The Guest List(38)

Will shrugs. ‘It’s not a prank for you, it’s for me. You know, for old times’ sake. They wouldn’t have meant you to get upset—’

‘I’m going to go and get them all up now, find out which one of them it was. Show them exactly how funny I think it is.’

‘Jules.’ Will takes hold of my shoulders. And then, soothingly: ‘Look, if you were to do that … well, you might say things you’d regret. It would spoil things for tomorrow, wouldn’t it? It could change the whole dynamic.’

I do, sort of, see what he means. God, he’s always so reasonable – sometimes infuriatingly so, always taking the measured approach. I look at the black mass, now on the floor. It’s hard to believe that some darker message wasn’t intended by it.

‘Look,’ Will says gently. ‘We’re both tired. It’s been a long day. Let’s not worry about it now. We can get a new sheet from the spare room.’

The spare room was intended for Will’s parents. They baulked at the outlandish idea of actually staying on the island. Will didn’t seem surprised: ‘My father’s never been particularly impressed by anything I’ve done – getting married is undoubtedly no exception.’ He seemed bitter. He doesn’t talk about his father much – which paradoxically gives me the impression that he’s a bigger influence upon my husband than he likes to admit.

‘Get a new duvet, too,’ I tell Will now. I’m half tempted to say I want to swap to the other room. But that would be irrational, and I pride myself on being the opposite.

‘Sure.’ Will gestures to the seaweed. ‘And I’ll sort out this, too – I’ve dealt with much worse, trust me.’

On the programme Will has escaped from wolves and been swarmed by vampire bats – though he’s never far from the help of the crew – so this must all seem a little pathetic to him. A bit of seaweed on the sheets is hardly a big deal, in the grand scheme of things.

‘I’ll have a word with the guys tomorrow morning,’ he says. ‘Tell them they’re fucking idiots.’

‘OK,’ I say. He’s so good at providing comfort. He’s so – well, there’s only really one word for it – perfect.

And yet, in this moment, with particularly nasty timing, the words on that horrible little note surface.

Not the man he says he is … cheat … liar …

Don’t marry him.

‘A good night’s sleep,’ Will says, soothingly. ‘That’s what we need.’

I nod.

But I don’t think I’m going to sleep a wink.





AOIFE


The Wedding Planner


There’s a noise outside. It’s a strange noise, a keening. It sounds more human than animal – but at the same time it doesn’t sound entirely human either. In our bedroom, Freddy and I look at one another. All the guests have gone to bed too, about half an hour ago now. I thought they would never get tired. We had to wait until the bitter end in case they needed anything of us. We listened to the drumming from the dining room, the chanting. Freddy, who has a little schoolboy Latin, could translate the thing they were chanting: ‘If I cannot move heaven, I shall raise hell.’ I felt the gooseflesh rise on my skin at that.

They’re like overgrown boys, the ushers. I’d say they lack the innocence of boys: but some boys aren’t ever really innocent. What I mean is that as grown men they should know better. And there is a pack feeling about them, like dogs that might behave well on their own but, once all together, don’t have their own minds. I’ll have to keep my eye on them tomorrow, make sure they don’t get carried away. It is my experience that some of the smartest affairs, populated by the most well-heeled and upstanding guests, have been those that have got most out of control. I organised a wedding in Dublin that contained half Ireland’s political elite – even the Taoiseach was there – only for things to come to blows between the groom and father-in-law before the first dance.

Here there’s the added danger of the whole island. The wildness of this place gets under your skin. These guests will feel themselves far from the normal moral codes of society, safe from the prying eyes of others. These men are ex-public schoolboys. They’ve spent much of their lives being forced to follow a strict set of rules that probably didn’t end with their leaving school: choices around what university to attend, what job to do, what sort of house to live in. In my experience those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.

‘I’ll go,’ I say.

‘It’s not safe,’ Freddy says. ‘I’ll come with you.’ I tell Freddy I’ll be fine. To reassure him I tell him I’ll pick up the poker from beside the fire on my way out. I’m the braver of the two of us, I know. I don’t say this with any great pride. It’s simply that when the worst has happened, you rather lose your fear of anything else.

I step into the night, appreciating the quality of the darkness, the velvet black as it folds me into itself. Any light from the Folly makes very little impact upon it, though the kitchen is aglow – and also one of the upstairs windows, the room the soon-to-be-married couple are occupying. Well, I know what’s keeping them up. We heard the rhythmic shudder of the bed against the floorboards.