The Big Little Wedding in Carlton Square

by Lilly Bartlett

‘Maybe you’ve overheated?’ he says, returning with the water and a cool wet bar cloth for the back of my neck. We both stare up at the cloudy sky. If anything, it’s a little chilly.

  ‘I’ll feel better in a minute,’ I tell him. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not exactly how I imagined this moment.’

  ‘There’s nothing to apologise for, Em. If we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, eventually we’ll throw up in front of each other. Think of it as a milestone. Tick.’

  Weakly I smile. ‘I’ll feel better if I don’t think about it.’ Deep breaths.

  ‘Mind over matter, right, okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s think about our honeymoon, then. It’s going to be my parents’ wedding present to us, so please promise me you won’t say no. We’ll go somewhere amahzing, somewhere incredibly beautiful to be completely pampered. You deserve to be treated like a queen and not have to worry about money for once.’

  ‘No arguments here,’ I say. Unlike my Dad, I’ve got no problem accepting money from my future in-laws. ‘We should go somewhere new to us both. Where haven’t you been? I’ve been to Blackpool and Southend-on-Sea. Don’t be too disappointed.’

  ‘Those were my top two choices,’ he says. ‘I’m devastated.’

  Maybe we’ll go somewhere exotic and islandy, like Tahiti. Not Thailand, though, since Daniel was there on his gap year and might have drunken memories of snogging girls on the beach. ‘Have you been to Polynesia?’ I’m already imagining the way Daniel’s skin goes golden in the sun. With his blond hair, he’ll practically glow.

  ‘If that’s where you’d like to go, then I’ll look into it,’ he says. ‘Should we go straight after the wedding or wait?’

  I hesitate. ‘Can I get back to you on that?’

  ‘That’s a cryptic answer.’ He’s frowning at me.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be. It’s just that I’d like to go when… I’m not on my period,’ I mouth in my best Les Dawson impression. If you want to see my parents crease up, watch them when the old Les Dawson sketches are on the telly. ‘I’ll just check the dates later, okay?’

  It would be one thing to have my period crash the party unexpectedly, but it’s crazy to walk into that crampy bloated line of fire on purpose. Especially if we’ll be on a beach.

  I’m feeling normal again by the time I get home. The house is locked up and the keys are off the hook, which means Dad and Auntie Rose are at Uncle Colin’s and Mum’s working. There’s no one to tell that our wedding is now official. I’m just about to ring Kelly to meet me at the pub when my glance falls on the calendar hanging over the bin in the kitchen. It’s got Dad’s various doctor’s appointments and Mum’s work schedule. It’s not where I keep track of my monthly cycle. My family’s close, but we’re not that close.

  I never used to bother keeping track, but I’ve had to since meeting Daniel. Otherwise, invariably, I’m reaching for the tampons and complaining of headaches just as we’re about to do something romantic together.

  That’s what happened the first weekend that we went away together. He’d turned up at the dealership just as I was pulling down the shutters. ‘What are you doing here? Is that my bag?’

  ‘I’m taking you away.’ His kiss coincided with the shutters clanking shut.

  ‘But I’m working tomorrow. And Kell–’

  ‘Kell knows. Your boss does too. You’ve got the weekend off. I’ve got us an Airbnb in Brighton and an eight o’clock dinner reservation. Are you surprised?!’

  I’d laughed. ‘Shocked! Happily shocked, thank you.’ I’d looked at my bag. ‘You’ve packed my bag?’

  ‘With Kelly’s help, so you don’t have to worry.’

  Uh-huh. I bet she didn’t pack tampons. ‘We’ll just need to stop at a Boots on the way,’ I’d said.

  It was a gorgeous weekend. Crampy but gorgeous.

  That’s why it’s best to plan these things.

  Thumbing through the little diary that’s in my desk drawer upstairs reminds me how much time we’ve spent together since we got engaged. I flip back to the last set of tiny Ps in the margins (ingenious system, I know) to count the weeks forward to our wedding day. It would be just my luck, wouldn’t it?

  One week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks… five weeks. One, two, three, four, five days more brings me to today.

  That’s not right.

