Kate's Wedding (25 page)

‘She’s not worth it!’ Susie cried.

‘You fucking bitch,’ Diana spat in Lucy’s face. ‘I’ll show you the fucking moves that turned the man you want into my fiancé. If you know what’s good for you,’ she hissed, ‘you’ll stay away from him. You’ll stay away from this town. You’ll go back to Australia, you fucking dingo slut.’

With that, Diana ground Lucy’s diamanté clip beneath her foot as a final gesture.

‘Let’s go for a massage,’ suggested Susie as she pulled Diana away from her rival. Diana swept from the room, followed by her terrified bridesmaids.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Nicole over and over. ‘I had no idea. I swear I had absolutely no idea.’

As the last of Diana’s party left the studio, Lucy gathered up what remained of her costume. Clare hurried to help her.

‘Is that?’

‘The witch that Ben is marrying? Yeah. You can see who’s got the balls in that relationship.’

Clare reached to touch a bloodied patch above Lucy’s eye.

‘You could call the police and get her done for assault. You’ve got plenty of witnesses.’

‘I hardly think any one of those women is going to be queuing up to support me, do you? Besides, I just want an end to it. I had no intention of sleeping with another woman’s man. I’m mortified that it happened and I just want to put it behind me.’

‘You should at least tell him what happened.’

‘What’s the point? It isn’t as though he doesn’t know what he’s marrying.’

‘You’ve got to feel sorry for him really,’ said Clare, ‘spending the rest of his life with that.’

‘He made his bed,’ said Lucy.

Chapter Forty-Three

Meeting her rival face to face had really rattled Diana. The photograph on the company website – of course, Diana had looked when she first found out about the fling – had really not done Lucy much justice. In real life, she was far prettier and slimmer than Diana had imagined. Diana was not at all happy to find that out. Suddenly, Ben’s transgression seemed much more understandable. Lucy was a far more formidable rival than Diana would ever have believed.

‘I can’t trust him,’ she said to her mother and Nicole. ‘He said that he wouldn’t have any strippers on his stag night – that was bad enough – but he told me that woman had gone to Australia. He swore on his life.’

‘I thought he said she had just gone back for Christmas,’ said Nicole.

‘I’m sure that’s not what he said,’ Diana retorted angrily. ‘I thought she was gone for ever. She’s still here, Mum. She’s in Southampton. I could bump into her at any time. I don’t think I can guarantee that next time I’ll react so calmly. Perhaps I shouldn’t go through with the wedding.’

‘If you don’t marry Ben, then that burlesque tart will have won,’ said Susie. ‘You’ve got to go through with the wedding.’

‘But how can I make sure he won’t cheat on me again?’

‘You make him aware of the consequences. Like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas. She got a clause in their pre-nup that said he had to pay her millions for every time he slept with another woman. Seems to have worked for them.’

‘Only because he’s nearly seventy, Mum. He was ready to settle down. What if Ben isn’t?’

‘He is, my love. Of course he is. He wouldn’t have asked you to marry him otherwise.’

But how could you ensure that a man wouldn’t stray? There was no point asking Nicole. She’d never had a steady boyfriend. And as they had a calming cup of coffee in the hotel bar, Diana studied her mother critically. Susie hadn’t managed to hang on to her man.

Diana’s mother had taught her that even someone with her looks should not take a man’s attention for granted. It wasn’t enough to say yes to a date. You had to make sure a man was properly reeled in before you let him ‘get fresh’ with you, as Susie put it.

‘Men don’t respect a woman who lets them have what they want without a struggle. I didn’t make your father struggle and look what happened to me.’

‘Mum,’ said Diana supportively, ‘Dad would never have left you if she hadn’t trapped him.’

The ‘trap’, as Diana called it, was her half-brother, Charlie. Charlie’s mother was Chelsea. Dave met Chelsea when he was fitting kitchens on the new-build estate where Chelsea worked as a sales rep in the show house. Charlie was conceived in the master bedroom, on a bed that looked like a double but was actually only three-quarter-size. Chelsea explained that scaled-down furniture was a trick building companies often used to make the houses they were selling look more spacious.

