Always Alchemy: The Ever After Book (Alchemy #6)

22. Forty Love

22

FORTY LOVE

RAFE

M y MO has always been: if you want something done properly, do it yourself.

Unfortunately, that’s also the MO of my three co-founders and best friends. When it comes to planning our joint fortieth birthday bash, you could say there are a lot of cooks in this kitchen.

Luckily, I love them.

Also, they’re all damn fine cooks.

Deciding on a venue wasn’t an issue. Given the amount of children we all seem to be producing, it was important to us that we find a place that was as family-friendly as it was luxurious (oh, how far we’ve come from the debauched early days of Alchemy). It also had to have incredible food and be within an easy distance of London.

There was one clear choice: Sorrel Farm, a stunning resort, foodie haven and working biodynamic farm in Kent, around twenty miles south-east of London as the crow flies. I’ve watched its rise with interest and admiration. Several years ago, a celebrity named Evelyn Macleod took a controlling interest, and she and her husband turned its fortunes around. Shortly after that, the Montague Group took a stake, adding a new jewel in the crown of their global hotel collection.

Since then, its rise has been stratospheric. Good job they only take reservations a year out, and even better job that I pulled my old mate, Theo Montague, aside just over a year ago and asked him for a price to take over the entire resort for a weekend.

And here we are.

This evening, one hundred of our closest friends and relatives will take over Sorrel Farm with fuck knows how many of their children tagging along—I’ve totally lost count. While the resort won’t quite be at full capacity, its staff will have its hands full with entertaining copious amounts of children of every age while keeping the adults fed and watered. (I’m confident we grownups can entertain ourselves.)

This feels like a good window of opportunity to push the boat out. To take a weekend and celebrate our families. Our friendship. While I can’t claim to have engineered this deliberately, Belle is just past the twelve-week mark with our second child. She’s doing better this time—she seems less nauseous than she did with Rosalie—but she’s pretty tired juggling work and an energetic toddler with growing a human being, so a weekend of sunbathing and catching up with the girls seems just what the doctor ordered.

Besides, once this baby arrives, I don’t see us leaving the house for the next, I don’t know, five years? I have no idea how the fuck people juggle more than one.

It’s incredible to think that before Belle Scott floated into my life, all tiger eyes and golden hair and honeyed limbs, I had no intention at all of settling down. I was working hard and playing harder. My life was convenience food and convenience fucking.

And now, four short years later, I’m as obsessively and revoltingly in love as a man can be.

I’m a husband.

I’m a father.

I’m that dickhead who actually counts his blessings every night before he goes to bed, because love and gratitude is the perfect attitude, or however the saying goes, and I’m knee-deep in both of them.

My mates are just the same. Gen and Cal I despaired of, if I’m honest. For completely different reasons, I didn’t think either of them would ever find that one person who was capable of making them rethink their single status.

And Zach?

My heart has bled more tears over that guy and his daughters than over any other human beings I know. There was a time when I wasn’t sure he’d make it. None of us were. We were worried sick at the shell of a man he became after we lost Claire: a flesh and blood human hollowed out by grief.

When I look at the man he is today, madly in love and fucking delighted with Jonny, deliriously happy with his incredible wife and beautiful daughters, I could kiss Maddy. She will never know how unutterably grateful we all are to her for bringing our mate back to the most purposeful, vibrant version of life.

So let’s bring it on this weekend.

Let’s raise our glasses and toast the myriad blessings that rain down on us every day.

Let’s drink to our health and our children and our better halves .

And let’s hope the rain stays the fuck away.

My formal medical prediction is that if we lived down here, my blood pressure would halve. Not that it’s overly high—I take good care of myself. Still, it’s hard to imagine a more idyllic way to spend a Friday night than this (the shrieks of over-excited kids aside, that is).

Given our friends are arriving at various points over the course of the evening, keeping tonight on the informal side seemed sensible. No one wants to be stressing to make a prescribed time for dinner while navigating the obligatory Friday evening traffic jams heading out of London.

When the four of us came down here to scope the place out in detail a few months ago, it was Theo Montague’s wife, Nora, who showed us around. She runs all the events here. As soon as we spotted the Walled Garden, it was game over. It may have looked sparser in February than I remember it being when Theo’s brother Miles got married here, but my memories of that day were enough to tell me how glorious it’d be in summer.

So here we are, right in the centre of the resort, on a serene late-June evening, kicking back with ice-cold beers in one of the most picturesque environments I’ve had the pleasure of seeing recently. This area, with its ancient walls, lies right at the centre of the resort. The space is punctuated by a long, slate-tiled pool that runs down its centre. Said pool is currently inhabited by half a dozen rash-vest-clad staff from the kids’ club and God knows how many children and floaties. They look to be having an absolute ball.

Around the periphery of the garden lie spectacular flower beds in all shades of white, blue and purple, delphiniums and hollyhocks and verbena jostling for space. Nora told us the gardens would be at their best in June, and boy, was she right. Above them, the old walls are covered with a combination of espaliers and wisteria which must have been fantastic last month and is now a vibrant green.

