Bad Brides (6 page)

‘It’s hard that you don’t have your own folks still here with you,’ Tamra said, reading his mind with disconcerting acuteness. She reached out to pat his arm
sympathetically. ‘I’m so sorry. They were too young to go.’

Edmund nodded in thanks, took the glass Brianna Jade was handing him and drank some more; he appreciated her words very much, but was too British to be able to respond to them. Tamra understood
this too.

‘I love the taste of champagne,’ she observed, deliberately lightening the mood, ‘but those damn bubbles can get up my nose sometimes.’

‘You can stir them out,’ Edmund said, clearing his throat, glad to have the conversation changed. ‘With a champagne whisk. My grandmother had some – they’re rather
lovely old things. She had one she wore around her neck in a little silver case: you pull it out and all these sort of filaments pop out and you put it in your glass to whisk the bubbles
away.’

‘Cool,’ Tamra said appreciatively.

‘I’ll make sure we fish them out for you and give them a good polish,’ Edmund said, smiling at her. ‘The silver here’s been awfully neglected, and we don’t
want to give you a tarnished whisk! We’ll have it all ready for you in time for cocktail hour tomorrow.’

‘Edmund, I would love that, and you’re really sweet to make the offer,’ Tamra said – she had got the hang of saying ‘really’ instead of ‘real’, as
the English did – ‘but I won’t be here tomorrow. I’m heading off back to London now. Time to leave the newly engaged couple in peace and quiet.’ She winked at them, a
perfectly executed gesture, one set of enviably thick eyelashes fluttering for a moment on her smooth cheek. ‘Last thing you guys want is Mom hanging around! So I’m going to love you
and leave you. I got the maid to pack me up again while you guys were sorting yourselves out. I mean, if Bri turned you down at the last minute, Edmund, we’d be leaving anyway, and if she
said “yes”, I needed to get the hell out of Dodge. So either way it was a no-brainer.’

‘But Tamra, it’s getting dark now,’ Edmund protested politely, though inwardly he was full of admiration for her skill and excellent manners: leaving the newly engaged couple
alone together displayed a sensitivity he hadn’t expected from her. ‘Why not at least stay till morning? You’ll want your dinner, surely.’

She laughed in his face in the nicest possible way, her teeth just as mother-of-pearl and perfectly aligned as her daughter’s.

‘Oh Edmund, honey, you know I barely eat at the best of times,’ she said fondly, patting his arm again. ‘I have a hamper ready to be loaded into the car – smoked salmon
and bresaola and Cristal all waiting for me on ice. I’ll just pick at some protein and drink all the way home.’

‘But—’ Brianna Jade began, only to be interrupted by her mother.

‘Ssh, honey,’ Tamra said with huge affection, enfolding her daughter in another tight hug. ‘You’ll be fine. You and Edmund have way more interesting things to do than sit
around and make conversation with your mom, for God’s sake! Right, Edmund?’

She winked at him again, a devastatingly appealing wink that said that she knew that he and Brianna Jade hadn’t even kissed before today and that she imagined he had plenty of ground to
cover now. Edmund’s shirt collar was suddenly tight and damp with sweat; he ran a finger inside it to loosen it up.

‘See you very soon,’ Tamra said, kissing him lightly on the cheek, her very expensive perfume enfolding him for a moment. ‘And don’t worry about me being bored in London
on my lonesome! I’m seeing Lady Margaret tomorrow for a boozy lunch – Jeez, that woman can drink like me, it’s a real pleasure hanging out with her – and I’ve got a
meeting with the publicist to talk about the first set of engagement pictures in
Hello!
’

She beamed. ‘Won’t take more than a couple of weeks to set that up. Did you propose on the bridge, Edmund? Over the lake? That would look gorgeous if we wanna recreate it.’

‘No, it needs some shoring up,’ Brianna Jade said, distracted from the shock of Tamra’s sudden departure by the prospect of the engagement photos as Tamra had known she would
be. ‘He did it in the gazebo instead.’

‘Lovely!’ Tamra said. ‘Get the bridge fixed first thing, though. They might want to use it too.
And
, I’ve got really exciting news –
Style
magazine is going to run its first-ever Brides issue next June, and guess who’s going to be on the cover if I have anything to say about it?’

