Much Ado About Sweet Nothing

by Alison May

  ‘She was just a mean lady. The next place will be better.’

  Henri chews but doesn’t answer.

  ‘And that last dress was nice. You really liked it. You looked all princessy.’

  She finally smiles. ‘I did like it.’

  ‘That’s better.’ Now that she’s cheered up I feel completely justified in going back to this morning’s efforts to find out what’s weird with Ben, but I’ve already established that she’s not going to tell me directly. I’m going to have to go for the indirect approach. ‘So has Claudio sorted out the boys’ outfits?’

  ‘Sort of. He’s picked what he wants, but they all have to go get measured.’

  ‘He’s picked what he wants?’

  ‘I might have advised a bit.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Ben in top hat and tails.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to imagine. He refused to wear a hat.’

  ‘I think you should insist. It’d be funny.’

  ‘I don’t really like men in top hats. It makes me think of amateur dramatics doing songs from the shows.’

  ‘It’d still be funny. Do you know how he’s getting on promoting the book?’

  She shrugs. ‘Ok, I think. He moans about it, but I think he quite likes the attention really. Have you read it yet?’

  Apart from the first chapter, I still haven’t. I hid the copy Henri leant my under the coffee table. I swear it was looking at me. ‘I’ve started it.’

  ‘Well you need to finish it. I need ideas for this art project, and you said you’d help.’

  Technically, I think Danny said I’d help, but I don’t labour the point. ‘I’m going to finish it.’

  She looks at me dubiously. Sometimes I almost wish that Henri was actually as dumb as she appears. I avoid her look. ‘Well, I am.’

  Henrietta

  She’d better read it. I’m starting to wish I’d never come up with the whole art competition idea. Of course, when I thought of it I didn’t know I’d be planning my wedding at the same time, but still, she is supposed to be helping.

  She has got Ben on the brain though. She talked about him all the way in the car this morning. Maybe Danny’s on to something after all, but I’m not allowed to say anything to her about it today. Danny says he has a plan, and the more I seem like I’m covering something up, the more likely she is to go for it in the end. I wasn’t sure about that, because it means that I have to not tell her anything whilst looking like I’m hiding something, and I’m not a great liar. Danny said that was for the best though. If she asks about Ben I just have to say he’s fine and be generally non-committal about him. Danny says my naturally honest face will make it clear that I’m hiding something without me doing anything else.

  She’s still hot on the scent. ‘So Ben’s going to judge the competition then?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And he’s happy with that.’

  I shrug. ‘So far as I know.’

  ‘And he’s fine overall? He hasn’t seemed odd to you.’

  ‘No. He seems fine.’

  ‘And he’s not said anything to Claudio?’

  ‘Why should he?’

  Trix is trying to look non-committal too. I really hope I’m better at it than her. ‘He just seemed a bit odd this morning.’

  I can’t manage this any longer. I look at my watch. ‘Better get going to the next shop.’

  ‘We’ve got loads of time.’

  ‘Don’t want to be late. We don’t want to get in trouble again.’

  The second shop is down a side street in the oldest part of the city, near the Shambles. I love this part of town. It’s all higgledy-piggledy buildings, and different layers of history built on top of each other. Once, when I first moved here, I found the most incredible vintage shop in a tiny courtyard somewhere off Swinegate. Then it took me about three months to ever find it again. I’ve started thinking that maybe it’s a magic shop that just appears when women really need it, providing perfect one-off outfits for any occasion.

  The wedding shop is painted pink on the outside and the dress in the window is the hugest big white net meringue you could imagine, and someone has sprinkled glitter all over the floor and the mannequin. When I open the door I’m hit by a wave of warmth and flowery scent. The door hits an old fashioned bell and the tinkle brings a lady bustling through from the back of the shop.

  ‘Hello, hello, hello. You must be Miss Leonard?’

  I nod. ‘I’m sorry we’re early.’

  She’s a walking personification of effusiveness. She claps her hands when I confirm my identity. ‘Excellent. Excellent. I’m Donna Berry, as in Berry’s Brides obviously. Shall I call you Miss Leonard?’

  ‘Henrietta.’

  ‘Henrietta. How pretty. Marvellous. And you must be the bridesmaid?’

  She extends a hand and a face-splitting smile to Trix, who nods.

  ‘Wonderful. Now tell me dear, when is the big day?’

  I wonder about lying, having learnt my lesson about wedding dress ladies and weddings that are only five weeks away, but Trix has already told her the date.

  She claps her hands some more. ‘How wonderful. So soon – you must be so excited.’

  I nod again.

  ‘And when did you get engaged?’

  ‘A week ago.’

  ‘Lovely. I do like a short engagement. So much more romantic. Don’t you agree?’

  I nod some more. It seems to make her happy. ‘Are you sure there’ll be time to get a dress, and, you know, alterations and things?’

  ‘Oh, don’t even worry for a moment about that. I’m sure we’ll find the time. Anyway, look at you. A perfect ten, if my eyes don’t deceive? I can’t imagine, I’ll even have to open my sewing box.’

