The carpet was thick. And expensive. It was the type that left footprints in the pile when you walked across it. It was the palest of greys, the colour of a dove’s wings or an iridescent pearl plucked from an oyster. Surely it was a ridiculously impractical colour for a shop? I looked up at the rows of dresses lining the walls: white, ivory, champagne and cream. It was a bit like being in Heaven; everything around me was coloured in shades of white and the palest of pastels. Everything was immaculate. Dirt, soil and everyday grime simply wouldn’t be tolerated here. But just to be on the safe side, I spent much longer than usual grinding my feet backwards and forwards on the coconut doormat.
A woman emerged from a shadowy area at the rear of the shop. Tall and as thin as a crochet hook, she was dressed from head to toe in black. Even her hair was ebony, the kind of shade that nature doesn’t do on Caucasian women. It was pulled back into the sort of topknot that surely had to hurt, and was neat enough to look as though it had been superglued into place. Absolutely no hairpins required.
‘Suzanne,’ she said, holding out a long-fingered hand to me as she crossed the distance between us. ‘Welcome back.’
I smiled a lot more easily than I’d probably done on my first visit to Fleurs, some six months earlier. Of course, then I’d been facing the pressure of making one of the most important shopping decisions of my entire life, and doing it all alone. Except of course, I hadn’t really been alone, and I probably hadn’t even been the one making the decision, because Gwendoline Flowers, the indomitable owner of Fleurs Wedding Gowns, had pretty much decided on which dress I should buy as soon as I entered her shop.
‘Have you brought anyone with you today?’ Gwendoline asked, looking past my shoulder at the clearly empty space behind me.
‘My mother and my best friend – Karen – will be joining me for the fitting,’ I said, glancing down at my watch. ‘I think I may be a little early,’ I apologised, knowing that I was, in fact, a good fifteen minutes ahead of my scheduled appointment. Nothing new there. My fear of being late – for absolutely anything – was a phobia that at almost thirty-two I was probably never going to outgrow.
‘Far better to be early than late,’ Gwendoline announced archly, and I gave a small shudder for the foolhardy bride who failed to keep to her given appointment time. ‘Except for your wedding ceremony,’ she added. ‘You definitely don’t want to arrive early for that. And never get there before the groom,’ she added, with a scarily witch-like cackle. And I would know, seeing as witches had featured so prominently in my formative years. And dragons.
‘Take a seat, my dear, while we wait for your entourage to arrive,’ Gwendoline invited, her arm sweeping like a conductor instructing an invisible orchestra towards the same velvet-covered chair I had occupied six months earlier, on my first visit.
As before, Gwendoline slipped behind the antique desk, and the memory of how our first meeting had felt exactly like a job interview came flooding back. I knew better than to expect any type of refreshments to be offered. There were establishments where the customers were offered a glass of champagne as they shopped for gowns, but Fleurs had a strict ban on food, drinks, small children and anything that walked on four feet.
‘So, just three weeks until the big day,’ Gwendoline said, smiling in a way that managed to reveal practically every one of her teeth.
I felt the nervous knot of tension in my stomach, the one that kept giving me sleepless nights the closer it got to my wedding day, twist and tighten. ‘Yes. It’s all gone terrifyingly fast. I just hope I haven’t forgotten anything. You were absolutely right when you said six months wasn’t long enough to plan a wedding.’
‘All you really need are two things,’ the shop owner declared. ‘A magnificent dress…’ – she inclined her head towards a curtained cubicle, where I guessed mine was waiting to be tried on – ‘and a truly wonderful groom.’
I gave a small happy sigh and smiled. One of those, I definitely had. Although I knew the jury was still out on that verdict as far as some members of our wedding party were concerned. One of whom was my mother. It probably hadn’t helped that she’d had so few opportunities to meet and get to know her future son-in-law before he officially became a member of our family. Or was I becoming a member of his? I really wasn’t sure of the protocol.
Part of the problem was that my mother lived in Cornwall, and the other part was that she hated men… No, that wasn’t entirely true; it was only my father she truly disliked. Which is probably part of the reason she also hated marriage, both as an idea and as an experience that having tried once she’d chosen never to repeat.
