Violet stood in the dress, holding out her arms so that Freya could check the fit.
‘It feels tight on me,’ Violet said.
‘It’s not tight,’ said Freya, pinching the spare material together so that Violet could see. It actually needed taking in because it was too loose, yet it felt tight. How weird.
Violet stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked beautiful and delicate in the ivory dress with the peach rosebuds round her neck. With her pale perfect skin and slender frame, she resembled a china doll: a doll with a sad-painted face. And this doll was going to be taking vows to be married to Glyn in exactly seven weeks. She thought of Glyn’s face, rapturous with joy, as the registrar said, ‘You may now kiss the bride.’ She thought of him leaning over, his lips covering hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth.
She staggered and Freya’s arms came out to steady her.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘I think I need to sit down for a minute,’ said Violet, her head as light as a helium balloon. Freya guided her onto a chair before going to get her a glass of water. She placed it in Violet’s hand and closed her fingers round it.
‘There, take some deep breaths then drink,’ said Freya.
Violet held the glass in one hand and pressed the other against her forehead.
‘Yes, sorry,’ she said. ‘There’s so much to arrange. So much to think about.’
‘Of course,’ said Freya. Her hand rubbed Violet’s arm, intending to soothe her. Oddly, it looked so much older than the rest of her. It was like Nan’s hand, with its paper-thin skin.
Violet had the sudden impulse to throw her arms round Freya and sink her head into her neck and sob. She wanted to rip the dress off and run away. However much room there was in it, it felt constricting and uncomfortable and symbolic of her life.
‘You know,’ began Freya softly, ‘if a wedding isn’t a dream one, it can only be a nightmare.’
Violet flicked her eyes up at the older woman. Was it so apparent that she was unhappy? Was it so obvious that her head was full of alarm bells clanging inside her?
Freya’s voice was as warm as a fireside and as Violet sat sipping her water, Freya remembered the young woman who had last worn the dress. She had the same frightened fawn-like eyes as Violet;the same vibes of panic were radiating from her;the same knowledge was sitting in her heart that she was marrying the wrong man. As with that bride, Freya wanted to close her arms round Violet and reassure her that everything was going to be all right. She wanted to tell her that if ever a dress would help her find her happy ending, it would be this one. But all she could do was let it happen.
Chapter 64
‘Ta da – behold Sunday lunch.’ Max announced, delivering two plates to the table with a smug flourish. Stuart smiled but it wasn’t a real Sunday lunch in his book. A real Sunday lunch started with a raw chicken that was cooked slowly in an oven, pervading the house with roasting smells. It did not consist of a ready-cooked chicken from a supermarket, foil-packed potatoes dauphinoise, tinned carrots and peas, pre-made gravy bought from a chiller cabinet and Aunt Bessie’s parsnips and Yorkshire puddings.
Still, it was better than the pasta or microwave meals that they used to have on Sundays because Max was invariably too busy catching up on paperwork to cobble up anything fancy. Stuart hated cooking and rather than try to throw something together himself he would suggest they nip up to the local carvery. More often than not Max would say she was too busy or not hungry and ‘Why don’t you just go to your mum’s while I finish what I have to do.’ So Stuart spent a lot of his Sundays enjoying his mum’s home-cooked fare wishing that Max could metamorphose – just on one day of the week – into a woman who wanted to nourish him with Sunday roasts. A picture rose into his head of Jenny Thompson pulling a leg of lamb out of the oven, pans bubbling on the hob, while he set the table for the two of them. Or maybe three or four of them. Two little children helping to put the knives and forks out. He would have bet his life savings that Jenny wouldn’t have ever served tinned carrots – not even to Alan the rabbit.
He lifted up the uncorked bottle of white wine and held it over Max’s glass.
‘Ooh none for me,’ she stopped him quickly.
‘Why?’ he said, eyebrows sinking crossly in the middle. He knew what was coming.
‘I might take a look at some figures later on so I want to keep a clear head.’
