Kate's Wedding (30 page)

‘I’ll take the seafront,’ said John. His grim expression spoke of the potential agonies of that path.

‘Dad,’ said Tess, linking her arm through his momentarily, ‘she won’t have done anything like that. Kate may have been confused, but she wasn’t suicidal. I’m sure that before you know it, one of us will be walking her home.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Come on, Dad. We
know
so.’

They came to the main road and took their different directions.

Tess’s plan was to cut through the housing estate to the alleyway that led to the common. Since she and Mike had moved down to the south coast for his work, Kate had visited them often. Kate would often accompany Tess when she walked the family dog around the scrubby land towards which Tess was now headed. They’d shared some happy afternoons there, sitting on the dry grass while the dog made friends with its fellow canines and Lily gathered posies of wild flowers. It had been the scene of many deep and meaningful conversations. Away from the possibility of being overheard by Mike, and while Lily was still too young to be interested, Kate and Tess had talked about everything. Tess knew Kate’s darkest secrets and vice versa. In any case, the common seemed an obvious place for Kate to aim for on her own.

Tess thought about some of the conversations she and Kate had shared recently. As young children, they had been inseparable. The teenage years had them at each other’s throats, and there was a tricky period when Tess first got married, but they had grown to appreciate one another more and more as each year passed. They shared the unique bond of siblings whose joint experiences are impossible to replicate in any ordinary friendship. Who else but a sibling really knows what your family life was like?

Had their family life doomed Kate to make the decision not to marry after all? Kate had always idolised their father. Their parents’ marriage was a textbook example of getting it right. Was every relationship Kate had doomed to fail because it couldn’t live up to the idyll of their childhood?

Tess had certainly discovered marriage to be rather less than she had hoped for. It did get boring, being with the same person for years without end. Motherhood, too, was dull and grinding more often than it was a joy. Tess wondered if it was in fact the way she had groaned and moaned about her own married life that had made Kate decide she would be better off with the constant round of spa breaks and shopping trips of single life.

They had all so hoped that she would marry Ian. It was obvious from the first time the family met him that Ian adored their precious Kate as much as they did. Had they put too much pressure on her to say ‘yes’? It was just that he was such a breath of fresh air after the Dan years. How strange it had seemed that Kate could have been in a four-year relationship with a man they’d never met. Before that, the only boyfriend of any real significance was Matt. Tess had never really liked Matt. She found him smug and cocky. It was hard to imagine he had much of a bedside manner even now. Tess knew, of course, that her sister had been seeing something of him.

If Kate really had decided to do a runner, then the rest of the day was going to be a nightmare. Tess knew that her parents would get over a cancelled wedding eventually. The important thing was that Kate understood that she had the right to choose in favour of her own happiness, because once the ring was on her finger, it would be a whole lot harder. As she stepped onto the common where she had often contemplated her own great escape, Tess could vouch for that.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Melanie had stayed up half the night trying to put together a suitable message to send to Keith via his Facebook account. It wasn’t easy. How on earth do you start an email to the ex-husband you haven’t seen in over a decade? Do you have to authenticate yourself first? Melanie had set up a Facebook account for the purpose of trying to track Keith down. It bore her name, but there was little else to prove that she was who she said she was. No photograph. Why shouldn’t Keith just delete her message right away?

What was her motivation for doing this? Did she really think that any letter she sent would be gratefully received? Over the years that they had been apart, the righteous anger Melanie had once felt that she ‘wasn’t getting her needs met’ had mellowed so that at last she could see how unreasonable she had been. Keith had hardly been getting his needs met either. However, it was possible that Keith, who had so generously shouldered all the blame back then, had come to see things quite differently.

Melanie decided in the end that she would not send the message. Not yet. Besides, despite the royal wedding, that Saturday was to be no different from any other Saturday at Bride on Time. The last thing Melanie needed was to be preoccupied and waiting for an answer. There were brides to be dressed. Melanie prided herself in never having let a bride down, and she wasn’t about to start.

Heidi and Sarah were both in the salon early.

‘The royal wedding just sort of fizzled out after you went home,’ said Sarah. ‘We went to the pub in the afternoon, but it was just like any ordinary Friday only with free sausage rolls.’

