How Not to be a Bride

by Portia MacIntosh

  ‘I’m excited for that as well,’ he replies, giving me a squeeze. ‘Man, I’m tired. Shall we get in bed?’

  ‘Sure,’ I reply. ‘You head up, I’ll just move these cups.’

  ‘Love you,’ he sings as he heads up the stairs.

  ‘Love you too,’ I call after him.

  I lie back on the sofa and stare at the ceiling – something has just hit me: I am not excited about this wedding at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  This morning I met Debbie Turner, daughter of Mrs Turner with the purple hair and Mr Turner who picks up dog shit, wedding planner extraordinaire.

  Supposedly Debbie and I have met before, and she claims she remembers me, but I don’t remember her. She’s a tall, skinny woman with wild hair – dark-brown, crispy-looking curls that I wouldn’t like to try and run a brush through. Imagine a brunette Merida from Brave, living in a humid world with no conditioner and that’s our Debbie.

  We started off having a catch-up, with Debbie telling us all about her kids, how well they’re doing at private school and a comprehensive list of all their sporting achievements to date. Most impressive. But then, as she ran us through the list of things we’ll need to consider for our big day, she asked a question I didn’t have an answer for: what was our wedding budget? The truth is that we haven’t really talked about that yet. Sure, we have more spare money since I took this job, but it’s not like I’m getting a regular salary. This is a one-time payment, and when the money from this job runs out, I don’t know for sure that I’ll have another to replenish the money with. Even though I made good money writing movies, between my extortionate rent and my lavish lifestyle, my outgoings were high. It was fine at the time, because I’d finish one movie and get to work on another, so the money was always coming in, but when I lost my job and moved back here, without an income, I began blazing through my savings quite quickly. If I’d thought there was even the slightest chance I could’ve lost that job, I would’ve been more careful. It just goes to show, you should never feel truly safe and secure anywhere. Always have a backup plan.

  The biggest shock of the morning came when Debbie told us how much the average couple spends on their wedding. She reckons £30,000 on average, including the honeymoon. Thirty-fucking-thousand pounds. On one event. That’s, like, a year’s salary for some people – who are doing well. I’ve spent lots of money on things in the past, but I’ve only really spent money on big things that hold their value.

  ‘It will be the most stupendous day of your life, though,’ Debbie explained to me, in an attempt to retrieve my jaw from the floor.

  Leo whistled at the price in disbelief, but quickly added that, no matter how much it was going to cost, it would be worth it. Very sweet of him to say so, but we could do so much with £30k – think of the things we could do to the house with that money.

  Debbie arrived to meet us all sickly sweet, but then, as soon as she realised I wasn’t your typical blushing bride, I could see her enthusiasm draining by the second. I think I put the final nail in our relationship coffin when we were saying goodbye and she asked if we had any questions.

  ‘Why do they call the meal a wedding breakfast when it’s almost always in the afternoon?’ I asked. It turns out she meant did we have any questions relating to our wedding plans, and not did I have any childish curiosities. Debbie said she would make some appointments for me to attend to try and work out what I wanted, and we left it at that.

  Now I’m back in London, back at Dylan’s house, back to my wedding-free safe space.

  ‘You look stressed,’ Dylan points out.

  ‘You look… drunk,’ I reply.

  ‘Very perceptive,’ he laughs.

  I know I don’t know him very well, and that I’m just here to work for him, but if we were friends, I’d ask him about his drinking. I know he’s a rockstar, but he’s drunk way too often.

  ‘I met with a wedding planner today,’ I tell him. ‘She was one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met. Everything is “stupendous” and her enthusiasm for wedding stationery was, frankly, troubling to me. How could someone get so excited about embossed lettering on invitations.’

  Dylan laughs.

  ‘Did you have anything to do with planning your wedding?’ I ask. It’s a cheap technique, and I’m relying on the booze to open him up a little, but I need to get him talking about his marriage at some point.

  ‘I ain’t talking about it, babe,’ he says, grabbing a beer from the fridge before heading back to the living room. I grab my Dictaphone and follow him.

  ‘Tell me a random tour story,’ I insist. ‘Let’s get things flowing.’

