The Greek Guesthouse - Chapter 1
Annie blinked. Oh my God – was it really her?
She blinked again as she registered the reflection that gazed back at her.
Yes, yes, all right, so the dress was on the snug side, she thought as she ran her hands down all that lovely soft satin.
But all brides lost weight before their wedding due to the stress of organising it.
Everybody knew that – it was a fact, and she would too.
Aside from not being able to breathe, the dress was everything she had ever dreamed of.
The champagne toning enhanced her red hair and pale colouring, while the fabric hugged her in all the right places.
It was a pity they couldn’t afford it with Tony being fixated on them saving a deposit to buy their own home.
She turned to see what the dress looked like side-on, and the movement saw her engagement ring sparkle under the fitting room’s bright light, but something wasn’t right.
She frowned. It was Carl’s fault. If he hadn’t asked her whether Tony had chosen his suit yet, then she wouldn’t be staring at her ring wondering why the small diamond’s prisms of blue light weren’t filling her with the same sense of joie de vivre today as they had two years earlier when she’d carefully picked it out with Tony.
She recalled the excitement she’d felt at the prospect of no longer being Annie Rivers, sister of the late Roz Rivers and daughter of divorced parents, but Mrs Annie Goodall. Tony Goodall’s wife.
Tony. She used to smile a silly, goofy smile whenever she thought about him, but now, staring at the diamond, she found herself not smiling but rather jostling for space on a dance floor the night they met…
She leaned over to scream in her girlfriend Jo-Jo’s ear, ‘Hey, see that guy over there – in the touch-rugby shirt?’
Jo-Jo did some fancy footwork and spun round, sending her long hair flying like a whip, before she screamed back over the top of the music, ‘With the dark hair?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He’s fit.’
‘He keeps looking over at me.’
Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ – every party girl’s anthem – blared out, and Annie bopped around the pile of handbags tossed into the middle of the gaggle of girls, who all screeched along to the song.
She knew with that confident certainty a woman in a little black dress has at twenty-five that when the song finished, the fit guy in the touch-rugby shirt would come over and say hi.
She was right, and soon she was swaying to a slow song, strong hands resting on her hips, as she lost herself in a pair of dark blue eyes belonging to a guy called Tony. Her last conscious thought before she homed in for a good old snog was, Such a waste, eyelashes like that on a man.
‘Annie.’ Carl’s impatient foot tapped outside the fitting-room door, bringing her back to the present.
Annie ignored him. This was her princess moment.
It was to be savoured, she told herself, wishing Carl hadn’t planted that seed of doubt because Tony had done precisely nothing when it came to preparing himself to say ‘I do’.
He was proving impossible to pin down with an actual wedding date too, and she had tried.
She recalled how that conversation had gone.
‘We’re procrastinating, Tony, and I just don’t know what we’re waiting for anymore.
’ She’d stopped him as he’d opened his mouth to interrupt.
‘I know you want us to get into our own home, but a wedding doesn’t have to cost the earth.
We could keep things simple. A registry office and a low-key reception. ’
Tony, glugging a beer at the time, had drained the can and belched. ‘Mum would kill me if we got married in a registry office. You know she wants the big white wedding. What’s the hurry anyway?’
The conversation had escalated into heated words along the lines of, ‘It’s not your mother’s day; it’s mine!’ and got her nowhere. Gaylene Goodall ruled her roost of four grown sons.
She cut off the memory and turned away from the mirror. ‘OK, Carl, shut your eyes!’
She opened the fitting-room door and glided out onto the shop floor. ‘Right, you can open them now,’ she said, fully aware that her best friend was peeping already. ‘Well, what do you think?’
Carl clasped his hands steeple-like in front of his mouth as his eyes swept from her head to her toes but gave nothing away as she slowly twirled around.
Annie shifted awkwardly; her hands dropped back down to her sides. ‘Come on then, tell me – do you like it?’ She was surprised how much it mattered to her that Carl approved of the dress.
He fanned his eyes open and closed.
‘Don’t cry – you’ll set me off.’
He flapped his hand in front of his face. ‘I’m not. OK, I am. But I can’t help it. It’s— Annie, it’s just… you just look so beautiful, exquisite, perfect – oh, I’d need a thesaurus to put all the adjectives to describe how you look into words.’