Darrell liked to describe his future mother-in-law as delightfully eccentric, a phrase I hoped for his sake he never decided to share in front of her. He also took considerable delight in her celebrity status, certainly far more than I had ever done. My mother is an author, a very successful one. If I told you the name on my birth certificate, you’d know instantly who she is. There’s probably not a child in the country who hasn’t read one of the books in her series about magic, witches and fearsome, molten-lava-spewing dragons.
I was uncommonly popular at school, which had nothing whatsoever to do with me. I was a quiet and introverted little girl, the kind who lurked at the edges of the playground; who never dared to hang upside-down on the climbing frame; who was the last child over every finishing line on sports day. But there was an almost obscene clamour to be my friend, to be invited back to tea after school, or even – the holy grail of achievements – to be invited for a sleepover. I’ve no idea whether my classmates were disappointed to discover we lived in a very comfortable, but otherwise boringly normal house, rather than the castle they were clearly expecting.
My father had bounced happily from one money-making scheme to another, doing his best to spend my mother’s income at a rate that almost outpaced her ability to earn it. It was certainly a surprise when, after many years of living together, they chose to get married just before my fifth birthday. Far less surprising was their divorce, just after I turned eight. My father had disappeared to Spain shortly after that, taking with him a sizeable chunk of my mother’s latest advance, which he’d used to open a bar in Malaga that unexpectedly became hugely successful. He’d left nothing behind except bad memories for my mother, and his surname, which I legally adopted; this at least prevented me from having to answer the inevitable ‘I don’t suppose you’re related to…?’ every time I was introduced to someone.
It was difficult to know if some of my mother’s anti-Darrell feelings were because – despite her objections – I’d asked my father to give me away at the wedding, thereby forcing my warring parents, who hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words in over twenty years, to spend a day in each other’s company without killing their former spouse.
‘Does the dress look good?’ I asked, suddenly aware it had been several minutes since either Gwendoline or I had spoken. Normally I was comfortable with silence, but today I wanted noise and distraction around me.
‘Are you worried you won’t still like it?’ asked Gwendoline, raising one perfectly threaded brow. ‘Because you don’t need to be. You will. It’s going to look beautiful and will fit you perfectly.’
How she knew that was a mystery, but it was one I was prepared to accept without question. She knew it in the way I understood a ledger book, or how to file a VAT or tax return. When, six months earlier, I’d sat opposite her across this same desk and admitted I really had no idea what kind of wedding dress I wanted, or what would suit me, she’d drawn herself up in her chair, and for just a moment her nostrils had flared, and I was reminded of the fire-breathing dragons who lived in my mother’s imagination. And then Gwendoline had smiled and risen gracefully to her feet, declaring with a confident smile, ‘I do love a challenge.’
She’d stood me on one side of the room and had walked slowly around me, as though I was a horse at a county fair. Occasionally she’d murmured instructions. ‘Turn to your left.’ ‘Now your right.’ ‘Lift your hair off your neck.’ ‘Now let it fall.’ It had all seemed a little arbitrary and when she’d disappeared, returning a minute or two later with three cellophane-covered dresses draped over her arm, I had had my doubts. Just three dresses? In a shop that surely held hundreds, if not thousands?
The first dress was ‘the one’. I tried on numbers two and three, just to be polite, but I think we both knew my mind was already made up; it had been even before Gwendoline had finished lacing up the bodice. I’d taken far longer deciding whether or not to accept Darrell’s – very unexpected – proposal, which was something that bothered me a little whenever I thought about it too much. So I tried not to.
Darrell and I had only been dating seriously for four months, and the very last thing I’d been expecting was to see him drop down on one knee in the restaurant where he’d taken me for Valentine’s Day. Every table around us had fallen embarrassingly silent, forks poised halfway to mouths as they waited to hear my reply. There were waiters standing prepped and ready at the edge of the room with a bottle of chilled champagne in a silver bucket, so clearly even they’d known this had been on Darrell’s mind for longer than I had.
