Rum, Pineapple Juice, Honey Syrup, Grapefruit Juice, Campari, Sage Leaves
On Friday evening I was planning to go home after work and do the ironing. But instead India and Jerry took a break from practising for their wedding night and we went out for a drink together. It was kind of fun, chatting a bit about the wedding, but mostly laughing at Jerry’s terrible impressions and India trying to remember all the names of the cocktails we’d tried on the ship.
Halfway through the evening we met up with Katie and Fliss – a couple of self-important paralegals from Jerry’s work who pretended they wanted to hear all about the cruise and the holiday. What they really wanted to do of course was have a good long stare at India and try and work out why Jerry was marrying her.
Mum and Dad were due back soon from Australia, the cruise all seemed a long time ago, and I wasn’t really in the mood for a big night for some reason. Still, by then we’d had a couple of glasses of wine and India and I had obediently dished up some funny stories about the places we had seen and the people we had met.
We talked about Marty and Marion and Ike and Caron. We showed them pictures on our phones of Newport, RI and Boston harbour with the plane whizzing overhead, and the wooded slopes of Nova Scotia. There were pictures of our lovely cabin before we messed it up, of New York and that fabulous skyline.
We had photographs of some of our meals, and nearly all the fancy desserts. Yes, I know it’s pathetic to take pictures of your dinner but we couldn’t help ourselves. We had selfies of the two of us in our evening dresses and one where we had been pulling funny faces in front of a chocolate fountain. And one in Boston where I had menaced India with a lobster and she had nearly fallen off her chair.
But we didn’t mention Gabriel.
Then we talked about Marnie Miller and showed everyone the photos we’d had taken when we first met her at the Captain’s cocktail party. I looked hard at that flawless face as she stood smiling between us. With the wisdom of hindsight of course …
‘Wow, she’s so frigging cool,’ Fliss said in a sort of breathless, admiring voice. ‘Look, she’s got a Birkin bag and that dress is Prada, I’m sure of it. What was she like?’
I took a sip of my wine and left it to India to describe the brand that was Marnie Miller. What was Marnie Miller like? I wasn’t sure any more; her personality had been so powerful and inescapable. I’d gone through so many different feelings: awed, idolising, uncertain, and finally, after the recent news, pretty unimpressed. Perhaps I had been the one in the wrong? Or maybe I was the only person in the universe no longer fooled by her?
After India had waxed lyrical about Marnie for a few minutes, we showed everyone pictures of breakfast at the food court with glistening stacks of Danish pastries and fruit carved into clever shapes. Then the towel elephants on our beds and the gala night ice sculpture of the Reine de France’s iconic angel, which had been pushed around the dining room on a trolley to applause and cheers.
But we didn’t mention Gabriel.
There were a few dark, unsatisfactory photos of the theatre shows and a couple of Peter and Paula spinning and twirling in their sequins. There were several of India leaning over the ship’s rail, her dark curls blowing in the breeze. And one of me with a startled expression pointing at something in the water. That was the day I thought I saw a killer whale but it had just turned out to be part of a white plastic bucket and a clump of seaweed. Still it might have been a killer whale, you never know.
Then there were the shots of various cocktails we had enjoyed. There seemed to be rather a lot of those if I was honest. Something in a hollowed-out pineapple decorated with tiny glittery umbrellas, a clever layered thing that shaded from pink to palest yellow and a massive Long Island Iced Tea that had nothing to do with tea and everything to do with five different sorts of alcohol.
‘Oh wowser, who the frig is that?’ Katie said suddenly, grabbing my phone.
I looked. It was the selfie I had taken of Gabriel and me that day in Nova Scotia when we had shared lunch. The same day he had frightened Liam away from India. I had been wondering why Gabriel had kissed me and asked me to dinner that evening. I’d thought I was in heaven.
‘Oh, just someone on the ship,’ I said, trying to sound careless. ‘I can’t really remember.’
India reached over and swiped his picture away. We shared a brief, knowing look.
All the memories came flooding back. I had the awful feeling that I might cry if I mentioned him. I wanted to bury my thoughts of him, not to rake over them.
‘So apart from him the boat was full of old relics, I bet,’ Katie said, her lean, intelligent face furrowed with pity.
‘No, not at all! I mean there were some older people on board but we met lots of nice people; not many kids that I saw, but then we were in the bars most of the time.’
Katie giggled. ‘I can just imagine it. A lot of Zimmer frames lined up outside the dining rooms and mugs of Ovaltine at eight-thirty!’
Katie and Fliss laughed, leaning up against each other for support, the brilliance of their humour having apparently sapped their strength.
‘No, it wasn’t like that at all,’ I said with all the passion of the converted. ‘It’s a five-star hotel taking you somewhere new every day. You should go.’
