The Wedding Dress

by Milly Johnson

  Also by Milly Johnson

  The Yorkshire Pudding Club

  The Birds & the Bees

  A Spring Affair

  A Summer Fling

  Here Come the Girls

  An Autumn Crush

  White Wedding

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Milly Johnson, 2012

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-47111-178-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Note to the Reader

  The Wedding Dress

  The Dressmaker

  The Never Ageing Heart

  Extract from A Winter Flame

  Note to the Reader

  In this exclusive ebook you will find three brand-new short stories from bestselling author Milly Johnson, and a sneak peek at her new novel, A Winter Flame, out in October 2012.

  The title story, ‘The Wedding Dress’ is a mini sequel from Milly’s last novel, White Wedding, following Max’s story as she finds happiness. If you haven’t yet enjoyed White Wedding, please bear this in mind before reading ‘The Wedding Dress’.

  The Wedding Dress

  Max McBride drove past the small shop with the bay window in Maltstone and smiled sadly. It was an eighty-five pence shop now; full of plastic rubbish, cut-price toiletries, batteries only strong enough to power a clock and bargain-basement books. Once upon a time it had been the most beautiful bridal shop ever, run by a strange but lovely woman who had a magical air of mystery about her. She had disappeared into the ether eighteen months ago leaving no forwarding address, which was a bummer really because Max was getting married and she needed a dress as special as the man she was going to be meeting at the end of the aisle. She knew that the shop’s owner, Freya, would have stocked, found or made her the perfect dress for the occasion – but she was gone and so Max just had to find another bridal shop.

  And so she ended up at Love and Marriage, a shop that believed its own hype. Situated on the remote Holmfirth Road, it attracted the sort of clientele who wouldn’t have got a bus there. The front window was decorated with incredibly impressive designer names with off-the-scale price tags to put off those who didn’t earn six-figure salaries. But Max wasn’t about to be deterred – she was a self-made woman with a Coutt’s bank account and so she swanned into the shop as if she was about to make an offer on all the stock.

  The owner of the shop had a nose for money and the length of her smile was directly proportionate to the strength of the smell of it. And her smile when Max walked in could almost have been knotted at the top of her head.

  ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’ she said.

  ‘Just browsing,’ Max replied.

  ‘Well, please let me know if you should need anything,’ said the shop owner. Her eyes didn’t smile like Freya’s had; it was quite obvious to Max that Mrs Love and Marriage had had so much Botox pumped into her face, the next step would have been rigor mortis.

  As Max moved down the rails, the shop owner secretly studied her, running her eyes from her dark red hair piled up into a bun down to her long legs. The suit she wore wasn’t off the peg – the customer had a big bosom and a small waist: a very non-standard fitting. She stole a look out of the window to see what she had arrived in: a golden Mercedes with a personalised numberplate. Mrs Love and Marriage heard a very loud kerching go off in her brain.

  ‘I’m seeing you in something like this,’ she said, suddenly appearing at Max’s shoulder with a strapless Vera Wang dress: plain, simple and exquisite.

  Max’s pupils remained undilated. The dress was about as exciting as Emmerdale with the sound turned off.

  ‘And I’m seeing myself in something like that,’ replied Max, pointing to the dress in the corner which a headless mannequin was wearing. The dress was an explosion of net and satin, saturated in Swarovski crystals and golden sequins. It was gypsy bride meets show-off Flamenco dancer. Totally unsuitable for a woman over thirty and bigger than a size eight. And it cost thousands of pounds.

  ‘Absolutely gorgeous,’ said Mrs Love and Marriage, her piggy little eyes flashing pound signs. ‘Let me slip it off this model and follow you into the changing room.’

  ‘So, did you find a dress?’ Luke leaned over the sofa and kissed his fiancée before putting down his briefcase and taking off his coat. He was a man who had his priorities right.

  ‘I did,’ grinned Max.

  Luke knew that grin and it made him shake his head. ‘Oh God,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ tutted Max with a sparkle in her eye; she knew that he understood what her grin meant.

  ‘Where is it then? Let’s have a look.’

  ‘No, it’s bad luck,’ said Max. ‘Besides, the house isn’t big enough for me to keep it here.’

  Luke groaned. The house had five double bedrooms set over three floors. But Max knew that he was playing with her. Luke wanted her to have the wedding of her dreams and if that meant a dress that would have the church walls groaning at the seams, then that’s what she would have.

  ‘Anyway, I er . . . I’ve got something to tell you, Max,’ said Luke, suddenly turning serious. He sat down on the sofa beside her and took her hand in his. ‘I bumped into Stuart today.’

  He waited for her to react. But all she said was, ‘Oh, did you?’

  ‘He’s going to be a dad.’

  Max felt the slightest of stabs inside her heart. It was as if her old relationship had been boxed up and put in a recycling bin which hadn’t been emptied yet and it could still bleed some emotion into her if poked.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Luke squeezed her fingers gently, reassuringly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Max, and was surprised to realise that yes, she was okay. Stuart would make a great dad. He was kind and sensible and gentle, and though they had been a couple for seventeen years, now he was just someone she used to know. Faithful Stuart, who never wanted children, had left her for another woman and they were going to have a baby. The old Stuart had gone, long live the new Stuart.