Stuart banged the wine bottle down on the table.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Max. Can’t you give it a rest for one day?’
That was the meal ruined.
‘I’m talking about only half an hour. An hour – tops,’ said Max. ‘I have a video conference with the Americans tomorrow about—’
‘Oh yes, “the Americans”,’ he sniped. ‘I suppose you’ll have to go over there as well and so I’ll see even less of you than I do already, if that is possible.’
‘Oh Stuart, don’t be like that. It’s a massive opportunity for me. I have to be up to speed on everything.’
Stuart picked up his fork and stabbed it into a slice of potato. He didn’t like potatoes in sauce. What was wrong with simple mash? ‘I hate you working weekends.’
‘The hours come with the job,’ said Max.
‘Then get another job.’
Max gave a gaspy laugh. ‘Another job? I don’t want another job. I love what I do.’
‘I hate your job,’ grumbled Stuart.
‘And I hate yours,’ Max stabbed a carrot with venom.
Stuart’s head jerked up.
‘What’s up with my job?’
Max dropped her head. ‘Just leave it, Stuart. Let’s not argue.’
‘No, come on, I want to know what’s so bad about my job.’
Max didn’t reply. She chewed on the carrot and kept her head down.
‘Let me answer the question for you, then, shall I?’ Stuart persisted. ‘It’s a shit job with a shit wage.’
Max shook her head and tried to remain calm so this didn’t blow up. ‘I never said that, Stuart.’
‘But it’s what you think. Go on, be honest.’
So Max was honest.
‘If you must know, I think you’re underestimating yourself.’
‘No, I am NOT,’ Stuart threw back. Max’s eyebrows rose. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him raise his voice to her at this level. ‘I like my job. At least I did before you pressured me into applying for a promotion. Now I don’t like it as much, so I can guarantee you I won’t be going any further up the bastard scale.’
‘You’ve been there nearly eighteen years. You could have been running that place by now if you’d wanted to,’ snapped Max.
‘Precisely. “If I’d wanted to” – but I don’t want to. I don’t want to be stuck in an office from six in the morning until nine at night. I’ve got better things to do with my life than work myself into the ground. And what if we decide we want kids?’
Max looked at him, stunned.
‘You are joking? I’ve never wanted kids. Neither have you.’
‘What if you change your mind?’
‘I won’t,’ said Max, definitely.
‘What if I do?’
The question hung in the air like poison. Max gulped and said almost breathlessly, ‘Have you?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘But I’m not as against the idea as I used to be.’
‘Boy,’ Max answered that breathlessly, as if winded.
‘And I want a dog or a cat,’ Stuart blurted out.
Max’s eyes widened as if she was viewing an alien being rather than her very-long-term boyfriend. Where was he vomiting all this up from?
‘I tell you, Max, if you’re insistent on working all the frigging hours God sends, and then some more, I’m not rattling round in this dump by myself any longer.’
‘Dump?’ Max released a dry laugh. If there was one noun that didn’t fit with the house they lived in, it was ‘dump’.
‘It is to me,
’ railed Stuart. ‘I hate this bloody house. It’s always freezing.’
‘That’s a lie,’ parried Max. ‘But if you’re cold why don’t you turn up the damned heating?’
‘I have,’ said Stuart. ‘And it still doesn’t alter anything.’
Max shook her head. She didn’t know what he was talking about. But whatever it was, it ran deeper than a central-heating issue. It was as if he was a dormant volcano that had suddenly started to grumble after a hundred years.
‘Stuart, what’s up, love?’ she asked softly.
Stuart stared across the table at the woman he had been in love with since he was sixteen. They’d had so much in common then. They spent their Sundays sitting on swings in the park talking for hours, or at her parents’ house listening to music, playing Monopoly, watching TV. He’d had plans then too. To buy a little cosy terraced house near his parents and do it all up, spend weekends by the seaside in a bed and breakfast and go for walks on the beach, get a dog. They weren’t great big plans like Max’s but they were his plans, and he hadn’t realized any of them. Max’s bigger wants had outshone his at every turn. And it was ultimately his fault because he had let that happen.
