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‘We saved you a place,’ Hillary called across the room. He was staring at her with wide, unblinking eyes, presumably trying to convey how unsatisfactory he felt his current breakfast companions, Miranda and Fred, to be. There were two free seats at his table, one opposite Fred, the other beside him. Audrey really should have thought through this ‘coming down for breakfast’ plan.
‘How did you sleep?’ Fred asked, as she took the seat beside him.
‘Fine,’ she said, her eyes firmly on the table in front of her. ‘The rain kept me awake for a while.’
‘Rain sometimes clears the air,’ Fred said.
‘Fred went out in it!’ Miranda said, laughing, reaching for the pot of tea in the middle of the table. ‘I woke in the night and nearly screamed when I saw this sodden figure at the end of my bed.’ Miranda sniffed the air. ‘Who’s wearing Purple Haze?’
‘I am,’ said Clara. ‘Incredible.’
Miranda was a professional perfumer. She could identify almost any perfume or scent in a room, including the washing powder people had used on their clothes.
Vivien approached their table and handed Audrey a mug of steaming liquid. She was dressed immaculately in a lemon twinset, with her hair pinned back and a simple powdered face. Unlike Audrey, her mother would never be seen in public without some form of hair and make-up in place.
‘Vivien is wearing Chanel No.5,’ said Miranda, closing her eyes, ‘and a bergamot and mint hand cream.’
‘I am,’ Vivien said, looking impressed, then turned to Audrey and handed her the mug. ‘Hot lemon, it’s what my voice coach always recommends before curtain. You shouldn’t have coffee, it will make you jumpy. Now, I know you said you were going to do your own hair, but you know Debbie and I both have appointments at the salon in the village this morning and I pencilled you a slot, just in case you changed your mind.’ Vivien reached out to touch her daughter’s hair. ‘This is a little wild.’
‘She’s channelling Russell Brand,’ Hillary said, giving Audrey a wink.
‘The salon’s called Curl Up and Dye,’ Debbie called from across the room. ‘Isn’t that so amusing?’
Audrey pulled her hair back into a ponytail with an elastic from her wrist. She could not think of anything more stress inducing than having her hair done by someone she didn’t know, while sitting between Debbie and her mother.
‘I haven’t washed it yet, that’s why it’s a mess. Clara’s going to do it, she’s great at hair.’
‘I thought you styled bands, not brides?’ said Vivien.
‘I was thinking we’d dye it green and then do a sort of punk updo,’ Clara said seriously, coming back from the buffet bar with two coffees and putting one down in front of Audrey.
Vivien’s face fell for a moment, until she realised Clara was joking. She intercepted the coffee in front of Audrey.
‘I don’t have the constitution for jokes this morning, Clara. You know how my nerves are before an opening night; you mustn’t test me.’ Her eyes darted back to the large windows and the grey rain, which was showing no sign of stopping. ‘Will it ever end? We don’t have enough pink and lilac umbrellas to go around – the guests will be soaked. Nothing worse than a damp audience. Hopefully, some people will have the good sense to bring their own.’
Watching Vivien talk about umbrellas, Audrey had a sudden flash of memory, of meeting her mother after a show at a stage door behind Shaftesbury Avenue. It had been pouring, and Audrey had brought a flimsy umbrella not up to the task. Vivien had scanned the crowd of well-wishers and autograph hunters, and when she’d seen Audrey, she’d walked straight through the crowd, pushed her broken umbrella aside, and enveloped her in a huge hug. They’d run off into Soho, giggling like children, their heels getting soaked in the puddles. There was a lighter side to Vivien, which sat alongside her more austere, diva-ish facade. Only those closest to her were ever allowed to see it, and in the last few years it had been ever more closely guarded. Had it gone, or was it just that Audrey was no longer allowed to see?
‘Were the ushers briefed about escorting people between the church and the house?’ Vivien asked, pulling Audrey back to the present. ‘You know, when Lawrence and I got married, we hired professional ushers from the theatre. They were so efficient.’
Clara caught Audrey’s eye as she mimed doing a shot.
‘I can make sure the ushers know,’ Fred said, and Vivien pressed a hand on his shoulder in gratitude.
‘That’s very helpful of you, Frederick.’ She had a habit of lengthening people’s names, whether that was what they were called or not.
‘Don’t let the weather rain on your parade,’ called Brian cheerfully from the table by the door. ‘Remember our wedding, Viv? Rained cats and dogs the whole afternoon, but we still had a ball, didn’t we?’
Vivien looked flushed by Brian’s words, and muttered, ‘Well,’ before walking towards the window to closer inspect the sky.
‘Audrey, I’d better get a chance to talk to you today,’ said Hillary, gently kicking her beneath the table. ‘You’re not going to be all boring and bridal and too busy to speak to me, are you? I mean, yes, I can carry on being completely adorable to all your friends, but really I am only here to see you.’
‘No one gets quality time with the bride on her wedding day,’ said Clara, sitting back down and hugging her arms against her chest. ‘Everyone knows that.’
Audrey’s head was beginning to spin with all this attention, all these questions. Why hadn’t she stayed in her room? Why had she come to breakfast with her hair a mess? Why hadn’t she tied her dress up properly? Crucially, why wasn’t she allowed coffee?
‘I bet you wish you’d gone for room service,’ Fred said, leaning towards her, reading her mind. She looked sideways at him and instantly regretted it. His green eyes cut through all the noise. There was something about Fred’s face. She pushed back her chair and stood up.
‘You’ll have to excuse me, I have a... a thing,’ she announced to the table. Then she walked over to the breakfast bar, picked up two croissants and a pot of coffee, and walked purposefully back towards the door.
Except she didn’t want to go back to her room. People could find her there. The laminated timetable of hair and make-up and ‘getting ready photos’ would begin, and then there wouldn’t be a minute left to be alone, to think. So instead of going upstairs, she kept going, down a small corridor that led through the bowels of the old house. She needed a quiet room, somewhere no one would look for her, just for twenty minutes. After opening several old wooden doors, she found what she was looking for: a small, cosy looking cleaning cupboard, full of linen and towels, a vacuum cleaner, a mop bucket, huge bags of loo roll, and boxes of miniature soap and shampoo. No one would find her here. She pulled the dangling light switch, made a seat for herself out of a pile of towels and tugged the cupboard door closed.
‘Focus, Audrey, focus,’ she told herself. Sometimes, when emotions started to overwhelm her, they could escalate into a panic attack. She didn’t want that to happen on her wedding day. She needed to get ahead of it, to pull herself out of whatever tailspin she was in. Seeing Fred had flung open a door, and she needed to work out how she was going to close it, for good.
