The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

of the invisible people, those who take your coat or hand you your food or clear up after you. Finally Danielle and Jed came in like a pair of celebrities you don’t quite recognize, greeted with whoops and clicks from mobile-phone cameras. They processed around the filling tables, hugging and kissing cheeks. Then Danielle caught sight of us, gave a shriek and, with her huge cream dress billowing around her, ran over to us with the bridegroom in tow.

‘Omigod, omigod, omigod,’ she said, and enfolded me. ‘This is just the most incredible day. I was so nervous. I thought I was going to forget my own name. I can’t even remember if I did. I can’t remember a single word I said. We’re probably not even married. This is Jed. Jed, Bonnie. Bonnie, Jed. Doesn’t he look fantastic?’

Jed was tall with a mop of blond hair. He was wearing a grey morning suit with a very flowery waistcoat. He surveyed us with an expression that was slightly disbelieving.

‘This is so brilliant of you, Bonnie,’ said Danielle, ‘after all you’ve gone through. It’s the most awful thing. I can’t believe what it must have been like for you. Everyone here can’t stop talking about it.’ I couldn’t bear to say anything so I just nodded. ‘When we get back from—well, I’m not meant to say where we’re going—we must have a proper talk about it all. I want to have a really good talk.’ She stopped and looked at us all. ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’

We were wearing our alt-country get-up, which was almost exactly what we normally wore: jeans and shirts. I also had on some cowboy boots I’d found at the bottom of one of my packing cases. ‘It goes with the music,’ I said.

‘Brilliant,’ she said. ‘Is your singer here yet?’

‘Sonia can’t make it,’ I said.

‘Omigod,’ said Danielle. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘She’s unavoidably detained,’ I said, ‘but we’ll see what we can do.’

‘Good, good,’ said Danielle, as if she’d had the first inkling that something might go wrong with her perfect day. ‘I’ve fixed you up with something to eat. If you talk to Sergio, the sweet man in the purple jacket over there, he’ll sort you out. We’re going to have some speeches after we’ve eaten and then you can strike up. I’m so looking forward to hearing you and having a bit of a dance.’

Sergio steered us out of the main room and into a sort of store area to one side with cardboard boxes and a picnic table on which there were some pieces of chicken, a bottle of wine and a carton of fruit juice. Joakim and Neal ate heartily while the rest of us sipped our drinks and didn’t speak. Guy was drinking orange juice but I stuck to wine. If I was going to sing to this lot, I needed it.

The speeches were perfect. Jed’s best friend told stories that fell completely flat about getting drunk and about previous girlfriends. You could hear the wind blowing outside and crickets chirping. Then Danielle’s father read out a speech that was too long even though it turned out that a page had gone missing, which rendered quite a lot of what remained meaningless. By the time he toasted the bride and groom, it would have been hard for anything not to be an improvement. Danielle seized the microphone and told the crowd they were in for a huge treat, that one of her oldest friends was a musician and had got a band together especially for the occasion and that they had been practising the entire summer and overcome lots and lots of obstacles and could everyone just put their hands together for Bonnie Graham and her band.

We slunk onto the stage slightly shamefacedly, except Guy. I glimpsed him taking his place behind the drums and had the feeling that, in his imagination, he had become John Bonham going out to beat the skins for Led Zeppelin, circa 1972. I just hoped he wouldn’t try to sound like John Bonham. I rather wished I was wearing sunglasses, like Roy Orbison, but it was too late for that now. I sat at the keyboard, tapped the microphone and muttered congratulations to Danielle and . . . First there was a tiny pause because I forgot Jed’s name and then, when I remembered it but before I said it, there was a howl of feedback from one of the guitars and people in the crowd winced and put hands to their ears. Neal looked at me apologetically. ‘A bit of rock-and-roll,’ he muttered.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said to the audience. ‘This is for Danielle and Jed.’

And we began ‘It Had To Be You’. It was like an out-of-body experience. I watched Danielle and Jed step tentatively out onto the open space, put their arms around each other and start to dance. I was listening to myself. My voice sounded fragile but that was OK. It’s a fragile song. Joakim was fine, of course. Guy was all right. Neal wasn’t very good. Amos was bloody awful, with wrong notes all over the place. He had a glassy look in his eyes as if he was about to faint. The song came to an end and there was a fair amount of applause.

Joakim stepped forward to the microphone. ‘This is a song that is not necessarily appropriate to a wedding,’ he said. ‘In fact, it’s completely inappropriate. But we like it.’

As I sang the first line, basically informing the man that since he clearly wants to walk out, he might as well do it straight away, I saw disbelief pass across the crowd like a Mexican wave. There was a look of deep concern, maybe even of horror, on some faces. Others were grinning. There was nothing to be done. I couldn’t give up and try another so I concentrated on singing, and as I did, something completely unexpected happened. I suddenly felt the song in a way I hadn’t during all