style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Right. Toodle-oo, ladies!’ Rupert blows kisses at both of us and disappears off to check out some art studio in a local crafts complex he’s thinking of renting. And Mallory and I kick off our shoes and settle in for a gossip.
It’s getting dark by the time I leave.
On the drive home, I reflect on how amazing it is that Mallory and I met only a little over eighteen months ago. I honestly feel like I’ve known her for years.
We met when I was shooting a wedding at the Greshingham, a five-star country house hotel just a few miles from Willows Edge.
It was a bad time for me.
Sienna had buggered off to Paris a few months earlier, leaving me completely in the lurch. I was doing my best to keep the business going on my own while trying to cope with the aftermath of our traumatic fallout.
I knew I would have to employ someone to help me at the weddings, but my head was all over the place. I was finding it hard enough to get through the days, never mind trying to focus on finding an assistant I knew I could trust.
The wedding that day at the Greshingham was proving a challenge, to say the least. The wedding party were in fine spirits – quite literally. (The groom’s Uncle Bob was breathing a particularly fine whisky spirit all over me from pretty much the word go, joking around in a harmless but distracting way.)
Trying to corral a group of ‘well-refreshed’ guests onto the lawn for the photos, I began to feel a new appreciation for sheepdogs. I’d get ninety per cent of them there, then a small group would break away and start wandering back to the bar. My voice was hoarse from cajoling.
At one point, I thought grimly: Come back, Sienna, all is forgiven!
Except it wasn’t, of course.
And it never would be.
I was close to tears by the time the outdoor photos were done and I’d scuttled into a dark corner of the bar to take stock.
I sat there, trying to check down my list, terrified I might have missed something vital.
But there was a woman with a loud, plummy voice on the next table who kept barging into my thoughts, messing everything up. She was all, ‘Oh, totally, darling!’ and ‘I say, how absolutely awful for you!’
It seemed I couldn’t get peace anywhere.
Then, the crowning glory, Uncle Bob found my hiding place and plonked himself and his whisky breath down right beside me.
I had an urge to run off screaming.
But I took a deep breath and did my best to be polite and smile, turning down his repeated offers of a drink on the grounds that I was working.
At some point, I made accidental eye contact with Plummy Voice over Uncle Bob’s shoulder. She pointed at my half-cut companion and made a revolted expression.
Bob tried to swing round to see who I was grinning at and nearly fell off his chair.
I bashed my forehead to mime how fed up I was and she burst out laughing then turned to murmur something to the woman beside her.
Bob, meanwhile, had shuffled his chair so close, he was practically sitting on my knee.
‘Show me how it works,’ he slurred, making a stab at picking up my camera and knocking over his whisky glass instead.
As he apologised earnestly and attempted to mop my list with his sleeve, someone said, ‘I say, darling, you didn’t tell me you were the official photographer at this shindig!’
I glanced up in surprise. Plummy Voice was smiling down at me.
‘Could I have a word?’ she asked cheerfully.
I blinked. ‘Er … yes, of course.’
Giving Uncle Bob the benefit of her smile, she leaned down and pressed his shoulder, murmuring sweetly, ‘So sorry to drag her away from you but it’s really very important. I’m fresh out of tampons, you see.’
Even Uncle Bob, in his alcohol-soaked haze, knew when it was time to make a sharpish exit.
Plummy Voice sat down and we watched him stagger off, narrowly missing cannoning into a large-breasted woman in an even larger wedding hat.
My rescuer’s name was Mallory and I felt bad about my earlier grumpiness. I thanked her for frightening Bob away and giggled when she said the tampon emergency was just a ruse. We hit it off immediately, swapping stories about men who wouldn’t take no for an answer and she told me about the ‘frightful chap’ she’d been unable to escape in a bar one time, until she mentioned she had to get back to her five children who were at home, being baby-sat by her lesbian lover.
‘Worked like a charm. He was orf like a shot,’ she grinned, flicking back her amazing, strawberry blonde hair.
Mallory was proof to me that you should never judge someone by their voice. Because while she might sound posher than the Queen, she was actually far more Sarah Millican by nature, with her earthy humour and slightly irreverent take on life.
I warmed to her no-nonsense approach to life and her ability to make a joke out of everything, even the bad stuff. We swapped business cards and I dashed off for the next round of photos, feeling so much more cheerful and energised than before.
I wasn’t expecting her to phone, but she did, a few days later.
She said if I needed an assistant, she was available. ‘No pressure, darling. Obviously. But you’d be a first class chump to turn me down.’
I had a feeling she was probably right. So we arranged to meet at Rosa’s coffee shop to discuss it, and we haven’t stopped talking since.
Mallory likes to try and sort out my life.
Sometimes I listen, sometimes I just laugh. She doesn’t seem to mind either way.
And she’s a great wedding assistant …
When I arrive home and slide my key into the lock, I hear the muffled sound of the phone ringing.
My heart lurches. Few people call me on the landline these days.
Dominic does, though.
It must be him.
For a second, I’m caught in limbo, heart slamming against my ribs.
I could just let it ring. Hurry back to the car and drive round to the safety of Mallory’s house …
But if I run away, I’ll just be playing into the hands of a bully.
Taking a breath, I push the door open.
The jolly ringtone is deafeningly loud
