Page 19 of The Wedding Cake
“And what does that realistically have to do with Piper? It’s like I said earlier, I don’t mean to be cruel or to pigeonhole any of these influencers, but they tend to favour the same look, certainly in Marbs and PB. I should know, I’ve designed and baked wedding cakes for dozens of them.” Freya paused, narrowing her eyes at her assistant. “Hang on a minute. Why would you even be inside the hotel? Hannah, I don’t like the sound of this. You work in the bridal industry, not some amateur Scooby Doo detective agency.”
But Hannah didn’t seem at all perturbed by the grilling. “Mam had a few re-bookings to sort out before she could get away and I needed a pee,’ she explained. Her mother had recently changed jobs, taking charge of room service at a brand new, flash and trendy hotel, mostly frequented by the influencer elite. “I couldn’t wait in the car any longer so I went to use the loo inside, but the snooty receptionist was looking. So I took the lift to the top floor when her back was turned. Just to have a nose around and see if there was anyone famous lurking. Plus Mam said there are Chanel soap dispensers at all the sinks in the loos up there.”
Of course!Double Tap Towers.Piper would be staying there (with a rather reluctant Tim trailing along behind her, Freya should imagine). It was the Costa del Sol’s first ‘social media hotel’, its name a play on the way you ‘like’ something on Instagram. The cogs in Freya’s brain began to turn, but she stopped them: even if Piper was a guest at DTT, as it was already known by the locals, it didn’t mean she was the woman Hannah had seen with the minted stepson.
As if reading her mind, and determined to prove her version of events, Hannah began to rummage around in the satchel that was permanently welded to her being when she was outdoors. She looked like a postwoman about to deliver some seriously bad news. Patience in tatters, Freya gulped desperately at her drink. This wouldn’t do. She pushed it resolutely to one side and began to attack the bowl of peanuts instead. Finally, Hannah pulled out a brown envelope.
“Geez, Hannah. No… I can’t sit here and pry like some kind of spy, rifling through dodgy photographs. That’s taking sneakiness to a whole new level. I’m done with the dark side for one week!”
“Please take a little peek.” Hannah wouldn’t take no for an answer and now she’d taken to nudging things across the table, too. “We have a duty to tell Tim the truth.”
Freya made a song and dance of looking over both shoulders – then inevitably gave in. She pulled a succession of images from the envelope and let out a gasp, her eyes growing wider by the microsecond. In her heart of hearts, she knew this was actually Piper. This woman emanated the same vibe of entitlement and all things diva that Piper had let off over the airwaves. She wasn’t about to tell Hannah that, though. Her assistant needed no further encouragement. Some of these snaps were X-rated, to say the least; a man and a woman half-naked in the hotel corridor, clearly unable to wait until they’d reached the door of their room, let alone the bed; a man and a woman finding new ways to use the dressing table; a man and a woman in some eye-opening balancing acts on the couch, and a man and a woman intimately entwined in the shower. It was enough to put Freya off staying in a hotel ever again. Granted, the place was big on videos and photography, but this gave the phrase ‘the nature of the beast’ a whole new meaning.
“Get these destroyed immediately. How did you even capture them?” Freya yelped, making the ears of a nearby duo of pampered poodles prick up. They were tethered to the legs of a table in front of them, and now in danger of tipping its contents over. “Never in my wildest nightmares did I think you were going to show me anything so graphic! I’m speechless.” She pushed the envelope so far across the table it landed in Hannah’s lap.
“Please don’t think badly of me, Freya. It wasn’t me who took the photos, it was my mam.” Freya couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Hannah’s mother had donewhat? “I briefed her on my suspicions yesterday and she jumped straight on the fact-finding mission. It came in rather handy that she’s room service manager, and well, Noah Barrington did keep calling; strawberries and a chocolate fountain, champagne buckets and oysters. All the aphrodisiacs. Mam’s been inundated with errands on the top floor,” Hannah paused for a breath. “She soon worked out what was going on… well, Noah and hisladymade that all too obvious for her with their exhibitionist carry-on while she delivered their food. They even had the door off the catch! But Mam took advantage of their theatrics and supplied me with as much evidence of Piper’s betrayal as she could.”
“I’ll say. And blimey, your mother moves other-worldly fast. I can’t understand how any of this was even possible, though. She must have had a hidden camera on her. There’s no way she could’ve captured all that footage from anything already set up in the bedroom, without its occupants knowing.”
“We’re big on justice on the female side of our family,” Hannah muttered. “And yeah, Mam’s always been a bit of a ninja. She’s a whizz with modern tech, that’s why she wanted the job in such a tech-savvy hotel. She’d give all of today’s influencers a run for their money with the gadgets. She’s amazing at hide and seek, too.”
Freya downed the rest of her drink in a bid to get over the variety of photographic acts she had unwittingly digested. “I’ll admit it’s almost certainly Piper.” Freya thought back to the scantily-clad bride-to-be she’d chatted with on yesterday’s video call on the yacht, comparing what she’d seen of her physique with the – bleugh! – vivid images Hannah had now stowed away in her bag. “But we can’t get involved. Even if we did have concrete proof. It’s out of the question. We have an obligation to operate with complete discretion for our clients. I never want to see these pictures or anything similar to them again. You could get yourself in serious trouble snooping like that. And as for your mother, you hardly need me to tell you she could lose her job.”
