Kate's Wedding Read online

  When, a couple of days later, Diana found a saucy text from Lucy on Ben’s mobile and all hell broke loose as a result, it was that grubby bathroom in particular that loomed large in Ben’s remembrance. Diana kept their starter home immaculate and spotlessly clean. Sheets were changed twice a week. The walls were tastefully adorned with prints from John Lewis. The fridge was always full. Comfort and cleanliness. Was he willing to trade that for Lucy’s sexual athleticism? He knew the acrobatics wouldn’t last. They never did. Diana had been like that in bed once. Years down the line, Ben knew better than to make a move when Diana was wearing her tooth-whitening trays or a face mask.

  So, faced with the choice between dirty sex in a dirty house and hardly any sex at all in a relative palace, Ben confounded popular beliefs about men by going for practical celibacy among the John Lewis cushions. And so the engagement was brokered and the moment itself was stage-managed. A bottle of champagne upon arrival. The ring handed over in the elegance of Cliveden’s terrace dining room to polite applause from the other guests. The first shag in six months in a deluxe suite with separate dressing area.

  ‘I am so happy,’ Diana said as she stretched her arm out from beneath the sheets to admire her brand-new diamonds.

  ‘Me too,’ said Ben. ‘Me too.’

  He stroked a finger down Diana’s arm. She would make a beautiful bride. Every man would envy him. Unknown to Ben, Diana was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Chapter Three

  21 October 2010, Bride on Time, Washam, a small town on the south coast

  Whatever the statistics suggested about the decline of marriage, Bride on Time seemed to be bucking the trend. Even this latest recession had left Melanie Harris’s bridal-gown business untouched. Perhaps romance wasn’t dead after all. Perhaps people were actually flocking to the safety of marriage in these difficult times. Or perhaps it was that Bride on Time had benefited from the collapse of its nearest rival store when the couple that ran it divorced after the husband came out. Such a shock. A man who knew his silk from his chiffon running off with another guy? Whatever the reason, the appointments book at Bride on Time was always full.

  Still, people driving past the unassuming aluminium-framed doorway, which led to a converted flat above a 24/7 mini-market, would never have guessed that Bride on Time was tricked out like the inside of a jewellery box, with swags of satin pinned to the ceiling and a pink velvet chaise longue in every corner, or that in an average week nearly thirty brides would be dressed for their big day by Melanie and her team. Newly engaged women (and, memorably, one slim-hipped man, who looked good in everything) came to Bride on Time from miles around. Melanie had clients from Southampton, Portsmouth and Petersfield. Several girls had made the trip down from London. She was even making a dress for an expat bride based in Palma, who flew in for a fitting once a month. Such was Bride on Time’s reputation for perfection.

  In 2010, Melanie’s little shop was almost thirty years old. She’d started the place just a year after her own wedding, sinking the money she and her husband had saved for a mortgage deposit into the first season’s stock. Melanie had worked as a seamstress since leaving school. She knew that bridal fashion was big business and luckily Keith believed her. There were some lean years to begin with, when the newlyweds lived on dented tins from the supermarket downstairs, but it wasn’t long before Bride on Time was VAT registered and employed two full- and seven part-time staff. Heidi and Sarah, the current full-time staff, were both excellent seamstresses. Heidi had worked for Vivienne Westwood before quitting to come back to Southampton to look after her ageing mother. Sarah, likewise, could make a catwalk model out of any checkout girl with a bit of clever stitching.

  But Melanie’s husband and friends credited Melanie herself with making the shop such a stellar success. Melanie had a way with people. It was as though she could tune in to their most secret desires. She knew within moments of meeting a bride which dress the girl would walk out with. She knew how to tactfully persuade a bride who wanted a Disney-themed wedding with grown women dressed as Minnie Mouse for bridesmaids that the pictures might not stand the test of time. She also knew how to calm the nerves of the bride who wasn’t flat-out delighted to find herself wedding-dress shopping. There were more of those than you would imagine. Sometimes it was just the stress of planning the big day. Plenty of girls dreaded being the centre of attention. Sometimes it was something more. Melanie had often played agony aunt as she laced up bodices in the chiffon-tented changing rooms.

