Page 37 of The Wedding Cake
“I-I thought you knew? She muttered something about heading off to a mountain hiking retreat before she left us earlier today.” Ricky began to shake at this news, eyes like saucers. “No idea where. I’m guessing she must be on her way there already.”
Tim’s face fell. Hannah’s emotions were harder to read. Frankly the girl looked like she didn’t know whether she was coming or going.
“Right, well,” Hannah brushed imaginary crumbs off her clothes. She hadn’t taken a bite of cake. “Thanks, Alice and River. All the best for the future to the both of you.” She forced a small smile. “I’m sorry but there’s no point in you coming with me, Tim.” She turned to the ex-groom. “I’ll take the van back to FOM’s garage, dump my bits and pieces in the cakery and turn in for an early night. W-would you let me know if Piper’s awake though, please? I mean, I’m sure she will be by now. But it would be good to know.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Tim replied, downcast. “Oh, and thank you. For the pictures. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, right?”
“You’re welcome.” Hannah whispered. Her face began to clash badly with her hair colour and she pelted out of the finca.
“What was that all about?” said Ricky. “I’d better go after her.”
“Not until you’ve helped me transport our inmate, you won’t,” countered Hayley, and Ricky sat back down without protest.
“All I know is Hannah is a gem,” said Tim, “and I’ll tell you both why on the coach.”
Alice wasn’t sure she wanted to hear another word, at least not until the waste of space in the tower had been dealt with and her new friends had returned. Tim’s disaster of a wedding had taken up enough of her special day. She chivvied Hayley, Ricky and the former groom into action so she could get back to the all-important job of partying with her own husband.
FREYA
Freya couldn’t believe how gullible she’d been.
Twice…
Lars was Merv’s stepson! It all made sense now. He had seemed to have a little too much insider information into her business all those months ago. Despite the queue of disasters that made up her previous dates, none of them had tried to worm their way into her affections to fleece her. Okay, Freya didn’t have concrete evidence of the guy’s intentions but the not-so-subtle hints he had dropped were enough of an alarm bell. It wasn’t just Hannah who was worth her weight in edible gold. Ricky’s undercover dating skills had come into their own. He’d purposefully copped off with ‘one of Lars’ fittest kitchen constructors’ at a party and dated him for a few months once his sixth sense about Lars’ motivations had been triggered, and his quarry had sufficiently rifled through his boss’s errant office paperwork and its many mentions of Freya and FOM.
If only that had been the only time she had been duped. But no. Something much more sinister had come to light. She’d seen the signs along the way, she’d chosen to ignore them, and now FOM was officially screwed. After she’d left the Goldsmith-Jackson wedding, Freya had remembered she’d also left her house keys in the cakery. It was such a clumsy mistake but hardly surprising, given all the emotions today had dredged up. They must be in the finishing room where she’d overseen Ricky putting the final touches to both halves of the showstopper, before she and Alejandro had delivered one half of the cake to Alice and River in Mijas, and Hannah had accompanied Ricky to Marbella with Tim and Piper’s side.
After scouring the room frantically, she made a last resort dive into the walk-in fridge. Bingo! They were twinkling at her from the middle shelf. Head full of Tim, Freya had never known herself to be such a klutz. She’d grabbed the icy cold keys and quickly made to walk out of the building so she could get back to the apartment and pack up her things for her much-needed few days away in nature. But just as she was leaving the finishing room, she did a double-take. Something caught her eye on the normally spotless floor. She walked closer to see what it was. A syringe. But this wasn’t one of FOM’s cake syringes. They were all white. This one had a purple plunger. This one had come in from the outside.
Freya dropped her keys in shock as she put two and two together, knowing that she had sadly come up with four.
“Hannah!” she yelled – despite the fact that her employee wasn’t even on the premises – and so loudly that she couldn’t believe the windows didn’t shatter, littering the floor with glass confetti (bleugh) around her shaking form.
TIM
“They do say truth is stranger than fiction,” said Hayley, taking the turning for Marbella after Tim had given the briefest possible version he could of the events that had led to Hannah sending him X-rated pictures of Piper. Having recently discovered that Hayley was a taxi driver, he’d no doubt provided her with some excellent fodder to breadcrumb to her clients during long journeys.
