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The house is quiet when I come in. At first I think there’s nobody home, but Tania’s sitting in the conservatory, still in her yoga gear with an old V-necked pullover of my dad’s over the top. There’s a pile of bridal magazines on the table, but she’s not looking at them. She’s sitting there, staring out at the garden. Friends close, enemies closer, I remind myself.
‘Hi! What are you up to?’
She looks up when I speak; I think that’s the first time she’s noticed that she’s not alone. ‘Oh. Emily, when did you get in?’
‘Couple of minutes ago. Where’s Dad?’
She turns her head away from me and stares out towards the garden. ‘He had to go into work.’
I sit down on one of the obligatory wicker conservatory chairs and pick a magazine up from the table. ‘He’s busy man.’ I put my best sympathetic face on. ‘It must make planning the wedding tricky.’
She looks at the magazines in front of her. ‘It’s a lot to think about.’
‘Well why don’t I help you?’ I pull a notepad from under the magazine mountain and find a pen in my handbag. ‘What is there still to do?’
‘Why are you helping?’
‘What do you mean?’
She narrows her eyes. ‘You don’t like me.’
I don’t even miss a beat. ‘Of course I like you. I haven’t really had chance to get to know you. This will give me chance.’
She gives me a tiny smile. ‘I thought you hated me.’
Her voice is quivering. It must be hard, coming into someone else’s home like this. I shake my head. It’s not that I hate her. It’s that I have to protect my dad. It’s not personal. ‘Of course I don’t. So what have you already done?’
She pulls her knees up in front of her, so she’s sat in a tightly coiled ball on the sofa. ‘Well I’ve got a venue, and I’ve ordered the invites.’
‘Excellent. What else do we need?’
She slides her feet onto the floor and leans forward. ‘There was a checklist-thingy.’ She rummages through the magazines for a minute before pulling one to the top, and flicking to the centre pages. As promised, there is indeed a checklist-thingy: Everything You Need To Organise For The Perfect Wedding! It’s an eight page pull-out. Eight pages of things you, apparently, need to organise for the perfect wedding, most of which, it seems, should have been done months ago. I can see why she might be a teeny bit overwhelmed. ‘Wow.’ I skim through the magazine. ‘Apparently you’re supposed to have four separate outfits.’
‘What?’
‘One for getting ready in. One for the day. One for the evening, and one for going away.’
Tania shakes her head. ‘I’m going to have one dress. I’ll wear it all day.’
‘Even to get ready?’
She laughs. ‘I can do my make-up in my pyjamas I think.’
I read on a bit. ‘No. You can’t. You can’t do your make-up at all. Somebody has to do it for you. In fact if we’ve got two and a half months to go, you should be having your first make-up trial in about three weeks.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’ve been doing my own make-up for forty-eight years.’
Forty-eight. Yeah, right. And the rest. ‘Well you can’t for the wedding.’ I smile as sweetly as I can. ‘And we’ll need to sort out dresses. Have you thought about bridesmaids?’ I try to make my voice casual, like I’m not bothered about the answer, but she must have at least one old friend who she wants with her at the wedding, maybe even a sister.
‘Actually yes.’
Bingo.
‘I talked to Theo about it. I’m not going to have hoards of bridesmaids, but I would like one.’
Excellent. Just one. That must be her best friend.
‘Emily, I was hoping you’d be my bridesmaid.’
What? My mouth goes dry. I’ve never been a bridesmaid before. When I was about seven I had a princess dressing-up dress, and I used to march up and down the garden grabbing handfuls of whatever plants I could reach, pretending to be a flower girl. I used to imagine that I had lots and lots of aunties and cousins and big sisters and that I was going to be a bridesmaid for all of them.
‘Emily?’
Of course I should have been expecting this. She’s marrying my dad. She has to ask me, doesn’t she, to keep him happy. It doesn’t mean we’re friends.
It’s good though. Well, not as good as her revealing that she has a sister who she’s kept hidden in a mental institution for the last forty years, since she was hideously scarred in a teenage fight after which Tania stole her identity and went on the run. But it’ll do. It gives me a perfect opportunity to snoop around Tania a bit more. ‘I’d be delighted.’
She leans toward me. I let her hug me. If it wasn’t Tania, it would almost be nice.
When she sits down, I pick up another of the bridal magazines. She’s turned some corners down in this one. I turn to the first marked page. It’s a picture of a dress. The model is young with loose blonde curls falling around her shoulders. The dress is one of those wafty, floaty numbers that women of a certain age think are ‘forgiving’ but actually you have to have the figure of a twelve-year old boy to carry off. I turn the corner back up. ‘You’ll be wanting something a bit more structured, won’t you?’
She doesn’t answer.
I let my eye run over her figure. It’s actually pretty incredible for her age. All the yoga must be having some effect, but still, she’s not twenty-five. I’m struck by the terrifying thought that she might look better than me, before I remember that there isn’t going to be a wedding. My dad’s going to come to his senses, and the whole situation will blow over. I flick a bit further through the magazine.
‘What’s going on here?’
I didn’t hear Dad come in. Tania jumps out of her seat and practically launches herself at him. ‘Emily’s agreed to be my bridesmaid.’
Dad smiles. ‘Wonderful, and wonderful to see you two getting on.’
I smile back. ‘Of course we’re getting on. I’m going to help Tania plan the wedding.’ I keep smiling. ‘You’re so busy with work. We can hardly expect you to drop everything to pick buttonholes can we?’ I stand up and link my arm through Tania’s at his side. ‘You can leave everything to us.’