  ‘What was your wedding dress like?’ her customers often asked her.

  No word described it better than ‘meringue’, but that was the height of fashion in 1981, she told them, including leg-of-mutton sleeves and a skirt so voluminous it almost obliged the bride to walk sideways on her way down the aisle. Melanie’s own enormous dress was made of a heavy silk taffeta that creased like buggery. It had driven her mother insane in the hours immediately before the wedding, which fell on the same day as the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Di.

  29 July 1981

  ‘These bloody creases won’t come out!’

  Melanie’s mother, Cynthia, had her stand in front of the ironing board so that she could at least try to press out the worst of the wrinkles in the train. The result was a small brown burn that had to be covered with a silk flower. But not even a burn on her wedding dress could ruin Melanie’s wedding day. She was marrying Keith Harris, the man she had met for the first time at a youth club when they were both just thirteen years old. He was her best friend in the world, the only lover she would ever have or need. Some girls might have found the prospect of only ever knowing one man slightly daunting, but at twenty-one, Melanie was ready to promise him the rest of her life.

  Cynthia felt a little calmer about the creases in her daughter’s dress after the bridal party broke off their preparations to watch the arrival of Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral. The royal bride stepped out of her carriage in a veritable cloud of crumpled taffeta and antique lace.

  ‘Look at that dress. It’s like a bloody dishrag,’ Cynthia pronounced. ‘Those puffball sleeves are bigger than her head!’

  ‘But she’s radiant,’ said Melanie’s maternal grandmother, Ann. ‘No one’s looking at the dress. Just look at her smile. She’s so much in love, that girl. Like our Melanie is. Anyway, scrunched-up taffeta is obviously all the rage.’

  Melanie’s mother conceded that Grandma was right.

  Meanwhile, Melanie beamed as she took in the similarities between her dress and what she could see of the future princess’s dress on the tiny television screen. Same sort of fabric. Same shape. It was a pity Melanie hadn’t thought of having more detailing round the collar, and of course Melanie’s train was never going to be that extravagant – twenty-five feet! The aisle at the village church just wasn’t that long – but all in all Melanie felt that she and Diana had been on the same wavelength and that added another layer to Melanie’s happiness. How lucky they both were to be marrying the men of their dreams on this beautiful day. Possibly, Melanie decided, she was even luckier than Lady Di, since she was marrying Keith, the most handsome man in her town, while Diana was marrying a man nearly thirteen years her senior with ears like a toby jug. Melanie wouldn’t have traded Keith for that particular prince.

  ‘The car’s here,’ Melanie’s sister, Michelle, shouted up the stairs.

  Melanie took a few deep breaths as her mother, her grandmother and two of her bridesmaids gathered up the taffeta skirt and train, and helped her down the narrow stairs towards the start of her new life as Mrs Keith Harris, with all its attendant Orville jokes.

  Chapter Four

  23 October 2010

  Washam

  Kate had often walked past the unassuming entrance to Bride on Time while staying at her parents’ new house in a little town on the coast near Southampton. The place had always fascinated her. The red prom dress in the window display (Melanie Harris had seen an opportunity in the imported
trend for high-school proms) looked unflattering, uncomfortable and highly inflammable. Who on earth was going to buy that, and who was going to be encouraged to buy a wedding dress by the monstrosities that flanked the red frock? They were perfect early-Neighbours-era Kylie. In fact, it was quite possible that they had been lurking around in the stockroom since the 1980s. None of the dresses benefited from being seen through a film of yellow cellophane, designed to stop the fabric from discolouring in the sun.

  Kate couldn’t imagine how the business survived, stuck above a mini-mart with such an uninspiring window display. Perhaps it was a cover for a brothel, she suggested to her father, John, as they walked by together one afternoon. John said he thought his daughter might be right. He liked to imagine all sorts of goings-on in the small town where he and Kate’s mother had chosen to spend their retirement for its proximity to Kate’s sister and their grandchild. Kate’s parents had a nickname for every familiar passerby.

