Rowena’s plan for Carrie had involved a triple whammy of therapy: alcohol, shopping, and Nelson driving them. They were now at the Turf, a medieval pub shoehorned into a space between two of the college buildings. As, apparently, was half of Oxford, students, shoppers, and tourists all squashed cheek by jowl in the little courtyard. It was a hot June Saturday towards the end of the exam season and the place reeked of the cheap cider the students sprayed over each other to celebrate finishing.
‘And what can I get you, madam?’
Carrie shook her head as the barman shouted into her ear. ‘God. Yes. Sorry. Three halves of Old Rosy and a pint of Coke.’
She bumped her way through the drinkers in the beer garden towards Rowena, Hayley, and Nelson, who was Rowena’s on-off boyfriend. They were huddled together on a spare patch of wall by the gents’ toilets. Hayley waved madly. Too madly. She’d been hyper all morning, like Tigger on speed.
‘Carrie! Oh thank you. I’m sooo thirsty and I shouldn’t have kept you all that time in Monsoon. But I have managed to get a pashmina exactly the same shade as my shoes and if I can just see a handbag to tone with it, I’ll be done and dusted.’
Carrie smiled, handing Hayley a glass of cider. They’d spent two hours looking for the pashmina and she’d almost lost the will to live.
Rowena helped herself to a glass too, but not before she’d checked her watch again.
‘Got to get back for something?’ said Carrie.
‘Me? No. No rush.’
‘Aren’t you glad we decided to come into town today? I mean, isn’t Oxford just gorgeous in the sun?’
‘Lovely,’ said Carrie as a bow-tied student knocked into her, splashing her top with lager. A party popper exploded next to them. Nelson stared into his pint of Coke, looking as though he’d been invited to his own funeral.
‘Nelson’s missing out on a Vintage Volkswagen Festival for this,’ said Rowena, stroking the back of his neck as if he were a favorite pet. ‘I won’t forget this, babe. I promise I’ll make it up to you.’
‘Exactly how much longer do we have to stay here?’ he grunted. Nelson had only two loves in his life: one was his collection of vintage VW camper vans; the other was Rowena. The trouble was, while he worshipped the ground she walked on, Rowena simply trampled all over him.
‘Oh, Nelson, it’s not that bad,’ she said.
‘You do know I was hoping to check out a new splitty at the festival, and now I won’t be able to get into the place for poseurs and surfers,’ he moaned.
Carrie couldn’t resist. ‘What’s a splitty? It sounds faintly pervy.’
Nelson sounded disgusted at her ignorance. ‘A splitty, for your information, is a VW camper van with a split screen. There’s an orange one I’ve got my eye on. I was thinking of making an offer, if it was in any kind of condition…’ he said, glaring sullenly at Rowena.
Carrie felt sorry for him. Poor long-suffering Nelson. He’d been pursuing Rowena, in his own plodding way, for several years now. Occasionally, usually when she was smashed, Rowena would throw him a bone and let him stay the night. But she had no intention of letting him move into the cottage. Carrie didn’t really know how Nelson put up with it.
‘Look, Nelson, we’re nearly done. Hayley’s finished her shopping and it’s roasting here in the city. Let’s drink up and you can take us home, then maybe you can still make the festival,’ she soothed.
‘Nelson’s fine,’ said Rowena sharply.
Carrie ignored her. ‘Nelson? You do want to go home, don’t you?’
‘I’m going to take a leak,’ he said, looking as if he’d been offered a choice of hanging or electrocution.
After he’d scuttled off into the gents’, Hayley started to regale them about the new range of edible lingerie from Sweet Nothings, the adult shop she worked for. ‘We’ve just launched a special hen night collection. It’s made of rice paper and tastes like chicken. You can suck it or swallow. It’s perfect for hen nights, wedding nights, honeymoons…’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, sorry. I’d forgotten. I didn’t mean anything…’
Rowena blew a smoke ring. ‘Keep digging, Hayley.’
‘It’s fine. You don’t have to treat me like an invalid. I don’t go around stalking bridegrooms, hoping to kidnap one and keep him for my very own,’ said Carrie.