  ‘Just need to figure out one that I remember,’ Dylan laughs, plonking himself down on the sofa. He makes himself comfortable for a second before sitting back up and patting the sofa next to him. ‘Sit here.’

  I take a seat next to him, placing the Dictaphone down on the coffee table in front of us.

  ‘I don’t like that thing, man. It makes me think I’m talking to a journalist. Journalists don’t treat me like a human, I’m just a source of money to them. If they can trick me into saying something fucking stupid they win the lottery. Sometimes I just want to feel normal. Like, Mitch and my publicist are next door in my office having a meeting about me at the moment. I’m never alone.’

  ‘OK, so we’ll ditch the Dictaphone,’ I say, in an attempt to make him feel more comfortable. ‘We’ll just talk and I can just write things down later. That’ll be much more relaxing, right?’

  Dylan nods.

  ‘OK, so this is a story no one knows,’ he starts, swigging his beer. ‘In fact, maybe don’t put this one in the book. We’re just chatting.’

  ‘OK, sure,’ I reply. I kick off my shoes and pull my feet up onto the sofa, like a child ready for story time.

  ‘So this is a long time ago, man. We’re on the tour bus, on the way back from Glasgow, I think, and there’s me, Mikey, Taz, our drummer and Kelly, who used to be our bassist. Well, his name was Jamie, but we called him Kelly because he looked like Kelly Osbourne did in 2002, with his black and pink spikey hair. Fucking weird kid, man. Then we had Mitch, our driver, dunno his name, and my buddy Nicole who used to tour with us sometimes. So it’s late, it’s winter – I dunno what year it was, but it was when we had those crazy snowstorms, remember?’

  I nod. I don’t remember at all, though, I was probably sunning myself in LA at the time.

  ‘So we break down in the middle of nowhere. It’s the middle of the night, the bus is fucked, there’s no heating or nothing. Driver tells us we passed a sign for a town. Lundsgill, or something like that. So, I drop a tweet like “All right, we’re stranded in Lundsgill, anyone wanna help us out?” and my Twitter blows up like it always does. But as I’m scanning the replies, there’s this one girl – mate, she was a fitty n’all – who goes “I live here, you can come stay with me”. So, great, we’re in there, I’m in there, and it’s all going to be fine. So she DMs me where she lives and we turn up there, and she lives on some farm with her family, and she looks nothing like her profile picture, not even close, man. Not cool at all. But her parents are friendly and they’ve got all these spare rooms so we decide it’s best to stay there – the whole country is at a standstill pretty much, so it’s here or the freezing-cold tour bus that’s broken down in the middle of a long, lonely road.’

  ‘Shit,’ I blurt, hugging my legs. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘So this fan, she’s, like, in love with me, but she’s young and she’s not even a little bit hot…’ Nice priorities, Dylan. ‘So I ask my buddy Nicole to pretend to be my bird, thinking she can share a room with me and this chick will leave me alone, but her parents are old-fashioned and poor Nic has to room-share with this fan – she said there were pictures of me all over the walls, one with lipstick on. Like, it’s funny until you’re snowed in there, right?’

  I nod, completely captivated.

  ‘Next morning the dad wakes us up earl
y, gives us all farm duties. Says we’ve gotta pay our way, it’s only fair – weird as shit, man. So later in the day, the wife cooks. We’re all eating lunch when we realise Kelly has vanished. And I’m thinking, we’re staying on this farm where they make meat, but you don’t see no animals, and I’ve taken a little something to take the edge off, so I’m tripping big time and I figure they’ve killed Kelly and we’re eating him…’

  My jaw drops so hard, I hear a pop in my ears.

  ‘You thought you were eating your bassist?’

  ‘Well, he was the fattest, so if you were gonna eat one of us…’ He laughs. ‘So I tell everyone and they think I’m just a bit messed up from the drugs, but they don’t wanna risk it, so we wait until it gets dark and we sneak out – we were badass, sneaking out of this farm unnoticed, but I’m just motivated by this fear for my life. I’ve never been so fucking scared. So we make it to the bus, get on and then there’s Kelly, asleep under a pile of clothes. Lazy git just didn’t want to do any work. The weather was much better by morning, and I guess someone from the label sent 4x4s for us to get us home safe. Weird 24 hours, though.’

