White Wedding (27 page)

‘Who’s calling, please?’ The woman on the phone had a slightly defensive tone in her voice now. Since her shop had been ‘outed’ by a local newspaper as a favourite
of prospective gypsy brides in the county, she’d had some mixed responses – and a large chunk of unhealthy journalistic interest.

‘I’m getting married,’ explained Max. ‘And I want a huge cake. I’m not a gypsy, but I’m having a gypsy wedding.’

‘Ah,’ said Shelley, warmth flowing back into her voice again. ‘What sort of thing were you looking for?’

‘A palace,’ said Max. ‘Like the one on the front page of your website. Only bigger and with more pink icing. I’ve got a scanned image with actual dimensions, so shall I
mail it over to you?’

‘Certainly,’ said Shelley. ‘Can you wait a minute, till I get to my desk?’

Max hit ‘send’ and waited until Shelley confirmed that she had received the design.

‘My,’ said Shelley, following it with a long whistle. ‘That’s a big palace. How many people are coming to your wedding?’

‘Oh not that many,’ said Max. ‘But it doesn’t matter if it gets eaten or not, I just want that cake. Can it be done? And how much will it cost –
approximately?’

Max’s eyes widened when Shelley gave her the figure, but never mind. It was what she wanted, what she had decided upon, what she could easily afford, and what she would have. Yes, most of
it would be wasted, probably, but sod it – she only got married once and she was having the works.

‘When’s the wedding?’

Max winced and prepared to be disappointed. ‘The second of July. Four and a half weeks.’

Shelley whistled again. ‘It’s tight,’ she said.

‘Tight but possible or tight and impossible?’

‘Nothing’s impossible for me,’ said Shelley. She was used to working all hours because the gypsy community often wanted her massive creations quickly, and they were prepared to
pay her handsomely for doing what she did better than anyone else. She metaphorically rubbed her hands at the prospect of such a lucrative job and quickly reached for a pen to take down Max’s
Visa number for the big fat gypsy cake deposit of fifty per cent.

Stuart opened the door and switched on the light, then he placed his hand on the radiator to check that the heating was on. It was, yet the house never felt warm. It
wasn’t cosy like his mum’s terraced house.
Or Jenny’s
.

He tapped his head with his fingertips, trying to break up yet another cluster of thoughts about Jenny Thompson. He wished he’d never set eyes on her again. It was as if some rogue part of
his heart was desperately hungry and empty and looking to be filled, and finding that Jenny Thompson was exactly what would satiate its appetite.

He kicked off his shoes, padded across to the stark white kitchen and opened the fridge. He took out a beer and poked around for something to nibble on. The fridge was packed but there was
little in there that appealed to him: yoghurts, a crustless quiche, anchovy paste, olives stuffed with garlic, a tub of salade niçoise, a crayfish-stuffed baguette, a bag of peppery rocket,
a round of Brie. He hated poncy French cheeses; he liked Red Leicester, but it never arrived with the Tesco home-shopping consignment even though he kept asking Max to add some to the next load.
No, it was always a garlicky Roule or Camembert or stinky stuff with blue veins running through it.

He bet Jenny’s fridge had cider and an apple pie in it, beef spread, mini pork pies and Laughing Cow triangles. And a block of Red Leicester.

He flipped the top off the beer bottle and took a long swallow. The house was so quiet, still and chilly. Everything was neutral-coloured or black and he suddenly felt like going mad and
throwing some red paint over everything. He was going loopy and he knew why he was so agitated. So he’d better make sure he didn’t see Jenny Thompson again.

Max finished work early on Friday and picked up Violet and Bel so they could all go to White Wedding together. She wanted to choose some bridesmaids’ dresses.

‘I don’t want to pour any cold water on your plans but are you sure you’re doing the right thing, Max?’ Bel asked, when Max excitedly told them about the honeymoon
she’d booked. And the cake. And the rest. ‘Won’t Stuart go mental?’

‘No, I’m absolutely as sure as houses that he won’t,’ Max flapped a dismissive hand. ‘Anyway, it’ll be too late to do anything about it when I’m halfway
down the aisle in my big frock. He’ll just do his usual rolling of the eyes and go along with it. He’s done that for seventeen years so one more afternoon won’t kill him. He
can’t surely expect me – Maxine McBride – to get married in a church without a huge dress. He knows me too well.’