Rowena sniffed. ‘What’s that smell?’
Carrie wrinkled her nose. ‘Probably me. Some Hooray Henry spilled his pint over me. I’ll try and get some of it out in the loo.’
Inside the toilets it was musty and quiet. She soaked a paper towel in cold water and patted the beery spot on her top before slipping into the cubicle and locking the door. She sucked in a breath, wondering what would it take to convince her friends she didn’t have to be treated with kid gloves anymore.
‘Fack!’
The cubicle door rattled loudly.
‘Hell-oo, is there anyone in there?’
Carrie unlocked the door and came face to face with two girls wriggling into silk dresses. The tall blonde looked like a horsey version of Joely Richardson, while the other one reminded her of a young Nigella Lawson.
Nigella’s hand flew to her mouth as Carrie stepped out of the cubicle. ‘Oops! Sor-ry. We really didn’t know you were in there.’
‘Thought the lock had broken,’ boomed Joely. ‘We’re off to a wedding and we needed to get changed.’
Nigella picked up a hat from the washbasin. ‘We thought we’d have a little shop and a little drink, you see, before we set off.’
‘And now we’re a little late and a little drunk. Bloody late, actually. Are you from round here, by any chance? Do you know any shortcuts to Steeple Fritton, darling?’
Carrie knew the place slightly, having acted in a few productions in the village hall. ‘Hmm. That’s north of here. I suppose if you take the B-roads you might do it in about forty minutes, unless you get held up by a tractor.’
‘Fack,’ said Joely, stabbing herself in the eye with a mascara wand.
‘What time’s the wedding?’ asked Carrie.
‘Half past three,’ said Nigella.
‘And what time is it now?’
Joely picked up her mobile. ‘Almost three.’
‘Then I think you’re going to be late.’
Joely sighed. ‘Do you think they’d mind very much if we missed the actual ceremony and just dropped in for the Pimm’s and canapés?’
‘Depends how well you know them,’ said Carrie, desperate to make her escape. She’d decided that Nelson had been tortured long enough.
‘Not very, actually,’ said Joely conspiratorially. ‘In fact, between you and me, we hardly know her and we’ve never met him.’
‘She’s our boss,’ hissed Nigella, as if the bride could somehow hear them. ‘And we feel obliged to go.’
Joely adjusted the angle of a flying-saucer hat. ‘We must sound like such bitches!’
Carrie just smiled to herself and held her hands under the icy water from the tap, weirdly enjoying the sensation of her fingers turning numb. ‘You’d better set off now if you do want to try and make the ceremony. You never know, you might get there in time. Brides are supposed to be late…’ she said, thinking how she had never made it at all.
Nigella’s snort echoed round the toilets. ‘Late! You have to be joking. Fenella Harding would be early for her own funeral.’
Carrie was taken aback. ‘Fenella Harding?’
‘Yah. Do you know her?’
She shook her head and turned off the tap. ‘No. I don’t.’
‘You looked as if you recognized the name,’ said Nigella suspiciously.
Carrie flashed them a smile. She did know Fenella slightly—she ran the firm of accountants who looked after the farm’s business affairs—but the last thing she wanted was to prolong the conversation. Her friends would be thinking she’d disappeared down the loo or something.
‘No, I can’t say I’ve heard of her,’ she said.
Nigella let out a sigh. ‘Lucky you. Just between us, she’s an absolute cow. How she ever found someone to marry her, I have simply no idea.’
Joely wrinkled her nose. ‘Drugs probably, or a cattle prod. She’s roped some rustic farmer person.’
Carrie caught sight of herself in the mirror and wondered whether she could be bothered to get her eyebrows waxed. ‘Really?’
‘Yah. Weird, eh? You’d have thought someone like Fenella would have sunk her claws into a stockbroker or a lawyer. Still, this guy’s absolutely dripping with family money apparently, even if it is in fields and cows,’ said Nigella.
