The Wedding Dress

by Dani Atkins

  We had arranged a quiet dinner for just the three of us. It should have been a perfect time to segue him into the plans for the next fortnight, but right from the moment we met him in the hotel foyer I could sense a growing tension between the two men, which was so palpable it almost felt like we should pull out the fourth chair at the table and invite it to sit down and join us.

  Initially, my father spent a considerable amount of time glancing from that spare seat to the door of the restaurant. It took me longer than it should have done to realise what – or rather who – he was waiting for.

  ‘Mum’s not coming this evening,’ I told him eventually, as I poured water from a jug into our glasses. My father’s eyes were cast down, focused only on the passage of the ice cubes tumbling out of the pitcher and crashing into the waiting glasses. For a man who’d spent the last twenty years of his life working in a bar, he seemed to find it singularly absorbing.

  ‘I imagine she wants to spend as little time in my company as possible,’ he said carefully, fingering and rearranging the cutlery beside his plate.

  ‘No. It’s not that. I think her publishers were planning on taking her out for dinner tonight,’ I said, blushing like a teenager caught out in a lie.

  His hand went from the cutlery to briefly cover mine. I glanced down and saw he also had brown age spots on skin that was no longer smooth and taut across his knuckles, the way it had been when we’d stopped holding hands. See, you and Mum have got something in common after all. The thought almost made me laugh explosively, but the sad look in my dad’s eyes defused it.

  ‘You don’t have to cover up for her, Suzy. I didn’t expect anything different.’

  ‘Suzanne’s been pretty anxious about how everyone would get along after such a long time,’ divulged Darrell, reaching for my other hand. To the other diners it probably looked like we were about to conduct a séance.

  ‘Not really,’ I said, lying for the second time in as many minutes and shooting Darrell a warning glance, which he totally failed to pick up on.

  ‘We just don’t want there to be any awkwardness to spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the day,’ continued Darrell blithely.

  My father’s eyes flickered for a moment and my hand felt cold when he removed his. That was the first moment I realised he didn’t like Darrell. ‘The last thing I’ve come all this way to do is cause trouble at your wedding,’ he reassured me gently.

  I don’t know what made me do it. Having not breathed a word of anything to my mother all week, I was astonished at how easily the truth spewed out of me, as though it was something bad I’d ingested that my body could no longer tolerate.

  I turned to Darrell. ‘I think if our day is going to be spoiled in any way, it’s more likely to be your malicious ex-girlfriend rather than my parents who is the cause.’

  Darrell’s eyes expressed his hurt and disbelief that I’d upended the bag and spilled out our secrets all over the table. I instantly wanted to turn back time and un-say it. His face, the look in his eyes… oh God, it was worse than kicking a puppy. Utterly inexcusable. Why had I done it?

  ‘What’s this all about?’ my father inevitably asked.

  I sighed and shook my head, knowing it had been too much to hope for that he wouldn’t have heard or picked up on my comment. I downplayed it. I made it sound irritating but unimportant, and not something that kept me awake at nights, worrying about what was coming next. I believe I might even have laughed a couple of times, as though having someone trying to sabotage your wedding was actually amusing. Hey, do you remember the time your crazy ex turned up at the church, darling?

  My attempts to make light of the situation were totally ineffective.

  ‘What do the police have to say about all this? Have they—?’

  ‘We’ve decided not to involve them,’ interrupted Darrell.

  I saw a long-forgotten expression on my father’s face. It was a steely look, usually reserved for those who’d consumed too many sangrias and whose judgement was impaired. ‘That’s your first mistake,’ he countered, sitting up a little straighter in his chair, unconsciously squaring his shoulders as he faced his son-in-law-to-be. Oh crap – this evening wasn’t going to plan at all. ‘This person, this woman, is guilty of – at best – harassment. That’s a crime, and the police need to be called in to stop her from causing any more mischief.’

  ‘Well, we can’t say for sure that it is—’ I began, loyally cleaving to the man who was going to spend the rest of his life with me, rather than the one who’d chosen to spend his half a continent away.

