Bad Brides (28 page)

Oh my God! No way will I get
Style
Bride of the Year if this story breaks before the
Style
editors have made their decision and locked it all down!

And Mom will die, she’ll just die if I lose that because of some shit that Barb Norkus, of all people, is pulling.

Brianna Jade made a decision. She had no choice. If it were just for herself, she’d tell Barb to go take a running jump: she didn’t even care all that much about being
Style
Bride of the Year, but she knew that for Tamra it was the cherry on the icing on the cake, the culmination of everything she’d hoped to win for her adored daughter when she’d brought
the two of them to London. Even Lady Margaret had said that there couldn’t be any social objection to such a prestigious magazine cover, which had naturally made Tamra more determined than
ever to snag it.

Brianna Jade had heard how Chloe Rose had been mocked by the upper classes when, as a commoner, she started to date Prince Hugo: Chloe had even been called ‘Dog Rose’, which had both
insulted her looks and tagged her as a social climber. How easy would it be for Tamra to be nicknamed ‘Hog Mom’ by some jealous rival who envied Tamra’s beauty and riches? Or for
Brianna Jade to be dubbed ‘Tater Tot’? Again, safe and happy in the country, Brianna Jade wouldn’t give a shit what the tabloids called her: but for Tamra, papped on a regular
basis, to have names like that yelled at her to provoke a reaction would be intolerable.

Mom’s done so much for me. Now it’s time for me to look after her.

A horribly vivid memory of Ken Maloney’s sagging old-man body by the pool, covered in white hairs, mostly where they shouldn’t be, was all Brianna Jade needed to confirm her resolve.
Much as she hated to buckle under to a blackmailer, this was to protect Tamra, and not on her own behalf. That was what convinced her to open her mouth and say: ‘Do you have a bank account,
Barb?’

As it turned out, Barb didn’t have a bank account, something that Brianna Jade had pretty much guessed already. And the maximum you could send via Western Union was four thousand pounds,
which converted roughly into six thousand bucks, which was a fortune to Barb Norkus, even though she pretended that it wasn’t enough, not at all, and attempted to convince Brianna Jade to
send that sum on a weekly basis. Brianna Jade countered with the very good point that the IRS would be all over Barb like white on rice if she sent that much money so regularly, and Barb had
reluctantly agreed. Brianna Jade had said she’d make a transfer every month for that amount, at which Barb had whined and moaned, but Brianna Jade, sensing a weak point, had mentioned the IRS
again, knowing that there was no way Barb was going to declare any of this to the tax people, and Barb had folded.

‘You’ll need to keep sending this every month,’ Barb warned firmly. ‘I can open my mouth just as fast as I can close it, you know?’

Just till the wedding,
Brianna Jade had thought.
After that, and after the
Style Bride
cover –
she had no doubt that Tamra would secure that for her daughter:
hadn’t Tamra got everything that she’d set her heart on in life? –
Barb Norkus can eat my lily-white ass.

And, in the pull-behind Scamp camper in her stepmom Hailey’s front yard, which she was calling home for now, Barb Norkus stretched out her legs and lit another of the Marlboro Lights
she’d boosted from her stepmom’s bag the other day. They were a rare luxury, and she had been saving them for special treats; now, however, she could smoke ’em as much as she
wanted. And she could get the hell out of this nasty thir-teen-foot space, so cramped that, with the double bed down, you were sleeping right next to the kitchen unit, the stinking toilet just a
couple of feet away, and washing yourself in the kitchen sink.

Gross, but free, as Barb’s dad wouldn’t let her stepmom charge her rent for living in the camper, even though Barb’s presence there meant that Hailey had to either lock her
doors or put up with the knowledge that Barb was helping herself to sessions on her dad’s computer and to the household supplies every time Hailey’s back was turned. Hailey had insisted
that Barb do something in return for free accommodation, and Barb had been tasked with watering the geraniums Hailey had cultivated in the tractor tyre planters around the camper’s parking
area: of course she’d never done that once, complaining that she’d been way too busy working the recent state fair.