‘She’s been boasting about pinching him on the rebound from some poor girl he’d been living with for absolutely aeons,’ said Joely, applying a Juicy Tube to her lips. ‘Though everyone thinks she was shagging the guy before they even split up.’
‘Still, the woman’s always the last to know. Monty Morrison spotted Fenella in Le Quat’ Saisons with some hulking great bloke in cords and a Tattersall shirt. Well, that had to be him, didn’t it? They got into a brand-new Range Rover, Monty says, and headed for Wytham Woods for a quickie,’ Nigella went on.
Carrie’s heart stopped momentarily. Her face stared back at her in the cracked glass of the mirror. ‘What color?’ she murmured.
‘Sorry?’
She spoke louder. ‘What color was the Range Rover your friend saw?’
Nigella sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know, darling, but he said they headed off for the woods in it.’
Carrie reached for a paper towel, her hands shaking. ‘How awful for his girlfriend,’ she said, feeling sick.
‘God, yes. Total bummer. Still, if he was bonking a witch like Fenella, he wasn’t worth having, now was he?’ Joely was saying.
‘What was his name?’ said Nigella. ‘Sounded rustic to me.’
‘It’s got a funny spelling. Foreign, I think. I remember it from the invitation.’
‘It’s Huw Brigstocke,’ said Carrie.
The girls turned to her and trilled in unison, ‘Sor-ry?’
‘It’s Huw with a w. It’s Welsh,’ she said to their astonished faces.
‘Oh. Gosh. Do you know him? Is he really rustic? Do you know his ex? Do you…’ Their eyes widened, then they both opened their mouths at precisely the same time. ‘Oh, fack.’
Sunlight and noise spilled into the toilets as Hayley walked in.
‘Carrie? We were wondering where you’d got to. Nelson really doesn’t mind missing the VW festival, so there’s no need to rush off.’
She might as well have been invisible. Carrie pushed past her, knocking her against the toilet door. Outside in the courtyard, the clock on New College tower was striking the hour. Its chimes drowned out all the chatter, the laughter, the clatter of glasses.
One, two, three…
‘Carrie. Whatever’s the matter?’ Hayley’s voice was behind her but it was coming from another planet.
‘Nothing. Just a headache. Tell Nelson and Rowena I’m off to get some aspirin,’ she said.
At first she walked slowly out of the beer garden and along the cobbled alley, numbed by shock. By the time she reached the traffic lights that led into Broad Street, she was running. Her heart thumped as she pounded past the college buildings and shops, heading for the taxi rank in St. Giles. She nearly knocked over a cyclist, who wobbled past her, ringing his bell and shouting angrily.
The numbness had gone, replaced by a stabbing pain that felt like rage and hurt all rolled into one. How could Huw have done this to her? It had been bad enough bearing the pain of him jilting her a fortnight before their own wedding, but now he’d pledged his undying bloody love to another woman barely four months later. God, they’d probably been having an affair while she’d still been sharing his bed. And why Fenella Harding? The sour-faced, holier-than-thou, iron-knickered cow!
When she reached the taxi rank, a cab was just pulling in. A large woman with about ten shopping bags was first in the queue.
‘Sorry. Emergency!’ shouted Carrie.
‘How dare you! This is my cab!’
Carrie pushed past the furious woman. ‘It’s a matter of life and death.’
‘I don’t care. Give me back my cab. I’m going to be late for my train.’
‘I don’t want no druggies in ’ere,’ said the driver.
‘I’m not on drugs and I’ll pay you double the fare if you take me where I want to go.’
He still looked dubious and she didn’t blame him. He must think she was a nutter, which was true. She just wasn’t a drugged-up nutter.
‘Triple the fare?’ she offered, hoping Rowena could do without rent that week.
‘Okay. Done.’
The cab roared away from the curb, shooting her backwards against the seat. As they queued at the lights on St. Giles, the driver called back through the grille, ‘Where exactly are we going that’s so important?’
She gripped her seat and said it out loud so there could be absolutely no mistake.
‘St. Mark’s church, Steeple Fritton. I’m late for a wedding.’