mine remained drinking. It wasn’t a late night – we’d ordered bar snacks and decided to call it a night just after 10 p.m. All, that is, apart from Ruby, who was by that point sitting at a corner table with Jeremy, also staying in the hotel having flown in from New York.
I guessed that it was around 4 a.m. and didn’t feel I needed to know the specifics of Ruby’s escapades with Jeremy the usher right now. ‘Can’t it wait until morning?’
‘It is morning.’
It couldn’t be. It was as dark as a coal mine in that room.
Ruby turned on a lamp. I clapped a hand over my eyes.
‘Look,’ she said, and I peered through my fingers to see her phone screen. It was 7.32 a.m. I glanced at the windows; the blackout blinds had tricked me.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I need to tell you something.’
It was like sharing a room with a hyperactive 5-year-old. ‘What?’
Ruby suddenly looked very solemn. ‘I slept with Jeremy last night…’
‘I guessed.’
‘No, but that’s not what I need to tell you.’
I frowned. ‘What? You’re freaking me out.’
She winced at me. ‘He had a video on his phone.’
‘O-K…’
‘Of the stag. A video someone took in Prague.’
‘Hugo’s stag?’
She nodded.
‘Of what?’
She winced again. ‘Of this,’ she said, offering me her phone.
I pressed play and heard rowdy male shouts and someone panting. The picture was blurry so I held the phone screen closer to my face, then grimaced and held it back out to her.
‘Ruby, this is porn. Why are you showing me porn at seven thirty in the morning?’
‘It’s not porn, look!’ She held up the phone to me and that was when I realized. It was Hugo, sitting in a chair, while a woman in a very small pair of red sequinned knickers rubbed her bottom against his groin.
‘What’s wrong with her nipples? Why’s she got corn plasters on them? I can’t watch this.’ I tried to hand the phone back again.
‘You have to!’ instructed Ruby.
Reluctantly, I dragged my eyes back to the screen as the dancer turned to face Hugo and pushed one of her breasts in his face.
‘What’s she doing?’
‘Watch it!’ said Ruby, nodding at the phone.
I tutted as Hugo’s hands reached around and clasped her bottom, pulling her towards him, then the dancer stepped back again to laddy cheers.
‘They’re marshmallows,’ Ruby explained. ‘On her nipples. Look, they’re gone now. Hugo bit them off. But keep watching.’
‘Do I have to? I need a coffee.’ I looked around the room as if a waiter with a cafetière would spring up from behind a piece of furniture. This wasn’t the wake-up call I’d envisaged.
‘Yes, look.’ Ruby nodded at the phone again as the woman in the spangly knickers dropped to her knees between Hugo’s legs and unzipped his flies. She lowered her mouth and I flung the phone on the duvet as if it had scalded my hand. ‘Rubes, I’m not watching that.’
From the end of the bed, as the video continued, I could still hear the laddy cheers floating towards us.
Ruby reached for the phone, pressed stop and we both sat frozen on the bed.
‘Quite impressed Hugo had it in him, to be honest,’ I said, after a few beats of silence. ‘But does it… I mean… does he…?’
‘Finish?’ said Ruby, as if she was discussing a running race. ‘Yes, he does. And then, well, sorry Flo, but it gets worse.’
‘Worse? How can it get worse? How can there be anything worse than discovering a video of our almost brother-in-law getting blown off by a woman who looks like a lion tamer on the day he’s getting married to our sister?’
‘Shhhh,’ she said, inclining her head at the adjoining door to the room where Mia was, hopefully, fast asleep. She held the phone up but I batted it down.
‘I’m not watching any more.’
‘OK, but…’ she stopped.
‘What?’
‘Rory’s in it too.’
‘WHAT?’
‘Shhhhh!’ Then she tapped at her phone again and I saw a flash of the lion tamer grinding herself into Rory before I looked in the other direction.
‘Rubes, I really can’t… I just don’t want to see.’
The room went quiet again.
‘How does she get the marshmallows to stay on?’ I mused.
‘Seriously? That’s your main question.’
‘No, not my main one.’ I glanced at her. ‘I presume Rory, er, gets there too?’
She nodded. ‘And you can hear him shout “Cowabunga!” Do you want to see?’
‘No, I really don’t,’ I said, sighing and leaning back on the suede headboard. ‘OK, a few questions. Firstly, how did you find out about this?’