‘Short?’ Mum sounds surprised.
‘Definitely. I love wearing short skirts.’
‘She does, Mrs T. She says she feels playful in a short skirt.’ Philippa raises her eyebrows at my mother.
‘Yes, and I want to feel playful at my wedding, because essentially it’s one big monster of a party. So short, cream, lace.’
Philippa nods. She knows the exact dress I am talking about. Two years ago now, we went into the bridal boutique in Nunstone and tried on dresses. I hope all women pretend they’re getting married and go into shops to try on dresses. I’d hate us to be the only ones.
‘Beatles and Stones is so great for the guys too.’ Philippa is nodding her head in admiration.
‘Yep, I know.’
Last night I went through all the men I know, imagining them in a sixties-or seventies-style suit and practically everyone looked great. Especially Joe King. I put him in an early Beatles-style single-breasted suit, with a thin tie and the one button on the jacket done up, tight-ish trousers. Not that Joe King would be coming to my wedding. I just happened to imagine him in the get-up, that’s all.
‘The only thing…’ Philippa stops suddenly and frowns.
‘What?’
‘Matt’s not going to go for it, is he? I think he’d want a more conventional wedding.’
‘Oh, would he?’ Mum looks concerned.
‘No. It’s hardly that unconventional to have a Beatles and Stones dress code. And people don’t have to do it if they don’t want, it’s just there if people fancy,’ I say.
Philippa is still shaking her head. I ignore her, I know Matt a lot better than she does.
‘Anyway, I quite like the idea of the short dress with biker-style black boots, very comfortable for dancing. But I think I might have to opt for ballet-type pumps, at least for the first bit.’
‘What about the venue?’ Mum asks.
‘Well, Marge’s dad has a marquee, which I’d like to put in someone’s garden. There are a couple of old dears at the surgery who have massive ramshackle gardens, one of them might let me use their garden to put the marquee in. I want everyone to feel relaxed and it’ll be in summer, so providing it doesn’t rain I’d like people to stumble out of the marquee and make out under the stars.’
‘I love it,’ Philippa sighs. ‘Bagsy me making out under the stars. Although it’s more likely to be you, Mrs T.’
Moving on!
‘It’ll be a beg, borrow and steal affair. I don’t want to ask Dad for money. So I have a plan. I know. I’m on fire. Basically I have made three lists. Food. Decoration. Entertainment, as you can see.’ I point to my whiteboard. ‘So under food we have coronation chicken, potato salad, trifle, etc. Under decoration there is jam jar of wild flowers, eight times, and twenty blown-up balloons, etc. Then under Entertainment we have sing a song, play crazy disco on your iPod and on and on. The list is based on eighty coming. Basically everyone has to pick something from one of the lists and do it or bring it. Cheap and ever so cheerful. And we could say bring a bottle as well and then we’d just pay for like Jägerbombs and specialty party booze.’
I stand proudly back reading my carefully written lists on the whiteboard.
‘Ooh, I love cheesecake,’ Philippa mutters as she squints at the list.
‘I just think if everyone mucks in a bit, it will be a right laugh. Don’t you think?’
‘Yeah, I do. I have to say, Fan, I think it looks wicked.’ Philippa nods, but she seems troubled. ‘I’m just not sure how Matt will feel about this.’
‘What’s not to like?’ I say, surprised. ‘It will save him a fortune.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Mum? What do you think?’
‘Oh.’ she smiles. ‘I love the Stones. I saw them years ago at Reading Festival, before you were born.’
‘Wow, did you, Mrs T?’
‘I think this looks great, Jenny, well done. I can’t wait.’ There’s a faraway look in my mother’s eye that I can’t place. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be a wedding planner, Jenny?’
I’ll ignore that comment.
‘So when shall we go dress shopping, ladies?’
‘Tomorrow?’ Mum suggests.
I chuckle. ‘That’s serious.’
‘No point in waiting,’ Mum says. Now, she seems a little emotional.
‘Mum, are you OK?’ I ask.
‘I’m just so proud of you,’ she says tearfully.
