Now
I woke up too early, the sun streaming through the latticed blinds and slicing me into thin, hot segments. I blinked at the ceiling, waiting for my brain slowly to crank into motion, when I felt a weight next to me shift, and what felt very much like a row of toes tickle my shin. I looked to my right and saw Candace lying in bed with me, wearing last night’s dress and snoring fitfully in her sleep.
The cogs caught and whirred. Dad collapsing like an overbaked soufflé in the middle of the restaurant, the soulless hospital room with its bleeping machinery, Ethan’s kind and unreadable eyes, Chris’s steady arms around me. Piper’s hysterics. Candace’s blank terror. And now, here I was, tucked up in a spare hospital bed with my stepmother, a guard rail digging into my side. I sat up in bed and glanced at the clock ticking on the wall: 6:34 a.m. I had just woken up but my body already ached with exhaustion, and there was a wedding to coordinate and a bride to mollify and an ex-boyfriend to navigate and a doctor to – possibly – flirt with. I had miles to go before I could go back to sleep.
I leaned over and gently shook Candace’s shoulder. ‘I have to get back to the house,’ I whispered as Candace’s eyes squinted dimly at me. ‘You get a little more rest if you can. I’ll check on Dad before I go.’
‘I’m up! I’m up!’ she said, struggling onto her elbows. ‘Jesus Christ, what do they make these mattresses out of – cement blocks?’
‘Shh!’ I said, ‘you’ll wake up Dad!’
‘I’ve been awake for hours,’ I heard a voice call from across the room. ‘I thought you guys were never going to wake up. What do you think this place is, a Holiday Inn?’ I looked over to see my dad sitting up in his bed and looking, frankly, pretty spritely. ‘Morning!’ he called to us. ‘How are you guys doing today?’ I watched in horror as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and hopped to his feet.
‘Dad, what are you doing?’ I yelled. He staggered slightly and I managed to jump out of bed and catch him just before he fell. ‘Get back in bed, now.’
‘I’m fine!’ he said, waving me away. ‘Just needed a good night’s sleep, that’s all. These beds, I tell you – like sleeping on a cloud or something! Candy, we’ve got to get one of these for the grotto.’
‘I think it’s probably the morphine rather than the mattress,’ Candace pointed out. ‘Now listen to your daughter and get back into bed. That nice doctor said you were supposed to take it easy!’
‘I am taking it easy!’ he insisted, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed. ‘Look at me, I couldn’t be taking it more easy! But I’m telling you, I feel absolutely fine! There’s no reason for me to take up a bed that could be used for a real sick person.’
‘You had a heart attack last night,’ I said. ‘I think that counts as being sick.’
‘I don’t care what those doctors say – what do they know, anyway? I feel like a new man! And if you ladies wouldn’t mind giving me a little privacy, I’m just going to get dressed and then we can be on our way. In case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got a wedding to go to.’
Candace sat next to him on the edge of the bed. ‘Baby, you know you can’t go to the wedding,’ she said gently. ‘You’re not well enough.’
Dad struggled back onto his feet. ‘If you think I’m going to miss my little girl’s wedding, well . . . you have got another thing coming!’
‘Dad,’ I said, in my best teacher’s voice, ‘remember what we talked about?’
‘What did you two talk about?’ Candace asked.
‘I know, I know,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘But this is different! This is Piper’s wedding!’
‘We’ve talked to Piper about it and it’s all settled. Of course we would all love for you to be there, but it’s too risky. The doctor said –’
‘The doctor can kiss my lily-white American butt!’ he yelled. In the corner, the heart monitor bleated urgently.
‘You need to calm down,’ Candace said, pulling him back down to the bed. ‘Don’t upset yourself!’
‘You’re telling me I can’t go to my daughter’s wedding and then you’re telling me not to get upset? What is this, some kind of conspiracy?’
The monitor was beeping wildly now as it charted the erratic pulsing of his heart. A plump, harried nurse burst through the door, followed rapidly by an unfamiliar doctor. ‘Clear the room,’ the doctor said to me and Candace. We stared at him, stunned and frozen, as if we’d been caught beating my dad, or trying to smother him with a pillow. ‘Please,’ he said, more gently. ‘Just for a moment.’ We filed reluctantly out of the room.
From the other side of the door, we heard the sound of calm but firm words of caution being meted out by the doctor, followed by slightly more irritated, nagging words from the nurse. Dad tried to bluster, then cajole, then charm, then plead. The doctor walked out of the room shaking his head. His hair was still damp from the shower, and a clean, lemony scent followed him. ‘Your father is a stubborn man,’ he said to me.
‘That he is,’ I said, smiling proudly.
‘Please try to keep your father calm. I can’t have him shouting the place down – this is a hospital, not a football match.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Candace said, ‘we will. We’re just so happy to see him back to his old self.’
‘If that’s his old self,’ he said with a sigh, ‘it’s no wonder the man had a heart attack.’
‘We’re working on it,’ I said. We crept back into his room, cheerful smiles slapped on both of our faces.
‘Are you going to be good?’ Candace asked, perching on the side of the bed.
