Bridesmaids

by Jane Costello

  ‘God,’ I say lamely. ‘No wonder he’s been in a bad mood.’

  ‘He’s been going out doing the odd bit of freelance stuff,’ continues Grace, ‘but nowhere near enough to pay the bills in the long term. What I can’t believe though, is that he couldn’t even bring himself to tell me. What sort of wife must I be?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say. ‘You’re a brilliant wife and Patrick loves you. You do know that, don’t you?’

  She sniffs again and doesn’t answer.

  ‘You know exactly what happened between him and Charlotte, don’t you?’ she asks.

  I nod. ‘Yes. She told me. She also told me it was over in seconds and he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.’

  Grace’s lip starts trembling.

  ‘Still doesn’t change the fact that he had sex with one of my friends.’

  I put my arm around her.

  ‘I know, sweetheart, I know,’ I say. ‘But don’t let this destroy your marriage, Grace. Please don’t. For your own sake and for the kids.’

  As I say it I don’t completely know whether what I’m telling her is good advice or not. I mean, she’s right. Her husband had sex with her friend. How could anyone forgive that? And yet, something deep down tells me that, ultimately, that’s got to be the right thing to do.

  ‘I guess I’ve got a lot of thinking to do,’ she says. ‘It’s still so raw. I need to have a long think about what I’m going to do.’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake blow your nose first,’ I say, and lean over to hug her.

  She wraps her arms so tightly around me, I’m struggling to breathe.

  ‘Thanks, Evie,’ she says. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too, Grace,’ I say.

  Suddenly, Patrick is by our side. He looks terrified–of Grace and of me.

  ‘Do you mind if I borrow my wife, Evie?’ he says. ‘I’ve got some serious making up to do.’

  Grace looks up at him.

  ‘I’m not taking anything for granted, Grace,’ he says, ‘but I will do anything–anything–for you to stay with me. For you to forgive me. I know I don’t deserve you, but I’m nothing without you, Grace. I mean that.’

  Chapter 119

  ‘Well, it’s a hell of a wedding, anyway,’ says Georgia, as we share her make-up bag in the ladies. Her cosmetic collection is a combination of £3.99 Rimmel lipsticks and face powders that probably cost more than gold dust.

  ‘Makes yours look distinctly tame, doesn’t it?’ I say, sweeping a blusher brush across my cheeks in an attempt to revive some colour in them. ‘No physical fights, no coffins, no marital bust-ups. It was all a bit boring, really.’

  ‘Thank God,’ she laughs. ‘Although, give Valentina some credit. She’s really taken it all on the chin. Speaking of which, how are you feeling these days, Evie?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, I heard you were still a bit upset over Jack,’ she says. ‘And we’ve not really had a chance to talk about it, have we? I haven’t even seen you since your mum’s wedding.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Honestly, Georgia. These things happen.’

  ‘Well, if it means anything,’ she continues, ‘Beth said he’s been moping around work ever since it happened.’

  I pause.

  ‘Beth?’ I repeat.

  ‘Yes, Beth. You know–my cousin,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I know your Cousin Beth. I just thought you said “he’d been moping around work”.’

  ‘I did,’ says Georgia. ‘They work together.’

  ‘Really?’ I am slightly confused. ‘God, I had no idea. I mean, I’d worked out they were seeing each other, but—’

  ‘Seeing each other?’ echoes Georgia. ‘Evie, they’re not seeing each other.’

  I frown.

  ‘They work together,’ she explains. ‘Only since very recently, mind you. Beth’s always wanted to work in the voluntary sector and she got chatting to Jack about the charity he works for at our wedding. He told her there was some administrative position coming up, so she phoned him on the Monday and started work there about a week later.’

  ‘So, she’s still working for them now?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ says Georgia, ‘but there’s nothing going on between the two of them, I promise you. I know that for certain because Beth has fancied him from day one but he’s refused to even acknowledge it. He clearly just isn’t interested in her. And she does nothing but complain about it.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘But why wouldn’t he have told me she was working with him?’ I ask.

