The Wedding Dress

by Dani Atkins

‘Not if my mum has anything to do with it,’ I replied, sinking my teeth into a considerably smaller piece.

  ‘Maybe all of this will turn out to be a good thing?’ Jamie suggested optimistically, in the way of someone who still hasn’t fully grasped the way my dad’s mind worked. ‘You know, maybe thinking his mum was sick, and then learning it wasn’t her, will have made him realise how much he cares about her, and that he only wants her to be happy.’

  ‘Do you spend all your free time reading Mills and Boon books or watching movies on the Lifetime channel, by any chance?’

  Jamie laughed good-naturedly, but understood my reference.

  ‘Dad does want Gran to be happy, but only in a way that’s acceptable to him. So, quietly grieving for Grandad in a respectful widow kind of way is fine, but telling the world that she’s fallen in love with another woman… not so much.’

  ‘It’s a generation thing,’ Jamie said, nodding towards the final slice of pizza, asking permission to eat it if I was done. It was a continual mystery to me how someone who ate that much could possibly have practically no fat on their body – or at least the bits of it I’d seen.

  ‘I think it’s more of a Gerald Preston thing,’ I replied with a resigned sigh as I began gathering up our empty drink cans and the pizza box. The sun was now all the way set, and I was suddenly very, very tired. It had been quite an exhausting day.

  Jamie got to his feet and extended a hand, pulling me up and against him. His body was taut and firm against the soft planes of mine and as his arms tightened around me, my face was already tilting up, ready for his kiss.

  ‘You taste of pizza,’ I murmured quite a few minutes later.

  ‘Should I apologise?’ Jamie asked, throwing an arm around my shoulders as we began to walk back to the parked car.

  I smiled up at him in the darkness. ‘No. Never.’

  26

  ‘Frank is dead.’

  I looked up from the keyboard, the final notes of Für Elise still reverberating in the air. For once the residents’ lounge was empty except for my grandmother and me. I looked at her blankly, and hated the way Dad’s continual insistence that she was suffering from early dementia kept intruding into my thoughts. It was certainly there now after this peculiar non sequitur.

  ‘Frank… my tortoise?’ I asked hesitantly, because I could think of no one else with that name. Not that my suggestion made much more sense than Gran had, because I’d been reliably informed that Frank had ‘gone to live on a farm’ at least ten years ago.

  Gran gave a small snort of laughter, which thankfully dispelled my fears in an instant. She was still here, one hundred per cent. ‘No, Mandy. Not your tortoise,’ she corrected patiently. ‘I’m talking about Frank, as in Mary and Frank.’

  ‘Ohhh,’ I said, as I successfully plucked the face of the Sunnymede resident from my memory banks, and then immediately followed it with another ‘Oh’, this one more sorrowful. Mary and Frank were one of the few married couples in the home. They’d moved in several years ago, and were so devoted you’d be forgiven for thinking they were joined at the hip. They did everything together, and were often found sitting huddled close at the back of this very room while I played. I’d even seen Frank sitting beside his wife in the compact hairdressing salon Sunnymede provided for its residents.

  Coincidentally, that was where Josie was right now, and to be honest I was surprised Gran hadn’t wanted to accompany her, because since Josie had come out of hospital the two of them had become every bit as inseparable as Mary and Frank.

  I felt guilty for having briefly forgotten who Frank was, and also genuinely saddened as I wondered how Mary would cope without him. A shiver ran through me. It was the same every time a Sunnymede resident passed away. It felt like death was a predator on the Serengeti, picking off the weakest of the elderly one by one. And every time it happened I felt as though I was one dreadful step closer to losing my grandmother.

  ‘That really is sad,’ I said.

  ‘Frank was in a lot of pain,’ Gran said pragmatically. ‘And now he’s not.’ I realised it didn’t matter how regularly I visited Sunnymede, I’d never be as sanguine about dying as its residents were. Not that Gran had felt that way when she’d almost lost Josie. Far from it.

  ‘The reason I mentioned Frank is that it ties in with some news I have.’