  I start to look properly around the shop. It’s small, but every available space has been filled with dresses, and veils, and shoes, and tiaras. It’s like a little girl’s dressing up dream. Donna turns and gestures towards the array of rails.

  ‘Now ladies, you can try on anything you like, of course. So what if you take a look around, and I shall find us a little something to whet the palette. Champagne all around?’

  I nod again. I like it here. I start to wonder whether I could come here every Saturday, and just wear a different wedding dress every week for work.

  Donna presses a handful of plastic tags into my hands. ‘Anything at all you would like to try just pop a tag on the hanger, and we’ll take them all through.’

  She presents Trix with another handful. ‘You as well, dear. There are bridesmaid dresses over to the left, or you can just pick out more things for darling Henrietta if you like.’

  I’ve only been here five minutes and I’m already darling Henrietta. I start putting tags on dresses, wondering whether I’d be allowed to just try them all on. Trix has gone over to the bridesmaid dresses and is peering at them with a look of mild horror. I think she’d probably forgotten that she could be made to try things on as well.

  I concentrate on the wedding dresses. They’re so packed together on the rails that you basically have to climb inside the rack to look at them. I’m burrowing through the rack when I find it. It’s a real princess dress; cream silk with long sheer sleeves that flare out to a point on the back of the hand and a beautiful cream bodice cut straight across the bust. At the end of the sleeves someone has embroidered tiny pink and blue flowers. The skirt flares softly in a way that doesn’t say 1980s tight wedding dress or 1990s big meringue. It just hangs and flares. I reach up to feel the corset and the skirt moves gently as I touch the dress. At the side are two long loose pieces of fabric that look as though they are designed to wrap around the bodice and pull the dress tight under the bust. This is it. I know it.

  I pick an armful of others, to show willing, and then I go and pick three for Trix as well. I don’t see why I should be the only one getting my underwear inspected by strangers. And besides, she’ll probably look lovely in them all. Trix is so striking to look at. For a moment I wonder
whether I really want her standing next to me in photos. Maybe I should pick something awful; if I did she’d manage to make it look quirky and alternative anyway, so I might as well go for something beautiful to start with. At least then, people might just think it’s the dress doing the work.

  I purposefully save the dress I fell in love with until last to try on. As I step into it I close my eyes, and keep them closed whilst Donna does the fastenings up my back. I feel her reach around the front, where two long wide pieces of silk are hanging loose. She pulls the fabric tight around my ribs where it sits snug to my torso to create a sort of fabric corset. She ties the ends of the fabric in a long bow at my back. I open my eyes. In the mirror I look like a medieval princess. I turn around to look at my back view. The tiny delicate flowers are embroidered around the ends of the long wide ties. Trix is grinning. ‘You’re Rapunzel.’

  She’s right. Just like always she’s managed to explain it so much better than I could. I look like Rapunzel. I have actually managed to look not just like a fairytale princess, but a specific fairytale princess. Donna is still behind me looking directly into the mirror. She’s squinting slightly.

  ‘Oh my, dear.’

  Trix’s grinning. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ I know I like it. I think I like it. I just want to know that it’s ok.

  She nods. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  Donna shakes her head. ‘Nearly. Wait there.’

  She disappears back into the shop and leaves me and Trix staring at my fairytale-perfection. It feels like I’ve found exactly what I’m looking for, not just what I’m looking for today, but what I’ve been looking for everytime I’ve ever been shopping in my whole life. All the times I’ve wandered around the shops in the belief that the perfect new pair of boots, or jeans, or knickers (yes, knickers – Trix refers to it as my ‘foundation garments phase’) would make me somehow better, were leading up to this moment. This is the dress that makes me look finished.

  Donna bustles back in clutching a pair of shoes. She pops them down on the floor in front of me. ‘What size are you my dear?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Just what I thought. I wondered about the six, but I thought no, no, she’s a dainty one, and picked out the five.’

  The shoes are beautiful. I just want to stand and look at them for a moment. They’re cream silk, with a heel, and they fasten by tying a silk ribbon across your foot. They are the prettiest thing I’ve seen since, well since the dress, but, apart from the dress, they’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. Trix stands up and holds my hand as I step into the shoes, which Donna kneels to tie. She then produces a tiara from a box at the back of the changing room. It’s decorated with tiny flowers again, and when she puts it on my head it glimmers in the light.

  This is it. This is the dress I will become Mrs Messina in. It is the perfect dress. It makes me look like the perfect bride for the perfect wedding. Behind me Donna is chattering away about shortening and steaming and then she moves on to Trix and I hear her saying they have bridesmaid dresses that match the blue in the flowers. But it’s like I can hear the words but they don’t relate to me. All I can see is me, this dress and the wedding in five weeks’ time. Just for a moment nothing else matters.

  Chapter Twenty

  Claudio

  ‘I should go back to my place. I’ve got work tomorrow.’

