White Wedding (17 page)

Her wound throbbed under the bandage wrapped around her head. She made a note not to look in a mirror as she was sure a very pale and tatty Björn Borg might stare back at her. Her bladder
had woken up as well now and was screaming for the loo. Bel started to fold up the quilt.

‘Just leave it, it’s fine. I’ll do it,’ said Dan. ‘But I would appreciate the tin opener if you can find it.’

‘I’ll find it,’ said Bel, pulling herself to her feet – successfully this time. She opened the creaky cottage door. ‘Thank you for er . . . babysitting me.’
That sounded ridiculous.

‘It wasn’t as if I had a choice,’ replied Dan.

‘Well, you did,’ said Bel, rearing a little. ‘It’s not as if you haven’t denied me entry to my own family’s property before.’

‘I didn’t mean . . .’

‘Please don’t explain. I get your drift. I’ll be off now. To hunt for the tin opener you are so desperate to retrieve, despite my escape from death’s clutches
yesterday.’ And she exited Emily with a haughty flourish.

Normal relations were resumed, it seemed.

In the tiny bathroom in Charlotte, Bel braved a full-on study of herself in the mirror and jumped back in horror. She looked terrible; whey-faced and gaunt. Like something out
of a
Living Dead
film. A zombie who played tennis in its spare time. She dampened a flannel and pressed it against her face.

She suddenly wondered what Shaden was doing now. Perfect, glossy Shaden with her eyes perfectly made up and lipstick perfectly applied. Was Richard with her?

A harsh series of raps on her outside door snapped Bel away from thinking about them. She dabbed her face dry and didn’t hurry down the stairs. It was obviously Dan who would be standing
there when she opened up.

‘Erm . . . did you want me to bring you anything back from the shop? And did you find the tin opener?’

‘I haven’t looked yet,’ Bel bristled. As she moved to the kitchen drawer she felt Dan enter the cottage behind her.

‘Bit small in here, isn’t it?’ he asked, squeezing past the sofa.

‘Apparently a family of eight once lived here.’

‘Eight what? Mice?’ grunted Dan. ‘That’s the tin opener, isn’t it?’ He pointed to the said article, sitting like an egg in a nest of screwed-up veil.

As she lifted it up, it caught on the material, and as she jerked it free, the veil snagged.

‘It’s torn,’ commented Dan, taking the tin opener from her.

‘I don’t give a flying fart, actually,’ said Bel, slipping into cross mode as she felt tears rising up to her eyes again. ‘And I’m okay for groceries,
thanks.’

Dan gave a less than subtle glance towards the short run of kitchen worktop, where the cans and Pot Noodles were standing.

‘As you wish,’ he said, banging his head on the low hanging lightshade on the way out. ‘Don’t say I didn’t ask.’

At the door he turned round. ‘I trust you won’t be snooping inside the cottage again while I’m out, will you?’

‘You have my word,’ said Bel.

‘Hmm,’ he replied. He looked unconvinced by her honour as he shut the door behind him.

‘Hello, there,’ greeted Freya, as Violet pushed open the door to White Wedding
.

‘Hi,’ Violet waved at her. ‘I was passing. I came in to have another look at the dress, if I could. Just to make sure that I still like it.’

‘Of course,’ Freya smiled. She walked down to her workroom at the far end of the shop. Like so many people, Violet wouldn’t have been surprised to find that as a younger woman
Freya had been a ballerina. She had the poise and elegance of a dancer. They would have been gobsmacked to discover that in fact she had been a farmer’s wife. Once upon a time she had lived a
cold, hard existence with only her dreams to keep her warm and give meaning to her days.

Freya returned with the beautiful ivory silk dress draped over her arm and Violet nodded as the older lady handed it to her.

‘Oh it’s so beautiful,’ said Violet. If she had to get married, there could be no sweeter dress to wear than this one. She had dreamed about it last night, which was what had
inspired her to come here today. In the dream she hadn’t married Glyn, but someone in a uniform – a soldier. And her heart had been flooded with happy feelings as he kissed her at the
altar.

Then she had slid into consciousness to find that it was Glyn who was kissing her and ready to make love to her. And she had tried to think of someone else so she could endure it, but her brain
wouldn’t quite let her because it felt like a betrayal.