  I leant back on the piano stool and eyed my grandmother warily. ‘More news, Gran? I’m not sure we’ve all fully recovered from the last surprise bulletin yet.’ Dad certainly hadn’t, but Gran knew that anyway.

  My grandmother smiled, looking suddenly more than a little coy. ‘What I have to say is connected to that in a way, and also to Mary.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  There was a look of suppressed excitement twinkling in her eyes. Whatever she was about to tell me was clearly important to her.

  ‘With Frank gone, Mary’s decided to move out and live with her daughter.’

  She paused for a moment; there was nothing whatsoever wrong with her dramatic timing. ‘Which means their double suite will shortly become vacant… and the management team have asked if Josie and I are interested in taking it.’ She was looking at me now with a child-on-Christmas-morning kind of anticipation. ‘What do you think?’

  What I thought was that this time it might be my dad who’d have the heart attack, but there was no way on earth I was going to say that to her. I’d walk barefoot over hot coals rather than extinguish that look from her face.

  ‘I think that sounds absolutely wonderful, Gran, if that’s what you and Josie both want.’

  To be honest, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Gran was hardly ever to be found in her own room these days. Despite the home having an excellent team of qualified nurses, Gran was happier keeping a close eye on Josie. And it wasn’t hard to understand why.

  It was only when Josie was well on the mend that I learnt it had actually been Gran who’d found her, collapsed on the floor of her room. If Gran hadn’t decided to knock on her friend’s door when she did… well, it could all have ended very differently. So I understood why sharing the double accommodation made perfect sense. But it was more than that, which I quickly realised when Gran began to speak in an almost wistful voice.

  ‘It would be very nice to share our “goodnights” and “good mornings” without having to walk down a corridor to do so. And after what happened, it makes you realise you never know how many of those you have left.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Gran,’ I pleaded, sliding my arm through hers as we walked back to her room.

  ‘Life’s precious, sweetheart. We shouldn’t waste a single minute of it.’

  *

  Gran waited until the door was safely shut on her suite before revealing a concern that she obviously hadn’t felt comfortable voicing in the more public areas.

  ‘The thing that’s troubling me, Mandy,’ she began, already looking a little flushed, ‘is I’m not sure what people will think of us “moving in” together.’

  I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms, and when I did I could feel my cheeks heating up in a race to match the colour of Gran’s. This really wasn’t a conversation anyone should be having with their grandmother.

  ‘Will people think that Josie and I are “living in sin”?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think anyone calls it that any more, Gran,’ I said, trying to shut the door on some very unnecessary visuals that were trying to push their way into my head. ‘Nobody thinks anything at all about people living together these days.’

  ‘Well, they did in my generation.’

  I opened my mouth to tactfully remind her that we were actually in a different century now, but she shot me down with a very effective winning argument. ‘And everyone at Sunnymede is from my generation, not yours.’

  As much as I wanted to make light of Gran’s concerns, because they seemed so groundless to me, it was impossible to ignore the worry lingering in her eyes. Gran and Josie were th
e least likely people on the planet to be cast in the role of Scarlet Woman, and yet I suspected that was what she was afraid of.

  There had to be a solution, and there was, a glaringly obvious one, and surprisingly it wasn’t me who found it, it was Josie, who joined us a moment later fresh from her visit to the hairdresser. She kissed Gran on the cheek and then kissed me too, which was a new thing, but really rather lovely, as it felt as though we were already becoming part of the same family. As she did so, the magazine she had tucked under her arm slipped free and tumbled to the floor. I bent to retrieve it.

  ‘They said it was all right for me to take it back to my room and finish reading it,’ she explained on a rush, believing my furrowed brow was because she was in possession of this week’s edition of Hello! magazine. But that wasn’t the reason. Wheels were turning in my head; ideas forming and slotting into place. Of course. How perfect. Why did I not think of this before?

  I held the magazine where it had fallen open on a double-page spread of two well-known actors, both dressed in Daz-white designer suits, exchanging their vows in the grounds of a stately mansion.

