White Wedding (30 page)

Back in her apartment, Bel snipped at the stems of the red roses and arranged them in a clear glass vase. Richard had been charm personified that evening. It brought back so
many good memories of being in La Hacienda with him; but with every one recalled, a nasty weed of a darker memory suddenly rose up to twist around it. She wondered if he had ever taken Shaden to
the restaurant. She wanted to know if he had ever bought red roses for her perfidious cousin – but then again she didn’t. She wished she could reach into her own head and cut out the
part of her brain that was labelled ‘Richard’s affair’.

She felt very alone that evening. She visualized Richard sitting at the dining table, working on his laptop as he sometimes did while she busied around throwing together a Greek salad. And their
washing tumbling together in the machine

She thought of her dad and Faye. Her father was the one who mowed the lawn and climbed up on ladders and replaced dud light bulbs; Faye was the one who did the shopping and chose the
furnishings. But they did the cooking together, they walked together, they talked together. Bel wanted the life that Faye shared with her dad. For all the strong, independent vibes that Bel gave
out, she hated being alone.

That would have surprised all those who thought that Bel was an ardent feminist. Anyone who really ‘got’ Bel knew that deep down she was just a vulnerable girl with a huge heart,
aching to love someone and needing a nice strong man to love her back.

The roses smelled beautiful, heady and perfumed. Bel wiped her leaking eyes with her fingertips. The roses were the colour of Shaden’s bridesmaid’s dress.

The next evening after work saw the three friends eating takeaway pizza in Postbox Cottage.

‘How gorgeous is this cottage?’ said Max, picking the chorizo from her pizza and putting it at the side of her plate. ‘And how sweet was it of your nan to give it to
you?’

Bel swiped the chorizo from Max and traded her some circles of pepperoni. ‘So, Violet, when are you moving Glyn in?’

Violet gave only a shrug as an answer.

‘He doesn’t know that you own it yet, does he?’ asked Max, reading into the jerk of Violet’s shoulders.

Bel stopped chewing. ‘Why wouldn’t you tell him?’

‘It’s not that I’m “not telling him”. I just haven’t told him
yet
,’ replied Violet, realizing immediately afterwards how rubbish and unconvincing
that sounded.

‘You don’t talk about him much,’ said Max after some more chewing of pizza. ‘How is he? Any better?’

Violet groaned inwardly. There were twenty questions coming, she could feel it.

‘It’s a slow journey,’ she replied.

‘Is he on tablets? Having some therapy?’ Bel joined in.

‘Yes, he takes Prozac but he packed in the therapy. He said it wasn’t doing him any good.’
He said I was all the therapy he needed
.

‘What does he do all day, then?’ Max observed how uncomfortable Violet was on the subject of her fiancé but still she carried on pushing questions at her. She wanted to know
why Violet didn’t gush about the man she was going to marry next month. Something wasn’t quite right about it all.

‘He cleans the flat, cooks, does some online food shopping . . .’ God, Violet was suddenly aware that she was making Glyn sound limper than a five-week-old stick of celery.

Max nodded and returned her attention to picking off the chorizo on her pizza. Glyn sounded limper than a five-week-old stick of celery, she thought. Not at all like the person she would have
pictured for Violet. That man was a strong go-getter who would love to take care of such a delicate, lovely soul and provide for her and look after her. It didn’t sound as if Glyn wanted to
help himself recover very quickly. Either that or he was a lazy bastard who was pulling the lead.

Bel was thinking exactly the same. Violet was the sort of person who should be grinning and fizzing about her forthcoming marriage, so why wasn’t she? It was obvious to anyone with a brain
cell that all was not as it should be in sweet Violet’s world. Why else would she keep from her man the news that she’d been given a house? No, something wasn’t right.

Bel looked around her at the quaint interior. Postbox Cottage was like a smaller version of what Emily and Charlotte would be like if they were knocked into one. She had a sudden vision of
herself stirring a big stewpot in the kitchen while Dan Regent sat on the large squashy sofa, scribbling notes on to a pad. My, oh my, did that man have his hooks in her head? He seemed to have
squatter’s rights and wouldn’t leave.

‘How’s Carousel coming along?’ asked Max, changing the subject. She didn’t want to pull Violet’s mood down any further. She knew that talking about the ice-cream
parlour would bring the smile back to her face. The smile that she should also be wearing when she was talking about her soon-to-be husband, but there was time later to dig deeper into that
one.