  ‘Probably because he’s a man,’ Georgia says dismissively. ‘Pete’s had deaths, pregnancies and a sex change among his colleagues without bothering to tell me about any of them.’

  That might explain the phone number exchanges. And the missed calls on the mobile.

  ‘But that doesn’t explain something else,’ I tell Georgia, as she zips up her make-up bag. I tell her about the call from Beth that I picked up during my mum’s wedding. About how she’d left her top at his flat that morning. How could she explain that?

  ‘I really don’t know,’ she says, looking puzzled. Then: ‘Hang on, this was the night of your mum’s wedding, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, she couldn’t have been with him the night before, because we were all at my Uncle Tom’s fiftieth birthday party. I was with her all night. In fact, we stayed at the hotel.’

  My heart sinks. I don’t know what the explanation is for what she said on the phone. But I do now know that I publicly accused Jack of two-timing me when he was completely innocent; did so when he’d just discovered I’d lied to him about my past, and then failed to even pick up the phone afterwards to say sorry.

  I have never had such an overwhelming urge to burst into tears.

  ‘Hey, love,’ says Georgia. ‘Don’t get upset.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I gulp. ‘But, oh God, Georgia. This is a disaster.’

  Chapter 120

  Edmund has given Valentina the biggest and best wedding money can buy, but he’s saved the thing that will probably mean most to her for last. He’s been taking ballroom dancing lessons. It means that Valentina gets to perform possibly the most professional, the most impressive and certainly the most downright flashy first dance in history.

  Naturally, she’s chosen the tango. And as the dance ends to rapturous applause, with her and Edmund nose to nose, she pulls a rose from between her teeth and kisses him like a comic-book heroine who has just been rescued from a gang of marauding ne’er-do-wells.

  The guests now start to pour onto the dance floor, including Bob and my mother, whose particular brand of dancing immediately terrifies some of the elderly and infirm in the party.

  I pick up my bag and decide to go outside for a walk in the grounds. The breeze is soft and warm and when I find a decent log, I plonk myself down on it and look into the sky, feeling utterly distraught. Tears prick into my eyes again as I think about what Georgia told me earlier.

  ‘You lot have got it easy,’ I say, between sniffs, to a couple of sheep munching away at some grass in front of me. ‘You don’t have to deal with having your bum groped in front of other wedding guests and being stalked by psychotic ex-boyfriends. And certainly, you don’t have to deal with screwing things up with the one man who ever meant anything to you. At least, I don’t think you do.’

  I really have lost it now. I’m sitting here, blubbing my eyes out and talking to a group of farm animals about my emotional difficulties. The fact that they appear to be pretty attentive listeners really isn’t the point.

  I don’t know how long I sit here for. Certainly it’s a good while–it honestly could be hours–and somewhere along the way the two existing sheep are joined by another handful.

  I am just starting to feel like Little Bo Peep when suddenly I hear voices behind me. When I turn around, Valentina, Grace and Georgia are marching towards me.

  ‘I hop
e there aren’t any cow pats around here,’ says Valentina, holding her hem up in disgust. ‘These shoes are Christian Louboutin.’

  ‘Valentina,’ I say, ‘aren’t you meant to be mingling or something?’

  ‘Yes, Evie,’ she says, ‘I am. But we’re here because we’re worried about you.’

  ‘Me?’ I repeat, waving them away. ‘Surely I’m the least of everyone’s worries today. Really, I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, we don’t think you are,’ says Georgia. ‘In fact, we think you’re less than fine.’

  ‘We think you’re pining,’ says Valentina. ‘For Jack.’

  ‘You make me sound like a Labrador,’ I say. ‘Anyway, whether I’m pining or not, there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ve buggered it all up–big time.’

  The three of them exchange glances and couldn’t look more conspiratorial if they were all called Guy Fawkes.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ says Georgia.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  ‘I’ve just been in touch with Beth,’ she tells me. ‘The top she was referring to when she spoke to you on the phone was actually a T-shirt. A charity T-shirt that she needed for a fun run she was taking part in the following day. That T-shirt hadn’t been left at Jack’s flat. It had been left in Jack’s office.’

