Revenge of the Wedding Planner (15 page)

And Julie had no right to involve me in her messy love life either. I was beginning to feel quite cross with Julie, I must say. She was forty-one years of age, for pity’s sake. She was old enough to leave her own fella. He was a good man, was Gary Devine. She was lucky to have him, in my opinion. But then again, to the Coven I’m just a boring old housewife with chunky ankles and a baggy black cardigan. I’d like to tell them that Bill and I have a red-hot sex life but they’d never believe me. Sometimes, I have three orgasms in one night. Those erotic massages Bill gives to me, well, money simply couldn’t buy them. There’s not a fancy spa in this whole wide world could make me feel the way Bill does when the notion takes him. And besides, if they knew what Bill was really like in bed they’d be after him themselves. They’re ruthless. I’ve told you that before.

Speaking of sex, I’d told Alexander enough times to wear a condom. I couldn’t think how or why he managed to get that stick-insect girlfriend of his pregnant in the first place. Oh, I don’t mean to be abusive when Emma couldn’t help the way she was. I know anorexia’s a proper illness like depression. I
know
that. But I couldn’t stand it when they went to bed together in our house, in case I heard Emma’s pelvis snapping in half in the dead of night. Oh, the very sight of her hobbling up and down the stairs made me want to eat all the Danish pastries in Marks & Spencer and then get stuck into the party nuts and crisps. Bill’s right, you know. There’s nothing as nice as a lovely round bottom.

‘Don’t cry,’ Bill said softly. ‘Get into bed and I’ll fetch you a big mug of tea and some chocolate biscuits to cheer you up. Do you want a few gossip magazines from the shop? Is the latest copy of
Heat
out yet?’

‘No, leave it! Leave me alone!’ I cried. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve made a mess of everything and then patronize me on top of it. Poor old Mags! She does her best, you know, but she’s such an idiot. Hasn’t a clue what to do in an emergency! And they say George Bush is stupid! At least he doesn’t dress like a middle-aged witch in clumpy shoes and stupid flared trousers. I’m a fool, my darling. You can’t sort me out this time with a chocolate digestive and a brew, Bill, no matter how much you claim to love me.’

And even that was embarrassing because we don’t say ‘brew’ in this part of the world. We say ‘a cuppa’ or ‘a cup of cha’. That was the Peter Kay influence, I’m afraid. He says ‘brew’ all the time. I wonder what Peter Kay would do in my situation, I thought miserably. He’d probably write a hit series and make another ten million. Me? I couldn’t give it away fast enough. ‘Maybe I should just sell the house and give the money to charity?’ I wept. ‘And then we won’t have to open the Eglantine branch of Suckers’ Nursery?’

‘Now, Mags, please don’t get yourself in a state,’ Bill said again, starting to look quite worried.

‘I can’t help it, Bill,’ I said. ‘I
am
in a bloody state. I think my head is going to explode with all this worry and tension. I didn’t mean to make such a bags of everything, Bill. Do you think I’m doing all this on purpose to irritate you? Do you think I’ve gone completely mad? I’m only
trying to help my son because I’m afraid if I don’t take control of the situation, he’ll fall apart.’

‘Come on, darling, calm down. Are you hormonal at all? Let’s check the calendar and you can take some Primrose Oil and Vitamin B-complex. Yeah?’

Oh, it would have to be
complex
, wouldn’t it?

So he went to check that chart we keep on the inside of the wardrobe door, with my PMT days blocked out in blue marker. On ‘blue days’ I try not to do anything silly, like punching people (who might happen to annoy me in some way) hard in the face. I felt like a monkey in a science lab. No wonder Josephine and the others thought I was pathetic. My own husband thought I needed to be monitored. And sedated with sour worms and pictures of drunken celebrities lying in the gutter with their knickers on display. Or not. And that was when I really saw red. As red as our bedroom curtains, actually. Toffee-apple red. Fire-engine red.
Lava
red.

So what did I do?

Did I do the sensible thing and get into bed with a cup of tea and try to forget my bad mood by pouring scorn on the photo-shopped pictures of Z-list celebrities?

Did I, bog-roll!

‘I won’t get into bed, Bill, my darling! I’m going out for a walk!’ I shouted into his stunned face. ‘And don’t you dare come after me! I’m capable of going for a walk by myself. I can do that, at least! And I can order granite headstones and drawing-room conversions if I want to. And I can cover up my boss’s affairs if I want to. And
you
can’t tell
me
what to do! I’m not mentally retarded even if the whole lot of you think I am!’

