A Ballad of Confetti, Cake and Catastrophes

by Helen Juliet

  Nicholas sat heavily on the couch and picked up his tea, sipping it in the hopes it might settle his churning stomach. Of all the rotten luck… He shook his head. He couldn’t hash over that now. He had to remain positive, focus on solutions. He wasn’t sure who Kinny might be phoning, but there was still hope if they said yes.

  Although, he wasn’t sure how exactly. The dresses looked beyond saving to him. But then, he didn’t know anything about sewing.

  Ash began to pick up any slivers of pink material that had detached completely from the dresses and landed on the carpet, collecting them carefully in her hand.

  “Do you think we can reattach those bits?” Nicholas asked her optimistically.

  Ash shook her head. “Nope,” she replied, popping the ‘P’. “But this way we can convince Danielle we simply put the dresses away, or took them to the dry cleaners.”

  “Dry cleaners,” confirmed Kinny, walking back into the room. She had her phone pressed to her chest. “We can say they smelt musty. That way she won’t go looking for them.”

  Nicholas looked between them both, unsure. “You don’t want to tell her about this?”

  Ash rested a hand on his shoulder, and looked at him solemnly with her big, blue eyes. “Of course we’ll have to tell her,” she said. “But would you rather do it now, or when we’ve got the solution all sorted out?”

  Nicholas raised his eyebrows. “Very good point,” he said.

  “Speaking of which,” said Kinny heavily. “My mum said yes. She’ll help.”

  Ash raised an eyebrow at Nicholas, but he just gave her a tiny shake of his head. He hadn’t heard Kinny talk much about her mum before. “That’s a good thing,” he said instead. “Right?”

  Kinny blinked, then gave him a weak smile. “Yeah, sure.”

  She obviously wasn’t going to offer up any more information, so Nicholas decided to let it go.

  Between the three of them, they managed to cajole each of the dresses back into their garment bags, being careful not to damage them any more than they already had been. But when Ash jogged upstairs to get changed, Nicholas thought he should at least double check that everything was okay.

  “We don’t have to go see your mum,” he said quietly to Kinny as they fished two big golfing umbrellas out of the coat cupboard. “Honestly, if you don’t want to, we can think of something else.”

  Kinny gave him a bright smile though, and touched his elbow. “I’m just being silly,” she said, and shook her head. “She said she’d be happy to help.”

  Nicholas wasn’t quite sure he believed her, but he decided to leave it at that. If she had a plan, he was glad to let her take charge. After the harp fiasco, he didn’t know if he could manage another crisis.

  Before he headed upstairs, Nicholas made sure the door to the den was shut this time, lest Archibald sneak back in to wreak more havoc, but not before he gave the floor a once over to make sure Ash had got all the scraps of material off of the carpet. She was right, Danielle and Clara didn’t need to know about this until they had a solution.

  Nicholas hurried back up to the bathroom and hastily had a quick wash. He wasn’t sure how long this was going to take, and he wanted to at least be halfway decent if he had to go straight away to see Fynn. Having met him in his dishevelled, hungover state on Saturday, he’d hate to give him the impression he was some sort of layabout with poor hygiene standards.

  He was essentially Fynn’s boss, he told himself as he took too long picking out a shirt to go over one of his favourite t-shirts. He needed to be presentable and professional. And if he happened to feel he looked quite attractive while doing that, then that was just a side-effect.

  “Nicholas!” Kinny called up from downstairs. He could hear the anxiety in her voice. “Are you nearly ready?”

  He had hoped to have another couple of minutes to put his contacts in, but he guessed he’d have to stick with his glasses for the third day running.

  With a sigh, he grabbed his wallet, keys and phone, and pulled his door to. “Coming!”

  The girls were waiting for him downstairs, armed with the three dress bags, two still-closed umbrellas, and Kinny’s car keys swinging from her hand. She had so many brightly coloured keyrings, Nicholas thought it was a wonder she was able to turn the bunch in the ignition at all.

  As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he obediently held his arms out to take the dresses, leaving the girls armed with the brollies. “Ready?” Ash asked, her hand on the front door handle. Nicholas could see the rain through the windows, hurtling to the ground with what felt like furious intent.

  He bit his lip. “Let’s do this.”