‘It does rather become madam, I must agree, although perhaps it is a little tight across the hips?’ Haughty Amanda, as Carl and Annie had nicknamed Modern Bride’s assistant, gave the bodice a gentle tug where the fabric had wrinkled ever so slightly.
But Annie was having none of it and shied away from the woman’s hands.
‘It’s fine, truly. It fits me just fine.’ Or it will once I drop the chocolate biscuits at morning teatime, she self-affirmed.
‘Oh, I thought of some more: stunning, gorgeous, ethereal’ – Carl continued to wax lyrical – ‘but—’
Annie froze. ‘But what?’
‘It’s just that—’
‘It is not too tight. Like I told Haught— I mean Amanda here. It is not too tight.’
Carl held up a stop-sign hand. As a commercial freelance fashion photographer, he was his own boss and well versed in dealing with hangry models and calming their potential histrionics. ‘No, no, sweets, of course it’s not. It fits you like a glove. That’s not it at all.’
Annie placed a hand on her hip and looked at him searchingly. ‘Well, what is it then?’
‘I don’t know how to say this, babe.’
Carl wasn’t usually one to be lost for words or to beat around the bush. Her skin went goosy, and she wondered what it was he was struggling to tell her. He wasn’t sick, was he?
‘Would you just say it, please, whatever it is? I can take it, I promise.’ It was a lie. If he told her the dress made her bum look big, she would not be happy.
‘Sure?’
‘Positive. You’re my best friend.’
‘OK. So you know how much I love you?’
Annie nodded.
‘Well, that’s why I can’t let you buy the dress. Annie, my sweet, the dress is perfection – you are perfection – but the man you’re planning on marrying isn’t right for you.’
Annie’s mouth fell open. That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. The fact she couldn’t buy the dress, no matter how badly she wanted to, was irrelevant.
‘I’ve gone along with things and humoured you where Tony is concerned, but seeing you now in that dress, well, I’m sorry, sweetie, really I am.
It hurts me to say it, but the dress is a keeper, the fiancé is not.
’ He swiped his brow, oblivious of the hurt that flashed across Annie’s face as he added in a jokey tone, ‘Phew. There, I said it.’ Then, registering the shock on her face, he took a step toward her.
Annie warded him off. ‘Why say that now?’
‘I’m sorry. I know I should have said something before, but I got swept up in this trying-on-of-the-dress thing. I can’t help it. I just love a bride.’ Carl’s smile was feeble. ‘Besides, what I said can’t be that much of a shock – you know how I feel about Tony.’
That was true. He’d never hidden his feelings about her fiancé; nor had Tony made any secret of his dislike for Carl. The two men were polar personality opposites.
Annie shook her head. ‘I was going to get you to be my man of honour.’ She sniffed.
‘Really? Me? Your man of honour?’ Carl looked like he would like to retract his earlier statement.
Annie didn’t trust herself to speak and nodded instead.
‘Oh, sweetie, I would dearly love to be your man of honour, but not if I feel you’re making a mistake. I could tell by your face when I asked you if Tony had chosen his suit earlier what the answer was. You need to ask yourself why he’s dragging his heels.’
‘He’s not,’ Annie mumbled.
He was.
‘And you’re not exactly glowing with happiness, babe. Look at the state of your fingernails. And you’ve been stress-eating.’
‘The dress is not too tight.’ She clenched her hands into fists and wished she’d refrained from scoffing that Mars bar on the drive over.
‘You don’t even have a joint bank account.’
This was true. ‘Tony’s just protective of what’s his. It comes from growing up with three brothers and always having to share.’
‘Marriage is a partnership,’ Carl said softly. ‘I don’t think either of you is happy, and I should have stepped up and said something back when you told me about your kayaking plan. That was my window, and I missed it. I’ve let things go too far.’
They eyeballed one another, both recalling the conversation they’d had over a Thai meal a few weeks back.
‘You’ll never guess what Tony and I are doing tomorrow?’ Annie had scooped up a forkful of fluffy, savoury rice.
Carl had raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Do I want to know?’
Annie had put her fork down, leaned over the table and thumped him playfully. ‘Don’t be rude. We’re going kayaking.’
