A Ballad of Confetti, Cake and Catastrophes

by Helen Juliet

  “Hey, do you want some ice cream?”

  For a second, he feared he’d horribly misjudged the moment, but with one final rub around her eyes, Clara levelled her stare at Nicholas. “There better be some Chocolate Fudge Brownie left.”

  Nicholas swatted the side of her head. “Alright bridezilla. If there isn’t, I promise to go out and get some. And I’m buggered if that doesn’t qualify me for the best brother ever.”

  “You’re my only brother.” But after she’d given him a wobbly smile, she threw her arms around him. “Promise me we’re going to nail this wedding, okay?”

  Despite all the problems they’d faced so far, and despite the niggling voice in his head that warned him to be cautious, Nicholas nodded furiously and without hesitation. “We’re going to nail it,” he assured her.

  After all, they only had one day to go.

  Chapter Eleven

  (One day to go…)

  It started at four-thirty in the morning.

  Nicholas was in such a deep sleep, he couldn’t quite work out what the noise was going off by his head was until it started up a second time. His phone was ringing. Why would his phone be ringing in the middle of the night?

  “Hello?” he said into the receiver, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Hello? Hello, Nicholas?”

  The panic in his sister’s voice woke him up much faster than any coffee had. “Lauren?” He sat up in bed and snatched up his glasses to slide onto his face. Whatever was going on, he felt he was better prepared if he were able to see. “What’s the matter? What time is it there, what’s happening?”

  “Oh Nick,” she cried, her voice thick. “I tried Mum and Dad but you know they turn their bloody phones off at night and I didn’t want to worry Clara but—” She broke off into an angry burst of Italian, and Nicholas jerked the phone away from his ear. “Sorry, sorry, are you still there?”

  Nicholas nodded, then felt immediately stupid. “Yes, still here. What on Earth is going on? Aren’t you supposed to be getting on a plane?”

  Lauren wailed. “That’s just it!” she said from the other end of the phone. “Franko was supposed to check Milly’s passport and he thought he did but it’s run out and now we have to get to the passport office and see if we can get it fast-tracked or apply for an emergency one—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Nicholas. “Slow down. Did you say Milly’s passport is out of date?”

  “Yes,” said Lauren with a sniff.

  “So…” Nicholas pinched the bridge of his nose and willed this not to be happening. “You’re going to miss your flight.”

  Lauren was audibly crying on the other end of the line. “We have to get to the passport office. It doesn’t open until nine. We’ll fix this, I promise, tell Clara I promise, okay?”

  “Hey, calm down,” Nicholas said a little firmer. “Yes, it’s going to be fine. You can get another flight tonight, yeah?”

  He heard Lauren blowing her nose. “They go all the time to London,” she said. “But someone needs to pick us up. What if it gets late? It’s the night before the wedding and we can’t make Dad come all the way out to Heathrow or something.”

  “Then you get a taxi,” Nicholas insisted. Even though Heathrow, Gatwick and City were all so much father out that Stansted airport, they’d all be preferable to Lauren not making it at all. “No matter the cost, we’ll all chip in if we have to. This isn’t the end of the world, alright?”

  Lauren inhaled shakily, then sniffed once more. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. Okay, we’re going to make our way into the city now. Milly’s so tired and cranky, poor thing, but now she’s had some food she’s calmed down.”

  “That’s because she takes after her uncle,” Nicholas said with a touch of humour. It had the desired effect, and Lauren’s breathing evened out on the other end of the phone as she got her wits back together.

  “You’re the best, Nick,” she said. She was the only one who ever really called him that, and it made a rush of affection swell over his chest.

  “No problem,” he assured her. “Although I didn’t really do anything.”

  Lauren chuckled. “Will you let Mum and Dad know?”

  Nicholas sighed. Yes, he’d be delighted to be the bearer of yet more bad news. But honestly, this was just a mistake. These things happened. Poor Franko was probably feeling wretched enough without anyone having a go at him. Although, knowing Lauren, she had probably lost her temper quite spectacularly when she’d first found out.

