by Dani Atkins
‘Tomorrow,’ he had said, making the word sound like a promise as he kissed me one last time before running lightly down the steps to the waiting cab.
‘Tomorrow,’ I had repeated softly in the empty foyer.
*
‘So what time is the florist coming? Is it before scary Gwendoline arrives with your dress?’
I smiled because I knew exactly what she meant about the owner of Fleurs Wedding Gowns. ‘I just knew she didn’t trust that I was listening properly when she was showing me how to lace up your dress. Still, I’m glad you booked their “Dress the Bride” service, even if it does mean I now won’t be able to claim my Good Bridesmaid badge.’
I got to my feet and squeezed Karen’s shoulder. ‘Oh, you’ll still get it,’ I said warmly, not knowing how true those words were soon going to be.
*
My mother arrived shortly before the flowers. I wished she could have been just a few minutes later. It was hard to disguise my instinctive panic as I opened the delivery of cardboard boxes and peeled back the layers of tissue paper. My fingers were trembling as I tore away the final one, as though this was suddenly a high-stakes game of pass the parcel.
The tissue paper floated to the floor as the boxes revealed nothing more than the bouquet, buttonholes and corsages we had ordered. Even so, my fingers rummaged beneath the flowers, looking for a hidden card covered with writing I would instantly recognise. There was none.
‘Have you lost something?’ asked my mother, looking on curiously as I slowly withdrew my hands from beneath the blooms. I felt a small embarrassed flush warm my cheeks.
‘I just wanted to make sure everything was here,’ I said, lying very badly indeed.
Karen returned to her own room to slip into her bridesmaid’s dress, leaving my mother and me alone for the first time in days.
‘If you’re sure you don’t need me to help you into your dress, I think I’ll take the buttonholes down and wait in Reception with your father. I do believe he’s rather nervous about his role today,’ she confided, revealing so much more than she realised by the softening in her cornflower-blue eyes and the curve of her lips.
‘You and Daddy seem to be getting on very well,’ I commented, wondering where the childlike title had suddenly sprung from, after decades of absence.
‘We do seem to be,’ she admitted. She reached for the box of buttonholes, her gaze fixed on them as she added quietly, ‘I know I was initially opposed to it, but actually I’m glad you asked him to give you away today. It means a great deal to him.’
I looked up and was surprised to see her eyes were full of tears. She never cried, and the fact that she was doing so now, on my wedding day – a day she had never wanted to see – was even more astounding. ‘I love you, Suzy, and I am proud to call you my daughter. Whatever happens today, I want you to always remember that.’
It wasn’t until she had disappeared, with the box of buttonholes tucked securely beneath her arm, that it occurred to me what a peculiar remark that was.
*
‘Stand perfectly still now,’ commanded Gwendoline, her hands poised above the satin ribbons and loops, like a concert pianist about to perform a concerto. There was certainly rhythm and fluidity in her movements as her fingers flew with lightning speed, threading, looping and tightening as she went. In less than half the time it would have taken Karen to accomplish, my dress was snugly laced against my body.
‘I’m kind of disappointed you didn’t do the knee-in-the-middle-of-the-back thing,’ said Karen, which made us both smile. Gwendoline did not join in.
‘No one needs to do that with a Fleurs gown,’ she declared, before allowing one small smile to escape. ‘They fit the bride far too well for that.’
With my dress fully fastened, all that remained was to step into the white satin shoes with their tiny sparkling embellishments, which stood side by side next to the bed.
‘Just like Cinderella,’ Karen said, her voice choked as my feet slipped into the shoes. We hugged, and I saw the small wince that Gwendoline couldn’t quite suppress.
There was only one thing left to complete my look. I crossed over to the dressing table and reached for the small black velvet box that Darrell had given me the previous night, just before he left. I had taken the box carefully from his outstretched hand. It looked old, possibly even antique. The velvet pile was worn smooth in places, as though it had been opened by the fingers of many generations before mine. Almost reverently, I had lifted the lid and stared down at the white satin interior, where a pair of antique diamond drop earrings had twinkled back up at me. I didn’t need to ask if they were real. Cubic zirconia is good, but it doesn’t sparkle like that.
