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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Now: The wedding night

The day before: Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Hannah: The Plus-One

Jules: The Bride

Johnno: The Best Man

Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Jules: The Bride

Hannah: The Plus-One

Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Now: The wedding night

The day before: Hannah: The Plus-One

Now: The wedding night

The day before: Jules: The Bride

Johnno: The Best Man

Hannah: The Plus-One

Now: The wedding night

The day before: Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Johnno: The Best Man

Jules: The Bride

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

The wedding day: Hannah: The Plus-One

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Now: The wedding night

Earlier that day: Jules: The Bride

Now: The wedding night

Earlier that day: Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Johnno: The Best Man

Jules: The Bride

Hannah: The Plus-One

Johnno: The Best Man

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Jules: The Bride

Johnno: The Best Man

Hannah: The Plus-One

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Now: The wedding night

Earlier that day: Jules: The Bride

Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Hannah: The Plus-One

Johnno: The Best Man

Hannah: The Plus-One

Johnno: The Best Man

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Jules: The Bride

Hannah: The Plus-One

Now: The wedding night

Earlier that day: Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Jules: The Bride

Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Now: The wedding night

Several hours earlier: Hannah: The Plus-One

Now: The wedding night

Earlier: Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Jules: The Bride

Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Now: The wedding night

Earlier: Will: The Groom

Hannah: The Plus-One

Olivia: The Bridesmaid

Jules: The Bride

Johnno: The Best Man

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Will: The Groom

Now: The wedding night

Earlier: Will: The Groom

Now: Johnno: The Best Man

Aoife: The Wedding Planner

Epilogue

Several hours later: Olivia: The Bridesmaid

The next day: Hannah: The Plus-One

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Lucy Foley

About the Publisher

NOW
The wedding night

The lights go out.

In an instant, everything is in darkness. The band stop their playing. Inside the marquee the wedding guests squeal and clutch at one another. The light from the candles on the tables only adds to the confusion, sends shadows racing up the canvas walls. It’s impossible to see where anyone is or hear what anyone is saying: above the guests’ voices the wind rises in a frenzy.

Outside a storm is raging. It shrieks around them, it batters the marquee. At each assault the whole structure seems to flex and shudder with a loud groaning of metal; the guests cower in alarm. The doors have come free from their ties and flap at the entrance. The flames of the paraffin torches that illuminate the doorway snicker.

It feels personal, this storm. It feels as though it has saved all its fury for them.

This isn’t the first time the electrics have shorted. But last time the lights snapped back on again within minutes. The guests returned to their dancing, their drinking, their pill-popping, their screwing, their eating, their laughing … and forgot it ever happened.

How long has it been now? In the dark it’s difficult to tell. A few minutes? Fifteen? Twenty?

They’re beginning to feel afraid. This darkness feels somehow ominous, intent. As though anything could be happening beneath its cover.

Finally, the bulbs flicker back on. Whoops and cheers from the guests. They’re embarrassed now about how the lights find them: crouched as though ready to fend off an attack. They laugh it off. They almost manage to convince themselves that they weren’t frightened.

The scene illuminated in the marquee’s three adjoining tents should be one of celebration, but it looks more like one of devastation. In the main dining section, clots of wine spatter the laminate floor, a crimson stain spreads across white linen. Bottles of champagne cluster on every surface, testament to an evening of toasts and celebrations. A forlorn pair of silver sandals peeks from beneath a tablecloth.

The Irish band begin to play again in the dance tent – a rousing ditty to restore the spirit of celebration. Many of the guests hurry in that direction, eager for some light relief. If you were to look closely at where they step you might see the marks where one barefoot guest has trodden in broken glass and left bloody footprints across the laminate, drying to a rusty stain. No one notices.

Other guests drift and gather in the corners of the main tent, nebulous as leftover cigarette smoke. Loath to stay, but also loath to step outside the sanctuary of the marquee while the storm still rages. And no one can leave the island. Not yet. The boats can’t come until the wind dies down.

In the centre of everything stands the huge cake. It has appeared whole and perfect before them for most of the day, its train of sugar foliage glittering beneath the lights. But only minutes before the lights went out the guests gathered around to watch its ceremonial disembowelling. Now the deep red sponge gapes from within.

Then from outside comes a new sound. You might almost mistake it for the wind. But it rises in pitch and volume until it is unmistakable.

The guests freeze. They stare at one another. They are suddenly afraid again. More so than they were when the lights went out. They all know what they are hearing. It is a scream of terror.

The day before
AOIFE
The Wedding Planner

Nearly all of the wedding party are here now. Things are about to crank into another gear: there’s the rehearsal dinner this evening, with the chosen guests, so the wedding really begins tonight.

I’ve put the champagne on ice ready for the pre-dinner drinks. It’s vintage Bollinger: eight bottles of it, plus the wine for dinner and a couple of crates of Guinness – all as per the bride’s instructions. It is not for me to comment, but it seems rather a lot. They’re all adults, though. I’m sure they know how to restrain themselves. Or maybe not. That best man seems a bit of a liability – all of the ushers do, to be honest. And the bridesmaid – the bride’s half-sister – I’ve seen her on her solitary wanderings of the island, hunched over and walking fast like she’s trying to outpace something.

You learn all the insider secrets, doing this sort of work. You see the things no one else is privileged to see. All the gossip that the guests would kill to have. As a wedding planner you can’t afford to miss anything. You have to be alert to every detail, all the smaller eddies beneath the surface. If I didn’t pay attention, one of those currents could grow into a huge riptide, destroying all my careful planning. And here’s another thing I’ve learned – sometimes the smallest currents are the strongest.

I move through the Folly’s downstairs rooms, lighting the blocks of turf in the grates, so they can get a good smoulder on for this evening. Freddy and I have started cutting and drying our own turf from the bog, as has been done for centuries past. The smoky, earthy smell of the turf fires will add to the sense of local atmosphere. The guests should like that. It may be midsummer but it gets cool at night on the island. The Folly’s old stone walls keep the warmth out and aren’t so good at holding it in.

