A Ballad of Confetti, Cake and Catastrophes Read online

  ‘My sister and her fiancé’s favourite song is a bit of a weird one, but just on the off-chance I thought I’d mention it. It’s Spice Girls “Say You’ll Be There”. I know, right? When I heard that, I knew they were destined to be together lol :)’ It was true. It had come up over dinner a couple of years ago, and although they had both been a bit embarrassed, Nicholas thought it suited them quite well.

  He pressed send, and went back to his bags. However, after a couple more he got his phone back out. ‘Anything by Beyoncé is probably good too, but that ‘Halo’ one is really romantic, isn’t it?’

  A few bags later: ‘NO DIDO! I don’t mind her myself, but Clara has a real thing against her. Same probably goes for Coldplay, so best avoid them as well, just in case. Sorry if you like them lol x’

  He hadn’t meant to add the kiss. Not at all. In fact, he didn’t even realise what he’d done until he was on the next bag, and he stilled suddenly as the horror dawned.

  ‘Sorry about the accidental kiss. Just habit lol. Didn’t mean to freak you out or anything.’

  ‘Do you do any other crazy covers? I really liked the Katy Perry one you did yesterday. Oh, and that Christine and the Queens track? I think it’s called “Tilted”? Not as a remix, just as it is.’

  ‘Ooh, how about Years & Years, they’re really cool!’

  ‘Sorry, I’ll stop texting soon. I just keep thinking of songs!’

  ‘How about ‘Glow’ by Ella Henderson?’

  “Nicky, who are you talking to?”

  He looked up sharply to see Danielle staring at him, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. “W-what?” he stammered.

  She licked the end of some cotton, then focused on trying to thread it. “You’re nonstop on that phone – it’s a miracle you’ve got anything done at all.”

  Nicholas frowned. He thought he had a pretty decent pile of confetti bags accumulated already. “Er, it’s just Trev,” he lied, naming his best friend from school. He had intended to text him later, so it wasn’t a complete lie. “He’s back from his uni too. We were thinking about meeting up maybe.”

  “Not this week, surely?” Danielle said. Her tone was friendly enough, but there was a frown line between her eyebrows.

  Nicholas felt a flair of irritation. If he wanted to meet with his best friend, he would ask if his sister minded. Not her. But he remembered his promise to himself to behave, so squashed his feelings down. “Don’t know,” he replied truthfully.

  His phone gave a tiny buzz, and he was too excited to care about the raised eyebrow that answering it got from Danielle. It was from Fynn, and this time it read ‘OK ;)’ Nicholas took that as an encouraging improvement.

  He made it through the next couple of dozen bags without thinking of anything else to text, and only stopped when his mum got up to do a repeat of the tea order. Nicholas stretched, not realising how much his back had needed to click. Kinny cracked her fingers, and Peter rubbed under his glasses with a yawn.

  “Okay,” said Danielle seriously. She flipped through one of her files, and consulted her laptop. “I’m afraid I’m going to need someone to be brave, and use the hot glue gun. Now, I know that’s asking a lot—”

  There was a snort from the corner of the room. Ash’s flailed both arms and legs as she sat upright, and wiped her mouth as she blinked several times. “Me,” she said, sticking her hand into the air, looking around the room until she found Danielle. “Me, I’ll do it. What do I need to do?”

  Danielle frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes,” she replied with a rapid nod. “Yep definitely, I can manage hot glue.” Nicholas thought she looked a little too eager.

  Luckily Kinny also piped up. “I can help,” offered she with a wave. “If it’s complicated.” Surely Danielle would trust her?

  Sure enough, she agreed to let the girls loose on the gun. Apparently, it was for some sort of photo collage that Nicholas would have thought could have been made with Prit-stick. But what did he know?

  While Danielle got them set up on the dining room table, already covered with an old sheet to protect it, Nicholas fired off a quick text to Trev so he felt less guilty. It would be nice to escape for a while and meet up with him, and maybe a couple of the other guys, but only if Clara didn’t mind.