  Darrell’s voice was dull and flat, practically a monotone. ‘She’s not well… mentally. She’s sick. Unbalanced. And I won’t call the police, because doing so would almost certainly destroy whatever stability she’s still holding on to.’

  My eyes were large, my mouth was probably hanging open as I turned in my chair. I knew none of this. Darrell had never so much as hinted that she might be suffering from a genuine mental illness. Suddenly I felt frightened, not of the woman or what she could do to me – that thought would probably come creeping up on me unpleasantly later, I was sure. No, what scared me was that this was one huge ground-breaking disclosure to suddenly drop on me from a great height. How, and more importantly why, had he never mentioned this to me before?

  ‘And you knew all about this, Suzy?’ My face was still turned towards Darrell, so my father couldn’t see the questions in my eyes, the shock still parting my lips, as though this new truth was just too big to swallow down all at once.

  Very carefully I took back control of my features, and turned to face my dad. The sound of torn loyalty filled my head like separating Velcro. ‘Yes, Dad, I did. She’s not been well. She needs to be treated with sympathy and compassion. I’m sure once we’re actually married, when the wedding is over and done with, she’ll be far better able to move on, and let go.’

  I could see Darrell nodding gratefully in my peripheral vision. He reached for my hand, and because my father’s eyes were still on us, I had no choice but to let his fingers wind through mine.

  *

  ‘I know we’ve been calling her Darrell’s crazy ex, but I didn’t think she was actually, you know… properly crazy.’

  I’d persuaded Karen to meet me in a small park just around the corner from our office block. I had a tendency always to get to work early, but Karen was habitually late. Getting her to meet me half an hour before work began was a big ask. I came prepared with the right currency to buy her good humour: a caramel cappuccino and a double chocolate muffin.

  ‘I don’t think “crazy” is an official diagnosis – it’s not very PC for a start, but basically I think that’s about the gist of it.’

  Karen sunk her teeth deep into the sponge of the muffin. ‘What did Darrell say when you challenged him about it?’ I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the memory of our late-into-the-night conversation, as well as a light shower of muffin crumbs. ‘You did call him on it, I hope. Why on earth was he keeping it a secret from you?’

  The traces of the night were still lingering within my eyes, and in the shadowy circles beneath them. ‘Probably because he still doesn’t believe she’s behind any of it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, if he’s that convinced, why won’t he let you call the police?’ I loved the way she cut straight through to the important question.

  ‘He says he doesn’t even want them questioning her. That she’s not strong enough.’

  ‘Because… he still cares about her?’ This was why I’d called Karen today. This was why I needed to speak to her, because I knew she wouldn’t be afraid to ask the questions I was too scared to voice.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said quietly, staring deep into my cappuccino, as though the answers were all there, lying just below the froth.

  ‘He’s protecting the wrong woman,’ she said darkly. ‘You’re the one he should be looking out for.’

  I gave a tired shrug, fighting the urge to say ‘I know’. ‘All he keeps saying is tha
t we just have to ignore it, and that everything will stop after the wedding.’

  ‘How can he be so sure, when he claims he doesn’t know who’s doing it?’ Karen was wasted in accountancy. She thought like a prosecutor during a quick-fire cross-examination, and that was just what I needed right then. ‘Unless he already suspects who it might be?’

  I shifted uncomfortably on the wooden bench, looking into the distance at the grey ribbon of path that wound through the park. There was a continual flow of early-morning joggers, providing a soundtrack of trainers slapping against tarmac.

  I didn’t want to risk Karen accidentally reading the memory of Darrell’s final words on my face. You’re so sure the person behind all of this is connected to me. But remember, there are people close to you who’ve been opposed to our wedding too.

  He’d refused to say anything else. He’d just left the ugly thought hanging in the air, like a dirty bomb. There were only two people he could possibly be thinking of, and the idea that either of them was involved in any way was totally ridiculous. Neither Karen nor my mother would ever resort to anything this spiteful or vicious. And the fact that Darrell could even hint that it might be them made me question how little he knew about me or the people I cared about.

