Revenge of the Wedding Planner (3 page)

I’m tall for a woman, five foot eleven inches, and let’s just describe my figure as voluptuous. Hourglass figure with ‘strong’ ankles, that’s me. I’m a lifelong devotee of the wide-leg trouser. I mean, why bother with healthy eating when there’s usually nothing in the grocery cupboard but a stale loaf of wholegrain bread, a small can of tuna in brine and a messy bottle of out-of-date salad cream? That huge choccy square in the Café Vaudeville must have weighed two pounds, but, really, I’m not in bad shape considering I’m a mother of four. I had mine young, you see. So my tummy zapped back in again like an elastic band. My hips are thirty-nine inches but my waist is still only twenty-eight! Some women I know hate me for it but there’s no point reminding them I spent my twenties and thirties at the kitchen sink while they were sunning themselves round the holiday spots of Europe. Now they’re all plunging into motherhood for the first time and even my youngest is at university.

So, Julie ordered a pot of tea for herself (and a plain scone) and for a while we just sat there soaking up the ambience, saying nothing, deliberately looking straight ahead. Then Julie stood up and said she was going to powder her nose and off she went, striding through the afternoon crowd, attracting admiring glances from the men and envious shrugs from the women. Maybe she wanted to gather her thoughts before she made her big announcement.

Julie is gorgeous-looking, did I mention that? She looks much younger than her forty-one years. She’s never had to go without her sleep, I suppose. Though they do say women without children can age faster than mothers but that theory certainly doesn’t apply to Julie. You’d easily take her for thirty. She’s tall as well, just one inch shorter than me, but she’s fine-boned and elegant to go with it. Graceful and willowy with a platinum-white bob, palest blue eyes, delicate tiny ankles, a light honey-gold tan and clothes to die for. Mostly white linen tops and skirts, lots of ruffles round the hem and outsize mohair flowers on the waistband. Dry clean only. Nothing cheap and trendy from your UK chain stores for our Julie, oh no. She shops only in exclusive boutiques staffed by women of a certain age who’ve had plastic surgery and whose fingernails are so long they must have to employ some lackey to get the lid off their toothpaste at night.

Even the loos are nice in the Café Vaudeville, by the way. All matt-black walls with giant lily motifs hand-painted on, and marble sinks. Clean as a new pin, they are. I was tinkering with the idea of a black bathroom in my own house, actually. Black walls would have contrasted beautifully with the white suite and I could have had a Roman blind made up in that lovely pattern that’s mainly white with ancient Greek dignitaries’ heads printed on it in grey. I remember thinking to myself: I’ll have to see if Bill is agreeable to a stone urn and black walls in the lavatory one of these days. And if not, then we’ll just have a black chandelier. Meanwhile, I got stuck into the chocolate square because I knew that if Julie’s news was negative in any way I wouldn’t be able to eat in front of
her afterwards. I’m a very practical sort of girl. With four children and a full-time job, I have to be.

Those chocolate concoctions are heaven on a plate, aren’t they? So rich and sticky. Full of grated coconut, flaked almonds and syrupy cherries that burst in your mouth. I almost forgot about Julie as I enjoyed the delicious taste of it. It reminded me of Christmas. I do love Christmas even though I’m not very religious. Well, it’s a pagan festival first and foremost, isn’t it, I suppose? All bright lights, evergreen branches and feasting in the depths of midwinter? Before some
men
had the bright idea to torment us all with the fairy tale of a virgin birth. Little did those wise-guys know, most women wouldn’t mind a virgin birth if it meant they never ever again had to experience another dimply sweaty beer belly and BO ’pits looming over them in the bed.

Think about it.

‘I’m leaving Gary tomorrow,’ Julie said simply when she returned from the ladies’ room in the Café Vaudeville. Sitting down again demurely on the banquette and smiling at me. And then she went on supping her tea and cutting her plain scone into neat little cubes.

‘Come again,’ I squeaked.

And I literally did squeak because she laughed and called me a mouse. A squeaky little mouse. She can turn quite defensive when she’s cornered, can Julie. You’ll see that as the story progresses.

‘Margaret Mouse, you do surprise me,’ she said, almost sniggering. ‘I thought you Goths were unshockable. Don’t you chain each other up for sex in the cellar and drink blood for breakfast?’

‘You’re thinking of high-ranking civil servants,’ I told her wearily. ‘And Bill was a Punk, not a Goth. And what you’re describing is
fetish
. Apart from the bit about drinking blood, which is plainly ridiculous by anyone’s standards.’

Honestly, so many people these days get Goth confused with fetish. They are completely opposing concepts, don’t you know? Those flimsy sex-shop undies don’t float my boat. Never have. For Goths (the real purists I’m talking about now) eroticism means fully dressed or completely bare, and nothing in between.

‘Come on, Mags,’ she said, ‘you can tell me. Doesn’t Bill ever dress up for you? Like on your birthday or special occasions? I bet he looks dead sexy in tight leather trousers and a studded dog collar.’

‘Oh, Julie. You know I prefer lace-trimmed cotton pillowcases and handwritten love letters. Please tell me you’re joking about leaving Gary.’

