Kate's Wedding (31 page)

Where to begin? Somehow, Kate thought to herself, I never really believed I would get to this day. Even when the wedding was just twenty-four hours away and the dress was ready and the flowers being arranged, Kate had not been able to imagine herself into place at the top of the aisle. And she realised then that when she had managed to think herself into a wedding scene, she had not been able to picture Ian standing beside her. The idea had never really taken shape in her mind. That frightened her.

Now the moment when she should be standing by Ian’s side was just a few hours away. Out on the Solent, an ordinary Saturday morning was in progress. A flotilla of small sailboats containing eager children was pulled out to sea by a tug, like a family of ducklings following the mother duck. In the middle distance, the Isle of Wight ferry took holidaymakers, enjoying the long weekend, to visit Osborne House or browse for dinosaur bones on the beach. Behind the ferry, a container ship headed into the docks at Southampton. That ship was as big as a block of flats. It dwarfed the refinery as it moved on by, silent as a ghost.

Kate idly wondered what Princess Kate was doing that morning. Did she have a hangover? Was she full of excitement at the start of her married life, or was she wondering what the hell she had just signed up to?

One day, she hoped she would be able to tell Ian what she had been through these past few months and how what should have been one of the happiest moments in her life had become such an almighty source of misery. She hoped that he would understand. He probably wouldn’t like what she had to say, but he was a good man and she knew that he had only ever wanted the best for her. Just like her dad.

Kate had always felt a similarity of mind with her father, so she wasn’t in the least bit surprised that it was he who tracked her down. Actually, the first family member that morning to get to her was her sister’s dog. Snowy, who had never really taken to training, leaped at Kate’s back in her excitement and almost pushed her off the sea wall.

‘Snowy!’

Snowy had no idea that today should be any different from normal. She was full of her usual exuberance at the idea of a walk. Any walk.

‘There you are,’ said John.

‘Dad.’

‘Do you want me to find you, or shall I go back and tell your mother that you called to say you were on your way to Rio while I was walking the dog?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know we’ll still love you whatever you decide to do. It doesn’t matter about what anyone else says. It’s your life, Kate. It’s your decision.’

‘What are you talking about? I’m just getting a breath of fresh air.’

‘But it’s nearly ten o’clock.’

Kate looked at her watch. ‘What?’ She sprang to her feet. ‘I didn’t realise how long I’d been sitting here. Has the hairdresser arrived? Is Tess there? Has she got Lily ready? Oh, Dad, I’ve just been sitting here thinking, having a moment of calm before the storm.’

‘But you climbed out of the window.’

‘I was going to climb back in before anyone woke up. I just wanted to get out of the house without having to answer loads of questions. I just wanted a moment on my own.’

‘Your mother thinks you’ve run away.’

‘Oh my God, I’m sorry. Let’s go back.’

Kate jumped up and brushed down her jeans.

Snowy jumped with her, excited to be on the move again.

‘Are you sure you weren’t really running away?’ asked John. ‘Because, you know, if you’re not sure, your mother and I and your sister and Mike and Lily, we’re all right behind you. Well, perhaps not Lily. She’ll raise merry hell if she doesn’t get to be a bridesmaid.’

Kate laughed.

‘I know, Dad. But I am sure. I’ve never been so sure in my life.’

Elaine burst into tears as her elder daughter walked into the kitchen.

Tess threw her arms round her sister’s neck. ‘Am I getting the dress out of the car or what?’

‘Get the dress,’ Kate instructed. ‘Mum, put the kettle on.’

Chapter Fifty-Five

Dave peered closely at the message on his mobile phone.

‘What is it?’ Diana asked.

‘It’s from your mother.’

‘What does she say?’

‘She says she thinks we should go round the block another time.’

Dave conveyed the instruction to the carriage driver.

‘What do we have to go round the block again for?’ Diana persisted. The cathedral was within sight.

‘Well, I suppose your mother thinks that we should keep everyone waiting a little bit longer. It’s tradition for the bride to be late.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t want to be too late. There’s a lot to get through at the reception. The string quartet is only booked till half past three. God knows how long this ceremony will take. The bishop has a tendency to go on.’

