‘But that was back in the war,’ Tess teased, ‘when fabric was still being rationed.’
Only Lily, who had never seen the dress before, was properly awed by the acres and acres of silk.
‘Auntie Kate is going to be a princess.’
‘Let’s see how impressed she is when she realises she’s got to carry the train,’ Kate laughed.
‘All right,’ said Elaine. ‘Let’s see how you put this thing on. Did you step into it, or does it go over your head?’
‘Over my head,’ said Kate. ‘The waistband is too tight to get over my enormous arse.’
Kate shivered in her underwear while Tess and Elaine tried to work out the logistics. It was difficult to know when the dress was up or down or inside out. If you let go of the bodice for even a second, it would be swallowed into the skirt like a peak sinking back into well-whipped egg white. There was plenty of swearing. Tess and Elaine found the dress was too heavy to lift even as high as Kate’s shoulders. At last, she sat down on the edge of the bed and they were able to flip it over her head.
Kate stood up only to discover that she had the dress on back to front. She tried to wrench the dress round, but in the end, it was easier to start again.
‘Now I need a drink,’ Kate announced.
Tess poured more champagne while Elaine attempted to button up the back of the bodice. Now she understood why the women at Bride on Time had given such detailed instructions. Not only did Kate’s wedding dress have buttons, it had a zip on the inner bodice and ribbons to cover the buttons once they were done. Elaine found the buttons impossible, even with the recommended crochet hook. Tess, who had already downed two glasses of champagne to calm herself after the excitement of Kate’s momentary disappearance, did not have much more luck. It took twenty minutes to get the dress fastened.
‘No wonder Miss Havisham never took hers off,’ said Kate.
Thankfully, Lily’s bridesmaid’s dress was altogether easier to get into. The little pink number had just a zip at the back. There was a brief moment of panic after Lily was dressed when she disappeared and was found outside jumping over a rainbow in a puddle, but fortunately, Tess had remembered to pack spare white tights. They lasted just half an hour before Lily put a hole in them.
The make-up artist arrived fresh from another wedding.
‘Thank God you want the natural look,’ she said. ‘I’ve run out of blue eye shadow.’
The make-up artist also pinned Kate’s hair up into an artfully dishevelled bun, adorned with one of the roses from the bouquet, which had only just arrived. The florist had been right about the bouquet, thought Kate, as she posed in front of the mirror. Anything smaller would have looked silly with the dress’s generous skirt. Trudy, the photographer, snapped some frames of the bouquet while Kate submitted to the last few tweaks of her hairdo.
‘You look so beautiful.’ Elaine gave a tearful sniff.
‘Mum, please. You’ll ruin your make-up.’
John appeared in the doorway. ‘Are you girls nearly ready? I know it’s traditional to make the groom wait, but . . .’ He tapped his watch. Kate turned from the mirror. ‘Someone stole my daughter and replaced her with a princess.’
‘Oh, Dad.’
Kate would not be travelling to her wedding in a horse-drawn carriage. For a start, she’d never really trusted horses, having been bitten by a supposedly docile nag on a childhood trip to a petting farm. And then there was the incident at her cousin’s wedding: that dead horse really took the fun out of the reception. Plus, it wasn’t her style. Kate would be travelling to the ceremony in her first ever car, a Fiat Panda that Tess now used as a runaround.
‘Are you positive you don’t want a Rolls-Royce?’ her father had asked during the planning.
‘No,’ Kate reassured him. ‘This Panda and I had many adventures together back when I was a single girl. I’d like it to be part of the proceedings.’
Of course, Kate had made that particular plan before she bought the enormous frock.
Loading the dress into the Panda was difficult, but not impossible. Photographs of John and Kate in the back of the car turned out to be 90 per cent skirt.
With the rest of the bridal party safely in the back of a proper, hired car, Kate savoured her last moment of singledom.
‘Thank you, Dad,’ she said, ‘for always being there for me.’
John gave his daughter a squeeze.