‘This place is like a Gulag,’ Dad muttered, but it was obvious that the fight had gone out of him.
‘We’ll take lots of pictures,’ Candace said, patting his hand. ‘And I’ll come straight over after the ceremony to tell you all about it.’
‘Oh no you won’t,’ he said. ‘I want you to go to town at the reception! I want you to drink Bob Armstrong out of house and home! I want you to dance until dawn! I want to see photos of you swinging from the chandelier!’
‘Alec!’
‘I want you to enjoy yourself. I know you haven’t had many opportunities over the past few years,’ he added with a sad smile.
‘Sweetie, don’t you know by now that the only time I’m having fun is when you’re by my side? It doesn’t matter how much champagne is flowing – there’s no point in drinking it if you’re not around.’
She leaned down and placed a kiss on the centre of my dad’s forehead, and I’m pretty sure I saw him wipe away a tear. ‘I’ll be outside,’ I said, edging towards the door.
‘No need for you to go, baby girl,’ Candace said. She looked up at me and I saw tears in her eyes, which almost – very nearly, but not quite – set me off, too.
Dad rustled himself into a seated position on the bed. ‘You two should get going anyways,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve got lots to do before the wedding, and Piper will be wanting you both to be around. You tell her that . . .’ He broke off for a minute and took a deep, ragged breath. ‘You just tell her I love her.’
‘I’ll bring you some cake,’ Candace said. I nudged her and nodded towards the heart monitor. ‘Oh, right. Maybe not cake.’
‘Go on, get!’ he said, and we kissed him goodbye before the heart monitor could start its frenzied ascent once more.
I glanced behind me as we left. All the bravado had left him, and he now looked slightly deflated, like a helium balloon long after the party had finished.
I dropped Candace off at the house and headed straight for the castle. I got a few curious looks when I walked in wearing last night’s cocktail dress and a rat’s nest of hair on top of my head, but I could tell that news of what had happened was spreading quickly as those looks soon turned to ones of sympathy. I chose to ignore them – if there was one thing I hated, it was sympathy from strangers.
‘Okay,’ I said to myself as I walked into the main hall, ‘let’s get this show on the road!’
The next hour and a half passed in a blur of baby’s breath and tea lights and origami paper cranes. There were disasters small (a slightly lopsided wedding cake, nothing a few wooden skewers stolen from the kitchen couldn’t fix) and large (a whole stack of place cards lost for an hour and then found, inexplicably, in the industrial refrigerator). The caterer was late, then realized she had forgotten the gluten-free blini bases. The registrar got lost. The gamekeeper’s dog (can you believe they have a gamekeeper?) briefly rampaged through the marquee and ate one of Madison’s artfully constructed centrepieces (thankfully there was one spare). One of the kids hired to hand out champagne before the ceremony decided to open a bottle and was found slumped by a toilet. In short, it was almost – but not quite – a disaster. Which was great, because I didn’t have the chance to think about my dad lying in that hospital bed, looking so small and so lost.
Finally, order at least temporarily restored, I headed back over to the house to try to piece myself together into something vaguely resembling a maid of honor. I wasn’t all that convinced of my chances.
The house was quiet when I walked through the door, the only sound that of a hairdryer moaning from somewhere upstairs. I sighed with relief and headed towards the kitchen in the hopes of begging a cup of coffee from Mrs Willocks.
‘Ruby? Is that you?’ Piper, resplendent in a hot-pink satin robe with the word BRIDE embroidered in delicate curlicues across the back, appeared at the top of the stairs. Her hair was piled on top of her head in enormous Velcro rollers, and her face had been perfectly made-up, but her eyes were tired and hollow. ‘How’s Dad?’ she asked.
‘He’s doing fine,’ I said. ‘He sends his love and says he’ll be thinking of you all day.’ I decided not to mention his apoplectic reaction to being told he couldn’t go to the wedding, and the subsequent heart monitor meltdown.
‘I can’t believe he won’t see me become Mrs Armstrong,’ Piper said. Her eyes began filling with tears.
I rushed up the stairs and placed an arm around her. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘but it’s your wedding day. He’d hate to see you crying. Not least because it’ll spoil your make-up.’
She managed a small smile. ‘I know,’ she said, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue. ‘Shit, the make-up woman is going to kill me. Come on, everyone’s in my room.’
I followed her into the bedroom. Mrs Willocks’s dolls and doilies were now covered in the detritus of wedding preparation. The bedspread was covered with make-up brushes and bottles of bronzer and still-damp towels. Someone had put Taylor Swift on an iPhone, and there was an air of false joviality in the room, as if everyone was just going through the motions of fun rather than actually experiencing it. Madison and Taylor were both wide-eyed and open-mouthed as they carefully applied mascara to their bottom lashes. They turned and smiled when I walked in, and I saw that they were both wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the motto #PipsGetsHitched. ‘Madison had them made for the bachelorette in Miami,’ Taylor explained. ‘There’s one for you, too.’
She had the good grace to look mildly sheepish when she handed me a shirt with HEAD BITCH in white lettering across the front. ‘Because you’re the maid of honor,’ she explained. ‘Sorry, it feels totally inappropriate now.’
