Combine a breakfast that consisted of Bucks Fizz that was more champers than OJ, with a corset-style bridesmaid’s dress that I hadn’t completely successfully slimmed down into. I just about made it to the top of the aisle – where I burped gutturally into the vicar’s face.
Gemma, Windsor
‘So, we’re not saying anything?’ Cleo asked again, like she just had to make sure of the party line. ‘I’m not sure I can manage that!’
‘Manage it,’ was Bea’s helpful response.
‘But, imagine it: we’ve all had a couple of glasses of wine – okay, well, maybe Sarah hasn’t had any wine, of course – and it just slips out… how can I keep it in?’
‘Keep it in.’ Bea rolled her eyes and stabbed at her Mille-Feuille with her fork. There was still over an hour until their train, so the three intrepid bridesmaids who had arrived at Paddington Station early had decided to duck into Patisserie Valerie and treat themselves to a cake-based breakfast.
‘I can’t believe Cole and Sarah are trying for a baby,’ Daisy sighed. ‘How mad is that. And meanwhile, here I am, wishing my contraceptive pills came in extra strength!’
‘Yup. I am so on the same page,’ Bea agreed. She wasn’t exactly the most sexually adventurous of women, but there was still always that moment of cold relief each month when old Aunt Flo came to visit. She’d had a pregnancy scare back in Sixth Form – she and the guy had been kids, really, and neither of them really knew how to put on a condom all that well; and, of course, there was no forgetting that time she’d had to slink to the pharmacy, humiliated and heartsick, and ask for a morning after pill; they’d been too drunk, too frantic for each other, to think of anything as practical as birth control.
After she’d taken the pill she’d sat in silence most of the afternoon, on her bedroom floor, unable to use her bed and put herself back in the place where it had happened, for all she’d stripped the sheets and thrown open the windows. She’d pictured the tiny tablet coursing through her, burning away any evidence that he’d ever touched her, that she’d ever touched him. Her flatmate Kirsty had been goggle-eyed and desperate for the gossip after she’d seen who Bea had had in bed doing the walk of shame out of the flat in the early hours. ‘Isn’t he your mate?’ she’d shrieked at Bea. ‘Well, what happens now!?’
‘Well, do you remember though, a couple of years ago, how we thought they were pregnant,’ Cleo was saying as she brought her wide-cupped caffè latte to her lips. ‘With how quickly they got married!’
‘Yeah,’ Daisy nodded. ‘Talk about zero to sixty.’
‘They’d only been together about, what, six months when they got engaged. Do you remember? It was right after Nora and Harry got together. Typical Cole, always got to be trying to out-do everyone else!’ Cleo laughed.
‘Yeah. We thought for sure Sarah was knocked up,’ Daisy recalled.
‘And now, apparently, she can’t get pregnant,’ Bea mused. ‘It’s ironic. And sad.’
‘I can’t believe she didn’t feel like she could talk to us about it.’ Cleo had obviously decided her milky coffee wasn’t sweet enough and was slowly stirring in a sachet of Demerara sugar. She gave Bea a sideways glance through her eyelashes. ‘At least one of us.’
Bea was distracted from a tetchy retaliation by her phone chirping at her. It was a picture message of a grossly obese woman swathed in miles of peach satin and taffeta. Eli had been sending over photos of the worst bridesmaid monstrosities the internet could provide him for the past few days. Bea knew it was just a tease, of course, but still, she shuddered. She’d already extricated a firm promise from Nora that their bridesmaids’ dresses would not come in any sort of pastel shade, and most certainly would not involve any kind of ruching; anything else she thought she could live with for one day. Still, she wasn’t looking forward to trying on dresses this weekend, under hot lights, in front of unforgiving mirrors, with terrifically-toned Cleo, brilliantly-busty Daisy and long-legged Sarah either side of her. She’d double-checked that morning before leaving her flat that she’d packed her Spanx.
Looks good on you…have you lost weight? she childishly typed back to the equally-immature Eli.
‘Well, stuff to do with babies and fertility is very personal and we really shouldn’t be gossiping about it,’ Daisy allowed with a sigh. ‘It’s hard because I want her to know that we’re there for her… without having to admit that we know, you know?’