‘Oh Darrell, these are absolutely exquisite,’ I had breathed, my fingers grazing gently across the surface of the glittering stones.
‘They were my great-grandmother’s,’ he’d said quietly.
I’m sure my surprise must have been written all over my face, but he never saw it, for his attention was only on the family heirloom. ‘They’ve been passed down through my family, and every Kingston bride has worn them. Will you wear them tomorrow?’ he had asked, his voice oddly unsure and emotional.
‘I would be honoured to,’ I had answered truthfully.
*
His family should be here to see this, I thought, as I stood before the mirror and threaded the beautiful earrings through my ears. Whatever has happened, the fact that he’d given me the earrings to wear meant that family was still important to him.
‘That just leaves the veil to secure in place and then I will take my leave,’ began Gwendoline, reaching for the garment bag that contained the last accessory to turn me into a fairy-tale bride. Her fingers were scooping the soft folds of fabric from the bag when the telephone beside the four-poster bed rang.
I stared at it for two rings before taking a step towards the bed. I think Karen asked if she should get it, but her voice sounded far away and distant, as though she was talking to me from another dimension. All I could hear was the ringing of the phone and the resulting thud of my heart. I shouldn’t know what this was. And yet I did. I shouldn’t be fearful; it could be something entirely innocent. And yet I already knew it wasn’t.
My palm felt damp as I reached for the receiver, but I didn’t drop it. My answer was already on my lips, even before the receptionist in the hotel foyer had finished speaking.
‘Send her up,’ I said, with a dull feeling of inevitability.
*
Not surprisingly, Karen initially refused to leave. ‘Please just go and wait back in your room,’ I implored, half pushing her towards the door. She was surprisingly sturdy and immovable, digging her kitten-heeled bridesmaid sandals into the pile of the carpet, like a stubborn seaside donkey.
‘No way. This woman is a bona fide nut job. This is exactly the sort of person who turns up wielding an axe.’ She nodded emphatically, as though a lifetime of prophecies were about to come shockingly true.
‘Tell you what, if she’s carrying one, I just won’t let her in,’ I said, my fingers firmly fastened on the flesh of her upper arm as I continued to attempt to propel her from my hotel room.
‘This isn’t something to joke about,’ Karen said, her voice dire.
‘I’m not laughing,’ I replied, with unnatural calm. For hadn’t I always known that this – or something very like it – was coming? Hadn’t I known it, in fact, from that very first moment when I’d found the card on my windscreen?
‘Would one of you two young ladies please explain to me exactly what is going on here?’ enquired Gwendoline, a little surprised by the turn of events, but largely unfazed. My veil was still draped reverently over her extended arms, like a beloved pet serpent.
‘Suzanne is about to do something extremely foolish, and I’m trying to stop her,’ declared Karen, her voice beginning to crack from both fear and frustration. Gwendoline’s pencilled eyebrows rose with perfect synchronicity. ‘She’s going to invite a crazy wo
man into her hotel room.’
The eyebrows managed, incredibly, to rise even higher. Gwendoline eyed first Karen and then me, and I could almost hear her thinking that the room might already have its full quota of those.
‘We don’t know that she’s crazy,’ I countered, directing my comment to the owner of the bridal shop. Aside from an almost imperceptible flare of her nostrils, Gwendoline still appeared remarkably unperturbed by Karen’s dramatic statement. Did this sort of thing actually happen more than the bridal magazines I’d read would have you believe? I wondered.
‘This woman, is she one of your guests?’
‘Hardly,’ muttered Karen, before I had a chance to reply. ‘She’s the groom’s ex-girlfriend.’
‘Ahh, I see,’ said Gwendoline on a sigh. Very carefully, she began folding the veil back into its garment bag. Perhaps after a lifetime in this profession, she really had seen it all before.
