Celebrity Bride by Alison Kervin Read Free Book Online Page A

tinsel, cocktail sticks and about three umbrellas. He thinks he's working in the bar in Only Fools and Horses .)
    'We're the Three Musketeers,' Sophie had said, raising her glass rather suddenly and dramatically, causing her to splash us all with Purple Nasty. (Yes – Purple Nasty – you heard me correctly – that's snakebite with blackcurrant in it. She's started drinking it since hearing that Charlotte Church and Girls Aloud knock it back at celebrity parties.) 'We will never be parted.'
    'Never,' said Mandy.
    'Never,' I agreed.
    Then we did that thing where you entwine your arms and drink through the arms of the person next to you and we all ended up covered in more Purple Nasty. It was a great night though, and I guess what I'm saying is, I can't imagine either of them letting me down after they promised that they wouldn't.
    'Sorry,' I say to Rufus, despite my conviction that the article is nothing to do with my mates. I feel the need to apologise because the quotes in the piece relate exclusively to me. I hope Mum's OK. And Great-Aunt Maude. She'll wet herself if she sees the article. No, she will, really. She wets herself a lot.
    Mum's a complete star with Maude; she really looks after her. She's the only one in the family who does. She's always going to visit her even though Maude's own children don't have anything to do with her. I don't know how Mum does it. Especially coping with all the nonsense about the war. You walk out of the sitting room to go and make tea and Maude bursts into tears, thinking you're off to fight them on the beaches or something. 'I'm only going to the kitchen; I'll be back in a minute,' I say, but Maude's never convinced.
    'They all say that but most of them never come back,' she mumbles, sobbing into a lace hankie.
    'The press in this country are a nightmare, but we'll survive, sweetheart,' says Rufus, seeing the worried look on my face as I stare down at the article. He smiles at me endearingly and heads off to find David and request more coffee. Rufus has one of those posh coffee-makers in the drawing room that I love; it radiates a smell like a Parisian café. You press the button on the side and suddenly it's so French you can almost hear the sound of accordions and feel the presence of the Eiffel Tower. The whole place pulsates with the aroma of roasted coffee beans. It's a bit different from the old flat where the mink-lined kettle chugged into action very reluctantly, making more noise than a small factory as it nudged its way to boiling point. When you poured the water out it was full of limescale – like out-of-date almond flakes scattered throughout the water, filling your mouth and lodging themselves in your throat and under your tongue.
    David appears at the bedroom door (all these staff wandering around the place are taking a lot of getting used to), and hands a tray to Rufus who puts my cup of coffee onto the lovely cream bedside table, which was imported from France at great cost. Every time I look round this amazing house it strikes me that there are pieces of furniture in here that are worth more than my parents' home.
    When I arrived last week, struggling along with my suitcases and carrier bags brimming with clothes, the staff came out to greet me at the main gate and took me through to the elegant brown leather and wood filled sitting room. There's a sitting room and drawing room at the front of the house, then a library, backed with those really old books you see in stately homes, and a games room with a cinema screen in it as you go back through the house. There's also a high-tech gym and a lovely, cosy snug with a breakfast table in it. At the back, there's a terribly elegant dining room, with modern-looking kitchens at either end. The staff who live in (four of them, including David) are based in the outhouses on the land at the back. And this is Rufus's casual London place. His main house is in Los Angeles, then there's the ski lodge he owns in Aspen and the flat