Violet shrugged off the uncomfortable memory and put on the dress. Freya zipped her up and looked over her shoulder into the mirror.

‘When I made this dress, it had buttons up the back,’ she said.

‘You made it?’ asked Violet with a little gasp of delight.

‘Yes, it was the very first wedding dress I ever made. I got a bolt of silk from the black market and stitched it by hand. But over the years it has been altered so much, to fit all shapes
and sizes.’

‘Did you make it for yourself?’ asked Violet, smoothing the silk over her hips. As perfect as it looked in the mirror, there was something wrong with how it felt on her – she
couldn’t put her finger on what the problem was. It was almost as if it was twisted round her body.

‘No,’ said Freya, examining the fit. ‘I had always wanted to make wedding dresses, from being a small child. But my family were farmers and we moved in small circles and so I
ended up marrying a farmer too. A career in dressmaking was just a pipe dream then.’

‘Wow,’ Violet blew the air out of her cheeks. ‘I can’t imagine you milking cows and feeding pigs. Were you happy, though? All that country air and apple picking?’
Say you were, thought Violet. She wanted to picture Freya in sunshine and jolly harvest times.

‘No, I was desperately unhappy,’ said Freya, her eyes dull with the pain of the memories.
Leonard – my husband – was a cruel and brutal man
. ‘I didn’t
live, I existed.’

‘What happened?’ asked Violet softly.

‘Into my life came a young man, a German. Vincent.’
A prisoner of war who worked on the farm
. ‘I fell in love with him on sight. But I was married, of course. Trapped,
incarcerated, imprisoned. As much as I wanted to leave my husband, there was nowhere for me to go. Especially not in those days.’

Violet studied Freya and noticed that, whatever she was thinking, there was a light growing brighter in her eyes.

Freya could feel
his
hands deliciously weaving themselves into the long, flame-red hair she had back then, smell him, see him in that ridiculous POW brown suit with the bright orange
patch on the back. And his voice was still a clear and perfect sound in her head.

‘
When I can go back to Berlin, Herzchen, I am going to take you with me
.’

As if a champagne cork had been pulled from a bottle in her brain, a fizz of memories foamed up behind it. The Italian POWs, so much fun to be around; Leonard, jealous of Vincent’s
popularity with everyone, having the camp transfer him to another farm miles away; the end of the war; the slow repatriation of the German and Italian POWs.

When the last of the prisoners left the farm, Freya knew she would never hear laughter there again.

She pulled herself into the here-and-now and smiled at Violet.

‘I will never know how I found the strength to leave, but one day I just picked up my bag and my sketchbook and I walked out of the front door and never went back. I think the last
remaining self-protective part of me finally realized that a life without hope is a living death.’

Violet wanted to cheer. But what about Vincent?

‘I caught a bus into town, then another and another until I ended up in Derbyshire. The last bus dropped me outside an inn where they were advertising in the window for someone to help run
the bar and clean. It was like a gift from God that I could walk straight into that job, and the people who owned the place were so kind to me. In the evenings, I would sit with the family and
talk, and I would embroider as I was doing so. And one day the son of the family brought me a bolt of silk and I sat and stitched this dress with all the care I could take, a dress fit for the
bride of a beautiful man like Vincent.’

Violet felt her spirits sinking. Other brides had worn this dress, but Freya never had. It felt all wrong on her today, but maybe that was because there was so much sadness caught up in the
threads.

‘And one day Vincent walked into the bar. He’d been home to Berlin then he came back for me, but he was unable to find me. It took him months, but he didn’t give up.’

‘Oh my.’ Violet’s eyes filled up. ‘Tell me that you left with him.’

‘I left with him.’

‘And you married him and wore this dress?’

‘I married him and wore this dress.’

‘Thank God,’ said Violet, patting her beating heart. ‘Did you ever see your husband again? Your first one, I mean?’

‘Only once,’ said Freya. ‘And he looked like a stranger. Even now I have nightmares that I could have wasted my life staying with a man I didn’t love, a man I had married
for all the wrong reasons.’

Violet swallowed. ‘Freya, why did you marry him in the first place?’ She listened to the answer carefully.