  Kinny’s car was hard to miss. It was a bright yellow Mini Cooper, and a plastic sunflower waved at them cheerfully from the antenna, beckoning them to brave it out of the house and down the road to where their ride awaited. With what Nicholas liked to think was a battle-cry, but which probably sounded more like a panicked shriek, he and Kinny hurled themselves out into the pouring rain, leaving Ash to lock the front door with her spare set of keys.

  Together, they managed to keep themselves and the dress bags more or less under the umbrellas, and only their feet got drenched as they legged it the few dozen feet down the pavement. Nicholas clutched the dresses to his chest as carefully as he could, hoping that the garment bags were waterproof. At least enough to withstand the rain that was, despite their best efforts, creeping under the golf umbrella.

  Kinny only fumbled for a moment with the right key to let them inside, then she and Ash ushered Nicholas in first, making sure the dresses stayed lying as flat as possible over his lap as he squirmed into the back seat. Soon enough, Ash had thrown herself into the passenger seat, and she and Nicholas watched as Kinny squeezed herself into the driver’s seat, sliding the umbrella down by Nicholas’s feet.

  The car started to steam up with condensation. Nicholas listened to himself pant, while the other two followed his example and clicked their seatbelts over their bodies.

  And then there they sat.

  Kinny wrapped her hands around the steering wheel and stared out into the murky world beyond the rain, not, as far as Nicholas could tell, really looking at anything. After a minute, he started to get uncomfortable.

  Ash broke the silence first. “Um,” she uttered after another minute had gone by. “Do you want a hijab?”

  Kinny blinked and turned to look at her. “What?” she said, a little dazed.

  Ash indicated the scarf she had around her neck. “I just thought – if we were going to see your mum – and you were nervous – it might be because you don’t normally wear a hijab, and she might expect you to?”

  Kinny barked a loud laugh. Nicholas felt relieved, but he was still none the wiser.

  “Oh, that’s so sweet of you.” Kinny reached over and touched Ash’s arm. “But, no, it’s nothing like that. My mum’s been with me when I’ve bought bikinis in the past. I – erm…I guess we had a bit of a fight. A little while ago. But she said it was fine to bring her the dresses – I mean – she didn’t say it was not fine. So, we just need to go over and stop faffing, right?”

  Nicholas wasn’t sure. “How long ago did you have your fight?” he asked, ignoring his better judgement.

  Kinny shrugged. “A year and a half.” She turned the ignition, and the engine thrummed to life. The radio also burst into sound, deafening them all with an energetic nineties number about sunshine and beaches and popping pills in ‘Beefa. “Shall we get going?” Kinny practically shouted. She grinned at them, and pulled out into the street without waiting for an answer.

  Nicholas opened his mouth, but he found he didn’t have anything to say other that asking if they were sure they didn’t want to try another plan. Seeing as he’d already asked that already, he decided not to rock the boat. He couldn’t help but feel anxious as to what they were walking into, though.

  Kinny’s family lived a twenty-five-minute drive across town. Nicholas had vague memories from his childhood of
waiting outside there before, probably while dropping Kinny off, or picking her up. But he couldn’t say he particularly recognised the blue trampoline sat in the small front garden that the rain was currently bouncing off, or the garishly painted gnomes that were peeking out from the shrubbery at them as they pulled up outside the semi-detached house. He did remember the archway over the dark green front door. Depending on the time of year, it would be covered in trailing plants with big purple blossoms that Nicholas had mistaken for bunches of grapes in his youth, and he’d always been quite captivated by it.

  Now the bare leaves of the plant flinched in the rain bucketing downwards, and the trellis shook when the door was abruptly yanked inwards.

  Mrs Sadik was not a tall woman. She wrapped her cardigan tighter around her as she regarded the three of them in the car while Kinny killed the engine. She pushed her rectangular glasses higher up her nose, the legs vanishing farther into her butterfly-patterned silk hijab. The garment seemed too bright and cheerful for such a grim day and the unfortunate task ahead, not to mention the scowl that adorned the older woman’s face.

  She beckoned impatiently towards them to make the sprint down the neatly kept garden path and into the safety of the house. Nicholas said a silent prayer to whatever deity might be tuned into them that she could help them fix their dress disaster, and undid his seatbelt.