Today has been surprisingly warm, at least by the standards of these parts, but the same’s not looking likely for tomorrow. The end of the weather forecast I caught on the radio mentioned wind. We get the brunt of all the weather here; often the storms are much worse than they end up being on the mainland, as if they’ve exhausted themselves on us. It’s still sunny out but this afternoon the needle on the old barometer in the hallway swung from FAIR to CHANGEABLE. I’ve taken it down. I don’t want the bride to see it. Though I’m not sure that she is the sort to panic. More the sort to get angry and look for someone to blame. And I know just who would be in the firing line.

‘Freddy,’ I call into the kitchen, ‘will you be starting on the dinner soon?’

‘Yeah,’ he calls back, ‘got it all under control.’

Tonight they’ll eat a fish stew based on a traditional Connemara fisherman’s chowder: smoked fish, lots of cream. I ate it the first time I ever visited this place, when there were still people here. This evening’s will be a more refined take on the usual recipe, as this is a refined group we have staying. Or at least I suppose they like to think of themselves as such. We’ll see what happens when the drink hits them.

‘Then we’ll be needing to start prepping the canapés for tomorrow,’ I call, running through the list in my head.

‘I’m on it.’

‘And the cake: we’ll be wanting to assemble that in good time.’

The cake is quite something to behold. It should be. I know how much it cost. The bride didn’t bat an eyelid at the expense. I believe she’s used to having the best of everything. Four tiers of deep red velvet sponge, encased in immaculate white icing and strewn with sugar greenery, to match the foliage in the chapel and the marquee. Extremely fragile and made according to the bride’s exact specifications, it travelled all the way here from a very exclusive cake-makers in Dublin: it was no small effort getting it across the water in one piece. Tomorrow, of course, it will be destroyed. But it’s all about the moment, a wedding. All about the day. It’s not really about the marriage at all, in spite of what everyone says.

See, mine is a profession in which you orchestrate happiness. It is why I became a wedding planner. Life is messy. We all know this. Terrible things happen, I learned that while I was still a child. But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day. But you can control one of them. Twenty-four hours can be curated. A wedding day is a neat little parcel of time in which I can create something whole and perfect to be cherished for a lifetime, a pearl from a broken necklace.

Freddy emerges from the kitchen in his stained butcher’s apron. ‘How are you feeling?’

I shrug. ‘A little nervous, to be honest.’

‘You’ve got this, love. Think how many times you’ve done this.’

‘But this is different. Because of who it is—’ It was a real coup, getting Will Slater and Julia Keegan to hold their wedding here. I worked as an event planner in Dublin, before. Setting up here was all my idea, restoring the island’s crumbling, half-ruined folly into an elegant ten-bedroom property with a dining room, drawing room and kitchen. Freddy and I live here permanently but use only a tiny fraction of the space when it’s just the two of us.

‘Shush.’ Freddy steps forward and enfolds me in a hug. I feel myself stiffening at first. I’m so focused on my to-do list that it feels like a diversion we don’t have time for. Then I allow myself to relax into the embrace, to appreciate his comforting, familiar warmth. Freddy is a good hugger. He’s what you might call ‘cuddly’. He likes his food – it’s his job. He ran a restaurant in Dublin before we moved here.

‘It’s all going to work out fine,’ he says. ‘I promise. It will all be perfect.’ He kisses the top of my head. I’ve had a great deal of experience in this business. But then I’ve never worked on an event I’ve been so invested in. And the bride is very particular – which, to be fair to her, probably goes with the territory of what she does, running her own magazine. Someone else might have been run a little ragged by her requests. But I’ve enjoyed it. I like a challenge.

Anyway. That’s enough about me. This weekend is about the happy couple, after all. The bride and groom haven’t been together for very long, by all accounts. Seeing as our bedroom is in the Folly too, with all the others, we could hear them last night. ‘Jesus,’ Freddy said as we lay in bed. ‘I can’t listen to this.’ I knew what he meant. Strange how when someone is in the throes of pleasure it can sound like pain. They seem very much in love, but a cynic might say that’s why they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. Very much in lust might be a more accurate description.

Freddy and I have been together for the best part of two decades and even now there are things I keep from him and, I’m sure, vice versa. Makes you wonder how much they know about each other, those two.

Whether they really know all of each other’s dark secrets.

HANNAH
The Plus-One

The waves rise in front of us, white-capped. On land it’s a beautiful summer’s day, but it’s pretty rough out here. A few minutes ago we left the safety of the mainland harbour and as we did the water seemed to darken in colour and the waves grew by several feet.

It’s the evening before the wedding and we’re on our way to the island. As ‘special guests’, we’re staying there tonight. I’m looking forward to it. At least – I think I am. I need a bit of a distraction at the moment, anyway.

‘Hold on!’ A shout from the captain’s cabin, behind us. Mattie, the man’s called. Before we have time to think the little boat launches off one wave and straight into the crest of another. Water sprays up over us in a huge arc.

‘Christ!’ Charlie shouts and I see that he’s got soaked on one side. Miraculously I’m only a little damp.

‘Would you be a bit wet up there?’ Mattie calls.

I’m laughing but I’m having to force it a bit because it was pretty frightening. The boat’s motion, somehow back and forth and side to side all at once, has my stomach turning somersaults.

‘Oof,’ I say, feeling the nausea sinking through me. The thought of the cream tea we ate before we got on the boat suddenly makes me want to hurl.

Charlie looks at me, puts a hand on my knee and gives a squeeze. ‘Oh God. It’s started already?’ I always get terrible motion sickness. Anything sickness really; when I was pregnant it was the worst.

‘Mm hmm. I’ve taken a couple of pills, but they’ve hardly taken the edge off.’

‘Look,’ Charlie says quickly, ‘I’ll read about the place, take your mind off it.’ He scrolls through his phone. He’s got a guidebook downloaded; ever the teacher, my husband. The boat lurches again and the iPhone nearly jumps out of his grasp. He swears, grips it with both hands; we can’t afford to replace it.