Stuart’s head slumped into his hands. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ he said. He felt closer to tears than he could remember being for years.
‘Forget it,’ said Max with gentle firmness. She wanted to put her arms round him but she was scared, for the first time, that he might push her off. After all those years of togetherness, she wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of how he would react any more. She felt as shaken as if she had been physically assaulted. Stuart really was stressed. ‘Look, I will totally and utterly forget about work today, okay? See, I’m pouring myself a big glass of wine.’
Stuart resumed eating his lunch but he knew that Max not working that afternoon wouldn’t change anything now. He couldn’t remember when the course of their lives had begun to split and started to take them in such different directions, but he faced the grim reality that travelling on those two roads would carry them further away from each other. And what was really freaking him out was that he feared his path had met up and joined with another that was heading to the same horizon as he was destined for.
Chapter 65
Once again Richard brought red roses to La Hacienda. Once again he was courtesy itself as he opened the door for Bel and complimented her on her outfit. It was a very simple black dress, boat neck, three-quarter sleeves, nipped in at the waist. She carried a mint-green bag, the same shade as her oval necklace, her earrings and her eyes.
‘Good week?’ asked Richard, smiling at her across the table.
‘Not bad,’ she replied. ‘You?’
‘Busy, busy,’ he said, turning his attention to the menu. ‘Easy choice: sea bass for me.’
‘Did you ever bring Shaden here?’ Bel blurted out. Not even she knew she was going to say that.
Richard looked at her as if she had just asked if his hobby was eating slugs.
‘No, of course I didn’t,’ he replied calmly – but tightly. He was about to say more but the wine waiter arrived with two glasses of Pinot Grigio.
‘You seem to be under the impression that it was a relationship,’ said Richard when the waiter was at a safe distance away. ‘It wasn’t. It was primal and sex-fuelled and I’m disgusted with myself.’ He shuddered. ‘We didn’t “date”; we didn’t have cosy evenings in front of the fire. It was a few lust-driven shags, which resulted in something very unfortunate that I will bitterly regret to the end of my days. Now, please, let that be the end to it. It was sordid and I’m ashamed and I’ve truly learned the hardest lesson that life could possibly have to offer me.’
‘Is that true, Richard?’ asked Bel. ‘I need to know the truth before I can truly move on. Why did you keep all her emails? As romantic souvenirs?’
‘As if. I swear to you, Bel, there was no romance. There was only stupidity on my part that I didn’t delete them. I filed the emails as a matter of convenience only. I had no intention of poring over them.’ He looked intently at Bel and held out his hand across the table – the hand wearing his wedding band. She slipped hers into it and felt his fingers stroke her knuckles. ‘You’re the only woman I want to think about, Bel. You have to trust me.’
Bel could understand why Shaden fell under his spell. He had a way of looking at her that made her feel as if she was the only thing in the world that could ever matter to him. She wanted to believe the words he said to her so very much. She didn’t want to be alone and unloved any more.
Chapter 66
The woman who waddled into White Wedding was as wide as a barrel and had hair of such a vibrant red dye that it could be seen from orbit. It managed to eclipse the brightness of her fire-engine shade of lipstick, which was a feat in itself. She was about seventy and the man whose arm she was linking was approximately the same age. He was dapper and considerably slimmer than she and kindly measured his pace to hers. In his free hand he carried a large pink-leather shopping bag initialled in huge dia-manté lettering across the front: DDT.
‘Vernon and Doreen Turbot. How d’you do?’ said the elderly man, putting the bag down on the floor and holding out his hand for Freya to shake.
When the lady started to speak, the man tilted his head towards her and looked at her with such tenderness that Freya was reminded of someone whose attention she used to hold like that, once upon a time.
‘I’m looking for a wedding dress,’ said Doreen. ‘White. Have you owt to fit me?’
‘I have a dress for every shape in my shop,’ said Freya softly, lifting a chair and bringing it over to allow the lady to sit down.
