Don't Tell the Groom

by Anna Bell

  With this dress I could carry the simple theme over to my hair, tying it up in a side bun decorated with a few loose pearls.

  ‘This is the one,’ I say to my mum.

  ‘My goodness, that was easy. It took us three months of looking with your sister. And the best thing is we’ll get to take it home today.’

  So we can; another advantage of the high street.

  ‘Can I keep it at yours?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course you can, love. You don’t want Mark to see it before – that’s bad luck.’

  That much I do know, and with all the bad luck we’ve been having recently we need all the help we can get.

  Getting changed back into my jeans and jumper I feel so ordinary. If only I could live in wedding dresses, it would make every day feel so special. I take the dress up to the till and at the last minute my mum shoves her card into the card reader.

  ‘I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ she says before I can protest properly.

  I was going to put up a little bit of a fight, but in the end I don’t bother. I vow to myself that I’ll put the two hundred pounds towards something for Mark. He deserves it.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘You’re welcome, love. Now all we need to do is find me an outfit.’

  I smile. If only that was all I needed to do. I still have practically everything else outstanding on my list.

  I might have ticked off the wedding dress, but I figure that was probably a walk in the park compared to how difficult the bridesmaid dresses are going to be. That reminds me, I need to get Lou and my sister Becky to commit to a date. Both of them are being as bad as each other by avoiding my attempts to pin them down on a Saturday. Anyone would think that I’m inviting them to a day walking on hot coals rather than a little retail therapy. But now that I have my dress there are no excuses left.

  Time is running out for me to organise this wedding and with only six weeks to go I have to get a wiggle on.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Why is it that when you have the heaviest bags from the supermarket the only space you can park in is miles away from your home?

  This is just one of the reasons why I hate living in our terrace; there isn’t a drive for parking. Not that it is usually a problem. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time I get a space either outside or close to our front door. But today, because I’m carrying twelve bottles of wine, I’m practically parked back at the supermarket.

  The lights are on when I get home which means that Mark has beaten me home for once. Either that or we’ve got some very dumb burglars.

  ‘Hello,’ I call suspiciously just in case. I quickly decide that even if they are burglars they can stay as whatever they’re doing in the kitchen smells divine.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, walking into the kitchen.

  ‘Hey, you.’

  I’m loving the outfit. Mark is dressed in his new dark blue jeans and a T-shirt, but what has really caught my eye is my frilly Cath Kidston apron.

  ‘You’re looking pretty special tonight,’ I say.

  ‘I try my best.’

  He walks over and gives me a kiss on the top of my head as he opens the cupboard next to me and takes out the pepper mill.

  ‘Are those the meatballs?’ I ask.

  ‘Yep, I’m almost done.’

  ‘Great. Can I have a taste?’

  ‘Nope, you will have to wait for later.’

  ‘Dammit.’

  Tonight we’re having Lou and Russell round for a wine-tasting evening. I came up with the idea as a sneaky plan so that we could work out what wine I should buy for the wedding. But when I mentioned wine tasting they all immediately saw through my plan and realised what I was up to. But who cares? It isn’t like they know any more than that.

  I was going to do a booze cruise to France to stock up on the wedding wine, only when I looked into how much it would cost me to get there and back and buy petrol and snacks and lunch, etc., it would almost be as much as the corkage. I went on my new favourite forum of Budget Brides-R-US and some of the brides recommended looking out for when supermarket wine websites have sales.

  Having made a shortlist of six reds and six whites, I’ve bought a bottle of each from the supermarket and we’ll rate each one. I’m just hoping that we don’t have to drink a whole bottle of each to make the decision.

  While Mark finishes off his meatballs, I get to work gluing paper on the wine bottles and writing numbers on them. I’ve got score sheets and everything for us, so people can mark each wine out of ten. I got a bit carried away when I was making them at work and I nearly laminated numbers like on Come Dine With Me, so that we could hold them up theatrically after each glass. It was a very slow day at work, may I add. I don’t usually have time for all that fun.

