Breakfast was a somewhat tense affair. Upon rising, a hungover, horrified Nora had gone straight to her mother’s room to apologise, but Eileen was still sour-mouthed and disapproving over her croissant and jam all the same. An apology to Sarah had immediately followed, but even so, Sarah was overly-quiet, avoiding eye-contact or the possibility that someone might bring up her imaginary baby again. Bea picked at her congealing eggs, feeling a bit ill, but not as ill as Nora looked; she was positively green. The idea of schlepping it to another one of those douche-bag boutiques and hauling herself in and out of fugly dresses all morning with so many elephants in the room to boot was not an appealing one.
The mood still hadn’t lifted by the time they arrived at the bridesmaids’ dress boutique – Nora driving again, albeit very slowly and carefully. Bea supressed a sigh as she unfolded herself from the car; the shop was so snooty that even the mannequins in the window looked bitchy. The leftmost mannequin was draped in a fabrication of bright tartan and stiff black taffeta; the centre, a red floor-length number with an impressively vampy split up to the thigh; the last one was in something that looked more like a nightie. This didn’t bode well. Bea just hoped that the wine flu wouldn’t addle Nora’s otherwise reasonable taste.
Thankfully it appeared the more neutral dress options were kept in the back, clearly not showy enough for the stage of the shop window. After the now-familiar spiel about the ‘feel’ and ‘tone’ of the Dervan-Clarke wedding the four ‘maids were allowed to roam the rails, pulling out anything they liked the look of.
‘Sarah,’ Cleo started, tugging out the skirt of a magenta drop-waist to better see its shape. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Sarah paused midway through her inspection of a beaded burgundy beauty. ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she said after a moment, faux breezily. ‘A big, fat load of nothing.’
‘I just don’t want you to think we were talking about you,’ Cleo winced. ‘Well, we were talking about you, of course, but not in a gossipy way, you know?
‘Stop digging.’ Bea instructed, turning away from her consideration of whether black bridesmaids’ dresses were classy or gothic. ‘I am sorry though, Sarah,’ she apologised, finding that she meant it. ‘I didn’t mean to overhear. And I shouldn’t have spread it around; I was drunk and, well, surprised.’
‘Surprised?’ Sarah ran her fingertips down the roughness of a heavily brocaded gown. ‘Why is it so surprising? We’re married. We’re in our thirties now. We’ve got the mortgage sorted. Why wouldn’t we be trying to have a baby?’ They’d come off birth control for the wedding. It hadn’t been a big thing, not at that point. Just sort of a mutual agreement – they wouldn’t be trying, per say, just not actively preventing. Cole had seemed quite excited at the thought – he always liked to be the first person to do something, after all, so the idea of fathering ‘the group’s’ first offspring quite appealed. Whether the reality would have lived up to the anticipation, Sarah didn’t know – maybe she’d never know.
‘Just surprised that it was this Big Thing, I guess,’ Bea tried, her tone suggesting the significant capitals on the words. ‘You and Cole always seem pretty, you know, put together. So it was surprising to see you having a pop at one another in the hallway at a party. That’s all.’
Sarah coughed back an unexpected laugh. ‘Put together?’ she echoed. ‘That’s nice to hear. Not quite the reality though, sadly.’
‘It never is,’ Bea agreed quietly, and the two women exchanged tentative smiles.
‘Hey,’ Daisy called, ‘what do you guys think of this?’ she asked, waving the hanger of a strapless champagne floor length gown.
In the end each of the girls picked out one option, and Nora selected another three. It became immediately obvious that what suited the fair-haired, curvaceous Daisy – such as the dusky lilac tea-dress – didn’t quite work as well on the willowy, olive-skinned Sarah – who looked stunning in the forest green floor-length with an illusion neckline.
Bea stretched her arm out to hold her mobile phone closer to the thick piped window. She had the one smallest signal bar, and some H instead of 4G (whatever the eff H was meant to be) and it was driving her insane. She hadn’t realised she was one of those people, the sort who felt vaguely unmoored when she couldn’t check her Facebook or know for sure she didn’t have any new emails. Back in the centre of the room Cleo was trying to keep a straight face in front of the shop staff as she turned dramatic circles in a bridesmaid dress that was so ostentatious if Elton John happened to be passing by he’d stop to tell them they should tone it down a little bit.