We could do this. We could sell up and buy a rambling pile down here with orchards and paddocks and a pool. We could cultivate gardens like this, gardens that get better every year. We could mark the kids’ heights with cuts into an old oak tree and spend Friday evenings drinking chilled white wine in our tranquil walled garden instead of trying out whatever newest and coolest restaurant is on our hit list.

Still, I know in my heart that Belle and I couldn’t leave the vibrance of London for long. I’m aware, unfortunately, that the tranquility of a place like this would drive us barmy without the buzz of London to offset it. At least it’s a reminder to escape the city more often.

I slip my arm more tightly around my wife, who’s sitting next to me in a circle of some of our gang, and survey the rest of the scene. Sorrel Farm is famed for its food, not just because its farm to table eating style benefits from the biodynamic farming practices it espouses, but because of the talents of their chef. I have every one of her cookery books.

In keeping with our informal approach tonight, catering-sized barbecues and long trestle tables line one side of the garden, the latter groaning under the weight of huge food platters. People are digging in as they arrive, and it seems the food just keeps being replenished.

Probably a good thing, given the rate at which Cal’s putting away those spare ribs.

Everywhere I look, our loved ones are laughing and joking. I spot Dex and Max chatting with Lauren and Charles, standing closer to the pool’s edge than I would deem advisable, given the level of splashing the kids are managing. The tweens and teens—mainly the French and Russell kids, I think—are in an awkward gaggle to one side. I remember that age, when everything felt awkward and the adults shunted you all together and expected you to hang out.

But, closer to home, the newest members of the Alchemy gang are getting along famously, and putting on a hell of a show for us.

Rosalie and Jonny are playing together in the little patch of lawn right in front of where we’re sitting. Post swim, they’re wearing dry nappies and matching yellow-and-white striped ponchos made of towelling fabric. When they get older, they will have many questions about why they were dressed identically or complementarily so much of the time, and when that happens, Zach and I will direct them to their mothers for answers.

I have to admit, they’re a fucking adorable pair. Jonny’s a robust little guy, marginally taller than Rosalie and smiley as hell, so dark next to her fairness. They’re playing with an inflatable beach ball someone nabbed from the pool, waddling along after it and constantly falling over. Each time one of them falls on their arse, the look of shock on their face nearly finishes me off. It’s priceless.

‘So cute,’ Belle says, leaning forward and zooming in on them with her phone.

‘They have to get married when they grow up,’ Mads insists, and Zach snorts.

‘Pretty sure that would feel like marrying your cousin, given how close they are.’

‘Childhood friends to lovers is a very romantic trope,’ she tells him with a straight face .

‘Not happening,’ I tell her. ‘Rosalie will never have any lovers. She’s going to your old school as soon as she’s eleven. Her upbringing will make her mother’s look like she was raised in a free love commune.’

Ben Scott may be persona non grata in our household, but I’m beginning to empathise more with his “purity culture” approach to Belle’s upbringing than I did before I had a daughter, that’s for sure.

My wife snorts in a most unladylike fashion. ‘Not as long as she has Maddy for a godmother, it won’t.’

‘Definitely should have thought that one through more carefully,’ I muse aloud. To stir the pot, I add, ‘Speaking of intermarriage among the next generation, I reckon Kit’s trying to impress Stella.’ I jerk my head to where the older kids are gathered with their ice creams.

Right on cue, Zach attempts to jump to his feet, his face thunderous. So fucking predictable. Maddy holds him back. ‘Stop it,’ she hisses. ‘You promised the girls you wouldn’t embarrass them this weekend.’

‘He’d better not try anything,’ he blusters, taking an angry swig of his rosé.

I smirk broadly. In just over a decade, I’ll be squarely in his shoes, but for now, this is gold. Aida and I exchange glances, and I see that she’s trying to hold back her laughter, too.

‘He’s two years younger than her,’ Maddy points out. ‘She’d rather die than give him the time of day. I promise you, no fourteen year-old girl wants to even acknowledge a twelve-year-old boy.’

‘Look at those keepy-uppies, though,’ Cal remarks, a glow of pride on his face. Kit’s expression is one of pure concentration as he shows off his skills with a football for the rest of them. Nancy is keeping a loud count, while Stella looks wholeheartedly unimpressed. She got scouted for Chelsea’s youth team a couple of years ago. She’s seriously talented—far more than Kit, I’d warrant.

‘Yeah, Stel’s gonna wipe the floor with him when he’s done,’ Zach predicts, looking more relaxed. ‘Too early to tell if this one will take after his sister, though.’

He nods in the direction of his youngest, who promptly falls sideways over the ball and goes arse over tit. Rosalie shouts with delighted laughter and claps her hands together while Jonny, initially unsure of what to make of his surprise crash landing, beams happily.

Having a toddler is exhausting, but I have a feeling that it only gets more complex the older they get.