‘He swept me off my feet with a charm offensive. I didn’t have time to breathe, or to think. I was flattered. I didn’t see the rot beneath the gleaming veneer,’ she said.
‘The only reason anyone should marry is for love, but you’d be surprised how many don’t. Now, let’s get you out of this dress. It’s such a perfect fit now, but brides
do tend to change shape in the weeks leading up to their wedding.’

As Violet let Freya assist her, Freya’s words played on a recurring loop in her brain.

The only reason anyone should marry is for love, but you’d be surprised how many don’t
.

No, Violet wouldn’t be surprised at all.

After a snooze and flicking through the pictures in a very old
Hello!
magazine retrieved from the rack in the corner, Bel heard Dan’s car trundle out of sight and
she huffed. She was bored rigid, but she couldn’t go back home yet even if she wanted to. No way was it safe to drive with her injury, not for a couple of days;plus, her car still had a flat
tyre. She needed something to do that didn’t take up a lot of effort but would pass the time, and she wasn’t in the mood for reading.

She remembered that there was a box of games from her childhood in the cupboard upstairs in Emily. Buckaroo and Ker-Plunk and some packs of cards: Old Maid and Donkey and – ho ho –
Happy Families. Faye used to play them with her when they visited but she always let Bel win, which was boring because, even when she was little, Bel was militantly independent. There was no fun in
being handed victory on a plate; she wanted to win it for herself. But it wasn’t just that; every time Bel was in danger of enjoying Faye’s company, she felt an overwhelming betrayal to
her mother’s memory. It had kept her from ever loving her kind stepmother, and it always would.

But hopefully the big jigsaw was still there too. She smiled at the recollection of her dad hunting for the flat-sided border pieces and passing them to her, while Faye tried to cobble together
the hard and boring featureless bits in the middle. The thought of those days was flavoured with toasted buttered muffins and hot chocolate with crushed Flake sprinkled on the top. Such happy
times. As a child in that cottage, she never knew that one day she would be an embittered old bag freezing her tits off next door after marrying a bastard with a roving dick. Her eyes prickled with
painful tears and she blinked them down again. She needed diversion. She needed that jigsaw.

She could sneak back into the cottage and get it without Dan knowing. Then again, she had given her word.
Well, you only promised not to snoop, didn’t you? And you wouldn’t be
noseying around, just going in, getting the jigsaw and coming back out again,
countered her brain.
I think you should go for it. Get the jigsaw, Belinda. It is essential for your mental
health
.

So, once again she unhooked the keys and sneaked into next door. The quilt she had slept in had been put away and the cushions plumped up on the sofa. She honoured her promise to him and went
straight up to the cupboard and got out the jigsaw. The room carried a faint air of his aftershave. It wasn’t as spicy as the one Richard wore, and which she secretly didn’t like all
that much.

She looked around at the bedroom. She couldn’t help herself. Another book by John North was splayed open, pages down, on the bedside cabinet. It said along the bottom ‘Proof Copy,
Not For Resale’. There was a set of keys next to it. She picked them up to see the large square keyring more closely because there was a picture of a couple inside it: a younger Dan,
clean-shaven and thinner and a tall and willowy woman with long blonde hair. They were both smiling for the camera and he had his arm round her slim waist. The woman wasn’t unlike Shaden in
her looks, which sent a pain tearing through Bel. She wondered if she would ever again think of her cousin without a wave of hurt engulfing her.

She went downstairs and saw his laptop open on the kitchen table again and there was a stack of books to the side of it. Biographies of Peter Sutcliffe, Fred West, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy and
Harold Shipman – obviously he liked a light witty read. His notepad was closed underneath them. She slid it out and poked her nose inside. It was half full of scribbles now, most of it
undecipherable to her because it was written in infamous doctor’s handwriting. The bits she could work out made grim reading:

She slipped it back under the pile of books, but it didn’t quite look the same as before. She chided herself for not remembering to check which way the notebook was facing.

She thought it best to leave sooner rather than later, feeling a tad bad that she had totally reneged on her promise not to snoop. Safely back in Charlotte, she cleared the table and tipped out
the jigsaw pieces on to it. They smelled slightly musty, the scent of happy old memories. Then she wondered what exciting concoction she could make for lunch out of Pot Noodle and a ring-pull can
of beans.