‘This is your last chance to get out of here,’ he reminded her. ‘If you say the word, I will turn this car round and we’ll go straight home. I’ll sort everything out. No questions.’
‘Dad,’ said Kate, ‘stop asking me. I’ve made my mind up. The only thing worrying me now is whether Ian might have changed his mind instead.’
Smiling, John prepared to turn into the hotel driveway, but suddenly a carriage decked out with a hundred white ribbons was thundering towards them. John braked. Both he and Kate ducked their heads uselessly as the carriage hurtled past.
‘My God,’ said Kate, when she dared to look up again, ‘did I just see two unicorns?’
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Diana’s unicorns showed no sign of tiring as they did a second circuit of the town centre. By this point the police had been alerted by several members of the public, though no one was quite sure what to do. The carriage driver eventually managed to limp to a phonebox and dial 999. His only suggestion was that the police close a few roads and let the horses run themselves into the ground. Would the horses run themselves into the ground before the police were needed at that afternoon’s football match? The carriage driver had no idea. This had never happened to him before.
‘I think the horns might have made them a bit crazy,’ he said.
By now, Diana’s journey to her wedding was breaking news on BBC 24. Links to the helicopter footage were soon appearing on Twitter. The centre of the city ground to a halt as the police tried to guess which direction the horses would take next and closed roads willy-nilly. On board, Dave suggested that he and Diana should try to jump for it too.
‘I don’t want to ruin my dress!’ Diana shouted.
That was academic. Diana’s dress was fast coming to resemble Cinderella’s frock after midnight. There were bits of it on branches all over the town.
‘Then we’re going to have to hang on to the bitter end,’ said Dave. ‘I love you, Diana,’ he told her. ‘Whatever happens, you must remember that. You’ll always be my princess.’
Diana was barely aware of her father’s sentimental pronouncements.
‘I am going to kill Ben Wilson,’ she said through bared teeth. ‘When I get hold of him, I am going to tear him limb from limb.’
Diana’s anger made her strong. It enabled her to cling on to that runaway carriage for a full half-hour while the horses just kept running, eyes rolling and mouths foaming as though they were driven by the Devil himself. Pinned beneath Diana and her enormous skirt, Dave wasn’t going anywhere either. He screwed his eyes tightly shut. He had always said he would die for Diana. Dear God, don’t let this be the day I have to prove it, he prayed.
On and on the horses galloped. No police cordon would stand in their way. Thundering, thundering, they rampaged through the city while the live footage was beamed around the world and pundits from Pennsylvania to the Punjab offered their sage advice.
‘Shoot them,’ was the general consensus.
‘The horses, or the bride?’ asked a wag big on animal welfare.
But no guns were sighted and at last Diana’s tenacity paid off when, as if guided by a celestial hand, the horses finally came to a halt right outside the cathedral like a pair of homing unicorns.
‘God saved us.’ Dave kissed the carriage floor.
Clinging on to the carriage door for support, Diana slowly pulled herself upright. Outside the cathedral, her mother and her bridesmaids were in a huddled conversation with the bishop and the one member of the groom’s party who had shown up. Ben’s best man, Ed, was dressed in jeans an
d a polo shirt. There was no sign of the naval uniform or even the pink cummerbund and cravat that had been the original plan. The bridal party had not yet seen the Twitter coverage of Diana’s ride from hell. As far as they were concerned, she was still trotting quietly round the block waiting to get the all-clear.
Susie and the bridesmaids turned to see Diana standing up in the carriage. With her hair in disarray and her dress torn to shreds from her wild journey, she looked less like a bride than Boudicca fresh from a battle.
‘Oh my God,’ said Ed. He slipped to the back of the welcoming party, as though Diana’s six-year-old twin-cousin bridesmaids could spare him from her wrath.
‘Where is he?’ Diana asked, quite quietly at first.
Her audience only gawped in silent awe. What on earth had happened to the bride?
Dave tried to stand up too but fell straight back down again, exhausted from his brush with death.