  “Of course,” he reassured her. “Don’t you worry about us, everything’s fine here. Just focus on getting little Milly sorted. We can’t wait to see you all, no matter what time it is, alright?”

  With a few more reassurances, they closed the call. Nicholas sat in the dark for a while, with the corner of his phone pressed against his forehead.

  He believed what he’d told her, he genuinely thought it would all be fine. It would have just been nice if this hadn’t happened on top of everything else.

  It was impossible to get back to sleep, he was too agitated, so the best he managed was to doze on and off until other people started getting up. His stomach fluttered with nerves as he hid under the duvet for as long as possible, wanting to delay the inevitable. But he knew his dad would be preparing to drive out to Stansted soon, and he needed to get a hold of himself and relay the bad news.

  He brushed his teeth and sprayed some deodorant on, however he didn’t have the energy for anything else, so just pulled some jeans on trudged downstairs. The only people missing from the kitchen were Kinny and Ash; everyone else was bustling about making tea and eggs and bowls of cereal. Clara was sat at the island looking tired and a little puffy from the night before, but Peter had his arm around her and was mumbling something into her ear that was at least eliciting a twitch of a smile every now and again. Nicholas hoped their chat in her room had helped, as he was just about to drop another stinker into her lap.

  “Oh, good morning sweetheart,” his mum cooed when she spotted him. “Look, the sun is shining!”

  He hadn’t even noticed. Having been obsessed with the weather for the past several days, he couldn’t believe he’d missed the bright blue skies that were currently hanging outside the kitchen window. Well, that was something at least.

  He didn’t want to drag this out any more than he had to, so he just cut to the chase. “I’ve got some bad news,” he said, bracing himself. “But before anyone panics, we’re sure it’s all going to be fine, there’s just a bit of a delay.”

  “A delay to what?” asked Danielle.

  “Who’s we?” chimed in Clara.

  Nicholas took a deep breath. “Lauren missed her flight. Milly’s passport ran out, and they didn’t realise.”

  He was assaulted with a cacophony of sound, but eventually he was able to explain that they would already be at the passport office by now. They’d most likely pay a fortune to get her a new one printed the same day, but it would be worth it.

  “They’ll be on a plane by tonight, and I said if we had to, we’d all chip in for an Uber, yeah?”

  In the middle of hashing back and forth exactly what was going on, Nicholas heard the front door open and close. But he was too busy texting with Lauren to pay much attention. She assured him that they were in the queue and would be seen shortly, which Nicholas was trying to explain to everyone was a good thing. However, his mum was too busy being miffed that her daughter hadn’t called her, even though Nicholas explained again and again that her phone had been switched off. Danielle was flicking through incoming flights from Rome on her phone, trying to anticipate which one Lauren and her family might get. Clara was looking close to tears, and the only thing Nicholas’s dad seemed capable of doing was making excess cups of strong tea, plonking them in front of people with a sturdy “There, there, it’ll sort.”

  Somebody cleared their throat.

  As Nicholas was still standing with his back to the archway into the kitchen, he didn’t quite und
erstand why everyone suddenly was staring at him, their eyes widening. It took him a second to realise they were in fact staring behind him, and he spun around to see why.

  He couldn’t help but gasp.

  Kinny and Ash were both wearing their newly-altered bridesmaids’ dresses, and Nicholas almost wept they looked so good. The pastel pink fabric flowed to just above their knees, where it then cascaded down at the back to float just behind their matching white, sparkly high heels. The clear sequins Mrs Sadik had added around the new hem complimented the bling on the shoulder straps, and all in all Nicholas thought they made a breathtaking sight.

  Ash did look obviously uncomfortable in her dress, hugging herself and rubbing her arms as she hunched in on herself slightly. Like she was trying her best not to be seen. But Kinny was by her side, resembling some sort of glorious Disney princess, even though she wasn’t wearing any makeup and her thick, dark hair was simply piled on top of her head. She had a protective hand placed on the small of Ash’s back, and Nicholas didn’t hesitate to rush to their side.

  “Oh my god,” he gasped. “They look amazing, you look amazing! Kinny, your mum did a fantastic job!”