  “Here we go,” Kinny murmured. Her clear apprehension did not help with Nicholas’s own worries. He was starting to wonder if she had even given her mum a call at all, or whether or not they were just turning up unannounced into a whole load of trouble.

  They were there now, so the three of them scrambled back out into the rain with the umbrellas. Nicholas tripped as he tried to hurry towards the house as fast as he could, but Ash grabbed his arm in time. They made it to the door without incident.

  “Hurry! Quick, quick!” Kinny’s mum urged them in a thick Turkish accent, waving her hand to usher them over the threshold faster. “It’s cats and dogs, you’ll catch your death.”

  She huffed and glowered. Somehow, the fluffy slippers she was wearing and the smudge of butter on her cheek didn’t render her any less intimidating as they all crowded into the small entrance hallway of the house.

  The front door slammed shut, and for a moment, the only sound was the rain dripping from the hastily shut umbrellas.

  Nicholas shifted on his feet. Mrs Sadik had her dark eyes fixed on Kinny, who in turn was darting her gaze between the socks drying on the radiator, the key bowl on the table by the door, and the family portrait hanging just to the right of Mrs Sadik’s ear.

  “Hi mum,” she uttered. Mrs Sadik’s scowl deepened.

  Nicholas decided it was time he found his voice. “I’m Nicholas,” he blurted out. He jigged the dresses so he could half stick his hand out towards Kinny’s mum. “Clara’s brother. Thank you so much Mrs Sadik, Kinny said you could help and I’m really hoping you can, because my mum’s cat really went to town on the dresses and the wedding’s on Saturday and I guess we could buy some new ones, but she spent ages working on these ones – her and Danielle I mean – that’s the maid of honour – and I know they didn’t work on them, the seamstress did, but there were loads of fittings. Anyway, I’d hate to have to tell her they’ve been totally destroyed and—”

  “Now, now!” Mrs Sadik waved her hands in front of his face, then clasped them around Nicholas’s. “Hush hush! Nicholas, it is nice to meet you. Clara has been good friend to Ekin for years and years. But all this worry! You are a good brother I’m sure, to worry so, but we have not even seen the problem yet!”

  Nicholas hadn’t realised a lump of panic had risen in his throat until he tried to swallow. “It’s pretty bad,” he said in a small voice. He daren’t look at Kinny or Ash. If they agreed, he might just lose the composure he’d been holding onto since discovering Archibald in the den.

  Kinny’s mum didn’t look shaken. She patted his cheek instead, and gave him a warm smile. “Not with this sad, sad voice. Come on. Let’s take a look and get to work. All is not yet lost!” She jabbed her finger about her head, and turned to lead the way down the narrow corridor like she was leading troops into battle. However, Nicholas didn’t miss that she purposefully avoided her daughter’s gaze.

  “Dude.” Ash whispered from behind, presumably to Kinny. “What did you do?”

  Kinny didn’t answer.

  There was a bicycle propped up against the wall, and dozens of pairs of shoes lined up haphazardly along the skirting board. Nicholas carefully picked his way through, mindful not to knock the garment bags on any of the picture frames hanging from the walls. Kinny had several brothers and sisters. Nicholas couldn’t remember how many, but there were numerous smiling faces that beamed up at him from the photos as he passed. Kinny was somewhere near the top age-wise, he thought.

  They reached the kitchen, and Nicholas was instructed to lay the dresses down on the table. The units all around them were a faded beige with chipped wooden handles, but they were meticulously clean. So many pots and pans and utensils hung from hooks in the walls that he could hardly see the colour of the wallpaper, and the fridge was so covered in magnets holding up photographs and letters and postcards that they almost camouflaged the appliance in its entirety. A stack of battered board games was piled on top of the washing machine, and a selection of small cacti ran in a line on the window sill above the sink, adding a splash of green to the room.

  There were several different scents of spices in the air even though nothing was cooking at the present moment, as well as a hint of wet dog, no doubt wafting from the small basket sat in the corner of the room by the back door. Nicholas automatically looked around for the basket’s owner, not adverse to having a friendly fury hug to cheer him up after such a shock. Honestly, why did his mum’s cat hate the world so much? Of all the things he could have gotten his claws into, did it really have to be the unique, took-months-to-make dresses?