  I’ve also made sure that we’ve cooked a few tapas dishes that have the same food groups as our wedding menu, so that way we can see if the wine goes with them. Clever, huh?

  ‘How many bottles of wine have we got? There are only four of us, aren’t there?’ asks Mark.

  ‘Yes, but we don’t have to drink all of the bottles. I mean, most of them are screw-topped, so we can save the rest of them for the weekend,’ I say.

  ‘Right, because we usually drink a dozen bottles of wine between us?’

  ‘OK. If we find ones that we all really like, I promise we’ll stop. But come on, this is going to be fun!’

  I’ve told Lou that the food is at seven thirty, so at seven forty-five I decide it is time to go and put on some glad rags and change my make-up from daytime to evening. Loosely that translates as me adding darker eye shadow, some eyeliner and extra blusher.

  At exactly eight on the dot, and half an hour late, Russell and Lou ring the doorbell.

  ‘Hiya. So sorry we’re late. And what’s with the parking tonight?’ says Lou, leaning over to give me a hug.

  ‘Tell me about it. There must be something on. Hi, Russell.’

  ‘Penny. We weren’t sure what to bring seeing as you told Lou no wine. So we brought cheese and chocolate.’

  ‘Yum, my two favourite food groups. Come on through to the lounge. I would say I hope you’re hungry but tonight it’s all about the wine. So I hope you’re thirsty.’

  Walking into the lounge I see Russell and Lou pull faces at each other. Oh no. I can see what is going on here. They’ve had an argument. Great. We didn’t invite Phil and Jane round as last time you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife and now these two are at it.

  What is it with married people? Why are they always arguing? When Mark and I get to stage five, and I’m Mrs Robinson, we will not be like this. Hey, there was no Lemon-heads playing when I thought of Mrs Robinson – maybe it’s wearing off. Oh no, there it is.

  ‘So what shall I open first? Red or white?’ I ask, trying to change the tone of the evening. ‘I’ve got scorecards for every wine we drink. It’s going to be a bit Come Dine With Me.’

  ‘Um, actually I’m not drinking tonight. I’m driving,’ says Lou.

  I look at Lou and I wonder if I need to clean my ears out. Lou is never the non-drinking one. Or at least whenever we get together she isn’t.

  ‘Lou, it’s a wine-tasting evening. You have to drink.’

  ‘I can’t face drinking.’

  I look at her sitting on the sofa and I’m wondering just who this impostor is, as she certainly isn’t the Lou I know.

  ‘How come?’ I ask.

  ‘Russell and I got ridiculously drunk last night and I can’t face even a mouthful of wine.’

  ‘What did you do last night?’ I practically scream at her. She has known about this tasting for weeks. She should have been resting her liver as well as her palate.

  ‘Nothing, we just stayed in,’ says Russell. He looks guilty and remorseful. He is sitting with his arms folded and he’s looking down at the floor.

  ‘We didn’t mean to get drunk. We just opened a bottle of wine and then another …’

  I look from Lou t
o Russell, neither one of whom will look back at me. Lou must be hung over; there are bags the size of saucers under her eyes and she seems dog-tired.

  ‘Just the two of you?’ I ask in a whisper. Lou has been awfully busy lately. What if she’s been cheating on us with new friends? I take a sharp intake of breath. She wouldn’t dare. I know Lou better than that. Don’t I?

  ‘Just the two of us,’ says Russell. He looks at Lou with what I think is a very conspiratorial glance. I knew it. They do have new friends.

  ‘Right. Well, Russell, you’re drinking, aren’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he groans.

  ‘Good. Well, then you’ll have to drink all of your wife’s wine too,’ I say.

  Ha. Take that as punishment. Lou drinks like a fish. If he thinks whatever he has is a hangover just wait until I’m finished with him.

  I practically storm out of the living room into the kitchen. Mark is busy garnishing dishes. Since when does he garnish? I’ve got to wean him off watching Saturday Kitchen.

  ‘Lou isn’t drinking. She’s hung over,’ I say.

  ‘That’s OK, we can still have a nice night. We’ll just drink her portion of the wine.’