  I recount. I’m feeling sick again.

  Is it the consequence of what I’m seeing in my diary?

  Or maybe the cause?

  ‘Kell, come over,’ I say as soon as she picks up. ‘Now.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Possibly everything.’

  She’s at my front door in five minutes. She hasn’t even changed out of her tracksuit. She’s got a bit of pasta sauce on her chest. That’s a good friend. ‘You’re scaring me. What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve missed my period.’ There’s no use being coy about it.

  ‘Have you got a pregnancy test?’

  I bought two double packs the last time I worried that I was late. That’s right, I did, didn’t I? This is probably just another false alarm.

  ‘Have you taken it?’

  ‘Without you? You are joking, right?’

  She clasps her hands to her chest, unwittingly covering the pasta stain. ‘I’m so touched that you’d wait to let me watch you wee on a stick.’ She looks at me. ‘Seriously, you don’t want me to go in with you.’

  ‘No, I can manage to hit the stick on my own, but thanks for the offer.’

  She’s not crazy about me waving the stick in her face when I come out. ‘Two minutes. Time it on your phone?’

  They’re the slowest two minutes of my life. What will I do if I’m pregnant? I mean, it’s not the absolute end of the world since I’m getting married in two months. But it’s not ideal. We haven’t even talked about children yet. And I know Daniel’s not expecting to have one for our six-month anniversary. I still need to find a proper job after graduation and I definitely can’t afford to stop working to have a baby. That would be months away, though.

  More immediately: will I have to waddle up the aisle? ‘When do you start to show?’ I ask Kelly.

  ‘God, don’t put the belly before the horse, Emma! You’ll jinx yourself.’ She checks her phone. ‘One more minute. Do you want to look?’

  I’d laid the stick face down so the little window doesn’t show. ‘Not yet.’

  But then maybe I’m not pregnant. It’s possible that all the stress of trying to throw a wedding is messing up my cycle. Stress does do that. Besides, we’re careful when it comes to birth control. We’re young, but we’re not stupid.

  ‘Two minutes,’ Kell says.

  I flip over the stick.

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ she says.

  ‘What’s good?’ I ask.

  ‘The test definitely works. Congratulations.’

  We stare at the big pink cross.

  I’m going to be a pregnant bride.

  Chapter 8

  I can’t tell my parents about this. I may be almost twenty-five and engaged to Daniel, but every time I think about breaking the news, I morph back into a teenager. As it is, Dad gives me a look whenever I say I’m staying over at Daniel’s. And I always make the excuse that I need to sleep without Auntie Rose snoring in my ear, or that I don’t want to drive back across London after a night out. I know it’s incredibly old-fashioned for them to be so protective, but I am their only child.

  I used to wonder why I had no siblings. Mum and Dad were only a little older than me when I was born. Whenever I asked them they laughed and said that one was enough. Apparently I wasn’t an easy child.

  ‘Colicky,’ Mum says now when I ask again as she searches for her wedding dress. ‘Oh my God, you were so colicky. And you didn’t just grizzle. You wailed constantly. I thought I’d go mad. Your gran used to take you to her house just so that I could get a few hours of peace and quiet in the afternoons. You woke every two hours in the night screaming the house down
too.’

  ‘Are you honestly telling your only child that she put you off children forever?’

  ‘And toilet training,’ she adds. ‘You wouldn’t even start till you were three.’

  ‘Thanks, I get the picture. I wasn’t the delight I am now.’ I wonder if colic and delayed toilet training are hereditary. ‘Is that it?’ I point to a blue plastic carrier bag at the back of the shelf.

  She reaches in to open the bag, pulling out a huge ball of satin, lace and sequins.

  ‘You know, Mum, for someone who’s always on at me about taking care of my things, you didn’t treat this very well.’

  ‘Well, I was never going to wear it again, was I?’

  There are acres and acres of material. ‘They went for full coverage in the olden days, I guess?’

  ‘That was the style,’ she says, gently fanning the dress out over the back of the settee. Its skirt spans the four-seater. ‘And I loved those sleeves.’