Fliss rolled her eyes. ‘Sweetie, I’m not nearly old enough to go on a cruise!’
‘You don’t need to be old …’
‘Well, my parents went on a cruise once, down to Madeira I think,’ Katie said. ‘They said there was nothing to do but eat or play bridge. The weather was foul and Ma was seasick. She said never again. I can’t imagine anything worse.’
I sent Katie one of my looks. If there was any justice she should have combusted on the spot, leaving a small pile of ash and a lot of melted hair extensions.
Katie finished her drink and looked around with a dissatisfied expression.
‘Well, I’m sure you had a lovely time; it’s just we’d prefer to go somewhere where there’s a bit more talent. Skiing is good for that, loads of hunky men with lots of money. Or flotilla sailing in the Caribbean – I’ve heard that’s a good hunting ground too. Remember that girl we were at school with, Lee or Fee? Fee, that was it. She went flotilla sailing in Bermuda and nabbed a hedge fund manager. They had the best wedding ever. At some stately home place near Bristol. It was fab. I think they’re getting divorced now, but it was a fab wedding. I wore a fab blue dress from ASOS. It looked exactly like a Victoria Beckham tunic, I mean exactly.’
I looked at my watch; it was nine-thirty and I faced a fifteen-minute walk home in the rain.
‘So when’s the wedding?’ Fliss asked my sister.
‘Three weeks tomorrow,’ India said, a glow in her cheeks.
‘So no wedding bells ringing for you, Alexa?’ Katie asked airily. ‘No plus-one to take to the wedding?’
I could tell by the tone of her voice she thought both things were unlikely. Well, I felt like saying, actually I had a passionate fling with possibly the handsomest man you’re ever likely to see. That man. But of course I didn’t. I just gave a careless laugh. After all, what was there to tell? And my plus-one on India’s wedding day was likely to be a stroppy three-year-old flower girl.
‘And is everything sorted out?’ Fliss asked.
‘Everything except Alexa’s dress.’
Everyone turned to look at me and Katie swept a long look over my figure.
‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘that’s going to be fun.’
I sucked my stomach in and forced a bright smile to my face. ‘We’ll be going shopping on Saturday. There are a couple of possibilities.’
‘Really? Okay,’ Katie said, sounding surprised while pouting sexily over her straw and giving Jerry a sultry look.
‘God, is that Benedict Cumberbatch over there!’ I exclaimed.
Katie whirled round, choking on her drink, and spent the next few minutes spluttering, eyes streaming as Fliss thumped her on the back.
‘Oh well, better be going,’ I said airily.
*
We went shopping.
It wasn’t what I would describe as fun.
India might have put on and triumphantly lost a few pounds but I had a new, larger bottom as a souvenir of my holiday. I needed to Spring-Clean My Food Cupboards as a matter of urgency. Now I knew I wasn’t as slim as my sister – I had half her willpower and twice her appetite – but I didn’t deserve this. Did I? Hmm. But I’d been making strides in the rest of my life: cleaner brain, cleaner house. I’d thrown away a disastrous suit and was feeling a bit more productive and together.
‘What on earth are you doing in there?’ India asked, obviously frustrated as I grappled with yet another dress. ‘I mean does it look okay?’
As I couldn’t get the zip done up the answer seemed to be no.
‘Having a teeny bit of a struggle,’ I said, thanking God there was a lockable door between us, not just a curtain, ‘but it’s not my colour anyway.’
‘Blue? Blue’s not your colour?’ India said, incredulous. ‘Half your wardrobe is blue. Well, try the other one.’
The other one was pink and had a crossover top, which I know is supposed to make the most of one’s shape, but in this case it made me look as though I was trying to hide a couple of intercontinental ballistic missiles down the front of my dress.
‘No,’ I said after a few minutes of trying to arrange myself. Perhaps I had put it on the wrong way? Or back to front? Perhaps it wasn’t the right style?
‘Oh, for f’s sake – look, try the flowery one then,’ India said. There was a moment’s pause and then: ‘I bet I know what the matter is. You said you were going to lose weight before the wedding and you haven’t, have you?’
‘Shout a bit louder, India,’ I muttered.
India knocked on the door. ‘Look, it really doesn’t matter. I’ll just get a bigger size from the rail.’
‘Oh yes, because I really want to be the fat bridesmaid on the end of the line,’ I said.
‘You’re not fat,’ she said rather too loudly.
‘I’m never eating again,’ I said crossly.
‘Yes, that may well be the case but let’s just get this dress sorted out. We haven’t got long. Three weeks.’
‘I know that, India!’
‘Perhaps some magic knickers might help?’
‘I’ve got magic knickers on already,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘I can hardly breathe as it is.’
India sighed. ‘Come on then, let’s go and try somewhere else.’