‘Not even good sausage rolls,’ Heidi chipped in.

‘Are you all right?’ Sarah asked then. ‘We know it must be hard for you, thinking back to 1981.’

‘It is hard,’ said Melanie brusquely, ‘but life goes on.’

‘You are brave, Mel.’

Maybe, not right then, but soon, she would have to tell Heidi and Sarah that life was very much going on in Keith’s case. She wondered how they would react when she told them she was not in fact a widow but a divorcee and she had spent the previous evening looking for her ex-husband on Facebook.

‘We’ve got fifteen girls today,’ said Heidi. ‘I feel like collapsing already.’

‘Oh, here’s to their happy ever afters,’ said Sarah, raising her coffee mug, ‘and here’s to my early night.’

‘I’m beginning to understand why you have that rule about not going to any of the weddings you’re invited to,’ Heidi said to Melanie. ‘Come Saturday lunchtime, I don’t honestly care if no one ever marries again in the history of the whole bloody world.’

‘Do you want to come over to my house for dinner tonight?’ Sarah asked. ‘I’ve got loads of leftovers from the buffet I did for Princess Kate.’

‘That’s kind, Sarah, but I’ve already got plans.’

Sarah and Heidi looked disbelieving. They knew that Phil the widower had been off the scene since February and Melanie hadn’t mentioned anybody else.

‘Where are you going?’ Heidi asked, because she knew that Sarah wouldn’t dare.

‘Just out,’ said Melanie.

‘Come on, you can tell us.’

‘All right,’ said Melanie. ‘I’m going to a wedding.’

Chapter Fifty-Three

Preparations for Diana’s wedding were almost complete. Diana was resplendent in her dress, sipping from a flute of pink champagne while her seven bridesmaids buzzed around her skirts. Pete, the photographer, was recording every moment. Outside, her father, Dave, had just arrived. He’d tricked out his old silver Jaguar with white ribbons so that Susie, Diana’s grandmother and two of the bridesmaids could be driven to the cathedral in style. He’d even persuaded one of his fitters to don a chauffeur’s cap and play driver for the occasion.

‘I had it valeted,’ Dave told Susie as she admired the shine on the bonnet.

Susie smiled at her ex-husband for the first time since they swapped expletives outside a supermarket on the day Susie heard he was getting remarried, ten years before.

‘Thank you, Dave,’ she said now. ‘That means a lot to me.’

‘It’s all for our little girl,’ said Dave. ‘Would you look at her?’

They could see Diana through the living-room window. Nicole was helping her step into her Louboutins.

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Every bit the princess she was named after.’

‘At least one good thing came of our marriage,’ Susie agreed.

As they stood on the front doorstep exchanging pleasantries, Susie and Dave heard the sound of horses’ hooves at the top of the street. They turned to see the bridal carriage pulling into the cul de sac. It was a white, open-topped carriage straight out of a Disney cartoon. A liveried driver held the reins. A matching footman balanced on the running board. The carriage was pulled by not one but two perfectly white horses. But these were no ordinary horses. They were unicorns.

‘Oh my God,’ said Susie. ‘Are they for real?’

Each horse wore a very convincing prosthetic horn on its forehead.

‘Don’t you remember that first wedding drawing Diana did when she was six years old?’ said Dave. ‘She told me she wanted to be taken to her wedding by unicorns. Unicorns is what Diana wants and so unicorns is what Diana gets.’

The bride and her attendants gawped from the window. Diana leaned out.

‘Your carriage awaits,’ Dave said with a chivalrous bow.

‘Oh my God, Dad! Unicorns! You remembered!’ Diana raced out of the house as fast as her huge dress would allow her and soon she was on the verge of happy tears.

‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry!’ The make-up artist bobbed around her. ‘Your false eyelashes will come off.’

Diana was wearing a pair of falsies that put the long lashes of her ‘unicorns’ to shame. Susie handed her a handkerchief so that she might dab her tears and protect them.

‘Oh, Dad,’ said Diana, ‘this is the best bridal carriage ever.’

