Christmas at the Little Wedding Shop. Jane Linfoot

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       9

      Sunday, 18th December

      At Brides by the Sea: Blaring horns and short circuits

       Sera, Pls can you bring me some pieces of lace – working on Christmas cupcake designs – cd always make a few Chrissy cupcakes for Alice’s cake table? Poppy xx

      I’m in the studio the next morning and as Poppy’s text pings into my phone, I can hear Jess’s loafers clattering up the stairs. Although, if Poppy imagines there will be a place for unscheduled cupcakes at Alice’s wedding, it’s because she doesn’t know Alice.

      ‘How long have you been here?’ Jess pops her head around the doorframe, frowning, her voice high with surprise. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be on wedding duties today?’

      Poppy’s text gives me the perfect excuse. ‘I just called in to get some lace scraps for Poppy.’ I’d rather Jess didn’t know I’ve been here since five, bent over the sewing machine. Having hit a brick wall with my as-yet non-existent designs, I’ve gone back to basics. I’ve been messing around with silks and satins and scissors, trying to free myself up by skipping the drawings and working very fast, straight onto the mannequin. If I stop worrying and work entirely instinctively with the raw materials, like I used to do when I was a student, maybe, just maybe, I’ll short-circuit my creative block. Come up with some entirely new ideas and shapes for wedding dresses. Although thus far, all I’ve got are a line of limp shifts, dangling from hangers. Like ghosts waiting for a Halloween party.

      ‘Are you okay? You’ve got very dark circles.’ Jess motions to her eyes, although if she thinks I’m looking sleep-deprived, she should find a mirror.

      ‘I was up late, reading up on the wedding strategy,’ I say. It was well after midnight when I crawled into bed, my head throbbing with wedding facts. I definitely don’t need to admit the pre-dawn start to work on my collection. ‘What’s your excuse?’

      She rolls her eyes. ‘Jaggers until four.

      ‘Again?’

      ‘It was the “Grab a Granny and a Cocktail” Christmas do. Believe me, some of these forty-year-olds really know how to whoop it up. Jules was there, with his mum.’

      ‘That was nice.’ Jules is Jess’s tame and very talented photographer, who hasn’t actually untied the apron strings and left home yet. As for age, Jess’s is a closely guarded secret. Between us, forty is a long way short of the real figure, but she talks a good job. And she swears by what she calls her ‘hope in a jar’ products – anti-gravity potions and wrinkle repair creams. She keeps them in the prosecco fridge and slaps them on by the gallon.

      ‘Actually Jules’ ma was drinking like a bloody fish, I couldn’t keep up with her at all.’ Jess gives a grimace. When it comes to alcohol, Jess is the original hollow-legged woman, so who knows what Jules’ mum is like. ‘So many Christmas parties, I’ll be damned relieved when it’s January. What are you doing today?’

      And now she has me. Alice rang last night to say she’s finally got a flight into Devon later on. Which is brilliant news, because that’ll take the heat off me. Right now I’m actually putting off the awful moment when I have to leave the building and drive to the airport to pick her up. Exeter’s a bloody long way when the furthest you usually drive is to the launderette, once every two years, when the washer breaks down.

      ‘As I said, I’m taking Poppy some pieces of lace.’ I recap, for both our benefits. ‘Then she and Immie are helping with the cottages.’

      If Jess gets a sniff of the truth about where I’m heading she’ll go into overdrive. If she starts reeling off road numbers and asking if I’ve got life insurance, I’ll get so hot under the collar, I’ll melt into a pool of grease. Driving round St Aidan I’m fine. But dual carriageways and turning-right arrows in the road give me the willies. And somehow I have to get all the way to Exeter. And it’s no good saying ‘use your sat nav’, because that just confuses me even more. And half the time there’s no connection anyway.

      A car horn beeps down below in the mews and makes me jump. Omigod, this is how nervous and wound up I am. That’ll be me in half an hour. Getting lost. Causing hold-ups because I don’t like driving over forty. Everyone beeping me because I’m in the wrong lane.

      When I peer past my fabric samples and magazine piles to see out of the window at the car roofs three floors below, I seem to be looking down on a log jam. Except these are cars not logs. There are three or four horns blaring now, their discordant notes clashing. At first I think I’m having some weird fast-forward see-into-the-future vision of me, having a mid-road crisis, en route to Exeter. When I blink myself back to the present and force myself to calm down, even from above I can tell the car at the front is sleek and low. Even though it’s one of those cold, murky, December mornings, when the daylight never really takes a hold, the highly polished, metallic granite paintwork of that car sticks out a mile. Given that by rights Quinn should be miles away, I’m bracing myself for something. I’m just not quite sure what.

      ‘Sera…’ It’s the Sunday girl calling up. ‘There’s a guy waiting for you downstairs. I put him in the White Room.’

      If this is Quinn, it’s an entirely unscheduled visit. Right now he should be at Rose Hill Manor, taking delivery of the starry ceilings for the ballroom. Thank goodness he didn’t do his usual trick of walking right on in like he owns the place, and make it all the way up to the studio. I hurl myself down the stairs, and thirty seconds later I’m skidding to a halt on the bleached floor of the White Room, gasping.

      ‘What the hell are you doing here? What about the heavenly ceilings?’

      From the way Quinn’s holding back his smile, he looks like he’s trying not to laugh ‘Nice to see you too.’ His hands are deep in the pockets of a well-worn duffel coat. ‘Poppy told me I might find you here.’ He’s really rocking the laid-back thing this morning. Which is really damned annoying, when I’m in such a razz.

      I pull out my phone and check the time. ‘Well I’m in a hurry, even if you’re not,’ I snap, and give him the most threatening stare I can drum up at short notice. ‘Some of us have to get to the airport.’ Between us, this is the kind of move I usually practise in front of a mirror for a few weeks before I let it loose on the outside world. But we all know there’s no time for that here. ‘If you miss the Celestial Ceilings people…’ Alice will go apoplectic/through the roof/ape – or maybe even all three.

      But before I can get that far, he interrupts. ‘Okay, take a chill pill, Sera…’

      If he knew how patronising he sounded, he really wouldn’t say that.

      He carries on. ‘The flight’s not in until this afternoon, there’s no need to set off yet.’

      I’ve done the calculations and I know better. ‘At forty miles an hour it takes…’

      He cuts me off mid-sentence. ‘That’s what I came to say. Given you said yesterday how much you hate driving, maybe we should swap jobs. You stay at Rose Hill and I’ll do the airport run.’

      ‘Right…’ I’m not sure how СКАЧАТЬ