Chapter 3
LYRA
The Secret Weapon at the Wedding Fayre
‘Thanks again for this, Mandy, I owe you one,’ I tell my friend as I slip into the passenger seat of her Corsa.
She lowers her shades and looks over me as if she’s a paramedic assessing me before we move off in her emergency response vehicle. I wait for her comment but she only hands me a drive-thru cup of coffee.
‘White americano, oat milk,’ she says. ‘You don’t look too bad for someone who ditched her car because she drank too many shots of tequila last night.’
I inhale the scent of the coffee, then take a sip, sighing contentedly. ‘I need this, but only because I’m tired, and embarrassed, not hungover. I didn’t drink enough to be hungover, only enough to make this morning a pain in the arse.’
Mandy zooms away from my very modest, pebble-dashed mining-village bungalow. It ought to be someone’s retirement home but happens to be my first home living away from my parents since my student accommodation at university.
She accelerates so hard, both her car and me are shouting at her as I’m forced back into my seat, my coffee spilling out of the small hole in the lid. She has one speed and it’s as fast as her old banger will allow.
‘Unload. Vent. Tell me all about it,’ she says, reaching for her own coffee cup from the centre console as we reach the carriageway between Beamish and Chester-le-Street.
‘You rarely drink, despite my unrelenting peer pressure. Even when you do, it’s a sociable glass of wine with dinner, so last night must’ve been bad.
’ She sets her coffee back down in the holster.
‘It was Livy, wasn’t it? No offence, Lyra, but your sister can act like a dick. ’
‘Hey, she’s my sister. You can’t call her a dick.’
‘I didn’t say she is a dick, I said she can act like a dick.’
I roll my eyes but she’s right.
‘I can categorically say…’ She signals to overtake and flies past a white van, needlessly, since there’s no real traffic on the road at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning and the van is travelling at the speed limit.
‘That your sister’s engagement party was one of the worst experiences of my last year. ’
I chuckle. ‘It was nice.’ It was lavish, so fancy it could have been a wedding, both our parents and Joshua’s parents jointly stumping up to mark the occasion.
‘I’ll admit, the free bar and swanky buffet were great, but the snide remarks and passive-aggressiveness of your sister and her mates who all have washing poles shoved up their?—’
‘Okay, okay, thank you, I get it.’ I take a mouthful of coffee and shrug. ‘Yes, they probably drove me to a shot or two. But I also got trapped in a lift, with a naked butler, who was so very, very, very wrong for me, yet totally in the right place at the right time.’
‘Whoa, now I’m listening.’
I cringe. ‘I ended the night snogging his face off, for my sister and all her friends to witness my ultimate demise.’
‘Demise? This sounds bloody brilliant!’ Mandy is far too animated given the early start and especially given…
‘He’s like a prostitute, Mandy! What was I thinking?’
She laughs loudly, her head pressing back into the seat, her eyes closed.
‘Eyes on the road, Mandy!’
‘Sorry. It’s just…’ She chuckles. ‘This is fantastic. You’ve finally moved on from that idiot boy next door that you were only dating for your parents’ approval and it’s with a naked butler.
Who, by definition, must be insanely hot, and may or may not have a lot of sex but if he does, contrary to your thoughts, my view is, his training must make him a bloody excellent shag. ’
Coffee sprays from my mouth as I laugh. ‘I wouldn’t know. Thankfully, I stopped myself before getting that far.’
‘Why, didn’t you have any cash on you?’
‘It’s not funny, Mandy!’
‘Then stop laughing, Lyra!’
I palm my face. ‘He was also massively rude and dismissive. Completely… cantankerous. He couldn’t bolt from me fast enough.’
‘Before or after you called him a prostitute?’
‘You’re joking but I actually did.’
‘No!’
‘Yes.’ I wince, finding solace in my hot caffeine. ‘Oh God, I just remembered, his car was pink. And had longer eyelashes than an elephant. How humiliating for us both. At least I gave my sister something new to talk about and, thankfully, I’m unlikely to ever see him again.’
We pull off the main road and onto the long driveway that leads across the River Wear and up a steep climb to Earl’s Castle, the stunning fourteenth-century building where Mandy and I are selling our worth on stands at a wedding fayre for the full day.
After which, I’m going to have to beg Mandy to take me to Newcastle to collect my car, which is probably clamped in Deansgate car park by now.
