do with Mark.
‘Fern, darlin’, he’s pure gold and you know it and I know it and soon the American public are going to know it too. Now he’s in luuurve he’ll be irresistible.’ Mark grins and lights a big cigar. I turn away from him and drape my arms around Scott.
‘It’s brilliant,’ I gush. ‘This album is the embodiment of everything everyone ever believes love can be. Everything you ever believed life could be!’
Scott pulls me close to him. We stand foreheads touching, my arms around his waist, his arms hung around my neck. I can feel his breath mingling with mine. He kisses my nose and beams back at me.
‘You’re great,’ he says simply as we reluctantly break apart.
‘When’s it going to be released?’ I ask.
‘Tomorrow. Which gives us eight days for it to climb the charts before the wedding.’
‘Tomorrow?’ How’s that possible? I don’t know much about the music business (far less than I should) but I thought that it took months to bring out an album. It’s clear that we’ve been listening to the edited version and that the sound has been mastered by an engineer – but what about the packaging, won’t that take weeks to develop? I must have missed the bit where Scott gets to have his photo taken in loads of different outfits, hanging out with lots of different kinds of people – like leggy blondes, or footballers, or scuba divers or something eye-catching.
‘When’s the press conference announcing the release?’ I ask.
‘Yesterday,’ says Scott with a beam.
‘Yesterday! And the promotional tour?’
‘Just after the wedding. Things haven’t been standing still while you’ve been planning this wedding, you know,’ chips in Mark.
Clearly. Something occurs to me like a brick flying out of the horizon. ‘When you say just after the wedding you mean after the honeymoon, right?’
‘Not exactly. We thought we’d make the tour into your honeymoon. We’ll be travelling all across America; New York, Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas,’ says Mark, with a self-satisfied grin.
‘You said you always wanted to go to New York,’ adds Scott.
‘And you said you hated being on the road,’ I point out. He’d said that being on the road was soulless, that the cities, hotels and crowds always blurred and merged into one, and the long highways – that led to out-of-town fast food joints – inevitably drove him to drink. ‘The last two times you fell off the wagon was when you were on tour,’ I add. It seems like a big risk to me. Is he ready for it? ‘Shouldn’t we have discussed this?’
Scott smiles at me, kisses my nose again and then wanders back behind the glass and picks up his headset without answering my question. He doesn’t need to. In my heart of hearts I know the answer. Yes, we should have discussed this, the way we should have discussed the pre-nup and the three celebrity bridesmaids I’ve never met and the sleeping arrangements in the country hotel. Suddenly, my head is full of things Scott and I don’t discuss. We talk about feelings but not facts. Facts are Mark’s bag. I don’t have any other choice than to turn to Mark if I want answers.
‘I’d like to have been consulted,’ I say shortly.
‘He’s going to be crowned King of America, Fern,’ says Mark.
‘America doesn’t have a king,’ I say, somewhat tetchily.
‘They’ve been waiting for him.’ Mark laughs and his cigar smoke billows in my face. ‘You’ve heard the album. We have to get on the road asap. That’s how albums sell.’
‘At the cost of his health?’ I ask, by which I mean sobriety.
‘This album needs to sell at any cost,’ says Mark steadily. ‘Scott knows that. Scott wants that.’ Then he asks, ‘Is this about you not getting a honeymoon? I’ll see he makes it up to you.’ I hate Mark implying I’m being a sulky spoilsport when in fact I’m seriously worried about my fiancé’s health and with good reason.
Ben is standing shoulder to shoulder next to Mark; he beams at me, reassuringly, and says, ‘I’ll come on tour too. It’ll be fun.’
I wish Ben had warned me to expect this. I could have given the matter more thought. I feel exactly as I did when presented with the pre-nup; everyone says it’s all OK, but it doesn’t feel OK. Deep down, somewhere in my gut, something feels off. It’s the oddest sensation. I remember having it as a little girl when I was playing hide and seek with my older siblings and their