I stopped trying to manhandle my friend like an overenthusiastic bouncer, and went instead to the door. I might have looked calm, but my heart was beating fast as I swung it open. I’d been half expecting to find her there already, the woman who’d haunted my life like a living ghost for the last few months. But the corridor was still empty.
‘Please, Karen. Just take Gwendoline with you and wait in your room. I need to do this alone.’
Karen hesitated, hearing something in my voice that said more than words could ever convey. Very reluctantly, she took a step towards the hallway.
‘Don’t shut the door,’ she instructed. ‘Don’t turn your back on her. Don’t—’
‘She’s probably just going to yell at me,’ I said, my eyes widening in alarm as Karen turned on her heel, strode back into the room, and headed for the breakfast tray. With a meaningful look she bent down and gathered up every single piece of gleaming silver cutlery.
‘Let’s not take any unnecessary chances, eh?’ she said, with an armful of flatware clasped against her chest. At any other time I would have laughed, but not just then.
‘Please be careful,’ urged Gwendoline, as she followed a reluctant Karen into the hallway. ‘And I don’t just mean of the dress,’ she added. That was the closest I came to smiling. My own well-being was clearly not Gwendoline’s major concern here.
I watched them all the way down the corridor until they reached Karen’s room. There was an unnatural stillness to the hallway after my friend’s door had clicked to a close. The only sound I could hear was my own ragged breathing. All I could do now was wait.
From somewhere unseen, around a bend in the corridor, I heard the subtle ping of a lift reaching my floor.
*
‘There’s a woman here in reception who says she has to speak to you urgently before your wedding,’ the receptionist had said, with an obvious apology in her voice. Had the hotel employee looked at her watch before making the call up to my room? Yes, I imagined she had. She would know our ceremony was due to begin in a little over half an hour. Had she glanced across at my father, who was probably pacing the foyer, rehearsing his speech one last time as he waited for me? Undoubtedly. ‘She says you’ll know who she is. And that you’ll want to see her,’ the receptionist had added uncertainly.
That last comment was curiously both right and wrong. Her identity wasn’t in question. It was finally time for me to meet Catherine, the woman who’d shared Darrell’s life before me. But did I want to see her? No. Absolutely not. And yet I knew that if this was ever to be over, I had to.
I waited for her knock on my door. Three sharp raps, neither timorous nor bold, but somewhere in between. I walked jerkily towards the door, as though my knees had forgotten that they knew how to bend. I’m not sure which one of us gasped first. Perhaps we did it simultaneously? After all, we had so much else in common, why not our reactions? She seemed genuinely shocked to see me in my wedding dress. What on earth had she expected? I was due to get married in thirty minutes, what else would I be wearing?
The reason for my own gasp was harder to pin down. Some of it came from fear, I’m sure, but the rest of it was from a vague feeling of déjà vu or recognition. I knew this woman, didn’t I? I took two steps backwards into my room and she countered them by taking two across the threshold.
She was a fraction taller than me, and perhaps a year or two older. That surprised me. By her actions, by the childish campaign she had waged, I’d always imagined that she’d be much younger, in her early twenties perhaps. This woman in her thirties looked outwardly respectable and sensible, and somehow that made her even more dangerous. She cleared the edge of the door and pushed it shut behind her. So much for Karen’s advice about keeping it open.
I continued to stare at the woman, even as her large brown eyes did the same to me. There was something so very familiar about her, as though I had seen her many times before, but in a different setting. It was that unsettling feeling you get when you encounter someone out of context: the shop assistant you pass in the park; the doctor’s receptionist pushing a trolley in the supermarket.
‘You’re prettier than I thought. Up close, you’re much prettier.’
This was not the time to thank her for the compliment, and I truly didn’t think she’d intended her words to be one anyway.
‘What are you doing here?’ It was a good opener for me to begin with, but she stared at me as though I might be pretty, but I was also incredibly dumb.
‘I came for your wedding, of course,’ she said, giving a brittle laugh, as though something inside her was broken.