Bea must have managed to get her phone into the micrometre-wide signal window; it buzzed against her hand as a few notifications got through and she felt the addict’s guilty little rush as she checked them.
Hope you lot are having a frocking good time, Eli had text cheerfully earlier that morning.
Frock off, Bea shot back, stretching her arm out again to try and relocate the magic signal spot so that her reply would actually send.
There was a noisy rustling as Cleo moved across the room and stiffly sat in the armchair next to Bea’s. ‘So comfy, this,’ she announced, sarcastically, flapping her arms like wings to exaggerate how the rigid material of the gown’s wide skirt fanned up on each side and stuck up over the arms of the chair. Following Bea’s cue she reached into her handbag and fetched out her own phone.
Hey, what are you wearing? ;)
Cleo burst out laughing. It took a moment but she remembered that she’d told Gray all about how she was going to be spending this morning modelling designer gowns; it was sweet that he’d remembered. She toyed with the idea of taking a selfie to show him the bedazzled monstrosity currently swathing her, pulling a jokey duckface, but the women from the shop had already told them they weren’t allowed to take any pictures, and they were watching too closely for her to get away with it.
Currently rocking a little bronze number – sort of a rhinestone meets taffeta affair.
She could picture that little half-smile on his face as he read her response. She wondered if Claire had been texting him over the last week. He hadn’t said anything about it at work, but then again she hadn’t brought herself to ask. Cleo shot a look at Bea, currently just as engrossed with whoever she was texting – probably Eli, from the smiley little look on her face; would she know anything about whether Gray and Claire had been talking..?
That sounds immense, was Gray’s response. Any chance of a pic??
Sorry, the Dress Police say no pictures until you’ve paid a deposit, Cleo explained. But basically just picture Sexy Steampunk Gladiator crossed with Drag Queen, and you’ve got it.
Oh, I am! was Gray’s immediate reply; somehow the toneless text was loaded with meaning and Cleo felt her face heating up.
‘Bea, you’re up,’ Daisy called, holding up the last dress for trying on. Bea had been the one to pick this one out. It was understated, a soft shimmery silver knee length piece with a kick to the skirt and with one thick strap on the right shoulder. It was still only on the hanger but Cleo could already see how good it was going to look on Bea – her angular collarbone framed by the diagonal of the neck, her fashionable ‘lob’ haircut showing off that exposed shoulder to the best advantage.
She turned back to Gray, tapping the pad of her thumb distractedly against the hard case of her phone while she mentally tested out different answers. Face to face with Gray she had no choice but to flirt – conversation with the man was akin to being fish-hooked through the stomach and gently tugged closer and closer, bit by bit. Via text she felt she should probably have a shade more compunction.
She pictured what he would be doing on this sunny, weekend morning. Maybe he was enjoying the papers in bed, all crisp white sheets and sunlight in slants from the window, enjoying an Americano from a wide-mouthed cup, just like the good looking men in coffee machine adverts. Presumably there wasn’t a long-limbed, bedheaded sex nymph dozing alongside him, or he wouldn’t be texting Cleo. (She didn’t think he was that much of a cad.) Or maybe he was just flipping between his text message inbox and Tinder, lining up a date with a nymph to be-bedhead later that night, cutting back to kill some time bantering with his work mate; after all, she always replied straight away… Ack. She did, didn’t she? She locked her phone screen and slipped it back into her handbag, clicking the buckle closed for good measure.
(She bet Claire waited the perfect amount of time before replying to texts.)
‘Oh, oh.’ Nora piped up suddenly from the other side of the room. ‘Oh, Mel, you look amazing!’ she complimented Bea as she slid from behind the privacy curtain, looking uncharacteristically shy; she hadn’t bothered to take off her bright orange trainer socks, and she wasn’t wearing a strapless bra so one black strap was showing on the left, but the dress was knock-out on her. It was perfect – modern, yet timeless, with a wintery feel. They’d freeze their arses off in December, but Cleo knew it was the one – and from the look on her face, Nora knew it too. It was the first time she’d had had any sort of spark all weekend.