Brianna Jade actually clasped her hands at her breast in excitement. She hadn’t done that since her pageant years, and this was the first time ever that she had made the gesture quite
spontaneously.

‘No
way
, Mom!’ she gasped.

‘
Way
, honey! I swear, you guys are going to be
Style
’s first ever Wedding of the Year! You have everything – class, title, a good-looking
groom—’

‘Um, thanks,’ Edmund murmured, adjusting his collar again.

‘And the most beautiful bride
ever
! I swear, Princess Chloe is a lovely girl, and looked real nice on her special day—’ Tamra had actually forgotten to say
‘really’, such was her level of excitement – ‘but you’re going to blow her out of the water, Bri, honey!
Style
Bride of the Year!’

Her dark eyes gleamed not only with anticipation, but with infinite menace; woe betide any other bride who might try to snag that coveted title for herself when Tamra Maloney had set her heart
on the prize for her beloved daughter.

‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s a done deal already,’ she told the Earl and Countess-to-be. ‘I swear, if
anyone
tries to stand in my way—’ her
eyes flashed with an ominously dark flame ‘they’ll regret it for the rest of their lives!’

Latitude Festival, Sussex

Tarquin Ormond sang ecstatically into his microphone, his head tilted back to catch the last traces of sunlight, his golden curls, damp with sweat, framing the angelic face of
the choirboy he had once been. The huge crowd in front of the main stage at Latitude, hippies and hipsters united in worship of Tarquin’s authenticity, his poetic soul, his transparent
sincerity, sang along, their heads also tilted back, as if they were all worshipping at some centuries-old rite, with Tarquin as their beautiful and pure high priest.

And in a way, that was exactly what the crowd was doing: worshipping the band’s authenticity. Tarquin and his band, Ormond and Co, were mainstays of the folk-rock revival, sweet-faced boys
who wrote all their own songs and not only played all their own instruments, but dedicated endless hours to searching out obscure traditional ones to incorporate in their music. For this song,
‘Blue Seahorses’, a roadie had lugged onstage a theorbo, a long-necked lute, which Elden, the guitarist, was playing with limited skill but great concentration, and a hang – a
huge steel hand drum invented by Swiss sound engineers – on which Lance the drummer was flickering his fingers intently.

Despite it being the height of summer – mercifully decent weather for once, so the Latitude crowds were in flip-flops rather than wellies – Ormond and Co were dressed in sweltering
tweeds. Being posh boys to a man (the band had been formed at the minor public school they had all attended), the tweeds were not second-hand from charity shops, which was where most new-folk bands
bought theirs, but had been handed down through their various families. Tarquin’s three-piece suit had been used by his Great-Uncle Willoughby for deer stalking and hare-coursing. No matter
how many times it had been dry cleaned, it still smelt, when heated above a certain temperature by Tarquin’s body, sweating under the stage lights, of stinky dog and hare blood. The young men
were all quite used to their suits by now and barely noticed each other’s odours, but eager journalists rushing to interview them as they came offstage had often been noticed to rear their
heads back and inhale as little as possible once they took in the full whiff of the four Ormond members in their damp hot tweeds.

Tarquin sang, and a great many people in the field below the stage, who would have commented, ‘But what the fuck does that even
mean
?’ if they had seen the
words written down, sang along with him with as much conviction as if his lyrics were a Shakespeare sonnet set to music. Tarquin’s exquisite tenor voice, together with the melodic cadences of
the tunes written by Lance and Elden, elevated the nonsensical words into a sort of broken poetry while sung – with the caveat that as soon as you actually stopped for a moment to ask why
seahorses would want to steal anyone’s wife, the whole edifice would tumble like a house of cards.

‘God, talk about the Emperor’s New Clothes!’ Milly Gamble, Tarquin’s actress girlfriend, watching from the wings, shouted in her friend Eva’s ear. ‘This one
makes even
less
sense than the last one!’

‘It’s like poetry,’ Eva protested. ‘I know what he
means . . .
’

‘You’re so nice, Eves,’ Milly yelled accurately, if patronizingly. ‘You never have a bad word to say about anyone!’

‘I do!’ Eva was piqued. ‘I’m sure I do.’