  I blink a few times. My God, why did I turn my Dictaphone off?!

  ‘That’s… I don’t even know what that is,’ I reply.

  ‘It feels good to tell someone,’ he replies. ‘What else do you wanna know?’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The past week or so has been a bit of a blur, what with me dashing back and forth between Canterbury and London, trying to spend as much time with Leo as possible in between meetings with Dylan and long writing sessions to get this book finished ASAP. Then, of course, there’s all the time I’m spending avoiding Debbie, the wedding planner from hell. The woman just has no chill whatsoever. Worse still, she doesn’t respect my wishes or my taste at all. She’s constantly trying to force things she thinks we should have, like an extortionately priced, handcrafted white chocolate unicorn sculpture. In August – is she high? You don’t need to be Professor Stephen Hawking to figure out what’s going to happen there.

  Not only is working with Dylan a great way for me to hide from Debbie, but it’s giving me a taste of a life I never thought I’d get to live again. I’ve been following him to gigs, TV appearances, parties – all of which are full of fabulous people and free food and drink.

  Today is a break from writing and from working on the house, and we’re gathering at my gran and granddad’s house for Sunday dinner. Leo and I are the first to arrive, which will hopefully score me some brownie points with my gran – unless we’re too early.

  Leo is making small talk with my gran, so I sneak out into the back garden to see my granddad, who is hiding in his shed.

  ‘Now then, kid,’ he says as I walk in.

  I squeeze him and give him a kiss on the top of the head before sitting down next to him.

  ‘Look at all these plants,’ I say sarcastically.

  ‘It’s winter, kid. And I’m only out here to listen to the radio in peace.’

  ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I tell him. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ he replies. ‘The legs aren’t so good today, I just can’t make them go.’

  I rub his shoulder.

  ‘I’m not enduring Sunday dinner without you, even if I have to carry you in,’ I joke.

  He laughs.

  ‘How’s the new job going?’

  ‘Ah, it’s great,’ I reply.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ he replies. ‘Kind of makes it OK that we’ve hardly seen you.’

  ‘We need to get you a phone,’ I say, taking my iPhone from my pocket. ‘There’s this app called Skype – I’ll show you – we could see each other.’

  I’m only logged in for a few seconds before a call starts coming through.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I blurt. ‘It’s my old boss.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’d better answer,’ I say. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mia Valentina, long time no speak,’ Skinner says cheerfully.

  Skinner was my boss at Pink Inc., the screenwriting team I was a part of back when I worked in LA.

  ‘I know,’ I reply. ‘We haven’t spoken since you fired me because I wouldn’t leave my sister’s wedding to work.’

  I hear my granddad snigger quietly.

  ‘Possibly,’ Skinner replies casually. ‘How have you been? I hear you write books now?’

  ‘Yeah, great, and I do. It’s all going well, thanks, really enjoying it, getting lots of good reviews.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you’re good,’ Skinner replies. ‘But you were awesome at writing movies.’

  I was, which is why it’s such a shame that he fired me.

  ‘Listen, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days but your Skype was all I had. Do you know what time it is here? But I figured I wanna catch you online, I gotta think like I’m in a different time zone.’

  ‘Right,’ I reply. ‘So, what’s up?’

  ‘Remember The Unhappy Couple?’ he asks.

  ‘Remember it? I won an award for it,’ I remind him.

  ‘A well-deserved award,’ he says. ‘The powers that be want a sequel – The Unhappy Marriage – and, well, they want the same writers to do the screenplay, and Molly got married, then pregnant, then quit – who saw that one coming? And Savannah is being real fussy about who she’ll work with, but she’s too stressed to do it alone… bottom line, we want you back.’

  ‘You want me back?’ I repeat. ‘Like, you want to give me my old job back?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replies. ‘I’m not happy about the way we ended things and, of course, you would be coming back to a better package than you had before.’

  I don’t think Skinner feels bad for sacking me at all, but I think he needs me now and that puts me in a very powerful position. Not only would getting my old job back mean more money, more fabulous parties and more time in sunny LA, but I’d be doing a job I loved, that I was really fucking good at. It always has been and always will be my dream job. I can’t believe I’m getting a second chance.