  I groan. ‘Do you have to even tell me this?’ I ask. ‘I mean, I feel like enough of an idiot anyway without having all the horrifying details rubbed in.’

  ‘I just thought you’d like to know,’ says Georgia. ‘That, and something else.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I say.

  ‘According to Beth,’ continues Georgia, ‘for two weeks after your row, Jack spent the whole time pacing up and down the office, agitated, and clearly torn up.’

  ‘So why didn’t he phone?’ I whine.

  ‘One might say that should have been up to you,’ points out Grace. ‘The misunderstanding was all yours–not his, Evie.’

  ‘Fair point.’ I slump back onto my log.

  ‘The thing is, he might have,’ Georgia persists, ‘but something put a stop to that once and for all.’

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘My little minx of a cousin told him about you and Seb. About her seeing you in that club.’

  I cast my mind back to the club and Beth witnessing Seb’s big sloppy kiss. It sends a shiver down my spine just thinking she might have relayed that back to Jack.

  ‘Oh God,’ I say. ‘Do you really have to go on with this torture? Really, do you have to?’

  ‘Well, we have got something good to tell you too,’ Grace pipes up.

  ‘Please do,’ I say.

  ‘Jack loves you!’ she announces

  ‘Oh, I wanted to say that bit,’ whines Valentina.

  I scrunch up my nose.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘How can he love me? And how the hell could you know?’

  They all look at each other again, each one grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘The thing is,’ says Georgia, ‘once I’d spoken to Beth, we weren’t going to leave it there, were we? I mean, what sort of friends would we be to just not do anything?’

  My eyes widen. ‘So what did you do?’ I ask, slightly hysterically.

  ‘We phoned someone,’ says Valentina, clapping her hands like a three-year-old. ‘In fact, we phoned—’

  ‘You might want to come with us,’ interrupts Grace, grabbing me by the hand.

  Chapter 121

  The first thing I notice when I walk into the ballroom is that the music has stopped; virtually the only thing I can hear is my own heartbeat, which is now hammering away as if I’d just run up five flights of stairs.

  The next thing I notice is Jack. Standing there, on the other side of the room, and the only person in the place wearing jeans, a T-shirt and, most bewilderingly, holding a microphone. I can see some guests out of the corner of my eye exchanging baffled looks and I glance at them for a second as if to say: ‘I haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on either.’

  ‘What…what’s happening?’ I splutter.

  ‘You’ll see,’ says Grace, smirking.

  Then the music starts, the unmistakable opening bars of a song I recognize instantly. Jack lifts up the microphone and feedback screeches through the sound system, prompting a sharp collective intake of breath from everyone in the room.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, and I suddenly realize that he looks terribly nervous. ‘Although you might think that sounds good compared with what you’re about to hear.’

  Georgia giggles.

  ‘Evie,’ says Jack, ‘we haven’t spoken for a while now. That was partly due to pride on my part–and I’m guessing it was the same for you too.’

  He’s right across on the other side of the room, but our eyes are locked as if we’re inches apart.

  ‘I also thought…well, I thought you’d found someone else,’ he says. ‘Now I know–thanks to your friends–that’s not the case. And that you know I was completely faithful.’

  I try to swallow. I can’t. I’m frozen to the spot, simultaneously terrified, confused and exhilarated, and desperately trying to keep this tearing emotion inside me in check.

  ‘But the thing is,’ Jack continues, ‘given that I didn’t phone you, I guess I need to do something to prove just how much I feel about you. And–although it’s a shame that the only thing I could think of makes me look a complete and utter prat–there really is only one way to do it.’

  There isn’t a person in the room who isn’t nudging, whispering and speculating about what he’s saying. I flash a look at Grace and she grins. Jack starts slowly walking towards me and, with lightning running through my veins, I hear Ruby Turner’s backing singers launching into song.

