The Wedding Dress

by Dani Atkins

  I lifted a hand and used it as a visor, as my eyes travelled down from the bandaged head to the stark white cast on his lower right leg. He was supporting his weight with the aid of crutches, which gave him a distinctly piratical appearance – in a world where pirates favoured black T-shirts and cargo shorts, that is. His smile was warm, but sobered dramatically as he looked down at my own injuries.

  ‘Well, you flat out beat me on the broken bones contest, my friend,’ he observed, his face not showing the same horror at my wounds that Aaron’s had done. ‘That’s quite a piece of reconstruction they had to do there, Miss Dumpty,’ he teased. Yet even while he was joking I could see the concern in his eyes. ‘How long were you in surgery?’

  ‘Seven hours,’ I replied.

  Without asking, he reached for the chair Aaron had so recently vacated and lowered himself on to it. ‘Makes my own trip to the operating theatre more like a visit to a drive-through,’ he said with a smile.

  He fumbled a bit with the crutches as he settled himself down. ‘I need to get better with these, or I’ll end up breaking the other ankle,’ he observed ruefully. And then, while I was still smiling, he leant over and did kiss me, on the cheek. ‘It’s very good to see you again, Bella Anderson. When they carted me off yesterday, I was pretty worried about leaving you behind.’

  ‘“We’re survivors. We’re going to get out of here,”’ I said, quoting the mantra he’d repeated to me not just once, but many times over the hours we’d been trapped.

  ‘I’m really sorry I never got to speak to your dad like I promised,’ Will apologised, looking around the room as though my missing parent might be hidden somewhere nearby. ‘Is he here now?’

  ‘He was until a couple of hours ago, but I sent him home to rest. Aaron’s here, though.’

  Once again, Will scoped the room as though an invisible boyfriend was about to magically appear.

  ‘He’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘Oh well, I won’t stay long, then,’ Will said, already looking as though he was about to leave. What was it about my visitors that made them want to head for the exit like Usain Bolt? ‘I really just wanted to check in on you, like I promised.’

  ‘I’m very glad you did.’ My eyes went to the clock on the wall, as I wondered if it might actually be better if Will wasn’t here when Aaron came back, seeing as he wasn’t actually thirteen years old, as I’d implied. And then I noticed the time. It was, almost to the second, twenty-four hours since the moment of impact on The Hybrid.

  ‘It was this time yesterday—’ I began, my voice thick with memories I knew would feature in my nightmares forever.

  ‘—that we each made a new friend,’ Will completed, reaching for my hand and squeezing it warmly. ‘That’s the way we should mark the moment: when something good came out of something dreadful.’

  15

  In a romcom or a cheesy Hollywood movie, that would definitely have been the moment when Aaron walked in, when my hand was being tightly held by a handsome stranger. But real life isn’t like a film script, and by the time Aaron returned some ten minutes later Will was already on his feet – or foot, in the singular, to be accurate – and getting ready to leave.

  Admittedly, Aaron’s eyes did flare slightly when he realised the person I’d been trapped on the ride with was a couple of feet taller and several decades older than I’d led him to believe. Thankfully he said nothing as I formally introduced them, as though we were all in a boardroom. In a manoeuvre that could easily have ended badly, Will juggled his crutches in order to extend his hand to Aaron.

  As the two shook hands, I could see Aaron quietly assessing the other man. I held my breath, not even sure why. ‘Bella told me you really helped her get through the ordeal yesterday,’ Aaron said, his voice grateful.

  ‘I think she helped me just as much,’ Will replied, smiling down at me. Their hands were linked across my body and I couldn’t help noticing how much paler Aaron’s looked compared to Will’s more suntanned one. I suppose it was hardly surprising, when one of them spent their days in an air-conditioned office, while the other travelled the world reviewing theme park rides. And really, what kind of a job was that for a man in his thirties? For the first time I wondered if what had happened on The Hybrid would make Will rethink his choice of career. Because I couldn’t imagine a time when I’d ever want to ride on a roller-coaster again… I looked down at my shattered legs… even if I could.