I remember looking down into his large soulful brown eyes, and even while some part of me knew I should be saying something sensible like We really haven’t been together all that long yet or Why don’t we just move in with each other? or even Hey, slow down, what’s the rush?, somehow none of those would have been what the waiters, the other diners, or Darrell had been expecting me to say. So I said the only thing I could, given the circumstances. I said ‘yes’.
*
‘Whoa, I’m seriously gonna need sunglasses before I look at that thing again,’ my friend and colleague Karen had cried when I’d walked past her desk the morning after accepting Darrell’s proposal. It was Monday and the first thought that had flashed through my head when my six a.m. alarm had sounded was Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m actually engaged. I’d rolled over, reaching out for the man who’d placed the square-cut diamond on my finger the night before, only to remember that he hadn’t been able to stay the night. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but my flight to Berlin is crazy early, and I still haven’t packed yet,’ Darrell had apologised, kissing me very slowly and thoroughly just to prove how much he didn’t want to leave.
‘I understand,’ I’d said with a regretful sigh, trying to ignore the voice that had whispered annoyingly in my head, the one that wasn’t too shy to ask why he’d chosen a night when he’d known he’d have to pop the question and run.
Darrell travelled. A lot. I should know that better than anyone, because the first time I’d met him had been on one of his many business trips. I’d been on a company conference, and after an evening of less-than-scintillating conversation – there’s a reason accountants have earned a reputation for being boring – I’d done something quite out of character and walked into the hotel bar alone. Just a nightcap, I told myself. I won’t even put it down to expenses, and then I’ll go straight up to my room.
I’d felt more than a little self-conscious as I crossed the room to the long beaten-copper-surfaced bar. A single woman in a hotel bar wasn’t unusual, not these days – but it was unusual for me. I was seriously regretting my decision, when an attractive man in his mid-thirties, seated on a stool to my right, looked up from his drink and smiled. There was something about him, something engaging and warm, that made me think that, for just one night, it might be all right to be the kind of girl who could accept the offer of a drink from a good-looking stranger.
One drink led to three, then four, and then I lost count. The bar emptied, until we were the last two people in it. The hotel employee who’d been serving us had coughed discreetly, having wiped down and cleared away everything that needed tidying, tipped out the bowls of nuts, and switched off most of the lights.
Darrell had chivalrously taken my elbow as I’d climbed down from the bar stool, which certainly seemed a lot further from the ground than it had done when I’d climbed up on to it a few hours earlier. I’d intercepted a brief look of concern on the bartender’s face as his eyes flashed from me and then to the man who was carefully supporting my weight. I was swaying slightly, and while logically I knew the floor was perfectly stationary, it still felt as though I was on the deck of a boat on turbulent waters.
‘I’ll see she gets safely to her room,’ assured the man who’d been my companion for the evening. The barman frowned, making a single bushy monobrow form over his eyes. If there’d been a thought bubble above his head, it would clearly have said, That’s what I’m worried about.
I don’t remember crossing from the dimly lit bar into the overly bright hotel foyer, or summoning the lift. I’d closed my eyes against the disturbing image of the flushed-face young woman in the mirrored walls of the lift carriage, and only opened them again when we’d pinged to a stop at my floor. Darrell took the plastic key card from my hand, and after glancing down to check my room number, had taken my arm, as though escorting me into dinner in a period drama, and guided me to my door.
I do remember becoming almost-all-the-way-sober as he slid the card into the slot, withdrawing it smartly as the light turned green. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the kind of girl who picked up random strangers in hotel bars and took them up to my room. I didn’t do this.
Neither, it turned out, did Darrell. He’d placed one smartly polished shoe in the opening, to prevent the door from closing, and bent to graze my cheek lightly with a kiss so fleeting I scarcely even felt the touch of his lips. Then he’d gently propelled me into the room.
‘Drink all the water from the mini bar,’ he’d advised, his eyes twinkling warmly as I groped on the wall for the light switch. ‘Sleep well, Suzanne,’ he said softly, as he withdrew his foot and the door began to swing to a close. ‘It’s been really lovely meeting you.’