  If Stuart hadn’t left her, she wouldn’t be planning her mad, crazy, huge wedding to Luke. Because bolshy, confident, powerful Max was a wreck when Stuart left, until Luke rode into her life like a white knight to love her and heal her, and made her realise that sometimes strong women need stronger men to make them happy.

  Luke placed his warm, large hand on her cheek. ‘I was a bit scared to tell you, Max. I was worried what your reaction would be.’

  ‘I feel like a recycling bin that has just been emptied,’ said Max, patting her chest. Luke didn’t know what that meant, but from the way she leaned forward and kissed him, he reckoned it was good news.

  Angel Hair was a shop not so far away from Love and Marriage on the Penistone-Holmfirth Road. The owner, Angelique, wasn’t half as much of a snob as
that Botoxed bag who had zipped Max up into the ornate gypsy wedding-style dress and then stood behind her cooing like an enamoured pigeon as Max studied herself in the full-length mirror and felt a heavy thump of déjà-vu.

  Angelique sported nails so enormous that picking her nose would have resulted in a punctured brain. They were painted black with gold tips and the tips were pierced with little angel charms hanging from them. Her skin was dark bronze with fake tan, her hair platinum and expertly woven into one of her own long wigs which was piled on her head in a bun as tall as the Eiffel Tower. But it still wasn’t as big as the hairpiece Max had bought from her the last time she was here.

  ‘You’ve been before, haven’t you?’ said Angelique. ‘I do like to see repeat custom.’

  ‘Yes, I was here about eighteen months ago,’ said Max, impressed by Angelique’s memory.

  ‘How’s she doing? Have you been looking after her properly?’ asked Angelique, as if she had sold Max a pedigree pet rather than a Marge Simpson wig.

  ‘I can honestly say it looks as fresh as the day I bought it from you,’ Max affirmed. That was the truth too; she had worn it for a few hours then it had gone back in the box. It was currently in her loft awaiting the time when she could be bothered listing it on eBay.

  ‘And what can I do for you today?’ asked Angelique. She’d had her lips done since they last met, thought Max. Was everyone who ran a wedding shop on a slow mission to turn plastic? Her mind strayed to Freya, who must have been over seventy years old at least and yet her white hair and age lines did nothing to diminish her true beauty. Oh, she wished she had been able to find out where she had gone, but all her searches had sadly come to nothing.

  ‘I’m getting married and I need something shocking.’

  ‘Weren’t you getting married last time you were here?’ asked Angelique.

  ‘Yes,’ said Max, thinking there was no point in lying about it. ‘But it didn’t work out. This will be my second attempt down the aisle.’

  ‘And you want something to blast all those memories of the first one away?’ Angelique guessed.

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘Well, these pieces are just in from France,’ said Angelique. ‘In fact, I haven’t even put them out on display yet they’re so new.’

  She sashayed over to a drawer and pulled out a box. Inside was a wig of such enormous proportions that it needed planning permission to reside on someone’s head.

  ‘This is the Madame Pompadour. Trust me: the days of the big wig are just around the corner. Within a year all the film stars will be at their premieres dressed like James II and Marie Antoinette. Take a seat.’

  Max sat down on a chair opposite a mirror and watched her transformation as Angelique pinned the enormous dark red wig onto her hair. Oh boy, this really would have the congregation’s heads turning.

  ‘You look so good you’re in danger of having your head chopped off,’ said Angelique, clapping her hands together with satisfaction.

  Max put her purchases from Angel Hair into the boot of her car and set off for the North Derbyshire border where she had an appointment with Shelley, the woman who had made the cake for her last wedding. That cake had turned out to be more of a housing estate than a confection, and upon seeing it, Max’s dad Graham had been torn between having a seizure and a fit of Tourette’s. And they said that was a shocker, thought Max with a giggle as she pulled up outside the shop. Oh, just wait.

  Shelley herself was there to greet Max. Considering how much she expected she was going to spend, it was the least she could do, and it had been worth cancelling a top-lip and leg wax for.

  Shelley had smashed up Max’s theory that everyone in the wedding business was going down the plastic route, by sporting a moustache that Magnum P.I. himself would have been proud of. She was a nice woman and made cracking cakes but that werewolf look wasn’t a good one. And the more Max tried not to look at it, the more it attracted her attention. It was as if there was a magnetic energy in those dark hairs which her pupils were irresistibly pulled towards.

  ‘These are some new designs I’ve done since I last saw you,’ said Shelley, handing over a photo album. ‘This is a Cinderella coach, this is a caravan, this one was a model of the bride and groom’s house in Alderley Edge. There’s a castle, a fairy-tale palace . . . anything tickle your fancy?’

  That moustache could tickle someone’s fancy, thought Max. Dear God. She hoped that one of her friends would tell her if she started walking around like Groucho Marx. Violet would do it in the gentlest possible way, possibly suggesting they go and have a joint wax together because she had ‘a voucher for a two for one’. Bel would go straight for the jugular. ‘Chuffing hell, Max. Is it full moon?’