  ‘There goes Keith Richards on his way to the bottle bank,’ Kate’s mum, Elaine, commented as a man who hadn’t changed his look since 1973 shuffled by the kitchen window.

  ‘I see Joan Collins is being measured for some new guttering,’ said John as a van pulled up outside a house owned by a glamorous widow.

  ‘Do you think that’s a wig?’ Elaine asked Kate as Joan Collins opened the door to her visitors. ‘Your father thinks that’s her real hair. I keep telling him it’s a wig.’

  Kate humoured her parents both. Commenting on the neighbours kept them off the subject of her own life, at least.

  That said, one of the many things Kate would always be grateful to her parents for was the care they took not to interfere in their grown daughters’ private lives. Kate had many friends who claimed they had been endlessly pressured by their parents to get married and start producing grandchildren. By contrast, Kate’s own parents had never been anything but supportive of Kate’s right to live her life exactly as she chose. Married, single, straight, gay, left, right . . . they didn’t mind at all. They never once mentioned how nice it would be to have Kate settled down. Except for one incident when Kate had just turned thirty and her father came in from the garden with a toad.

  ‘Kiss it,’ he said. ‘It may be your last chance.’

  Kate hadn’t brought a boyfriend home in seven years when she introduced Ian to her mum and dad. She would have liked for them to get to know Dan, but Dan seemed to think that agreeing to meet her parents would be tantamount to agreeing to a wedding and so he never did meet them, though he was always polite enough to ask how they were.

  Ian was different. He insisted that he be allowed to meet Kate’s family surprisingly early on, perhaps only three months after they first met.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I want to know everything about you,’ he said. ‘I especially want to know where you came from.’

  So Kate drove him down to the south coast for Sunday lunch. He did all the right things. He brought flowers, praised the food and offered to help wash up. He complimented Kate’s sister, Tess, on her new boots. He found common ground with Kate’s brother-in-law, Mike, on the subject of a disastrous cricket season. He was suitably enthusiastic when Kate’s five-year-old niece, Lily, insisted on demonstrating the song she would be singing in the school play. He didn’t even seem to mind that Lily started from the beginning every time she made a mistake. Which was often. He just kept on smiling through.

  Later in the afternoon, the entire family went for a walk down by the seafront. Ian strode ahead with Mike and John, carrying Lily on his shoulders. Kate lagged behind with her mother and sister.

  ‘Lily likes him,’ Tess observed.

  ‘I like him,’ said Elaine. ‘He’s a very nice young man.’

  ‘Young?’ Kate laughed. ‘He’s forty-five.’

  ‘And he’s never been married, you say?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Elaine, before adding in a stage whisper, ‘None of that complication.’

  Though Elaine refrained from saying it out loud, Kate knew she was thinking about Dan and his never-ending divorce proceedings.

  ‘Your father seems to like him too,’ Elaine continued.

  ‘I know he must be special,’ said Tess, ‘because you haven’t brought anyone home since that bloke with the BMW. What was his name? Nice car, shame about the—’

  ‘God, that was ages ago. Let’s not talk about him,’ said Kate. Her entire body shivered as she remembered Sebastian, the BMW driver, who had asked her to whip him while he cavorted in a pair of her stockings. Kate knew Tess already thought her private life was a bit of a joke. Tess didn’t know the half of it. There were many good reasons why Kate hadn’t brought someone home in so long.

  Anyway, Ian definitely passed muster that afternoon. From that day forward Elaine always asked after him whenever she phoned for a chat. Ian was a big fan of West Ham FC, so John made an effort to know how the team was doing and asked Kate to pass on her congratulations if a match had gone well. Never before had Kate’s parents been so keen to know about a boyfriend. Tess, too, always wanted to know what Ian was up to and what was his opinion on this, that or other aspect of her sister’s life. They could not have made it more obvious that they approved of Ian Turner. That was how Kate knew her family would be pleased with their news.