‘I don’t mean slagging off factory farming or supermarkets or Third World work conditions,’ Milly shouted. ‘I mean actually bitching about—’

But she had to cut herself short, as the music had reached a final peak and stopped with a last wail of the theorbo. Onstage, Tarquin had sung the last ‘stri – eye – ife . .
.’ of ‘Blue Seahorses’, and was panting, arms spread wide like the golden-haired, blue-eyed martyred saint he strongly resembled, microphone dangling spent from one white hand as
the crowd cheered and drummed their feet and wailed their applause. The steel hang was dripping with sweat from Lance’s beard; the roadie running onstage to remove the drum had to handle it
very carefully in case it slipped through his fingers.

‘Fuck, Tark’s going to pong of dog even more than ever when he comes offstage,’ Milly muttered grimly. ‘I’m not going
near
him till he has a shower and
changes and hangs those stinky old rags up in the sunshine to air out.’

‘I do think it’s rather lovely that they all wear their family’s clothes,’ Eva whispered bravely. ‘It’s so authentic and
real
. You know, their fans
actually know the names of the relatives they belonged to?’

‘They
do
? God, how mental of them!’ Milly said loudly enough that Elden, handing his theorbo reverently to another roadie and receiving an Arabian
oud
in exchange,
shot a cross glance over at Tarquin’s girlfriend, whom he rightly considered not remotely respectful enough of her boyfriend’s band and their very important art.

Onstage, Tarquin had raised the mike to his mouth again, and was saying: ‘Beautiful people of Latitude!’

The crowd cheered this with great enthusiasm. Tarquin was completely transparent: he was like a holy fool, quite incapable of saying anything he didn’t mean. If he told them they were
beautiful, he was utterly sincere, and they accepted the compliment very happily.

‘I just can’t hold it back any longer!’ he exclaimed, pressing one hand against his heart. ‘I wrote “Blue Seahorses” for my girlfriend, and that song means so
much to me – it really sums up all my hopes and fears about love, which is, like, the deepest feeling ever.’

The crowd roared its approval of the profoundly meaningful lyrics of ‘Blue Seahorses’.

‘And so many of you have got in touch to say how much the song means to you as well, which is
so
emotional for me to hear,’ Tarquin continued, and the young female fans at
the front, all of whom were madly in love with him, squealed at almost bat-like pitch at the idea of Tarquin reading the emails and Facebook and Twitter posts in which they poured out their hearts
to him.

‘So look, I was planning to do this at the end of our set, but I just can’t hold it back any more! I feel your love surrounding me, lifting me up like the seahorses, and I’m
just like – the time is
now
!’

Tarquin turned, sweat flicking from the tips of his boyish golden curls, one hand to his brow to block out the sun as he squinted into the wings to spot Milly.

‘Some of you may know my girlfriend, Milly Gamble,’ he continued, at which the screams dwindled considerably; Tarquin’s female fans either pretended that Milly didn’t
exist or posted screeds of hate on fan-boards about how she wasn’t worthy of him.

‘
Some
of them?’ Milly muttered to Eva, equally unenthusiastic at his words. ‘
Please
. I was in
Dr
fucking
Who
!’

To be fair, Milly was quite right. Most of the audience would recognize her, and the majority of those who did would be able to put the name to her adorably pretty face, that of a perfect
English flower child: big blue eyes, blonde ringlets, round chipmunk cheeks and just a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her tip-tilted nose. Because of her looks, Milly was always cast
as the innocent heroine. She had already been Hero to Melody Dale’s Beatrice in the recent RSC
Much Ado About Nothing
, a Dickens heroine for ITV and a princess in a castle on
Dr
Who
(played by Melody’s husband James).

It was deeply frustrating for Milly, who was longing to break free of this typecasting and play a scheming bitch for a change, and not just because it would reflect her true personality so much
better. But she was intelligent enough to go with what nature had dealt her, and there was no point trying and failing to be cast as a femme fatale when you looked like an innocent Dickensian
virgin. She was just twenty-three, and already well-known enough to pose for glossy magazines, usually with the caption ‘Britain’s Newest Sweetheart’ above her delightful little
face: if that was how she was going to be perceived, Milly had decided, then why not try for ‘America’s Sweetheart’ too? She was determined to crack the States, had already been
compared several times to a young Meg Ryan, and being not just an up-and-coming ingénue, but half of a young and gorgeous celebrity couple to boot, was perfect publicity.