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  Praise for Helen Warner

  ‘A thought-provoking novel’ Heat

  ‘A page-turning good read’ Star

  ‘Four women, one wedding and unexpected results. Great good fun’ Woman & Home

  ‘There’s lots of bitching and a few tears in this fizzing read’ Woman’s Own

  ‘As bubbly as a glass of wedding Champagne’ Cosmopolitan

  ‘Action-packed’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘A ridiculously romantic story written from the perspective of four women as they gear up for a wedding that will have repercussions for them all’ Heat

  ‘The kind of book . . . holidays were made for’ RED

  ‘Helen Warner paints a complex picture of friends and lovers’ Star

  Helen Warner is Director of Daytime for ITV where she oversees a wide range of programming from This Morning to The Chase. Previously, she was at Channel 4 where she was responsible for shows including Come Dine With Me, Coach Trip and Deal or No Deal. She lives in Essex with her husband and their two children and she writes her books on the train to work.

  Also by Helen Warner

  RSVP

  Stay Close to Me

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Helen Warner, 2014

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Helen Warner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-47110-061-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-47110-062-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Alice & Paddy

  My very own VIPs

  with

  or without

  you

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 1

  ‘Jamie!’ yelled Martha, as she raced down the stairs wearing only a pink bra and mismatched red knickers, her long hair still wet. ‘Have you ironed my dress yet?’

  She scuttled into the kitchen, which was a scene of early-morning chaos. The ironing board was up, the television was blaring out the breakfast news, and Jamie, in just a pair of boxer shorts, was running from the toaster to the table with a plate in one hand and the iron in the other. At the table, Mimi and Tom were arguing loudly over who had flicked a blob of marmalade onto the computer screen, resulting in Jamie, who rarely raised his voice, shouting that they would both be banned from ‘screens’ for a week if they didn’t stop fighting.

  ‘Here,’ Jamie said in a softer voice, handing Martha her favourite dress, a stone-coloured, fitted shift. He watched with an amused expression as she clambered into it, before turning around and contorting her body so that she could zip it up at the back.

  ‘How do I look?’ She threw the question expectantly over her shoulder.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ he replied dutifully, bending to kiss the top of her head, before she scurried off in the direction of the front door. ‘But I think you’d benefit from some shoes?’ he added.

  ‘Oh shit!’ cried Martha, running up the stairs once more.

  From the kitchen she heard Mimi’s voice, ‘Muuuuummm! Enough of the bad language! You’re always telling us not to swear.’

  ‘Aaarghh!’ grumbled Martha to herself, as she knelt down in front of her wardrobe and rummaged through the pile of shoes in search of a matching pair. Eventually she located a pair of gold platform sandals that were more suited to a party than an interview, but with time running out she would just have to make do. She couldn’t be late today, it was too important. Scrabbling to her feet, she stepped into the sandals, instantly growing in stature by four inches. She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror on the wall, before running out of the bedroom as quickly as the sandals would allow, only dimly registering that something wasn’t quite right.

  ‘Jamie! I’m off!’ she shouted, snatching up her oversized leather satchel and opening the door. ‘Bye, kids! Love you both, have a great day!’ she added.

  ‘Bye!’ they chorused back. ‘Love you!’

  Jamie padded out of the kitchen, still wearing just his boxer shorts and looking, she thought, more handsome than he had any right to at such an early hour. ‘Hey, don’t forget your breakfast.’ He smiled and handed Martha some buttered toast, wrapped in a piece of kitchen paper. ‘And good luck!’

  Martha grinned and reached up to kiss him. Even in her high heels he was still taller than her. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed, taking the toast. ‘Love you, miss you, mean it!’ she called out in a cod American accent as she finally left.

  ‘Love you, miss you, mean it!’ he replied, mimicking her accent and laughing as he watched her from the doorway. It had become their private joke, ever since a holiday in Florida a few years back when they had heard an earnest couple saying it to one another as they parted at the airport.

  ‘Get inside!’ she shouted as she unlocked the car and dumped her bag on the back seat. ‘You’ll give Mrs Moffatt a heart attack!’

  Jamie beamed and stretched languorously, knowing full well that the gesture showed off his toned stomach. ‘Ah, it’s probably the only excitement she gets,’ he protested. ‘I’ll put the bins out later too – she loves that!’