‘There’s not that much here,’ he says, a bit apologetically, once he’s managed to load the page. ‘Loads on Connemara, yeah, but on the island itself – I suppose it’s so small …’ He stares at the screen as though willing it to deliver. ‘Oh, here, I’ve found a bit.’ He clears his throat, then starts to read in what I think is probably the voice he uses in his lessons. ‘Inis an Amplóra, or Cormorant Island, in the English translation, is two miles from one end to the other, longer than it is wide. The island is formed of a lump of granite emerging majestically from the Atlantic, several miles off the Connemara coastline. A large bog comprised of peat, or “turf” as it is called locally, covers much of its surface. The best, indeed the only, way to see the island is from a private boat. The channel between the mainland and the island can get particularly choppy—’

‘They’re right about that,’ I mutter, clutching the side as we seesaw over another wave and slam down again. My stomach turns over again.

‘I can tell you more than all that,’ Mattie calls from his cabin. I hadn’t realised he could overhear us from there. ‘You won’t be getting much about Inis an Amplóra from a guidebook.’

Charlie and I shuffle nearer to the cabin so we can hear. He’s got a lovely rich accent, does Mattie. ‘First people that settled the place,’ he tells us, ‘far as it’s known, were a religious sect, persecuted by some on the mainland.’

‘Oh yes,’ Charlie says, looking at his guide. ‘I think I saw a bit about that—’

‘You can’t get everything from that thing,’ Mattie says, frowning and clearly unimpressed by the interruption. ‘I’ve lived here all my life, see – and my people have been here for centuries. I can tell you more than your man on the internet.’

‘Sorry,’ Charlie says, flushing.

‘Anyway,’ Mattie says. ‘Twenty years or so ago the archaeologists found them. All together in the turf bog they were, side by side, packed in tight.’ Something tells me that he is enjoying himself. ‘Perfectly preserved, it’s said, because there’s no air down in there. It was a massacre. They’d all been hacked to death.’

‘Oh,’ Charlie says, with a glance at me, ‘I’m not sure—’

It’s too late, the idea is in my head now: long-buried corpses emerging from black earth. I try not to think about it but the image keeps reasserting itself like a glitch in a video. The swoop of nausea that comes as we ride over the next wave is almost a relief, requiring all my focus.

‘And there’s no one living there now?’ Charlie asks brightly, trying for a change of conversation. ‘Other than the new owners?’

‘No,’ Mattie says. ‘Nothing but ghosts.’

Charlie taps his screen. ‘It says here the island was inhabited until the nineties, when the last few people decided to return to the mainland in favour of running water, electricity and modern life.’

‘Oh that’s what it says there, is it?’ Mattie sounds amused.

‘Why?’ I ask, managing to find my voice. ‘Was there some other reason they left?’

Mattie seems to be about to speak. Then his face changes. ‘Look out for yourselves!’ he roars. Charlie and I manage to grab the rail seconds before the bottom seems to drop out of everything and we are sent plunging down the side of one wave, then smashed into the side of another. Jesus.

You’re meant to find a fixed point with motion-sickness. I train my gaze on the island. It has been in view the whole way from the mainland, a bluish smudge on the horizon, shaped like a flattened anvil. Jules wouldn’t pick anywhere less than stunning, but I can’t help feeling that the dark shape of it seems to hunch and glower, in contrast to the bright day.

‘Pretty stunning, isn’t it?’ Charlie says.

‘Mm,’ I say noncommittally. ‘Well, let’s hope there’s running water and electricity there these days. I’m going to need a nice bath after this.’

Charlie grins. ‘Knowing Jules, if they hadn’t plumbed and wired the place before, they’ll have done so by now. You know what she’s like. She’s so efficient.’

I’m sure Charlie didn’t mean it, but it feels like a comparison. I’m not the world’s most efficient. I can’t seem to enter a room without making a mess and since we’ve had the kids our house is a permanent tip. When we – rarely – have people round I end up throwing stuff in cupboards and cramming them closed, so that it feels like the whole place is holding its breath, trying not to explode. When we first went round for dinner at Jules’s elegant Victorian house in Islington it was like something out of a magazine; like something out of her magazine – an online one called The Download. I kept thinking she might try and tidy me away somewhere, aware of how I stuck out like a sore thumb with my inch of dark roots and high street clothes. I found myself trying to smooth out my accent even, soften my Mancunian vowels.

We couldn’t be more different, Jules and I. The two most important women in my husband’s life. I lean over the rail, taking deep breaths of the sea air.

‘I read a good bit in that article,’ Charlie says, ‘about the island. Apparently it’s got white sand beaches, which are famous in this part of Ireland. And the colour of the sand means the water in the coves turns a beautiful turquoise colour.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Well that sounds better than a peat bog.’

‘Yep,’ Charlie says. ‘Maybe we’ll have a chance to go swimming.’ He smiles at me.

I look at the water, which is more of a chilly slate green than turquoise, and shiver. But I swim off the beach in Brighton, and that’s the English Channel, isn’t it? Still. There it feels so much tamer than this wild, brutal sea.

‘This weekend will be a good distraction, won’t it?’ Charlie says.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I hope so.’ This will be the closest we’ll have had to a holiday for a long time. And I really need one right now. ‘I can’t work out why Jules would choose a random island off the coast of Ireland,’ I add. It seems particularly her to choose somewhere so exclusive that her guests might actually drown trying to get there. ‘It’s not like she couldn’t have afforded to hold it anywhere she wanted.’

Charlie frowns. He doesn’t like to talk about money, it embarrasses him. It’s one of the reasons I love him. Except sometimes, just sometimes, I can’t help wondering what it would be like to have a tiny bit more. We agonised over the gift list and had a bit of an argument about it. Our max is normally fifty quid, but Charlie insisted that we had to do more, because he and Jules go back so far. As everything listed was from Liberty’s, the £150 we finally agreed to only bought us a rather ordinary-looking ceramic bowl. There was a scented candle on there for £200.

‘You know Jules,’ Charlie says now, as the boat makes another swoop downwards before hitting something that feels much harder than mere water, bouncing up again with a few sideways spasms for good measure. ‘She likes to do things differently. And it could be to do with her dad being Irish.’

‘But I thought she doesn’t get on with her dad?’

‘It’s more complicated than that. He was never really around and he’s a bit of a dick, but I think she’s always kind of idolised him. That’s why she wanted me to give her sailing lessons all those years ago. He had this yacht, and she wanted him to be proud of her.’

