A Spot Of Bother

98

Mum was right. A wedding without disasters clearly broke some unwritten rule of the universe. Like snow at Christmas. Or pain-free childbirth.

She rang the marquee people and that was fine. They’d come round with mops and heaters later on in the day.

Then Auntie Eileen and Uncle Ronnie turned up with their Labrador in tow. Because their dog sitter was in hospital. Unfortunately Jacob hated dogs. So it was shut outside to keep Jacob happy. At which point it began howling and trying to dig its way through the back door.

Then the caterers rang to say they needed to change the menu after a power failure left a freezer off overnight. Sadie rang to say she’d just got back from New Zealand and found the invitation in the post and could she come. And Brian and Gail rang to say the hotel had lost their reservation and clearly someone else had to solve this problem for them. Like the bride, for example. Or the bride’s parents.

Katie gave up answering the phone and went upstairs and found Dad locked into the bathroom, possibly hiding from Eileen and Ronnie, so she went up to the top loo, peed and flushed and heard the macerator grinding away and saw the water surge to within a centimeter of the rim of the bowl. At which point some kind of death wish took her over and instead of ringing the phone number on the sticker, she thought, I’ll give it another go, and flushed a second time with predictable results.

Two seconds later she was kneeling on the floor holding back a pond of diluted wee with a dam of cream towels saying, “Arsing, fucking, shitting,” which was when Jacob appeared behind her and pointed out that she was saying rude words.

“Jacob, can you fetch Granny, and tell her to bring some bin bags?”

“It smells yucky.”

“Jacob, please fetch Granny, or you will never get any pocket money, ever.”

But the Labrador was back in the house and Jacob was refusing to go anywhere near the ground floor, so she went down herself, and found Mum and Dad in the hallway having some kind of altercation about Dad not pulling his weight but doing it in a fevered whisper, presumably so Eileen and Ronnie didn’t hear. Katie said the loo had overflowed. Mum told Dad to sort it out. Dad declined. And Mum said something very unladylike to Dad which Katie didn’t quite catch because Ray appeared at the other end of the hallway saying, “I hope you don’t mind, your aunt let me in.”

Mum did a horrified double take and apologized profusely for arguing yet again in Ray’s presence and asked whether she could make him a nice cup of tea and Katie reminded her that the loo was still overflowing and felt extremely pissed off that Ray had spent last night in London organizing some secret thing, and Dad slipped away while everyone’s attention was diverted and Ray bounded up the stairs and Mum said she’d put the kettle on and Katie went to grab some bin bags from the kitchen for ferrying the wee-sodden towels to the washing machine and noticed en route the muddy paw prints on the dining-room carpet and tossed Ronnie a disposable cloth wipe and told him to clean up after his bloody dog, which he had to do because he was a Christian.

The macerator man said he’d be there in an hour and Eileen and Ronnie took Rover out for a long walk despite the rain and everything was fine until Katie took her dress out of the suitcase to iron it and found half a pint of coconut body wash soaked into the hem and swore so loudly Eileen and Ronnie probably heard it several fields away. So Ray held up his hands and said, “Hit me,” and she did, repeatedly for some considerable time until Ray said, “OK, it’s starting to hurt now.”

He suggested she go into town to buy another dress and she was about to give him a hard time for thinking all female problems could be solved by shopping, when he said, calmly, “Buy a new dress. Find a café. Sit down with a book and a cup of coffee and come back in a couple of hours and I’ll sort everything out here,” and she kissed him and grabbed her bag and ran.