My feelings for the last dress had been lust. Maybe I thought I wanted its babies, but really I just wanted to give it a good seeing-to and send it home the next morning. But this dress … This dress I wanted to take home to meet my parents. I wanted to take it to dinner and make sure no one ever hurt it. If I wasn’t getting married, I’d buy it to do the dishes. This was the dress.
‘Oh, Angela.’
Louisa, Jenny and my mother appeared beside me in the mirror, but while I felt transcendentally happy, all three of them were sobbing as though someone had just told them they had terminal cancer of the puppy. Mum pressed one hand over her mouth and flapped the other madly in front of her, trying to wave her tears away. Louisa was having an out-and-out hysterical meltdown, while Jenny just nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘That’s it,’ she shrugged, pulling her notebook out of her bag and crossing off her list. Score one for Clark. ‘You look amazing, Angie.’
‘Doesn’t she?’ Chloe stood to one side, her arms folded. ‘Well, that was easy.’
‘Great job with the accessories.’ Jenny reached out for my arm to take a closer look at the bangles. ‘These are beautiful.’
‘I love my work,’ she said again, pulling out a tray of more bangles and handing them to Jenny, the semi-professional magpie, for perusal. ‘I’d need to take it up a little bit, maybe take the waist in a touch, but I could deliver it on Saturday morning. The wedding’s in London?’
I switched off while the rest of the bridal party remembered themselves and went back to business, discussing timings, pricing and the finer logistics of the transaction. Instead of worrying about whether or not there was time for a final fitting, I lost myself in the mirror. I had a wedding dress. For my wedding. To Alex. Holding my left hand up to my chest, I smiled at the emerald as it twinkled against the fabric. All I needed now was for the rest of the week to work out as simply.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wedding HQ was completely deserted when we got home. Alex had texted to say he was meeting some friends and some people from the label and might be out late. Dad was out somewhere rattling through his list of jobs, Mum went to have a lie-down and Jenny immediately bunkered down in the living room, going through emails, ticking off boxes and colour-coding spreadsheets. Louisa had vamoosed the second we’d got out of the car, citing the fact that she was missing her baby too much as the reason for not having time for the cup of tea she’d been moaning about for the last two hours. I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t so much that she missed Grace as that she wanted to be beyond Jenny’s shouting distance.
I sat at the kitchen table in semi-darkness, resentful of my ordinary clothes. Stupid sundress. Rubbish cardigan. But Jenny said there was no such thing as wearing in a wedding dress, so I was stuck with my everyday ensembles until Saturday, when it would arrive shiny and new and at a length that wouldn’t cause me to break my neck. Sigh.
‘Jenny?’ I shouted from my seat, too depressed to walk into the living room.
‘Angela?’ she called back, too deep in wedding-related Pintrest boards to raise her head.
‘Do you want to do something?’ I couldn’t cope with another evening in the house. I’d been here for three days and I was desperate to get out. And possibly get drunk. The day had been trying, to say the least. ‘We could go back into town, get dinner, see some sights?’
‘Sightseeing and dinner is scheduled for Wednesday,’ she replied instantly. ‘I’ve got too much to do. Why don’t you go write your vows?’
Forcing myself out of my chair, I peered into what used to be my parents’ living room. There seemed to be some semblance of order to the stacks of paper and charts that Jenny had created, but it didn’t make any sense to me. A bit odd when you considered this was all for my wedding.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, perching on the arm of the sofa.
‘Sure.’ She was concentrating on what looked like a drawing of the garden, Sharpie marker in her mouth, laptop by her side. ‘Everything’s on schedule. Sadie and Delia are coming. Erin and Mary can’t make it. No word from James.’
‘No, I don’t mean with the wedding,’ I said, although I did really want to know what all the different marked-off areas were for. CF? Was that a chocolate fountain? It had better be. ‘In general. Are you OK? You seem a bit, I don’t know, tense.’
