Ed walked out of the penultimate bridal store on his list deflated. He’d been in there for less than two minutes. A snub-nosed child of a woman had practically laughed in his face when he said he was after an appointment for the weekend.
He headed towards the final store on his list. He was trying hard to remind himself that making amends with Emily was not entirely dependent on getting this appointment. But he couldn’t shake the visceral feeling that it mattered. Emily was normally ultra-organised, so the fact that she hadn’t chosen a dress yet told Ed she hadn’t been able to bear to shop for one without her mum. That broke Ed’s heart. And told him he absolutely had to step in and step up.
He turned into a pretty cobbled street. Shona would have called it ‘darling’ and taken about a zillion pictures for her Instagram. She was a rabid Anglophile who talked constantly about her cockney heritage (a great-grandmother who hailed from Clapton). Ed reckoned her love of all things Brit was a large part of her attraction to him. He was like Marmite or M&S or proper tea.
He click-clacked across the cobbles, the expression ‘nothing worth having comes easily’ floating into his mind. It was an adage he’d always been slightly dismissive of. He’d spent a lifetime getting all sorts of things he wanted with minimal effort on his part. He’d been both clever and popular at school and good at just about any sport he turned his hand to. Later, he discovered dating to be a breeze and he was constantly surprised by just how grateful women were to any man who behaved with a semblance of decency or even just let them finish a sentence.
Maybe getting this appointment would prove impossible, though? Ed shook such negative thoughts from his brain. Shona was a big believer in both positive thinking and manifesting. ‘You gotta tell the universe what you want.’ She encouraged Ed to set intentions and voice them out loud. Normally he was resistant, but desperate times called for desperate measures. ‘I will get this appointment,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I will make things up with Emily. I will get my mother to help me out of the financial hole I’m in.’
His intention setting was interrupted by a notification pinging on his phone and for one mad second Ed wondered if the universe was responding immediately? Perhaps it was the woman from the last store saying she’d had a cancellation? Or, better still, his mother saying of course she’d give him a loan.
In fact, it was job alerts from one of the recruiters. That could be the universe: solve your financial problems by taking a job. But Ed was a business owner now, and okay that business had had a few teething problems, but he’d find something he could resell. He’d been a bit unlucky with the watches and the fancy dress costumes, but there was definitely easy money to be made flogging stuff online.
Ed was outside Helen Yately Brides now. He decided he’d have a quick peek at the jobs, purely out of curiosity. Right at the top was a telesales role at Spectrum. Ed’s old job. If he’d been in any doubt before, this made up his mind. He’d rather be a dog food taster (real job: Ed had met a guy at the gym who did it) than go back to Spectrum. He’d liked working there at first. He was a natural when it came to getting people talking and got way fewer people hanging up on him than anyone else in the team. He’d often get into long interesting chats with people he called. One guy had worked for NASA, for God’s sake, another had seven kids. Seven! But everything changed at Spectrum when a new manager called Brad joined. Brad was a stickler for process and liked to micromanage. Why wasn’t Ed sticking to the script when he phoned people? Why was he twelve minutes late last Tuesday? Within a couple of weeks, Ed had walked out.
Ed opened the door to the shop. The ceiling was carpeted in what he assumed were fake pink flowers and there were zebra print rugs and exposed brick walls, creating a fancy cocktail bar vibe.
Two brides-to-be were twirling this way and that in front of long mirrors. One had a single friend with her but the other had a huge entourage complete with a couple of token men.
A sales assistant with a mass of dark curls was picking her way across the shop floor carrying a big stack of shoeboxes. The boxes wobbled before crashing to the floor like a stack of Jenga bricks.
Ed was across the room in an instant, helping to retrieve various ivory, gold and silver shoes and putting them back in their boxes.
‘Thank you so much,’ the assistant said. ‘That serves me right for trying to carry too many in one go.’
Ed handed her a jewelled stiletto and smiled. ‘You nearly made it.’
The woman laughed.
Ed gave her a full-beam smile. ‘I’m hoping you can help me make a mission impossible possible.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, you see the thing is I’ve messed up. Like not just a little bit but spectacularly.’ In Ed’s experience, few things endeared you more to women than honesty (even fake honesty). He told her about the wedding and Emily’s mum no longer being around. He said he was only over here until Monday and was supposed to have booked up appointments at bridal boutiques for next Saturday but had forgotten.
The assistant raked her hands through her curls. ‘I’d like to help you, but we’re booked solid at weekends. We don’t even get breaks. Last Saturday, I actually thought I might wet myself.’
Sweat prickled Ed’s armpits. If he didn’t win over Emily, he had zero chance with his mother. The thought of his mother caused a switch to flip in his brain. ‘I think maybe the reason I forgot to book up the appointments is that my head is all over the place right now. My mum is dying, you see. We’re all in bits about it, particularly my poor daughter. She adores her grandma, and she’s been more like a mum to her since Catherine died.’ He hung his head low. ‘We’re having to move the wedding forward.’
The assistant chewed on her bottom lip. ‘Listen,’ she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, ‘come in at midday on Saturday and I’ll just pretend there was a mess-up with the bookings and fit you in.’
It was all Ed could do to not start dancing a little jig. ‘You’re a superstar!’
The assistant smiled. ‘Just don’t tell anyone the truth.’
Ed tapped the side of his nose and gave her a beaming smile. ‘See you on Saturday.’
He stepped out into the rain. A small stab of guilt punctured his elation. He probably shouldn’t have told the assistant that his mother was dying.
Then again, it was kind of true. We’re all dying.