  We didn’t speak much after that. We balanced on either edge of the mattress all night, leaving enough space for at least two more people to sleep between us. He’d apologised in the morning, pulling me into his arms and murmuring that he’d only said it because he was overwrought, and that he hadn’t really meant it. Of course it wasn’t them. It was a stranger. A jealous, petty, nasty-minded stranger. He’d kissed me on the mouth, and I could taste toothpaste and coffee on his lips, and the lingering sour trace of a lie. He still thought the perpetrator was someone close to me, and I was a long way from being able to either forget or forgive his words.

  It was thirteen days until our wedding.

  *

  ‘Hey, that’s your new friend down there, isn’t it?’ Karen asked, balling up her muffin wrapper and lobbing it into a nearby bin.

  I squinted into the morning sunshine, shielding my eyes with my hand like a visor. ‘I wouldn’t exactly call him that,’ I said, allowing my eyes to travel along the jogging path until they settled on Paul Winterscotch, who was just approaching a bend. He slowed down to take the corner, looked up and saw us. His pace slowed from a jog to a trot, as he raised one arm and waved. Feeling a little self-conscious, I raised my own arm and did the same.

  ‘Ooh, I think he’s heading this way,’ commented Karen unnecessarily, as Paul veered off the path and on to the grass and began to make his way up the slope towards us. ‘Want me to leave?’ she asked wickedly, which earned her a quick sideways glare.

  ‘Not as much as I want you to stop being ridiculous,’ I hissed back, through the smile I had ready and waiting for the very attractive man whose pace had now slowed down to a walk as he approached us.

  Karen was humming something under her breath, which sounded suspiciously like an off-key version of the theme from the Diet Coke advert. Not that I couldn’t appreciate what had prompted it. It was a warm summer morning, and Paul was wearing a standard jogger’s uniform of shorts and T-shirt, which clung interestingly to his body in a way that no woman – not even one less than two weeks away from her wedding – could fail to notice.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ he said, smiling easily to include both of us in his greeting.

  ‘It is,’ I said stupidly. Karen gave a burble of laughter into her coffee. I shot her a look that said, If you start choking now, there’s no way you’re getting a Heimlich from me, my friend.

  ‘You’ve been jogging?’ I asked ludicrously. Karen coughed. I shot her another glance.

  Paul either didn’t notice or was too polite to comment on my obvious awkwardness. ‘I try to get a few miles in each morning, whenever I can,’ he said, lifting a water bottle to his lips. I deliberately focused my attention on a particularly interesting bush rather than watch him swallow the refreshing liquid. That was one cliché too far, even for me.

  He lowered the bottle, his bright green eyes darkening a little in concern as he clocked the panda-like circles beneath my blue ones. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, his gaze darting briefly to Karen before settling once again on me.

  ‘Yes, everything is absolutely fine,’ I said, a lie I don’t think any of us believed.

  ‘Okay then,’ Paul said slowly. ‘Well, I should probably be heading back before I’m caught sneaking into the executive shower room again.’ His grin was more dazzling than the sun climbing the sky above us. ‘See you on the eleven o’clock collection,’ he called back over his shoulder as he jogged away.

  Karen waited until he was safely out of earshot. ‘There’s not one thing about him I don’t like,’ she said.

  ‘There’s not one thing about him that you actually know,’ I countered, bending to retrieve my empty coffee cup.

  ‘Not true,’ she argued. ‘I know he’s kind, considerate, drop-dead gorgeous, delivers the mail on time, and is heir to a very successful company. And if I’m not mistaken, he is also a little bit smitten with you,’ she added, winking comically. ‘Shame you’re already taken.’