  Kinny hung back as her mum unzipped the top garment bag and poked at the dress within. Ash joined Nicholas in peering over Mrs Sadik’s shoulders.

  “See,” he said weakly. “It’s a disaster.”

  Mrs Sadik made a noise a bit like blowing a raspberry. “You are too dramatic, young man,” she chided. Her tone was friendly enough. “Everything is end of the world with youngsters. Let us see what we can do. Come, help me get out of the bag.”

  “Mum, I—” Kinny began, taking a step forwards.

  Mrs Sadik threw up a hand. She did not look around. “This is not the time, Ekin. I will help your friends.”

  Nicholas and Ash both naturally moved away, looking between Kinny and her mum. Nicholas’s heart sank as he saw the big tears pooling in Kinny’s eyes. “Mum, I’m sorry.” Her voice was little more than a rasp.

  Mrs Sadik did whirl around at that. Kinny was tall and willowy, and had a good few inches on her mum, but she still flinched at the finger that was pointed at her nose. “Ekin Aysu Sadik!” she snapped, followed by several words in what Nicholas had to assume was Turkish. “We have this talk. We will not have it now. I will help Clara and her family. You are saying sorry another day.” She turned back to Nicholas, who was secretly hoping the floor might have had sympathy and swallowed him up by now. “I go get sewing machine. You have tea, yes?”

  Nicholas coughed. “Uh, yes. Tea, tea would be lovely – Ash you’ll have tea, won’t you? Shall I make it, I’m happy to make it.”

  “No, no,” said Mrs Sadik, already moving to the kitchen door and shaking her head. “Sit, sit, Basak is making the best tea, nobody better.”

  With that, she was gone.

  Nicholas rubbed the back of his head, and glanced at Kinny. “Are you alright?” he asked quietly.

  Kinny released a sob she had obviously been trying to hold on to, and slumped into the chair nearest to her. “I’m fine,” she bit out, rubbing the back of her hand over her eyes.

  Ash sat down beside her and rubbed her back. Nicholas followed their example
and took a seat too. “Sounds like you really fucked up, mate,” Ash said.

  Kinny let out a laugh then frowned. “You’d think, wouldn’t you? We both reckon we’re in the right though, and until one of us apologises, nothing’s going to change.”

  Nicholas almost said it was fine, so long as the dresses got mended. But he figured that would be a bit insensitive. “Sometimes,” he ventured, hoping he was being tactful. “I find it helps to apologise, even if you don’t really mean it.”

  Kinny gave him a snuffle that was close to a laugh, and gave up on wiping her eyes. “She knows I won’t mean it.”

  “Won’t mean what?” A girl of about fifteen came into the room. She was wearing a unicorn onesie and had train-track braces. She glanced up from typing on her phone to give Kinny a mischievous grin. “Hey sis.”

  “Hey Bas.” Kinny let her sister bump into her in a sort of hug, then watched as she flicked the kettle on the counter on to boil. “Nothing new.”

  Bas cackled. “Oh my days, is mum still mad with you about Babaanne?” Kinny grumbled under her breath, but that just made her sister laugh harder. “I knew it! Oh my god, I told you not to do it. And now you’re asking for a favour? Good luck with that.”

  Nicholas’s stomach plummeted. “You don’t think she’ll help?”

  “It was my money!” Kinny said, a defensive tone in her voice. But Bas just kept chuckling as she took out a number of brightly coloured, mismatching mugs from one of the cupboards.

  “You guys want tea, yeah?” she asked Nicholas and Ash instead.

  At that moment, Nicholas didn’t think he could drink anything, even if he was gasping from dehydration. “The dresses,” he prompted her. “You think your mum won’t help?”

  Kinny folded her arms across her chest and harrumphed. “She’s already helping. It’s whether or not she can even do anything we should be worried about.”

  Bas scoffed. “I wouldn’t help you. You guys take milk I assume?”

  “Hey,” said Kinny. She flopped her hands into her lap and looked genuinely upset.

  “I’ll take milk,” said Ash. She had a sly look on her face. “And a slice of gossip. Come on kid, spill.”