  Then, to my complete amazement, so does Jack.

  Jack Williamson, a man who has never sung in public–a man who swore he never would–is singing. He’s singing to me.

  His voice is deep and ever so slightly off-key, but I don’t think I’d care right now if he sounded like a castrated seagull.

  As Jack sings, the guests who were initially wondering what the hell was going on, now start to get into the swing of things–and one or two even stand up and begin swaying, as if they’re at a Queen concert. Someone actually holds their lighter up.

  By the time Jack has walked all the way over to me, I am totally unable to determine whether I should laugh, cry or just pass out with the sheer insanity of it all. Either way, when I touch my cheeks, I find they are soaked with tears.

  Jack looks into my eyes to sing the final line and we’re so close now I can see the contours of his face in the sort of detail that I never thought I’d see again. It takes my breath away.

  ‘Nobody…but…you.’

  He puts the microphone down on the table next to me and pulls me towards him as I wipe away my tears. With applause echoing all around us, Jack leans forward and our lips meet.

  It is the sweetest, deepest, happiest moment in my twenty-seven years on this earth. And right now, right at this moment, I know I’m going to say something I thought I’d never say to anyone. Ever.

  I pull back and I look at Jack, my Jack, my shaking hands clutching his, while I search for my voice.

  I find it. And I whisper to him.

  ‘Jack. I love you.’

  Epilogue

  Three years later

  ‘You know,’ says Valentina, admiring her profile in the mirror, ‘I had my doubts about wearing a bridesmaid dress at eight months’ pregnant, but I should have known, if anyone could carry it off–I could.’

  I can’t help smiling to myself. Valentina may have been married for three years and be about to bear her first child for Edmund, but some things never change. So are you a little bit surprised? That they’re still together, I mean? Well, don’t worry–I suspect a few others are too.

  Let’s face it, when they first met, it didn’t take a cynic to recognize that Valentina appeared to be as romantically attached to Edmund’s Gold Card as she was to Edmund himself. But, so
mewhere along the way, a funny thing happened: she fell in love with him. Whether it was when she witnessed him saving a man’s life on their honeymoon, or when they found out baby Paris (Orlando if it’s a boy) was on the way, I’m not entirely sure. But it happened all right–and the Barnetts couldn’t be happier. Which from Valentina’s point of view is fantastic, because divorce is so last year.

  The door to our hotel suite opens and Polly walks in.

  ‘Where’s your mum?’ I ask, slightly nervously. I may have been fully expecting Grace to be late, but it doesn’t make me feel any less jumpy about it.

  ‘Just coming,’ says Polly, who at eight is so grown up now. ‘You didn’t really expect us to be on time, did you?’

  ‘Soooo sorry!’ says Grace, bursting through the door and ushering Scarlett in with one hand and her bags in with another. ‘I’ve been trying to get out of the house for an hour but my mother phoned to ask if I wanted anything from Debenhams while she was in there. Then she phoned to ask if I wanted anything from M&S. Then John Lewis. Then she phoned back to ask was I absolutely sure I didn’t want anything because M&S had some lovely paté in–she knew it was lovely because Maureen Thomas from church had some the last time she was round there and it had real Cointreau in and…Oh look, the upshot is: sorry. Now, where do I get changed?’

  Okay, so they got off to a shaky start, but Grace and Patrick haven’t looked back since the early events of their marriage. It took a while for Patrick to win Grace’s trust back, but once he’d got a new job and she moved to a new law firm (with a new female boss who couldn’t be less like her old one), things just started slotting back into place–and a good place at that.

  ‘Right,’ says my mum, straightening her turban–which along with the three-quarter pants she’s wearing makes her look like she’s just appeared out of a magic lamp. ‘I can’t be hanging round here all day. I’ve got guests to greet. See? See how responsible I can be?’

  I go over and kiss her.

  ‘You’re right,’ I say fondly. ‘At least about you needing to get going. The responsible bit I’ll reserve judgement on. And make sure Bob gets here on time, will you?’