‘It’s great,’ I said, slipping it over my head. And it sort of was – when else was someone going to present me with a Head Bitch shirt?
‘Is your dad okay?’ she asked.
‘He’s a little tired, but he’s going to be fine.’ Relief flooded through me again as I said the words.
‘Thank God,’ Madison said. ‘We’ve been so worried.’ I’d never had a group of female friends – it had always just been me and Jess – but in this room, fuggy with hairspray and perfume and various fruit-scented bodywashes, and seeing the looks of genuine concern on their faces, I suddenly understood the value.
‘Ruby,’ Piper said, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s three hours until my wedding and you literally look like a prostitute. And not even an expensive one. You need to get in the shower immediately. If you hurry, I’ll see if the hair and make-up ladies can come back and work their magic on you.’
‘I definitely need all the magic I can get,’ I said. I ran to my room and closed the door behind me. My bed looked almost painfully inviting at that moment, despite the neat row of dolls surrounding it like tiny glass-eyed sentries, but I knew that I couldn’t lie down, not even for a minute. In twelve hours, the wedding would be finished, and I could slide between the cool sheets and let myself slip into oblivion but, for now, sleep would have to wait. But there was one thing I knew couldn’t.
I paced around the room as the phone rang.
‘Hey, chicken, what’s happening. Did you get rid of the twins yet?’
I burst into tears at the sound of her voice.
‘Ruby?’ Jess said. ‘What’s wrong?’
I took a deep, shuddery breath. ‘My dad had a heart attack,’ I said, before dissolving into a fresh wave of tears.
‘Oh fuck. BEN!’ she called, ‘can you take Noah from me?’ A pause, a muffled rustling, a door shutting. ‘Ruby, are you there? Talk to me – what happened? Is he okay?’
‘He’s going to be okay,’ I said, ‘but oh, God, it was so scary. He just – collapsed. Just like that, in the middle of the room, with everyone around him. No one could help him. And then the ambulance came and they hooked him up to all of these things and – he looked so small, Jess! And so old! I thought he was going to die.’
‘I know, sweetheart, I know. I’m so sorry. But they’re saying he’s going to be okay?’
I nodded.
‘Ruby?’
‘Yes,’ I said, swallowing another sob. ‘He’s going to be okay.’
‘Thank God.’
‘I’m sorry I’m such a mess,’ I said. I couldn’t believe that I had lost control like that. I was supposed to be strong today, not crying like a crazy person. I couldn’t be weak, not now. Not ever. ‘I know you’ve got all this stuff on your plate, and you’re pregnant, and here I am calling you up and crying down the phone at you! Just ignore me, I’m fine now,’ I said, breath stuttering. I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince, her or me. I don’t think it was working on either of us.
‘Your dad had a heart attack. You’re allowed to be not okay. And why the fuck are you apologizing? I’m your best friend – you’re supposed to cry down the phone at me!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, quieter this time.
‘Ruby, listen to me. You are a human. You are allowed to feel sad, and scared, and whatever else you feel. You’re allowed to feel things. Stop trying to out-tough life.’
‘Sorry,’ I whispered. Honestly, it was like I had a particularly apologetic form of Tourette’s.
‘Oh my God, stop!’
‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ We both started to laugh, the wild, slightly manic sort of laugh that only happens at the most inappropriate times.
‘I have to get ready for this fucking wedding,’ I said finally.
‘That’s okay. I have to go get ready for this fucking baby. I’m in labor, by the way.’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘You are not. What the fuck are you doing on the phone to me?’
‘It’s fine! I’m only three centimetres dilated. I’ve got hours to go before she destroys my vagina. Did I tell you the doctor told me she had an unusually large head? Thanks for that, doc!’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said, though the thought made me queasy. ‘You should lie down. Or are you supposed to walk around? You should go do whatever you’re supposed to do when you’re in labor.’
‘Take drugs and shout at my husband?’
‘Yes, that,’ I said. ‘I love you. You’ll be amazing. Let me know as soon as she arrives.’
‘I will. I love you too. Keep me posted about your dad. And please, give yourself a break, okay?’
‘Never,’ I said, but I was smiling now, and I felt lighter already. I hung up the phone and hurled myself into the shower, letting the hot water slough away the institutional smell of the hospital and stale adrenalin from the night before.
Clean, dry, and proudly wearing the HEAD BITCH T-shirt again, I headed back to Piper’s room. I passed Madison in the hall and she gave me a quick smile before bounding down the stairs. I peered over the banister to see Ethan waiting for her at the bottom. He grinned when he saw her and said something that made her toss her head back and laugh. Her hair was out of the rollers now, and tumbled down her back in caramel curls. I could see now that her #PipsGetsHitched T-shirt was cropped, revealing a slice of hipbone and abdomen, and I silently said a prayer to the metabolism gods that their retribution would be swift and just. Sisterhood be damned. I watched the two of them head towards the door. They had the flushed, slightly guilty look of people who shared a secret and had no intention of giving it away.
I probably wouldn’t have wanted to know even if they were telling.