‘Oh that’s better,’ said Doreen. ‘We’ve shopped till we’ve dropped today. Holiday clothes. Vernon and I are renewing our vows on a cruise, you see.’ She beamed to reveal red lipstick all over her teeth. Not that her husband seemed to notice. He couldn’t have looked more love-struck if he’d tried.
‘We’re going on the Mermaidia,’ added Vernon. ‘We’ve got a room with a butler. We’re making up for lost time, aren’t we, cherub?’ Vernon squeezed his wife’s shoulder. ‘We were reunited after forty years last year. We had a quickie wedding because we didn’t want to wait. But now we’re having the works.’
‘Forty long years we were apart,’ echoed Doreen. ‘But we haven’t half made up for lost time, haven’t we?’
She nudged Vernon and they both broke into a cheeky secret grin. Freya remembered that look – the key to a lover’s secret world.
‘Quite right too,’ said Freya. ‘Let me find some things for you to try on.’
When she returned, Vernon strolled off, hands behind his back.
‘He doesn’t want to see them,’ confided Doreen. ‘Doesn’t want to encourage bad luck by seeing me before the big day.’
Freya nodded. Tradition and romance were not confined to the young, she had been more than happy to discover over the many years in her profession.
Doreen was not interested in the plain soft satin gown that Freya suggested. She wanted forty missing years of drama embodied in one gown. She heaved herself from the chair to take a tour of the shop and her eyes lit up when she saw the dress that Freya was working on: Max’s gypsy dress.
‘Oh my life – that’s what I’ve always wanted. I dreamed of a massive frock decades before those gypsies made them popular,’ she gasped. ‘We’ll have to buy a special suitcase for it, but that’s what I want. One of those big, big, big dresses.’
‘I can vacuum-pack a dress for you,’ said Freya. ‘It would take up less room than you might imagine.’
‘Can you put lights in it? In the shape of little fish . . . and chips.’
Freya didn’t even raise her eyebrows
‘I can,’ she nodded with confidence.
Freya pulled a dress from a rail, a voluminous one with lots of ruffles at the neck and a wide wide skirt. ‘Try this for starters,’ she said. ‘I think it would look lovely on you.’
‘Oh
now, that’s smashing,’ Doreen’s face melted into a besotted smile.
‘Come with me and try it on,’ said Freya, holding out her arm so the old lady had some support as she headed for the changing room.
Freya helped her first into three net petticoats, then into the enormous frock. The ruffles framed Doreen’s formidable bosom perfectly and the puffed-out skirt gave her the illusion of a waist. Her figure in the gown was distinctly hourglass. Doreen looked in the mirror and saw Mae West staring back at her.
Freya chose a cathedral-length veil to go with it and a crown covered in hundreds of seed pearls. Everything the old lady wore should – by all the rules of fashion – have looked a bugger. But the dress wove its magic. In this white cloud, Doreen was a princess marrying the prince who had kissed her and woken up her heart again after forty years of a humdrum existence. Life without Vernon Turbot was all right but nothing special; life with him was full of fireworks and passion. In this dress, Doreen looked like the woman that she felt resided in her heart.
‘I’ll have it,’ said Doreen breathlessly. ‘Whatever it costs, I’ll have it. I don’t want to see any more. This is the one. But with those lights on, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’ll make sure you have your lights.’
‘And more underskirts.’ She flashed the widest red-lipstick-toothed smile at Freya. ‘It feels like it was made for me. You know when something’s just right, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes, my dear,’ Freya nodded slowly. ‘Indeed you do.’
Chapter 67
Violet watched Pav filing down a hole he’d made through one of the tables so he could thread a long gold-painted twisting pole through it.
Glyn hadn’t been very pleased when she said she had to meet with a builder on a Saturday, though he hadn’t suspected she was lying about it. She hating lying, but Violet knew that if she had to spend all day sitting in the flat on the sofa with his arm round her, watching TV, she would scream.
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