‘She must know I heard something,’ Bea argued. ‘It wasn’t exactly a subtle conversation.’
‘They probably didn’t expect any eavesdroppers,’ Cleo pointed out, still stirring her hot drink.
Bea glared at her. ‘It was the middle of a party. I walked right up to them. It’s not like I was hiding in the coats.’
‘You guys,’ Daisy warned suddenly, and Bea followed her eyes to where Sarah was clattering down the concourse in white strappy sandals and a peach sundress – typical, peach! – dragging a small wheelie suitcase behind her with one hand and waving at them with the other.
‘Oh, good, I’m not the last one here,’ she greeted them as she came to a stop by their table. ‘And I even have time for a coffee!’
‘I wanted to quickly go through the itinerary before Nor gets here,’ Cleo added, rummaging in her oversized patent leather handbag and retrieving a clutch of coloured plastic wallets. She passed them out: yellow for Bea, pink for Sarah, blue for Daisy and red for herself, with the green one held back for Nora.
‘Is this really necessary?’ Bea left the folder on the table next to her plate of half-eaten cake. ‘We’re just going to a few wedding dress shops. It’s hardly a military operation.’
Cleo sighed. ‘I just know that Nora is a bit stressed about her mum coming along, and I just want to take all the hassle out of the weekend for her, that’s all.’
Nora had done the done thing and invited her mother to attend the dress fittings with her, thinking that there was absolutely no way that Eileen would come. Nora’s youngest sister Finola was fifteen, but Eileen treated her like she was still five, and would never have left her alone overnight, let alone over two nights. Nora’s plan had backfired spectacularly when Eileen had arranged for Fin to stay with her brother for the weekend and promptly booked a room in the boutique Cotswolds B&B the girls had already arranged to stay in.
‘Just please, promise me,’ Nora had begged, clutching Bea’s arm, ‘keep her away from the hen weekend!’
Sarah had returned from ordering her coffee and was leafing through the contents of her own plastic folder. ‘That’s… that’s a lot of maps there, Cleo,’ she eventually managed.
‘Some of these little villages are a right arse to find,’ Cleo pointed out. ‘And I don’t know if the hire car will have a sat-nav, or what. Best to be prepared.’
‘Alright, alright, Girl Scouts of America,’ Daisy teased, swilling her lemon slice around in her now-tepid green tea with her index finger.
‘Damn you, I was about to go Scar from The Lion King,’ Bea whined; Cleo shot them both pained looks.
‘Anyway,’ she said, pointedly. ‘Nora wanted to do a cream tea, so when we get settled at the B&B we’re going out for a late lunch at this place in the village-’
‘The Thanks A Latte Café?’ Sarah read aloud from her pack, sounding dubious.
Bea let her fork fall with a dramatic clatter to her plate. ‘And you didn’t feel like telling me we were going for a cream tea before I ordered this bloody huge pastry?’
Cleo shrugged and arched an eyebrow. ‘You can have two loads of cake in one day. No judgment.’
‘As long as this isn’t like the last time where you guys got massively on my case because I put the jam on before the cream,’ Daisy rolled her eyes. ‘Like it even matters.’
‘Daise, we got on your case mainly because you tried to then eat your scones with a knife and fork,’ Bea countered.
‘Yeah, yeah, let’s all bully the Yank,’ Daisy grumbled, a favourite refrain of hers, for all she was born and raised in Louisiana.
‘Yes, so, the Thanks A Latte Café,’ Cleo continued, ‘and then the first three dress shops before we break for dinner. The appointments are at two, three-thirty and five-fifteen. See, there’s a schedule in the back.’
‘What’s this?’ Daisy asked, pulling a sheet of photographs of models wearing impossible dresses from towards the back of her folder.
‘It’s a mood board I made out of the sort of dresses that Nora’s been putting on her Pinterest board,’ Cleo explained, in a tone of voice that made it sound like she thought that was obvious. ‘So, you know, keep your eye out for anything similar on the dress rails.’ Bea pushed back the word ‘bridesmaidzilla’ by shovelling the last of her Mille-Feuille into her mouth.