  ‘That’s it!’ I cried, practically bouncing on my feet as the solution to everything was quite literally set out before us. ‘There’s the answer to your problem.’

  Two sets of cataract-impaired eyes turned my way, their faces equally mystified.

  ‘You should get married.’

  *

  ‘Have you lost your mind? Have they?’

  Dad’s reaction was disappointing, but hardly a surprise.

  ‘As if my mother’s head wasn’t filled with enough crazy ideas, you had to go and add one more.’

  ‘Getting married isn’t crazy. Not if they love each other.’ Dad was looking at me as though I might possibly be someone he’d never met before. My eyes dropped guiltily to my plate, but there was no help there among the lamb chops and peas.

  ‘I thought after what happened with Josie you finally understood how important she is to Gran,’ I said, addressing my words to my dinner. A single tear plopped silently into my gravy, swiftly followed by another.

  ‘As a friend,’ Dad muttered tersely, attacking his own chop ferociously, as if it had personally offended him.

  ‘I think it’s quite clear by now, Gerald, that your mother’s feelings for Josie go much deeper than that.’

  Dad’s eyes flew to Mum. Et tu, Brute? they seemed to shriek.

  ‘I know Gran was a bit taken aback when I first mentioned it…’ I began, slow to realise I was slipping my own head into a noose. My voice trailed off as Dad slowly turned his face towards me.

  ‘So you admit this was all your idea? You and those misguided idiots at the home. What were they even thinking of, suggesting that they should share a suite?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Dad. Being supportive, maybe? You should give it a try sometime.’

  ‘Mandy.’ It was a single word, but I recognised Mum’s tone from a thousand childhood reprimands.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘But Gran needs someone in her corner and I just want her to be happy – that’s the only reason I suggested it. And I’m sure they’d have thought of this themselves… eventually,’ I defended. My eyes were once again swimming with tears. There were two dads now instead of one, and both of them looked furious.

  Would Gran and Josie have come up with this idea if I hadn’t planted it in their heads? I couldn’t say for sure. And admittedly there had been a long awkward moment of dumbfounded silence when I’d suggested the marriage idea.

  Gran’s eyes had dropped to the magazine in my hands. ‘I rather thought that kind of wedding was only for famous people and celebrities?’

  ‘No, Gran. Not at all. Same-sex marriage is for anyone who wants it. It’s been legal here for years.’

  She was shaking her head from side to side and Josie’s face was locked in wide-eyed astonishment. They weren’t ready for this, I realised, far too late to take it back. Maybe it was a generation thing. Or perhaps it was too soon after Grandad, or too much for the Sunnymede residents to accept. I was so busy feeling pleased with myself for having found a solution that I’d failed to notice I’d crossed a big fat line. I might have done it with the best of intentions, but I’d suggested something that had no place coming from me. It should have come from them.

  They needed to discuss this in private, and I hastily made a flimsy excuse about having left my sheet music in the lounge and exited Gran’s suite almost at a run. The last thing I saw as I shut the door were the two elderly ladies, wearing matching stunned expressions, staring at each other.

  There really is only so long you can pretend to be looking for something that isn’t lost in the first place. After twenty minutes in the residents’ lounge, I realised I was going to have to go back and face the music. Pun totally unintended. I knocked lightly on Gran’s door, my rehearsed apology for interfering all cued up and ready to go. But the words died on my lips when I saw them sitting side by side, holding hands. Josie’s wrinkled cheeks were damp with tears and as she lifted up a hand to wipe them away I saw my grandmother’s signet ring was now sitting on the third finger of her left hand.

  Josie’s smile was radiant through her tears as she looked at me. ‘I’ve never had a proposal before. At my age, I never thought I’d hear anyone say those words to me.’ And then she was crying again, and so was Gran, and so was I. It was one of the best moments of my life.