  Kinny gave him a look of relief, but before she could reply, Danielle’s voice cut across the room. “What have you done?” she demanded, a horrified tremble in her words.

  Nicholas wrapped his arm around Ash’s waist, and the three of them faced the room together. “Please don’t freak out,” he suggested. But they were a bit too late.

  “Freak out,” said Danielle. “Freak out! You’ve changed the fucking dresses, the day before the wedding!”

  Nicholas winced. She never swore. “Danielle,” he began.

  “Are they all like that – is mine like that?”

  “Why did you change them?” asked Clara.

  Nicholas’s mum tried to intervene by waving her hands about. “Everybody please calm down. Nicholas, what’s going on here?”

  “We didn’t have a choice,” he said.

  But Danielle was pacing up and down the side of the breakfast bar, her hands tangled in her hair. “What could have possessed you to do such a thing?” she shouted. “They were fine as they were, why would you do this? Kinny, why did you let your mum muck about with them, she’s hacked them in half!”

  “Because,” said Ash, standing a little taller. “You left the door open to the den, and the cat used the dresses as scratching poles. Kinny fixed your mistake, so don’t you dare shout at her!”

  She’d gone bright red, and her eyes pooled with tears. But before anyone could say or do anything else, she spun on her high heels and stormed out of sight.

  For a moment, Peter’s head swung comically back and forth between his sister and his fiancée. But Clara nudged him, and as soon as she gave him a nod, he bolted on after Ash.

  Nicholas’s mum laughed nervously. “Surely Archie wouldn’t have done that, would he?” She was met with an awkward silence. “Oh, but he’s such a good boy!” she cried. “Aren’t you, pumpkin?”

  Nicholas hadn’t realised the demon cat had snuck in through the flap in the back door, and with a strangled cry he leapt between him and Kinny in her dress. “Oh no you don’t!” he hissed, jabbing his fingers at the nefarious feline. His ankle was still a little sore from the assault he’d received yesterday.

  “Nicholas, you’re being ridiculous,” his mum scolded him. She bent down and scooped Archibald up. He immediately began purring like a lawnmower, and glared daggers at Nicholas from her lap. Nicholas glared back. “Did a little scratch really warrant changing the whole dress designs?”

  “It, um, wasn’t a little scratch,” Kinny said. Her hands were clasped in front of her, but her shoulders were still set. “Ash was right, they really were ripped to shreds. And rather than worry everyone, we wanted to try and fix it ourselves. But, maybe we made a mistake?”

  She glanced behind her to where Ash had run off. Nicholas reached out and took her hand.

  “We thought it was better to shoulder the burden ourselves,” he told them. “And obviously since then, we’ve had a few more hiccups.” Half of which, most people didn’t even know about. “So we kept it to ourselves. But Kinny’s right, maybe springing it on you now wasn’t the best idea.”

  Nicholas’s dad shrugged. “I think you look lovely Kinny, dear,” he said, dunking a custard cream into his tea. “It was one less thing for poor Clara to think about. Danielle, I bet yours looks just as nice.”

  Danielle seemed to have been struck dumb. She was just gawping at Kinny with her hand over her mouth.

  “Do you really hate it that much?” Kinny asked in a small voice.

  “It was the best we could do,” Nicholas jumped in defiantly. He glowered at Archibald, and the cat stared right back, challenging him from his mum’s lap. “Kinny’s mum salvaged three whole dresses in four days, and I think she’s done a magnificent job.”

  “Lovely,” agreed his dad.

  His mum was chewing her thumb anxiously. “They are nice,” she said. “Just, a bit different I guess. A bit of a shock.”

  Clara looked between her and the dress, but otherwise hadn’t show much of a reaction.

  Everyone else went quiet as they anticipated Danielle’s response. She continued to stare for a few more moments, before finally dropping her hand. “Archibald really wrecked them?”

  “Completely,” Nicholas affirmed. “There wasn’t much left at the front other than ribbons.”

  “Oh dear,” said Nicholas’s mum guiltily. She addressed the fur ball in her lap. “Archibald, how could you?”