‘Anyway, tomorrow we have the bridesmaid dress boutique, first thing, in fact, so, just FYI… I’m going to keep my breakfast sort of carb light!’ Cleo continued with a self-depreciating laugh; Bea wished she had some pastry left. ‘And then shops four and five, then lunch, then a couple more shops…’
‘She’s looking for a wedding dress, not the Ark of the bloody Covenant. Does she really need to do like ten shops in one weekend?’
‘It’s just a question of logistics; the Cotswolds has a really good concentration of wedding dress boutiques, and she managed to find a weekend where we were all available, and-’
Sarah half-tuned out Bea and Cleo’s squabbling and concentrated on pouring milk into the coffee the waiter had just delivered to the table. In the middle of a flash of guilt at the counter she’d ordered a decaff, but now she was back berating herself for pandering to fear and for internalising her controlling husband, who even as she sat at that table was snapping relentlessly at her as she added two sachets of sugar to her drink.
‘You obviously don’t want a baby that much,’ Cole had murmured to her last night at dinner, barely audible over the sound of the wine pouring heavily into her empty glass.
This weekend, her body was a temple. No alcohol, no caffeine, no crap. She had a book confidently entitled ‘Taking Charge of Your Fertility’ loaded to her Kindle. By the time this wedding rolled around she’d be a dress size smaller, a whole lot healthier, and – hopefully, hopefully – growing a little secret inside her.
‘Hello, bridesmaids!’ trilled Nora, appearing at pace. Much like a wizard, she was never early, but never that late, either. Her mother Eileen followed at a more sedate speed, wearing a mauve skirt suit and wielding an alarming hat box. ‘How are we doing for time?’
‘Probably about ten minutes. The train’s not in the platform yet,’ Cleo answered, gesturing a little way across the station concourse to where a set of large departure boards were scrolling and flashing.
‘Okay.’ Instead of rushing to grab her own coffee, Nora helped herself to a few swallows of Cleo’s latte. ‘So, news! We’re all booked in. So we have a date, and a venue, so we sure as hell better find me a dress this weekend!’ The four bridesmaids responded with appropriate noises of excitement and one armed hugs.
‘Where? When!’ Sarah asked as she sat back down.
‘The Hall. New Year’s Eve. Go big, or go home, right?’
Cleo clapped her hands together in delight. ‘Withysteeple? Oh Nor, I just knew you’d love it. I saw you getting married there. And New Year’s Eve! So gorgeous. How perfect!’
‘I still think your father is turning in his grave,’ Eileen said tightly. ‘What, may I ask, is wrong with the idea of getting married in church? The church where you and your brother and sisters were all baptised and confirmed? Where Father Michaels has known you every day of your life? I don’t know what I’m going to say to everyone.’ Eileen sniffed dramatically and returned to staring grimly out across the station concourse, hat box balanced on her knees.
Nora’s lapsed Catholicism had always been a thorn in her mother’s side. Nora and Harry had been geared up for her inevitable anger and disappointment, but they would not be moved by it.
‘I CANNOT get married at Our Lady With Consumption!’ Nora had hissed at Bea (actually, the church was called Our Lady of the Assumption, but they’d come up with the immature nickname when they were about ten years old, and it had stuck).
Fair enough, Nora didn’t want to get hitched in the old church – but it was so typical she’d pick the venue Cleo had been pushing. Bea tapped her nails sharply against the table top, fighting against the turn of her thoughts. Nora hadn’t even bothered to go and see the Barn that Bea and Eli had scouted for her.
‘Mammy,’ Nora was saying now, sounding bored but firm. ‘We’ve talked about this. Harry isn’t even baptised so I don’t think we’d be able to get married at Our Lady even if we wanted to. Father Michaels can come to the reception, if you want. All your Prayer Club too,’ she added, magnanimously. Eileen only answer to this generosity was to sniff loudly again.
‘Oh look, that’s us,’ Sarah chirped against the tension, rising to her feet. ‘Platform Seven.’
‘Let’s go!’ cheered Nora, flinging a companionable arm around Sarah, who teetered a little in her white heels but laughed, and wrapped her arms around Nora in turn. ‘Off to the country!’ Nora cried, putting on an over-the-top West Country burr, with shades of the Ambrosia custard advert. ‘I’ve got a surprise for over lunch.’