Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling

by Emer McLysaght

  ‘Are you wearing the good knickers I got you?’

  Part of this dress-shopping experience I planned for Maj was getting her some new holdy-in knickers and a strapless bra to wear for the fitting. No point putting a new dress over old pants, was my reasoning. And, anyway, it’s just what you do. It’s special.

  ‘Of course I am.’ Majella huffs and puffs from behind the curtain. We managed to rouse the teen from her stupor long enough to show us where the changing room was and hang the dress up for Maj to try on. ‘It’s off the rack so try not to get tan on it,’ were her only words of encouragement.

  ‘As if I’m wearing transferable tan like some kind of amateur,’ Majella hissed after her, and I pulled the curtain across and asked Shannon, who had grudgingly given up her name, would she not light the nice scented candle on the counter and to bring out any veils she might have in the back.

  ‘How’s it going in there?’ I call nervously to Majella. All our hopes are pinned on this dress fitting and suiting. She doesn’t answer but instead the curtain is pulled back and my breath is taken. She looks so beautiful. My eyes instantly fill with tears. ‘Oh, Maj. It’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Is it really? Will you do up the back for me?’

  The back is a long line of tiny buttons and she spins around and I set to work, cursing my fingers as they battle with the delicate little pearls. I give up trying to do them all and settle for every fifth one, reaching the top and turning her back around to me. Shannon makes a reappearance and throws some boxes down onto the chaise longue. Without being asked, she pulls a box forward and instructs Majella to stand on it, like a ballerina in a jewellery box, and flings a pair of heels at her and then slouches back to her post.

  Maj holds onto my hand and steps into the heels and up onto the box and looks at herself in the full-length mirror for the first time, smoothing and twisting. The boat neck sits across her collarbone and the slightly full skirt swishes as she turns.

  ‘Ais,’ she whispers, peering around at the desk where Shannon is carving something into the counter. ‘Take a few snaps there.’

  Taking photos in bridal shops has always truly tested my moral compass. The signs tell me it’s not allowed because they don’t want you going off and getting the dress made by somebody’s auntie for a third of the price. But I must admit I have whipped out the phone for a sneaky photo in the past, beads of sweat running down the back of my neck in fear of getting caught. I have a strong feeling Maj is going to buy this dress, though, and I know that Shannon couldn’t care less if she just walked out of the store wearing it, so I slip my phone out of my pocket and surreptitiously slide it into position.

  As if Satan himself was watching me, no sooner have I snapped the first photo than the bell on the shop door tinkles and a woman bustles in with armfuls of garment bags, hissing at Shannon as she does. ‘Shannon, a hand, please?’

  As soon as Shannon has sullenly relieved her of her burden, the woman’s face transforms into smiles and warmth as she sails towards us, arms outspread. She’s got a real Cilla-Black-in-her-sixties vibe and is wearing a pussy-bow blouse and tight black trousers, and if she’s Shannon’s mother then the apple has fallen kilometres from the tree.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, you look gorgeous, give me a twirl there.’ She flits around Majella, tucking and pulling and expertly doing up the buttons on the back that I missed.

  ‘I think …’ I look at Maj with my eyebrows raised. ‘I think we’re going to take it?’

  Maj takes one more look at herself in the mirror as Mrs Bridal Sweet fixes a veil to the top of her head and spreads it out behind her. This is the kind of treatment I was after. I hope Shannon is out the back somewhere preparing a bottle of bubbly.

  ‘We’ll take it,’ Majella announces with a sigh.

  ‘Excellent choice,’ the woman declares as she whips the price tag off the back of the dress and scurries over to the till, rabbiting, ‘Now, it’s a sale dress so no returns, no exchanges, no alterations, sold as seen, full payment due immediately.’

  Majella steps off the plinth and rummages in her handbag for her wallet. ‘Give her my card there, Ais, you know the number.’ Majella has such a history of losing her card and forgetting her PIN that every time she gets a new one she tells me the details as a security measure.

