Revenge of the Wedding Planner (26 page)

When the time came for her to go back to the clinic in January, Emma said she’d be well again in no time and she asked Alexander to let her have another chance. To give him his due, he didn’t agree right away. He said he would think about it. When Emma’s taxi set off he didn’t cry and he didn’t wave goodbye. He just stood on the footpath looking moody while Emma blew kisses to him through the back window. I never thought I’d say this, but that was one occasion when the man was a lot smarter than the woman. Bill and Alexander went to the pub to celebrate the success of their little scheme and I took down the Christmas decorations and ate the last of the pretzels and the Brazil nuts. Well, I do hate to throw good food in the bin.

At the end of March, Emma reached her target weight of seven and a half stone and she was released into the community once again. Hooray! Of course, there’d be years of therapy ahead of her and possible relapses and all kinds of setbacks to get over. But Emma was off the
danger list and we all cheered down the phone and congratulated her and told her to visit us the minute she got back to Belfast. And she did. She came straight round to our house and formally asked Alexander out on a date. He said he’d check his diary. Casanova Grimsdale! Attaboy!

Well, nearly.

By midnight they were curled up in bed together. Listening to some lightweight pop music on the radio and eating chocolate biscuits. Though he didn’t tell her about his crafty scheme to make her jealous. On Bill’s advice, Alexander was to maintain his penchant for arty glamour models indefinitely. And the following morning they told us they were getting engaged to be married.

Oh, my God! A miracle had happened!

We were so pleased for them both, of course, but we did remind them that Emma’s parents had spent a lot of money on the private clinic and they might not be able to pay for a lovely big wedding any time soon. And they shouldn’t get their hopes up. But Alexander said not to worry, they had promised themselves a budget of only £1,000 to pay for the wedding and the honeymoon (no more and no less) and it was going to be so much fun shopping for bargains and making things on a shoestring.

Alexander was earning a regular wage as an apprentice-plumber by then and he said he wanted to spend it on renting a little apartment for himself and Emma. He said they wanted to live on their own as soon as possible, and thanks anyway for our offer of a bedsit. And would you believe, they found a place that very night in the local paper. A lovely brand-new apartment in a converted
convent on the Ormeau Road. (Honestly, they’re converting anything and everything in Belfast these days. Turning factories and bakeries and convents galore into luxury turn-key flats. It’s all down to the halt of emigration and the rise of the white-collar sector, apparently.) On the third floor of the development, the flat was. Sorry, the apartment. Two button-flush bathrooms and a sleek modern kitchen, all stainless-steel cupboards and green-glass bricks. Tiny little place but very nicely designed, with a dainty balcony and a built-in ironing board. Well, there’d need to be an ironing board built-in, I thought to myself when I saw it, because there wasn’t enough room to erect an old-fashioned one. Five hundred quid per month to rent, which I thought was a bit steep. It would amount to almost half of his wages but Alexander said he could afford it and they agreed a date with the owner for moving in.

I told you the rented sector was really taking off here. Time was, you couldn’t rent at all in this country unless it was a featureless government unit on some rundown concrete estate. But the fancy building that Alexander and Emma have moved into has ornamental bell towers, electronic gates and stained-glass windows on the gable walls. It’s really fabulous. I wouldn’t mind moving in myself, say I wanted to downsize sometime. I hoped they would have nice neighbours, but that was only me being fussy again. I’m sure any undesirables will be evicted right away before they do any damage to the hanging baskets.

Emma’s massive haul of designer clothes and shoes were safely installed in the built-in wardrobes by the end
of the week. Bill and I went round to visit them a few days later and they seemed happy as anything. The metallic fridge was full of yoghurts and fresh fruit and there was a big wooden bowl of mini-chocolate bars on the breakfast counter. They’d bought a nice print of the old shipyard to hang in the sitting room. Alexander was brimming over with pride and enthusiasm and I had to admit I wasn’t as gutted as I had been about him dropping out of university. I suppose we’re brainwashed into wanting a university education for our children. But these days you can make a better living as a plumber than you can as, say, a science teacher in a grammar school. And as long as our beloved son was happy, we were happy too. We told Alexander and Emma we were delighted with everything. And we gave them a puffy all-white patchwork quilt and a quirky lime-green tea set with gold handles as house-warming gifts.

