Kate's Wedding (2 page)

‘Oh, Kate.’ Ian pulled her into a bear hug. ‘My Kate, my Kate, my Kate.’

Kate dropped her camera. One of the matrons picked it up and obligingly took a series of snaps.

‘You’ll want to remember this moment for ever,’ she told Kate as she handed the camera back. ‘We are so pleased for you. You two young people take care of each other now.’

‘I am going to take care of this woman until the day I die,’ Ian responded proudly. He hugged Kate close again, rendering her unsteady on her feet.

‘You’ve made our vacation,’ the matron assured him. ‘To see a proposal in the most romantic place on earth!’

Ian was looking at the photos on the camera already.

‘There we are,’ he said. ‘That’s us. That’s you and me getting engaged.’

The Kate in the photographs looked ambushed, staring over Ian’s shoulder with wide and frightened eyes.

‘Were you surprised?’ Ian asked her, beginning the reminiscing before the moment was even complete.

‘Well, yes,’ said Kate. ‘I suppose I was.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘Of course I am.’

She felt breathless and tearful. Exactly as she’d felt the time she almost died stepping out in front of a bus while exhausted from an all-nighter at the office. She could almost hear the squeal of the brakes. Was she frightened? Relieved?

They joined the queue shuffling back towards the lift.

‘I haven’t got a ring yet, because I didn’t want to get something you didn’t like. I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Kate. ‘We can choose something in London.’

You’re not properly engaged until you’ve got the ring
, said a little voice at the back of Kate’s head.
There’s still time to change your mind
.

No, Kate told the voice firmly. This is exactly what I’ve always wanted. This is the best moment of my life so far. She looked at Ian’s handsome profile as he pushed ahead through the crowd. She hadn’t been lying when she told Ian that everything about this, her second romantic weekend in Paris, was better than the first. She loved her kind and generous boyfriend. He made her feel so much better than any of the muppets she’d dated before him. She knew that when he promised he would always look after her, Ian actually meant it. He was steadfast and trustworthy. He was a proper, grown-up man who would never give her cause to worry or distrust him. She knew that he had made his proposal out of the very purest love, and there was nothing she wanted more than to spend the rest of her life as Mrs Ian Turner. Yes, Kate told the little voice. This is brilliant. Oh my God, I’m getting married!

‘Let’s not go back down to earth just yet.’ Kate caught her new fiancé by the arm. ‘I want to savour this moment for a little bit longer.’

Kate easily persuaded Ian back to the viewing platform, where she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him so passionately that she raised a cheer from a coach party of pensioners from Frankfurt.

Chapter Two

Unlike Kate Williamson, Diana Ashcroft was absolutely expecting her proposal. In fact, it was she who had suggested the ideal date, 20 October 2010.

‘Twenty ten, twenty ten,’ she spelled it out. ‘That way, we’ll never forget it.’

Diana’s boyfriend, Ben, nodded mutely while Diana issued instructions. Since her birthday was on 21 October, she continued, it made sense for Ben to take the Wednesday, Thursday
and
Friday off work for a mini-break at Cliveden. Diana had always wanted to go to Cliveden. Either there or Belvoir Castle. It had to be somewhere classy. Somewhere special.

Somewhere expensive, thought Ben.

Going during the week would make their hotel stay slightly more economical, Diana added thoughtfully. And she would love him for ever if he granted this one wish and made their engagement a real
event
. She gave Ben the coy smile that she knew he couldn’t resist.

Ben duly booked the hotel and started shopping for the ring. At least that wouldn’t be too difficult. Diana and her mother, Susie, had already been into Goldsmiths at the West Quay Shopping Centre and spent an hour narrowing the contenders down to two, so that Ben could pick his favourite.

‘Of course, you get the final say,’ Diana promised.

However, as he was standing in the shop, taking in the prices in stunned dismay, Diana texted to tell him that she really,
really
preferred the princess-cut invisible centre and diamond-set band from the new Excitement collection, which was the more expensive ring by several hundred pounds. Ben was altogether less excited than panicked as he handed over his credit card to be swiped to the tune of £3,499.99.

‘You’re supposed to spend a month’s wages on the ring,’ Diana told him when he returned to their house looking pale, ‘so you should probably get me some earrings as well.’

With the engagement ring, the matching earrings and the mini-break at Cliveden, Ben figured that he had spent all his disposable income for the year in one fell swoop. But how could he put a price on Diana’s happiness? he reminded himself. And her forgiveness. This engagement, which had come upon him rather more quickly than he expected, was the sign of commitment Diana had demanded after discovering he had cheated on her with a girl from work.

‘It’s the only way I can ever trust you again,’ she told him.

After the tears and the terrifying screaming matches that had followed his being busted, Ben was happy to agree to just about anything. Like most men, Ben would sooner have faced a machine gun than a crying girl. Forget waterboarding, water
works
were the ultimate torture.

Ben told himself that he would have proposed to Diana at some point anyway. Diana was the love of his life. The fling with Lucy, the girl from work, was a huge mistake. They had flirted for months, while working on the same project, by text and email, and in late-night ‘meetings’ at the pub. The build-up in sexual tension was incredible, but anyone might have predicted that as soon as the tension was released in an untidy bedroom in Lucy’s damp flat, the scales would fall from Ben’s eyes.

Even as he lay in Lucy’s bed right afterwards, he started to compare her unfavourably with Diana, his girlfriend of seven years. Lucy’s sheets needed changing for a start. Ben shuddered at the thought that he might not be the first guy to have slept on this set. The walls of her bedroom were depressingly bare but for an Australian flag held up by drawing pins. She had nothing in her fridge but a carton of sour milk, which Ben only discovered was sour when he took an unfortunate swig from it. Lucy’s bathroom was filthy. The pink plastic backing strip of a panty liner curled obscenely on the floor beneath the toilet bowl. She was far from being a domestic goddess.

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

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.

‘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.