‘What like Millets or the camping shop?’
‘No, that’s not what I meant. Stop it this minute; you’ve got a gorgeous figure, much better than mine.’ My jaw did drop at that one. ‘I mean let’s go further up the high street and try the shops in the arcade. There are a couple of new ones there. You never know,’ she wheedled, and I gave in, because I knew we needed to find a dress; as much as I joked about it I couldn’t wear jeans and a T-shirt.
I struggled into my clothes and came out of the changing room, red-faced and sweating.
‘Shall we have coffee?’ India asked gently. ‘Just give you time to get your breath back?’
‘No, I’d only have a cake and make the problem even worse,’ I grumbled, still unable to shake my grumpy mood brought on by ill-fitting dresses that made me look like a sausage roll.
‘Well, I’m parched; these shops are far too hot and everyone knows wedding dress sizes are based on Chinese women or something. Don’t take any notice. I know we’re going to find something fabulous today.’
We made our way to our favourite café, a place I adore as it’s smothered in bunting and fairy lights with vintage china on the tables. India enjoyed hot chocolate while I had a cup of herb tea that tasted of something green and unpleasant.
‘Just calm down,’ India said kindly, ‘we’ll find something; we’ve hardly started looking yet.’
‘I’m fine, I’m just annoyed with myself,’ I said, sipping my hot grass water. ‘I have no one to blame but myself – that’s the worst part.’
‘Look there’s still time. You could lose a few pounds before the wedding but that really doesn’t matter. Let’s just find something you like.’
‘Or I could just put a bag on my head and turn up in my PJs and a dressing gown.’
‘Now you’re being silly.’
‘Anyway the bridesmaid is supposed to look shit, then the bride looks better. And everyone will be looking at the flower girls anyway. Do you actually need me? I mean I wouldn’t mind if you changed your mind.’
India gave me a look. ‘Don’t be ridiculous; of course I want you as a bridesmaid. In fact I’d rather ditch the flower girls. What I was thinking of, agreeing to have them in the first place, I don’t know. They are without doubt three of the most irritating and silly little girls ever. Poppy and Scarlett are far too full of themselves and Maudie, while very photogenic, is still in nappies.’
The three little girls were going to be in cream silk dresses with palest gold sashes, dinky little kid leather shoes and flower halos so I knew India was trying to be kind. ‘Oh, they’re not; they are sweet, and they’re going to look adorable.’
‘And so will you, you wait,’ India said, a certain steely look in her eye. ‘We’re going into shops where we don’t normally go and we’ll look with new eyes. We’ll force them to have something, just by sheer willpower. We’ll do some blue-sky thinking. We’ll think outside the box. The perfect outfit is out there somewhere and we are going to find it! Yes, we are!’
She high-fived me with a battle cry of ‘Team Fisher, yay!’
India had seriously considered buying an outfit of white canvas, gilt-buttoned Nauticalia when we were on board the ship, so I had my doubts. Still, we went off for round two of pavement pounding and rack shuffling with new enthusiasm. Well, once I had stopped feeling a bit weird because of the grass tea, which was repeating on me rather unpleasantly.
I began to wish we were in America again where the larger customer is catered for and the customer service is far more ingratiating. In the next shop we went into the assistants actually laughed when they found out what we wanted.
‘A bridesmaid’s dress? Size fourteen, or possibly a sixteen? Today? Really?’
The two, thin (probably size eight) assistants peered at me and then at each other.
‘Yes,’ India said, grabbing hold of the back of my coat as I tried to edge towards the door. This sort of thing always got her riled. India fixed them with her best steely-eyed look and they shrivelled. ‘I know you can help us –’ she peered at their name badges ‘– Jodie and Sara. After all, your company slogan is Right Dress, Right Time, isn’t it? Well, this is the right time, we just need the right dress.’
‘Yes, but she hasn’t got the right …’ The thin, huge-eyebrowed assistant didn’t complete the sentence. Anyway, after India had hinted that we were guests at a very high-profile wedding, which might be featured in Hello!, the two girls did their best. To be fair they had some nice things in there and if only they had stocked the Right Size we might have had some success.
We pressed on with a new sense of purpose and I even began to enjoy myself a bit. We were a challenge. We were loud. We were annoying. We tried on loads of things that might have worked but weren’t quite right. We began to lose the plot a bit and stray into outrageous. I even tried on a pair of dungarees with a frilly chiffon blouse underneath. (It looked quite good actually.) I think by then my blood sugar was dangerously low and I was distinctly light-headed so we went and had lunch.
