Chapter Four
‘First-Snowfall-Blue’
20 th December
“I can hardly hear you!” Granny Jean snapped down the phone at me.
I moved it to the other ear and walked a little way along the clifftop car park where I was waiting for Archie.
“Is that better?” I asked, suspecting it probably wouldn’t be. “The signal here isn’t great.”
“I can just about hear you,” she sighed resignedly. “Before the signal goes again, hurry up and tell me what’s been going on.”
“Well, yesterday Lou and I went to the printers to collect the menus, place settings and welcome sign for the venue. She’s getting married at Porthglen Manor, this beautiful old house overlooking the sea.”
“Sounds expensive,” Granny Jean grumbled.
“I don’t know how much it cost,” I said. “But she’s very excited about it.”
“It’s just not very Lou, is it?” She retorted. “I always picture her at a yoga retreat.”
“Well, she does do yoga,” I said. “Just not for her wedding day.”
“Hmph,” Granny Jean said. “What else? Does she have the decorations sorted yet? When I spoke to her on the phone at the weekend, she said she hadn’t yet.”
“Archie and I are on the way to collect them now,” I said. “I’m just waiting for him to arrive in that rusty old car of his.”
“Archie? Who is that?”
“Ross’ nephew,” I explained for what felt like the hundredth time. She refused to remember the names of people she disliked as a sort of protest to their existence. Archie was no exception. “You’ve met him a few times.”
“Yes, I remember the one,” she said snidely. “He’s the best man?”
“That’s right,” I said. “He’s… not exactly who I would want to organise a wedding with, but he’s not too bad.”
“He sounds like an imbecile from all I’ve heard about him,” Granny Jean said. “Don’t let him screw things up.”
“I won’t,” I assured her. “I’m keeping a keen eye on all of it.”
“Good.”
The sound of a spluttering exhaust pipe interrupted our conversation, and seconds later Archie’s car came around the corner.
“I can hear his car,” Granny Jean said. “Even with the bad signal. How detestable.”
“Very,” I agreed. “But I can’t drive, so I’m at his mercy. I would have had to try to catch the bi-weekly bus to pick up the decorations otherwise.”
“Well, don’t let him feel like he’s doing you a favour. He agreed to take on this responsibility just as much as you did.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, a little bolstered by that thought. “Speak to you soon, Granny. Love you.”
“Yes. Bye.”
That was how she always ended our calls. I didn’t dare hope for anything different after all these years, but it still stung a little not to hear her say it back.
“Get in, Imogen,” Archie said from the car window. “Let’s get this over with.”
As I slumped into the passenger seat and hastily pulled on my seatbelt, he roared away, the thumping sound of the engine the only break in our silence.
Since our tense conversation about the stag and hen dos – which had ended with us agreeing to stick to our own respective parties and not get involved in the other to avoid a fight – we’d regressed a little into bickering.
And silence was better than bickering, so we both let it stay.
“Where is the decoration shop?” I asked after a few minutes.
“Foweybridge,” he said. “It’s one of those party shops – Halloween costumes, balloons, hire a bouncy castle, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds very upmarket,” I said sardonically.
He scoffed. “Don’t be a snob. Ross is renovating a house and paying for all of us to stay in those lovely lodges. He doesn’t need to blow the budget on streamers and centrepieces.”
I was surprised by his genuine defensiveness. “You’re right,” I said. “Nobody remembers the decorations at a wedding anyway.”
His car sputtered slightly as we went over a reflective cat’s eye on the road.
I sighed.
“Why are you driving around in an old rust bucket like this?” I asked.
“It gets me where I need to go,” he said. “I would think you’d want to be careful what you say about my car, seeing as you can’t drive and I’m doing you a favour.”
“You’re right,” I said through gritted teeth. “I just also don’t want to die in a car crash because your ancient car’s brakes fail.”
He chuckled derisively. “It passed it’s MOT with flying colours, thank you. Maybe don’t judge it on its appearance. It’s perfect for me and my job – tree surgeon, remember?” I nodded with an eye roll. “The roof fits my ladders, the boot fits all my equipment. Plus, it’s cheap on petrol. Why upgrade if you don’t have to?”
“Because it’s always better to have the newest item that you can afford,” I said, wondering why I was having to spell out the obvious. “You could have a car where you don’t need to wind down the windows by hand.”
To demonstrate my point, I struggled to rotate the handle on my door, inching the window down squeakily.
“Yeah, and I could have heated seats, and a modern navigation system and a car that wipes my backside for me too. I don’t need any of it. I’m happy with this.”
I didn’t challenge him further, winding the window back up and holding onto the underside of my seat to give me some sense of safety as the rickety car chugged along the country lanes.
I couldn’t understand his perspective, but equally, he couldn’t understand mine.
Perhaps throughout this wedding planning process we’d just have to accept that about each other. Perhaps it would be more peaceful that way.
Or perhaps not.
The party shop was on farmland on a turning just before Foweybridge town centre. We pulled into the car park which was in essence just a field that someone had mowed and scattered gravel over.
“More mud,” I complained as I stepped out. I’d managed to find some mud-compatible boots in a cute boutique in Porthglen the day before after hours of looking for something that wasn’t ugly. You wouldn’t catch me dead in lime green wellies. These were patent leather with neat laces up the front and a sturdy but flattering heel at the back. They had cost me more than my whole outfit combined, but at least I would make it through the sludge. I slammed the car door and added, “Is there anywhere in this town that isn’t muddy?”
Archie shrugged.
“The beach is mostly sand,” he answered dryly.
I rolled my eyes at him.