Anyway, Charlie was conceived the year Diana turned eighteen. In actual fact, the news of his impending birth broke on Diana’s birthday. Dave had tried to put things right. He promised Chelsea he would pay for her to go to a spa in St Lucia for a fortnight if she would terminate the pregnancy. Chelsea accepted his kind offer of a holiday but refused to get rid of the baby. She announced as much by breezing into Diana’s birthday party in a midriff-baring top that showed her new bump to best effect. Susie filed for divorce a few weeks later.

Dave had tried to explain to his daughter that the marriage had been moribund for a long time. Why else would he have been attracted to Chelsea in the first place? But as far as Diana was concerned, it was clear the blame lay with her father. She forgave him to the extent that she allowed him to buy her a car and pay for driving lessons, but she vowed she would never speak to Chelsea, even when the bitch became her father’s second wife. Diana had never met Charlie. She wasn’t even interested in seeing the photograph of him on Dave’s mobile phone.

It was her dad’s betrayal of her mother that made Diana so determined that Ben would not do the same to her. She needed to be certain of his love. For a start, she wanted to cut the hen party short and go home at once. There was no way she was going to leave Ben alone in the house overnight now that she knew Juicy Lucy was still in town. She called Ben up to let him know what had happened.

‘She threw the first punch,’ Diana lied, ‘just in case she calls you up and says otherwise.’

By the time she got back to the house, Diana was feeling a little calmer. Her mother and Nicole had talked her down from the peak of her fury. Her recovery had been helped by an assurance from the spa hotel’s manager that they would not be using Juicy Lucy again. The last thing the hotel needed was for Diana to make a formal complaint.

When she got home, Diana found Ben sitting in front of the television, with a round of sandwiches on his lap. Clearly, news of Diana’s unfortunate encounter with the slag from his office had not ruined his appetite. Not yet, anyway. When he saw Diana’s face, Ben put his half-eaten sandwich back on the plate. Suddenly, he wasn’t hungry any more.

‘I have forgiven you,’ Diana announced. ‘I accept that you didn’t know that Ed had booked that lap-dancing club for your stag do. I even accept that Ed didn’t really know what he was doing. I’ve decided he can still be your best man. I also accept that you weren’t to know that Lucy had been booked as the entertainment for my hen night. But I’m upset, Ben, and I want us to do something in the service that represents the way things are going to be from now on.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been talking to Mum and Nicole on the drive back here about what would reassure me and they have suggested that we write our own vows. I think they’re right. We should write something more personal to us than the religious ones.’

‘Diana, we’re getting married in a cathedral. I don’t think we can write our own vows.’

‘I’m going to tell Dad to ask tomorrow morning. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. It’s a free country. They let you say your own vows everywhere else, and Dad’s paid a lot of money for our service. Anyway, I have already started writing mine, and I’ve also done a draft of what I would like you to say.’

‘Hang on.’

Diana handed him a piece of paper.

‘I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to expect you to say these things in front of our friends and family.’

Ben read the densely typed lines. ‘You really want me to say this?’

‘I do. We can have a practice now, if you like.’ Diana took the paper back and began to read aloud what she had written.

‘“My darling Ben, you have been the centre of my life for the past seven years and now we are promising to be the centre of each other’s lives for ever. You know that you are my best friend, and I am yours. You are the only other person I will ever need in my life, and I am the same for you. Once we are married, we will need nothing but each other. Our pasts will be as a slate wiped clean.”’

Ben winced.

‘“To make sure that slate is wiped clean, we are going to promise today, in front of our families and our friends, that there will be no more secrets between us from this moment forward. You will always tell me where you are going and who you will be with, and I will do the same in return. When I call you, you will always pick up the phone. When I want you to come home, you will be there within half an hour. I will never have to wonder what you’re up to again.”’

‘Diana, these aren’t wedding vows. These are rules. This is you ticking me off in front of everyone we know. I can’t say these things.’

