7

      The kitchens were a hive of activity. The oyster, salmon and prawns delivery had turned up, phew, another check on Ellie’s list. She and Irene had a quick cup of tea, which Ellie forced herself to have a slice of toast and butter with, or she’d be at risk at forgetting to eat. Nanna’s voice had already appeared in her head that morning nagging her about that.

      Ellie headed up to the Great Hall to see how things were going. Joe, Colin – the gardener, Malcolm and Derek were trying to shift the heavy banquet table to the side of the room. There was a lot of huffing and puffing, and the gents were obviously struggling. So Ellie took up one side and nodded to Doris to help too. That seemed to add to the momentum, and they shifted it the few feet across it needed. Boy, was it heavy!

      ‘Crickey, that’ll do my back no favours at all, Malcolm,’ Derek muttered.

      ‘You’ll be fine, Derek. If Ellie can lift it, I’m sure you can.’ Malcolm seemed to have lost his patient edge this morning. This event was testing everyone.

      ‘Thanks, folks.’ Joe was trying his best to keep them all motivated.

      A couple of minutes later, Wendy bustled in bearing two large boxes of flowers. As she opened the lids, the scent was gorgeous, filling the room.

      ‘We’re nearly there, Wendy. If you can hold fire for about fifteen minutes, we’ll have the other tables in and set up ready for you. Come on lads, step to it.’ Joe said.

      Malcolm just raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Slave labour.’

      ‘Tell me about it,’ Ellie added, with a wry grin.

      ‘So masterful though,’ Malcolm mouthed silently to Ellie over Joe’s shoulder, much to the amusement of the room.

      Ellie’s mobile went off. Her eyes flicked to the screen, Chelsea calling. Here goes …

      She walked to stand by the leaded windows that overlooked the rear gardens; the signal being better there.

      ‘It’s a total disaster! The electrics have all gone off, and we’re in the middle of blow-drying my hair. You’ll need to sort it out immediately,’ Chelsea shrieked, her voice so loud, Ellie had to hold the phone away from her ear.

      It was probably just the trip switch. They would no doubt have an array of hair straighteners, hairdryers, nail dryers, music systems playing, the works, all on at the same time. The ancient castle electrical system just couldn’t cope sometimes. She’d go check it out and call in Joe if it seemed more complicated than that.

      ‘We’ve run out of prosecco, too. We’ll need at least four more bottles. I’ll need to calm my nerves after this fiasco. I’ll never be ready in time, now.’

      ‘O-kay. No problem.’ They had indeed drunk all sixteen bottles last night. But Ellie had seen Alan arrive to set up the Reception drinks in the drawing room. She’d call by and see if he had any spare bottles on the way through.

      ‘Okay, everything all right here for now, then? I’m off to the bridal rooms. Some electrical crisis. I should be able to handle it.’

      ‘Good luck.’ ‘Yes, best of luck.’ ‘Call me if you need,’ Joe added.

      ‘Will do.’

      There were looks of empathy as she headed out.

      Ellie tried to smile as she knocked and entered the bridal zone, but already the act was hurting her cheek muscles.

      She was carrying the four bottles of bubbly as instructed, and popped them down on the side.

      ‘About bloody time.’

      Manners maketh a man, echoed in Ellie’s mind. Some people, goodness … It was Nanna’s voice. Ellie bit the inside of her cheek.

      ‘Right, if you just give me two minutes, I’m going to check the fuse box for this area of the castle.’

      She scoured the room before she left. Yes, guilty as charged; on the first glance, she saw a kettle plugged in, an iron set up on an ironing board, two pairs of ghd straighteners, three hairdryers, some kind of gel-nails drying machine, several iPods charging, and goodness knows what else was tucked away out of sight. ‘You can’t have all that equipment on at once, I’m afraid. The electrical system just can’t cope with it. Whilst the hairdryers and straighteners are going, maybe hold back from boiling the kettle, and charging your phones.’

      There were groans all round.

      ‘Anyone would think we’re in the dark ages,’ Chelsea muttered, with a scowl.

      ‘Well, it is a castle venue.’ Ellie tried to hold her frustration at bay. ‘There are naturally some limitations. I’m sorry, but there’s not an awful lot I can do about it, other than warn you not to overload the system, or it may well trip off again.’ She felt like adding that electrics just weren’t in the original castle designs, and to remind them that they had chosen a rural castle venue specifically and not the bloody Ritz Hotel, but she thought the rebukes would just be too much.

      Joe and the team did their best to keep the castle infrastructure as modernized as possible, and of course they were careful to keep everything up to date safety-wise, but rewiring and upgrading a whole ancient building like this would be a logistical nightmare, as well as running into many thousands of pounds, which they just didn’t have.

      ‘Sorry … Perhaps you could spread yourselves over a few of the rooms you have, that’d help too.’

      ‘Aw,’ Bridezilla pulled a face, ‘but it’s all girlies together, that’s the whole idea. Anyway, what are you waiting for, stood around here. Get it sorted. My hair’ll be a frizz-ball else. And I know who’ll to blame.’

      Ellie pursed her lips as she turned to go, to stop the torrent of home truths that were threatening to spill out at that very second. Instead they burned in her brain, including several swear words.

      She reached the fuse box down the passageway, and used a chair to climb up and take a closer look.

      Damn.

      It wasn’t just the trip switch gone. There was a suspicious smell of burnt plastic and one of the switches looked rather frazzled. This was a job for the experts, and there was no way they would be turning any electrics back on in this section of rooms for now. At least the other switches on the row seemed okay, there was no smoke, and the rest of the castle was still up and running.

      She needed to get in touch with Joe ASAP, and get him to call out the local electrician; with any luck they might be able to get it fixed through the day, so the girls could at least come back and use their bedrooms that evening.

      But for now, there were hairdryers, curlers, straighteners, and goodness knows what to get back into action. As well as a bride with a very large bee in her bonnet.

      Ellie wasn’t quite sure how she was going to tell her, and felt her throat tighten and her mouth dry. Maybe she should go and put on the full metal suit