“But we can’t let him marry that tart!” Hannah’s eyes were wild and pleading. “This goes above and beyond anybody’s career, surely? There must be something we can do. We must warn Tim. The man’s entire life and future happiness is at stake. We can’t fence-sit on this.”
“Fence-sitting is our only option. All those pictures show us is the profile of a woman who looks like Piper, but truthfully, it could be any number of females – locals or tourists alike. It could even be the guy’s girlfriend. It’s not our job to dig. If Piper is playing around, then Tim will soon work that out for himself.”
“It’s not as simple as that.” Hannah started to protest. “The thing is, I’m just not sure that I can stop myself from taking further action. You don’t understand. It’s not in my nature—”
“There will be no further words on this subject.” Freya finished her drink and banged her glass a little too loudly on the table, setting the nearby poodles off once more. “I know you and your mother mean well but we’re professionals at FOM.” She felt like the biggest hypocrite, voicing such a flimsy claim aloud. “We can’t afford to get ourselves in hot water so we are going to pretend we never had this conversation.” Another theme that seemed to be repeating itself this week. “I’m going to walk out of the square right now, take myself home, purge myself of everything we’ve discussed tonight with a shower, and sleep. I suggest you do the same. When we see each other again at work tomorrow, we’ll start with a clean slate.”
Freya stood up, and a reluctant Hannah nodded her agreement as she stared into her drink. She looked defeated. Where had the girl’s stubborn protest of a moment ago come from? Freya hadn’t known Hannah had it in her. Freya was her boss, for goodness sake – Hannah knew that so well, she often threw the fact into their conversational mix. Admittedly, at the beginning of the conversation, Freya had been petrified of losing her assistant for good after her own shambolic behaviour. But the simple truth was that Hannah and her mother were playing with fire. Whether Aaron Barrington’s stepson had encouraged a little PR leakage about his current conquest or not, the Barringtons were incredibly wealthy and well-connected. It didn’t pay to cross them. And it certainly wouldn’t pay for Hannah’s mum to go meddling. Quite literally. She’d soon find herself without a salary.
Freya couldn’t deal with this for a moment longer. She ignored the lift of her heart that told her Tim could soon be a free man (her very own man) ...ifHannah’s discovery was true,ifPiper confessed to being unfaithful,ifTim decided to call off the wedding, andifhe was even interested in trusting another woman again. That was a heck of a lot ofifs.
Freya had bookedthe hairdressers long before the paragliding offer had come about, she reminded herself. This trip to the salon the day before their meeting was categorically not part of a plan to beautify herself. How could it be when she’d soon have her curls flattened with a helmet? Tim could take her as she was. Grr. Innuendos had crept into her mind chatter as well now.
“Qué vamos a hacer, guapa?”her hairdresser asked her. Freya had always been determined not to be a typical expat, so she took her business to one of the cheaper Spanish salons in the east end of Marbella. They cut her hair well for a competitive price – a bonus in these parts – and they always threw in a relaxing Indian head massage at the end of the hair wash, which made up for the pain inflicted by the hairdresser’s sink. She was desperate for it today.
“Solo un corte, por fa, Pepa,” Freya replied to her customary stylist.
She was lucky enough not to have a single grey hair yet so didn’t see the point in foils, caps and God knew what else being plonked upon her head. A simple cut would do.
Her salon didn’t go in for serving refreshments but, like most hairdressers, they had magazines by the bucket load. Freya wasn’t normally fussed on the celebrity gossip front, but she carefully picked up the copy of¡Hola!to her right, mindful that Pepa would go bonkers if she jogged her while she was cutting Freya’s hair.
Once the glossy magazine was safely in Freya’s lap, she flicked carefully through the pages, skim-reading through adverts for perfume and features on palatial homes.Blah-blah-blah. It was always the same old fodder and she didn’t know why she bothered, but she flipped through the pages to the society bit at the end on a whim. Wouldn’t it be funny if she saw Lars in his best bib and tucker at some fancy black tie event before he’d had to go back to the cold snowy north and into hiding?
But Freya didn’t spot the Scandinavian swindler. She spotted somebody else instead…
Noah Barrington.
Of course. “¡Por supuesto!”she cried in Spanish, causing Pepa to reprimand her with a massive tut for not staying statue-still.
According to the copy in italics beneath the picture, he was a professional DJ as well as the stepson of the property magnate who owned Double Tap Towers and its sister hotels in Ibiza and Mallorca. Now that Freya looked more closely, she knew she had seen him in this magazine before – not to mention milling about as a guest in the wedding snaps of some of her previous clients. The only major difference this time was that, according to the story, he was with his ‘partner’, Miss Piper Moss. There couldn’t be two women in town with the same name and face. The Piper who smiled serenely from the pages was a dead ringer for the insufferable female Freya had spoken to on video. And the one in the photos.
Oh, crap. Hannah was right.
Freya tossedand turned all night. She was going to look a sight for sore eyes tomorrow morning when she went paragliding. All that pampering at the hairdressers had been for nothing. But she didn’t care. She resigned herself to the fact that the zeds wouldn’t come no matter how much she willed them to, and got up to make a hot chocolate. Tiddles purred contentedly as she stirred the spoon in herCola Cao.It wasn’t a patch onCadbury’sbut hopefully it would make Freya sleepy again.