  It was difficult to keep quiet about the engagement until they were able to tell their parents. After the initial shock of the proposal, Kate’s feelings on the subject had quickly settled into the proper euphoria. The rest of the mini-break in Paris was just wonderful. For the first time in her life Kate found herself actually going into a jewellery shop with a man. Dan had always tugged her past jewellers’ windows at high speed, as though the unobtainable glitter might send her insane. Now Ian was insisting that they visit every jeweller on the Place Vendôme – Boucheron, Chaumet, Bulgari. In Boucheron, Kate tried on a yellow diamond as big as an almond. When the sales assistant announced the price, which was roughly equivalent to the cost of a brand-new Porsche, Kate kept her nerve and continued to admire the stone, while Ian told the assistant that the ring was ‘too big for anyone but a transvestite’.

  Afterwards, back out on the street, Kate and Ian laughed so hard they thought their sides would burst. They tried on a considerably more modest solitaire in Tiffany at Galeries Lafayette, but ultimately decided to get a less expensive copy made in Hatton Garden when they got home.

  When they weren’t shopping for a fantasy engagement ring, they stopped on street corners all over Paris to share kisses. They held hands over dinner, breakfast and lunch. They twirled round the Tuileries like a couple half their age.

  On the Eurostar back to London, Kate felt a sense of calm underlying the excitement of what was to come. She looked at Ian dozing beside her. That snore of his was now hers for life, but she didn’t mind about that. Ian really wanted her, and she wanted him too. More than anything. They would look after each other. Together they would build a wonderful life. At last Kate had found her for-ever love.

  Back in London, the guy in the dry-cleaner’s asked Kate if she was sure she hadn’t flown to Poland for a quick nip and tuck, rather than to Paris for a mini-break.

  ‘You look radiant,’ he said.

  Kate’s mother agreed with the dry-cleaner’s pronouncement when she saw Kate climb out of Ian’s car the following Saturday. When the news had been shared, Elaine clapped her hands together and said, ‘I knew it! I knew it the moment I saw you get out of the car. You look transformed.’

  And Kate really did feel transformed. All her adult life she had told herself that it didn’t bother her whether she got married or not, but the truth was, she had been blindsided by joy. And there was something about her parents’ reaction that gave the lie to the notion that they too had been entirely happy with her prolonged bout of spinsterhood. The only word for her parents that afternoon was ‘ecstatic’. Their unabashed happiness made Kate feel happier s
till.

  When Tess arrived, an hour or so later, she squealed her own delight at her big sister’s announcement. Mike shook Ian’s hand and assured him, in dark tones, ‘The fun starts here.’

  Lily, just turned six, seemed a little confused by all the congratulations and the kissing.

  ‘You’re going to have an uncle Ian,’ Tess told her.

  ‘I thought you said I could have a Dream Pony stable set,’ Lily responded.

  After much prompting, Lily eventually wished her Auntie Kate ‘Congratulations’ and gave her new Uncle Ian a reluctant kiss on the cheek. Then she insisted on all the lights in her grandparents’ living room being turned off so that she could put on ‘a show’ in the newly engaged couple’s honour.

  ‘This is such good news, Kate.’ Tess wouldn’t stop squeezing her hand all afternoon and evening. ‘Especially, you know, especially right now.’ Tess looked deep into her eyes.

  At last Kate caught her meaning. In all the excitement about the engagement, Kate had forgotten that her mother had been in hospital that week, as an out-patient, for some tests following an abnormal mammogram. Nothing serious, they’d hoped, but Kate had completely forgotten to ask the outcome. She followed her mother out to the kitchen to help her make another round of tea.

  ‘How was the hospital visit?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Let’s not talk about that now,’ said Elaine. ‘It was boring. Today is about your engagement.’ Elaine cupped Kate’s face in her hands. ‘My little girl is getting married!’