The funny thing is, next day Emma dropped out of college too. She said she found being in third-level education just too stressful – she had even failed her resits because of the exhaustion she was suffering. And she got a part-time job in a fancy gift shop across the street from their apartment building so she could start paying her way in life. And when she saw how long it actually took to earn a hundred pounds she was totally cured of her addiction to high-end clothing and accessories. Which was a brilliant stroke of luck because the private therapy sessions were expensive enough to be getting on with. The engagement was still on, however. Oh, yes!

Alexander bought Emma a big chunky silver ring with a row of red-glass stones on it. It cost £58 from a posh
little fashion boutique on the Lisburn Road. The shop assistant wrapped the ring up in a beautiful pink satin box and gave Emma a free sprig of glittery roses for her hair when she heard about their plan to get married on a strict budget. Wasn’t that lovely of her? And so, the silver ring was the first thing they bought with their £1,000 budget. The second thing was the marriage licence itself from Belfast City Hall. That was £130 (weekday rate). They didn’t have an engagement party because Emma was still feeling rather tired after her stay in the clinic, and also from her new job, which involved quite a lot of unpacking crates and dusting bronze Buddhas. Instead, Alexander took Emma out to see a comedy play at the Grand Opera House, though he did stump up a little extra for a private box that cost £80, including tickets and a bag of chocolates. So, all together they’d spent £268 on a gorgeous quirky engagement ring, a wonderful night out at the theatre and a marriage licence from possibly the prettiest city hall in the UK. I was madly impressed. Mind you, Julie did tell me to shut up and stop ‘bloody rabbiting on’ about how sensible my son and his wife-to-be were being about the whole thing. Julie found it all a little
too
quirky, to be honest.

‘Remember, Mags,’ she said to me (surprisingly darkly) one day when we were making up black feather corsages for the rock star’s 666 wedding guests. ‘It’s women going crazy with wedding fever that keeps you and me in a job. So don’t go telling
any
of our clients about this shoestring wedding of your Alexander’s, do you hear me? We don’t want the punters getting any of these poverty-is-cool ideas. There’s
nothing
romantic about pinching the pennies, my dear! Nothing romantic in any shape or form.’

‘Yes, Julie,’ I said at once. But my heart was singing with joy.

I’d actually forgotten about Jay’s affair with the French model for a few moments (even though I had one of the black corsages
in my hands
) and the knot of guilt that was forever gnawing away at my insides temporarily relaxed. Of course, it came back with a vengeance when I did remember. But no, I kept saying to myself, this is nothing to do with me and maybe it’s better if Julie never finds out about Jay’s infidelity? And I wouldn’t have known about it either, if I’d banged the door of the lighthouse shut when I came in that day.

And so on.

Emma and Alexander set the date for their wedding for 10 May. Which was nice, I thought, because by then I’d be well rested after the ‘wedding of the century’ and I’d be really looking forward to the much smaller and more intimate day Alexander and Emma were dreaming of. They weren’t going to invite anyone from my side of the family (thank goodness) as we were still smarting from the trauma of our Gothic wake. And not too many from Bill’s side either as they would have had to travel from ‘across the water’, as some people here like to call the Irish Sea. Just close friends and immediate family, really. Emma didn’t want to have too much fuss, so close to her remission from the eating disorder. About thirty guests in all, we reckoned. A civil marriage ceremony in the City Hall was duly booked, just like our own wedding day. And then the happy couple were going to serve a modest buffet in their apartment, which they would prepare themselves the day before. They were
going to make their own invitations using rice paper from the gift shop, and Emma was planning to wear an ivory-coloured evening dress and a pair of shoes she already had. And, of course, she had the glittery roses she’d got for nothing – they’d suddenly become one of her most treasured possessions.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Emma said tearfully as Bill and I took our leave of them after that first visit to their new home. ‘We did think of asking Dream Weddings to arrange our special day for us but, really, we don’t want anything too grand or complicated. After recent events, you can see why we don’t want any fuss and fanfare. The baby and so on? I do hope you understand?’

‘Oh, I do understand. I do indeed,’ I assured them. ‘It all sounds heavenly, if you must know. You have everything under control. And I’d love to just turn up and be a plain old ordinary guest for once in my life. No responsibilities!’