  The shoulders are the size of bowling balls, mushrooming from long sleeves of floral lace. It’s got a narrow white satin collar at the throat and sheer white netting covering the neckline. And sequins sewn in to the satin brocade. A lot of sequins. ‘Did you wear some kind of hoop skirt or something underneath?’

  Mum smiles. ‘I didn’t need to. You filled it out nicely.’

  ‘Me? How– What?’

  ‘I was pregnant when your dad and I married.’

  She says this like she’s telling me she picked up more loo roll while she was at the shop.

  ‘Four months by the wedding day. Your gran had to take the dress out twice!’ She points to the panels at the sides of the dress. ‘See? Here.’

  Now looking at it, the waist does look a bit big for her. Mum has always been slender and fit from her cleaning jobs.

  ‘You never thought to tell me this before, Mum?’ Not that it really matters, but it’s the kind of thing you like to know.

  She shrugs. ‘We didn’t tell anyone before the wedding. Only your gran. People knew after because of the timing when you were born, but we never broadcasted it.’

  A sense of foreboding creeps up my spine. ‘Why not?’

  She vaguely waves her hand. ‘I guess it was because people judge a pregnant bride. Not for getting pregnant – it was the nineties so nobody cared about having children out of wedlock – but for some people it puts a question mark over the wedding. Did we get married just because of the pregnancy? Was that the reason, not because we really loved each other? “Elaine was pregnant, you know. She must have trapped that nice Jack into marrying her.” Especially Jack’s mother, who acted like he was abdicating the throne to marry me. I wasn’t having her spoil our wedding day.’

  I’m no mathematician, but even I can count to nine. ‘Your anniversary is in January and my birthday’s in November.’ If she tells me I’ve been celebrating the wrong birthday all my life, I’m going to be seriously cross.

  She nods. ‘Our wedding anniversary is in April. The date we met is in January. Your dad took me away to a B&B in Whitstable our first year to celebrate and we just carried on with it after we married. It always seemed like the more important date anyway. His mother knew as soon as you were born, of course, and the old cow never let me forget it. But at least we got our wedding day without her going around telling everyone I’d trapped her son.’

  I hadn’t even thought about that. Possibly the only thing more awkward for Daniel’s family than him marrying a girl off a council estate would be knowing he was about to marry a pregnant girl off a council estate.

  Sometimes I don’t know what I think I’m doing, marrying into that family. I know it sounds crazy, backward, to wish they were more like me instead of wanting to be more like them. But I do. This would all be a lot easier if they weren’t so damn posh. Because they might be giving me the benefit of the doubt now while everyone’s on their best behaviour, but what about later when the normal disagreements break out between us? Will our differences really not get dragged into it then?

  And now this. Talk about stacking the cards against myself.

  ‘Mum? I’m pregnant.’

  Her face goes very still. ‘Oh, Emma, no,’ she whispers.

  That’s not the reaction I was hoping for. I feel tears prick my eyes.

  ‘You’re too young! You and Daniel should have years together before you start thinking about having a family. You’ve got your whole life in front of you. And now…’ She looks like she’s going to cry too.

  ‘Well, it’s not like we planned this. And for the record, I just found out, so we were already engaged. Daniel doesn’t even know yet, so this isn’t a shotgun wedding.’

  Her hug is fierce when she gathers me in. ‘Sweetheart, I know how much you and Daniel love each other. Dad and I both do. I’m sorry for my reaction. It’s because I love you so much. I just wanted you to have an easier life than I’ve had.’ She holds me at arm’s length. ‘You’re finishing university when your dad and I left school at sixteen to work. You’ve got the chance to have a career, not just jobs like we’ve had. You won’t have to worry all the time about money like we did. There’s so much that I want for you, Emma. You shouldn’t have the same life I’ve had.’

  ‘You make it sound like it’s been terrible. That’s not fair on Dad.’

  ‘It’s not your Dad’s fault, I love him to the ends of the earth! He and I have had a wonderful life. We are having a wonderful life. But it’s been a hard one too, because of the choices we made.’

  ‘You mean because of me.’