*
‘God, you were so lucky,’ Karen had declared, when I’d recounted the story to her several days later, on my return to the office. ‘He could have been an axe murderer, or a rapist, or… or…’
‘I think you’ve probably covered most of the worst-case scenarios,’ I’d said, my voice a little brittle because I was embarrassed, and also because I knew she was right. I don’t take risks, I think everything through, weigh it up carefully, and then always, always, play it safe. I am the epitome of careful. I’m made of the stuff that most likely earned accountants their reputation for being dull.
‘It was a one-off moment of madness, a temporary lapse, which luckily I walked away from unscathed,’ I said, gathering up the armful of files that I’d temporarily dropped on to her desk as we chatted. I picked them up and made to return to my own work station, at the opposite end of the huge open-plan office floor.
‘Whoa, not so fast, Miss Reckless. What happened in the morning? What did you say when you saw him the next day? What did he say, come to that?’
I gave a small wintry smile, and brushed a long strand of chestnut hair off my face. ‘Nothing. He said absolutely nothing.’ I hoped I sounded as unconcerned as I was trying to look. ‘I wanted to thank him, but couldn’t find him anywhere, and when I asked at Reception later that day, they told me he’d checked out first thing that morning. I didn’t see him again after that.’
*
A bell tinkled behind me, and I swivelled on my seat to watch my mother sail through the shop’s doorway. She’s a slight woman, half a head shorter and a whole dress size smaller than me, yet wherever she goes she creates an illusion of presence. People often say television personalities appear much smaller when you see them in real life. My mum is the exact opposite of that; her charismatic personality somehow appears to inflate her. If she ever committed a crime, every single witness would probably give an inaccurate description of her height and build.
A subtle waft of her familiar perfume engulfed me as she swept me into a hug. It was the smell of my childhood, and was more uniquely hers than even her signature. I’ve always hated smelling it on anyone else. When I first left home for university, I was so homesick that I bought a small bottle and inhaled sneaky draughts of it, like a junkie needing a fix, until the loneliness faded. I never told her that, and to this day I don’t know why. She’d probably be delighted to find a sentimental heart beating beneath my pragmatic accountant’s one.
‘Am I dreadfully late?’ she asked the room in general. ‘I swear the taxi driver took me on the most implausible route from the train station to the hotel. I could have walked it quicker.’ I glanced down at her small, dainty feet in their elegant suede court shoes, and turned my face to hide my smile. I suspected that, somewhere out there, a poor cab driver was now nursing a very large headache.
‘We’ve not started yet. We’re still waiting for Karen.’ Rubbing Aladdin’s magic lamp couldn’t have been more effective, for virtually as soon as I spoke the words, the missing member of our party grinned at me through the shop’s plate-glass window and hurried in to join us.
We were an unlikely quartet of women, as different both physically and psychologically as it’s possible to get. And yet when Gwendoline and I disappeared into the changing room, there was an air of impending excitement that bristled like static electricity in the air. My designer-clad mother, with her immaculately blow-dried hair, should have looked mismatched seated on the antique chaise longue beside my very fashion-indifferent best friend. And yet, as they disappeared from view when Gwendoline swished the curtain into place on its rail, I saw the two women exchange an identical look of anticipation and then – unbelievably – clasp hands. There aren’t many things in the world that have the ability to unite total polar-opposite strangers in such a uniquely emotional way. Newborn babies can do it, puppies too I suppose, but other than that, a wedding dress – or rather the first sight of a bride in her wedding dress – might possibly be one of only a few other situations when even the stoniest, coldest of hearts melts.