‘We both know that’s not true,’ I say, quickly, and to be honest I’m shocked by how unkind I sound. But it’s such a ridiculous thing to say to me now. I’ve no idea why she’s suddenly started behaving as though she’s in an American sitcom. Proud of me? She doesn’t know me, so how can she be proud of me? I look back at my wedding list. Mind you, it is a particularly blinding piece of low-budget wedding planning.
‘So tomorrow then for dress shopping,’ I say, but the lightness has gone from my voice. ‘We’ve got early closing at the surgery. Philippa, can you get out?’
‘You know me, I’d get out of anything for dress shopping.’
At least Philippa’s on board. Finally. Now, how can I avoid talking to Mum for the remainder of the evening? A bath with a book it will have to be.
Chapter 17
Joe King just popped into my head again! I’m in a wedding boutique in Nunstone and I just looked out of the window onto the street and thought, I hope I don’t see him. The ridiculousness of that sentiment works on many levels. For a start, he works in a chemist in Tiddlesbury, why would he be hanging around a wedding dress shop in Nunstone? But also, more importantly, why should I not want him to see me in a wedding shop? Why? It would be good for him to find out that I’m a soon-to-be-married woman. He continues to pop into my head, even though I’m really trying not to think about him. I really am. I really, really am. I bet he hasn’t thought about me once. The beautiful comment was probably just a throwaway that he says to a different girl at every gig. I bet he’s lying in bed with nineteen-year-old twins at this precise moment. Not that I care. Really.
On a positive note, we’ve only just arrived at the wedding dress shop and we’ve already been given champagne.
‘Cheers,’ I say, clinking glasses with Mum and Philippa. I feel a bit bad about snapping at Mum last night. Although I don’t want to apologise, because then I’ll be bringing it up again.
‘In the eyes,’ says Philippa eyeballing both of us. ‘Can’t risk seven years of bad sex.’
‘Oh, God, is that what happens?” Mum says, sounding concerned.
‘Yep, seven years bad sex, Mrs T.’
‘So that explains it.’
‘Did you call that Simon chap?’ Philippa asks, because I try to avoid talking about my mother’s quest for rebound sex, if at all possible.
‘Not yet. But I will.’
‘Now, then, Jenny,’ the sales assistant joins us.
‘Yes!’ I squeal. I’ve already reached quite a high vocal register. It’s the excitement.
‘Do you have any thoughts about what sort of dress you are looking for?’
‘Yes.’ Another yelp. They’re very hard to control.
‘Right.’ She laughs.
‘So, what I really want is sixties style, short in length, cream lace, long sleeves, high-ish neck, you used to have one just like that…’ I hold my breath, willing her to still have this dress.
‘Ah, yes. The Twiggy dress, let me fetch that for you.’
‘The Twiggy Dress.’ I sigh. ‘It’s called the Twiggy dress.’ l suddenly freeze. ‘What if it looks terrible on me?’
‘I assure you it won’t.’ The lady is back. She’s holding up a dress bag. It’s in there. She’s holding my dream dress. I gulp some champagne.
‘Ta da!’ she says unzipping the bag and manoeuvring the dress so we can glimpse its glory.
Oh, I feel like kneeling in its presence. I couldn’t imagine a more exquisite wedding dress. I love clothes. I truly do. I have hundreds of items of clothing and if I had t
o explain why I would probably end up getting a little misty eyed. There’s something magical, something amazing about someone, somewhere designing a beautiful dress and choosing a stunning fabric and thinking, I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to create something exquisite that will make someone feel sublime, feel beautiful, feel whole. When I was little and there were a lot of nasty words being said to me both at school and at home, I would lock myself in my room and put on a pretty dress and it would make me feel better. It really would. I think there’s a lot wrong with the fashion industry, I hate to think of starving children in far-flung countries working for pennies to make cheap T-shirts, or young girls starving themselves to look like skin-and-bone models. I hate that fashion has became so complicated and dangerous for women. But then I think back to the twelve-year-old me, who’d been banished to my room by my father and didn’t have anyone to confide in, and how she would put on a dress and it would feel like a comfort, like a friend. Clothes have always had the power to transport me to somewhere different, somewhere better.
