Once in a Lifetime (15 page)

Nearly an hour later, the hairdresser was nailing giant heated rollers into Lizzie’s hair to moans of ‘Ouch, that hurt!’

Anna, who was bridesmaid number two, had turned up and she and Natalie had been tag-phoning the make-up lady every ten minutes. The woman hadn’t replied to either messages or texts.

‘She’s obviously not coming,’ Anna said. ‘We’ll never get anyone at such short notice. What’ll we do?’

‘Don’t look at me. You know I’m hopeless with makeup,’

Natalie said.

‘I can do mine, but I’ve never done anyone else’s,’ said Anna.

‘Baileys and coffee anyone?’ roared the mother of the bride from downstairs.

Natalie had a brainwave.

‘Charlie from Kenny’s - she runs the Organic Belle department - she might be able to lend us someone for an hour.

She’s lovely, she’d help out, I know.’

Charlie recognised an emergency when she heard one.

‘It’s quiet enough this morning,’ she said. ‘I can’t lend you anyone, but if I take an early lunch, I’ll pop round and do it myself. Will an hour and a half be long enough?’

‘You’re an angel!’ said Natalie gratefully. An hour and a half would get Lizzie and her mother done. Everyone else could fend for themselves.

She went into the bedroom to tell Lizzie the good news and was waylaid by bridesmaid number three, Steve’s sister,

Shazza, who’d insisted on being a bridesmaid, and having got her wish had been doing her level best to take over. ‘I think we should all put our hair up,’ she said.

‘What?’ Natalie asked, bewildered.

‘Up, it’s more flattering,’ said Shazza, holding her own blonde hair up to demonstrate.

Shazza had gone against Lizzie’s dictat that spray tans would look ridiculous at a February wedding and was the rich brown colour of an Italian handbag. Everyone else’s skin was pure Irish blue.

One hand holding up her hair, Shazza did a twirl in front of Lizzie. ‘See? Much nicer with the dresses.’

The bridesmaids’ dresses were pale baby pink, a colour that did precisely nothing for Natalie but suited Shazza perfectly.

‘I hate my hair up,’ Natalie said. ‘And we agreed that we’d have soft curls …’

‘No, you’re right, Shaz,’ said Lizzie traitorously. ‘Up would be fabulous. Much more fairytale. Mum,’ she called out.

‘Could I have another Bailey’s? I’m parched.’

‘She’s only trying to keep the peace,’ Anna whispered to Natalie, seeing her friend’s furious face. ‘If she doesn’t agree with Shaz, she’ll rush round to Steve and whine about how his bride-to-be is being mean to her.’

‘But we’re her best friends since we were five,’ hissed Natalie back.

Anna responded with a shrug of the shoulders and her weddings-are-hell look.

Natalie was shaking with cold and her skull ached from having her hair screwed on to her head with a million hair clips by the time she finally met up with her family and Molly again.

The official pictures after the wedding ceremony had taken forever and most of them had been staged outside in the spectacular and scenic gardens of the elegant Mount Ardagh Hotel, which actually meant a bit of grass behind the hotel. Here

there was a peeling pergola with flowers twirling round it and a small pond that was no longer viable for actual fish and home to lots of ferny-type things that looked good in photos but were remarkably smelly in real life.

‘I promise,’ whispered Molly, ‘that if I ever get married, it’ll be in the summer and I will let you pick your own dress.’

‘Never get married,’ Natalie whispered back, shivering.

‘Please get me something hot to drink. I am frozen.’

Bess handed her a woollen wrap in a dark crimson that immediately lifted Natalie’s complexion.

‘Lizzie should have let you each wear a colour that suited you,’ Bess said, and Natalie felt guilty at silently agreeing with her Even her little brother Joe, who didn’t notice female attire unless it was on a girl he fancied, nodded in sympathy at Natalie’s outfit.

‘The hair is brutal,’ he said. ‘Looks like it hurts.’

‘It does,’ Natalie informed him. ‘But I’ve got to keep it up for ages.’

‘Joe only likes long, flowing hair,’ Ted smirked.

Joe thumped him.

‘Whose long, flowing hair would that be?’ asked their father, grinning.

‘Nobody.’ Joe thumped Ted again for luck.

‘Joe’ll be getting married next,’ Ted said, getting out of his brother’s reach. ‘You’ll have to do bridesmaid again, Nat.’

