Nicola Marsh: A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge / Three Times A Bridesmaid…

The final touch was a second shower that was open to the sky.

‘Oh, very “you Tarzan, me Jane”,’ she muttered.

To the front there were a couple of director’s chairs where you could sit and gaze across the oxbow lagoon where the family of elephants had the same idea about taking a shower.

All she needed now was the bubbly, she thought, smiling as a very small elephant rolled in the mud, while the adults used their trunks to fling water over their backs. Kids. They were all the same…

Looking around, she could see why Celebrity was so keen. People were crazy about animals and the photographs were going to be amazing. But, while the place had ‘honeymoon’ stamped all over it, she wasn’t so sure about the wedding.

It had required three aircraft to get her here and the possibilities for disaster were legion.

She shook her head, stretched out cramped limbs in the early morning sunshine. She’d worry about that when it happened and, after one last look around, took herself inside to shower away the effects of the endless journey, choosing the exquisitely fitted bathroom over the temptations of the louche outdoor shower.

She was here to work, not play.

Ten minutes later, having pampered herself with the delicious toiletries that matched the ‘luxury’ label, she wrapped herself in a snowy bathrobe and went in search of a hairdryer.

Searching through cupboards and drawers, all she found was a small torch. Not much use. But, while she had been in the bathroom, her breakfast tray had arrived and she gave up the search in favour of a caffeine fix. Not that David had taken her ‘just coffee and toast’ seriously.

In an effort to impress, or maybe understanding what she needed better than she did herself, he had added freshly squeezed orange juice, a dish of sliced fresh fruit, most of which she didn’t recognise, and a blueberry muffin, still warm from the oven.

She carried the tray out onto the deck, drank the juice, buttered a piece of toast, then poured a cup of coffee and stood it on the rail while she ruffled her fingers through her hair, enjoying the rare pleasure of drying it in the sun.

It was her short punk hairstyle as much as her background that had so scandalised people like Marji Hayes when Sylvie had first given her a job.

Young, unsure of herself, she’d used her hair, the eighteen-hole Doc Martens, scary make-up and nose stud as armour. A ‘don’t mess with me’ message when she was faced with the kind of hotels and wedding locations where she’d normally be only allowed in the back door.

As she’d gained confidence and people had got to know her, she’d learned that a smile got her further than a scowl, but by then the look had become part of her image. As Sylvie had pointed out, it was original. People knew her and if she’d switched to something more conventional she’d have had to start all over again.

Admittedly the hair was a little longer these days, an expensively maintained mane rather than sharp spikes, the nose stud a tiny amethyst, and her safety pin earrings bore the name Zandra Rhodes, who was to punk style what Coco Chanel had been to business chic. And her make-up, while still individual, still her, was no longer applied in a manner to scare the horses.

But while she could manage with a brush and some gel to kill the natural curl and hold up her hair, the bride, bridesmaids and any number of celebrities, male and female, would be up the oxbow lagoon without a paddle unless they had the full complement of driers, straighteners and every other gadget dear to the crimper’s heart.

Something to check with David, because if it wasn’t just an oversight in her room they’d have to be flown in and she fetched her laptop from her briefcase and added it to her ‘to do’ list.

She’d barely started before she got a ‘battery low’ warning.

Her search for a point into which she could plug it to recharge proved equally fruitless and that sent her in search of a telephone so that she could ring the desk and enquire how on earth she was supposed to work without an electrical connection.

But, while David had urged her to ‘ring’, she couldn’t find a telephone either. And, ominously, when she took out her mobile to try that, there was no signal.

Which was when she took a closer look at her room and finally got it. Fooled by the efficient plumbing and hot water, she had assumed that the fat white candles sitting in glass holders were all part of the romance of the wilderness. On closer inspection, she realised that they were the only light source and that the torch might prove very useful after all.

Wilderness. Animals. Peace. Silence. Back to nature.

This was hubris, she thought.

She had taken considerable pleasure in the fact that Marji Hayes had, through gritted teeth, been forced to come to her for help.

This was her punishment.

There had been no warning about the lack of these basic facilities in the planning notes and she had no doubt that Marji was equally in the dark, but she wasn’t about to gloat about the great Serafina March having overlooked something so basic. She, after all, was the poor sap who’d have to deal with it and, digging out the pre-computer age backup—a notebook and pen—she settled herself in the sun and began to make a list of problems.

Candlelight was the very least of them. Communication was going to be her biggest nightmare, she decided as she reached for the second slice of toast—there was nothing like anxiety to induce an attack of the munchies. As she groped for it there was a swish, a shriek and, before she could react, the plate had crashed to the deck.

She responded with the kind of girly shriek that she’d have mocked in anyone else before she saw the small black-faced monkey swing onto the branch above her.

‘Damn cheek!’ she declared as it sat there stuffing pieces of toast into its mouth. Then, as her heart returned to something like its normal rate, she reached for a sustaining swig of coffee. Which was when she discovered that it wasn’t just the monkey who had designs on her breakfast.

‘Is that coffee you’re drinking?’

Letting out the second startled expletive in as many minutes as she spilled hot coffee on her foot, she spun to her left, where the neighbouring tree house was half hidden in the thickly cloaked branches.

‘It was,’ she muttered, mopping her foot with the edge of her robe.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

The man’s voice was low, gravelly and rippled over her skin like a draught, setting up goose bumps.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded, peering through the leaves. ‘Where are you?’

‘Lower.’

She’d been peering across the gap between them at head height, expecting to see him leaning against the rail, looking out across the water to the reed-filled river beyond, doing his David Attenborough thing.

Dropping her gaze, she could just make out the body belonging to the voice stretched out on one of those low deck loungers.

She could only see tantalising bits of him. A long, sinewy bare foot, the edge of khaki shorts where they lay against a powerful thigh, thick dark hair, long enough to be stirred by a breeze coming off the river. And then, as the leaves stirred, parted for a moment, a pair of eyes that were focused on her so intently that for a moment she was thrown on the defensive. Ambushed by the fear waiting just beneath the surface to catch her off guard. The dread that one day someone would see through the carefully constructed shell of punk chic and recognise her for what she really was.

Not just a skivvy masquerading as a wedding planner but someone no one would let inside their fancy hotel, anywhere near their wedding, if they could see inside her head.