‘Is this about Louisa?’ She turned to look at me. ‘And the baby?’
Good grief.
‘No, it’s about whether or not you’re all right,’ I repeated. ‘You’ve been so up and down lately, and now you’re, like, super-focused business Jenny. I sort of thought planning a wedding would involve more cupcakes and giggling than shouting at each other in the street.’
‘So it is about Louisa?’
‘I do want you two to get along,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. ‘But mainly I want you to have fun. I want us all to have fun.’
‘We’re doing the bachelorette on Wednesday, after we buy the bridesmaids’ dresses,’ Jenny said, shrugging as though she didn’t know what I was talking about. ‘We’ll have fun then.’
Awesome. Jenny had scheduled in some fun. I was super-mad at Alex for going out without me. Not that I couldn’t call him and tag along, I was sure, but I hated feeling like a clingy girl. I’d never really been one of those; I was far too lazy.
‘I’m going to make a coffee.’ She stood up and pushed past me into the kitchen. ‘Or at least what your parents call coffee. You want one?’
I shook my head and waited until I heard the tap running before diving across the room to take a look at her computer screen. Well, there was a wedding, all right. I just wished I didn’t recognize the groom. Jeff. I couldn’t help but feel her ex-boyfriend’s recent winter wedding in New York was a strange resource for researching a last-minute, London-based garden party ceremony, but then Jenny was strange. She’d thrown herself into planning this wedding to get away from thinking about Jeff and had only succeeded in trapping herself in this horrible, hateful little bubble. I turned away from the laptop and went back into the kitchen, trying to feel something other than bride envy. For a complete asshat, Jeff had thrown one hell of a classy wedding. His missus wasn’t a patch on my Lopez, though.
‘Sure I can’t tempt you out for a drink?’ It had to be at least forty-eight hours since she’d imbibed, and that was just weird. ‘We could just go to the pub round the corner? Drink away my jitters?’
‘You’re having jitters?’ She span round, hurling freeze-dried coffee granules across my mother’s spotlessly Swiffered floor. ‘What? You can’t!’
‘Not jitters!’ I backtracked wildly. ‘I just meant, you know − grr, argh … weddings. We should open a bottle of wine, at least.’
‘I can’t drink when I’m working,’ she said, pressing a hand to her heart in relief as she went back to making a very strong, very unpleasant-looking cup of coffee. ‘You know that.’
In my defence, I didn’t know that. From what Erin had told me, she loved to drink while working. Or at least work while drinking. And besides, she wasn’t working, was she? Unless I was paying for this. I really hoped I wasn’t. All of my money was tied up in important investments. Like my shoes.
‘We’re not technically working,’ I said, trying to put the emphasis on ‘technically’ as politely as I could. ‘We’re kind of on holiday. We could go out for a little bit.’
Jenny put the kettle down and turned to face me, looking as though she was about to explain something very difficult to someone very stupid.
‘Angie, honey. This stopped being a vacation when you asked me to organize a wedding for you with six days’ notice. You wanna get drunk or you wanna get married?’
Well, that seemed like a stupid question. I wanted to get drunk, then I wanted to get married, and then I wanted to get drunk again. Wasn’t that how this worked?
‘I just don’t want you to spend your week off stressed out over a spreadsheet,’ I said with as much diplomacy as I could mu
ster. ‘That’s what work is for.’
‘I’m fine.’ She stirred her coffee with her pen and poured in a distinctly unfine amount of sugar. ‘Totally fine. Just let me get this done, OK? I’ll be finished up for the day in a couple of hours. I have to call some guy called Carluccio about the catering. We can talk party favours when I’m done.’
‘Jenny.’ Time for the big guns. ‘Where are your clothes?’
Her shoulders seized up and the sugar kept pouring.
‘I was looking for something and your cases are empty.’