The thought thrusts me back to that kiss. I trace my lips where the butler’s were last night. Never have I ever been kissed like that before. It felt closer to fourth base than when I’ve actually got to fourth base with anyone.
‘Did I mention he looked like Guy Walker from The Hand Me Downs, who I crushed on so bad for my entire late teens and early twenties?’
‘The hooker?’
I bite my lip to fend off my smirk as I nod.
‘Hench, well-versed in the bedroom and a rock star look-a-like. I’m turning us around and going to the nearest cash point to buy your foo-foo a treat!’
By the time we pull into the staff car park of the estate grounds, we’re both in fits of giggles.
Mandy is five years older than me. She’s vivacious and wild in the best of ways.
More liberated and comfortable in her own skin than crazy or impulsive.
She says what she thinks and does what she wants, though not with a complete disregard for people’s feelings.
She’s kind and fun, outspoken but not rude. She’s basically an aspirational human.
Steven, one of the hotel’s porters, who has blond-tipped, nineties-boyband-style spiked hair, which doesn’t at all match the Regency-era pantaloons he’s adorning – because the staff at Earl’s Castle all wear period costume – taps on the driver’s side window.
We take him up on his offer to help us inside with our stuff, which is a lot.
Together, we lug banners, cameras and sample wedding albums from the boot and back seats of the car.
Technically, Mandy is my boss. When I dropped out of uni seven years ago, I had no idea what I was going to do. My plans to study documentary photography were kiboshed That Night and the following months became a blur of hospital visits and rehabilitation for my dad.
But once the appointments calmed down, we, as a family, accepted our new normal.
Mum and Livy went back to work and Dad accepted that he had disabilities that would forever change life as it had been.
I was lost, stagnant, inexperienced in anything other than medical care and that was the very last thing I wanted to go back to.
So when Cami mentioned that she had a friend who was running her own business as a wedding photographer and she needed some support on weekends, I thought, why not? I get to take pictures for a living and I have flexibility to work around Dad’s care.
Mandy and I exchange pleasantries with a few of the other preferred suppliers to Earl’s Castle: tailors, seamstresses, decorators, crafters, cake bakers, musicians, magicians, videographers and photographers.
Then we set up our stand for the fayre in my favourite room in the castle to photograph weddings.
It’s an enormous, three-hundred-guest-capacity room, with vastly high ceilings, intricately plastered walls, and six dazzlingly elaborate crystal chandeliers.
Ornately decorated mirrors allow light from the expansive windows to bounce around the pristinely white space.
The only colour in the room comes from luxurious midnight-blue drapes that outline the alcoves in which the windows sit.
I love it because it’s majestic, charming and bright, yet its simplistic colour allows couples to add personal touches for their celebration. It also gives me freedom to explore stunning lighting, to use different lenses, and make the couples’ colour schemes really pop.
The other rooms in the castle are medieval and fun, creepy even, perfect for the murder-mystery nights and medieval banquets held here but really tricky to photograph. Weddings should be bright, shouldn’t they? A celebration of love, of new life, of?—
‘My favourite photographers! Are you ready for a day of selling?’
That’s Pearl, one of the family management team who run the hotel on behalf of the owners – whose ownership dates right back to the seventeenth century. Pretty cool, if you’re into the history of peerages. I am not. But I do like a romantic venue and I adore Pearl.
She’s exactly the kind of person her name suggests – a precious gem.
She and her husband Geoff have been managing the castle for nearly thirty years, as Pearl’s parents had done before them.
And since they reached the twenty-ninth anniversary of their twenty-first birthdays (their words), their kids have been preparing to take over their management business, too.
‘Absolutely,’ I say.
‘With bells on,’ Mandy adds.
Geoff appears at Pearl’s side, wearing his staple corduroy trousers and pale checked shirt, clean shaven, grey-white hair neatly combed. ‘Thank you for being here for another wedding fayre,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately, we’re sharing some disappointing news today.’
His tone makes me look to Mandy, knowing she won’t know any more than I do but wanting some kind of… reassurance? This place is our constant. One of our main sources of income. I see my trepidation reflected.
‘The owners of Earl’s Castle are considering options for the future management of the hotel. And…’ Geoff smiles sadly at his wife. ‘That includes the potential for a large hotel management chain to replace our family here.’
Poor Pearl and Geoff. Poor Mandy and me.