  “Ahh, Nicky,” said Danielle as she re-entered the room. “That was what I wanted to ask you. Did you find the harpist’s details yesterday? I’d really like to get them on file.”

  His insides turned to ice. “Uh,” he said.

  He should just explain now, tell them about the mix-up (he didn’t have to let them know he’d just forgotten to book her, after all). But, he had really hoped to have his first meeting with Fynn before that, just to definitely make sure it was all okay. That didn’t matter, he should just come clean-

  “Not yet,” he said cheerfully out loud. “But I remembered where I wrote it down. So once I put my room back in order, I’m sure I’ll find it. It’s all in hand though, I promise.”

  Danielle pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything. No one else seemed to notice anything amiss either, as they started discussing what they were going to do for lunch. But Nicholas felt his heart rate going up. Why had he lied? Why hadn’t he just been honest?

  He really wasn’t sure, but it sat uneasily with him for the rest of the day.

  Chapter Four

  (Five days to go…)

  The house was quiet.

  Nicholas pressed his ear to his bedroom door and listened through the wood with bated breath. Nope, not a peep.

  Carefully, he eased the door open and glanced left and right across the landing. No movement, no sound, nothing.

  “Oh thank Christ for that.” He sagged against the doorframe, and felt his mouth curl into a shaky grin. People, at times, were completely overrated.

  He stretched his arms above his head and ventured out into the corridor in his pyjamas. Being a Monday, he had hoped that most of the house would be going back to work, but after yesterday’s carnage, he wasn’t entirely convinced it was going to happen. Especially with Danielle. He was sure he was going to wake up and discover that she had swung last minute annual leave for the week, just so she could dedicate all her waking hours to the wedding.

  But a quick glance on each of the three floors showed all the doors were open and lifeless, aside from the attic room where Ash and Kinny were no doubt also enjoying a bit of tranquillity with a well-deserved lie-in.

  Yesterday hadn’t been all that bad, really. Aside from the sick, nagging feeling in his stomach every time he remembered lying about Fynn not being the harpist, Nicholas had actually made it through the rest of the day without any arguments, tears, or getting burned with the glue gun. They’d gotten an Indian take away in the evening, and watched old sit-coms while Danielle listened to Clara’s entrance music on a seemingly endless loop through her headphones. She had counted from one to eight in a barely-there whisper for the best part of an hour, pausing to note down times on her laptop every now and again.

  In all honestly, Nicholas did genuinely think it was very sweet how much effort his cousin was putting into the big day. Although her way of going about it was sometimes clumsy and, he worried, occasionally hurtful, she was still working extremely hard to make things perfect. Despite the slightly uglier sides to their relationship, she and Clara had been friends pretty much since birth, and at the end of it all, if Clara and Peter had a lovely day, that was all that mattered.

  Even if Nicholas had been ready to tear his hair out after the bazillionth hushed count of eight drifted across the room.

  Now, there was no sign of life as Nicholas trotted down the stairs to the ground floor of the house. There was, however, a note left by his mum on the kitchen island, telling him and the girls to have a nice day, as well as a reminder for him to go into town and pick up the groomsmen’s ties from the department store at some point before five o’clock. There was also a big, smiley face, a dozen love hearts and several flowers d
ecorating the page, which made him snort and roll his eyes. But it was sweet to know his mum was thinking about him.

  From the pair of trainers by the back door and exercise gear chucked into the sloshing washer-dryer, Nicholas guessed that Danielle had gone for her normal run before commuting into her job in London where she was a paralegal or something equally impressive. He shuddered to think what time she’d woken up. His dad worked in the capital as well, but his mum, Clara and Peter all had jobs in St Albans, so would probably have left at a much more reasonable time. Nicholas had the opportunity to take advantage of one of the perks of student life, and would be spending most of the day in his pants, logged onto Netflix.

  He poured himself a bowl of chocolatey cereal, humming ‘MMMBop’ as he waited for the kettle to boil. He fancied tea, and maybe some biscuits too. And then he could make toast later if he was peckish.