  *

  It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I’d found myself listening out for the rumble of the mail cart each day. More than once my eyes would stray to the clock, and if I had to do anything that would take me away from my desk, I tended to do it after the eleven o’clock collection and delivery. Not that we spoke every time he dropped mail into my in tray. Sometimes I would be on the phone, or in conversation with a colleague, but even then our eyes would meet, and there would be something warm and friendly in them that I came to look forward to seeing each morning.

  About a week after the decapitated bouquet had been delivered, Paul dropped something on my desk, besides the mail. It was a small bunch of bright yellow gerberas, loosely wrapped in paper.

  I’d put down my pen, swivelling my chair slowly around to face him.

  ‘They were selling them off at half price on that market stall on the corner. I saw them when I went out to pick up a sandwich for lunch. I thought you might like them. They have heads,’ he added with a smile. For a moment I could think of nothing to say, and during my silence Paul began to look unsure, as though he’d just noticed an invisible line he probably shouldn’t have crossed.

  ‘When you buy a girl flowers, you’re not meant to tell her you got them cheap,’ I advised with a smile, as I bent my head to the blooms. ‘Girlfriends in particular don’t like that.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he replied easily, picking up a pile of letters from the out tray and dropping them into the cart, ‘when I next have one.’

  My eyes mutinously refused to leave his, however hard I tried to tug them away. ‘Thank you for the flowers, Paul. It was a really thoughtful gesture.’

  I’d kept them on my desk long past the time when their heads had grown droopy and they were ready for the bin. And I never once mentioned them to Darrell.

  5

  The ringtone was unfamiliar. Mine was ‘La Bamba’, which amused me every time it rang, except when I forgot to put it on ‘silent’ in meetings. Darrell’s had the far more generic tone that had come with the phone. But this was different; it sounded like a wind chime caught in a gentle breeze, which quickly rose through the Beaufort scale. It had easily escalated to a hurricane by the time we were both awake.

  ‘What is that? What’s ringing?’ I asked, squinting in the dawn light slicing through a gap in his curtains.

  ‘Ugh,’ grunted Darrell inarticulately beside me.

  ‘Is it an alarm… or a phone?’ I questioned, struggling up on to one elbow.

  The bed suddenly bounced, as Darrell leapt from it faster than someone performing a seat drop on a trampoline. He hurried across his bedroom floor, still naked. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he urged, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder. I was already sitting up by then, the duvet dr
opping around my waist. For the first time ever, he didn’t so much as glance at my breasts.

  The chiming had reached an impossible crescendo. No way was anyone going back to sleep now. Darrell yanked open the top drawer of his dresser and groped around in its shadowy depths. I caught a glimpse of something slim and black in his hand before he hurried from the room towards the lounge. He paused briefly to shut the bedroom door behind him. Another first, in less than twenty seconds. I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

  I always felt a little displaced when I spent the night at Darrell’s flat. Although I kept a small capsule collection of necessities in his bathroom, and clothes in his wardrobe, we were both more comfortable at my place. A sizeable section of my wardrobe was already taken up with Darrell’s clothes.

  We hadn’t intended to spend the night here. We’d had a final meeting with the caterers, which had overrun massively. We’d only swung past his flat so he could pick up a clean shirt for the morning, but when we’d returned to my car just ten minutes later it had refused to start.

  ‘Damn it,’ I muttered, as the turn of the key produced only a dull clicking noise. Darrell got me to spring open the bonnet and spent the requisite amount of time fiddling with things he probably shouldn’t touch, and jiggling wires that were best left alone.

  ‘You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?’ I asked, coming up behind him and winding my arms around his waist. He stopped studying the engine as though it was an alien spacecraft and turned to look at me with a boyish grin. ‘Haven’t got a clue.’ We both laughed, and I remembered all over again why I loved him. It shocked me a little that recently I’d started to forget.

  ‘I’ll call the AA in the morning,’ I said sleepily, speaking into the breadth of his back. ‘Why don’t we just stay here tonight?’

  Perhaps he did look a little reluctant, but I think that was probably because he hated disappointing me in any way. ‘Really? I don’t have a single thing in the fridge for the morning.’