  ‘No! Because of you it’s all been worth it. But we didn’t better ourselves like you’re doing and it’s meant dead-end jobs. Sweetheart, I clean up after people for a living and your dad was a cab driver.’

  ‘Being a cab driver isn’t dead-end.’

  ‘It’s not secure, either,’ she says. ‘It’s fine as long as you’re working, but there’s no pension, no safety net. Look at us now that Dad can’t work. I want more for you. Emma? Promise me you won’t give up your dreams. Will you promise me that?’

  ‘Of course I promise, Mum. I haven’t worked this hard for five years to give it all up just because we have a baby. I can do both. Daniel and I can do both, together.’

  ‘We’ll all do it together,’ she says.

  She helps me into the dress and buttons up the back. It’s still got a bit of room at the waist but not much. I hardly recognise myself when I look in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

  ‘It’s bloody awful!’ Mum laughs.

  ‘It looks like a fancy-dress costume,’ I admit.

  ‘Oh, Emma, I know you want to save money, but you can’t wear this. It’s so out of fashion. Look at those sleeves!’

  ‘Yes, but what if Mrs Delaney can alter it? Imagine it without the sleeves. She could just take them off, right? It’d be a nice sleeveless dress then.’

  ‘And that neck. She’d need to take off the collar and netting.’ Mum traces her fingers over the satin of the neckline underneath. ‘It might not be so bad then. But are you sure? Don’t you want your own dress, not some hand-me-down?’

  I think about the gorgeous dress I first tried on with Philippa and Abby. It made me feel like a princess. ‘It’s not just any old hand-me-down, though, Mum, is it? It’s your dress, and you married Dad in it and you’re still going strong after twenty-five years. That’s good karma. I’ll have Mrs Delaney alter it and it’ll be lovely. I’ll be proud to walk up the aisle in it.’

  She smiles. ‘And your gran put extra material into the side panels, so you can still take it out if you need to. I guess she’s given you a little something for your own wedding.’ She shakes her head. ‘Heirloom jewels would have been better, but that’s never going to happen in our family. Maybe hand-me-down pregnancy dresses are our tradition.’

  ‘Just promise you won’t tell Dad?’ I say. ‘We can tell him after the wedding, but I don’t want him to know now.’

  ‘You’ll always be his little girl, you k
now.’

  Yeah, his pregnant little girl. ‘Just don’t tell him, okay?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s your news to tell, not mine,’ says Mum.

  Daniel is nervous when I meet him at his flat. I didn’t mean to sound ominous when I said we had to meet, but I can’t tell him about his impending fatherhood over the phone, can I? And I’ve got to do it before we get to Philippa’s for dinner. Especially now that Mum knows. That just slipped out when I heard that I was actually at my parents’ wedding. I’d wanted to tell Daniel first.

  He’s not the only one who’s nervous. I have no idea how he’s going to take this. It’s definitely not in our plan. We don’t even have a place to live together yet, and now I guess we’ll have to look for two bedrooms.

  I don’t think it’s really hit me yet. I mean, now that I know, the symptoms are so obvious. So physically, yes, but emotionally, no.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ he asks when I get to his door. ‘You sounded odd on the phone.’

  I kiss him instead of answering. ‘I’ve seen Mum’s wedding dress.’

  ‘Brilliant! How is it?’

  ‘It’s bloody awful, but I’m going to try to get Mrs Delaney to alter it for me so it’ll be nice.’

  He takes my overnight bag from me. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Just some water, please.’ My mouth has gone dry.

  I follow him into the kitchen. ‘I learned something interesting about the dress.’

  ‘Hmm?’ He pours my water from the filtered jug on the worktop.

  ‘I’ve been in it before,’ I say.

  ‘I can imagine you dressing up as a little girl. You’d be adorable.’

  ‘I guess it was a little me. Embryonic, in fact. Mum was preggers when they got married.’

  ‘Didn’t you know that already? I mean, I’d have assumed you’d know.’

  ‘Well, I might have if they hadn’t been lying about their anniversary all these years.’

  ‘That’s odd. It’s not exactly a shameful secret. People have sex before they get married. Not that I’m thinking about your parents having sex. Oh. Now I am. Sorry.’