‘Oh it’s lovely. Pav’s doing a really good job.’

‘And what’s
Pav
like? Are we talking totty?’ Bel crooked her eyebrow.

‘He’s gorgeous and Polish but far too young to lust after. So put your tongue away.’

As if Glyn had heard her, her phone started vibrating again in her pocket.

‘Is that yours again?’ said Bel. ‘You get a lot of calls, don’t you?’ She calculated that it must have gone off at least ten times in the last half-hour.

‘Oh sorry, didn’t realize you could hear it,’ Violet said, visibly flustered and foraging in her pocket for it.

‘I thought you must be enjoying it,’ winked Bel.

‘It’ll be suppliers emailing costs and stuff,’ said Violet, handling the phone with all thumbs. And there was a blush growing on her face as well, the others noticed. She was
lying about it being suppliers. So why was that, then? Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice in Wonderland might have said.

The phone stopped vibrating and then immediately began again.

‘Bloody thing, I’ll turn it off when I can find the button.’ As she was struggling with the minuscule ‘off’ switch, Max noticed that the screen showed it was an
incoming call from Glyn. And said so.

‘If it’s from Glyn, just answer it,’ she said. ‘It might be important.’

‘It won’t be,’ said Violet, at last powering it off. ‘He gets fed up being in the flat by himself. I told him I wouldn’t be late.’

‘Late? It’s only quarter to six,’ said Max. She suspected that it had been Glyn who had been ringing Violet so persistently during their pizza-eating session. She was beginning
to build up a picture of a man she didn’t think she would like very much.

Violet flapped her hand as if waving the discussion away and then addressed Bel with a nudge.

‘How did it go with Richard yesterday?’

‘We went for dinner at La Hacienda. It’s “our place”, so if it was going to go well anywhere, it would be there.’

‘Ooh very nice,’ trilled Max. ‘And expensive. I hope he paid and you picked the most expensive thing on the menu.’

‘Of course he paid,’ said Bel. ‘And even the most expensive thing on the menu is well within his price range. I couldn’t make him suffer that way. He’s too
loaded.’

‘How was he?’ asked Max, serious now.

‘Contrite,’ said Bel, nodding; the word that had just come to her fitted him very well. ‘Neither of us really knew what to say.’

‘Did he kiss you goodnight?’ said Max.

‘On the cheek.’

‘Are you seeing him again?’

‘We agreed that for the time being we’d see each other about once a week, work permitting, and see how we go,’ sighed Bel. ‘What a mess. I daren’t tell my dad
I’ve seen him.’

‘So, where’s your fucking bastard cousin?’ said Max, with a sneery-Elvis lip.

‘Richard hasn’t seen her since the reception, so he says, and I believe him,’ Bel replied. ‘I don’t think he dare stretch any truth at the moment. I got the feeling
from Dad that my stepmum hasn’t spoken to Shaden’s mother since the wedding either. So I don’t know where my dear cousin is, or what she’s up to.’
Apart
from
selling her story to tabloids for plastic-surgery money
.

‘Your family gatherings are going to be interesting from now on,’ said Max with a naughty laugh.

‘The Bosomworth clan can stay away for ever as far as I’m concerned. I shan’t miss Vanoushka or creepy Martin, and Lydiana’s once-yearly visits from her “house in
Australia with both outdoor and indoor swimming pools” are more than enough. Anyway, they only come to the house to check out how they can attempt to better Faye. Or, in the case of
“Uncle Martin”, to grope my arse.’

‘Your stepmother sounds very different to the rest of her family’ Violet observed.

‘Yeah, but she has Bosomworth blood running through her veins,’ sneered Bel.

‘Oh come on, she can’t help which family she was born into,’ said Max. ‘She seemed lovely when we met her at the wedding.’

Bel didn’t want to get on to the subject of Faye’s virtues. She went into the kitchen for another bottle of Schloer and Violet asked her to fetch the large plate of assorted tiny
cream buns that was stored in the fridge.

‘I can’t eat cream buns, Violet,’ Max cried, as the cakes arrived. ‘I’ve got a wedding dress to fit into. Oh sod it.’ And with that she picked up a baby
doughnut and popped it into her mouth whole. ‘Oh you’ll never guess. I got Stuart half-wankered and he agreed to invite a couple more people to the wedding.’

‘Dear God,’ said Violet. ‘How many is “a couple”?’