  But then I remember Leo and our house and our life here. There’s no way he’d want to leave his family – even if he said he would – and I wouldn’t want to go without him, even if it was for just one project. We sure could use the money, though, and I could do the right things with it this time.

  I know I’m still writing, but there’s no way I could ever be as successful writing books as I was writing movies. I’m just not sure writing movies fits in with my new life. Money and success, or love? Surely it’s a no-brainer.

  ‘I’ll give you some time to think about it,’ he offers.

  ‘OK,’ I reply. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I just got offered my old job back,’ I tell my granddad after the call ends.

  ‘Kid, that’s brilliant. Congratulations. Are you going to accept?’

  ‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it, and that I didn’t need the money… but Leo wouldn’t want to move, and whether he agreed to, even though he didn’t want to, or whether he suggested I go alone for a few months… it just wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘That’s very considerate of you, kid. I’m proud of you. I guess it would throw the wedding off too, hey?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply. I hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘I hear your gran on the phone to your mum, talking about the wedding,’ he starts. ‘I think they’re worried you’re not actually going to get married.’

  I face-palm.

  ‘It’s because I haven’t made any real plans yet,’ I tell him. ‘I’m going to, I’m just so busy.’

  ‘You sure?’ he asks me.

  My granddad, as always, can tell when something isn’t right.

  ‘I… I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ I admit. ‘But I meet with Debbie and I look at all the different options and I don’t want any of it. It just fills me with this feeling of…’

  ‘Nothing is worth you getting anxious again, kid.’

  When I was a t
een I was anxious almost all the time and, at one point, it really got on top of me. I was bullied at school for being a bit fat – amazing, isn’t it, that the biggest crime you can commit as far as your peers are concerned is to be ‘not thin’. Living your life as a fat teenage girl is one of the hardest things you can do – I know it may seem like a very first-world problem, but you can’t even imagine what it’s like. The thing that always amazed me was just how many people would tell me I was fat, as though I didn’t realise every time I had to run or try and buy clothes from the same shops as my friends. Kids at school would tell me, people would shout it from passing cars – even my PE teacher would yell it at me as I failed my sixteenth attempt at the high jump. Ah, the high jump, the highest of academic achievements. Your weight should have no bearing on your worth as a person whatsoever, but it does, and so back then, no one gave me the time of day. It got me down and soon enough my low mood turned into anxiety – about everything. It was a really awful time where I just struggled from one panic attack to the next, and although I got through it, you never really get past it. It still rears its ugly head every now and then, if I’m especially stressed, and that’s what my granddad is worried about.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I promise. ‘I’m sure I’ll get into the swing of it soon – it’ s my first wedding,’ I laugh.

  ‘And hopefully your last,’ my granddad smiles.

  ‘In the spirit of that sentiment, let’s not mention this job offer to Leo,’ I suggest. ‘I don’t want to put him in a difficult position.’

  ‘Sure,’ my granddad replies. ‘Pass me my stick, will you?’

  I hand my granddad his walking stick and watch helplessly as he struggles to pull himself to his feet.

  ‘I just can’t make my legs go,’ he tells me, shaking his head. ‘Few Yorkshire puddings will see me right.’

  I smile. It’s so like my granddad to be so positive when he’s feeling so bad. I offer him my arm to help him back into the house where hopefully dinner is ready.

  The thing I love about my grandparents’ house is that – even though I’m sure it has – I don’t feel like it has changed a bit over the course of my life. I used to spend a lot of time here when I was a kid, and all the things that make me think of back then are still present today. My gran still has a bowl of ornamental soaps in her bathroom, shaped like a variety of things, form fruits to seashells. I used to love playing with them when I was a kid, although I learned from a very early age that we didn’t use these soaps to wash hands. I’m not sure if the ones there today are the same ones, or just similar. However, it was the large glass cabinet in the dining room, full of crystal figurines, that I always so desperately wanted to play with, but was never allowed to touch. Perfect, sparkling little swans, rabbits, cats and all sorts of animals made of perfectly clear crystal that beamed a rainbow of colours when the sunlight shone through the dining-room window of an evening. Even today, as we sit and eat dinner, despite being a grown woman, those little figurines will tease me, their bright little colours catching my eye, still making me want to touch them, just once…