‘And thank you for the gorgeous presents,’ Emma added. ‘I adore the funny little tea set, really. It reminds me of you.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ I said to her.

And I meant it from the heart.

17. The Wedding

The wedding.

Ah, the wedding of the century. The bling-tastic event that should have made Dream Weddings famous throughout the British Isles but instead became a media byword for disaster. In fact, for a time you couldn’t switch on the radio without hearing a lecture on the perils of overambition and social-climbing gone mad. Even BBC Radio 4 were having debates about the trend for ‘tasteless to the point of nihilism’ celebrity marriage ceremonies. So you can see how serious it was, if the likes of R4 were bothering themselves with common folk like us.

Stuck-up old miseries.

And I don’t say that lightly. I adore R4 – with those plummy-voiced presenters, it’s like
Jackanory
for grown-ups. Even if they’re talking about something completely obscure, like Russian food in the seventeenth century, or anything to do with classical music, I still lap it up. It’s very calming, usually, to listen to. My favourite narrator is Alan Bennett. Do you know what I’d just
love
to hear? Alan Bennett narrating
The Borrowers
, from the original books by Mary Norton. Oh, bliss…

But back to the wedding.

You know, over the years, I’ve seen inside the homes of quite a few so-called intellectuals and families with old money and, honestly, they wouldn’t spend Christmas.
Thrifty as anything, they are. Everything falling to bits and covered with an inch of dust and dog hairs. Now, don’t get me wrong! Dust and decay and a broken Aga is all very well if it floats your boat. But please don’t go knocking the rest of us if we like to make a bit of a statement. Just because we like glitter and glitz, or gargoyles for that matter, it doesn’t make us bad people or anything.

‘Can you actually have too much money?’ R4 asked the listening public, practically going giddy down the microphone. ‘Literally more money than sense?’ And the public seemed to think that, yes, a person could be too rich. And that the pressure to spend the money on bigger and better weddings than your peers (and bigger houses and better holidays and so on) could surely trigger bouts of utter silliness. If not bona fide madness.

And yet it had all begun so well.

A Rock Chicks and Vampires theme with millionaire rock stars and leggy French models galore, £300 goody bags and gallons of pink champagne. I mean, as Julie said herself, what could possibly be described as tasteless about that lot? It was all dead classy.

The first day of May and everything was perfect. A bright, balmy afternoon and a clear blue sky above us. A fresh breeze blowing in from across the Irish Sea and not a speck of litter anywhere. Or a cow pat; we’d borrowed a special hoover from the ferry company (the mind boggles). Seven o’clock in the evening, that’s when the wedding was due to begin. So the ceremony could take place just minutes before the celebrations kicked off. All the photographs were to be ‘action shots’ in black and
white. No hanging around for hours with a light meter, you see? It was Julie’s idea. The castle’s imposing ramparts (what was left of them) were festooned with trailing silver and black bannerettes, which looked magnificent fluttering in the wind. Very Harry Potter. The butch and solemn-faced security staff were discreetly posted around the site, impeccably dressed in matt-black bomber jackets and loose-fitting slacks worn over formal dress shoes. They each had a two-way radio, a mobile phone and a First Aid kit as well as the obligatory dark glasses. The couple’s official bodyguards had their own little tent placed near the main body of the castle building and they were all ready to deal with any possible assassination attempts and (or) determined stalkers. So far, so good.

The puppeteers were ready on their platform, belted onto it with safety harnesses, actually, the multitude of rubber bats dangling on dozens of invisible wires. The fireworks were rigged to be lit as darkness fell and were under constant scrutiny by a health and safety expert. The magistrate and the Druid were there, dressed up to the nines and looking very important and wise. Each trying to out-do the other in terms of lofty grandness. Busloads of guests began to arrive and file onto the lawn, where Julie swiftly directed them towards the pristine marquee for a pre-wedding glass of pink champagne and a selection of vegetarian nibbles. They did look a bit peculiar (the guests, not the nibbles) flapping round the site in their vampire garb. In fact, the proceedings had all the hallmarks of a downmarket magic convention. But Julie and I had no choice but to keep congratulating the groom on the magnificence of it all.