‘Don’t you want to?’

‘Well, frankly, no, I don’t want to.’

‘But you want me to be happy, yes?’

‘Of course I want you to be happy. But this is not about making you happy. This is unreasonable. These vows will make us both look like idiots. Why can’t we have the ordinary service? I’m going to promise to love and honour you for the rest of my life. Isn’t that enough?’

‘What about obey?’

‘No one says obey any more. In any case, that was what the woman had to say. The groom never had to say that.’

‘I want us to have our own vows. It won’t be our personal wedding without them.’

‘I’m not going to say that shit about always picking up the phone when you call. If I don’t pick up the phone, it’s because I’m busy.’

‘Busy with some slut!’

‘Or working. How about that for a novel idea?’

‘Ben, you don’t know how traumatic the past six months have been for me. I was completely happy in my life before I found that text from Lucy on your phone. You shattered my trust in you. No one else is to blame. You shattered it, Ben. Everything we built together was shaken because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants. Well, you’re not going to do that to me again. It’s my way or the highway. If you don’t want to promise me the things that I’m asking for, then let’s just call off the wedding and you can pay my father back every single penny he’s spent on it.’

There was the rub. Ben had already calculated that Dave had spent at least £50,000.

‘Are you ready to do that?’ Diana challenged him.

‘Of course not,’ said Ben. ‘We’re going to get married.’

While Diana was on the phone to her mother again, no doubt telling her what a loser Ben was, he picked up the sheet of vows and read them through again. It would be funny, he thought, if he didn’t know that Diana meant to make him say every humiliating word. His only hope was that the bishop would veto such craziness, or that he would grow a pair of balls overnight and finally tell Diana what he really thought. But £50,000? He would need to win the lottery at the same time. Ben put his head in his hands.

Chapter Forty-Four

Kate said goodbye to her two best friends and her mother and sister in the lobby of the spa hotel. They’d had a wonderful day together, just the five of them. Elaine said that she felt a thousand times better after an aromatherapy facial than after three weeks of radiotherapy. She said she was pleased too, to see Kate looking so relaxed.

Kate assured her that was only the result of an eyebrow shape.

Much as she had resented another demand on her time, Kate had to admit to herself that it was nice to spend the day with the most important women in her life. Back when they were at college, Kate, Helen and Anne had lived in each other’s pockets. Girly moments like that spa day were so rare now. The conversation had moved on too. They no longer talked about the boys they fancied. Instead, Kate nodded sagely as Helen and Anne talked schools with Tess and Elaine.

‘You’ve got all this ahead of you,’ said Helen. Later, as they walked from the spa dining room to the treatment area, Helen linked her arm through Kate’s and asked her if she’d thought about booking an appointment with her GP for a fertility check-up.

‘What?’ said Kate. ‘Ian and I haven’t even talked about kids yet.’

Helen pulled a face. ‘Chop, chop.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Sorry,’ said Helen. ‘None of my business.’

It was the only bum note of the day. Kate tried hard to keep her annoyance from her face, but later, Tess asked if she was OK and seemed unconvinced when Kate insisted she was fine.

‘Thank you.’ Kate kissed Elaine and Tess goodbye for the twentieth time. Helen and Anne were already on the road.

‘Drive safely,’ they said. As far as they were concerned, she was going straight back to London, but Kate had other ideas. They thought she was going back to Ian. Ian thought she was staying at the spa hotel overnight. Kate texted Matt. It wasn’t entirely premeditated.

Got time for a drink?
Kate asked him.

He did have time.

So Kate drove down to Southampton and met Matt. They didn’t meet in their usual pub this time. Kate went to his house, a small, modern semi on the outskirts of town. It was the first time Kate had been in Matt’s personal space since 1997. His taste had changed quite considerably. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he had acquired some taste at last. Matt accepted Kate’s compliments on his furnishings but admitted that he’d simply ordered straight from two pages of a John Lewis catalogue. ‘Interior design by numbers.’ Rosie had kept everything else.