It’s difficult to imagine Jules in the inferior position of wanting to make someone proud. I know her dad’s a big deal property developer, a self-made man. As the daughter of a train driver and a nurse who grew up constantly strapped for cash, I’m fascinated by – and a little bit suspicious of – people who have made loads of money. To me they’re like another species altogether, a breed of sleek and dangerous big cats.

‘Or maybe Will chose it,’ I say. ‘It seems very him, very outward bound.’ I feel a little leap of excitement in my stomach at the thought of meeting someone so famous. It’s hard to think of Jules’s fiancé as a completely real person.

I’ve been catching up on the show in secret. It’s pretty good, though it’s hard to be objective. I’ve been fascinated by the idea of Jules being with this man … touching him, kissing him, sleeping with him. About to get married to him.

The basic premise of the show, Survive the Night, is that Will gets left somewhere, tied up and blindfolded, in the middle of the night. A forest, say, or the middle of an Arctic tundra, with nothing but the clothes he’s wearing and maybe a knife in his belt. He then has to free himself and make his way to a rendezvous point using his wits and navigational skills alone. There’s lots of high drama: in one episode he has to cross a waterfall in the dark; in another he’s stalked by wolves. At times you’ll suddenly remember that the camera crew is there watching him, filming him. If it were really all that bad, surely they’d step in to help? But they certainly do a good job of making you feel the danger.

At my mention of Will, Charlie’s face has darkened. ‘I still don’t get why she’s marrying him after such a short time,’ he says. ‘I suppose that’s what Jules is like. When she’s made up her mind, she acts quickly. But you mark my words, Han: he’s hiding something. I don’t think he’s everything he pretends to be.’

This is why I’ve been so secretive about watching the show. I know Charlie wouldn’t like it. At times I can’t help feeling that his dislike of Will seems a little like jealousy. I really hope it’s not jealousy. Because what would that mean?

It could also be to do with Will’s stag do. Charlie went, which seemed all wrong, as he’s Jules’s friend. He came home from the weekend in Sweden a bit out of sorts. Every time I even alluded to it he’d go all weird and stiff. So I shrugged it off. He came back in one piece, didn’t he?

The sea seems to have got even rougher. The old fishing boat is pitching and rolling now in all directions at once, like one of those rodeo-bull machines, like it’s trying to throw us overboard. ‘Is it really safe to keep going?’ I call to Mattie.

‘Yep!’ he calls back, over the crash of the spray, the shriek of the wind. ‘This is a good day, as they go. Not far to Inis an Amplóra now.’

I can feel wet hanks of hair stuck to my forehead, while the rest of it seems to have lifted into a huge tangled cloud around my head. I can only imagine how I’ll look to Jules and Will and the rest of them, when we finally arrive.

‘Cormorant!’ Charlie shouts, pointing. He’s trying to distract me from my nausea, I know. I feel like one of the children being taken to the doctor’s for an injection. But I follow his finger to a sleek dark head, emerging from the waves like the periscope of a miniature submarine. Then it swoops down beneath the surface, a swift black streak. Imagine feeling so at home in such hostile conditions.

‘I saw something in the article specifically about cormorants,’ Charlie says. He picks up his phone again. ‘Ah, here. They’re particularly common along this stretch of coast, apparently.’ He puts on his schoolteacher voice: ‘“the cormorant is a bird much maligned in local folklore.” Oh dear. “Historically, the bird has been represented as a symbol of greed, bad luck and evil.”’ We both watch as the cormorant emerges from the water again. There’s a tiny fish in its sharp beak, a brief flash of silver, before the bird opens its gullet and swallows the thing whole.

My stomach flips. I feel as though it’s me that has swallowed the fish, quick and slippery, swimming about in my belly. And as the boat begins to list in the other direction, I lurch to the side and throw up my cream tea.

JULES
The Bride

I’m standing in front of the mirror in our room, the biggest and most elegant of the Folly’s ten bedrooms, naturally. From here I only need to turn my head a fraction to look out through the windows towards the sea. The weather today is perfect, the sun shimmering off the waves so brightly you can hardly look at it. It bloody well better stay like this for tomorrow.

Our room is on the western side of the building and this is the westernmost island off this part of the coast, so there is nothing, and no one, for thousands of miles between me and the Americas. I like the drama of that. The Folly itself is a beautifully restored fifteenth-century building, treading the line between luxury and timelessness, grandeur and comfort: antique rugs on the flagstone floors, claw-footed baths, fireplaces lit with smouldering peat. It’s large enough to fit all our guests, yet small enough to feel intimate. It’s perfect. Everything is going to be perfect.

Don’t think about the note, Jules.

I will not think about the note.

Fuck. Fuck. I don’t know why it’s got to me so much. I have never been a worrier, the sort of person who wakes up at three in the morning, fretting. Not until recently anyway.

The note was delivered through our letter box three weeks ago. It told me not to marry Will. To call it off.

Somehow the idea of it has gained this dark power over me. Whenever I think about it, it gives me a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach. A feeling like dread.

Which is ridiculous. I wouldn’t normally give a second thought to this sort of thing.

I look back at the mirror. I’m currently wearing the dress. The dress. I thought it important to try it on one last time, the eve of my wedding, to double-check. I had a fitting last week but I never leave anything to chance. As expected, it’s perfect. Heavy cream silk that looks as though it has been poured over me, the corsetry within creating the quintessential hourglass. No lace or other fripperies, that’s not me. The nap of the silk is so fine it can only be handled with special white gloves which, obviously, I’m wearing now. It cost an absolute bomb. It was worth it. I’m not interested in fashion for its own sake, but I respect the power of clothes, in creating the right optics. I knew immediately that this dress was a queenmaker.

By the end of the evening the dress will probably be filthy, even I can’t mitigate that. But I will have it shortened to just below the knee and dyed a darker colour. I am nothing if not practical. I have always, always got a plan; have done ever since I was little.