My fingers were trembling as I undid the buttons on my shirt and pulled it free from the waistband of my skirt. I kicked aside my everyday clothes with a bare foot, as though they were suddenly unworthy of sharing a changing room with the dress I was about to try on. Gwendoline reached for the garment bag that still effectively hid from view the most expensive and important piece of clothing I’d ever purchased. She paused with one hand on the zip fastener and glanced back at me over her shoulder. This was pure theatrics, and I suspected she’d done this not just once, but many times before. She was smiling in a Mona Lisa sort of way, but I was too busy trying to remember how to breathe to join in.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
I nodded, my eyes fixed on the zip as it crept slowly down on small white teeth. I thought I’d remembered the dress; I thought the reason why this had been ‘the one’ was securely locked away in my data banks. But I’d forgotten so many details over the past six months. I could have told you it was strapless with a sweetheart neckline, but the silver embroidery decorating the bodice was more delicate than I remembered, with a Milky Way of tiny crystals scattered across the fabric that glittered like the remains of a passing comet. I reached out my hand to finger the soft chiffon folds of the skirt that flared from the dropped waist, already knowing and loving the way it would swirl around my legs like a moving white cloud as I walked.
For the first time I was grateful that Fleurs insisted upon a strict no-photography-of-the-gowns rule. It would have ruined this perfect moment of falling in love with my dress all over again if I’d have been able to see it any time I’d wanted.
‘Couldn’t you have taken a sneaky photo on your phone?’ Karen had asked, when I’d tried and failed to properly describe my dress to her.
‘They don’t let you,’ I’d answered, ‘and to be honest I was still in a state of shock when I chose it.’
‘That was probably because of the price tag,’ she’d quipped. It was hard to tell from her voice whether or not she was teasing. ‘Did you stop to work out how cost in-effective it is spending that many months’ salary on a dress you’re only going to wear once?’
‘Actually, I’m planning on wearing it to work every day, until I break even,’ I’d said, laughing at how well that plan would go down at the weekly team meeting. ‘I know you think I’m crazy – and not just because of how much the dress cost. But I only intend to do this once in my life. This is the only wedding dress I’m ever going to buy, so for once I forgot to be an accountant and decided to just be a girl.’
Karen had smiled then and given me a really hard squeeze, and when we’d broken apart I was shocked to see her eyes were glittering brightly. She’d been with her boyfriend, Tom, since university, and although she always claimed she wasn’t bothered about getting married, I wondered for the first time if my whirlwind courtship, engagement, and now marriage was actually painful for her. And just like that, she wasn’t the only one with teary eyes.
‘Have you got it on yet?’ called my friend’s voice now from the main salon. ‘We’re practically dying out here, you know.’
‘Patience, ladies. It’s going to be worth the wait,’ assured Gwendoline, slipping the dress from its hanger and holding it open, like a silken pool, for me to step into.
The fabric rippled smoothly against my bare legs, as I was expertly eased into the gown. Being dressed by hands other than your own is a strange sensation. Unless you’re royal or exceptionally rich, most of us will probably only ever experience it as an adult on our wedding day. I shut my eyes as Gwendoline expertly hitched the strapless dress exactly where it was meant to go, and then kept them closed as she deftly laced up the back fastenings. If speed-lacing ever became a competitive sport, Gwendoline was a shoo-in for gold. Finally, she stepped back, ensuring her reflection was clear of the changing-room mirror.
‘You can look now,’ she instructed quietly. It wasn’t just the dress, although that alone made me want to cry. I’m not vain, but most of the time the reflection staring back at me in the mirror is passably attractive. Today I looked beautiful. And it wasn’t just the dress. Somehow, with just a skilful twist and two hairclips, Gwendoline had managed to secure my shoulder-length hair into a style that looked as though I’d spent an afternoon in a hairdresser’s chair.
‘Go and show them,’ she urged, whispering as though we were in a place of worship, and even though Darrell and I had been in total agreement about having a civil ceremony, I suddenly regretted our choice, and wanted not the slimmed-down svelte service, but the pews, and the organ, and the peeling of bells and a hymn-singing choir. The whole big fat wedding.
‘Oh, Suzanne, oh my God… you look… you look…’
‘Please don’t say “like a cupcake”,’ I pleaded. My voice, my lower lip, everything about me felt like it was trembling. Karen leapt from the chaise and came towards me with her arms outstretched, stopping just centimetres away, as though she’d hit a force field.
