Penny Vincenzi - The Best Of Times

She said she’d quite like a good party, but not so big she couldn’t dance with everyone in the room; she and William had very few friends in common, and she didn’t want anyone there who didn’t understand what they were doing together.

So there had been about thirty altogether-for a late lunch and then dancing at the Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, which Mr. Grainger insisted on paying for. Abi had wanted to pay for it herself, and not be any further beholden to the Graingers, but:

“Let him,” William said. “It’s his way of apologising for my mother’s behaviour.”

Sylvie was there, of course, with a new boyfriend. He was called Alan Wallis and he worked in the men’s department of Marks & Spencer. When Abi first met him, she told Sylvie she must need her hormones examined, that he was bound to be gay, but Sylvie assured her he was most definitely not; he was brilliant at the business, and in fact so demanding that she was quite worn out by it all. Abi, in a spirit of pure mischief, made him go and ask Mrs. Grainger to dance, but in fact, Alan Wallis had the most beautiful formal manners and had done an advanced ballroom dancing course and steered Mrs. Grainger most expertly round the room, and she was later heard to tell William that he was rather a charming young man and that they had had a very interesting discussion about the rise and fall in the Marks & Spencer share price, and the reasons behind it.

Mr. Grainger was in his turn very taken with Sylvie. “Maybe they could set up a maison à quatre,” Abi remarked cheerfully to William. “That would solve an awful lot of problems.”

William’s brother and sister and their respective families came; Abi quite liked Martin, who was not unlike William to look at, but a lot smoother, but she thought his sister was frightful and was almost moved to feel pity for Mrs. Grainger when she saw her being snubbed repeatedly by her daughter and even more frequently by her son-in-law.

Georgia was there, of course, and so was Merlin; Georgia was interestingly and rather overtly impatient with Merlin, Abi noticed. He was at his most charming and kept paying everyone very lavish compliments; he told Abi she made his heart stop, she looked so lovely, and William that he was the luckiest man in the universe-that really annoyed Georgia-and Sylvie that she danced like the proverbial angel. In the end, Georgia actually snapped at him and told him to stop behaving as if he was in front of-or behind-the cameras. He looked quite hurt, and Sylvie, bored by now with Mr. Grainger, took it upon herself to comfort him, which made Georgia crosser still.

Emma was there with Barney; they were officially engaged now, and Emma had a rock quite as big as Abi’s on her finger. She told Abi privately that she would have given anything to have a quiet wedding too, but her mother had gone into overdrive over the whole thing, and her rating on the nightmare bride’s mother scale of nought to ten was about eleven and a half.

“It’s a bit like you, in a way: Barney and his family are so posh, and me and my family aren’t, and I just can see it all ending in tears.” Abi had told her to elope with Barney, or run away and get married on a beach somewhere, but Emma said she couldn’t possibly do that to her mother. She also, Abi suspected, wanted very much to walk down the aisle in a meringue.

William had invited a few of his farming friends, and their wives, jolly, horsey girls for the most part, who danced energetically long after everyone else had given up, and Abi invited a small number-three, to be precise-of her better-behaved girlfriends, who would be an adornment to the company and could be more or less relied upon not to get so drunk that they were sick or to bring any drugs onto the premises… and that was that.

“And you know what?” she said to William as they undressed late that night in their suite of the Radisson Edwardian hotel at Heathrow, prior to a six a.m. flight to Barbados, “it was exactly how I hoped: everyone seemed happy, most people got on with most people, and even your mother smiled quite a lot.”

William agreed, rather absently; he was goggle-eyed at the excesses of the hotel, with its vast atrium, its marble floors and pillars, its lush palm trees and gilded mirrors, never having seen anything like it in his life.

“I’ve only actually been away three times, twice with Nanny to Frinton and once with my dad fishing in Scotland.”

Abi told him she thought she could probably improve on that.

The honeymoon had been wonderful; they had stayed at the Glitter Bay Hotel, and done all the touristy things: parasailed, surfed, swum with dolphins, and danced to various wonderful bands night after night on various wonderful beaches. And then returned home to the reality of cottage number one.

Actually, Abi was very happy there. She was absorbed with starting her company, planning the festival, learning to ride-at which she proved rather adept: “We’ll have you out with the hounds soon… all two of them,” Mr. Grainger had said with his usual heavy wink-and struggling to cook. After a few weeks of overambitious failures, she gave up and simply served endless enormous roasts, which were easy and satisfied William’s awesome appetite. Mrs. Grainger left her alone for the most part, occasionally arriving at cottage number one with pies and puddings and chutneys and jams-“I know how busy you are; this might help a bit”-which Abi became swiftly grateful for. She knew Mrs. Grainger’s motives were not entirely good, being partly to contrast with her own efforts, but on the other hand it all tasted wonderful.

And here they were on the morning of the festival, with three thousand tickets sold. “Three thousand, I can’t believe it,” Georgia had said. “It’s amazing.”

Abi told her it wasn’t amazing enough-they needed twice that to make any real money; they were way overbudget on the bands. “But we should get loads more on the day… as long as it isn’t tipping down.”

“You said it would be tipping down,” said Georgia. “You can’t get out of it that easily.”

The best thing was that Barney’s bank, BKM, had agreed to sponsor it.

“Only a rather modest amount, I’m afraid,” Barney had told Abi. “Ten grand, piss in a pot to them, but it should help a bit. And they’ll want their pound of flesh or whatever, be credited on all the publicity and so on. They’re actually rather tickled by it. My boss said he’d bring a few friends if it’s a good day.”

Abi told him she didn’t see ten grand as either modest or a piss in a pot, and that she’d thank Barney’s boss personally in the best way she knew how.

“Best not,” said Barney, grinning at her. “He’s gay.”

She got up now, pulled on some jeans, her wellies, and her Barbour-“Who’d ever have thought I’d be seen alive in a Barbour?” she said to Georgia. “But they really do keep the water out better than anything”-and drove down to the site.

It was still only seven, but the place was already full of people. She looked at it from the top of the hill, at her creation, at the transformation of the small lush valley into something so unrecognisably different, and felt a mixture of pride and terror in more or less equal proportions. The cows had been moved out, mildly protesting, a week ago, ousted by a rival herd of huge lorries, massive power lines, tall arc lights, neat rows of portaloos and showers; the brilliant red-and-yellow-striped arena stood at the heart of the site, a flag fluttering from the top bearing the words, In Good Company , a battery of lights above the stage, a rather random array of mikes and other sound equipment standing on it, together with keyboards and drum kits, waiting to be called to order by their musician masters, and even a rather incongruous-looking piano-that would be for Georgia’s friend Anna, the jazz singer, and her daughter-and on either side of it, two huge screens. She parked her car at the site entrance; a couple of portacabins stood just inside the gate. Rosie, the site manager, waved at her and ran over, pulling the hood of her jacket up over her head.