Chapter 1
You know those people that have a house full of motivational slogans? Embrace Every Moment, stamped on their coffee mugs. Always Kiss Me Goodnight painted above their perfectly made beds.
I’m not one of those people.
This morning I overslept, then slipped on a stray sock and banged my toe on the nightstand. The elevator in my building broke and I had to run down six flights of stairs. And then my local coffee shop was closed. For health violations.
What’s that? Not the end of the world? You want me to suck it up?
Did I mention that I’m wearing a wedding dress… on The Tube?
It’s a Good Day for a Hot Mess. Someone embroider that on a pillow.
My mobile is ringing in my bag. I can hear the bloody thing, but I don’t have a prayer of getting to it before it stops because I can barely even bend to get my sodding bag out from underneath the fluff of my wedding dress. Rena’s plan sounded bizarre enough when I was driving to the TV studio, but this is off the scale stupid even by my own standards. Or hers. I’m doing this because she’s been my best friend since we were five years old and I love the bones of her and Bryn, but if she doesn’t win their fantasy Maldives wedding on the ridiculous game show she’s entered us into, I’m going to kill her. And get myself a new best friend. One who doesn’t make me wear an ugly-ass charity shop wedding dress on The Underground, for starters.
Whoever’s calling me isn’t giving up, so I lower myself in some ridiculous kind of curtsy and try to lunge for the handle of my backpack. Damn this bloody corset thing! Would it kill someone to help me out here? Look, I get it. I’m wearing a wedding dress that even Little-Bo-Peep would turn her nose up at; I look like I’ve escaped from the local secure wing, but someone help a girl out here? Considering I’m on the 7.47 into Hammersmith with a bunch of suits, there’s not a Prince Charming amongst them. I’ve just about managed to contort myself low enough to get a hold of my bag, but not without having my face practically shoved up the ass of the man standing in front of me. I bite down the urge to tell him his musty suit could do with dry cleaning, ferreting in my bag as I haul myself up again.
Three missed calls from Rena. Of course there are. I sigh and jab at the screen to get her back.
‘Where the hell are you? I’m already outside Splash TV and I’m freezing my fucking tits off in this dress!’
Her voice screeches out of my mobile and bounces off the carriage windows, making several Prince Uncharming’s slant their eyes shiftily towards me. They’re getting right on my bloody nerves, which is the only explanation I can offer for what I say next.
‘Calm down, darling,’ I coo, more than loud enough to be heard. ‘I’ll be there soon. By this afternoon you’ll be my wife, and I’ll warm your freezing tits up with my hands, I promise. Then I’m gonna crawl underneath the skirt of your wedding dress and lick your…’
We rattle into a tunnel, cutting her off, which is lucky because I was just about to say something utterly filthy designed to make the guy across the aisle choke on the bacon bap he’s shoving down his throat.
I look down at my mobile regretfully and murmur ‘cut off,’ for the benefit of my audience.
‘Call her back,’ someone behind me urges. ‘I want to know what you were going to do next.’
I twist around, aware that my boobs are frothing over the top of the bodice of my dress as if I’m a serving wench in a period drama. I’m quite in character by now.
‘Piss off, you lot shouldn’t have been eavesdropping on my private conversation,’ I wail at the carriage in general, fake-anguished. I offer up a silent thank you to my old drama teacher because I even manage to summon up a few tears. ‘It’s my wedding day, for God’s sake, and my car was stolen, and now I’m on The Tube looking like this.’ I pause to gulp and gesticulate at the acres of ivory dress I’m tangled up in, ‘and my beautiful, gorgeous girlfriend thinks I’ve stood her up on the most important day of our tender young lives!’
Pretty much everyone in the carriage is looking at me now, and that’s when it happens. We stop, the doors slide open, and the hottest guy I’ve ever laid eyes on inches into the already jammed carriage. When I say hot, we’re talking Chris Pratt’s better looking brother. He clocks me straight away, probably because I look like the fairy who fell off the Christmas tree shoe-horned into a box full of dour ravens.
Whoa. Well, I’m glad he missed my lezza declaration.
He looks me over in all my tear-stained glory, and then he smirks. Smirks, people. He might be hot, but that was still rude.
‘What’s so funny?’ I snark.
He shrugs. ’You’re wearing a really shit wedding dress on The Tube.’
I sense the suits around me collectively suck down a breath, as if they feel for the new guy, but are still kind of glad they’ve bagged ringside seats.
‘Says you, dressed like a twat in a …’ I sweep my gaze over his outfit in search of something to insult, and fuck, that’s when I spot the hint of a dog collar underneath his jacket. No shitting way. How can the hottest man in the world be a vicar?
‘I forgive you, my child,’ he murmurs, looking at my tits.
‘Don’t bother, mate, she’s a lesbian,’ the guy behind me says. He clearly hasn’t clocked the dog collar, or indeed onto the fact that this isn’t the nineteen seventies and I can be a lesbian if I bloody well like without him feeling it’s in any way acceptable to have a dig.