  ‘I’ll try and look in on you again when I have my next appointment at the fracture clinic,’ Will said with an easy smile.

  ‘That would be great,’ I replied, feeling my heart thumping forcefully in my chest as he swung himself closer to my bed.

  Please do not kiss me goodbye, requested my eyes, or at least that’s what I hoped they were saying. Aaron wasn’t the kind of a boyfriend to get jealous or possessive and had always been perfectly comfortable with the time I spent with my male friends. It was something that Sasha mislabelled as complacency, but which I called trust. However, I wasn’t sure if even he’d understand the strange way the accident had catapulted Will and me to a level of friendship it would otherwise have taken us months to achieve.

  Will bent lower and whether I liked it or not, it looked as though that kiss was going to happen. I could smell a woodsy fragrance from his shower gel as he approached. Maybe a fleeting peck on the cheek would be okay? Surely that wouldn’t be misconstrued? I could feel my face unconsciously tilting towards him as he swept down lower… and then retrieved his hoodie which had slipped off the back of the chair. Relief swept through me first, and then embarrassment, followed by a niggling disappointment I refused to acknowledge.

  *

  ‘He seems like a nice guy,’ Aaron said, glancing towards the door that Will had just exited through.

  ‘It’s hard to say, really. We didn’t exactly meet under normal circumstances. We probably have nothing in common in real life.’

  Aaron looked at me for a long moment, his expression thoughtful. ‘No, you probably don’t,’ he concluded.

  *

  Sasha arrived with armfuls of the kind of things that only your best friend would know to bring. I peered into a bulging Boots carrier bag, which was like a lucky dip of all my favourite products. The face creams alone must have cost her a fortune. There was everything in there, from emery boards to tampons. ‘I didn’t know how long you were going to be in here,’ she said by way of explanation. My eyes flashed over to Aaron, and she’d been catching and interpreting my glances for enough years to know that I was shooting down that topic before it took flight.

  ‘Aaron, you don’t happen to know if they’ve got a coffee shop down in the foyer, do you?’

  ‘There’s a Costa, I think.’

  Sasha gave that smile that had been twisting men around her little finger for as long as I could remember.

  ‘Two double caramel lattes?’ he guessed with a smile.

  ‘And something sticky to eat, with nothing less than a thousand calories in it,’ Sasha added. ‘Sod the skin-tight wedding dress.’

  The everything-is-absolutely-fine-here mask on my best friend’s face began to slide as soon as Aaron left the room, and then slipped off entirely when she lifted the sheet I’d asked the nurses to pull over my damaged legs. It looked bad, I knew that, but just how awful only hit home when Sasha stifled a gasp and her lower lip began to tremble. She started to cry, and it took only a moment or two before I joined in.

  Her slender arms went around me and we rocked together as we sobbed. Sasha smelled of sunshine and Tresemmé shampoo, mixed with an indefinable sweet aroma, which I swear exuded from her pores like a pheromone.

  ‘And there goes the make-up,’ she said eventually, peeling away from me to grab us a handful of tissues from a nearby box. We wiped our eyes and blew our noses almost in unison, the way we’d done in the past when the older kids had picked on us in primary school; or when Sasha’s beloved old spaniel, Jack, had passed away; or when neither of us had got
the grades we’d wanted for our GCSEs. I had so many memories with this girl, and even though the good ones were what we chose to remember, it was the bad ones that bound us to each other. They always would.

  *

  Sasha had claimed the seat closest to the bed, while Aaron was looking out of the window, nursing his takeaway coffee and trying very hard not to get caught up in the crossfire. The disagreement was rapidly spiralling into an argument, but he knew better than to intervene.

  ‘Absolutely not. No. It’s not going to happen.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that as it’s my wedding, that’s my decision to make, and not yours.’

  I glared at my best friend, marshalling my arguments, knowing as I did that she’d have an answer ready and waiting for every single one of them.

  ‘Everything is booked and paid for. You’ve got guests and family coming from all over the country – and abroad. You can’t just go pulling the plug on all those arrangements on a whim.’

  ‘It’s not a whim. I’ve given it a lot of thought.’