Carl had snorted. ‘Pardon?’
‘Don’t look so surprised! I can be outdoorsy from time to time, you know.’
Carl had laughed loudly.
‘It’s not funny. I’ve decided Tony and I need to find something we can do together, and I’ve always wanted to try kayaking s —’
‘I don’t remember you ever having expressed a desire to kayak before.’
She hadn’t, but Annie hadn’t been about to admit it was part of her plan to bring her and Tony closer together.
The idea had come to her on her lunch break from her hated office job.
She’d been sitting by the banks of the River Avon, which snaked through her home city of Christchurch’s central business district.
A young couple, tourists by the looks of them, had paddled past in a kayak, distracting her from her sandwich, and she’d watched them, entranced.
They’d been in the moment together, laughing and making memories.
She’d asked herself when she and Tony had last laughed like that or done anything worthy of keeping as a precious memory for a rainy day then immediately phoned him.
A plumber, he hadn’t been impressed to hear her voice because he’d had his free hand down a toilet when she rang.
In a thoroughly fed up-off voice, he’d informed her that his mother had drummed it into him and his brothers when they were growing up that the golden rule was always none for a wee and two for a poo.
So why was it that some kids felt the need to use a whole bloody roll of toilet paper?
he’d demanded, as though she held the answer to this great toilet-blocking mystery of life.
Instead of words of wisdom, she’d blurted, ‘Tony, let’s go kayaking this weekend.’
Their excursion down the Avon had been a disaster from the moment Tony, cocooned in the front, had decided he was in charge.
An argument over paddling left or right to turn the kayak had seen Annie nearly brain him with the oar.
They’d returned to the punting sheds twenty minutes early and hadn’t spoken to one another for the rest of the day.
Annie dug her stumpy nails into her palms as Carl softened his tone.
‘I thought you and Tony would be one of those couples who’d stay engaged until one day you’d both wake up and, well, break up. Seeing you here now in that gorgeous creation’ – he gestured at the dress – ‘it hit me. You’re serious about getting married, so I needed to tell you how I feel.’
‘I wish you hadn’t.’
‘Oh, come on, darling, even if you can get Tony to commit to a date, surely you don’t see yourself spending the rest of your days with Macho Man?’
‘Of course I do, otherwise I wouldn’t have got engaged to him.’ Annie’s bottom lip wobbled. ‘And he’s not macho – he’s just a man’s man.’
Carl’s expression grew petulant. ‘Well, I owe it to Roz not to let you make a monumental mistake. Honestly, Annie, sometimes I’m not even sure you like him, let alone love him.’
Annie’s late sister’s name was the red rag to the bull.
She missed her sister, and she should be here with her now.
It was five years since Roz had passed and she’d found herself catapulted from her role as the baby of the family – albeit only by a year and a half – to the strong one whom her parents leaned on when they couldn’t lean on one another anymore.
Carl had been her rock, but he wasn’t enough.
She wanted to find someone who would look after her for a change.
Tony had fitted the bill, but lately he hadn’t been doing a very good job of it.
She’d begun to wonder if he wanted a way out of their relationship but didn’t know how.
But this conversation was about Tony not Roz.
‘Don’t you bring her into this! It’s not as though she made sterling life choices, is it?
’ As her voice rose, her huffing and puffing strained the seams of the dress.
‘Besides, look at the state of your relationship,’ she said, a mental picture of the buff but rather temperamental David springing to mind. ‘Have you two patched things up yet?’
Carl flapped his hand dismissively. ‘Nope. I don’t want him back. Honestly, the man is so self-absorbed.’
‘So then you’re hardly in a position to be advising me on marriage!’
Hurt flickered over Carl’s face.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Annie regretted them. They were a low blow. ‘I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.’
Carl, however, was a world-class sulker, and he angled his chin up and away from her.
Haughty Amanda’s head stopped swinging back and forth as though she was watching a heated tennis match, and she focused on Annie once more.
‘Ahem, might I offer madam some help getting out of the dress?’
‘No, thank you – I’ll manage.’ Annie flounced back into the dressing room thinking horrid thoughts about Haughty Amanda.
When she emerged, dressed in her T-shirt and jeans, Carl was gone.