  Madame Bridal Sweet has the payment processed before Majella even has the dress off. As she hands me the receipt, I hover, hoping a pair of flutes might appear, inwardly raging that this woman isn’t falling over herself to mark this special moment. However, she just busies herself getting a garment bag ready for the dress, so I dig out the Buck’s Fizz and the two glasses and clink them together as Maj emerges from the changing room.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ I challenge your one, who cluelessly chirps, ‘Work away, darling,’ and I make a mental note to find Bridal Sweet on TripAdvisor and let loose. They didn’t even try to gussy Majella up in an overpriced headpiece and then give her the hard sell on it. They didn’t even try to persuade her to invest in the dreadful shoes. These are rites of passage for a bride. Even a dress-on-sale bride.

  I squeeze the cork out of the bottle and get Majella to hold the glasses while I pour the Buck’s Fizz. She smiles as we cheers.

  ‘Thanks, Ais, you’re the best. This is the best.’

  It’s far from the best but it makes me even more determined to make the rest of Majella’s bridal journey as perfect as possible.

  ‘You’ll have a fab day,’ Bridal Sweet goes as she zips up Majella’s garment bag. ‘And you’re in good company. Did you hear Emilia Coburn is renting a French chateau for her wedding to the James Bond lad? I heard it on the radio on the way in.’

  ‘Go ’way! The glamour. That will be some do!’ Maj is on a high as she slings the dress over her shoulder, bottle of Buck’s Fizz in her other hand. I throw a cold ‘bye’ over mine as we exit and head for the car.

  ‘Your dress is next, Ais. Then we’re sorted.’ Maj sinks into the passenger seat contentedly as the email tone sounds on my phone.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll just get that before we head off.’

  I fish it out and see Mandy Blumenthal’s name on the screen. The NDA and the final contract! She said she’d be sending it this week. Majella is flat out sending pictures of the dress to Sadhbh so I open the email and click on the document, scanning it quickly.

  ‘This Non-Disclosure Agreement is entered into by BallyGoBrunch Catering of Ballygobbard and Mandy Blumenthal Inc. of New York City … confidential information … sensitive nature … held in the strictest confidence for the sole and exclusive benefit of the Disclosing Party (Miss E. Coburn) …’

  My eyes go past the name and then fly back to it. E. Coburn. Emilia Coburn. Is Emilia Coburn having a birthday party? And I’m doing some of the catering? Oh my God!

  ‘What is it, Ais?’ Majella swigs from the bottle and puts her feet up on the dashboard.

  ‘Eh, nothing. Just Mammy wanted to know about, eh –’ I cast my eyes wildly around ‘– about, eh, air fresheners for, eh, goats.’ Luckily Maj is too preoccupied to notice. I drive home right at the speed limit, frantic for a chance to read it all properly, feeling like my heart is going to beat right out of my chest.

  28

  I read it again, just to make sure.

  ‘This NDA shall remain in effect until the confidential information pertaining to the event, the nature of the event, the bridal party and their guests no longer qualifies.’

  It’s their wedding. Emilia Coburn and Ben Dixon are having their wedding at Garbally and I’m the only one who knows it. Well, the only one around here anyway, it seems. Even James seems to think the first event there is a birthday party, and I’m afraid to probe any deeper because am I even allowed to say that I’ve signed an NDA? Won’t that reveal that I know something about it? Better to say nothing at all. Mandy has prepared less detailed agreements for Carol, Noel and Karla, so all they know is that we’re preparing food for an event at Garbally. I open the calendar on my
phone and I’m about to put the date into it when I freeze. Maybe it’s best not to. You never know who’s watching. I’ll hardly forget it anyway, though – 27 April. Exactly one week before Majella’s wedding.

  ‘Honey, I’m home,’ James calls into the apartment as he closes the front door with a swing of his hip. He’s done it every night since we moved in together and is just thrilled with himself. It’s cute but also wearing a bit thin. Plus, he’s started coming in covered in cement dust every day. They’re pouring floors at Garbally apparently. Pity they wouldn’t pour themselves into washing machines at the end of the day. James is carrying shopping bags. He must have gone to the New Aldi to get ingredients for the toad in the hole he’s promised to make me. Or threatened, more like. I couldn’t say anything over breakfast, of course, but it sounds God-awful, with the exception of the sausages.

  ‘Honey, you’re home.’