Ricky was equally gobsmacked at the revelations, eventually finding his voice to say, “We’d best not tell Freya. Much as I love Hannah, she’s totally crossed the line. It’s always the quiet ones. Hannah’s always in her own little bubble in the cakery. She rarely joins in with our banter unless she thinks she has a valid point to make. Talk about double standards. It’ll be a shame to see her go if Freya does find out what she’s been up to.I shan’t say a thing, of course.But now the secret’s out, there’s no telling how quickly the gossip will get back to the boss.”
In other words, Ricky was totally going to break the news to Freya. Why hadn’t Tim thought to keep his gob shut? Now poor Hannah would be out of a job. He’d created a bottomless pit of destruction! All the more reason to wait patiently until Freya came back from this mountain escape of hers, when he could hopefully persuade her that Hannah didn’t deserve to be fired. Tim was booked to be in Spain for another week. He and Piper were supposed to be enjoying the perks of the villa before jetting off on honeymoon. From a work point of view, his clients and the hospital knew he’d be away. There was just the matter of trying to find alternative accommodation during August at short notice. But even if he had to kip on his friends’ shared hotel room floor, it would be worth it.Hopefully.Hope was all he had now.
Once they’d arrived back at the villa, and had rung the bell to alert security, they then had to explain the complex logistics of Operation Transfer to the various members of staff. Tim snuck in through the side entrance of the property to check up on Piper in the bedroom.Shit.She wasn’t there! The bed was empty, its crumpled silk sheets tossed to the floor – and not in a seductive way. Panic tugged at what was left of his heart strings and he willed away the wail of ambulance sirens in his head. Surely somebody would have notified him at the gates if his ex had been taken ill? If the sudden exhaustion had been a side effect of something serious? Or maybe not. Perhaps they wanted to damp down the drama so it didn’t leak to the press. But whatever the situation, Piper’s welfare was no longer his responsibility. Her parents were in Marbella and they would have to take care of her.
He packed his case as quickly as he could with shaking hands, rifling through drawers and wardrobes, swiping all his toiletries from the bathroom’s plush shower and sink. The lack of a good square meal and the adrenaline of the long day had caught up with him and he looked more than a little jaded when he spotted his reflection in the mirror. Tim left his luggage by the bedroom door, ready to load back into the coach, while Hayley and Ricky oversaw the safe deposit of Rob, Bear and Alex. Tim would quietly round up his parents and friends, then everyone could be on their way. And then he could close the book on this chapter. But before he did that, he couldn’t resist sneaking onto the balcony to watch the men reorient themselves down below in the garden. Bear and Alex thought they were still at the finca, apparently. They reclined on the pool’s sun loungers and let the waiters bring them fresh cocktails, as they watched a woman straddling a unicorn lilo in her umpteenth outfit of the day.
“She sleptfor an hour and got a second wind,” said Fergus, creeping up on Tim in the marble corridor after he’d tracked down his family, the boys, and their new friends, shepherding them onto the coach and slipping into the lift to the villa’s first floor to retrieve his suitcase. “It was the strangest thing but then I guess it’s been the strangest day.”
On the subject of strange, a few of the other guests seemed to have caught Piper’s earlier yawns and were scattered around the property themselves. Tim had passed them on his way outside. They snoozed on plush sofas and garden hammocks. And if he wasn’t mistaken, Tim noted also that Mervyn was mysteriously back on the scene, chatting animatedly to a tall fair-haired male. Tim didn’t have time to contemplate any of that.
“I’m glad to hear it. She deserves to enjoy her day and her night,” Tim replied, relieved this man had never become his father-in-law.
“You deserve the best too, Tim.” Fergus’s words startled him and the two of them paused at the wide window that offered another bird’s eye view of Spanish paradise. “I was wrong about you. I know Piper mucked you around but even after all that, you still had her best interests at heart and there’s not many men out there who’d have been so forgiving… and, erm, visionary.” Fergus tilted his head at Piper’s double, who was now soaking up the last rays of the sun, Bear and Alex wittering away on either side of her. River had warned Tim that his former band members had probably consumed not so much an alcoholic-based cocktail, as a drug-based one. Yep, now that definitely figured.
“Thanks. It means a lot.”
Tim shook Fergus’s hand, walked to the lift with his case and then changed his mind and took the stairs. He wanted to feel life from this moment on. He wanted to be an active part in it. No more taking the easy way out – even when it was a struggle. No more glazing over things. No more meaningless luxury. Every action Tim took from this moment onward would be rooted in authenticity.
ALICE