  He gazed out the window. Rain was pelting down and the sky was iron grey. He felt a twinge of worry, but then he reminded himself they had ages until the wedding. April was notorious for showers – for all he knew it would be bright and breezy again by the afternoon.

  The afternoon, when he was meeting Fynn again. A nervous flutter went through his insides at the thought of it. Then he scoffed and tipped a spoonful of sugar into his tea. He needed to get a grip on himself or he was going to look like a right prat.

  He couldn’t help it. Fynn was so quiet, even his texts were restricted to one bloody word at a time. Nicholas was bound to talk more to fill in the pauses, and that would no doubt lead to him saying something idiotic. Like, how talented he thought he was, or how pretty he thought his eyes were. He was starting to come to terms with the fact that he might possibly have a tiny crush on the enigmatic busker, but Fynn really didn’t need to know that.

  He blew on his tea, and watched the rain creating patterns down the window pane for a bit. A crush didn’t have to be romantic, did it? Maybe he just really admired Fynn. Talent was attractive, everyone knew that. So perhaps he was just drawn to his skill as a musician.

  Before going to sleep the previous night, he had indulged in looking Fynn up on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. He had wanted to see if he could find any more of his performances, and he wasn’t disappointed. He’d discovered video upon video of him sitting in what looked like his bedroom, strumming on his guitar, his deep rumbling voice adding new life to songs Nicholas hadn’t always paid attention to before. He told himself this was part of his research, that he was just checking up on Fynn’s quality as a performer. But he had also noticed there didn’t appear to be a girlfriend in any of the photos or posts…

  It didn’t really matter in any case, because unless Nicholas did anything, the issue of his maybe-crush was never going to come up. Fynn was probably as straight as an arrow anyway. Nicholas poured milk on his cereal and put the bottle away, vowing to try and not think about the matter anymore. There was a slim chance of that, but he could at least try.

  He heard a creak upstairs and figured Kinny or Ash might be stirring. Kinny was on Easter break like he was, but she was a primary school teacher, so would have lots of homework and planning to sort out. It wasn’t like Nicholas was on holiday himself – he’d have a great deal of revision to plough through too. But he had decided to wait until after the wedding to even think about that, regardless of whether or not that was a good idea.

  Ash worked shifts; Nicholas wasn’t sure doing what, but she’d said yesterday that she wasn’t due in until the afternoon. It was probably some sort of retail, he figured. Peter was a manager at the Games Workshop not far from where he’d met Fynn in the city centre, so he could see Ash doing something similar.

  It would be nice to have it only be the three of them pottering about the house for the morning, but selfishly, Nicholas hoped they’d sleep a little longer. It would be heaven to just chill out by himself for an hour or so.

  He picked up his mug and his cereal bowl, and went to go settle in the living room with some trash-telly. Ordinarily, he’d bunker down in the den, but it was so full of wedding stuff, as well as Danielle’s belongings, it didn’t feel right. He glanced at the open door on his way past…and froze in his tracks.

  In another household, seeing the family cat leaving a room might not be cause for alarm. It might not make your heart stutter or cause you to break out in a cold sweat. But Archibald had That Walk going on, the one where you knew he’d found the cream, caught the canary and probably robbed the Bank of bloody England while he was at it.

  Nicholas ran.

  He sloshed tea over his wrist but he didn’t care that it was hot. He all but dropped his breakfast onto the table, and wiped away the liquid on his pyjama top as he hastily scanned the room for damage. Sadly, it didn’t take him long to spot.

  He couldn’t help but slap his hands over his mouth as he gasped.

  He and Clara had tried to impress on Danielle yesterday that the door needed to be kept closed whenever she left. But it hadn’t helped that his mum had kept cooing that ‘her baby was a good boy’ as she stroked his tummy. And of course, he always was good when she was in the room. He was only an absolute fucker whenever Nicholas’s mum wasn’t around to witness it.

  “ARCHIBALD!” he roared. He dropped his hands and bunched them into fists. It wouldn’t do any good now, the little shit always knew to hide when he’d done something particularly heinous. But it made Nicholas feel the tiniest bit better.

