I Heart London (37 page)

‘Please don’t die,’ I whispered mid-hug.

‘I won’t,’ she promised. ‘So everything is going to be fine. I’m just waiting to hear from the catering people about what time they’re getting here. They’re running late because of the whole dead mom thing, and then we’re waiting on the cake and the dress, and after that, it’s just me, you, a whole shit-ton of make-up and a good strong mimosa. Sound good?’

‘Sounds good,’ I said, trying to suppress my smile and calm the spinning sensation in my stomach. ‘I know this is going to be an odd question, but what time am I getting married?’

‘Two.’ She looked at her clipboard to confirm. ‘We’ve got four hours. Although people will be arriving from one, so really three hours. And the photographer will be here to take pictures of you getting ready from around eleven. So you have one hour, because you need to be kinda ready before he starts taking pictures of you, you know.’

‘Getting ready?’ My head was already spinning with the timings. ‘Have I got time to have a bath?’

‘Yes. But you have to eat first,’ she said, turning her attention back to the garden. ‘Nothing heavy! Wedding dress!’

‘Nothing at all,’ I said to myself, holding my stomach. I was almost certain I was going to spew. ‘Bath first.’

The house was loud and busy, but no one seemed to be terribly interested in what I was doing so I shut myself in the bathroom, ran a deep, deep bubble bath and locked the door. Pouting, I looked at my phone, holding it well away from the water. There were a couple of texts but nothing incredibly exciting. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it hadn’t happened yet. Perhaps something between a telegram from the Queen and a cavalcade of Facebook birthday wishes. Served me right for never really using Facebook.

I was afraid to stay in the bath for too long, so I took care of business, shaving my legs, scrubbing off at least three layers of skin and making a bubble-bath bikini before climbing out and turning on the shower. The ultimate indulgence − a bath-shower; and, as my mother was bound to point out, a waste of water when there was a hose-pipe ban. Before too long I was pink-skinned and fresh as a daisy. My black eye was all but gone and the scratches on my legs and arms were going to be pretty easy to cover up. My limp still threatened to add a touch of Keyser Söze to my march down the aisle, but I was fairly certain I could get away with my heels as long as I took a painkiller an hour before I needed to wear them and didn’t drink for another hour after that.

I moved the solo primping party from the bathroom to the bedroom and blow-dried my hair, not sure what Jenny was planning to do with me later. I smothered myself in moisturizer and checked my mani-pedi. All perfect.

Hmm. Wrapped in my dressing gown, I didn’t know quite what else to do. And it was only a quarter to eleven. Resting my chin on my forearms, I gazed out of the window at the back garden. Jenny was bounding around like a children’s TV presenter, all neon jeans and headset. My mum was taking a case of champagne into the marquee. I couldn’t see my dad. But I could hear him. Somewhere in the garden, somewhere I couldn’t see and part of me hoped I never would, I heard a brass band begin. Wow. They were not subtle. And if I was not very much mistaken, they were playing possibly one of the least wedding-appropriate songs of all time −
I’m Too Sexy
by Right Said Fred. Without a second’s hesitation, I picked up my phone and called Louisa.

‘Hello? Are you OK?’ she answered quickly. ‘I’m coming over in, like, fifteen minutes. Grace just threw up on my dress.’

‘Your bridesmaid’s dress?’ I asked, horrified.

‘No?’ I could tell she was lying. ‘Not at all. Twenty minutes.’

‘Don’t rush. To be honest with you, there’s not much I can do at the moment. I feel like Rapunzel locked in her bedroom. Well, there is this,’ I said, leaning out of the window. I stuck my phone out as far as I could reach and put Louisa on speaker.

‘I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, babe,’ she shouted over the music. ‘They’re bloody terrible. But your dad promised they weren’t going to play their Sexy Medley, so maybe they’re warming up?’

‘Sexy Medley?’

‘
I’m Too Sexy,
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?
and
You Sexy Thing
,’ she stated. ‘On brass instruments. Your dad has a solo in
You Sexy Thing
.’

‘I’m going to throw up.’ I closed the window but the music kept on coming. ‘Alex better not have told him he can play during the ceremony.’

Louisa was silent.

‘Fucking hell.’

‘It’s all going to be perfect, Ange,’ Lou promised. ‘I’ll see you in a bit. Grace looks so cute, you’ll want to eat her face.’

‘I am peckish,’ I said, trying to work out if my stomach was growling with hunger, nerves or the thought of my dad’s trumpet solo. ‘See you in a bit.’

The garden, unlike my bedroom, was all action. I watched florists bring in stacks and stacks of peonies. I watched assorted burly men install the PA system and hang my lights. I watched Jenny flapping her arms around like a very attractive but angry flamingo, and I wished I could help. Sort of. When the doorbell went, I ran downstairs, determined to get involved in my own wedding.