‘Where is he?’ Diana’s fists were balled at her sides. Her face was grim. Her eyes flashed fury.
Still no one spoke.
‘Where is my bloody fiancé?’
When Ed finally admitted that Ben wasn’t coming – ‘He said he told you. He put a letter through your door last night’ – Diana screamed bloody murder. She jumped down from the carriage and landed a punch on Ed’s jaw.
‘I’ll give you a bloody letter!’ she screamed as she pushed him to the ground.
While Ed writhed on the ground, Diana stormed past her mother and the bridesmaids into the cathedral.
‘Where is he?’
She shouted so loud that her voice reverberated throughout the whole nave, terrifying her wedding guests as thoroughly as if they had heard the voice of God.
‘Where is heeeeeeeeee!!!!??? Aaagh. Aaagh. Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggh!’
Standing by the cathedral door, Susie and Dave regarded each other in slightly stunned silence. Dave reached for his ex-wife’s hand for the first time in over a decade. The smaller bridesmaids clung to Nicole’s skirt for comfort. Nicole herself felt a curious mixture of abject fear and sheer ecstatic delight as she watched the ‘best friend’ who had often treated her so badly finally get her comeuppance. While everyone else was absorbed in the spectacle, Nicole took a sneaky pic with her iPhone.
Inside the cathedral, Diana fell to her knees at the high altar and sobbed all over the flowers. Her cries were like the cries of a soul in purgatory, until suddenly she began to rip the heads off her Princess Diana roses. Unsure what else to do, her guests began to file out of their pews.
Outside on the cobbles, the horses were still shuddering in the aftermath of their exertions. Diana’s unicorns had both lost their horns.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Ian had not changed his mind. Just as on their first date, when he had arrived fifteen minutes ahead of time to make sure Kate didn’t have to walk into the bar on her own, he made damn sure that he was at the hotel well ahead of her. He had been standing in front of the registrar’s lectern for twenty minutes when the call went up that Kate and her father had arrived. Later, he would discover that they had hoped to be earlier but were prevented from turning into the driveway by a runaway carriage. Whatever, at last she was there. When the hotel pianist struck up the first chords of ‘Here Comes the Bride’, Ian turned to his future wife with the biggest smile she had ever seen.
Everything fell into place in that second. All the doubts fell away. Kate wondered how she had ever considered not turning up for this, the most important moment in her life. Ian grabbed for her hand as soon as she got close to him. She squeezed his hand hard in return. She knew absolutely that she would love him until the day she died.
When they shared their first kiss as husband and wife, Kate could hardly bear to let him go to turn and receive the applause of their guests. All the people she loved were in that room: her parents, her sister, her niece; her best friends, Helen and Anne, led a standing ovation; Matt gave her a thumbs-up from the back of the room. Kate found herself crying and laughing all at the same time. Ian hung on to her tightly. Kate placed her left hand on his cheek. There was his ring on her finger, representing his promise. They were husband and wife.
‘I will love you for ever,’ she said.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
‘There’s a statistic that suggests one in eight people meet their future spouse at a wedding,’ Matt told the girl sitting next to him.
‘Is that so?’ she said, leaning back in her chair to give him a better view of her impressive décolletage. Kate had chosen well when she decided to seat her ex-boyfriend at the same table as her office manager. An afternoon in Gina’s company could cheer up any unhappily single man.
‘What about meeting your ex-spouse at a wedding?’ asked Melanie, who was sitting to Matt’s left. ‘What are the statistics for that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Matt, ‘but you’d have to be pretty bloody unlucky. If I saw my ex-wife at a wedding, I’d be looking for the nearest wooden stake.’
‘Oh,’ said Gina, putting two and two together, ‘you’re that Matt.’
‘That Matt?’ He preened.
‘The one Kate went out with at college, the one who’s got much f—’ She bit her tongue. ‘Much nicer in his old age.’
Matt was happy about that.
