Chapter 20
‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Good morning.’
Sampath blinked, taken aback. Had he got his time differences wrong. ‘You sound very chirpy. What time is it?’
‘Oh, it’s ridiculous o’clock, but I’m in work early so that I can knock off at three today. I have had so much caffeine. What’s up?’
He told her what had happened. It took some time. ‘I don’t know what to do, Ash. Do I tell her?’
Ashley gave a low whistle. ‘Oh, ouch. This is awkward.’
‘I have to tell her.’
‘Do you?’ said Ashley. ‘Really?’
‘Oh, come on. She can’t marry this guy. He’s cheating on her. I mean, if I found out my friend’s fiancé was cheating on her, I’d tell her.’
‘Right, right,’ said Ashley. ‘But she’s not your friend, is she? She’s your client. So is he.’
This stymied him. ‘But … no. I can’t do that. She’s—’
Ashley sighed. ‘Sampath, do we interfere in client relationships?’
‘No. But—’
‘You can’t tell them what to do with their relationship. You’re just the wedding planner. You’re there to help them with arrangements.’
He ran a hand over his face, tiredly. ‘You know we’re more than that. How many times have you talked a nervous bride or groom down the night before the wedding?’
‘That’s different. That’s a normal part of the process,’ Ashley countered. ‘We’ve all seen a perfectly lovely woman marry a man who is a shithead, knowing full well that he’s a shithead, because she loves him anyway.’
True. That did happen. They were very careful not to judge.
But this still felt different. Kalpana deserved better.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Even without the cheating, she could do so much better. I’ve kept quiet about so much.
He treats her like some sort of idiot. He doesn’t listen to her, he belittles her work in snide little ways, he just abandoned her while they were on holiday.
And now he’s cheating on her? She doesn’t deserve that. ’
‘Leaving aside the cheating for a second, he’s treating her like that and she’s putting up with it. There must be something in him that makes it worth it.’
He closed his eyes. He had been thinking about this in the middle of the night too.
‘Ugh. It’s a self-esteem thing. Her parents have done similar to her all her life – made her feel like she was nothing – and she doesn’t see it for the bullying that it is.
She shouldn’t be putting up with some guy who thinks her wonderful books are trash.
He hasn’t even read any of them, he’s just assumed.
She should be with someone who sees her for who she really is.
Who thinks the sun rises and sets because of her. ’ Someone like me.
‘Woah,’ said Ashley. ‘Is this a fanboy thing? Do you feel so strongly because you love her books?’
He wanted to shout, ‘No! It’s because I love her!’, but that would be career suicide, so he didn’t. He couldn’t be the wedding planner who fell for the bride. It was just plain wrong. But so was letting her marry Marcus now that he knew the guy was cheating on her.
Ashley was still waiting for his answer.
He couldn’t let her find out how he felt about Kalpana.
If this wedding failed to happen and he’d told Ashley about his feelings, things would not go well for him.
So he said, ‘It’s not just because I love her books.
I’m not an author stalker. I genuinely think she’s a really nice person and he’s …
a bit of a high-handed shit. He’s very rich, that’s clear.
He’s also very self-centred and thoughtless. And a shitweasel.’
Ashley said, ‘You’re right. He does sound like a bit of a shitweasel. But still … it’s not our place to interfere. If Marcus—’ In the background, he heard someone ask, ‘Is that Sampath?’
Ashley muttered, ‘Shit’ in an undertone, then said, louder, ‘Yes, Grant, it is.’
Uh-oh. He couldn’t let Grant know about any of the problems with the wedding.
His boss came on the line. ‘How’s it going? Have you found a theme that Marcus likes yet?’
‘I’ve shown him several options,’ said Sampath, carefully. ‘He’s suddenly less interested in the wedding preparations. He’s a bit distracted by … promotional opportunities. For his book.’
‘Well, understandable, I suppose. But get him back to focusing on the important things. If we can nail down details, tell him I’m sure we can work with his PR people to get an exclusive for one of the magazines. Maybe even …’ His voice took on a breathless quality. ‘… Wedding Fayre Magazine.’
‘Um. Right. Yes. Well, I’ve found some really nice suppliers we could use for future packages.
The costings aren’t too bad – so we could pitch it to the mid-tier, perhaps.
I’m putting together the reports for that,’ Sampath said, aware that he was babbling a little in his efforts to stop Grant from asking more about Marcus and Kalpana.
‘All sounds excellent. Once we have lots of photos of Marcus Lloyd-Howell’s wedding, I’m sure we’ll be able to sell those packages without any problems at all!’