‘Hi, bride.’

It was Chloe with my dress.

‘You want?’ She handed over a big garment bag, and I couldn’t stop myself from squealing with delight as she draped it over my arms before sliding a large, stiff cardboard carrier bag onto my wrist. ‘This is all the accessories and bits and pieces,’ she explained. ‘I really wish I could stay and see you in it, but I’ve got to deliver a ton of other stuff today, and the shop is always busy on Saturdays.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. I was bouncing with excitement again and couldn’t wait for her to leave so I could go back upstairs and get into the frock. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘No worries.’ She leaned over the dress to kiss me on both cheeks and patted the garment bag lovingly. ‘Just enjoy it. I know it sounds stupid, but people forget to.’

‘Thanks.’ I hugged the dress tightly. ‘Again.’

Closing the door, I held the bag up high and the light from the kitchen window created a halo around it. My precious.

‘Is that the dress?’ Mum trotted over, almost breaking into a run. ‘Ooh, I’ll get Jenny. We need to try it on right away, just in case.’

‘Just in case what?’ I wailed. ‘There is no just in case.’

‘Just in case,’ she repeated, legging it back into the garden to grab the wedding-planner-slash-bridesmaid-slash-stylist-slash-know-it-all. ‘Wait upstairs!’

‘This is all your fault,’ I screeched at the top of my lungs half an hour later, I’m not entirely sure at who, when I finally accepted that the dress was not going to fasten. We’d greased the zip, I’d tried on Spanx, I’d breathed in so hard I thought I was going to crack a rib, but it just wasn’t going to work. There was a good inch of open zipper and no amount of sobbing, Lurpak or elasticated underwear was going to change that.

‘We can fix this,’ Jenny promised. ‘You can’t actually see the zip. We just need to pin you in.’

‘I don’t want to be pinned in,’ I whined. ‘It’s my wedding dress. I want it to fit. Why doesn’t it fit?’

‘Just don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be,’ Jenny threatened. I dropped my chin and realized why she was so good at her job. She was scary when she needed to be. ‘I promise we will make this work. And I promise I will kick that hipster-chick’s ass for effing up the alterations.’

I dropped onto the bed in my too-small dress, feeling like a heifer. Maybe we shouldn’t have had that pizza. So far, I had a dress that didn’t fit, shoes I couldn’t walk in and a brass band interpretation of Rod Stewart’s greatest hits. Brilliant.

‘Jenny?’ came a voice up the stairs. Louisa had arrived. And from the sound of it so had Grace. She was the only one wailing louder than I was. ‘Can you come down here? I think there’s a problem with the cake.’

Jenny gave me a stern look and vanished downstairs, leaving me with my mum. I tried not to look too distraught. It was only the cake. It wasn’t the dress. As long as we fixed the dress and nuked the band, things would work out just fine.

‘You’ve got to expect a few little hiccups,’ Mum said, still fiddling with the zip on my dress. ‘It’s not going to make any difference. You’re still going to have a lovely day, and you’ll be married, and that’s all that matters.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed half-heartedly. ‘That is all that matters.’

We sat in silence on the bed for a moment before it all got too much for her.

‘I’m going to go and see what’s going on with that cake,’ she said, patting me on the back.

I stood up and stared into the floor-length mirror. The dress was still beautiful, maybe even more beautiful than I remembered, but the fact that it wouldn’t fasten was all I could think about. It wasn’t so obvious that you could see it, but I just knew. It didn’t sit quite as well as it had on Monday, it didn’t move as well. At least it was the right length.

I sat back down on my bed and waited ten minutes before losing my temper. I wanted to know what was wrong with the cake. I wanted to know why no one was hanging out with me. I wanted to know why the bloody brass band was still playing. Enough was enough. I wriggled out of the straps of the dress and twisted it round so I could get at the cursed zip. But it didn’t move. I pulled on it as hard as I dared − nothing. Not a millimetre up or down. I was stuck. Determined not to panic, I pulled my blue NYPD hoodie over the dress and made for the stairs.

‘I mean, it is a cupcake,’ Louisa was saying diplomatically over the sound of Jenny’s angry yelling. ‘And it does make a statement.’

‘I think it’s quite interesting,’ Mum agreed. ‘Very striking.’

‘
I don’t give two shits what you thought you were doing
,’ Jenny was screaming at God knows who. ‘I asked for a cupcake wedding cake. I sent you an email. That email had seven different photographs of cupcake wedding cakes, and this is what you came up with?’