‘Yeah, but how much further are you going with your plans, Max?’ asked Violet, reaching out for the White Wedding door handle.

‘How much further can she go?’ Bel added. ‘It’ll end in tears if you aren’t careful, Max – and I don’t mean cake ones.’

Freya was unpacking tiaras from white tissue paper when the doorbell announced their arrival.

‘Hello, there,’ she greeted them. ‘How are you all today?’

‘Good,’ smiled Max. She had hoped to have a word with Freya about some ideas she wanted incorporating into her dress design, but decided now to do that on a separate trip at the
weekend. When Bel and Violet weren’t around to spoil things with their ‘be careful’ caveats.

‘And what can I do for you ladies this time?’

‘Bridesmaids’ dresses,’ Max responded. ‘Big ones.’

‘Behave,’ cautioned Violet, poking her in the arm.

‘Colour?’ asked Freya.

‘What colour do you fancy, girls?’ Max turned to her friends and spread her arms wide across the shop.

‘It’s your wedding, Max. What colour do you want us to be in?’

Max recalled gypsy Margaret’s bridesmaids in that neon shade of sunburn.

‘Pink,’ she said. ‘Very bright pink.’

Freya beckoned them to the middle of the long shop, where the bridesmaids’ section was. She reached for a dress in a delicate blush.

‘Don’t even take it from the hanger,’ said Max. ‘
That’s
the sort of pink I’m talking about.’ And she pointed to a dress so bright that they all
needed sunglasses to view it. And intensive therapy afterwards.

Bel raised her eyebrows at Violet, but this was Max’s wedding and they both knew that her dictionary did not carry the word ‘understated’.

The dress was very plain in style, even if the perfect colour.

‘I can adapt the design if you want something in the same style as the wedding dress,’ Freya offered.

‘Perfect,’ Max decided. She knew that Freya would make a marvellous job of it too. There was something about Freya that elicited absolute faith in her.

‘Have you got time to do that? The wedding is so close,’ asked Bel, hoping Freya might say no.

‘Yes, I have time,’ said Freya. ‘I’ll just take your measurements, if I may,’ she added, unlooping the tape measure from round her neck and addressing Bel. She
already had Violet’s, of course. ‘It shouldn’t take me too long to have them ready.’

‘Lovely,’ Max, Violet and Bel said in unison. One voice more enthusiastically than the other two.

Stuart rolled over in bed and his arm fell on to the place where Max should be. He would have probably remained asleep if it had found her there, but instead he woke as his
hand found only a fast-cooling quilt.

Max was buttoning her shirt.

She saw him open his eyes and quickly sit up, and immediately held out her flat palm to stop him asking questions.

‘I’ll be back as quickly as I can,’ she said, her voice brimming with giddy excitement. ‘I’m just going into the office to pick up some files. The American firm
B.J. Brothers Industries rang me in the middle of the night and left a voicemail saying they want to talk to me urgently. They’re massive, Stuart.’

‘Bloody hell,’ huffed Stuart. ‘It’s me that needs a massive BJ.’

‘I’ll give you the biggest birthday BJ I can when I come home. I shouldn’t be more than an hour. If you’d stayed asleep, I bet I would have been back before you woke
up.’

Stuart’s head dropped onto the pillow.

‘No point in asking you to turn your phone off at evenings and weekends, is there?’ said Stuart tightly.

‘How can I?’ said Max. ‘It’s my company. I have to be available 24/7. I can’t believe I bloody slept through the ringtone.’

Stuart kept conveniently quiet about the fact that he hadn’t. It had woken him up at half-past one and he had leaned over Max and pressed the ‘ignore’ button on her phone.

She bent down and kissed his cheek, then asked, ‘What time are you meeting Luke to go and look at wedding suits?’

‘Half-past three,’ replied Stuart with a low grumble. As if the day hadn’t started off well enough, he had to spend part of his birthday trying on fecking wedding suits.

‘Don’t eat much. I have presents and cake and surprises and I’m going to whisk you out to lunch,’ Max said breezily, hoping to cheer him up with that. ‘Oh and the
cleaner will be here – don’t forget, will you? – although I’ll be back by then. But if I’m not, will you ask her to give that downstairs toilet an extra good
bleaching?’

‘Yeah, bye,’ said Stuart, turning his head sulkily into the pillow.

‘Happy birthday, darling,’ she said before closing the bedroom door quietly, as if he were asleep.

