Sighing, Sal hauled her bag over her shoulder and marched off down the pavement in the direction of the bus stop. She really should have got ready earlier, she reflected, as she did have quite a long journey ahead of her. Bus to Woking Station, then a train to Waterloo and then the Underground to Paddington. Sal was cutting it pretty fine now and JoJo was going to be mightily disappointed in her if she was more than her customary ten minutes late.
She arrived at the bus stop. The New Grey Goose, still just in view, was looking fabulous, she had to admit. Sal had done a lot of work to the pub: a typical, Tudor English pub with a low-slung roof and wonky beams. When she’d acquired it, parts of the roof were falling off and the white paintwork between the beams was grey and flaking. No more. The roof was now fully tiled and weather-proof; the exterior walls an attractive, soft pistachio green and punctuated by hanging baskets and a shiny black door. Inside, she’d swapped threadbare, flocked 1980s carpet for honeyed oak floors; burgundy, peeling wallpaper for smooth, cream walls; and brasses and horseshoes and dreadful wall-mounted beer towels for tasteful, black and white Surrey pastoral views. The New Grey Goose was now a very nice pub.
A bus miraculously arrived, thank goodness, and Sal climbed aboard. As she walked down the central aisle, she spied her biking adversary cruising leisurely back down the street, his bum high in the air atop that painful-looking saddle and his suspiciously smooth calves taut. He raised one hand from the handlebars to give her a cheery wave. Cheeky git, she thought. But she couldn’t worry about him now. Martina, her manager, would have to deal with him if he came back. Sal was escaping for three nights and it felt really good, despite having to leave some good stuff behind.
‘All right, Sal?’ An elderly lady in a red raincoat, sitting at the front of the bus, greeted her with a smile.
‘Yes, good thanks, Mrs Ross. You?’
‘Very well, thank you. Lovely steak and mushroom pie I had in your place the other night.’
‘Thank you.’
Grinning to herself, Sal headed for the back of the bus just like she’d always done at school. She was pleased the new menu – and the new chef – was going down such a treat. Sitting down in the middle of the back row of seats, with a bit of a shove she tucked her overnight bag, stuffed with the contraband hen accoutrements, underneath. They were not really her thing, actually – she didn’t especially like the clichéd hen do, the wearing of tutus and pink cowboy hats and the dancing round a pile of handbags in a nightclub – but she was a rebellious sort of person who’d started buying them as soon as JoJo said they were banned.
She also hadn’t been to a hen weekend for years, but had been invited to quite a few in her time. Some good, some bad, some hysterical; Rose’s had been quite memorable . . . She was relieved, too, she thought, as the bus pulled away, there was going to be no nightclubs this weekend. Sal was a pub girl, not club, always had been. She’d worked behind the bar at university and had never really left.
‘Is this seat free?’
A young man, holding one of those tiny, ridiculous dogs that celebrities used to carry around, came and sat down beside Sal. Really? There were about forty other seats! The dog immediately started sniffing at Sal’s hand and she swiftly moved it away, bristling. She really hoped she didn’t smell of dog when she got to The Retreat, though it would probably get blasted away with a lemon and saffron infused laser, or something.
Glamorous pamper party, the invitation said, or along those lines. It wasn’t really her bag either. She wasn’t into grooming, having her nails done, all that stuff. She was more of a soap and water woman, and she knew she’d feel uncomfortable with strange ladies in white tunics prodding and poking her, and having to lie face down with her face in a hole in a bed, and all that enforced pampering – but she should be looking forward to it. She needed some time off from the pub, everyone had told her so.
Even Niall.
‘A break from all this bedroom action,’ he’d said earlier that afternoon and with his customary sexy grin, under that mop of sexy tousled hair and above that impressive set of attractive tattoos. ‘I imagine you in a pink cowboy hat, on one of those bucking bronco things, in a bar,’ he’d added. It had been after a particularly amazing session in Sal’s double bed, in the pretty beamed bedroom above her pub.
Always the pink cowboy hats . . . ‘It’s not going to be that sort of thing,’ she’d replied, gazing at his gorgeous head as it lay on one of her pillows. She still couldn’t believe it kept finding its way there. ‘It’s going to be dead classy. If you knew JoJo like I know JoJo, who booked it, then you’d be in no doubt.’
‘JoJo the wedding dress designer?’ Niall said, propping that gorgeous head up on one elbow and staring at her with those ridiculously sexy green eyes. ‘Well, the thing is, of course, that I don’t know her at all. I’ve never met any of your friends.’
He hadn’t. She and Niall weren’t really at the ‘meeting friends’ stage. They were still at the ‘shag each other senseless’ stage, the ‘we don’t know where this is going but we don’t currently care’ stage.
‘No, you haven’t, not yet.’
‘And will I?’ He turned to face her, his green eyes, framed by impossibly thick, dark brown lashes, sparkling with merriment and unabashed lust.
‘Yes. Probably. One day.’ Niall meeting her friends would make him real. It would also make it real that she was sleeping with her chef – he of the magnificent pies – and had been for two months. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that, beyond the sheer, exciting thrill of actually doing it; although she knew, logically, it was certain to go nowhere, once she had discovered what was wrong with him.
‘And Rose, the put-upon mother of three will be there?’
‘Your words not mine, but yes.’
‘And you’re meeting Wendy’s sister-in-law-to-be for the first time?’
‘Tamsin, yes.’ After they’d received their invitations Wendy had said she was Frederick’s only sister and he’d suggested they should invite her. It was fine by Sal. Sal just wanted Wendy – who had once miserably declared she was going to end up spinster of her parish and wandering round with a load of meowing cats – to be happy.
Sal glanced back at Niall. He was clearly not thinking about Tamsin, or anyone else. He had that foxy grin on his face again and his left eye was closing into the saucy wink she was beginning to really look forward to, usually at about this time of the day.
‘So,’ he said, ‘have we got time for another go? Another dose of afternoon delight? I can get the playing cards out again, to get you in the mood . . .’
‘Ha. No!’ she’d protested, but not that strongly, and she definitely didn’t need a round of Chase the Ace to get her in the mood. She’d let him pull her back onto the bed for another, very enjoyable romp. Hence the real reason for her lateness. Hence the fact she was now pelting it from Paddington tube station to Paddington railway station (not that great a distance but possibly a step too far when a woman has to navigate escalators and people who refuse to stand on the right and a pair of new, unaccustomed-to heels, which would inevitably turn out to be a mistake . . .) as fast as she could and a full twenty minutes late.
The new ankle boots were already a mistake, actually. They were pinching her toes and she could feel the beginnings of a blister on her left heel. She’d only bought them yesterday, along with a couple of dresses, in the clothing aisles of Sainsbury’s, for those posh evenings at The Retreat’s and that promised party at the lake house on Sunday night. If glam was required, glam could be rustled up.
Sal skidded round the corner and came to a stop with a grin. There they were, under the