Diana perused the faces of the guests.
‘It must be really tedious, having to have all those politicians as your guests. Who do you think that is?’ Diana pointed at a woman who was veritably waddling down the aisle.
‘That might be the queen of Tonga,’ said Susie. ‘The king of Tonga had to have a specially made seat when Diana married Charles. It took eight men to lift it or something like that. I remember thinking that I would need eight men to lift me too if you didn’t finally make an appearance. You were two weeks over your due date, you were. Nothing made any difference. You just weren’t going to come out until you were good and ready.’
‘I was listening for Kiri Te Kanawa. I was waiting to make my grand entrance,’ said Diana.
‘You certainly were.’
While the live television cameras waited for the bride and her father to arrive in their limousine, the television footage flipped back to 1981.
‘Ugh. I can never see those bridesmaids without thinking about the excruciating pain of childbirth,’ said Susie. ‘I can almost feel the tearing pain . . .’
‘Mum, please. I’m trying to eat a sandwich.’
‘Sorry, love.’
The television showed the guests in the abbey again.
‘I think it was a mistake, don’t you, inviting ordinary people?’ said Diana. ‘I mean, what is that woman wearing? She must be a charity worker.’
‘I think she’s a duchess, actually,’ Susie pointed out.
‘Well, she doesn’t know how to dress . . . Oh, if only Ben had a military uniform,’ sighed Diana as a man in naval uniform found his way to his seat. ‘He’d look great in a jacket like that. Do you think you can hire them?’
‘I expect so,’ said Susie. ‘But not modern ones. Isn’t wearing a soldier’s uniform like impersonating a policeman?’
‘Oh, Mum, of course it isn’t. You know what? I’m going to have a look online and find out where I can get one.’
‘It’s a bit late, isn’t it? For tomorrow, I mean.’
‘Not if Ben gets up really early. Look’ – Diana showed her mother the screen of her iPhone. ‘I knew there was a fancy-dress store in Southampton. It says here that they specialise in naval uniforms throughout history. How about this, Mum? Ben would look amazing in that.’
‘I don’t know, sweetheart. He’s already hired a morning suit, hasn’t he?’
‘So? He can hire this instead. I like this one. It’s a replica of the uniform worn by the senior officers on the Titanic. I’m going to ask Ben to have a look.’
Ben was home alone. He had told Diana that he would be spending the day with his parents, enjoying his last day as a single man in the bosom of his family. Instead, he was spending it alone in a darkened room with nothing but a few cans of beer and a porn movie for company. The porn movie had been a gift from the boys for his stag night. It was carefully disguised in the box from a Southampton FC DVD. Ben felt pretty sure it was safe like that.
While Diana contemplated sending Ben up the aisle looking like Captain Birdseye, Ben watched two girls dressed in football kit getting it on with one another. Ben’s fantasies could not have been more different from his future wife’s.
When his phone rang, he let the caller go straight to voicemail. When the phone rang again three times in quick succession, Ben knew it could only be Diana.
‘Have you got the wedding on?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Ben lied. He turned the volume down so that Diana couldn’t hear the girls in their football kit scoring with each other.
‘OK. BBC?’
‘Of course.’
‘Now, you see that man in the third row from the front on the right-hand side? The one in the white jacket? Now, don’t you think that’s the best uniform you ever saw?’
‘Yes,’ said Ben automatically. He assumed that was the right answer.
‘Then how do you feel about wearing something like that yourself? For our wedding.’
‘What? I’m wearing a morning suit.’
‘I know that’s what you were supposed to be wearing, but watching the royal wedding and seeing how wonderful all those men look in their uniforms has got me thinking. There’s a place in Southampton that hires out costumes. They’ve got something that would be just right. You could go there first thing in the morning and if it doesn’t fit, then fair enough, but if it does . . .’
‘Those people have uniforms because they work in the armed forces. I work in IT.’
‘Ben, it would make my dream complete.’
Diana’s dream. Diana’s dream had long since become Ben’s nightmare.
Everyone thought Ben was lucky to be marrying Diana. When they walked down the street together, she turned heads and Ben saw envy in the eyes of his fellow men. But this whole business with the uniform only served to remind Ben that Diana didn’t even really see him as a person. Diana was approaching the wedding like a small girl playing with her dolls, and Ben was the biggest plaything of them all. What on earth was she thinking? Having him dress up like he was going to a fancy-dress party? There were less than twenty-four hours to go. Ben looked at his watch and his eyes widened as though he saw a death’s head staring back at him. Less than a day.
Diana twittered on. ‘I’m going to call and leave a message right now. If they’ve got it in, you could pick it up as soon as the shop opens. Tell Ed to call me with his measurements so I can see if they have something to fit him as well.’