Everyone smiled and Bess ruffled Joe’s gelled hair affectionately.

‘Before

I buy the mother-of-the-bride outfit, can you tell us who this future member of the family is?’ she asked.

Natalie felt a stab of envy. Why? She couldn’t understand what would make her feel that way. It was like waking up after a dream and trying to catch the memory of it again, feeling it flitting away. Something to do with Joe and Bess and her little brother getting married one day.

‘Nobody,’ said-Joe crossly. ‘Bigmouth here ought to watch it, or he’ll get another belt.’

Sitting at the top table was like being an international peacekeeper, Natalie thought. To cope with the combined masses of the O’Shea and Devine clans, the arrangement had turned into a long table with two big round tables stuck on at each end to appease the various great aunts, grannys and uncles who’d have been aggrieved to be seated somewhere less important.

Sitting on the cusp of the long table and one of the round ones, Natalie found she was surrounded by people with a stack of freshly remembered resentments waiting to be aired.

The salmon was not as nice as the salmon at a previous wedding, one great uncle muttered.

‘I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t asked to that wedding,’ flashed back a gimlet-eyed cousin.

‘Who are your people?’ demanded Natalie’s neighbour, a misleadingly sweet-faced little old lady, who’d come all the way from Kinsale for today and had taken against the hotel because there was no kettle or tea-making facilities in her room.

Natalie had heard the whole story twice already.

‘They’re over there,’ she said now, looking wistfully at a distant table where her family and Molly appeared to be having fun.

The Kinsale lady peered at them. ‘Who’s that girl wearing the strange outfit with the fandangle on the shoulder?’

Natalie hid a smile. Molly was very proud of her vintage dress, a grey woollen 1950s creation with a flared skirt which she’d accessorised with a patent belt and a large white corsage a la Carrie in Sex and the City, undoubtedly the fandangle Mrs Kinsale was referring to.

‘One of my best friends,’ she replied.

‘I thought Lizzie was your best friend?’

Natalie’s smile was forced this time. ‘Oh, she’s one of them too.’

The introduction of bottles of cava for the speeches cheered up most of the grumpier people and Natalie relaxed.

Even the crossness emanating from the tables of relatives hadn’t dimmed Steve’s love for Lizzie, and Natalie found herself sighing at his speech, when he called Lizzie ‘my best, my always.’

‘Lovely,’ said Mrs Kinsale, taking a good gulp of her cava before holding her glass up for a refill.

Natalie wasn’t listening, she was watching Lizzie and her mother embracing, all the morning with its arguments about who got the longer go of the hairdresser forgotten. That was the dream she hadn’t been able to touch, Natalie realised.

Bess and Joe, mother and son. Lizzie and her mother. The strongest bond in the world.

‘Don’t worry, pet, it’ll be you getting married one day,’ said Mrs Kinsale, mistaking the gleam in Natalie’s eye for tears over her unmarried state. ‘But I’d do something different with your hair, pet. That doesn’t suit you.’

While the hotel staff were rearranging the tables for the dancing that evening, Natalie went to the ladies to take down her hair. Damn Shazza and her bloody idea. Painstakingly, she took out all the little hair clips until her head was metal free and she was able to shake her dark hair loose again. She looked better already. With Bess’s wrap around her shoulders, she felt like herself and not the horrible fake bridesmaid version.

Despite the cold, she thought she’d venture outside to breathe some fresh air. The smokers had annexed a little outside bar area with heaters and seats, and she went the other direction to stand on the terrace and look out at the coast where the flicker of the lighthouse lamp broke up the darkness of the sea.

‘I was wondering what you’d look like with your hair down,’ said a man’s voice.

‘Whatever it looks like, it certainly feels better,’ said Natalie,

turning towards the voice. ‘I have just taken twenty-seven pins from my head.’

‘Twenty-seven?’

‘I counted every one.’

He had a nice grin. Was nice all over, really, with an open, intelligent face and kind eyes. He was probably her own age or a bit older, and even in a very elegant navy suit and grey silk tie, looked like he was designed for bashing down doors and had ended up in a tie by mistake.

‘I don’t do much with my own hair,’ he added, and put a hand unselfconsciously up to his head, which was shaped like a bullet on top of huge shoulders and totally shaved.

Natalie laughed out loud.

‘Sorry,’ she said instantly, afraid she’d offended him.