  Mark doesn’t get it. It is so not about the wine. It’s about the fact that she knew she was coming to this and she still got drunk last night. It’s like she doesn’t care about my wedding at all.

  ‘I think they had other friends round and they won’t tell us. They’re acting really weird.’

  ‘As are you. Just calm down and open the wine. Take it through and I’ll be in in a minute,’ says Mark.

  Men. They just don’t get what is right in front of their noses.

  I pick up bottle number one of the white and the score-cards before doing as Mark says and going back into the lounge.

  ‘Here you go,’ I say, handing out the scorecards.

  ‘Look at all the trouble you’ve gone to with these,’ says Lou.

  I KNOW! I practically scream. But I don’t. Instead I sit down in an armchair and open the wine. I can see Lou out of the corner of my eye. That will teach her to go drinking with other people. I bet she feels guilty now.

  I pour three glasses of wine and then pause at Lou’s empty glass.

  ‘Do you want something non-alcoholic?’ I ask reluctantly.

  ‘Why don’t you just sip the wine, Lou, and do what you’re supposed to do in proper wine-tasting – spit it out?’ says Russell.

  ‘What an excellent suggestion,’ I say. Full marks to Russell. That is a great suggestion. I’ve got a little steel tub that will be perfect. So it’s supposed to be an ice bucket for small bottles of wine, but it looks the same, doesn’t it?

  Lou and Russell are looking at each other really strangely again as I go out of the room to get Lou’s spit bucket. I really do hope everything’s OK there, despite them cheating on us; they’re my favourite couple that we hang out with.

  ‘Here you go, Lou,’ I say, handing her the bucket. She looks peaky, but she takes the bucket. She must feel very guilty if she’s willing to do this.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than this at my hen do. After all, I’m sure that we’ll be drinking at least two nights in a row,’ I say.

  ‘Oh yes, the hen do,’ says Lou.

  ‘Yeah, there’ll be none of this ‘I’m too hung over to drink’ malarkey then. I remember your hen do and that excuse definitely wouldn’t have washed. Have you and Becky started planning it yet?’

  ‘What?’ asks Lou.

  ‘My hen do. You know as bridesmaids that it’s your job to sort out.’

  Thankfully that’s one wedding task I don’t have to deal with, and for once I’ll be the one kept in the dark with all the secrets.

  ‘Remind me to phone Becky tomorrow,’ says Lou to Russell.

  That hardly sounds like a promising start for the hen do organisation. Perhaps I should have told them both before now that they’d be organising it. I just thought it was a given.

  ‘Hey, guys, sorry about that,’ says Mark, as he swoops in from the kitchen, minus the apron. It’s a shame; I thought the apron brought out the colour of his eyes.

  I wait for everyone to do their handshakes and kiss hellos and then I launch right into telling them the wine-tasting rules.

  ‘Right, this is wine number one. We have to see what we think about it and then give it marks out of ten. There are going to be quite a few wines this evening, so you might want to make notes, like hint of raspberries or delicate bouquet.’

  ‘How do you taste a delicate bouquet?’ asks Mark, smelling his wine before I’ve officially said go.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve heard them say it on posh programmes,’ I say.

  ‘Oh well, bottoms up,’ says Russell.

  We all take a sip of the wine and I actually feel like a proper adult. What a sophisticated evening we’re having.

  What is that noise? I look up from my scorecard where I’m writing very strong flavour and I see that it is Lou spitting out her drink into the bucket. I’m sure when I’ve seen people wine-tasting on TV they do it a bit more discreetly than that.

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she says, running off towards the bathroom.

  ‘Pass me her bucket,’ says Mark. ‘That was pretty rank.’

  ‘What, the wine or Lou practically throwing up in the living room?’ I ask snidely.

  ‘The wine,’ says Mark.

  ‘Yeah, I have to admit it was a strong taste to have without food. Have we all done our scores?’

  Mark and Russell look at each other and nod. Time for the big reveal.

  ‘That was a South African chenin blanc,’ I say, peeling off the label.

  ‘Great. Are they all going to taste as awful as that?’ asks Mark.