‘You look so perfect and so beautiful, I’m afraid to touch you.’ I solved the problem by closing the distance between us and hugging her fiercely. From the corner of my eye I believe I saw Gwendoline wince. ‘You look totally amazing,’ Karen whispered into my ear, before slipping out of my hold.
There was only one person left who still hadn’t passed judgement, and three pairs of eyes went to her, as she sat straight-backed and unmoving on the velvet chaise. My mum didn’t play poker, but should she ever decide to take up the game, she’d make an absolute killing. It was impossible to tell from her expression if she was moved, disapproving or just a little bit bored by the proceedings. No one could have seen the difference… unless they’d spent almost thirty-two years looking into a pair of cornflower-blue eyes that were practically identical to their own. Because when nothing else gave away her emotions, her eyes revealed her secrets. Karen and Gwendoline looked between mother and daughter and back again, like spectators at a tennis match, waiting for someone to knock the ball out of play. The longer the silence stretched on, the more anxious they looked. But not me.
I cracked first. I always did. I was good, but I couldn’t beat the master at the game she had practically invented. I started, ever so slowly, to smile. ‘You like it, Mum, don’t you?’ She blinked, just a little more rapidly than usual. ‘You do, don’t you?’ She licked her lips but her mouth looked somehow softer now, and if I wasn’t mistaken, perhaps not quite as steady as she’d have liked.
‘I know you’re disappointed that I picked the dress out by myself, and that you weren’t involved. And I know you’ve got doubts, and they’re only because you’re worried about me. But putting all that aside, it would be really good right now to hear you say that I look nice.’ Blue eyes on blue eyes, and still she stayed silent. ‘Unless – of course – you really don’t like it.’
‘You look…’ She sighed as though struggling to find the right words, which as an author is not something she usually had a problem with. The one she eventually settled on was fine with me. ‘Perfect,’ she completed, wiping away a solitary timorous tear from the edge of one eye, before it dared run down her cheek and ruin her foundation. ‘You look absolutely perfect, Suzanne.’ Her hand reached for mine, and I gripped it tightly, noticing as I did two new small brown smudgy age spots. She was getting older, and I was getting married, and just for a moment I wasn’t sure which of those statements terrified me more.
By the time I was back in my own clothes, Karen had already gone back to work. ‘I told them I’d be back in the office by lunchtime,’ she apologised, popping her head through a gap in the changing-room curtain. ‘You’re back in tomorrow, right?’ I nodded, hunting on the floor for a missing shoe. ‘Okay, well, I’ll see you in the morning. Enjoy the rest of your day off.’
I gave her a watery smile from my kneeling position, where I probably looked like I was praying. And in a way I was. The first hurdle of the day was over; the dress had been a success. But there were further challenges that still lay ahead.
Darrell had booked a table for three at an expensive restaurant, where he had insisted we take my mother for dinner. He was on a full-out charm offensive, and had looked so crushed when I’d suggested somewhere less fancy that I’d swallowed down my objections. There was an almost uncomfortable urgency in Darrell’s desire to change my mother’s mind about our forthcoming wedding. In a way it reminded me of the speed with which he’d swept me off my feet, making it practically impossible not to fall in love with him. This was his greatest fault, if I had to admit that he had any: his impatience. When he wanted something to happen, or to change, he wanted it right now, instantly. But that strategy wasn’t ever going to win over my mother.
‘So, it’s more softly, softly, catchee monkey, is it?’ he’d asked, nuzzling against the side of my throat in the way he did that was guaranteed to render me virtually incoherent in seconds.
‘Kind of,’ I said, my response already sounding throaty. ‘Although if you refer to my mother as any type of primate, she’ll probably never speak to either of us again.’
Darrell had picked me up then, gripping my thighs as they fastened around his hips. ‘Talking of animal instincts…’ he’d said, striding towards my open bedroom door.
‘That’s not the most subtle or sexy segue I’ve ever heard,’ I said, gasping as his hand slid smoothly beneath the fabric of my T-shirt and around to cup my breast.