Sampath took a deep breath. ‘What if … what if the Lloyd-Howell wedding doesn’t happen?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Grant’s voice sharpened. ‘What’s happened?’
How much should he tell Grant? He already knew what his boss would say about the cheating: Stay out of it. Just make sure the wedding goes ahead. He was mindful of what Ashley had said earlier about the risk to his job if this wedding fell through.
If he didn’t tell Grant anything, he could buy himself some more thinking time.
On the other hand, if everything went wrong, he should at least lay some groundwork so that it didn’t look like he’d not even noticed the problems until it was too late.
‘Like I said, Marcus seems to be cooling off to the idea of the wedding. Not just this particular configuration of it. The idea of having a wedding at all.’
‘That won’t do. We need this wedding to come off. It’s a big project. And a great showcase to expand our reach,’ Grant said. ‘You have to do whatever it takes to keep things on track.’
‘What can I do if they decide not to get married? Their relationship is none of our business.’
‘Ordinarily, yes. But not in this case. They must get married. You’re good with people. Talk to them. Bring them back together.’
Ugh. No. Self-preservation made Sampath say, ‘Okay. I’ll try. But, as I say, there might not be much that I can do. But we’ve got a lot of research and contacts out of it anyway.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Can you put Ashley back on the line, please?’
He spoke to Ashley a little longer, about other things, but it was hard to keep focused, because he couldn’t talk about the one thing that was burning a hole in his brain.
Finally, Ashley said, ‘What time is it over there?’
‘Um. Mid-afternoon.’
‘You sound tired and distracted, my love.’
‘Yeah, didn’t sleep much last night.’
‘Siesta!’
‘That’s not a bad idea.’
He said goodbye to her and hung up. Would a nap make things any clearer? He hadn’t slept much the night before. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw either Marcus kissing that Nirmala woman … or Kalpana.
How could he not tell her? Marcus clearly didn’t love her. If she knew that he was cheating on her … If she knew, she’d break up with him. Wouldn’t she?
Ashley’s comment about how Kalpana had put up with the things Marcus said and did up to now bothered him.
Why did she? Did she genuinely not see the negativity in the way he talked about her work?
Whenever she talked about him, she mentioned her family.
Was she with him because it gained her family’s approval? That was so sad.
He rubbed his eyes. This line of thought was ridiculous.
Even if he told Kalpana and she broke up with Marcus, he couldn’t tell her how he felt.
He was just the wedding planner. She liked him, she trusted him.
He was good at his job, so all his brides trusted him.
They considered him to be a friend, a confidante.
If they, or the groom, flirted with him, he knew not to flirt back.
Logic told him that no matter how much he wanted to tell Kalpana how he felt, he couldn’t. It was wrong. Besides, his boss would fire him the minute he found out.
With a groan, he stood up. But he had to tell her. Job or no job, it was the right thing to do. He stretched. First, he would have a nap. Then he would sit down and work out what to say.
***
When Marcus returned, Kalpana was ready to confront him, but the first thing he said was, ‘So, how did the walk-through of the wedding venue go?’
This threw her. ‘What?’
‘You checked this place out as a wedding venue yesterday?’ Marcus said. ‘You can’t have forgotten already, babe, come on.’
Was it only yesterday? So much had happened. For a second her mind was swamped with an image of Sampath, shirtless, looking at her over his shoulder. She gave the smallest shake of her head.
‘The venue,’ she said, buying herself time. ‘Yes. The hall is great. There’s a garden and you can spill out onto the beach from there. I thought it was lovely.’
‘Bit cliché, though, right?’ said Marcus. ‘Like, everyone who gets married in Sri Lanka has that sort of wedding. They’ve probably got balloon arches and hiring an elephant on offer too.’
They had. ‘But we don’t need to do those things. We can just use the hall and the lovely garden with a marquee and access to the beach—’ Why was she talking about this? She didn’t want a wedding at all!
He pulled open the packet he had bought and extracted the new charger.
‘No, I think the vibe in Colombo suits us better,’ he said, too focused on plugging in his phone to look at her.
‘If Sampath can get those pavement bookstore guys to set up a little shop inside the hall, we can have a book-themed wedding at that place we saw. Something mews.’
‘Park Street Mews?’
‘That’s it. That looked much more fun and … quirky. Memorable.’
‘But I didn’t like that place,’ she said. ‘I felt it was … cool to the point of being cold. It wasn’t me.’
He stood up and put his hands on his hips. ‘What? You said the street was really colourful and fun.’