I move over to where I have the table plan pinned to the wall. Will says I’m like a general hanging his campaign maps. But it is important, isn’t it? The seating can pretty much make or break the guests’ enjoyment of a wedding. I know I’ll have it perfect by this evening. It’s all in the planning: that’s how I took The Download from a blog to a fully fledged online magazine with a staff of thirty in a couple of years.

Most of the guests will come over tomorrow for the wedding, then return to their hotels on the mainland – I enjoyed putting ‘boats at midnight’ on the invites in place of the usual ‘carriages’. But our most important invitees will stay on the island tonight and tomorrow, in the Folly with us. It’s a rather exclusive guest list. Will had to choose the favourites among his ushers, as he has so many. Not so difficult for me as I’ve only got one bridesmaid – my half-sister Olivia. I don’t have many female friends. I don’t have time for gossip. And groups of women together remind me too much of the bitchy clique of girls at my school who never accepted me as their own. It was a surprise to see so many women on the hen do – but then they were largely my employees from The Download – who organised it as a not entirely welcome surprise – or the partners of Will’s mates. My closest friend is male: Charlie. In effect, this weekend, he’ll be my best man.

Charlie and Hannah are on their way over now, the last of tonight’s guests to arrive. It will be so good to see Charlie. It feels like a long time since we hung out as adults, without his kids there. Back in the day we used to see each other all the time – even after he’d got together with Hannah. He always made time for me. But when he had kids it felt like he moved into that other realm: one in which a late night means 11 p.m., and every outing without kids has to be carefully orchestrated. It was only then that I started to miss having him to myself.

‘You look stunning.’

‘Oh!’ I jump, then spot him in the mirror: Will. He’s leaning in the doorway, watching me. ‘Will!’ I hiss. ‘I’m in my dress! Get out! You’re not supposed to see—’

He doesn’t move. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have a preview? And I’ve seen it, now.’ He begins to walk towards me. ‘No point crying over spilled silk. You look – Jesus – I can’t wait to see you coming up the aisle in that.’ He moves to stand behind me, taking a hold of my bare shoulders.

I should be livid. I am. Yet I can feel my outrage sputtering. Because his hands are on me now, moving from my shoulders down my arms, and I feel that first shiver of longing. I remind myself, too, that I’m far from superstitious about the groom seeing the wedding dress beforehand – I’ve never believed in that sort of thing.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I say, crossly. But already it sounds a little half-hearted.

‘Look at us,’ he says as our eyes meet in the mirror, as he traces a finger down the side of my cheek. ‘Don’t we look good together?’

And he’s right, we do. Me so dark-haired and pale, him so fair and tanned. We make the most attractive couple in any room. I’m not going to pretend it’s not part of the thrill, imagining how we might appear to the outside world – and to our guests tomorrow. I think of the girls at school who once teased me for being a chubby swot (I was a late bloomer) and think: Look who’s having the last laugh.

He bites into the exposed skin of my shoulder. A pluck of lust low in my belly, a snapped elastic band. With it goes the last of my resistance.

‘You nearly done with that?’ He’s looking over my shoulder at the table plan.

‘I haven’t quite worked out where I’m putting everyone,’ I say.

There’s a silence as he inspects it, his breath warm on the side of my neck, curling along my collarbone. I can smell the aftershave he’s wearing, too: cedar and moss. ‘Did we invite Piers?’ he asks mildly. ‘I don’t remember him being on the list.’

I somehow manage not to roll my eyes. I did all of the invitations. I refined the list, chose the stationers, collated all the addresses, bought the stamps, posted every last one. Will was away a lot, shooting the new series. Every so often, he’d throw out a name, someone he’d forgotten to mention. I suppose he did check through the list at the end pretty carefully, saying he wanted to make sure we hadn’t missed anyone. Piers was a later addition.

‘He wasn’t on the list,’ I admit. ‘But I saw his wife at those drinks at the Groucho. She asked about the wedding and it seemed total madness not to invite them. I mean, why wouldn’t we?’ Piers is the producer of Will’s show. He’s a nice guy and he and Will have always seemed to get along well. I didn’t have to think twice about extending the invitation.

‘Fine,’ Will says. ‘Yes, of course that makes sense.’ But there’s an edge to his voice. For some reason it has bothered him.

‘Look, darling,’ I say, curling one arm around his neck. ‘I thought you’d be delighted to have them here. They certainly seemed pleased to be asked.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he says, carefully. ‘It was a surprise, that’s all.’ He moves his hands to my waist. ‘I don’t mind in the least. In fact, it’s a good surprise. It will be nice to have them.’

‘OK. Right, so I’m going to put husbands and wives next to each other. Does that work?’

‘The eternal dilemma,’ he says, mock-profoundly.

‘God, I know … but people do really care about that sort of thing.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you and I were guests I know where I’d want to be sitting.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Right opposite you, so I could do this.’ His hand reaches down and rucks up the fabric of the silk skirt, climbing beneath.

‘Will,’ I say, ‘the silk—’

His fingers have found the lace edge of my knickers.

‘Will!’ I say, half-annoyed, ‘what on earth are you—’ Then his fingers have slipped inside my knickers and have begun to move against me and I don’t particularly care about the silk any more. My head falls against his chest.

This is not like me at all. I am not the sort of person who gets engaged only a few months into knowing someone … or married only a few months after that. But I would argue that it isn’t rash, or impulsive, as I think some suspect. If anything, it’s the opposite. It’s knowing your own mind, knowing what you want and acting upon it.

‘We could do it right now,’ Will says, his voice a warm murmur against my neck. ‘We’ve got time, haven’t we?’ I try to answer – no – but as his fingers continue their work it turns into a long, drawn-out groan.

With every other partner I’ve got bored in a matter of weeks, the sex has rather too quickly become pedestrian, a chore. With Will I feel like I am never quite sated – even when, in the baser sense, I am more sated than I have been with any other lover. It isn’t just about him being so beautiful – which he is, of course, objectively so. This insatiability is far deeper than that. I’m aware of a feeling of wanting to possess him. Of each sexual act being an attempt at a possession that is never quite achieved, some essential part of him always evading my reach, slipping beneath the surface.

Is it to do with his fame? The fact that once you attain celebrity you become, in a sense, publicly owned? Or is it something else, something fundamental about him? Secret and unknowable, hidden from view?