‘It’ll be fine, my love,’ Dave assured her. He patted her hand. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’

But by the time they had ‘been round the block’ again, Dave had received another text message from Susie asking him to ‘just keep going’.

‘What’s going on?’ Now Diana was suspicious.

‘Nothing.’ Dave gave his daughter’s knee a squeeze. ‘Nothing at all. The traffic’s been bad on the road from Portsmouth and there are just a few people yet to arrive. We don’t want to start the ceremony without them.’

That kept Diana quiet for another minute.

‘Dad,’ she asked eventually, ‘who exactly hasn’t arrived?’

Dave didn’t need to say anything. The look of sheer panic on his face told Diana everything she needed to know.

‘You are joking,’ she said. ‘Dad, tell me you’re bloody well joking!’

Dave could only shake his head.

Diana’s mouth dropped open. For a second she was lost for words. Just for a second.

‘He wouldn’t do that to me. He loves me. He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Let’s just wait in this nice layby.’

‘No! Take us straight to the cathedral!’ Diana shouted at the guy who was driving the carriage.

‘Sweetheart, I think we should wait here,’ said Dave. ‘Your mother has got everything under control. There’s no point us rushing in there just yet. If I know Ben, he won’t let you down. There will be some perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe there’s traffic.’

‘There had better be bloody traffic,’ Diana hissed. She was prevented from phoning Ben because she didn’t have her phone with her and Ben’s number wasn’t on her father’s, but she was not going to take her father’s advice and hang around in a layby looking like a refugee from a pantomime because nobody could tell her where her fiancé was.

‘Drive on,’ she commanded.

The carriage driver didn’t know who to take his orders from. Should he listen to the father, who seemed to be the voice of reason, or the bride, who looked as if she might at any moment lose her head?

‘Drive on,’ said Diana. Her expression was steely. She was not to be messed with.

‘We need to wait here,’ said Dave. He wasn’t to be messed with either.

The driver looked from one to the other. Which one would be the less angry? In the end, Diana made the decision for him. While the driver was hesitating, trying to remember if his wife, who arranged the rental, had already cashed the cheque, Diana clambered over the seats and grabbed the reins from his hands. Giving the reins a swift jerk, she scared the horses into motion again and fell back heavily into her father’s lap when they took off at a gallop.

‘Whoa!’ The driver tried in vain to bring his horses back under control, but there was no chance. Somehow Diana had frightened them beyond such reason as one can expect from an animal and now they were hurtling towards the traffic.

‘Make them slow down!’ Diana yelled.

‘Stay calm, stay calm. Just hang on to the carriage,’ the driver instructed as Diana and her father embarked upon the ride of their lives.

‘Stay calm!’ the driver shouted again, but soon Dave was cowering on the floor of the carriage with Diana right on top of him. Dave hung on to the side of the carriage. Diana hung on to her father. Her enormous dress billowed around her, but, alas, didn’t seem to act as any kind of brake. Her cathedral-length veil was ripped from her head as they passed beneath a low-hanging branch.

‘Daaaaaddd!’ Diana screamed. ‘You’ve got to get us out of here.’

At this point, the driver, terrified by the dual carriageway in his near future, hurled himself onto a dogshit-covered grass verge. The footman had fallen off long before. Now Diana and her father were completely alone.

The horses thundered on, as though they were late for the Apocalypse. There was nothing Diana or Dave could do except pray that the other road users would be able to avoid them. Father and daughter clung together as the mad dash continued for long enough for a local news network to pick up the spectacle on the camera on their traffic helicopter.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you’re never going to believe this – we have what looks like an out-of-control carriage pulled by a pair of wild unicorns.’

Chapter Fifty-Six

‘Jeez,’ said Tess as she hauled Kate’s dress into the house, ‘I have put my back out.’

‘You should try wearing it,’ said Kate. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m two inches shorter by the end of the day.’

‘Thank God I don’t have to iron it,’ said Elaine. ‘I had to iron my own wedding dress, you know.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Tess and Kate chorused.