Opening the kitchen door, it all became clear. Mrs Stevens had made me a cupcake wedding cake. Literally. Instead of a tower of little frosted cakes, there was one giant cupcake the size of a small car, smothered in enough icing to give a blue whale diabetes, with a bride and groom cake topper perched in the middle of it all. Well. It was something.

Jenny was marching up and down the kitchen bellowing into her phone. If we were in New York, Mrs Stevens would never work again. As it was, I imagined she’d feel terrible for a couple of days and then get right back on with taking her Christmas cake orders.

‘Yeah, I know my number was out of order, but you had other numbers.’ Jenny was starting to turn a very worrying shade of red. ‘And a brain, right? You do have a brain? And eyes? And you thought this was a good fucking idea?’

‘Sorry, Angela.’ Louisa bounced Grace up and down in her arms. She at least had the decency to smile at me.

‘All right ladies.’ A bright white flash went off and blinded everyone in the kitchen. ‘My name’s Damien. I’ll be your photographer for the day.’ Another flash, this time right in my face.

‘Damien? Of course you are.’ I held out my hand, hoping it was in the general vicinity of his, too blind to know for sure. ‘I’m Angela.’

‘Nice outfit, Angela.’ He shook my hand and then turned to shoot a picture of my mum and Louisa with the cake. ‘And nice cake.’

‘Oh, I say.’ Mum held out a hand to ward him off. Grace did not like having her picture taken and started to cry immediately. ‘I think no photos for a moment?’

‘Yeah, things aren’t going that smoothly right now,’ I rubbed my eyes and blinked several times. ‘Maybe you could take some pictures outside or check the lighting or something?’

‘If I’m honest with you,’ Damien replied, still shooting off his flash every five seconds, ‘I don’t do weddings. I’m more editorial-focused, more, uh, there and then type stuff, you know? But I took this job as a favour to a friend of a friend, so I’d rather, you know, be where the action is. I like to stick my camera right in the middle of it.’

I had a paparazzo for a wedding photographer. Brilliant.

I was about to tell him exactly where he could stick his camera when Jenny hung up on Mrs Stevens with a ceremonious ‘Go fuck yourself, lady’, which I was certain would see my mother barred from the WI, and put her arm around my shoulders, guiding me away from the man with the camera.

‘Angie, honey.’ She sounded considerably more calm when she spoke to me than to septuagenarian neighbourhood bakers, even if she still looked absolutely frazzled. ‘Let me talk to the man with the camera. You go back upstairs and take that mother-fucking dress off before I hit you, OK?’

‘It won’t come off,’ I hissed. ‘The zip is buggered.’

Click. Flash.

‘A touching moment between the bride and her maid of honour.’ The photographer looked down at the screen on the back of his camera. ‘Nice.’

‘Maid of honour?’ Louisa said. ‘Jenny’s your maid of honour?’

‘No,’ I replied quickly. ‘You’re both my maids of honour.’

‘You can’t have two.’ Jenny folded her arms and gave Louisa a look I did not want to see. ‘You just can’t.’

‘Fine, then Grace is my maid of honour.’ I grabbed the baby out of Louisa’s arms and she stopped crying. ‘See? Now me and my maid of honour need calm. You two stop bickering.’

Click. Flash.

‘Can you stop taking pictures of us?’ Jenny asked as politely as possible. ‘Also, you’re late.’

‘But I’m dead good,’ he winked. ‘Trust me − by the end of the day, you’ll love me.’

‘By the end of the day, Auntie Jenny will probably have given him one,’ I whispered to Grace. She giggled. I giggled. And then she threw up down my jumper.

‘You too, Grace?’ I pouted at the spew-covered baby in my arms. ‘You just got demoted back to flower-girl.’

‘Give her here.’ Louisa took back her bundle of joy. ‘Let’s get you upstairs and get you ready.’

For the next hour, we pretended I didn’t have a giant bun for a wedding cake, that my dress wasn’t knackered and smelling of sour butter and baby sick, and that everything was going to plan, just like any other wedding.

Jenny did my hair, I did Louisa’s, and no one touched Jenny’s because it was already perfect. After the hair, it was make-up. Somehow, Jenny managed to melt away any imperfections that might have been lingering and make me look every inch the blushing bride. It took half a MAC counter and enough brushes to repaint the Sistine Chapel, but I didn’t care. I looked like me, only much, much prettier. My hair curled around my shoulders in loose waves with a few strands pinned back from my face. Between my glowing skin and a simple half up and half down do, I looked like I’d just come back from a very fashionable jog. It was a good look. Damien snapped at us as we fussed around, laughing and generally attacking each other with lip gloss. It felt good. It felt how weddings looked on TV, and I was relieved.