I could count on one hand the number of times Jenny had been lost for words in the years since we’d met. In her case, silence was not golden. Silence was a precursor to some God-almighty display that made American Psycho look like The Tale of Peter Rabbit. I shouldn’t have asked that question when she was so much closer to the knife drawer than I was. But instead of savagely attacking me with a cheese grater, she turned to face me with a completely impassive expression, sipped her coffee and walked straight back into the living room without a word.
‘Right.’
I left her alone and ventured into the conservatory, where I spotted a light on in Dad’s shed. A shadow was moving around inside, and my heart started beating faster. If someone was stealing his Flymo, I was going to lose my shit. Today was not the day to mess with me.
‘Why do you always approach potential robberies without proper shoes,’ I admonished myself as I strode across the lawn barefoot. If there was a man in my dad’s shed stealing power tools, I probably should have mentioned it to Jenny. Or at least brought my phone. I wasn’t going to be much competition for a shed robber and it was going to be difficult to walk down the aisle if I was dead. And my mum would be well pissed off now she’d paid for the dress.
I cracked open the door with a polite cough and waited to get bashed in the head with a leaf blower. ‘Hello?’ I stepped inside and offered the burglar my most charming smile. But instead of finding an opportunistic teenager in a balaclava, I found my dad sitting down. Rolling a spliff.
‘Oh. Hello, love.’ He froze and looked around in the semi-darkness. ‘Just doing some wedding stuff.’
‘You’re getting stoned for my wedding?’ I was as morally outraged as it was possible to be while feeling utterly misplaced as a human. Teenagers got high. James Franco got high. Allegedly. Parents definitely did not get high. ‘Are we serving space cakes for dessert?’
He looked down at the tin, which no longer contained mints, curiously strong or otherwise, then leaned back in his chair. ‘Just don’t tell your mother.’
‘You’ve let me down, you’ve let Mum down and, most importantly, you’ve let yourself down,’ I said, shunting a pair of secateurs along so I could sit down. I sighed. ‘Mum doesn’t know you’re a secret stoner?’
‘I’m not.’ He closed up the tin, stashed the Rizlas in a drawer and gave me what was supposed to be a reassuring smile. I would have been more reassured by my credit card bill. ‘It’s not as if I’m high as a kite every day. Sometimes I get a bit wound up. And the doctor says it can be good for some people.’
‘Yeah, people who have like serious health problems or dodgy doctors in California, not a slightly annoying wife.’
‘Slightly annoying?’ Dad snarked. ‘You have been away for a long time. Anyway, today was just a bit trying, and listening to all that old stuff from the Seventies with Alex − well, it put me in the mood. And I thought you were still out.’
‘My wedding has driven you to drugs.’ I pulled up my legs and hugged my knees. ‘Sorry.’
‘Not so much your wedding as your little friend in there.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘I never thought I’d meet a woman more dedicated to keeping me out of trouble than your mother. Have you seen the list of jobs she gave me?’
‘I haven’t,’ I admitted. ‘But feel free not to worry. She’s got some stuff going on − it’s not about you. She won’t kill you if you haven’t got the right carpeting for the marquee.’
‘Won’t she?’
‘Well, she might.’
We sat in companionable silence for a moment as I imagined Jenny chasing my dad around the garden in a bridesmaid’s dress with his Black & Decker strimmer.
‘It’s nice to have you home, love.’ He reached over and patted my knee. The Clark family equivalent of a sloppy kiss. ‘I have missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you too,’ I said, surprised at how much I meant it. ‘And Mum.’
‘Really?’ He didn’t look convinced.
‘Well, I’ve missed you.’
‘And is everything all right?’ Dad pulled out another tin, one that actually contained mints, and offered me one. ‘Work really is OK? You’re all right for money?’
‘We’re fine for money,’ I confirmed. ‘I’m not exactly buying an apartment in the Plaza, but I’m not stony broke. And yes, work really is good. I think. It might be the first time I can ever honestly tell you I love my job. It’s going well and I’m not living in my overdraft.’