  ‘Show off!’ Martha shook her head and smiled as she climbed into her beloved Fiat 500 and started the engine. Their 75-year-old neighbour had lived alone ever since her husband Alfred had died almost four years previously, and she adored Martha and the children. But she especially adored Jamie. He had recently helped to set her up with a computer so that she could Skype with her son, who live
d in Australia. Martha wouldn’t have had a clue where to start, but Jamie was patience personified when teaching her how to use the laptop her son had bought her.

  Martha took a deep, calming breath as she drove the familiar route to the train station. She switched on the radio and quickly became absorbed in the easy banter of the Radio 2 breakfast show, glad to have the company as she munched her toast. It was cold and the butter was congealed but she was grateful for it; it would be lunchtime before she got another chance to eat.

  She knew she was lucky. Ridiculously lucky. She had two gorgeous, happy, healthy children, a husband who was her soulmate, and an exciting, high-profile job as a showbiz interviewer. Over her fifteen-year career, she had met just about all the major film and TV stars on both sides of the Atlantic, and was on first-name terms with several A-listers.

  She had become the first port of call for all the big PRs, on account of her reputation as a writer who never veered into the realms of personal bitchiness like some other reporters; she always seemed to get to the heart and soul of her subjects. She had an innate ability to draw them out and get them to reveal things that they had previously managed to keep to themselves.

  She had started out as a news journalist but had fallen into showbiz reporting by accident, when she was sent to interview a top female TV presenter for a magazine. During a searing interview, the presenter had broken down and admitted that she was an alcoholic, taking herself by surprise as much as Martha. As she wrote up the interview a few days later, Martha had called the presenter and offered to leave out the revelation, worried about the impact it might have on her young family. Martha had held back from telling her editor about the scoop for that very same reason. But the TV star had insisted that she was relieved to have finally admitted it, and that she had already enrolled in AA, determined to get help.

  The interview made all the national newspapers, as well as being the main topic on a number of radio and TV discussion shows. It also propelled Martha into the spotlight and instantly made her a favourite with celebrities, who felt that they could trust her, even though, ironically, they always ended up revealing more to her than they planned.

  For Martha’s part, she loved her job, but she knew full well she wouldn’t be able to do it without Jamie’s support. He had been a journalist himself when they got together, but had given up a staff job on a broadsheet to look after the children full-time when Martha’s career really took off. She often had to travel abroad, and without Jamie it would have been impossible to accept most of the assignments she was given.

  Jamie never complained about putting his career second to hers, although she knew sometimes he found it difficult that she was the main breadwinner. He still earned some of his own money by writing freelance articles; they weren’t big money-spinners but they gave him a certain amount of independence and helped his self-esteem. He was also working on a children’s book, which Martha felt would be huge if he could get some interest from an agent.

  But for the time being, his main role was looking after the children and he did it magnificently. He was very involved with their school, where he was chair of the PTA, and he spent hours each day playing with them, talking to them, taking them on trips and igniting their interest in everything from trampolining to astronomy. Unlike many of the school mums, he didn’t find the daily grind of looking after children boring. On the contrary, he seemed to find them inspiring and was never happier than when it was just the three of them out on their bikes together, exploring. Martha had often thought that he did a far better job than she could ever do if their roles were reversed.

  Pulling into the station car park, she punched the air with delight as she found a parking space in a prime position close to the exit and leapt out, wobbling slightly on her heels as she did so. She grabbed her bag from the back seat and raced for the platform of the small country station, mentally thanking her lucky stars that the train to London left from the nearest platform, rather than the one opposite, which involved a heart-attack-inducing race up a steep flight of stairs, a trip across a footbridge and back down the other side.

  Sure enough, the train was already pulling in as she arrived, out of breath. Several other commuters looked at her curiously and she smiled to herself, delighted that even at thirty-six, she still had the ability to turn heads. She proudly shook her long, chestnut hair, which was dry by now and which she knew was her crowning glory. She never did anything with it except for washing it each morning, yet it was glossy and thick enough to appear in a shampoo commercial.

  She found a seat beside a large, pink-faced woman, who had already marked her territory by placing her arm fully on the rest that separated the two seats. Martha raised an eyebrow, knowing that for the hour-long journey there would be a battle of wills over who eventually got the armrest. It annoyed her when other people did it but she had to admit she was one of the worst culprits if she got there first.