  ‘Sasha, at most you’ve had twenty-four hours to think about this. You’ve been planning your wedding for the best part of two years. Do the maths – it doesn’t add up.’

  ‘I’m not getting married without the most important person in my life there with me.’

  I gave a small snort, even though my heart was suddenly feeling a little too snug in my chest. ‘I think you’ll find the groom’s the one you can’t manage without. We bridesmaids are kind of expendable.’

  Sasha’s eyes were awash with emotion. ‘You’re not expendable. You’re my best friend, you always have been, and yesterday I could have lost you forever. The stupid theme park was my idea for a hen party, and so I’m the reason you’re there in that hospital bed with your legs all beaten up and shattered. And who knows when you’ll be—’

  I cut her off like a striking cobra.

  ‘Sasha, none of this is your fault. It was just a stupid accident – wrong place, wrong time. It doesn’t trace back to you.’ I sighed sadly, because I knew her decision was coming from a place of love, but I couldn’t allow her to sabotage her wedding plans because of me. ‘And what does Phil say about all this?’

  Sasha leant forward, unconsciously fiddling with the solitaire diamond on her left hand. ‘He understands how important you are to me. He’ll be okay with this.’

  You didn’t need to be an archaeologist to brush the dirt off the lie and realise that her fiancé was less than happy with calling off the wedding because of my accident. I closed my eyes and tried to find the right words to fix this.

  ‘Please, Sasha. Have you thought how dreadful it will make me feel if you cancel your wedding because of me?’

  ‘It’s not cancelling, it’s postponing,’ Sasha replied mulishly, but I could see that something of what I’d just said had hit home. ‘When you’re better, we’ll reschedule it.’

  My eyes met hers and I let my guard drop, revealing the truth as clearly as if I’d spoken the words out loud. Sasha’s eyes widened and stayed that way as her lips began to tremble, but I shook my head and threw a warning glance across the room at Aaron, whose back was still turned from us as he stared out of the window, pretending he was Switzerland.

  ‘I will be at your wedding,’ I promised, aware that Aaron had spun around with a hopeful look on his face. ‘In spirit,’ I added firmly, ‘I’ll be there in spirit. Remember, I know every last detail about this whole crazy shindig,’ I continued, remembering how I’d regaled most of them to Will on The Hybrid as we waited to be rescued. ‘I’ll be with you every single step of the way, but I’ll just be doing it from here,’ I said, forcing a smile up from an almost empty barrel. ‘And the upside is that I won’t have to wear that perfectly hideous dress you picked for us.’

  Sasha’s chin lifted in a challenge, but then I saw the smallest flicker of a smile at the edge of her mouth, and knew that I’d got this.

  ‘I still can’t believe you won’t see me get married.’ Fat salty tears were rolling down her cheeks. Even when she cried, Sasha looked pretty; that girl simply didn’t know how to do ugly. She was going to make a gorgeous bride, but we both knew I wasn’t going to be there to see it happen.

  ‘I’ll see the photos, and maybe someone could Skype the ceremony for me? It’ll be like I was there.’

  ‘I could do that,’ suggested Aaron tentatively, as though walking cautiously across a frozen pond and wondering whether the ice would crack. For just a moment I felt a frisson of something I wasn’t entirely proud of. The idea of Aaron going to my best friend’s wedding without me simply hadn’t occurred to me. It felt like a well-placed dagger sliding between my ribs. I hadn’t even begun to catalogue all the things I’d probably never be able to do because of the accident, but I already knew that missing Sasha become Mrs Phillip Walker would always be one of the hardest to accept.

  *

  ‘Why does everyone bring grapes? Why not bananas? Or mangos?’

  Wayne looked up from reading my hospital chart – which I’m sure he wasn’t meant to be doing – with his cheeks bulging like a gerbil’s, having scoffed half of the bunch he’d brought me, something else he probably shouldn’t be doing.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he mumbled, swallowing rapidly to get rid of the evidence and then starting to cough alarmingly.

  ‘If you’re choking over there, you’ll have to count me out for the Heimlich,’ I said, only half joking as he looked up with streaming eyes and reached for the covered jug of water on my bedside unit.

