One Greek Summer Wedding

Chapter 16

‘Looks like she went to town with the rustic stone,’ Margot announced. ‘Very Grand Designs.’

They had left their taxi and started to approach the driveway, towards a very impressive villa that could have come straight out of the pages of an overseas home magazine. Cara was still damp from the pool at Cook’s Club. When Margot had eventually surfaced for breakfast, it was close to any normal person’s lunchtime and there had been little explanation as to why Cara had had to have a new room in the middle of the night. Although she wasn’t stupid. She knew Margot had taken a man back to the hotel, but why hadn’t she simply booked another room for herself instead of making Cara swap?

Having glided their way through a sumptuous brunch they’d headed to the pool and it was only when Cara decided to dry off and sunbathe that Margot had announced they were leaving for another wedding-related activity…

‘Is this where the wedding is going to be?’ Cara asked.

‘No! Don’t be silly, darling! It will be much grander than this. Likely a beautiful hotel with sea views, Sofia’s son and that Wren person dangling off the edge of an infinity pool with ships passing by in the background.’

‘But doesn’t it say where it’s going to be on the invitation?’

‘Why do you keep focussing on this invitation?’ Margot snapped, narrowly avoiding the edge of a blooming cactus plant.

‘Because I haven’t seen it, I don’t know when the wedding is, or where it is and I didn’t know the bride and groom’s names until last night.’

‘Well, you’re only the plus one, Cara. Let me worry about the details,’ Margot said, forging on.

Only the plus one. Well, that had certainly put her in her place. She took a second to look some more at the house and its impressive garden as Margot went, all arms outstretched, greeting the group of people up by the front entrance. It was the kind of place she had always admired online or on TV, the type of home that she might have been able to buy with one royalty cheque if her singing career had been what she had been led to believe it would be. Instead, Yodi the dog was most probably sleeping on a Simba mattress in a pet house modelled exactly like this. He probably even had his own car…

‘Yassas.’

Cara jumped, almost as much as she had when Yodi had invaded the stage. It was Akis wearing another pair of jeans – black this time – and a grey slim-fit T-shirt that skimmed over every contour.

‘Do not worry, I am not going to get you under a spotlight again,’ he told her.

‘Well, I’m hoping, as it’s a cake and wine tasting, there won’t be any kind of stage.’

‘And you do not know my mother at all.’

‘How many people are coming to taste the cake and wine?’ Cara asked as they walked up the driveway together, grasshoppers leaping from the concrete back to the well-tended plants as they passed. ‘I thought it was usually something only the bride and groom did.’

‘As I said, you do not know my mother. Wren and Cosmos had a private tasting to shortlist the tasting for today. And that was after my mother and her friends had curated the longlist.’

‘Wow,’ Cara said. ‘That is dedication to wine and cake.’

‘You like wine and cake?’ Akis asked her. ‘Perhaps more than Greek beer and seafood?’

‘I guess we’re about to find out.’

‘You go ahead,’ he said, stopping short of the steps that led to the front porch. ‘I only have an invitation from my brother, not my mother so…’

‘So?’

‘So I will wait until Cosmos plucks up the courage to tell my mother that he wants my opinion on wine and cake and?—’

‘Aki! Ela! Ela! Parakalo!’

‘OK. I will take that as my invitation.’

‘Who is that?’ Cara asked, looking at the man waving his hands as if he was in a crowd at a football match.

‘That is my father, Thanasis. Otherwise known as my mother’s slave. As children we thought there was something wrong with his neck because he could only nod, never shake to say no. Then we realised.’

‘Oh.’ Cara didn’t really know what to say to that.

‘Am I selling this afternoon with my family to you? Can you not wait to be involved?’

‘Well, let’s hope the shortlist of wine and cake is good,’ she said, heading on.

‘Do you prefer this one, Cosmo? Drink.’ Sofia put a glass to Cosmos’s lips and tipped it a little as if he was incapable of doing so himself. ‘Or this one?’ The first glass was taken back and another planted in its place.

‘I like the first one,’ Wren told her.

‘I know,’ Sofia said. ‘You have said this already. Many many times. I am asking Cosmo.’

Cosmos mis-swallowed and wine dribbled down his chin.

‘Cosmo! You are wasting it!’ Sofia exclaimed, standing up and taking the glass away.

Akis shook his head and swigged from the bottle of beer his father had given him. This whole banqueting table in the garden was like a setting for a wedding itself. Pristine white tablecloths, crystalware, ice buckets, flowers around the pergola, even the stray cats were sat in an orderly pile barely in view.

‘This one here is particularly divine,’ Margot said, hoisting the bottle out of a cooler and holding it aloft.

‘See! My friend, Margot, knows an excellent wine,’ Sofia announced. ‘Anastasia! Get off your phone and pay attention.’

Akis didn’t really know why he was here. His mother didn’t want him here, his father was using him only to hide behind or occasionally send a knowing look to, Anastasia was glued to Instagram, his brother was doing his usual weak routine and Wren was never going to make his mother listen to her. The others were like confetti to this event, there to add colour, yet superficial and ultimately unnecessary except to praise his mother’s organisational skills. But then there was Cara. The only member of this gathering he didn’t yet have a read on. She had tasted each cake but made no comment. She had sipped a few of the wines… and then she had discreetly plucked a white rose from the vine and picked every single petal apart, crushing each one in her palm.

‘I want Akis to taste this one,’ Cosmos moaned, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

‘I am not a connoisseur of wine,’ Akis answered immediately.

‘Nonsense!’ Sofia replied. ‘And you will definitely need the practice. Everyone knows that priests know good wine.’