Stuart crossed his arms in bed and huffed. The annoying thing was that he knew Max would be buzzing as she drove to work. He wondered if she would ever leave that office if she didn’t have
to.

He didn’t go back to sleep; he was too cross. Instead he got up and showered and shaved and was fully aware that instead of putting on sloppy weekend tracksuit bottoms, he hunted out his
best Diesel jeans and splashed himself with aftershave – something he never did unless he and Max were going out, not that they’d done much of that recently. Jenny was coming this
morning. And he couldn’t help it: he was looking forward to seeing her again.

He collected the newspaper from the letter box and sat at the breakfast bar with a coffee. He should go out, really, before she arrived, then he wouldn’t have to see her. He wouldn’t
fan any more flames that way. He was getting married in exactly four weeks and was obsessing about another woman. That wasn’t good. Yes, he really should go out and avoid Jenny Thompson. So
Stuart tipped his half-finished coffee down the sink, marched down the hallway and took his jacket from the peg. Then he drove off into town and mooched around aimlessly, trying not to wish he was
back home instead.

Bel sat bolt upright in bed. She had woken up crying after yet another awful dream. It was a recurring one, which varied a little each time, but it still left her reeling with
guilt. She was back at her wedding reception and had just delivered her speech but hadn’t marched off. Instead she was standing there waiting for rapturous applause to begin, but everyone was
viewing her with their faces screwed up in disgust. Her father was shaking his head with shame and Dan Regent was there, his arm round a sobbing Shaden. Even Max and Violet couldn’t meet her
eyes. And Richard’s heart was breaking. ‘How could you do this?’ he was imploring. ‘I love you so much.’

Bel felt totally disorientated as the real world engulfed her conscious soul. She got up and made herself a coffee but it did nothing to quell the anxiety that was rattling her head. She
hadn’t heard any of Richard’s side of the story yet. She needed to. When anyone had an affair it was never as clear-cut as ‘all his fault and none of hers’, or vice versa,
so all the agony aunts said. There were always two sides to a story. Hadn’t she said that to herself too, whenever she watched
Jeremy Kyle
?

She wished she was back in Charlotte, with no phone reception, and fighting with her ebony-eyed neighbour over a tin opener. She wondered what Dan Regent was doing now. If he was still there.
And if he was there alone, or had twatty Cathy shown up and they were rolling around in bed sheets together under the white-painted eaves? She imagined that Dan Regent would be very nice to tumble
around in bed with. He would be gentle and slow, not like Richard, who saw sex like an Olympic event. If it didn’t involve a full
Kama Sutra
of positions, it wasn’t proper sex to
him.

Like Richard, Cathy must have been visited by the temporary-madness fairy and she had to have come back to her senses and thrown herself on Dan’s mercy; and of course he would have taken
her back. The Cathys of this world were irresistible creatures: evil witches armed with dangerous spikes that pierced hearts over and over again, yet still those hearts came back for more.

She tried to chase thoughts of Dr Dan out of her mind. She’d had to do that a lot since she left Haworth. So many things hijacked her thoughts, plucked her up by the collar and dropped her
right back in Charlotte; any reference to barmy Dr Donald Reynolds in the news, any tin in her cupboard without a ring-pull top, even the cheese in her fridge. Plus, she had a heightened awareness
of all things Bronte; there was a new adaptation of
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
on the TV and as she passed the cinema she saw they were showing the old Orson Welles version – her
favourite Rochester – of
Jane Eyre
at the Pensioners’ Silver Screen morning.

She didn’t feel strong enough to meet Richard yet, but she knew she had to soon. She was married to him, for God’s sake, and her thoughts should be on him, not some doctor whose path
she’d happened to cross when she was vulnerable and not thinking straight. She owed
her husband
the right to speak, to explain. Only then could she know if she had been truly justified
in her behaviour. The more time went on, the more she doubted she had. She knew she had always been a stubborn cow, forming an opinion and then sticking to it despite whatever contradictory
evidence might be thrown up. Her treatment of Faye was testament to that.

Bel reached into her jewellery box and lifted out the golden hoop. Then she tried it on the third finger of her left hand. It felt lovely. She had wanted to be married so much, to belong to a
man who could find the soft, vulnerable part that existed inside her hard bolshie shell, and treasure it. A man who smiled when thoughts of her brushed past his brain.