‘I’ll work on it, wife-to-be,’ he promised, his lips covering mine, making any further conversation impossible.
*
I was smiling when I emerged from the fitting room, and didn’t really expect to stop doing that any time soon. Even the considerable outstanding balance on my bill didn’t have the power to deflate my happy mood. Knowing that the two most important women in my life both agreed I’d chosen the right dress made paying for it a great deal less painful. I drew my credit card from my purse and laid it down on Gwendoline’s desk, waiting for her to finish up with the paperwork she was currently filing away.
‘Could you put the balance for the dress on this, please,’ I asked, confused when she slid my card back across the desk towards me.
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ she said, ‘because it’s already been taken care of.’ For just a moment I thought Darrell had somehow contacted Gwendoline and paid for my dress. Except he hadn’t known which shop I’d gone to, nor how expensive it had been.
I’m not sure why the obvious answer took so long to occur to me. No, scratch that. I knew exactly why Mum hadn’t been my first guess, because she’d spent the last twenty years or so of my life quietly brainwashing me against marriage. Darrell had seemed shocked when I’d said I would never ask nor expect my mother to contribute financially to our big day. ‘If we do this, we do it by ourselves,’ I’d told him unwaveringly. Darrell’s own parents had emigrated to Australia, and all I really knew about them was that after some huge falling-out – which he was very reluctant to talk about – they hadn’t spoken in years. It was one more thing that had drawn us together – a huge gaping chasm of a fault line that separated us from absent family members.
‘I really don’t give a monkey’s who pays for what, or whether we’re going against tradition,’ he had said, pulling me into his arms. ‘I don’t care where we get married, or how many bridesmaids you have, or how many guests you want to invite. Just as long as you’re there and I’m there, that’s all I’m ever going to want or need.’ We were writing our own vows, and I really hoped he was planning on including that line.
‘Mum? Did you do this?’
My mother looked a little shamefaced, and I’m sure if there had been another customer in the shop, she might have tried to let them claim the credit for the purchase of her only daughter’s wedding dress. ‘It’s a very beautiful gown,’ she said with a small artless shrug, as though that had been her justification in parting with not just many thousands of pounds, but also with her long-held principles.
I went to her and hugged her tightly, struggling to speak past the huge lump in my throat. I knew this didn’t mean she’d changed her mind about marriage, or the wedding, or even about Darrell, but it did mean that even if she thought I was in the wrong, she was still on my side. She always had been.
‘You do know, I didn’t ask you to come here today to pay for my dress,’ I said. From my peripheral vision, I was aware that Gwendoline had discreetly slipped into the shadows.
‘I know that, Suzy.’
Suzy? When was the last time she had called me that? Not since I was in hospital with appendicitis, I thought, and that was when I was sixteen. It made me realise for the first time that today had been every bit as important to my mother as it had been to me. She just hid it better, that’s all.
‘Besides, one of your parents needed to contribute financially to your big day, and I’m pretty sure your father will have squandered every last peseta he owns on that damn drinking hole of his.’
My father’s bar was actually quite upmarket and elite, but this definitely wasn’t the moment to point that out, and anyway, I strongly suspected she already knew that.
‘You do know Spain has been using the euro since 2002, don’t you?’
Her eyes glinted with the wickedly dark sense of humour that always took people by surprise the first time they met her. ‘Pesetas sounded pithier,’ she retorted, with a brief flash of a familiar smile.
And there, as ever, was the chief difference between us: she was all about the words, and I was all about the numbers. I’d inherited none of her creativity, nor her unique and gifted way with words. Every B minus on my English school reports had probably left her wondering if there hadn’t been some dreadful mix-up on the maternity ward. If I didn’t look so much like her, I’m sure she’d have pursued it. Of course, in a world full of keyboards and spellcheckers, I keep my secret well hidden. But the notebook beside my bed, where I’ve scribbled down the vows I’ll be declaring in three weeks’ time, tells its own story. Each time I see the crossed-out words With Darrell I’ve definately found the right man to comit to, it looks as though I’ve changed not only my spelling, but also my mind.