  Danielle shook her head. “You did tell me. You both did.” She turned and faced Clara, who was still sat chewing her lip at the kitchen table. Danielle took a deep breath in. “Do you like them?” she asked.

  Clara took a moment to realise she’d been addressed. Indeed, Nicholas stuck his finger in his ear to give it a quick clean, just in case he’d misheard. Was Danielle actually defaulting to Clara?

  “Oh,” said his sister. She glanced at Danielle, as if wary to believe she’d genuinely asked for her opinion, then scooted off her chair to come inspect the dress closer. She and Kinny exchanged a warm smile, then Clara touched the edge of the material carefully, like it might still fall apart. “Well, like you said Mum. It’s not what we designed. But…I like them. I really do.” She turned back to Danielle, and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  Danielle swallowed, and nodded. “Then I had better go and try my one on then,” she said graciously. “Hadn’t I?”

  Nicholas felt a wave of relief wash over him. “I’m sorry,” he said again to everyone. “That must have been a bit of a nasty shock. But trust me when I say it was more of a shock to find the dresses. They look a million times better than they did on Monday.” That, thankfully, got the laugh he was angling for.

  Kinny took Danielle and Clara to see the final dress, so that Danielle could try it on. Nicholas was aware that Peter had gone to see if his sister was okay and didn’t want to intrude, but she had looked after him on Tuesday night, and he felt he owed it to her to go deliver the good news that people had calmed down about the dresses.

  After a few more words with his parents, he passed Danielle and the others in the den, and made his way up the stairs. He didn’t go in Lauren’s attic room very often any more. Being the middle child, it wasn’t all that surprising that she’d been a little different to him and Clara. A staunch vegetarian, she always had some humanitarian cause she was championing, and wanderlust had taken her off around the world the moment she’d left school at eighteen. She’d insisted to their mum she could redecorate however she liked, so the small room now had more of Mrs Herald’s personality about it that it did Lauren’s.

  Ash and Peter were perched on the end of the cream-coloured bedding, and although Ash wasn’t crying, she didn’t look all that happy. She’d already changed out of her dress; it was back on a hanger dangling from the top lip of the wardrobe, and she was once again decked in jeans
and a t-shirt with a rainbow on it. She gave Nicholas a little wave as he came through the door.

  “Hey,” he said. He went and sat on the cream stool by the white dressing table. His mum had made the furnishings as neutral as possible, which although a little boring, gave the room a fresh, calming feeling. “It’s okay,” he explained hastily. “Danielle came around. She’s trying on her dress now. I think she and my mum feel pretty awful that Archibald caused us such a headache.”

  That got a small smile.

  “See,” said Peter, rubbing her back. “Everything’s fine.”

  Ash sighed. “It’s not really that,” she said, glancing back towards the dress. “I just feel so uncomfortable in it. It’s going to be hard to wear it all day.”

  Nicholas frowned. “Could Kinny’s mum let it out a bit if it’s that bad?”

  Surprisingly, she laughed at him, loudly. “You’re so sweet,” she said with genuine affection. “But I didn’t mean that sort of uncomfortable. It’s just so girly. It’s pink and frilly and sparkly, and now everyone can see my legs too.” She grimaced.

  “I thought you liked them,” said Peter. Nicholas thought he had every right to be annoyed – it was sort of late in the day to be objecting to the bridesmaids’ dresses. But his tone was sympathetic. “You said they were pretty.”

  Ash bit her lip and stared at the offending garment. “It’s pretty on Kinny,” she said quietly. “Really pretty. I’m just not that girly.”

  Peter laughed. “Well, we all know that,” he agreed. He gave her a hug around her waist.

  But Nicholas caught Ash’s gaze, and he raised an eyebrow. He wanted to ask if this was linked to her not always feeling like a girl, but he didn’t dare risk it in case that put her in a situation with Peter that she couldn’t backtrack out of.

  She seemed to catch his meaning though, as she responded with the tiniest of nods. “Um,” she said, pulling at the hem of her t-shirt. “Peter?”

  At her tone, he sobered up. “Yeah?” he prompted.