‘You’ve been telling me you’re not living in your overdraft for ten years,’ he said, popping his own mint and putting away the tin. ‘So that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.’
‘But this time I really mean it,’ I laughed, thinking about that first exciting bank statement all in black ink. ‘Things really are pretty good. Definitely better than OK.’
He gave me a steady look with his grey-blue eyes, hands on his knees. ‘You’d tell me? If there was anything you needed to tell me?’
‘Like what?’ I couldn’t work out whether he was genuinely worried about me or just tapping me up for some harder drugs. I was only on season one of Breaking Bad and I hadn’t seen The Wire at all. I didn’t know all the codewords.
‘Anything,’ he said, rubbing his thumbs together awkwardly. ‘Even if there was something you didn’t want to tell your mum. Or you thought we wouldn’t want to hear. You know you can tell me anything.’
‘I know I can tell you anything because I’ve got awesome blackmail material on you now.’ I kicked the drawer where he’d hidden his stash. ‘But really, there’s nothing. I am ecstatically happy about everything that’s happening in my life.’
‘Well, that’s good enough for me, then. Alex seems a good lad.’ Dad straightened up a bit and dropped the serious chat. ‘We’ve had a chat and it looks like he’s got his head on his shoulders. Even if he is a musician.’
‘Even if he is a musician,’ I repeated. ‘So Mum isn’t going to stand up and refuse to let me marry him at the last minute?’
‘I’ll tie her to her chair,’ he promised. ‘He’s sensible, he’s not a penniless busker and he’s clearly mad about you. He’s a bit too handsome for my liking, but he does laugh at my jokes. I can’t really ask for anything else for my little girl.’
This was good news. I loved my dad, I loved Alex, so there was no bad here.
‘And it’s probably better for my heart to get this whole wedding thing out of the way quickly. I couldn’t have managed a year of listening to your mother debating whether or not to invite that woman down the road who looked after you once when you were seven.’
I frowned. I did not want that woman at my wedding. She was a cow and wouldn’t let me watch Blue Peter.
‘I did wonder one thing, though.’ Dad fiddled with a screwdriver for a moment. ‘You know I’ve always been a big fan of brass bands.’
I did know that.
‘And I’ve been playing a bit with one from down the road.’
I did not know that.
‘And I’m sure it’s not in Jenny’s theme or anything and you can just say no if you want to say no because it’s very silly, but one of the boys mentioned it might be a nice idea if we could play at the reception. For you. Just for a bit.’
Oh. At some point while I’d been away, my dad had become an adorable trumpet-tooting stoner. I pressed my hands against my mouth and tried to choke a sob before it emerged.
‘It’s silly. Your
mum said it was silly. Jenny’s got a string quartet or something planned, I know.’
‘She has?’ I wondered what else Jenny had planned that she hadn’t mentioned. ‘Whatever. If you want to play, then you should play. I want your brass band at my wedding.’
Now there were eight words I never thought I’d say. And I didn’t entirely mean them, but who could say no to their dad, in his shed, when he’s choking up and you’re having your most emotional moment since he took you to your Brownie promise-making ceremony? So we’d have a brass band for half an hour. It might be fun.
‘I’ll let the band know.’ He puffed out his chest with pride. ‘They’ll be chuffed to bits. And your mother will have to eat her words.’
‘We all know how much she loves that,’ I said. I hoped this wasn’t going to come back to bite me in the arse. I knew Alex would be into it − he loved any kind of music stuff − but Jenny wasn’t going to be amused, and it seemed like my mum wasn’t completely won over by the idea. They’d better bloody be good.
‘I just wish you were staying longer,’ Dad said, clapping his hands on his knees as he stood up. ‘But I know you’ll be off living your life over there as soon as you can get away.’
‘Not as soon as I can get away,’ I replied, looking up at him in the dim glow of the shed. He looked well. Happy. ‘I mean, we’ll stay long enough for it not to be impolite. At least until the toasts. But then we’re gone. Obvs.’