‘I reckon about fifteen each side. I’ve asked his mum for a list of addresses so I can invite them to the reception as well.’

‘The reception that Stuart doesn’t know anything about? How are you going to keep it secret now, Max?’

‘I have thought of that,’ Max replied with an indignant sniff. ‘I’m going to put on the invitation that there will be “refreshments” after the ceremony, which
is vague enough. I’m organizing a minibus to take people from the church to Higher Hoppleton Hall. I shall send a separate note to each guest to say that they’ve actually been invited
to a full sit-down dinner reception but they must not tell Stuart as it’s a wedding surprise for him.’

‘How stupid of me not to think of that,’ Bel smacked her forehead.

‘He’s stressed at the moment, I can tell,’ said Max, reaching next for a mini cream slice. ‘We went out for a curry on Saturday night and he was great company, then he
went off to the toilet and came back with a cloud over his head. And he’s totally gone off sex. That night it took me ages to—’

Violet screamed and held up her hand to stem Max’s flow. ‘Do you mind, I’m eating an eclair and you’re putting me off.’

‘We had a bit of a row in bed as well,’ Max confessed, her eyebrows dipping into a frown. ‘He has this really annoying habit of doing something nice and then totally ruining
it.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Bel.

‘Well, on the rare occasion that he brings any flowers in he’ll hand them over and then say something like, “They’re not much, they were only cheap. Chuck them away if
you don’t like them.” Once he bought me a surprise box of After Eights – which I love, incidentally – with the accompanying words, “I know you’d prefer posh ones
but this is all I can afford right now, okay?” as if I’d actually asked him for a three-pound box of Patrick Roger Parisienne chocolates.’

‘Sounds like he thinks you’re worth more than he can afford,’ suggested Violet.

‘Why can’t he just say that, then? “Max, I wish I could give you the moon, but here are some After Eights.” I’d be so overjoyed I’d shag him on the
spot.’

‘God knows,’ said Bel. ‘If only they were from anywhere as near as Mars . . .’

‘You should have heard him going on about Curry Corner when we were there. Anyone would have thought I was a queen that he’d dragged to a dump and force-fed chicken jalfrezi. I told
him to stop it because he was spoiling the evening.’

‘And he answered?’ prodded Violet.

‘He said that the evening had already been spoiled. I still don’t know how. And he wouldn’t tell me. Just told me to drop it.’

‘Don’t try to fathom them out,’ harrumphed Bel. ‘They’re all fecking weird. I bet even Prince Charming turned into a bumhole as soon as he got that ring on
Cinderella’s finger.’

That reminded Max of what she had to show them. She grabbed her handbag and started hunting in it. ‘Look at this,’ she said, pulling out a wad of paper and handing it over. Violet
stared at it and her eyes grew as large as dinner plates.

‘You. Are. Joking,’ she said, passing it over to an impatient Bel.

‘Oh. My. Good. God,’ said Bel, looking at the pumpkin coach in pink, drawn by two white horses bearing pink plumage. ‘You can’t.’

‘I’m not. I’m having six horses,’ Max giggled.

‘Stuart will hit the roof.’

‘Tough. It’s ordered. And it’s his own fault. If he thinks I’m worth the best, then the best is what I shall have.’

Bel and Violet looked at each other and opened their mouths to say something – but there would have been no point. Stuart, it appeared, had played right into his gypsy bride’s
hands.

Stu heard the downstairs door open. She was here. He hadn’t been able to see her on her Tuesday cleaning visit because he had a boring meeting that he couldn’t get
out of, and he had been ticking off the days to today: Saturday.

He had tried not to think about her, forcing Max’s face into his brain every time it wandered over to Jenny’s, but he had failed more than he had succeeded. He ran down the stairs
with a smile already beaming on his face to find Sheila hanging up her coat on the hook by the door. He couldn’t stop his spirits sliding brutally into disappointment.

‘Hello,’ greeted Sheila. ‘You’ve got me today.’

‘Nice to see you again, Sheila,’ said Stuart, sticking on a pretend smile of delight. ‘Are you better?’

‘Well, on the mend. Still a bit sore,’ said Sheila. ‘I hope our Jenny has been looking after you.’

‘Jenny was doing a great job filling in. You shouldn’t have come back until you were totally fit and well,’ said Stuart, hoping Sheila would put on her coat and say that he was
right and she’d send her daughter round immediately.