This thought, inevitably, has me thinking about the note. I will not think about the note.

Will’s fingers continue their work. ‘Will,’ I say, half-heartedly, ‘anyone might come in.’

‘Isn’t that the thrill of it?’ he whispers. Yes, yes I suppose it is. Will has definitely broadened my sexual horizons. He’s introduced me to sex in public places. We’ve done it in a night-time park, in the back row of a near-empty cinema. When I remember this I am amazed at myself: I cannot believe that it was me who did these things. Julia Keegan does not break the law.

He’s also the only man I have ever allowed to film me in the nude – once, even during sex itself. I only agreed to this once we were engaged, naturally. I’m not a fucking idiot. But it’s Will’s thing and, since we’ve started doing it, though I don’t exactly like it – it represents a loss of control, and in every other relationship I have been the one in control – at the same time it is somehow intoxicating, this loss. I hear him unbuckle his belt and just the sound of it sends a charge through me. He pushes me forward, towards the dressing table – a little roughly. I grip the table. I feel the tip of him poised there, about to enter me.

‘Hello hello? Anybody in there?’ The door creaks open.

Shit.

Will pulls away from me, I hear him scrabbling with his jeans, his belt. I feel my skirt fall. I almost can’t bear to turn.

He stands there, lounging in the doorway: Johnno, Will’s best man. How much did he see? Everything? I feel the heat rising into my cheeks and I’m furious with myself. I’m furious with him. I never blush.

‘Sorry, chaps,’ Johnno says. ‘Was I interrupting?’ Is that a smirk? ‘Oh—’ he catches sight of what I’m wearing. ‘Is that …? Isn’t that meant to be bad luck?’

I’d like to pick up a heavy object and hurl it at him, scream at him to get out. But I am on best behaviour. ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ I say instead, and I hope my tone asks: Do I look like the sort of cretin who would believe something like that? I raise my eyebrow at him, cross my arms. I am past master at the raised eyebrow game – I use it at work to fantastic effect. I dare him to say another word. For all Johnno’s bravado, I think he’s a little scared of me. People are, generally, scared of me.

‘We were going through the table plan,’ I tell him. ‘So you interrupted that.’

‘Well,’ he says. ‘I’ve been such a bellend …’ I can see that he’s a little cowed. Good. ‘I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten something pretty important.’

I feel my heart begin to beat faster. Not the rings. I told Will not to trust him with the rings until the last minute. If he’s forgotten the rings I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

‘It’s my suit,’ Johnno says. ‘I had it all ready to go, in the liner … and then, at the last minute … well, I dunno what happened. All I can say is, it must be hanging on my door in Blighty.’

I look away from them both as they leave the room. Concentrate hard on not saying anything I’ll regret. I have to keep a handle on my temper this weekend. Mine has been known to get the better of me. I’m not proud of the fact, but I have never found myself able to completely control it, though I’m getting better. Rage is not a good look on a bride.

I don’t get why Will is friends with Johnno, why he hasn’t cut him out of his life by now. It’s definitely not the witty conversation that keeps him hanging in there. The guy’s harmless, I suppose … at least, I assume he’s harmless. But they’re so different. Will is so driven, so successful, so smart in the way he presents himself. Johnno is a slob. One of life’s dropouts. When we collected him from the local train station on the mainland he stank of weed and looked like he’d been sleeping rough. I expected him to at least get a shave and a haircut before he came out here. It’s not too much to ask that your groomsman doesn’t look like a caveman, is it? Later I’ll send Will over to his room with a razor.

Will’s too good to him. He even, apparently, got Johnno a screen test for Survive the Night which, of course, didn’t come to anything. When I asked Will why he sticks with Johnno, he put it down to simple ‘history’. ‘We don’t have much in common, these days,’ he said. ‘But we go back a long way.’

But Will can be fairly ruthless. To be honest, that was probably one of the things that attracted me to him when we first met, one of the things I immediately recognised we had in common. As much as his golden looks, his winning smile, the thing that drew me was the ambition I could smell coming off him, beneath his charm.

So this is what worries me. Why would Will keep a friend like Johnno around simply because of a shared past? Unless that past has some sort of hold over him.

JOHNNO
The Best Man

Will climbs out of the trapdoor carrying a pack of Guinness. We’re up on the Folly’s battlements, looking through the gaps in the stonework. The ground’s a long way down and some of the stones up here are pretty loose. If you didn’t have a good head for heights it would do a number on you. From here you can see all the way to the mainland. I feel like a king up here, with the sun on my face.

Will breaks a can out of the case. ‘Here you go.’

‘Ah, the good stuff. Thanks, mate. And sorry I walked in on you back there.’ I give him a wink. ‘Thought you were meant to save it for after marriage, though?’

Will raises his eyebrows, all innocence. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jules and I were going through the table plan.’

‘Oh yeah? That’s what they call it now? Honest though,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry about the suit, mate. I feel like such a tool for forgetting.’ I want him to know I feel bad – that I’m serious about being a good best man to him. I really am, I want to do him proud.

‘Not an issue,’ Will says. ‘Not sure my spare’s going to fit, but you’re welcome to it.’

‘You’re sure Jules is going to be all right about it? She didn’t look all that happy.’

‘Yeah,’ Will waves a hand. ‘She’ll be fine.’ Which I guess means she probably isn’t fine, but he’ll work on it.

‘OK. Thanks, mate.’

He takes a swig of his Guinness, leans against the stone wall behind us. Then he seems to remember something. ‘Oh. By the way, you haven’t seen Olivia, have you? Jules’s half-sister? She keeps disappearing. She’s a little—’ He makes a gesture: ‘cuckoo’, that’s what it means, but ‘fragile’ is what he says.

I met Olivia earlier. She’s tall and dark-haired, with a big, sulky mouth and legs that go up to her armpits. ‘Shame,’ I say. ‘’Cause … well, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?’

‘Johnno, she’s nineteen, for Christ’s sake,’ Will says. ‘Don’t be disgusting. Besides, she also happens to be my fiancée’s sister.’