Akis’s blood chilled. It was one thing for his mother to make these declarations to him, or in front of the immediate family, but now she was saying this to a large party, making it public knowledge. He fixed his expression to neutral and rubbed his fingers up the stem of his wine glass. If he reacted he was only going to add credence to this priest ambition his family had for him.

‘Sofia, I need you to check something in the kitchen.’

It was his father.

‘Nothing needs looking at in the kitchen, Thanasi.’ She poured a very small amount of wine into Akis’s glass.

‘No, please, I think something… is on fire.’

Sofia dropped the wine bottle to the table and went rushing off, Thanasis at her back.

‘What do you think of this wine?’ Cosmos asked. ‘Is it not like the one that Yiayia used to make?’

Akis took a sip of the cherry-coloured liquid and immediately he was taken back to Irini’s kitchen, cutting up figs, kumquats, oranges and all kinds of berries to make a concoction that would keep the villagers inebriated for another year. His brother was right.

‘I agree,’ Akis said quietly. ‘But I know how expensive this wine is. If you tell Mama it tastes like the wine Yiayia used to make there is no way you will be allowed to have it at your wedding.’

‘This is a performance, isn’t it?’ Margot said, a wry smile on her lips as she lit another cigarette.

‘I thought you liked this kind of thing,’ Cara replied. ‘Isn’t it why we’re here?’

‘It is,’ Margot agreed. ‘To remember how the other half do things.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, how hard people try to, you know, be something they’re not.’

‘Margot, I think that’s a bit?—’

‘At college, Sofia always needed to be one tier higher than anyone else. Or at least think she was. The rest of us just existed as we were. And all these extra wedding events that aren’t really needed, it’s just extravagance for extravagance’s sake. Amusing, really.’

This was the side of Margot that Cara didn’t like very much. It was a cruel side, a side that wanted others to feel inferior. Sometimes she wondered if that was how Margot might have made her mother feel when they were growing up. Perhaps that treatment might have made someone want to spend their time travelling the world, having no fixed abode, being very much in charge of their own path, bucking some of society’s norms.

Cara knew exactly what she was going to say next.

‘Who did you bring back to the hotel room last night?’

‘What?’ Margot gasped.

‘Well, was it a one-night thing or do you think it will be a whole-Corfu-stay thing like the week in Milan with Giovanni?’

Margot frowned as if Cara had spoken the question in a language she didn’t understand. ‘Who’s Giovanni?’

Cara sighed. This was Margot in full-on childish confusion mode. She played that card a lot in the boardroom. It always seemed to lull people into a false sense of security, made them drop their guard and think that Margot was a lesser opponent when it came to brokering deals. Then her aunt capitalised on their poor decision-making and struck the killer business blow.

‘You actually never said where you disappeared to last night,’ Margot said, turning the tables.

Cara smiled. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Not that I disapprove. I was delighted you absconded really. So nicely out of character.’

Cara plucked another rose head from the bush and pulled off the first petal.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ Margot asked, offering the packet. ‘Save the nature. Your mother would be starting a fundraiser if she could see you doing that.’

‘Cara! Anastasia says she forgot to ask you last night! What colour is your dress for the wedding?’

Cara baulked as all eyes landed on her. She crushed the rest of the rose head in her hand, hiding it in her palm. ‘I… am not sure.’ And why did the mother of the groom need to know what a plus one of an old college friend was going to be wearing?

‘It is peach,’ Margot piped up, stubbing her cigarette out into a bowl of what looked like potpourri. She was making a habit of that.

Cara turned a little in her chair, looking at Margot. Why was her aunt deciding what dress she was going to wear? Yes, the peach-coloured one was really nice, but she did have other ones with her, and she was someone who looked out of the window or on a weather app before making a final outfit choice.

‘Peach?’ Sofia said, coming closer. ‘What is “peach”?’

‘Like the fruit,’ Margot continued, getting to her feet. ‘You Greeks probably call it something else. Something with lots more letters. Let’s go inside and I will find you something in your beautiful house that is close to the colour.’

Cara watched Margot slip her arm through Sofia’s and attempt to draw her away from the table and her guests. Cara recognised this Margot move. This was the separation technique. You went in and removed someone from the pack either to continue negotiations on a one-to-one level, or to detach an aggressor, someone who had the ability to turn the group’s thinking in opposition to your goals.

‘We do not need to go anywhere,’ Sofia said, unlinking herself from Margot and looking confused. ‘You will find this peach on your phone and I can see the colour.’

A hand went on Cara’s shoulder then and she looked up to see Anastasia standing by her seat.

‘My mother takes colour coordination to a whole new level. The bridesmaids are having a spectrum of blue and each one of them has to remember to stand in the correct order throughout the event.’

‘Wow,’ Cara answered. ‘But, I’m not really part of the event in that way. No one is going to be looking at my dress.’

‘I am sure they will look as well as listen,’ Anastasia said, sweeping a wine glass from the table and drinking the dregs of the contents.

Cara momentarily froze. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Cara, there will be plinths with balloons on the stage,’ Sofia called. ‘Will that be an issue for you? I was not sure how much room you needed, if you, you know, were one of those people who walked up and down and around or whether there was some kind of dance routine.’

I am sure they will look as well as listen. Dance routine.She was starting to be deeply concerned at these comments.

All the guests seemed to have paused their cake-eating and were looking at her, waiting for a response, small forks suspended.

‘Balloons are… fine?’ She didn’t know what else to say because she didn’t know what was going on. But Margot seemed a little flustered, like she might know exactly what was going on.

‘We are all so excited you agreed to be the wedding singer at such short notice! It is going to be an incredible day!’

Wedding singer.

As an icy shard stabbed at her stomach, Margot caught her eye and then joined in with the other guests as they applauded.

The applause. The lights. The cameras. Yodi. Seb.

Cara got to her feet. She needed to escape.