I gulp some more champagne. Why I am scared to try on this dress? Perhaps because I’ve pictured this day for years and years, ever since I was that twelve-year-old girl in her bedroom. ‘You’ll find it hard to get a husband with those habits, Jenny,’ my father would always say to me, if ever I licked my knife or blew on my food or sneezed without holding my hand over my mouth. But then at some point it became, ‘No one will marry you, Jenny.’ Perhaps he didn’t mean it to be as cruel as it felt. Sometimes I got the impression that he might have thought he was being funny. But there was no playful wink or loving ‘I’m only having you on’ hug after. Just those words – no one will marry you, Jenny. Even so, I’d daydream. Daydream that, one day, someone would want to marry me. And in those daydreams I’d always be wearing a cream lace sixties minidress. And now, look, it’s here, in front of me.
‘It is so beautiful,’ I whisper as though it’s sleeping and I might wake it. ‘What do you think?’ I ask Mum and Philippa.
‘I think… it’s divine,’ Mum says, and again her voice sounds choked with emotion. ‘I wish I’d had the confidence to get married in something like that.’
‘It’s never too late, Mrs T. You’ll meet a lovely man and you’ll marry him in a minidress.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Fifty-four is not too old to wear a minidress, no matter what they tell you in the Daily Mail, Mrs T.’
‘Shall we pop it on you?’ the lady asks me.
I nod nervously. I seem to have finished my champagne. I place the empty glass on a low table near me and follow the lady behind a big swooshy satin curtain.
‘This will look great with your lovely hair.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ I say pulling off my skirt and T-shirt.
The lady undoes the buttons down the back of my dress, a tiny heart is carved upon each button. ‘Here,’ she says, holding it open as I step into it. ‘Oh, look, yes,’ she coos and begins doing up the buttons now. ‘Oh, it could have been made for you.’
When she’s finished I turn to face the mirror. I’m still funny-looking Jenny Taylor. My arms are still too long for my body, my mouth is still too big for my face. I’ll never be a great beauty, but in this dress, here, now, I don’t care, because I feel… what do I feel? What do I feel like in this dress? I suppose, I feel like me, but the best of me.
‘Let’s show the girls.’ The lady swishes back the curtains.
‘The two of them sit wide-eyed and motionless, looking in my direction. There’s utterly no expression on either of their faces at all.
‘What? Do you not…?’
‘Oh, Fan,’ gasps Philippa.
‘Are you crying, you tool?’
She nods. ‘You look amazing.’
‘Oh, Jenny,’ Mum says, standing up and stepping towards me. There are tears in her eyes. She’s mouthing the word ‘beautiful’ and she’s holding her arms out as though she wants to hug me. I freeze. We haven’t done hugging for a long, a very long, time.
‘I think I should get you three some tissues,’ the lady says delicately to me.
‘I don’t need any…’ I start, but then I feel a big tear, that I hadn’t even noticed come into my eye, slide down my cheek.
Chapter 18
Mum bought the dress for me. The nice sales lady said the price and my mum brought out her credit card and got pretty aggressive when I told her not to be silly. There ensued a lengthy verbal tussle. In the end, she said, ‘Don’t insult me,’ as though she was a psychopath, so I slunk back and let her pay for the dress. And it wasn’t cheap. It was the same price as most of the long ones, which seems a bit unjust to me. The last time we went shopping together and she bought me something I must have been about fourteen.
So I love my awesome dress but the only downside is that I want to wear it all the time, I keep unzipping the bag and just sitting there watching it. I absolutely cannot wait to wear it. In fact, I could wear it out before the wedding. It doesn’t look like a wedding dress. That’s the beauty. I’ll be able to wear it again and again. Something you couldn’t do with a traditional meringue dress, unless it was Halloween and you wore it with one of those plastic axes sticking out of your head.
Whiteboard wedding planning has been cracking on apace and I think we’ve more or less covered everything. Now, I just need Matt to get back from Chicago, then Mum and I can do a little presentation for him, he can give the nod and we can get ‘Operation Kate and Wills Watch Our Wedding And Weep’ off the ground.
I’ve been running every night too, which I’m doing now. Partly because my wedding dress is short but mainly to get me out of the house so my mother can’t corner me.