  She plugged in her headphones, earning herself a scowl from the woman which she swiftly deflected with a beaming smile, and pulled out her cuttings on Charlie Simmons, the actor she was meeting that day. It was to be the first of a number of meetings, as she had been assigned to ghost-write his memoirs. It was the first time she had been asked to write a book and she felt uncharacteristically nervous; it was one thing to do an in-depth profile, but it was a much bigger leap to write a life story. The book had been commissioned after Charlie’s Oscar nomination for his most recent film, in which he had played a very famous interviewer, and he was tipped to be the ‘next big thing’ in Hollywood, the latest British export to hit the big-time.

  But Martha had heard that he could be tricky when it came to journalists. Usually, she never worried when she was warned that someone could be difficult; she quite often thought that she would be difficult herself if someone wrote horrible things about her. And judging by his cuttings, there was plenty for Charlie Simmons to be upset about, but if she was going to be spending a lot of time with him, Martha needed him to warm to her and, more than that, she desperately wanted to do a good job. This assignment could lead to a whole new career for her if she did it well.

  Martha’s father had been a newspaper editor, as well known for his violent temper as he was for his brilliance. He had inspired Martha to become a journalist in the first place, but she had never forgotten him telling her that every morning he got up and looked in the mirror, thinking that today would be the day he finally got found out. It was something she constantly experienced herself. She couldn’t believe she’d made it so far without any of the problems that seemed to dog many of her female contemporaries, who were unhappily single or whose careers had been held back by their over-reliance on alcohol. She had managed to combine a very stable, happy home life with a successful career.

  Martha looked out of the train window at the lush patchwork of green and yellow countryside flashing by in the early morning June sunshine and thought about her father’s words now, wondering if this assignment would be the one where she finally fell flat on her face. The one where she finally got found out.

  Chapter 2

  After waving Martha off to work, Jamie joined Mimi and Tom at the kitchen table, where they were still finishing breakfast.

  ‘Yuk, Dad, put some clothes on!’ Mimi frowned as she took a bite of her toast. ‘It’s gross being naked at the breakfast table!’

  ‘I’m not naked,’ Jamie protested, ‘I’ve got boxer shorts on. And this isn’t a breakfast table, it’s just a table. An ordinary, bog-standard table.’

  Mimi smiled. At eleven years old, Jamie knew she loved these silly exchanges. The three of them regularly had heated debates about the most stupid of things.

  ‘I would say . . .’ Tom began in a considered voice that belied his eight years, ‘that it could be classed as a breakfast table, if you’re eating breakfast from it.’

  Mimi glanced at her brother suspiciously. He didn’t usually agree with her in these debates. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully. ‘That’s rig
ht. And if you’re eating dinner, it becomes a dinner table.’

  ‘Aah, but what if you’re eating an apple? Or some grapes?’ Jamie cut in. ‘Does it therefore then become an apple table? Or a grape table?’

  ‘No, because that’s not a proper meal. You only name the table after proper meals.’ Mimi nodded slightly as she finished speaking, causing her long blonde hair to pool around her shoulders.

  ‘And does it depend on what the meal is?’ Jamie looked up at the ceiling, as if he was giving considerable thought to the issue. ‘For instance, does it become a curry table if one is eating curry? Or a—’

  ‘Yuk,’ interrupted Tom, wrinkling his pert little nose. ‘I hate curry. It’s never going to be a curry table.’

  ‘No,’ Mimi said decisively, getting up from the table as if to emphasise that the debate was at an end. ‘It makes no difference what the content of the meal is, it’s the time of day that it’s eaten that determines what the table is called.’ She loaded her plate and bowl into the dishwasher. ‘To name it after the individual food that’s eaten at the table would be time-consuming and, frankly, a bit stupid,’ she finished.

  ‘I’d still like to make the case for it sometimes being called a snack table,’ Jamie said. ‘We eat an awful lot of what could only be described as snacks around this table. What do we call it at these awkward, in-between times?’

  ‘I think we can agree that depending on the time of day, there will be a suitable name for the table,’ Mimi said, washing her hands at the kitchen sink. ‘Let’s say that up until eleven a.m., it’s a breakfast table. From eleven a.m. until, say, five p.m. it’s a lunch table and—’

  ‘That’s a dangerously long lunch though?’ Jamie protested.

  ‘I think we can live with it,’ Mimi replied curtly. ‘And from five p.m. onwards, it’s a dinner table.’

  ‘Okaaaay,’ Jamie agreed reluctantly, pursing his lips and shaking his head.