‘Nineteen, so she’s legal, then,’ I say, looking to wind him up. ‘It’s tradition, isn’t it? The best man has the pick of the bridesmaids. And there’s only one, so it’s not like I have all that much choice …’

Will twists his mouth like he’s tasted something disgusting. ‘I don’t think that rule applies when they’re fifteen years younger than you, you idiot,’ he says. He’s acting all prim now, but he’s always had an eye for the ladies. They’ve always had an eye for him in return, lucky bastard. ‘She’s off-limits, all right? Get that through your thick skull.’ He knocks my head with his knuckles.

I don’t like the ‘thick skull’ bit. I’m not necessarily the brightest penny in the till. But I don’t like being treated like a moron, either. Will knows that. It was one of the things that always got my back up at school. I laugh it off, though. I know he didn’t mean it.

‘Look,’ he says. ‘I can’t have you blundering around making passes at my teenage sister-in-law. Jules would kill me. She’d kill you, too.’

‘All right, all right,’ I say.

‘Besides,’ he says, lowering his voice, ‘there’s also the fact that she’s, you know …’ he makes that cuckoo gesture again. ‘She must get it from Jules’s mum. Thank God Jules missed out on any of those genes. Anyway, hands off, all right?’

‘Fine, fine …’ I take a swig of my Guinness and do a big belch.

‘You had a chance to do much climbing lately?’ Will asks me, obviously trying to change the subject.

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Not really. That’s why I’ve got this.’ I pat my gut. ‘Hard to find time when you’re not being paid for it, like you are.’

The funny thing is, it was always me who was more into that stuff. All the outward-bound stuff. Until recently, it’s what I did for a living too, working at an adventure centre in the Lake District.

‘Yeah. I guess so,’ Will says. ‘It’s funny – it’s not quite as much fun as it looks, really.’

‘I doubt that, mate,’ I say. ‘You get to do the best thing on earth for a living.’

‘Well – you know … but it’s not that authentic; a lot of smoke and mirrors …’

I’d bet anything he uses a stuntman to do the harder stuff. Will has never liked getting his hands that dirty. He claims he did a lot of training for the show, but still.

‘Then there’s all the hair and makeup,’ he says, ‘which seems ridiculous when you’re shooting a programme about survival.’

‘Bet you love all that,’ I say with a wink. ‘Can’t fool me.’

He’s always been a bit vain. I say it with affection, obviously, but I enjoy getting him riled. He’s a good-looking bloke and he knows it. You can tell all the clothes he’s wearing today, even the jeans, are good stuff, expensive. Maybe it’s Jules’s influence: she’s a stylish lady herself and you can imagine her marching him into a shop. But you can’t imagine him minding much either.

‘So,’ I say, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘You ready to be a married man?’

He grins, nods. ‘I am. What can I say? I’m head over heels.’

I was surprised when Will told me he was getting married, I’m not going to lie. I’ve always thought of him as a lad about town. No woman can resist that golden boy charm. On the stag he told me about some of the dates he went on, before Jules. ‘I mean, in a way it was crazy good. I’ve never had so much action with so many different women as when I joined those apps, not even at uni. I had to get myself tested every couple of weeks. But there were some crazy ones out there, some clingy ones, you know? I don’t have time for all that any more. And then Jules came along. And she was … perfect. She’s so sure of herself, of what she wants from life. We’re the same.’

I bet the house in Islington didn’t hurt either, I didn’t say. The loaded dad. I don’t dare rib him about it – people get weird talking about money. But if there’s one thing Will has always liked, maybe even more than the ladies, it’s money. Maybe it’s a thing from childhood, never having quite as much as anyone else at our school. I get that. He was there because his dad was headmaster, while I got in on a sports scholarship. My family aren’t posh at all. I was spotted playing rugby at a school tournament in Croydon when I was eleven and they approached my dad. That sort of thing actually happened at Trevs: it was that important to them to field a good team.

A voice comes from down below us. ‘Hey hey hey!’ What’s going on up here?’

‘Boys!’ Will says. ‘Come up and join us! More the merrier!’

Bollocks. I was quite enjoying it being just Will and me.

They’re climbing up out of the trapdoor – the four ushers. I shift over to make room, giving each a nod as they appear: Femi, then Angus, Duncan, Peter.

‘Fuck me, it’s high up here,’ Femi says, peering over the edge.

Duncan grabs hold of Angus’s shoulders and pretends to give him a shove. ‘Whoa, saved you!’

Angus lets out a high-pitched squeal and we all laugh. ‘Don’t!’ he says angrily, recovering himself. ‘Jesus – that’s fucking dangerous.’ He’s clinging on to the stone as though for dear life, inching his way along to sit down next to us. Angus was always a bit wet for our group, but got social credit for arriving in his dad’s chopper at the start of term.

Will hands out the cans of Guinness I’d been eyeing up for seconds.

‘Thanks, mate,’ Femi says. He looks at the can. ‘When in Rome, hey?’

Pete nods to the drop beneath us. ‘Think you might have to have a few of these to forget about that, Angus mate.’

‘Yeah but you don’t want to drink too many,’ Duncan says. ‘Or you won’t care enough about it.’

‘Oh shut it,’ Angus says crossly, colouring. But he’s still pretty pale and I get the impression he’s doing everything he can not to look over the edge.

‘I’ve got gear with me this weekend,’ Pete says in an undertone, ‘that would make you think you could jump off and fucking fly.’

‘Leopards don’t change their spots, eh, Pete?’ Femi says. ‘Raiding your mum’s pill cabinet – I remember that kit bag of yours rattling when you came back after exeat.’

‘Yeah,’ Angus says. ‘We all owe her a thank you.’

‘I’d thank her,’ Duncan says. ‘Always remember your mum being a bit of a MILF, Pete.’

‘You better share the love tomorrow, mate,’ Femi says.

Pete winks at him. ‘You know me. Always do well by my boys.’

‘How about now?’ I ask. I suddenly feel I need a hit to blur the edges and the weed I smoked earlier has worn off.

‘I like your attitude, J-dog,’ Pete says. ‘But you gotta pace yourself.’

‘You better behave yourselves tomorrow,’ Will says, mock-sternly. ‘I don’t want my groomsmen showing me up.’

