The days whirled by madly, hardly enough hours in the day to suit Sophie. She dealt with everything, from fittings, to planning and tying everyone down for the rehearsal, getting the chapel decorations just right, planning the music, the cake, the reception, place-cards, working out who could sit where, who was feuding with who, and where the girls most likely to cause trouble or try and upstage me, but for various reasons couldn’t be excluded, could be shunted to keep them out of the way and out of trouble. (As a sidebar to all this, the girls were astonished at how much Sophie looked like Mom; they couldn’t get over how she looked, spoke, even laughed, like Mom; Josie was intrigued to the point she went so far as to speculate that Mom and Sophie had to have had some kind of familial connection; no two random strangers could be so similar, there had to be more to it. As it happens, she was right, but more of that later).
In the midst of all this, Richard and Hugo were called away to crisis meetings in Hong Kong, so Jimmy and Sophie’s gardener were drafted in to stand in for them during the endless practice runs, and fittings, fittings, fittings, as Sophie redesigned the bridal party’s dresses pretty much every day.
At the peak of all this chaos, the boys returned, their business in Hong Kong concluded, and Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. We were in the sitting room in my home, Josie, Sara, Rosie, and I all standing on footstools, chatting and giggling as Sophie and the dressmaker remodelled our dresses yet again, our backs to the door and not seeing Richard and Hugo, until a soft “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to interrupt anything…’ caused both girls to whirl around and freeze, transfixed, staring at the boys while they stared right back, all four of them suddenly playing statues.
I started to introduce everyone, but I kind of trailed off when I realized no-one was listening, and Rosie was nudging me to silence as Richard and Sara, and Hugo and Josie gazed at each other. Sophie’s eyebrows went up, then up some more when she realized what was going on, but she kept silent, not wanting to break the spell.
I could tell immediately that this was different; Richard and Hugo went through girls like it was some kind of contest, dating three or four different girls every week, but I’d never seen them struck dumb before. If I’m honest, the super-hot fashion models/media darlings they usually dated made Sara and Josie look kind of ordinary, but I’d never seen the boys stunned into silence and gaze at any girl the way they were captivated by my two friends, and a little bell started ringing way down inside me. This was different. Were Richard and Hugo, playboys extraordinaire, finally caught? From the way Rosie looked at me and nodded, I think I knew the answer, and Sophie, looking silently from her sons to my girls and back again, like a slow-motion tennis match, looked like she knew too.
Sophie finally broke the silence, her throat-clearing enough to startle everyone, and then the blushes began; frankly, I was amazed; I’ve seen both Sara and Josie go into furious, blistering four-letter tirades at some of the brain-dead jackasses infesting the high school without a second of shame or pause for breath, yet now they were blushing the way they used to when we were ten years old and Davey would smile at them.
“Lori, who is THAT?” whispered Sara out the side of her mouth, her gaze fixed on Richard. “My God, he looks just like Davey, they both do, oh Jeez, are they his brothers? Has he got any brothers? Say something!”
Josie just gazed unblinkingly at Hugo. As for Richard and Hugo, their usual poise and aplomb seemed to have completely deserted them as they stood there silently, with their mouths hanging open, gazing raptly at my girlfriends. It was Sophie who eventually spoke, cutting across the waves of attraction tinged with longing emanating from all four of them.
“Josephine, Sara, I’d like to introduce my sons, Richard and Hugo; boys, I’d like you to meet Josephine Gregor and Sara Mason, Loretta’s friends from America.”
Both men stumbled and fumbled through some sort of response, all the while not taking their eyes off my friends’ faces, and probably would have stood there dumbstruck for the rest of the afternoon if Rosie hadn’t frowned at them and jerked her head at the two girls. Then they moved, possibly at warp-speed, because suddenly they were beside them, offering a hand each to the girls as they stepped down, and then the Denham charm clicked-on, while the seamstress watched wide-eyed, her mouth full of pins, as the girls were led away in a kind of trance, their dresses tacked-up and trailing bits of lace and ribbon, leaving Rosie and I stranded on our perches, completely forgotten.
I caught Sophie’s eye, and grinned happily, and I could see the words ‘Yesss! At last, Hallelujah!!!’ rolling around in her eyes like the reels on a fruit machine, and she, Rosie and I grinned at each other like cats while an awful lot of smoldering looks and intense gazing, green eyes into green eyes, happened on the other side of the room. I couldn’t help thinking that from such small beginnings are dynasties born, and I smiled at the thought that those two playboys might finally have found what they’d been looking for all along, and maybe, just maybe, all being well, there’d be a new generation of green-eyed Denham children along one day soon.