She looked down complacently at the hand holding the cigarette. She’d had her nails done for the fair, but that had been a while ago, and Barb had been hanging on to those overlays like
grim death, trying to get another few weeks out of them. She’d got her hair coloured when her tax return came in, but now she must have at least four inches of roots: it had been a while.
She’d boosted one of Hailey’s home dye kits to cover the roots, but it hadn’t been as good a match as she thought, so she actually had bi-colour hair now, and it was really
bugging her.

She’d been waiting to pick up farm jobs mid-September for cash; they always needed people to be ‘management’ over the migrant workers. You got paid more if you knew some
Spanish, but Barb didn’t see why she should have to learn another language in America, land of the free English speakers, and she’d never exerted herself to try. She preferred working
the farm stands on weekends and evenings selling peaches, apples or strawberries, logging the baskets people brought from the You-pick-it.

That was where she’d got the phone which she’d used to call Brianna Jade. Some big-city idiot woman in designer jeans, thinking it was so cool to pick her own fruit –
like
that wasn’t a back-breaking job for wetbacks!
Barb thought unpleasantly – had been so busy rattling onto her spoilt brats about how great it was to choose your own peaches –
which you could do just as well at Fairway
– that she’d left her phone on the counter and not realized.
Dumb bitch, serves her right. And extra dumb for having left it with
an international calling plan on it, too.

Well, now Barb could chuck the phone and get a new one. Whatever she wanted. She could get her nails and her roots done, she could move out of this shitty camper with its cheap fibreglass walls
and thin-as-paper fake wood panelling. She could rent somewhere real nice in the upscale trailer court: a forty-footer RV with central air, a home theatre, a dinette that seated four people, an
electric fireplace and a tub/shower – her eyes positively sparkled at the prospect as she jumped down from the bed and headed out of the camper.

She’d hitch a ride to Wal-Mart, or to the Dollar General on the Illinois Highway: there were Western Unions in both places. Brianna Jade had looked on the website and said the transfer
should happen straight away.

Six grand a month! That was seventy-two grand a year – unimaginable riches. Seriously, Barb had never thought she’d make that much in her entire life, let alone in one year! She
could get Brianna Jade to make the transfers to Western Unions all over the States, travel around to collect the money from different locations, find some people to buy fake IDs from so the IRS
wouldn’t catch up with her. Plus, that would mean that all the Kewanee folks wouldn’t figure out why she suddenly had so much money and try to ride the gravy train along with her; if
Brianna Jade got a deluge of calls from back home, all threatening to sell their snaps of her up on that tractor trailer with the Hog Queen sash across her blue satin-covered boobs, she’d
more than likely just throw in the towel and tell ’em to go ahead and do it.

No, this gold mine was all Barb’s: she wasn’t going to share it with a living soul. On her way to the main road she threw the butt of her Marlboro into the closest tractor tyre
planter, kept going, then turned round, pulled the half-empty packet from her pocket, extracted a last cigarette and placed the packet in the centre of the planter, squashing down the geraniums.
Hailey couldn’t fail to see it there when she came home from her shift at Walgreen’s pharmacy counter. It was the perfect fuck-you to her stepmom, acknowledging that Barb had stolen her
cigarettes and didn’t give a shit that Hailey knew it. Plus, it said that Barb didn’t give a shit about Hailey’s damn trashy tractor tyre planters either.

Barb’s tri-colour hair flapped behind her in the breeze as she strode away from the family who had taken her in a couple of months ago when her boyfriend kicked her out. It wouldn’t
have occurred to her for a moment to give a single cent of the six grand to her father and Hailey. In Barb’s world, you took care of yourself first, foremost and for ever. Even saying thank
you was for suckers.

Stanclere Hall, November

‘God, look at the old place!’ Tarquin exclaimed as he turned the car into the drive that led up to Stanclere Hall and the occupants of the eco-friendly had their
first glimpse of the newly done-up house. ‘It’s like a luxury hotel now!’

The Hall had undergone a titanic renovation process in order for it to be spruced up in time for the arrival of the party guests: repairs to the roof had been put on hold in order to focus on
more cosmetic aspects. The stonework had been repointed where it most needed it, the window frames refitted, the moth-eaten carpets replaced only where necessary – now that there was staff to
polish the mahogany floors every day, they could be shown off – and, in a heroic effort, several of the key bedrooms had been converted or extended into others to allow en-suite bathrooms to
be installed.