‘We’ll behave, mate,’ Pete says, throwing an arm around his shoulder. ‘Just want to make sure our boy’s wedding is an occasion to remember.’

Will’s always been the centre of everything, the anchor of the group, all of us revolving round him. Good at sport, good enough grades – with a bit of extra help here and there. Everyone liked him. And I guess it seemed effortless, as though he didn’t work for anything. If you didn’t know him like I did, that is.

We all sit and drink in silence for a few moments in the sun.

‘This is like being back at Trevs,’ Angus says, ever the historian. ‘Remember how we used to smuggle beers into the school? Climb up on to the roof of the sports hall to drink them?’

‘Yeah,’ Duncan says. ‘Seem to remember you shitting yourself then, too.’

Angus scowls. ‘Fuck off.’

‘Johnno smuggled them in really,’ Femi says, ‘from that offie in the village.’

‘Yeah,’ Duncan says, ‘because he was a tall, ugly, hairy bastard, even at fifteen, weren’t you, mate?’ He leans over, punches me on the shoulder.

‘And we drank them warm from the can,’ Angus says, ‘’cause we didn’t have any way to cool them down. Best thing I’ve ever drunk in my life, probably – even now, when we could all drink, you know, chilled fucking Dom every day of the week if we wanted to.’

‘You mean like we did a few months ago,’ Duncan says. ‘At the RAC.’

‘When was this?’ I ask.

‘Ah,’ Will says. ‘Sorry, Johnno. I knew it would be too far for you to come, you being in Cumbria and everything.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ I think of them having a nice old champagne lunch together at the Royal Automobile Club, one of those posh members-only places. Right. I take a big long swig of my Guinness. I could really do with some more weed.

‘It was the kick of it,’ Femi says, ‘back at school, at Trevs. That’s what it was. Knowing we could get caught.’

‘Jesus,’ Will says. ‘Do we really have to talk about Trevs? It’s bad enough that I have to hear my dad talking about the place.’ He says it with a grin, but I can see he’s got this slightly pinched look, as if his Guinness has gone down the wrong way. I always felt sorry for Will having a dad like his. No wonder he felt he had to prove himself. I know he’d prefer to forget his whole time at that place. I would too.

‘Those years at school seemed so grim at the time,’ Angus says, ‘but now, looking back – and Christ knows what this says about me – I think in some ways they feel like the most important of my life. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t send my own kids there – no offence to your dad, Will – but it wasn’t all bad. Was it?’

‘I dunno,’ Femi says doubtfully. ‘I got singled out a lot by the teachers. Fucking racists.’ He says it in an offhand way but I know it wasn’t always easy for him, being one of the only black kids there.

‘I loved it,’ Duncan says, and when the rest of us look at him, he adds: ‘honest! Now I look back on it I realise how important it was, you know? Wouldn’t have had it any other way. It bonded us.’

‘Anyway,’ says Will, ‘back to the present. I’d say things are pretty good now for all of us, wouldn’t you?’

They’re definitely good for him. The other blokes have done all right for themselves too. Femi’s a surgeon, Angus works for his dad’s development firm, Duncan’s a venture capitalist – whatever that means – and Pete’s in advertising, which probably doesn’t help his coke habit.

‘So what are you up to these days, Johnno?’ Pete asks, turning to me. ‘You were doing that climbing instructor stuff right?’

I nod. ‘The adventure centre,’ I say. ‘Not just climbing. Bushcraft, building camps—’

‘Yeah,’ Duncan says, cutting me off, ‘you know, I was thinking of a team-bonding day – was going to talk to you about it. Cut me some mates’ rates?’

‘I’d love to,’ I say, thinking someone as minted as Duncan doesn’t need to ask for mates’ rates. ‘But I’m not doing it any more.’

‘Oh?’

‘Nah. I’ve set up a whisky business. It’ll be coming out pretty soon. Maybe in the next six months or so.’

‘And you’ve got stockists?’ Angus asks. He sounds rather put out. I suppose it doesn’t fit with his image of big, stupid Johnno. I’ve somehow managed to avoid the boring office job and come out on top.

‘I have,’ I say, nodding. ‘I have.’

‘Waitrose?’ Duncan asks. ‘Sainsbury’s?’

‘And the rest.’

‘There’s a lot of competition out there,’ Angus says.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Lots of big old names, celebrity brands – even that UFC fighter, Connor MacGregor. But we wanted to go for a more, I dunno, artisanal feel. Like those new gins.’

‘We’re lucky enough to be serving it tomorrow,’ Will says. ‘Johnno brought a case with him. We’ll have to give it a try this evening, too. What’s the name again? I know it’s a good one.’

‘Hellraiser,’ I say. I’m quite proud of the name, actually. Different to those fusty old brands. And a little annoyed Will’s forgotten – it’s only on the labels of the bottles I gave him yesterday. But the bloke’s getting married tomorrow. He’s got other stuff on his mind.

‘Who’d have thought it?’ Femi says. ‘All of us, respectable adults. And having come out of that place? Again, no offence to your dad, Will. But it was like somewhere from another century. We’re lucky we got out alive – four boys left every term, as I recall.’

I couldn’t ever have left. My folks were so excited when I got the rugby scholarship, that I got to go to a posh school – a boarding school. All the opportunities it would give me, or so they thought.

‘Yeah,’ Pete says. ‘Remember there was that boy who drank ethanol from the Science department because he was dared to – they had to rush him to hospital? Then there were always the kids who had nervous breakdowns—’

‘Oh shit,’ Duncan says, excitedly, ‘and there was that little weedy kid, the one who died. Only the strong survived!’ He grins round at us all. ‘The ones who raised hell, am I right, boys? All back together this weekend!’

‘Yeah,’ Femi says. ‘But look at this.’ He leans over and points to the patch where he’s going a bit thin on top. ‘We’re getting old and boring now, aren’t we?’

‘Speak for yourself, mate!’ Duncan says. ‘I reckon we could still fire things up if the occasion demanded it.’

‘Not at my wedding you won’t,’ Will says, but he’s smiling.

‘Especially at your wedding we will,’ Duncan says.