‘You’re not welcome here,’ I said, hearing the tremble in my voice and hoping that she could not. ‘I don’t want you here, and Darrell certainly doesn’t want you here.’
She laughed again, and I wondered if Karen had been right. Was she actually insane?
‘Oh, I’m certain Darrell doesn’t want me anywhere near here. Or near you. And yet he must have known I would come, that I had to come,’ she said, sounding almost as though the decision to be here, in my hotel room, on the morning of my wedding, had been forced upon her.
‘Listen, Catherine, I know—’
She gasped and took a half-step backwards, as though I’d struck her. ‘You know who I am then? You know who I am, and yet you’re still going through with it? You’re still going to marry him?’ Her voice was incredulous, as though I was the one in the wrong here.
‘I realise you’re very upset. I know that for you to be here today, you must once have loved Darrell very much.’
‘Of course I love him. I’ll always love him. That’s the deal though, isn’t it? You’re never allowed to stop. Even if you hate them, even if you hate what they’re doing, you still can’t stop loving them.’
‘You have to realise that it’s over between you and Darrell. I’m sorry, but you have to accept that and leave us both alone. I’m the one he’s marrying.’
‘Not if I can help it.’
Suddenly I was very glad that Karen had removed the sharp implements from the room, because that had sounded very much like a threat.
‘You can’t force him to go back to you,’ I said, inching slightly backwards. Perhaps if I could just get to the phone beside the bed, I’d be able to call down to Reception, to summon help. I glanced over at my mobile, which was sitting uselessly on the other side of the room.
Catherine was speaking, but I was too preoccupied with trying to reach the hotel phone to take in what she said. She took a step towards me, her hands reaching out and grasping my shoulders, hard enough to leave marks.
‘What did you say?’
With difficulty, I shrugged off her hands; they felt like claws. Ten red circles stood out like measles spots on my bare skin, showing how hard she had grabbed me.
‘I… I…’
‘You said something about me getting Darrell back? As if we were a couple? Is that what you meant?’
I nodded, my throat too constricted with fear of this wild-eyed woman to articulate a reply.
‘God. You really don’t kn
ow a fucking thing, do you? Darrell isn’t my lover.’ She gave a small sound of disgust. ‘He’s my brother.’
*
I don’t remember moving to the chair, but suddenly it was there, right behind me. I sank on to it, and after a moment Catherine crossed to the one on the opposite side of the coffee table and did the same.
‘Darrell doesn’t have a sister,’ I said dumbly, even as my eyes were running over her face. Those eyes. The shape of the nose, the fullness of her mouth. No wonder she had looked familiar.
‘We’re twins,’ Catherine added without expression. She gave a laugh that held no humour at all. ‘Lovely to know that he’s still pretending I don’t exist. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying to save him.’
‘Save him?’ I asked, feeling like I was on a carousel that was spinning as fast as a centrifuge. ‘Save him from what? From whom?’
There was pity on her face then, only I didn’t know who it was for: her, me or Darrell.
‘From himself. I’m here to save him from himself… again.’
She paused, and I wondered if she was waiting for me to say something, but I had so much to say, so many questions to ask, they were bottlenecked in my throat, choking me. At last, one managed to squeeze through.
‘Has this got anything to do with the feud he has with his – with your – parents?’
Her eyes, Darrell’s eyes, opened wider. ‘Oh, so you know about that, do you?’
There was a bitterness in her voice that scored me like acid. ‘I only know that he doesn’t speak to them any more. That there was a serious falling-out. And that they moved to Australia.’
Catherine laughed then, and for a moment I wondered if she really might be unstable after all. Was that why Darrell had never told me about her? ‘Australia? Oh my God, if this wasn’t all so dangerous, it really would be funny. They’ve never been any further than Calais in their entire lives. They live in Wales. Not in the same town where we grew up. Obviously. And we all use my mother’s maiden name these days. Except for Darrell, of course. He’s still a Kingston.’