This was work that had been planned for the wedding at the end of May, not an engagement party in late autumn, and the stampede to speed up the process had been horrendous for everyone involved;
with no neighbours to complain about noise, shifts of workmen had toiled away on double pay from six a.m. to ten at night, every day of the week. Edmund had been banished to a tied cottage on the
estate, Brianna Jade to Chewton Glen Spa Hotel in the Cotswolds, and Tamra, who cared much more about the revamp than either one of them – ironically, as she would never even live at the Hall
– had camped out in a side wing, supervising the works with an iron hand in a velvet glove, and causing the project manager and architect, by the end, to regard her almost as a demi-goddess
come to earth, beautiful, capricious, and probably capable of literally smiting them with a lightning strike from her perfectly manicured fingers if they failed to carry out any of her many and
various orders.

Certainly, however, the Hall had been transformed: it was Cinderella at the ball. The lime trees lining the wide avenue that approached it had been freshly pruned, and the lawns were so green
and lush, the shrubbery so immaculately shaped, that Tarquin’s comment was perfectly judged. The sheer amount of money that had been thrown at the seemingly magical transformation bespoke
five-star hotel rather than private residence.

‘It’s rather a shame, in a way,’ Eva murmured from the back of the car, looking at Stanclere Hall gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, partly because every single one of its
windows was now perfectly clean and they reflected the sun much more than they had when dusty and cobwebbed. Tarquin mm’ed a yes of agreement.

‘Oh, you’re both just silly nostalgics!’ Milly said briskly. ‘What’s so glamorous about a crumbling old house no one can afford to heat? I bet if you visited before
the Fracking Queen threw millions at it, it would have been all draughty and freezing and probably infested with mice, too.’

‘Not
glamorous
, Milly, but maybe romantic?’ Eva said dreamily. ‘Faded tapestries, pulling on extra sweaters in the evening, sitting around the fire, cooking over a big
range in the kitchen . . . Can you imagine the attics full of old furniture, trunks with stacks of old letters and family photographs, dresses in rickety old cupboards that go back centuries?
Rocking horses, maybe, covered in cobwebs . . . Think how lovely it would be to explore . . .’

‘Ugh, the
dust
,’ Milly commented, but neither of them were listening.

‘Rooms no one’s gone into for absolutely
ages
,’ Tarquin chimed in. ‘Wow, that’s so evocative. I can just imagine it. Like layer upon layer of history, a
sort of palimpsest of the Hall going back through time.
That’s
what we mean, darling,’ he said to Milly with his sweet smile. ‘When you clean everything up, you sort of
sweep those layers away for ever, if you see what I mean.’

‘Exactly!’ Eva added with great enthusiasm. ‘It’s like you’re whitewashing away the past. The house is like a memory keeper – almost like its own diary going
back through the ages – and when you lose that, it’s almost like you lose its essential essence—’

‘Oh, for God’s
sake
!’ Milly interrupted impatiently as the Prius followed the sweep of the drive as it curved towards the Hall. ‘You’re both talking
absolute nonsense! Honestly, Tark, you’ll end up presenting some TV show on stately homes for American heritage nostalgics, the way you go on.’

‘I wouldn’t mind that, actually,’ her fiancé said thoughtfully. ‘In fact, I think I’d rather like it.’

But, as so often, Milly had tuned him out. She didn’t just invite Eva almost everywhere she and Tarquin went because she loved Eva’s company; she had realized, quite early on when
she started to date Tarquin, that the more Eva was around, the less Milly herself had to even pretend to be interested as Tarquin wittered on about poetry and
fêtes champêtres
and layers of history. It worked wonderfully. Milly took care of Tarquin’s romantic and physical needs, Eva his intellectual ones. This made life ridiculously easy for Milly, who needed to
keep Tarquin happy. Getting engaged to him, planning the wedding, had catapulted Milly into a much higher level of celebrity: snagging
Style
Bride of the Year would be a pinnacle for her
– not just being on the front of the magazine in itself, but the flood of media coverage that would disseminate her image to the rest of the world.