I shouldn’t have said that.

It’s ‘learning difficulties’, isn’t it? Or ‘special needs’? I have special needs all right, I thought to myself, because I’m a married woman with four children, a massive house to keep clean and tidy, a recently dead father, a long-term disinterested mother, an important and demanding job and an emotionally damaged boss who’s cracking up.

‘Mags? Are you feeling all right? Crikey, this is a bad one! Eh? You only get PMT this bad once in a decade.’ And he consulted my chart, his finger running down the page, his forehead creased into a massive frown.

‘Shut up! You’re badgering me and I can’t stand it! I
won’t
stand for it, do you hear me, Bill Grimsdale? Oh! Leave me alone!’

Well, Bill ran out of the room and downstairs to the yard, accidentally dislodging one of his precious guitars as he went. He started kicking the back gate and swearing like I don’t know what. I knew he needed some air and he was only going down there to stop himself from calling me some names I richly deserved, but I couldn’t go after him and say sorry because I was erupting like a volcano myself. I wanted to thump him for being such a sensible Spock-like male! My own darling husband and I was furious with him! Jealous, really. I was jealous of him and his logical brain and his trim figure and his calm personality. Bill will never have fashion dilemmas and blue days. He has beautiful ankles. And he never makes a lot of extravagant promises he’ll never be able to keep, to ungrateful people who don’t even appreciate his kindness. He has no idea what it’s like to be a woman on the verge.

I slammed out of the house in an absolutely stinking
mood and I marched straight down the road into a hair salon that I’d never set foot in before because it looked so expensive, and I told the stylist to give me a chin-length, raven-black bob with a peacock-blue streak down the front. Sorted, I thought smugly. Julie’s not the only one who can do mad things. I’m crazy myself, don’t you know? Every bit as barmy as she is. I nearly had a heart attack, though, halfway through the colouring process, when I thought I’d left my credit card in the house, but thank goodness it was tucked safely into my cardigan pocket. I keep it on my person, if I can, in case my handbag is grabbed in the street. I loved that credit card more than life itself, the moment I felt its tiny flat body against my fingers. I kept my hand on it until I was offered a cappuccino and biscuits, in fact.

Oh, but it’s a great feeling when you have eight grand’s worth of spending power on your actual person. You could almost do anything if you only had the imagination. Two solid hours I sat in that red leather chair, mesmerized by the drone of the hairdryers and the glamour of the teenage stylists. No wonder some celebrities are as thick as two short planks, mind you. How can they possibly keep up to date with current affairs when it takes so long for a plain old haircut? Enjoyable and all as it was. I tried to read a newspaper but the dye fumes kept putting me off my train of thought.

However.

In for a penny, in for a pound. The black bob with the blue streak in it looked utterly fabulous when it was finished. I told myself it would be no bother at all to have to use straightening balm and straightening irons on
it every morning from now on and I paid up, leaving a huge tip. But the new look went only part of the way to dispelling my boiling rage so I’d no option but to keep going. I needed to do something big, something really big to channel my anger. Something
painful
. To punish myself for being such a total idiot.

The tattoo I’d always wanted! A set of angel’s wings on my back… a small set of angel’s wings. Bill didn’t like tattoos. He said they inevitably turned into hopeless green smudges after twenty years. And that only very reckless and short-sighted people went in for them. Not literally short-sighted, you know what I mean.

Cheeks flushing with fear, I took a taxi into the city centre and without hesitation I had the angel’s wings done on my back, in a little tattoo parlour beside the Linenhall Library. Twenty-three years after first deciding I wanted them. Just a tiny set of wings, mind you, not a Robbie Williams-sized one. That would have been vulgar on a lady. But hey, it was bloody sore all the same. I knew Bill would go mental worrying about contaminated needles but it all looked very respectable and sterile in there and, honestly, I was past caring. If I do cark it, I thought, at least I won’t have to worry about turning into a boring old granny with that stick-insect Emma lording it over me in my own house. And then, blood from the tattoo sticking to my T-shirt, I went into a fancy boutique nearby and I bought this
designer
pair of midnight-black, real suede, pointy-toed boots for an amount of money that would normally make me spit with disgust. Some charity could have built a decent-size school in Ethiopia for the money I spent on those boots. I don’t know what came
over me. I was far too old for a blue streak in my hair and pointy-toed boots, not to mention a tattoo, but I wanted to spoil myself for a few hours. I was projecting ahead, I suppose. Seeing my forties going the way of my twenties and thirties. Endless walks to and from the school gates, making costumes for school plays, taping messy drawings to the fridge, having no nights out. Which didn’t make any sense because I love my children more than anything and I have never cared for fripperies like blue hair and designer boots, but maybe I was feeling guilty about Bill’s and my savings going up in smoke?

