The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(44)
“I wasn’t thinking,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“How long till you get here?”
“Not long,” she says. “Not long at all.”
He sighs again. “Good.”
“But Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you remind me where I’m going?”
Ten minutes later, with the help of his directions, Hadley finds herself in the lobby of the Kensington Arms Hotel, a sprawling mansion that seems out of place amid the crowded city streets, like it was plucked from a country estate and dropped at random here in London. The floors are made of black-and-white marble, alternating like an oversized checkerboard, and there’s a great curving staircase with brass railings that stretches up beyond the chandeliered ceiling. Each time someone enters through the revolving doors, the faint scent of cut grass drifts in, too, the air outside heavy with humidity.
When she catches sight of herself in one of the ornate mirrors hanging behind the front desk, Hadley quickly lowers her eyes again. Her fellow bridesmaids will be disappointed when they see that their hard work from earlier has been ruined; her dress is so wrinkled it looks like she’s been carrying it around in her purse all day, and her hair—which had been so perfectly styled—is now coming undone, stray wisps falling across her face, the bun in the back sagging badly.
The man behind the desk finishes a phone call, replacing the receiver with a practiced flick of his wrist, and then turns to Hadley.
“May I help you, Miss?”
“I’m looking for the Sullivan wedding,” she says, and he glances down at the desk.
“I’m afraid that hasn’t yet begun,” he tells her with a clipped accent. “It will be held in the Churchill Ballroom at six o’clock sharp.”
“Right,” Hadley says. “But I’m actually just looking for the groom now.”
“Ah, certainly,” he says, ringing up to the room and murmuring into the phone before setting it down again and giving Hadley a crisp nod. “Suite two forty-eight. They’re expecting you.”
“I bet they are,” she says, heading toward the elevators.
When she knocks on the door to the suite, she’s so busy preparing herself for Dad’s disapproving frown that she’s a bit surprised to find Violet on the other side instead. Not that there’s a lack of disapproval there, either.
“What happened to you?” she asks, her eyes traveling all the way down to Hadley’s shoes before snapping back up again. “Did you run a marathon or something?”
“It’s hot out,” Hadley explains, glancing down at her dress helplessly. She notices for the first time that, in addition to everything else, there’s a comma-shaped streak of dirt at the hem. Violet takes a sip of champagne from a glass wreathed in lipstick marks, surveying the damage from over the rim. Behind her, Hadley can see about a dozen people sitting on dark green couches, a tray of colorful vegetables on the table in front of them and several bottles of champagne on ice. There’s music playing softly from the speakers, something instrumental and vaguely sleepy, but above that, she can hear more voices around the corner.
“I suppose we’ll probably need to sort you out again before the reception,” Violet says with a sigh, and Hadley nods gratefully as her phone—which she’s still clutching in one sweaty hand—begins to ring. When she glances at the name lit up on the screen, she realizes it’s Dad, probably wondering what’s taking her so long.
Violet raises her eyebrows. “ ‘The Professor’?”
“It’s just my dad,” she explains, so that Violet doesn’t think she’s getting strange transatlantic calls from a teacher. But looking down at the phone again, she feels suddenly deflated. Because what had once seemed funny now seems just a little bit sad; even in this—this smallest of gestures, this silliest of nicknames—there’s a sort of distance.
Violet steps aside like the bouncer at some exclusive club, ushering Hadley inside. “We don’t have much time before the reception,” she’s saying, and Hadley can’t help grinning as she closes the door behind her.
“What time does that start again?”
Violet rolls her eyes, not even bothering to dignify this with a response, and then retreats back into the room, arranging herself carefully on one of the chairs in her wrinkle-free dress.
Hadley heads straight for the small sitting room off to one side, which links the bedroom to the rest of the suite. Inside, she finds her dad and a few other people crowded around a laptop computer. Charlotte is seated before it, her wedding dress pooled all around her like some kind of sugary confection, and though Hadley can’t see the screen from where she’s standing, it’s clear that this is a show-and-tell of sorts.
For a moment she considers ducking back out again. She doesn’t want to see photos of them at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or making funny faces on a train, or feeding the ducks at the pond in Kensington Gardens. She doesn’t want to be forced to consider evidence of Dad’s birthday party at a pub in Oxford; she doesn’t need a reminder that she wasn’t there, had in fact woken that morning feeling the significance of the day like a weight around her neck, which trailed her through Geometry and Chemistry, all the way through lunch in the cafeteria, where a group of football players had sung a jokey version of “Happy Birthday” to Lucas Heyward, the hapless kicker, and by the end of their awful rendition Hadley had been surprised to discover the pretzel she’d been holding was nothing more than a handful of crumbs.