  Max herded her thoughts back to the cakes. ‘I was thinking more of something like this,’ she said, pulling a design out of her handbag and handing it to Shelley.

  Shelley gulped. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That really is a shocker.’

  ‘You’d do it though?’

  Shelley was borderline speechless. ‘Yes, yes I can do that.’

  Max whipped out her credit card. ‘Hair—here’s my visa. I might as well pay for it all now if you tell me how moust—much I owe you.’

  Max had promised herself that this time around she would have a cake that people could actually walk through. Big was best, bigger was even better than best, had always been her philosophy.

  Back at home, Max opened the secret wedding file on her PC and checked off: dress, shoes, hair, cake. Luke was sorting out the honeymoon – somewhere sunny was all he would give away. The reception was next. Last time she had booked Higher Hoppleton Hall and enough flowers to give the whole of Scotland hay-fever. What could top that? she thought. And how should she arrive at the church? The last time she had virtually suffocated her father in a Cinderella coach. He probably still had net in his lungs from having to breathe it in; it wouldn’t surprise her to hear that he woke bolt upright in the night after suffering flashbacks. Her dad was an old-fashioned, traditional man with no concept of gypsy brides on his radar. He’d told her he was already starting to have sleepless nights about what she had planned for this wedding.

  Max opened a large envelope which contained a selection of sample menus from a possible venue for the reception. The least grand of the three featured a six-course menu with a choice of lobster or a three-bird roast as the main. The cost was a mere arm and a leg. The grandest, however, demanded both legs, both arms and a head as due payment. Twelve courses of unadulterated gluttony on a scale that would have Henry VIII feeling stuffed. Boy, that would show everyone she had moved upwards and onwards.

  Her thoughts, out of her control, strayed to Stuart. She wouldn’t know what to say if she ever bumped into him. So many years of togetherness, planning a future, loving each other, sleeping and waking in the same bed – where had all that intimacy gone? And yet there was Luke, dear Luke, whom she had known a lifetime as just a friend and he was the one she was now planning her future with, loving, sleeping beside. Love was like waves in the sea, rising, falling, dying, re-forming, fickle and changing, and that suddenly scared her because she had felt secure with Stuart and his leaving her had come totally from leftfield. She would never again feel one hundred per cent certain of a man. Those waves, gentle and safe, could revolt against their regular pattern with a breath of wind. Who was to say that this time next year she wouldn’t be back in Shelley’s cake shop ordering a sponge copy of Buckingham Palace for wedding number three because Luke had buggered off with a woman he bumped into in Starbucks? Shelley would have a beard by then, and would be earning a supplementary living as a lookalike for Cat Stevens.

  Luke found Max crying when he came in from work. She tried to cover it up, of course, but her eyes grew very bloodshot when she was upset.

  ‘Is it all getting too much for you, honey?’ he said, overriding her insistence that everything was fine and holding her tightly and kissing her hair.

  ‘Is it Stuart?’ he ask
ed with a catch in his voice.

  Max sighed heavily. ‘It’s not him exactly. It just made me realise how much life can change in such a short time. That couples who thought they were forever can split up.’

  ‘Well, they can, but when it’s right, they don’t,’ said Luke, holding her face, looking into her lovely eyes, brown as cocoa beans. ‘Your mum and dad are still together and happy after twenty-odd years and my parents have stayed the course, give or take a little rock to their boat. Anyway, you might leave me in five years for one of your swanky American clients.’

  He grinned and looked at her with such warmth in his gorgeous grey eyes that she felt suddenly shy and girly. Luke had a tremendous gift of making her feel vulnerable but at the same time so beautifully looked after.

  ‘I’m marrying you, Maxine McBride, because I love you and intend to keep on loving you. I’ve got no intention of calling it off because one of us may run off with someone else in the future. You’re a ridiculous woman. Now go and open a bottle of wine – I want to sit on the sofa with my fiancée, order in a Chinese and watch something on the TV that hasn’t anything to do with bloody offices.’

  He smacked her bottom and, with a smile on her face, she went off to the kitchen in the direction of that lovely bottle of Pinotage in the wine rack.

  So, how to arrive at the church then? After putting her dad through the Cinderella coach squash, Max thought a repeat performance of that wouldn’t be wise. Especially as her dad had stood in a big pile of horse poo whilst he and an army of people were trying to extricate her and that frock out of the coach . . . A helicopter was an option, although her dad didn’t like flying – he got dizzy changing light bulbs. Stretch limo? Bit high-school prom. Silverghost Rolls Royce? Pink Cadillac? Ferrari? Her dad would prefer the car option, she knew; it would satisfy his traditional leanings. God, this wedding was harder to arrange than the first one. Back then her heart had been making the shopping list, this time her head had taken over the duty. A Ferrari would be nice but so hard to get in and out of. Likewise an Aston Martin. Plus, if she got her dad in a James Bond car, she doubted she would get him out again.