I was missing London already and not yet feeling in the festive spirit. I was longing for spiced hot chocolate from my favourite Camden coffee shop, a walk through the market with its pretty lights and a shopping spree on Oxford Street with my friends. That was usually what the run up to Christmas looked like for me.
Seeming to sense my issue, Archie added, “You’ll get used to it. The benefits far outweigh a bit of mud.”
“Benefits?” I questioned.
“Feel the air. It’s so clean. You’ll really start to notice that when you go back to London. I never feel like I can breathe in cities.”
“You’ve been to London?” I asked, realising immediately how rude I sounded.
He closed his car door with a disbelieving huff.
“I might be from the countryside, but I don’t live in a cave. Yes, I’ve been to London, Imogen. In fact, I lived there for three years while I apprenticed.”
The word ‘sorry’ wouldn’t quite come to my tongue. Instead, I opted to ask, “And you didn’t like it?”
We walked towards the entrance of the shop.
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t live there again. I like the quiet and the sea air.”
My eyes twitched in surprise. Perhaps there was more to this this lad than I thought.
The shop was a higgledy-piggledy mess, with boxes of balloons, candles and streamers dotted around seemingly randomly.
An elderly lady sat behind the wooden till, reading a cookery magazine over the top of half moon glasses which were perched on her nose. A ginger cat was curled up on her lap, sleeping softly as she petted it. With each stroke a plume of fur dropped to the floor.
“Excuse me?” I said. “We’re here to pick up an order.”
She regarded us from over the top of her glasses as if we were being rude.
“Name?” She asked.
“Lou and Ross.”
“Surnames?” She sighed.
I bristled. In this little raggedy shop in the middle of nowhere, how many orders did she have with those names? More than likely, just one.
“Lou Ashton and Ross Balmore,” I answered with thinly veiled irritation.
Archie stood with his arms crossed and an amused expression on his face.
The elderly lady gave a groan, pushed the cat off her lap and fetched a leatherbound notebook from behind the till. She licked her thumb and looked through it.
“Ah, yes. Here. My daughter organised the order,” she said. “It’s all arrived and in the back, but there are a few changes.”
“Changes?”
“Colour changes, that sort of thing,” she shrugged.
“The… the colours are pretty important,” I said. “They’re having a Winter Wonderland theme up at the manor house. What was the colour change?”
She groaned. “I’ll look. Just wait, okay?”
She shuffled off through a door at the back of the shop.
“Keep it together, please,” Archie said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you’re a little highly strung at the best of times,” he said. “I don’t want you to blow your lid at that poor old lady.”
“If they’ve changed Lou’s snowy blue theme to bright orange, you can count on me blowing my lid,” I said. “These things matter.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure it will be fine.”
“How infuriatingly non-confrontational of you,” I said. “We’re not going to accept the order if it’s not what they paid for.”
He shook his head and walked away, going to inspect the prank section of the shop.
The lady’s daughter came out with a sheet of paper in her hand.
“This is from the supplier,” she explained. “Here’s what they sent: 100 ice blue chair bows, 25 candlestick centrepieces with white candles, 20 large white and blue tinsel boughs, 300 balloons in ice blue, first-snowfall-blue and silver, 100 streamers in white, 10 cans of canned snow for the windows, 25 bags of snowflake glitter for the tables, 25 faux pine frost-effect wreaths and ah – here’s the change – you ordered 100 first-snowfall-blue guest gift bags and the supplier swapped them for brilliant white in the same design as they didn’t have 100 in stock. They are an extra ￡0.25 each, so a good comparative product.”
I could see Archie watching us from behind a rack of whoopie cushions. He mouthed, ‘Behave!’. Somehow that riled me even more.
“Brilliant white isn’t the same as first-snowfall-blue,” I protested.
“No, but it’s very similar.”
“One has the word ‘blue’ in it. The other is white. How are they same?”
“Well, first-snowfall-blue is a sort of… off-white,” the woman said. “I can send that part of the order back, if you prefer?”
She was as ready for this argument as I was.
I had dealt with enough small business owners to know when I was being strong-armed. She had a small profit margin, she needed our business, but that didn’t mean Lou and Ross should pay extra for the wrong item.
“We’ll take the white bags,” I said. “But we’re not paying an extra ￡0.25 per bag for your mistake. ￡0.25 per bag for 100 bags is ￡25, that’s hardly loose change.”
“Well, it was the supplier’s mistake,” she explained frostily. “You are welcome to ring them and speak to their customer service.”
“No, I think we’ll settle this between us,” I said, crossing my arms. “Because the order was through you . If your supplier didn’t have enough stock, that’s not our fault. You shouldn’t place the order if you don’t know if it can be fulfilled.”
Her expression, which had been a stoic mask the entire conversation, fell slightly at my insistence.
“Okay,” she nodded reluctantly. “No extra charge.”
“And throw in these for free to compensate us for the mistake,” Archie said, appearing with an armful of whoopie cushions, fart sprays and pink tutus. The lady looked between me and him with a grimace. “For the stag do,” he explained.
I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t helping to make my point.
“That is…” The lady began to protest.
“If you don’t want to fairly compensate us, I’ll have to think again before I tell my roster of loyal customers about how helpful Sandy’s Party Shop was. A. B. Tree Surgery , you may have heard of me?” He said, with a more professional air than I’d ever seen from him before.
She baulked. “Fine. I’ll throw those in too. Please sign here to accept the order.”
Archie winked at me, and I resisted the urge to smile back.
Surprisingly, he’d been a great help.
Despite the whoopie cushions.