Anyway, it was done. If I’d lived in London I would have looked like a kick-ass fashion designer or a top columnist in some sassy magazine. They’d probably have stopped me in the street to ask my opinion on something topical and shown it on the ITN news. In Belfast, however, I resembled a bit of a sad case. I walked round the shops for a while, feeling too cross to go home but too shy to sit in a coffee house by myself. Some teenage Goths saw me loitering in the park and they said, ‘Cool hair,’ and I thought I still had an edge to me and I was all delighted. But then they spoilt the compliment by laughing rather loudly when they’d walked on. I was tempted to buy some cigarettes and sit on a wall smoking them, but I have never even liked the smell of tobacco so that was a non-starter. I went into the Palmhouse and thought of the night Bill and I made our first baby and I wept for a while beside the hyacinth display until some tourists came in the other door and I backed out again, mortified.

Eventually I got hammered drunk (it takes only three
gins and tonic) in our local pub off Larkspur Avenue and, to cap it all, I called Gary on my mobile and told him what was going on in the Galway spa. I told him everything, nearly. That Julie was terrified of getting married because her own mother and father were bonkers, and that Charlotte had had a protracted breakdown and that Sidney had taken his own life. And also, there was this handsome young guy called Jay O’Hanlon who worked in the spa and he was a bit of a looker and Julie was feeling very vulnerable and was possibly attracted to him and might even have
kissed
him already. Just kissed him, mind. But it meant nothing if she had, she was only having a harmless little dalliance to bolster her fragile self-esteem. And I did stress Julie’s vulnerability because I didn’t want Gary to be cross with her. So, I ’fessed up, big time. Except for the small details of the hayloft romp and the multiple orgasms and the handcart bondage, obviously. And Julie’s screams of delight in the ice-cold water trough and the fact that she’s infertile. Well, you’d need to be heartless altogether to mention that lot, wouldn’t you? I didn’t want Gary Devine to crash his car on the way down to Galway. By all accounts, the traffic over the border is chronic at the best of times. Well, they don’t have as many cops as we do here in the North.

Gary was so furious he ran out of the farmhouse without even replacing the receiver. I heard it clattering onto the maple floorboards and then Gary roaring his head off in the background.

‘Joo-leeeeeeee!’

Oh, dear.

I had another gin. And then another.

Next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake at closing time. It felt really weird to be walking home in the dark with blue hair in my eyes and brand-new boots on my feet. I kept missing my step because the boots were so soft I couldn’t feel the pavement through them. It must be heaven to live like this all the time, I thought. To never feel hard cheap shoes cutting into your toes and heels. No wonder rich people seem so relaxed and confident all the time. They don’t have to keep patching up their crippled feet with sticking-plasters. I was talking to myself as I turned into our avenue, like a hormonal drunken teenager or something. I almost expected my mother and father to tell me off when I got home. But then I remembered my father wouldn’t be shouting at me or at the DUP political broadcasts ever again.

‘Oops, don’t think about that or you’ll be off caterwauling again,’ I whispered to myself, finger laid against my lips. ‘Crying for ever and a day like the legendary Mrs Charlotte Sultana.’

I hoped Bill wasn’t going to lecture me about liver damage. I’d completely forgotten about the tattoo even though my back was definitely a little tender. I kept thinking I must have bumped up against a hand dryer or something in the ladies’ room.

But no, the hall was deserted and silent. I stole in like a cat burglar and immediately tripped over something big and flat, fell headlong onto the rug and hurt my knee. When I switched on the lights, Emma’s stuff was piled up in the hall. All thirty-nine boxes of it (I counted them – though I might have been out by a box or two because of my blurred vision). And she and Alexander were in
bed together in his room. I could hear them chatting away, nineteen to the dozen. I thought that at least I didn’t have to worry about Emma getting pregnant because she was pregnant already. And it was kind of comforting to have the suspense taken away like that. The kitchen was strewn with dirty dishes as the other kids had made their own supper but not tidied up. The grill was greasy and there were crumbs everywhere. Bacon sandwiches. No doubt they’d taken advantage of me going AWOL to buy a packet of bacon slices at the corner shop and devour it. I don’t cook meat very often, you see, what with Bill and myself being vegetarian. I’m more of a salads and sandwiches person.