Ed would think that Ben had gone mad. There was no way he was going to ask him. Any minute now Diana would tell him that the whole wedding was going to have a Titanic theme. It would be appropriate in some ways. Southampton was where the Titanic set off on her doomed voyage. Would the next day at the cathedral see the launch of another ill-fated journey for Ben and Diana? Ben was suddenly so disturbed that he couldn’t even bring himself to finish watching the porn film.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Of course, the staff of Bride on Time had a day off for the royal wedding, but Heidi and Sarah had arranged to meet at Sarah’s house to watch the wedding together. They had asked Melanie to join them. Both Heidi and Sarah were single now, Heidi having finally dumped the man she’d clung on to for Valentine’s Day, Sarah’s romance having never really got off the ground. They assumed that Melanie, being a childless widow so far as they knew, would be equally keen to meet up. Indeed, Melanie did go along to Heidi’s house for a cup of tea in the morning, telling herself that it was the right thing to do for the sake of staff bonding.
Sarah had made some special royal-wedding cupcakes in red, white and blue. Heidi had spent a king’s ransom on commemorative china on which to serve it.
‘This will be worth a fortune in twenty years,’ Heidi was convinced.
Of course, that day’s coverage of the wedding contained plenty of flashbacks to 1981. Melanie felt her chest tighten as she saw footage of Diana arriving at St Paul’s again and she was transported back to her childhood bedroom at her parents’ house with her grandmother, long gone now, helping her into her dress. She remembered her mother, now so doolally she thought Melanie was not her daughter but her sister, trying to iron out the creases in her skirt. None of them were happy memories any more, tinged as they were by the sadness that followed.
This day could be the start of something different, though, couldn’t it? As Catherine Middleton arrived at the abbey, her beautiful smile was bigger than ever. The nation rejoiced in a true love match.
‘I think I’ll go back to my house,’ said Melanie, as the new princess and her husband began to exchange their vows.
‘You can’t go now,’ said Sarah. ‘Don’t you want to see them riding back to the palace? And the kiss? And the flyover?’
‘I’m not feeling too good,’ Melanie lied. ‘If I go home now, there won’t be any traffic.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Sarah.
‘I’ll see you both at work tomorrow morning. Bright and early! I imagine we’re going to get lots of orders for tha
t dress!’
Melanie saw herself out. Heidi and Sarah didn’t wait until she was safely out of earshot before they started speculating on the real reason for Melanie’s departure.
‘Do you think she’s OK? She hasn’t seemed very happy all morning.’
‘It must bring back terrible memories of her dead husband,’ said Heidi. ‘All that stuff about Charles and Di in 1981. I expect she’s going home to have a cry.’
That much was entirely right, but not for the reasons Heidi and Sarah imagined.
Melanie had known for some months that her feelings were reaching a crescendo. She could either continue to be miserable or she could do something about it. That evening, for the first time, she typed Keith’s name into Facebook. The networking site immediately came back with more than six hundred possible matches. Melanie sighed at the enormity of her task. Was that him? She peered closely at a photograph of a man wearing nothing but Speedos and a snorkelling mask. No. Too young. Keith might have had a six-pack twenty years ago, but the chances of him having one now were pretty slim. There were a frustrating number of profiles that had no picture whatsoever. All Melanie had to go on were the friends in those profiles’ friends lists. But she didn’t recognise anyone. There were so many people in the world. Even typing in ‘Keith Harris Southampton’ only narrowed the options down to a couple of hundred. Melanie typed in her own name and was greeted by similar hordes. That brought a wry smile to her face. We all go through life thinking we’re so different from everyone else. Facebook puts the lie to that. How many people even used their own names?
After two hours, Melanie must have checked the details of at least forty Keiths. Some were easy to dismiss. Too young. Wrong nationality. Messages on their wall about the kind of things that would never have interested her ex-husband.
Some were more difficult. One profile didn’t have a profile picture, but when Melanie clicked through, she found she was able to access a whole host of family photographs, mostly of a woman in her late thirties or forties with two brown-haired children in school uniform and football kit. Obviously, this Keith Harris was a doting father. Melanie enlarged the photos of those children as far as she could and studied their faces for signs of her own Keith. His children would have had brown hair, she thought. And perhaps the little one had similar blue eyes.
Melanie felt her stomach lurch. Had Keith found a new wife and started the family he claimed he didn’t want to put her mind at rest when they couldn’t get pregnant together? If so, then that evening’s fantasy would have to remain just that. She couldn’t possibly get in touch with him if he was a fully paid-up family man. She felt a wave of unhappiness such as she hadn’t felt in years. She clicked to open another page of photographs.
Torturing myself, she told herself off.
But at last she found a photograph of the two small children with a man, and in yet another, older, photograph, the man and the woman from the other photos stood side by side on the steps of a church. This Keith Harris was not Melanie’s own. Melanie clicked the profile shut.
She opened another.
‘Keith Harris is excited about an evening at GAY.’
It wasn’t impossible, but . . .
Another profile. This Keith Harris wrote all his wall posts in French.
It was like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. And even if she did find the Keith she had been married to and there was no evidence of a new wife or girlfriend, really, where would she begin?
Just three more, she promised herself. Then she would have to go to bed. She had an early start in the morning. That Saturday was going to be the busiest April Saturday the staff at Bride on Time had ever seen. Fifteen brides would be stopping by in the morning to pick up their dresses. There was always at least one that would need emergency work, a rescuing stitch.
It seemed that Keith Harris number one only befriended Russian glamour models.