‘It started to fall out,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t want to be one of those guys who have three long hairs and hairspray them into place: one to the left, one to the right, and one tossed.’

‘No, not a good look,’ she agreed.

‘I got rid of the lot.’

It suits you,’ she said.

‘Does it?’ he said, sounding as if he’d never really considered such a thing.

Natalie felt a sudden liking for this big, friendly man.

‘It’s handy,’ he shrugged.

‘Whose side are you on?’ she asked.

‘The groom’s side. I’m Rory Canavan,’ he said, and offered her a giant hand to shake.

‘I’m Natalie Flynn, bridesmaid number one and school friend of the bride,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘I asked.’

‘There are men who have to score the bridesmaid at weddings, you know,’ Natalie said.

‘I have heard that,’ he said. ‘Not the most noble of aims, is it?’

‘No. I wonder, do they have a points system? Three points

for the chief bridesmaid, four if she’s married and is matron of honour, and ten points and a bonus prize if you score the bride?’

‘That is so cynical,’ he said, but he was laughing.

‘You’re not trying to score three points?’

He shook his head. ‘I followed you out here because I saw you earlier and I wanted to meet you but you seemed very interested in the people at your table.’

‘If only you knew,’ Natalie said with feeling. ‘You could have rescued me earlier.’

Rory looked pleased. ‘Am I rescuing you now?’

‘You would be if you sat with me at my table,’ she said thoughtfully.

Mrs Kinsale asked all the questions Natalie couldn’t.

‘What do you do?’ she asked, fixing Rory with her most adorable smile and giving him a poke in his substantial chest.

The sparkling wine had been round her side of the table many times and she had almost forgotten her grudge with the hotel over the in-room facilities.

‘I’m a vet,’ he replied.

‘Ooh, a vet! A professional man,’ she said, and gave Natalie a delighted poke this time.

‘Where exactly?’

‘About ten miles outside Ardagh,’ he said, speaking loudly to the little old lady. Natalie could have told him that Mrs Kinsale was so sharp, she’d have heard a pin drop from the other side of the room. ‘It’s a big animal practice.’

‘Big practice or big animals?’ asked Natalie, grinning, although she knew very well what he meant.

‘Big animals,’ he said. ‘Cattle and horses, and some dogs and cats.’

‘I had a Yorkshire terrier, but she died,’ said Mrs Kinsale, getting maudlin. ‘She was like a child to me, that dog. I loved her like a child.’

‘Did you get another dog?’ asked Rory.

The old lady shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t be able for it and who’d mind her if I died?’

‘You know, if you get her from a good vet, they could promise to do their best to look after your pet if you couldn’t take care of her any more,’ Rory said kindly. ‘It’s a worry for lots of people and the veterinary community understand that.

And a sprightly thing like yourself would be dancing for many years yet,’ he added. The band were striking up ‘When I Fall in Love’. ‘I don’t suppose you can waltz? I’m very bad at it.’

Mrs Kinsale beamed at him.

They made an odd couple on the dance floor: the giant of a man supporting the frail lady, and Natalie saw she wasn’t the only person looking at them fondly.

Lizzie, who hated slow dancing, wandered over hauling her dress behind her. The skirt was speckled with something dark and reddish. Red wine, Natalie guessed.

‘I’m wrecked,’ Lizzie said, sitting tiredly in Rory’s chair.

She picked up a full glass of sparkling wine and drained it.

‘I see you’ve met Rory,’ she added.

‘He’s nice,’ said Natalie, which was actually an understatement.

She’d never gone for those big, Gaelic football-playing type of fellows before, but she could see the charm. You’d feel totally safe with Rory by your side, safe in every sense of the word. There was a decency about him, a sense that he’d protect you from all harm.

‘Sure, if you like that type of thing,’ said Lizzie shortly.

Lizzie had always liked sophisticated men. Steve, with his narrow hips and well-cut hair, could have stepped out of a modelling catalogue. ‘You can’t dress him up, though. He looks ridiculous in a suit.’

‘Since when do we judge people by dressing them up?’

Natalie asked, hurt but hiding it. She hadn’t liked a guy for ages and now she was liking one she’d met at Lizzie’s wedding and Lizzie seemed put out by the whole idea.

Besides, Rory looked lovely in his suit. Sexy and rumpled, somehow. She wondered what he’d be like to kiss ‘He’s