  ‘May I?’ he wheezed.

  I shrugged. ‘You might as well, you’ve already eaten most of my fruit.’

  This was Wayne’s fifth visit in the two weeks I’d been in hospital. Half of me was always delighted to see him, while the other half was busy worrying about who was looking after our business while he was visiting me.

  ‘Have you brought it?’ I asked, once Wayne’s colour had reverted to its normal degree of pallor rather than the vivid red of someone gasping their last breath. Wayne looked over his shoulder, giving a very poor imitation of someone in an old spy film.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ he asked, looking decidedly shady as he reached for the large leather bag he’d brought with him.

  ‘He had to meet a client this afternoon.’ I watched Wayne relax as though someone had let the air out of a balloon. ‘You aren’t seriously scared of my dad, are you? You two have always got on so well.’

  ‘When I’m not doing something he expressly told me not to do, we get along just fine,’ Wayne clarified. He drew a familiar black case from his leather bag. ‘And I’m not scared exactly… more extremely anxious not to make him mad at me.’

  ‘Yep. That’s the definition of scared, my friend,’ I said, holding out a hand for my laptop, the illegal contraband I’d persuaded him to bring to the hospital. I slid open the zip and surveyed my link with the outside world like a long-lost friend.

  ‘So it wasn’t “missing” then, as Dad claimed,’ I said wryly, as I turned on the laptop.

  ‘It was where you said it would be in your flat. But you shouldn’t be angry with him. He’s only trying to stop you from worrying about anything except getting better.’

  ‘I don’t think how many screen hours I’ve clocked up is going to affect how well my bones fuse together, one way or the other.’ There was an edge to my voice that I really didn’t like the sound of. I sighed sadly. ‘What Dad doesn’t seem to grasp is that feeling out of the loop just makes everything worse.’ The screen blinked into life with one of my favourite photographs of Sasha and me. It wasn’t new, I must have seen it a thousand times, but never before had it made me feel like crying. But these days, almost everything did.

  Wayne looked fake offended. ‘I shall try not to take umbrage that you clearly have very little confidence that I won’t run our business into the ground before you get back.’

  ‘If I come back,’ I said morosely. ‘Until the next operation, they’re not certain
about anything.’

  Wayne’s pale-blue eyes blinked a little more rapidly than usual. Terrific. Now I was making my visitors cry too. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down like a float on a pond. Enough of this, I told myself fiercely.

  ‘Umbrage, eh? Now there’s a word you rarely hear outside the 1950s.’

  Wayne looked instantly relieved to be drawn back into bantering territory. ‘You know me, full of surprises.’ He perched his small behind, much neater and more pert than mine, on the edge of the bed and gave my arm a gentle squeeze.

  ‘Seriously, Bella, I don’t want you worrying at all about Doggy Divas. Our Saturday girl – Sally – is going to work through the summer, and if we need to get someone in when she goes off to uni, then that’s what we’ll do.’

  I nodded and hoped Wayne couldn’t see behind my watery smile how much I missed making those kinds of decisions with him. But we’d been friends and partners for too long for him not to see it went deeper than that.

  ‘It’s just…’ I began, knowing even before I completed this sentence that I wasn’t going to be able to find the right words to make him fully understand. ‘I feel like I’ve lost something, something important.’ For a moment I thought he’d go for the easy quip, but thankfully he didn’t. He just nodded his head and urged me to continue. ‘I don’t feel like “me” any more. With Dad I put on this big brave act, and yet he still looks like someone who’s been sucked back into an old nightmare. Sasha is so overcome with guilt that I have to paste an idiotic happy face on whenever she visits, because I’m terrified she’ll see how devastated I am about missing her wedding and call the whole thing off. And then there’s Aaron…’

  My voice trailed away, and I looked up and met Wayne’s concerned gaze. ‘You’ve still not told him everything the doctors have said?’

  I shook my head sadly. ‘I keep hanging on, hoping for more positive news, but what if there isn’t any?’ I don’t think my voice had ever sounded so forlorn.