  However, he was rewarded with the thumping of two pairs of bare feet running down the stairs. “Nicholas?” Kinny called out as she and Ash approached, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to turn around and look as they arrived in the room. “Are you alr—”

  She cut herself off with a shriek, and mimicked Nicholas’s initial reaction by covering her mouth in horror. The two girls flanked his sides, and together, they stared at the damage.

  “Well…bollocks,” stated Ash. She ruffled her pixie-cut, and shook her head.

  “Oh no,” whispered Kinny tearfully.

  Danielle must have wanted to air out the bridesmaids’ dresses or something. Maybe she was worried about the soft, pale pink material creasing, or making sure none of the tiny crystals fell off from the shoulder straps. Why else would she have hung all three of them from picture frames against the wall? Now, Nicholas was extremely worried about the enormous slashes in the swathes of chiffon that had reduced the bottom front half of each of the dresses to nothing but holes and tatters.

  “Your cat did this?” asked Ash, walking over to inspect the damage close up.

  She was in her short-shorts again, and Nicholas didn’t even try to muster the energy to be disappointed in his lack of a normal, red-blooded-male reaction when she bent over and peered at the material. Instead, he scowled.

  “He’s not my bloody cat,” he snapped. He rubbed at his face and tried to think straight. He tried not to be furious at Danielle for not listening to him and Clara, but he found he was too panicked to be angry anyway. Being mad or saying ‘I told you so’ wasn’t going to un-fuck the dresses. “What are we going to do?” he asked. “Buy new ones?”

  They hadn’t bought these ones though. They had been handmade by a professional seamstress in the London, and had cost an absolute fortune. They were specifically tailored to fit each girl; Danielle had designed them herself and the subtle combinations of pinks matched the wedding colour scheme perfectly. They would never find anything similar off the rack; they were perfect. Or at least they had been. Now they hung in ruins.

  “Can the woman fix them somehow?” he asked hopefully. But Ash shook her head.

  “She’s on location in the States until May,” she explained, jolting Nicholas’s memory. “That’s why we had to have them finished at the start of the year.”

  According to Clara, she’d worked on dozens of films and theatre productions and had had an actual BAFTA stood on the desk in her workshop. That’s why she was so good, and why the dresses had cost that much.

  Nicholas let out
a high-pitched whine. Right, they weren’t totally screwed yet, they had time. “We’ll just have to see if we can find someone else,” he said. There had to be loads of options in London; if he’d found a replacement musician, surely they could find a replacement seamstress.

  Ash turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “We’ll have to come clean if we do that,” she said. She stood and shook her head. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t got the kind of money right now that it’ll take to get these fixed.”

  Nicholas, looked between the two of them. It couldn’t cost that much to do something, anything with what they had left of the dresses, could it? But the girls’ tight, worried faces told him otherwise. “I’ll call my dad,” he said, glancing towards the ceiling to indicate his phone in his room. “He might have an idea.”

  “Hang on,” said Kinny, her voice muffled behind her hands. She dropped her arms to her sides, fists clenched as she stared with determination at the dresses. Almost as if she thought if she glared hard enough, they might mend themselves back together. Like something out of Fantasia. “There…there might be someone I can ask.”

  Ash glanced at Nicholas. “Someone seamstressy?” Kinny nodded, and Ash raised her eyebrows. “Someone with the time to do it?” Kinny paused, then nodded again. “Someone who might not charge too much?” Another nod. “Well,” scoffed Ash, crossing her arms. “Then, yeah, let’s do that!”

  Kinny chewed her lip, clearly hesitant. “I’m not sure they’ll help,” she said slowly. “But, it’s worth asking, isn’t it? This is an emergency.”

  “I’d say,” agreed Nicholas. “But, only if you’re sure?”

  Kinny thought about it for a moment or two, and Nicholas held his breath. “Yeah – no, it’s fine.” She pulled her hair out from her scrunchie and shook it loose. “I’ll just – hang on while I get my phone.”