‘But that was back in the war,’ Tess teased, ‘when fabric was still being rationed.’

Only Lily, who had never seen the dress before, was properly awed by the acres and acres of silk.

‘Auntie Kate is going to be a princess.’

‘Let’s see how impressed she is when she realises she’s got to carry the train,’ Kate laughed.

‘All right,’ said Elaine. ‘Let’s see how you put this thing on. Did you step into it, or does it go over your head?’

‘Over my head,’ said Kate. ‘The waistband is too tight to get over my enormous arse.’

Kate shivered in her underwear while Tess and Elaine tried to work out the logistics. It was difficult to know when the dress was up or down or inside out. If you let go of the bodice for even a second, it would be swallowed into the skirt like a peak sinking back into well-whipped egg white. There was plenty of swearing. Tess and Elaine found the dress was too heavy to lift even as high as Kate’s shoulders. At last, she sat down on the edge of the bed and they were able to flip it over her head.

Kate stood up only to discover that she had the dress on back to front. She tried to wrench the dress round, but in the end, it was easier to start again.

‘Now I need a drink,’ Kate announced.

Tess poured more champagne while Elaine attempted to button up the back of the bodice. Now she understood why the women at Bride on Time had given such detailed instructions. Not only did Kate’s wedding dress have buttons, it had a zip on the inner bodice and ribbons to cover the buttons once they were done. Elaine found the buttons impossible, even with the recommended crochet hook. Tess, who had already downed two glasses of champagne to calm herself after the excitement of Kate’s momentary disappearance, did not have much more luck. It took twenty minutes to get the dress fastened.

‘No wonder Miss Havisham never took hers off,’ said Kate.

Thankfully, Lily’s bridesmaid’s dress was altogether easier to get into. The little pink number had just a zip at the back. There was a brief moment of panic after Lily was dressed when she disappeared and was found outside jumping over a rainbow in a puddle, but fortunately, Tess had remembered to pack spare white tights. They lasted just half an hour before Lily put a hole in them.

The make-up artist arrived fresh from another wedding.

‘Thank God you want the natural look,’ she said. ‘I’ve run out of blue eye shadow.’

The make-up artist also pinned Kate’s hair up into an artfully dishevelled bun, adorned with one of the roses from the bouquet, which had only just arrived. The florist had been right about the bouquet, thought Kate, as she posed in front of the mirror. Anything smaller would have looked silly with the dress’s generous skirt. Trudy, the photographer, snapped some frames of the bouquet while Kate submitted to the last few tweaks of her hairdo.

‘You look so beautiful.’ Elaine gave a tearful sniff.

‘Mum, please. You’ll ruin your make-up.’

John appeared in the doorway. ‘Are you girls nearly ready? I know it’s traditional to make the groom wait, but . . .’ He tapped his watch. Kate turned from the mirror. ‘Someone stole my daughter and replaced her with a princess.’

‘Oh, Dad.’

Kate would not be travelling to her wedding in a horse-drawn carriage. For a start, she’d never really trusted horses, having been bitten by a supposedly docile nag on a childhood trip to a petting farm. And then there was the incident at her cousin’s wedding: that dead horse really took the fun out of the reception. Plus, it wasn’t her style. Kate would be travelling to the ceremony in her first ever car, a Fiat Panda that Tess now used as a runaround.

‘Are you positive you don’t want a Rolls-Royce?’ her father had asked during the planning.

‘No,’ Kate reassured him. ‘This Panda and I had many adventures together back when I was a single girl. I’d like it to be part of the proceedings.’

Of course, Kate had made that particular plan before she bought the enormous frock.

Loading the dress into the Panda was difficult, but not impossible. Photographs of John and Kate in the back of the car turned out to be 90 per cent skirt.

With the rest of the bridal party safely in the back of a proper, hired car, Kate savoured her last moment of singledom.

‘Thank you, Dad,’ she said, ‘for always being there for me.’

John gave his daughter a squeeze.

‘This is your last chance to get out of here,’ he reminded her. ‘If you say the word, I will turn this car round and we’ll go straight home. I’ll sort everything out. No questions.’