‘This just gets better and better,’ hot-rev laughs, hooking his hand into the grab strap over his head as the train zips through the tunnels.
‘She’s late for her own wedding,’ musty suit pipes up.
‘Someone’s had a lucky escape.’
Now, I know that I didn’t exactly look for sympathy by loudly telling my fake lesbian wife-to-be I wanted to crawl under her wedding dress and lick her lady garden, but I’m feeling ever so slightly unsupported in my crisis right now. What if I really was a damsel in distress? Would any of these guys step up as my knight in shining armour? I get the distinct impression not. They’re lucky this is my stop. And joy of joys, I can’t decide if I’m lucky or not because it seems like Reverend HotPratt is getting off at Hammersmith too.
He strides along beside me as I wrestle my backpack onto my stupidly bare shoulders.
‘Are you really late for your own wedding?’
I huff as we step out onto the busy pavement, shivering because it’s sodding freezing. Who wears a strapless wedding dress on The Tube in London in March? No one sane.
I glance at him, and for a second I forget why he’s pissed me off and remember that he’s hotness itself. ‘Are you really a vicar?’
‘Why, do you have something you need to confess?’
‘Such as?’ I mutter, distracted as I glance both ways, uncertain which way the studio is. I know it’s not far, thank God, I just need a quiet second to get my bearings.
‘Such as it’s not really your wedding day, and you pretended to be lesbian to wind up that bunch of suits on the train?’
‘What makes you so sure about that?’
He laughs, cocksure. ‘You were checking me out.’
If I had a bouquet in my hands, I’d hit him with it. ‘In your dreams. I was thrown for a minute by the dog collar, that’s all.’
‘Can’t a vicar be good looking?’
‘Who said you’re good looking?’
‘You did.’
He’s saved from the scathing insult about to trip off my tongue by Rena, who’s shouting my name and waving both arms like a mad thing a little way down on the opposite side of the road.
‘Your fiancée, I presume?’ he guesses. It wasn’t much of a stretch, given that she’s the only other woman on the street wearing a wedding dress.
I wave back, relieved, hitching up my skirts as I make a dash towards the crossing because it’s flashing green.
‘Good luck, my child,’ Rev HotPratt shouts after me, laughing. ‘I think you’re going to need it!’
‘I very much doubt it!” I fling back, although he’s probably right. We’re going to need all the luck we can get this weekend if Rena’s going to win the wedding of her dreams.
‘Jesus, Connie. I didn’t believe you when you said the dress was hideous. What were you thinking of?’
Rena is laughing at me so hard she’s made her mascara run. It doesn’t help that she looks sensational in her own thrift store sheath, all Italian curves and flowing black waves caught back from her face by a huge, glittering butterfly.
‘I thought you said we were playing it for laughs,’ I grumble. My dress is straight out of the eighties, a meringue so huge and froufrou that it stands up on its own. I’m an accessory to this dress, it doesn’t actually need me. What the hell kind of designer manages to shoehorn balloon sleeves onto an off-the-shoulder number? I look like Little-Bo-Fucking-Peep.
‘Did I? I don’t remember.’
She knows full well she did, the bitch. I’ll get her back for this. She forgets that she’s already asked me to be her Maid Of Honour. When all this is over, I’m going to be the most dishonourable maid on the block. Best friend or not, she’s getting it both barrels.
‘Try not to damage it during the game-show,’ she snorts, stroking my skirt. ‘I might need to borrow it for my actual wedding if we don’t win.’
‘Well, we won’t win if I don’t try my best,’ I smile, sweet as sugar before I let the smile slide right off my face in favour of scowling. ‘And I won’t try my best if you keep taking the piss out of me. I’ve just caught The Tube with a bunch of wanker-bankers looking like this for you, my humour cup does not runneth over right now, Rena. I need coffee, and I wish I smoked so I could have a fag.’ That’s not strictly true. I hate smoking but stressed out people always look relieved in the movies when they spark up and take a drag, and right now I seriously need relieving.
Rena pulls the snowy white fur stole from around her shoulders and wraps it around mine instead as she kisses me on the forehead.
’Thank you,’ she murmurs. ‘You’re the best friend ever. I’m sorry I laughed at you.’
Her body heat has turned the stole into something like an electric blanket, and it does wonders for my mood.
‘Good,’ I mutter. ‘That’s better. If you can supply me with a cappuccino, I’ll think about forgiving you.’
She grins as she reaches into her bag and pulls out a mini bottle of brandy. ‘Done. I can even lace it with something to lift your spirits.’
It’s not a cigarette, but it’s a close second. I take the bottle and unscrew the cap.
‘On second thoughts, forget the coffee.’ I take a good swig and look behind us at Splash TV. ‘Let’s go and win you a wedding.’