in at all today.’ Tinks straightened up the appointments book and smoothed down the skirt of her navy shift dress.
‘I know,’ said JoJo. She’d settled her sister, Millie, into her Maida Vale mews and had kissed her daughter, Constance, goodbye, several times. She should have gone straight on her way.
‘Have a great time,’ Tinks had said, with a note