Ooh, aw. Stitch. Ah, ha.
‘I’m doing something healthy here. Why give me pain?’ I rail.
I have a confession. One I am very not proud of. Since I met Joe King I’ve started putting a little lipstick on before I go running. There, I said it. And I’ve been running a little quicker than usual, you know, just in case, on the off chance, if he were to see me, I wouldn’t look a total ploddy minger. It’s ludicrous. One, he’s just some syphilis-ridden rock star who I’ve met twice, and two, quickening my pace gives me quite a lot of discomfort and causes me to pull a face like a cow in labour.
Ow! OW! OW! I’ll have to hobble to Wee Gate and try and stretch it off there. I turn the corner down the narrow lane. There’s a car next to Wee Gate. Ooh, could they be doggers? I don’t know why I get so excited about the idea of doggers, probably because I live in Tiddlesbury and need all the excitement I can get. I trundle nearer. I see two people sitting in the front seat of the car, a man and a woman, I can tell from the back of their heads. They can’t be doggers. If you wanted to fornicate in a Ford Mondeo you’d surely do it in the back. What a shame.
‘One day I’ll spot some doggers,’ I mutter. It pays to be positive.
I stand in front of their car and use the gate to stretch my legs on. The couple now have a cinematic view of my arse. I feel the back bottom view is better than legs akimbo from the front though.
‘Ah!’ I jump. The fella’s just beeped his horn. Very funny. I turn around and give them a nod.
Oh, my god, I know these two. We match-made them with a note! He’s the bloke in the denim shirt who was eyeing her up in Nunstone at the pub quiz while she was sharing a bottle of wine with her friend. We slipped her a note. This is unbelievably exciting. I must be grinning quite scarily. The expression on their faces has just changed quickly from one of amusement to alarm. If it wasn’t for Philippa and me, Cilla and Cupid, they wouldn’t even be sat there all smoochy. I want to tell them. Imagine if I did, we’d probably get invited to their wedding. We could be godparents to their children or they might even name their children after us. I can’t tell them though, because the note giving is totally anonymous. Ooh, I really have scared them. He’s reversing the car now. I wave. They don’t respond.
I wonder whether she told him that she received a
n anonymous note in the form of a very pretty card. If so, I wonder who they think sent it. I get my sweaty phone out from the pocket in my shorts and call Philippa.
‘Today we have reached a big milestone in the Smiling Fanny Manifesto’s life,’ I inform her.
‘Fan, Fan, where are you?’
‘Wee Gate. Listen, guess what I just saw.’
‘Fan, I’m having a nightmare. Absolute sodding mare. I’m interviewing that writer tonight, the one who moved into Rose Cottage. Quite a well-established guy, writes sci-fi for young adults. Philip Hall is his name. I was desperate to do the interview because, you know, I might be able to ask him for advice about my book. Anyway, I said I’d do a light-bite tea, so I made a quiche but it… Oh, Fan, it looks like something unfortunate happened in a shortcrust pastry case.’
‘Chuck some rocket on top of it, make it look posh.’
‘That’s not even the worst of it. He’s bringing some kid. And Dad’s here in the living room with his Gushing Arterial Blood lot tonight, I hadn’t realised!’ Philippa’s dad meets once a month with a group of doctors, from what Philippa and I can tell they eat cheese and talk about gore. ‘I can’t even put the kid in front of the telly, and I can’t let it near the Gushing Arterial Blood lot or the poor thing will be scarred for life. What do I do with it?’
‘How old is it?’
‘Dunno. Must be young if he’s bringing it with him.’
‘‘Hmm. Does it have a sex?’
‘Does it have sex?’
‘No, what sex is it?’
‘Oh, boy,’ she says confidently. ‘I think. Or girl. No, I think he said it was his nephew.’ There’s a pause. ‘F-a-a-n,’ she sings sweetly. ‘F-a-a-n.’
‘You want me to look after the child.’
‘Well, you’re so good with kids.’
‘I’m really sweaty.’
‘I’ll feed you wine and spray you with deodorant.’
‘All right. I’m on my way. Got something very exciting to tell you anyway!’
‘You couldn’t pick up some rocket, could you?’
Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy Page 9