  I said this back to him the first night he did it, and now it’s a little ritual. He smiles at me in his work fleece with his bag of groceries in one hand and some post in the other. It’s mad how quickly this has all happened. I survey our little place. I must say, it’s looking a lot better since I went to Knock Garden Centre the other day. As well as a lovely cosy throw for the couch, I picked up a Colette Green reed diffuser, a bottle of fancy hand soap for the bathroom, eight baskets in varying sizes, a set of Joseph Joseph chopping boards, three stepping-out mats for the shower, a silver picture frame, four succulents, two mugs that say ‘Love’, a knitted pouffe for the living room and two hundred tea lights. You can never have enough tea lights, especially in your first proper home with a boy.

  Carol nearly fainted when the receipt fell out of my purse in the café, and it’s very unlike me to be so flaithiúlach, but I must admit, firing the stuff into the little wheelie basket they give you there made me feel quite calm. The calmest I’ve felt in ages. Maybe that’s why Sadhbh likes shopping so much? Maybe I need another shopping spree after the shock of this NDA stuff.

  ‘Well, did she get the dress?’ James is unpacking stuff in the kitchen and I stop myself from going in to make sure he’s putting everything on the right shelf in the fridge.

  ‘Oh, she did. One thing knocked off my to-do list.’

  He waves a square white envelope at me. ‘Look! Addressed to both of us. Our first post.’

  I reach out and take it from him, running my finger over our two names. It looks so grown up. I slip my finger under the flap and open it.

  ‘It’s a card! “Home Sweet Home” with a picture of a cottage. Aw.’ I flip it open. ‘“Congrats Aisling and James! Love Elaine and Ruby, and Dexter.” “Dexter is our new puppy,” it says in brackets. Ah, they got a puppy! I thought it would have been cats, to be honest.’

  ‘That was very nice of them,’ James says, going back to his groceries while I move some of the smaller baskets and succulents around on the mantelpiece to make room for the card. Of course there’s only an electric fire in the hearth, given that it’s an apartment, but it’s better than nothing, and the ‘real’ effect is so convincing James had to stop me flinging a sod of turf on it for the first few weeks.

  ‘Remind me to tell them about the new mugs,’ I say, arranging the baskets by size. ‘They were designed by Ellen DeGeneres, you know.’

  ‘Huh?’ He’s looking at his phone.

  ‘The mugs. Ellen designed them herself. She has her own range of delph now. I’m sure the girls are all over it.’

  ‘Sorry, Ais … it’s just this email. Gah!’

  ‘Everything okay?’ I walk over to the kitchen and run a hand up his back, feeling bad for being annoyed at him when he came in. As I know only too well myself, the curse of being self-employed is you have to be reachable at all times. There’s just no escape. It’s not like sitting in an open-plan office and being paid whether you process those pension claims or not, and more’s the pity. Hindsight is 20/20, but I didn’t know how good I had it back at PensionsPlus.

  ‘It’s about that event that’s scheduled for Garbally. The planner is nitpicking about finishes when we’re not even close to that stage yet. So bloody clueless. It’s that woman, Mandy, the one you met. What’s the latest with that, anyway?’

  I start to panic. Can I tell him anything? Can he even know we’re doing food for this ‘event’? Will I get sued? I decide to err on the side of caution. ‘No, she’s gone very quiet. They must be going with someone else.’

  ‘You’re probably better off.’ He flings his phone onto the counter and I gather up the butter and milk and head for the fridge, avoiding his eyes.

  ‘Well, you know the way it is with … some people,’ I stammer. ‘They probably want everything to look perfect. For the pictures, I mean. The … eh … birthday pictures.’

  I nearly said wedding pictures. I really need to stay on top of this. To be fair, though, everybody does love looking at wedding pictures. Denise Kelly has her album on a sort of stand in the corner of her sitting room. More of a podium, really. She turns a page every day like the Book of Kells. It’s a good idea, really, when you factor in the price of a wedding photographer. She’s only getting her money’s worth.

  James looks at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?’ I pick up the TV guide. ‘Oh, look, the repeat of Strictly is starting. I’m dying to see Basil Brush’s tango. Majella said Pablo was very impressed with his rhythm.’ I slide down onto the couch and flick on the telly, grateful to have my back to him.

