The Honeymoon Hotel Read Online Free

and silver teapots, dispensing tiny macaroons and wielding proper tea-strainers.
    Oh, brilliant
, I thought. Right on cue, now all the hard work was done, Laurence had appeared by the entrance to the garden, resplendent in his blazer and red trousers, kissing the bride, shaking everyone else’s hand, smiling and laughing away like the consummate hotel owner. I knew what he’d be saying even though I was too far away to hear; I could see from the dazzled expressions on their faces that he was working his magic on everyone in earshot.
    Laurence seemed to be getting on particularly well with Clemmie’s Auntie Priscilla, I noted. I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for potential dates for him, on Caroline’s instructions; she was very keen to get Laurence paired up again, and weddings were a fertile source of appropriate middle-aged women, most of whom he seemed to know already through his many years of extreme sociability. Laurence wasn’t a man who coped well on his own, and like me, Caroline didn’t have time to deal with his constant phone calls about the washing machine.
    While I was watching Priscilla flirting outrageously with Laurence, and wondering if I should ask Clemmie for her details, or just take them straight off the guest database, my fascinator buzzed, and I pushed a stray curl out of the way to answer it. ‘Gemma?’
    ‘Rosie, someone’s brought their dog with them? It’s in the foyer? I don’t know what to – urgh! Bad dog! No! Naughty!’
    ‘Put it in Laurence’s office,’ I said, setting off, shoulders already pulled back in fire-fighting readiness. ‘I’ll be right there.’
    I swished past the guests, the waiters, the caterers, the flower arrangements, the champagne, and although the stopwatch in my head was ticking, I couldn’t stop the smile spreading across my face.
    On a bright May day like this one, there wasn’t a more romantic place to get married in all of London than the Bonneville Hotel. In all the world, actually. It’s the only place I’d ever consider getting married, if I was in the market for a wedding, which I’m not.
    As I said, it’s not that I don’t have a boyfriend, I do. And it’s not as if I’m completely anti-marriage, because obviously I enjoy a good wedding as much as the next person. Even after my Unfortunate Wedding Experience – the ‘j’ word isn’t in my vocabulary either. It’s just that …
    Well. Let me tell you about my boyfriend, Dominic.

CHAPTER TWO
     
    When I told people my boyfriend was Dominic Crosby, they usually laughed and said, ‘Not
the
Dominic Crosby, though?’ and when I assured them that, yes, I lived in West Kensington with
the
Dominic Crosby, London Food Critic of the Year two years running and campaigner for Quiet Zones in restaurants, they laughed again, but more nervously, and then changed the subject.
    I didn’t know Dominic was
the
Dominic when I met him, about two years ago. He was just the short, rather intense bloke sitting nextto me at a university friend’s birthday meal in Clerkenwell – a birthday meal I didn’t really want to go to but felt I had to attend, because if I didn’t, the main topic of conversation would have been Rosie and her Big Fat Non-Wedding, and its sequel conversation, now starring Anthony’s ‘surprise’ new girlfriend, Leona from Work. (
Still
. Nine months on, my non-wedding was the conversational gift that kept on giving. Luckily for me, not long after this particular dinner, another friend’s boyfriend went to prison for payroll fraud and everyone started feeling sorry for Kate instead.)
    I should have had an inkling about who the bloke sitting next to was when he insisted on sending back all ten plates of lamb tagine served to our table because the lamb ‘had the stringy texture of knitting wool, spiced with the piquant addition of Mr Muscle’. But I’d missed the introductions at the start of the evening as I’d been dragged into Laurence’s office on my way out to