Keith Harris number two gave his date of birth as 1929.
Keith Harris number three was friends with Alison Abbott, a girl from Melanie’s class at school, and Richard Jones, who had been in the year above them. And there was the final piece of evidence: this Keith Harris had included ‘West Ham’ among his ‘likes’. Melanie was sure at last that she had found her man.
Melanie felt as hot about the face as she had done when she’d walked past Keith on her way to the youth club all those years before. She clicked frantically on every tab in his profile, trying to glean as much as possible from what little was written there. Frustratingly, he had left his personal information blank. Nothing about his whereabouts or his marital status, though he had written ‘West Ham for ever’ under ‘religious views’. That was very Keith. His wall posts, too, seemed largely useless when it came to enlightening Melanie on how the years had treated her ex. She read them carefully and clicked to see exactly who had ‘liked’ what. She was gratified to see there was no flirtation. But no real information either. Until she came to the very first post on Keith’s wall, which was at this point almost three years old. It was from Richard Jones, the old school friend.
‘Are you still in London?’ Richard asked. ‘I get up there from time to time on business. Would be great to meet up and have a pint.’
Beneath it, Keith had replied, ‘Absolutely, mate. Let me know. I’m still at Cowells.’
Cowells. That one word was the key that Melanie needed. Minutes later, she knew that her ex-husband was now a partner in a London accountancy firm. The website even carried his picture. He had a lot less hair than Melanie remembered, but other than that, he seemed hardly to have changed. He had stayed as skinny as always. And that smile. How could Melanie forget that smile? Keith’s grin inspired everyone who saw it to grin back at him, as Melanie was doing now, just looking at the screen. But then she found herself wondering who Keith had been smiling at when that photograph was taken. Was he feeling as happy as he looked? Though thirteen years had passed since the divorce, Melanie was surprised to find herself jealous of the people who had seen that smile in the flesh.
She looked closely at the clothes he was wearing. His suit looked well cut. Had he chosen that himself? And that tie? Hadn’t he always said that he thought ties with those tiny cartoons on them were for toffs? He would never get more adventurous than a stripe. He had certainly said that when Melanie splashed out and bought him a tie from Ferragamo. Seventy quid it had cost her and he wouldn’t wear it.
But hang on. Melanie did her best to enlarge the photograph. She turned the screen to its maximum brightness. Wasn’t the tie Keith was wearing in that picture the very one he had turned his nose up at all those years before?
It can’t be, thought Melanie.
It was.
This had all sorts of implications. If Keith was still wearing a gift that she had bought for him, then he must still think about her. Perhaps he had hoped that one day she would see the photograph on his corporate website and understand it as a secret signal.
Melanie Harris, you are daft, she told herself. Totally daft.
Men weren’t sentimental in the same way as women. Keith hadn’t thought anything when he reached for that tie. It must have been the nearest one to hand.
Still, Melanie couldn’t stop thinking about it when she finally went to bed. It was a strange coincidence if nothing else. Something to mention when she sent her first email. No, she couldn’t email him. What was the point?
Melanie turned her pillow over and laid her face against the cooler side, but it was no use. She couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t be able to sleep until she had done something. That stupid tie was a sign. Keith was reaching out across the years to her. There was no evidence of a new woman in his life on his Facebook page. What did Melanie have to lose except her dignity? And really, she didn’t even have to lose that if she didn’t let anyone know what she was about to do.
Melanie turned her laptop on again. She clicked through to the website of Cowells Accountancy ACA. She could email him directly through that
website. But then a secretary might read it. Melanie went back to Facebook and trawled through seven more wrong Keith Harrises before she found her man again. She opened a message window and started to write.
On the other side of town, someone else was writing a very important letter indeed.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Midnight, 29 April 2011
This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write. I don’t know how to begin. I suppose I should start by saying I want you to know that I love you, whatever happens. I always have done. You have brought so many good things into my life and I have so many happy memories from our life together. I can’t thank you enough for all the good times. They will be with me for the rest of my days, but the fact is that I’m not happy and I just can’t be with you any more.
I have to come right out with it. I haven’t really been happy since the day we got engaged. You know that it came as a shock to me, our getting engaged. It’s not that it hadn’t crossed my mind, but it definitely happened quite a bit earlier than I expected it to. I felt in many ways that it was forced upon me, given the circumstances. There was no way I could have said ‘no’ to your request to get married when it was clear how important marriage was in your view of our future together.
The truth is, I felt I had no choice but to get engaged back in October. So many people would have been disappointed if I’d decided to do anything else. At the time, I told myself that it was what I wanted too.
I did think that perhaps it was the wedding-planning that was getting me down. When I talked to other people, they all told me that they hated their wedding day and only got through it by thinking of the marriage beyond. They also told me that it was natural to feel like a door was closing.
The thing is, I can’t see the marriage beyond the big day. You might say that it won’t be that different from what we already have. Perhaps that suits you, but it doesn’t suit me. I think that what we already have isn’t enough for me any more. I think I thought that before we got engaged, but the wedding day itself has thrown my feelings into focus. I’m not happy. A wedding ring won’t change that, no matter how much I wish it could.
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