Melanie soon found herself edged out of the conversation. Not that she was especially bothered. She had no interest in flirting with a twit like Matt. As far as she was concerned, Kate had lucked out the day that Matt broke up with her. Her groom, Ian, seemed like a much steadier man. Melanie was very glad she had accepted Kate’s invitation, even though it had been issued at rather short notice just the day before. Melanie had been so relieved to hear that Kate hadn’t decided to bail after their heart-to-heart. This wedding felt right. It had been one of the most romantic ceremonies she’d ever seen.
But something was bothering Melanie about one of the guests on a table she guessed to be made up of Ian’s friends. This particular bloke had not been at the service. He had arrived late for the reception itself, coming in as Kate’s father was making his speech in her honour. Melanie had caught sight of him as he tried to make an unobtrusive entrance, but he was seated behind her and she didn’t want to turn round to look at him while the speeches were going on. She didn’t want to make it obvious that she wanted to know who he was. But now the speeches were over and Melanie saw her opportunity in a trip to the ladies’.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to Gina and Matt. They didn’t notice as she slipped away from their table.
She wanted to get a good look at that bloke.
It was him. It was definitely him.
Melanie just about made it to the ladies’ room. She sat down on a chair upholstered in pink velvet and fanned her face with the order of service from her handbag.
‘You all right?’ a woman her age asked. ‘I get them flushes all the time these days. I got myself one of these.’ The woman fished a small battery-powered fan out of her fake-crocodile clutch. ‘Best two pounds I ever spent. Want to borrow it?’
Melanie declined. ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I just had a bit too much champagne.’
She stayed on the chair and waited for the ladies’ room to empty out; then she stood in front of the mirror and examined her face. Of course, she looked shiny. It was hot in that dining room. The delicious champagne – too delicious to resist – had brought quite a flush to her cheeks. But beyond that, Melanie wondered, how did she look? Did she look good for her age? Did she look like the woman he had fallen in love with? Why hadn’t anyone warned her he would be there?
Because they didn’t know, of course. How could Kate have had any idea that Melanie had been married to one of their other guests?
Melanie decided that she would have to leave. She was about to walk straight out through the hotel lobby when she remembered that her jacket was on the back of her chair in the dining room. She would have left it behind, but it had her car keys in the pocket. She cursed herself f
or not having put them in her handbag.
Taking deep breaths in front of the mirror, Melanie considered her options. Perhaps she could ask one of the waiting staff to go into the dining room and fetch her jacket for her. No, that was silly. Why didn’t she just walk right up to Keith and ask him how he was? After all, just the previous night she had been thinking about getting back in touch with him for old times’ sake. He had moved to London, but now he was just a few feet away from her. How much of a bigger hint did she need Fate to give?
But who was he sitting with? Melanie closed her eyes and tried to remember the other people at Ian’s table. He had walked into the dining room alone, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was alone. There were women on that table. Young, pretty women. What if Melanie strode up to Keith, only to find herself being introduced to some young girlfriend, someone who would not have been taken for having a menopausal flush?
This is ridiculous, Melanie told herself.
She was a successful businesswoman. She liked to think she was anybody’s equal. She could hold her own against some new young girlfriend. If she walked over to the table where Keith was sitting and discovered that he wasn’t alone, she would leave the wedding at that point. She would never have to see him again. It would be painful, but it would be done. The big thing to do was reintroduce herself. Only a coward would sit in the same room as her ex-husband and refuse to acknowledge his existence.
I can do this. I can do this.
Melanie practised some of the deep-breathing exercises that she recommended to all her brides. She dabbed a little powder on her shiny nose and reapplied her lipstick. She fluffed up her hair. She smoothed her skirt down over her hips and readjusted her cleavage. She still had it. She prepared to wiggle her way through the dining room and shake hands with the man who had broken her heart.
Melanie didn’t have to go into the dining room. She walked out of the ladies’ and smack bang into Keith’s back. He was on his mobile phone. He turned to see who had bashed into him.
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