‘Because you’re the best girl in the world.’

‘Aaaaah,’ chorused the bridesmaids, led by Nicole. The bridesmaids were all dressed in pink. It didn’t suit all of them, but it did match Diana’s flowers.

‘Dad’ – Diana gave him a hug that left a big foundation-coloured smear on his collar – ‘I know you haven’t always been the best father in the world, but I want you to know that I forgive you. I forgive you for leaving Mum and marrying Chelsea. I even forgive you for having Charlie.’

‘He would have loved to have seen his big sister getting married,’ said Dave.

‘I didn’t say I would ever think of him as my brother, Dad.’

‘We’re going to head on to the cathedral in the Jag,’ said Susie before an argument could start. ‘Have you got everything you need, Diana love?’

‘I think so.’

‘Something old?’

‘My baby charm bracelet.’ She waggled her wrist to jangle the bracelet that Dave had bought the day he discovered she was a girl and not the automatic Southampton FC season ticket he’d hoped for.

‘Something new?’

‘My dress, obviously.’

‘Something borrowed?’

‘Nicole’s belly-button ring.’

‘Nice touch,’ said Pete, giving Nicole a saucy wink.

‘Something blue.’

Diana hitched up her skirt to show a garter with a bow of blue ribbon. The older bridesmaids whooped.

‘All present and correct,’ Diana confirmed.

‘Hang on. She still needs a silver sixpence for her shoe,’ said Diana’s grandmother.

Diana looked panicked.

‘I haven’t got one!’

‘I’ve got one for you,’ said her grandmother, pulling a little velvet pouch out of her handbag. ‘Well, it’s not a sixpence, but it is a silver coin. Your grandfather bought it for you on the day you were born. They were minting them especially for the royal wedding. He said I should hang on to it until you got married. He would have loved to see this day.’

Diana took the velvet pouch and tipped the commemorative coin out into her palm. On one side was the familiar image of the queen, on the other side Charles and Diana in profile.

‘Oh, Gran, that’s brilliant,’ said Diana.

‘You’ve got to put it in your shoe,’ her dad reminded her.

Diana had Nicole help her take one of her shoes off again, so that she could slip the coin inside, but it was thicker than the silver sixpence of the rhyme and it was far too uncomfortable for Diana to be able to walk around with it in place. She took the coin out and handed it back to her gran.

‘You’ll have to carry it.’

‘At least you know that your grandfather is with you in spirit today.’

‘Yes, Gran. I can feel it. Now, shouldn’t you all be on your way to the cathedral?’

Diana’s grandmother, her mother and two of the bridesmaids squeezed into the back of the Jaguar. The other five bridesmaids would be following in a people carrier, but not before they had helped Diana up into her fairy-princess carriage with its unicorns. Up and down the street, Susie’s neighbours had turned out to watch the bride set off on her journey to the cathedral. They had always known that Diana Ashcroft would get a spectacular send-off, but no one had expected unicorns. At least, no one in their right mind had expected unicorns.

‘Daddy’ – Diana cuddled close to her father in the back of the carriage, as Pete fired off another fifty photographs – ‘this is the best day of my life.’

The horses took off at a far statelier pace than they had arrived at, thanks to the weight of two new passengers and a wedding dress that weighed the same as a child. Diana made the most of the slow exit from the cul de sac. She gave her mother’s neighbours a regal wave. Two young girls were open-mouthed with awe at the spectacle of this cross between Kate Middleton and Katie Price.

‘I bet that one day they’ll ask their fathers for a carriage just like this,’ Diana observed as she blew the girls kisses.

‘I bet they will,’ her father agreed.

At the top of the road, Diana’s carriage passed the recycling truck. The bin men waved and whistled at the bride before they carried on into the cul de sac, where they would be picking up one particularly important bag of rubbish.

Chapter Fifty-Four

All the time her sister and father searched for her, Kate was not far away. She was sitting on the seafront in Warsham. She’d been sitting there for ages, since seven that morning. She had, as her mother suspected, climbed out of the bedroom window. It was a ground-floor window. It was easy. Far easier than leaving through the front door and having to answer questions about where she was going at such an early hour and why.