  I still can’t quite believe BallyGoBrunch will be doing the canapés for Emilia Coburn and Ben Dixon’s wedding. On the one hand, it’s doing nothing for my already sky-high stress levels, but on the other, it’s likely to be a star-studded affair. What if their pictures get into magazines, what with all their celebrity friends? Imagine Dawn O’Porter being papped eating a Carol Boland sausage roll? Or George and Amal going bananas for our ham and cheese croquettes? The café could be catapulted onto the international stage. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. Everything will have to be perfect. I take out my phone again and open the document, swooshing my finger around to draw my signature before I change my mind. I hit Send and sit back on the couch, thinking about all the ways I could possibly make a balls of this.

  Sadhbh sent me a link last week to an article about compartmentalising. She said it would help me get my cortisol levels down, and at this stage I’ll try anything. Well, anything but ‘smudging’. This was her other idea: that I wrap up a little pile of sage, set it on fire and walk around the apartment waving it till all the negativity is gone from my life. I ask you. No, compartmentalising makes more sense. With that, I just visualise keeping every problem in its own box and not letting them all spill out together and joining up like one giant, mega problem, which is how I’m feeling at the moment, and it’s starting to show, even with Majella’s dress now under control.

  Carol had a huge pot of chicken carcasses and vegetables and herbs on the hob for three days to make a stock, and when she asked me to strain it yesterday, I poured the lot down the drain and kept the pot of bones. She had to explain to me three times what I’d done wrong. I’m half-thinking of going to Dr Maher and asking him for a prescription or something, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to confess to anyone that I’m feeling so overwhelmed. Would they even believe me? I should probably tell James first, since he’s my boyfriend. My ‘partner’, as Mammy’s taken to calling him. I always thought ‘partner’ was for glamorous women whose first husbands died in mysterious circumstances but here I am, a ‘partner’. James’s partner.

  I can hear him whisking away goodo in the kitchen and I know I’m lucky to have him. I had to go to the cash and carry yesterday morning, and when I got to the Micra I noticed he’d poured boiling-hot water on my windscreen to de-ice it. A lovely gesture, even though it’s highly dangerous and he could have shattered the whole thing. Still, though, it’s the thought that counts.

  I can’t help but think ba
ck to his parents in that big house in Buckleton, how they can barely stand to be in the same postcode as each other, and how you’d think that would have completely messed up his idea of what love really is. But no, he’s behind me making me toad in the hole. He’s staying in Ireland because of me. He loves me.

  ‘Hey, I was thinking.’ He slams the oven door, throws himself down beside me on the couch, and nuzzles my neck. ‘We should have a little housewarming in the next few weeks, now that you’re all unpacked. What do you think? I know you’ve been non-stop with wedding-dress shopping and all that. It’ll be a chance to let your hair down and relax. You can invite all your friends and I can bring some of the work crew.’

  Oh God, as if I haven’t enough to be doing without adding a party. I’m about to object when he cuts me off. ‘You can show off your new mugs. And those candles you’re so fond of. Maybe get another throw.’ He raises his eyebrows and he knows he has me, the crafty shite. I must ring Knock Garden Centre and get them to hold two of the Colette Green cushions for me. If we’re going to have a party, we’re having it in turquoise-velvet style.

  29

  I know being fashionably late is a thing, but it’s a quarter past eight and there’s still not a sinner here. I thought I could count on Majella and Pablo to be early, or at least on time. They’re only coming from upstairs.

  ‘If you look in the freezer one more time the ice will have actually melted.’ James laughs, opening a bottle of Bishop’s Finger with my Las Vegas fridge-magnet-slash-bottle-opener. ‘Relax, Aisling.’

  That’s the third time he’s told me to relax and it’s getting more and more like a red rag to a bull.

  ‘I was just making sure it’s definitely there,’ I reply as evenly as I can, adjusting China’s finest silver-foil helium balloons that spell out ‘cheers’ and karate chopping the velvet cushions. He’s probably spent his whole life hosting effortless parties for people who are used to just holding out their glasses and having them refilled as if by magic, but this is my first grown-up party and I’m in ribbons trying to get it right. ‘You remembered the lemons, didn’t you? I won’t have it said that we didn’t have slices of lemon for people’s gins.’