  ‘I hope not.’

  Oh, God! What if they are? What if I have the worst skills in wine-picking ever? I usually just go for the prettiest label and be done with it. Only this time I actually read the backs of the bottles to see what they went with.

  ‘That’s better,’ says Lou, as she comes back into the room.

  She doesn’t look better; she looks as pale as Casper the friendly ghost.

  ‘Shall we go into the dining room and eat?’ asks Mark, as if he’s sensing the uneasiness of the evening returning.

  Mark and I have really excelled ourselves in our tapas cooking. Or at least Mark has – I just printed all the recipes off the internet for him. Every dish tastes delicious. It’s a pity we have no idea how to cater for eighty people or else we could roll this out as our wedding food, it’s that good. And think how cheap that would be!

  ‘This wine is definitely my favourite,’ says Russell.

  Not that I wouldn’t have noticed – he’s drunk practically the entire bottle of it. We’ve stopped going methodically through the bottles and in the end we’ve assigned Russell to be the white drinker and Mark and I were trying reds.

  ‘Can I have a quick sip?’ I ask. I think it’s best I get in on the act before there is an empty bottle. I reach over and grab Russell’s glass. ‘You’re right, that is lovely. OK, we have our white winner.’

  I peel off my stuck-on label and see that it’s the French Chablis. I carefully circle it on my wine list and make a note: This is the one. Just in case I have too many more wines and then don’t remember tomorrow morning.

  I couldn’t face going through another painful evening like this. It’s like the worst dinner party ever, except with maybe the best food. Lou and Russell are barely speaking to each other and Mark and I are having to hold court.

  ‘So, Lou, you’re the only one who knows about the wedding venue. Am I going to like it?’ asks Mark.

  ‘You’re going to love it,’ Lou says, smiling.

  So she can smile after all; I was beginning to think she’d said something nasty and the wind had changed.

  ‘It’s going to be a beautiful wedding,’ she adds.

  ‘Ah, thanks, Lou, and I’m sure you’ll make a beautiful bridesmaid too. Exc
ept not too beautiful as you’re not allowed to upstage me.’

  ‘No chance of that,’ she says.

  Did that sound sarcastic to anyone else in the room? Or have I had too much wine?

  I’m just going to glide right over it. ‘Now that I’ve got my dress we’ll have to go and get your dress sometime. Maybe next week?’

  ‘I can’t, I’m busy,’ she says.

  ‘OK then, what about the weekend after?’

  ‘No,’ she says, wrinkling her nose up. ‘I think I’m busy then too. I’ll tell you what, when I get home I’ll check my diary and tell you what date I’m free.’

  WTF? Is this my best friend I spent months and months traipsing round every dress shop in the south-east with, looking for a bridesmaid dress that was the exact shade of pink she wanted? And now she won’t even commit to a date to go and look at dresses?

  I’m too gobsmacked to even respond. Lou is the only person I’ve let into any aspect of this secret wedding planning and yet she keeps running a million miles the other way when I try to involve her. Is she trying to distance herself deliberately?

  She really has got secret friends. It is the only explanation.

  ‘How about we have dessert?’ says Mark.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I say, standing up. I manage to collect up our dirty plates and walk into the kitchen before I let a tear roll down my face. I don’t want to go all bridezilla on everyone but I just feel that Lou, of all people, should be taking an interest in this wedding.

  I’m practically on autopilot taking the chocolate cake out of the fridge. Maybe this ‘don’t tell the groom’ is harder on me than I realise. Maybe I’m being too harsh on Lou. Maybe I’m just disappointed that Mark isn’t able to take an interest in the wedding details and I thought Lou would pick up the slack. Perhaps that’s the real reason I’m feeling upset.

  I’ll give Lou an extra big portion of chocolate cake and perhaps that will be my peace offering to her. I even add an extra scoop of vanilla ice cream as I know that is her favourite.

  ‘There you go,’ I say, as I walk back into the dining room.

  ‘Actually, I think we’re going to skip dessert,’ says Lou. ‘I’m really tired and I still feel really sick.’