I can’t speak. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.
‘We’ll be there soon.’ I wipe my eyes at last and check my make-up. Suze is all primed with my dress, and Danny is in charge of Luke’s outfit too.
It’s fine, I tell myself sternly. Even if it’s not exactly what I planned, it’s fine. Luke’s here, I’m here, he’s going to have his party and it’s going to be fabulous.
‘Happy birthday, darling,’ I murmur as the taxi pulls into Janice’s drive, and squeeze Luke’s hand.
‘What? Why are we pulling in here?’
Luke is heroically trying to sound like the most astonished person in the world. I wish he wouldn’t. He’s not very good at it.
‘Get out …’ I flash him a smile – and even though I know he knows, I can feel the excitement fizzing up again. I mean, he doesn’t know everything. I pay the taxi driver and lead Luke through Janice’s darkened house. The catering staff are either hiding in the kitchen or already in the marquee, but even so, I don’t dare turn on the lights.
Ow. I just bumped my hip on Janice’s stupid table. Why does she have tables everywhere?
‘OK, outside …’ I push him forward, through the French windows into the garden. There’s the marquee, all decorated with twinkly fairy lights and lit up inside – yet completely silent as though two hundred people aren’t gathered inside.
‘Becky …’ Luke stops dead and stares. ‘I can’t believe this. I can’t believe what you’ve … Did you arrange all this yourself?’
‘Come on!’
I drag him along the matting to the entrance, my heart suddenly racing. They’d better all be there.
Of course they’re there.
I take a deep breath – then pull open the flap to the marquee.
‘SURPRISE!!’
The noise is phenomenal. A massive throng of lit-up faces is turned towards us. I recognize only some of them. Janice is near the front, in her Mrs Bennet dress, and Jess is in the most amazing sculptured black sheath, with dramatic make-up to match. As I look around the marquee I can’t help a twinge of pride. Fairy lights are strung up and silver balloons are bobbing with ‘Happy Birthday Luke’ printed in the Brandon Communications logo font. All around the marquee are glossy mock promotional posters and blown-up newspapers, each with a different headline and story about Luke Brandon. (I wrote them all myself.) The pièce de résistance is a massive back-lit graph, just like the ones they produce for Brandon C press launches. It shows pictures of Luke every year, from a baby right up to adulthood, and is headlined: ‘Luke – a Bumper Year’.
And right above our head, all around, are my pom-poms. We strung fairy lights through them and hung them in garlands – and they look amazing.
‘Happy birthday to you …’ Someone launches into singing and the crowd follows lustily.
I dart a glance at Luke.
‘Wow!’ he exclaims as though on cue. ‘This is such … I had no idea!’
He’s making the hugest effort to look supremely shocked. I have to give him that.
‘For he’s a jolly good fellow …’ the crowd is now singing. Luke keeps spotting faces in the crowd and acknowledging them with waves and smiles, and as soon as the singing finishes, he takes a glass from a waitress and raises it towards the general mêlée.
‘You bastards!’ he says, and there’s a roar of laughter. The little three-piece band in the corner strikes up with some Gershwin, and people surge round Luke, and I watch his face as he greets them.
He wasn’t blown away. He wasn’t speechless with surprise. But then … I knew he wouldn’t be. The minute that guy opened his mouth in the Berkeley Hotel.
‘Becky! This is fantastic!’ A woman from Brandon Communications whose name I’ve forgotten (but I remember that amazing Alexander McQueen dress) descends on me. ‘Did you do all these decorations yourself?’
Erica and her staff are circulating with canapés and I can see Janice approaching a chic blonde girl with a powder compact. For God’s sake. I told her, no touch-ups. I have to head her off, quick.
But before I can, a greying man hands me a cocktail and introduces himself as an old colleague of Luke’s and asks me how long it all took to plan, and then his wife (floaty dress, too much lipstick) asks me excitedly if I’ve seen the clips on YouTube, and about fifteen minutes go by and I haven’t done anything except talk to strangers. I don’t even know where Luke is.
There’s a bit of a draught coming through the flaps of the marquee, too, and everyone’s gradually huddling away from the entrance.