Following the mantra you might as well be hanged for a sheep etc., I had a large glass of red wine, a chicken wrap and we shared a bowl of chunky chips. And then, realising we really did have to focus on the job in hand and were running out of options, we annoyed a woman in our biggest department store by finding the perfect dress, which they didn’t stock in my size because it had been discontinued. Then we went down to the far end of the High Street where there was a selection of charity shops, bookmakers, ice cream shops and amusement arcades. We stood outside the dress equivalent of the last chance saloon. Mary Dell.
Mary Dell was the sort of shop I thought had disappeared years ago along with milliners, corsetieres and furriers. There were some dull-looking wedding dresses in the window, protected from the non-existent sunlight by blinds made from orange cellophane.
‘I can’t go in here,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s the sort of place Mum would go in. No, Grandma. And come to think of it she’d probably be pretty reluctant.’
‘Well, yes, after all she died fifteen years ago –’
‘Yes, okay, Miss Pedantic.’
Inside there was a slightly strange-looking woman dressed in a dark blue dress with pins stuck into a pincushion on her wrist. Behind her was a terrifying woman in black with a tape measure around her neck and Miss Dell on her name badge.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ Miss Dell asked.
‘No, sorry, I didn’t know …’
‘Hmm.’
She looked into a large green leather diary on a shelf behind the till and riffled through a few pages making annoyed noises.
‘What do you want?’ she asked at last.
I bit back the impulse to ask for cod and chips twice.
‘A bridesmaid’s dress. For me. The wedding is three weeks today. Sorry.’
Miss Dell ruffled through a few more pages and huffed a bit while the woman in the dark blue dress dusted a china cake topping of a startled groom and watched me over the top of her glasses.
‘Well, it’s not very convenient,’ Miss Dell said, ‘but typical I suppose.’
I was hustled into the fitting rooms with all speed in case I was planning to escape and encouraged out of my jeans and shirt and into what Miss Dell described as a modesty robe. As I did so I fell back several decades.
Outside the fitting room India sat on the brocade chair trying not to snort with laughter, her ankles neatly crossed like a 1950s model.
Far from sneering at my figure, Miss Dell was, in her own way, rather excited.
‘Hmm. It makes a change,’ she said, writing down a few alarming-looking numbers. Were those my measurements or was she playing bingo?
‘I have something somewhere,’ she said at long last. ‘You should have come in months ago. We could have made something more …’ She waved her hands, trying to express something.
‘Yes,’ I said, chastened. ‘I was hoping to lose weight. I kept putting it off.’
‘Hmm.’
At last she said she had a couple of ideas and was going to look for something but first she sent her assistant off to the other room. The woman wandered off and Miss Dell closed the door firmly behind her. Evidently we could not be left alone with her, but whether she was concerned about our safety or her colleague’s I wasn’t sure. Then she went upstairs and left India and me sitting looking at each other.
‘What do you think she’s gone to look for?’ India hissed.
‘Heaven knows. A length of rope and some gaffer tape?’
‘And what do you think is in the other room?’
‘A spare bridegroom? A fossilised cake covered in cobwebs?’
I pulled the modesty robe around myself a bit tighter and India went to look at the eclectic mix of bridal ephemera laid out on the glass shelves behind the till.
‘Look, a tiara! Who was it who said you had the face for a tiara? Someone on the ship, wasn’t it?’
‘Put it down!’ I hissed. ‘She’ll be back in a minute and she’ll catch you!’
‘Are you sure you couldn’t get into that pink dress in Monsoon?’ India said. ‘It was so pretty.’
‘Not unless I can organise a breast reduction in the next couple of weeks,’ I said, trying on the tiara and squinting at my reflection. ‘Or I don’t mind every bloke in the reception staring at my chest all evening.’
‘Well, it’s a reasonable question. Would you?’
‘Yes, I would, India,’ I replied.
‘God, you’re so difficult sometimes.’
Miss Dell was coming back downstairs so we both straightened up like a couple of naughty children. She was holding several dresses over one arm.
‘I have four,’ she said, ‘and a small bet with myself.’
‘Whether they’ll fit or not?’ I said.
‘Hmm. Which one you’ll buy. Of course they’ll fit.’
And they did.
In fact two of them were rather lovely and in the end we chose a blue one that was floor-length, with lacy sleeves and a floating satin ribbon bow on the back. The most exciting part was it was a size twelve.
I gasped with excitement on seeing this. Miss Dell fixed me with a beady eye.
‘Of course it’s a US size,’ she said with a humorous twist to her mouth. ‘You mustn’t look at labels.’
I started trying to work this out and quickly decided it would be to my disadvantage so I stopped thinking about it.
We watched as the silent woman in dark blue reappeared and packaged the dress into several layers of tissue and then stuffed it unceremoniously into a crumpled supermarket carrier.
‘Right,’ India said a few minutes later when we stood outside the shop, ‘we deserve a drink. How about a cocktail?’