  Henri is sitting on the kitchen table. She can’t go back to her place. It’s Sunday now. She came over on Friday evening and stayed here last night after she’d been shopping with Trix as well. If she actually goes home then the weekend will be over, and I will definitely have failed to tell her what I meant to tell her on Friday night. So long as she’s still here, it’s like it’s all part of the same date, so I haven’t failed yet. And I do have to tell her. Not mentioning Italy felt ok to start with because nothing was certain. The e-mail that came last week changed that. If I don’t tell her now, I’m actually lying, rather than kidding myself that there’s nothing to tell.

  She won’t go back to hers anyway. She says she’s going to two or three times every day. I think she sometimes worries that she’s crowding me.

  She probably read in a book once that men need space.

  ‘Don’t. You’ve got clothes here. Stay here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ I move so that I’m standing between her knees and pull her closer to me, so her hips are tilted against my crotch. ‘Stay here tonight.’

  ‘OK.’

  So we have sex, in my bedroom, not on the kitchen worktop – sadly dear brother gets all weird about being expected to squeeze past copulating couples on his way to make a cup of tea – but I know I can’t put off telling her any longer. The fact that she hasn’t been home since Friday doesn’t really mean that it’s still Friday night.

  ‘Henri?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

  She sits up and pulls the duvet up to cover her. ‘It’s all too quick, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I’ve rushed you. I know. It’s my fault. I’ve messed it up, haven’t I?’

  ‘Woah! It’s not anything you’ve done.’

  She’s looking at me, biting her bottom lip. She always does that when she’s scared. Most adults manage to stop themselves from doing those sorts of things. In real life you don’t actually see people furrowing their brows, or wringing their hands that often. But with Henri all her emotions are right there on her face in the most upfront way. I kiss her forehead.

  ‘It’s about work. My work.’

  She’s still chewing her lip.

  ‘You remember when I was in Napoli, I told you that another tour company had asked me to apply for a job with them.’

  Now her eyes have got really big and wide. She’s simple in her heart Hen, but contrary to what some people think, she’s not stupid. She realises what I’m driving towards straight away.

  ‘You’re moving to Italy?’

  I’m looking right at her. I’m hoping she can see how desperate I am. ‘I was sort of hoping we might be moving to Italy.’

  It really is a brilliant opportunity for me. Tour guides are regulated in Italy, but they’ve offered to pay for me to get my official license, so I’ll be able to do tours of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Not a lot of Brits do that, so once I’m licensed I’ll be raking it in.

  This company know me and they want me, and to be honest, I basically told them I’d take it there and then, but of course, it was all provisional because I was still doing another job. And I didn’t know that by the time they wanted me to start I’d be married.

  ‘When?’ Henri is still chewing her lip.

  ‘Summer.’ I shrug. I’ve thought about nothing but telling her, but how it would actually work has barely crossed my mind. ‘I guess we could go earlier though.’

  ‘What would I do in Italy?’

  ‘Whatever you want. You could paint. You could teach English. You could work anywhere; there’s always something for English speakers.’

  ‘I don’t speak Italian.’

  ‘You’d learn. It’s a beautiful language.’

  ‘Where would we live?’

  ‘If we moved out there, the company would probably put us in an apartment to start with. After that … wherever you want. We could buy an apartment. If you were working, we could rent a villa even.’

  I have no idea if any of this is true. I haven’t even thought about where we would live. I just need her to agree. ‘A villa with room for lots of little bambinas.’

  For the first time she smiles. ‘That means babies.’

  ‘See. You’re a natural. You’ll be chatting like a local in no time.’

  ‘How many bambinas are you planning?’

  ‘Tens. Hundreds. As many as you want.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Italy.’

  ‘You’ll love it. I promise.’

  ‘What if I don’t?’

  ‘Then we’ll come
back.’ Would we? Would I? If I really loved the work, and the place, but Henrietta was unhappy, would I really come back? It won’t come to that. She’ll love it. I know she’ll love it. I can picture us living there, walking through the Piazza del Plebiscito, laughing at the tourists like proper locals. I’m thinking of all the places I would take her, and I’m thinking of the villa we’ll have. I can see her padding barefoot over the tiles to kiss me when I come home. I risk a look at her face. She’s stopped chewing her lip. She nods.

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  She nods again.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Henrietta

  I go to Danny’s office as soon as I get into work. He’s going to be the first person I’ve told. I’m planning to get them all out of the way today. I’ll tell Danny this morning, and then I’ll find Trix during the day. Claudio’s coming with me to tell my dad this evening.

  I knock on Danny’s door, but there’s no answer. I wait a moment and knock again. I’ve just about concluded that he’s not in there, and I’m going to have to ball my courage up and try again at morning break, when he calls from inside the office.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  I wait outside the door, turning the envelope with my resignation letter round in my hand. It seems like ages before Danny opens the door, but time always seems slower when I’m nervous. I go in and sit down. I take deep breath, but before I launch into my prepared speech I see Danny’s face. He has a proper black eye, like in a film.

  ‘What happened to your eye?’

  He touches the bruising carefully with his fingertips. ‘I tripped.’

  ‘It looks nasty.’

  He raises his eyebrows and then winces. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No. I didn’t mean. You look fine. It’s just …’ I stop talking. Claudio keeps telling me to shush. He says that when I’m nervous I talk too much. ‘Sorry.’