  Unlike the one right now at the dinner table, which definitely felt like one of the worst.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ declared my dad, getting to his feet so abruptly that his chair almost tumbled over. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he’d had enough of the situation or his dinner, which, despite being his favourite meal, had scarcely been touched. ‘I’m going out for a walk.’

  My mother glanced at the rivulets of rain streaming down the kitchen window.

  ‘In this?’

  I don’t think he’d even noticed the torrential summer storm, but once he’d made up his mind about something, it took a miracle for Dad to ever change it. Perhaps it would have been better for everyone if I’d remembered that a little earlier myself.

  *

  ‘But apart from watching countless episodes of Don’t Tell the Bride, what do you actually know about organising a wedding?’

  ‘That’s not enough?’ I asked, stifling my laugh so that it wouldn’t travel beyond my closed bedroom door. On the other end of the phone, Jamie chuckled warmly.

  ‘All I have to do is not have the ceremony on a football pitch, hold the reception in a rugby club, or get the bride dropped in by parachute.’

  ‘Piece of cake then,’ said Jamie.

  ‘Ugh… cake, I forgot about that,’ I said, reaching for a notepad where my scribbled ‘to do’ list was growing worryingly.

  ‘Well, if you need a chauffeur, count me in,’ Jamie assured. ‘I’m sure Pete would let me borrow the car again if you want it.’

  I sighed softly. Who knew that planning a wedding involved so much preparation? Not that I regretted telling Gran and Josie that I was happy to be their unofficial wedding planner, but perhaps I should have given a bit more thought to what I was actually taking on.

  A light warning knock on the door gave me just enough time to whisper a hurried goodbye to Jamie, before Mum slipped into my room. She was carrying a mug of tea, the Preston family equivalent of a white flag. In a way I hoped looked entirely nonchalant, I flipped over the notepad so that it was face down on the duvet.

  ‘How’s Dad? Has he calmed down yet?’

  Mum motioned for me to move up and perched on the edge of my mattress. I was suddenly thrown back a decade, to a time of bedtime stories and cuddles goodnight. How much simpler it had been to be a good daughter back then.

  ‘Your dad is fine,’ said Mum with a sigh. ‘Just as long as no one mentions the words wedding, or double suite, or even the name Josie.’

  ‘He was so good when Josie was sick though,’ I sighed.
‘Arranging and paying for a cab to take Gran to and from the hospital every day. I really thought that meant he was coming around to the idea.’

  Mum raised her eyebrows. They were neat and light brown, and could hold entire conversations without her lips ever needing to move.

  ‘Well… I’d hoped he had,’ I completed sadly.

  We were both silent for a while and then Mum glanced down at the notepad on the duvet beside me. I’d often suspected mothers had X-ray vision, and this just confirmed it.

  ‘You’re going to help her arrange it, aren’t you?’

  There was no point in lying, she’d know straight away if I was.

  ‘I have to, Mum. She has no one else to do it for her.’

  Mum nodded, as though this was entirely what she had suspected. ‘I can’t help you, Mandy, you know that, don’t you? It would hurt your dad too much.’

  This time it was my turn to nod. Asking for her assistance would put her in an impossible position, making her choose between two people she loved. And there was already far too much of that going on in our family at the moment.

  ‘I know that, Mum. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Have you thought about how much this will all cost? Weddings are expensive and most of Gran’s money is set aside to pay for Sunnymede.’

  There were pound signs next to each bullet point in my notebook, and every one of them had a question mark beside it.

  ‘Not really. I’ll find the money from somewhere.’

  Mum got to her feet, and her smile as she looked down at me meant more than anything she could ever say. She put her hand into her pocket, drew out an envelope and passed it to me. I lifted the flap, gasping softly when I saw the bundle of crisp, bank-fresh twenty-pound notes.

  ‘It’s not much,’ she apologised, ‘but it will get you started.’

  My head was bobbing up and down, because at that moment words were beyond me. She didn’t need them anyway; she knew. She bent and kissed the top of my head and suddenly I wished I really was seven years old again.

  ‘Thank you, Mummy.’ How many years had it been since I’d called her that? Too many.