‘I’m not joking. Gary wants to get married and start a family and I don’t. That’s it in a nutshell. So there’s no point in going on with the relationship. There’s just no point.’

‘Now wait a minute, Julie. Slow down and think about this logically. Can’t you tell Gary how you feel about having children? I’m sure he would understand. He loves you to bits.’

‘There’s no time for soul-searching, Mags. We’re both over forty. It’s now or never for Gary. I haven’t told him I’m not ready for marriage and I don’t think I
can
tell him face to face. He won’t be amused, you know? Recently he’s been nagging me to set a date for our wedding and
asking why I can’t decide on a venue for the reception. He won’t be expecting anything as drastic as this and he won’t take the news lying down.’

‘You’re right, there,’ I said. ‘He won’t let you go, if I’m any judge.’

‘You see what I mean?’ she replied, her blue eyes wide in exasperation. ‘You know yourself what would happen if I tried to leave Gary in a mature and sensible fashion. He’d wreck the house. His house, remember. Not mine. And the renovations cost an absolute fortune. I can’t stand confrontation, Mags. You know I can’t abide shouting and pleading and tears dripping off people’s chins. And slamming doors give me palpitations. It’s all so untidy, so unnecessary. Look, the decision is already made. What I want you to do is tell Gary for me. Please. Will you? You’re so good at this emotional stuff. I’m begging you, Mags.’

I was stunned.

‘The thing is, Julie, I’d rather not get involved in your relationship with Gary,’ I said when I’d recovered from the shock. ‘In any relationship, really. It’s usually the messenger that gets shot, in my experience.’

‘Oh, Mags!’

‘No, really,’ I insisted. ‘Although I do appreciate the compliment about me being emotional and so on, thank you very much. But you know this information ought to come from you directly. Are you sure you won’t change your mind about talking to him?’

‘No, I simply can’t face the man, absolutely not. So either you do it or I leave him a note on the kitchen table.’

‘But that won’t be the end of it, Julie. Won’t Gary come to the lighthouse, looking for an explanation?’

‘I don’t think he will, actually. He’s a very proud man. A few days to brood and he’ll bounce back. It’s better if I just vanish. Out of sight, out of mind.’

Oh, as if, I thought to myself. You don’t know Gary, of course, but he’s deep. He’s not a bounce-back sort of man. So for his sake I ploughed on, though I had a feeling it wouldn’t do any good whatsoever.

‘What about your things?’

‘What things?’

‘What things, she says! Your six-figure wardrobe, lady! Your clothes and all your other possessions in Gary’s house? I mean, you’ll have to go back to fetch them, won’t you? You’ll see him then. You’ll have to talk to him
then
?’

Gary lives in a rustic farmhouse on the outskirts of town but of course on the inside it’s packed with luxury fittings, a dream bachelor pad.

‘I’m going away tomorrow morning for two weeks so he won’t be able to find me,’ Julie said. ‘I’ll tell you the location but no one else is to know. I don’t care what happens, you mustn’t reveal to Gary where I am. I’ve thought about this from every angle and it’s definitely what I want to do. As for my clothes, most of them have been spirited out of the wardrobe already, allegedly taken to the dry-cleaner’s. What’s left, he’ll probably throw in the bin. Along with my fancy blender, my chrome shoe-racks, my nice shower gels and so on. I wouldn’t blame him.’

‘Oh, Julie. Are you sure about this?’

‘I am, yes. Thank my lucky stars I still have my apartment.
I was tempted to sell it last year and buy a holiday home in Italy but then there was that scaremongering about the cheap flights coming to an end. So I changed my mind. And to be honest with you, somehow I just knew I’d be needing it again.’

Julie kept her pristine all-mod-cons apartment in a converted flourmill in Saintfield when she moved in with Gary three years before but he didn’t know that. She doesn’t have a lot of faith in love everlasting, I’m sorry to say. Yes, I realize that does sound strange coming from a wedding planner but there’s a lot of money to be made in this game and Julie is nothing if not financially astute. And as I said before, we
are
very good at what we do.

‘So, I’m leaving Gary tomorrow,’ she said again, just like that.

I was deeply unsettled. I don’t like change, not even in the lives of other people.

Then Julie poured another cup of tea and drank it slowly, gazing up at the red-glass chandeliers and with only the hint of a tear in her eye. What a trooper Julie is, I thought. At the time I supposed she had her reasons but I couldn’t figure out why she would want to break up with her lovely boyfriend. I was sure he would have liked the chance to discuss things and maybe they could have reached some sort of compromise.

Gary Devine was the best-looking man I had ever seen in real life. Conventionally handsome, if you know what I mean. The living image of Andy Garcia. Big honest eyes, thighs rounded and hard like telegraph poles, thick head of glossy black hair. (And it’s not even dyed, like mine is.) Great lover too, according to Julie. She never went into details.
She just laughed once and said Gary definitely knew what he was doing in the bedroom. Nicely spoken, he was. Never used to swear in the company of ladies.

What does Gary do for a living, I hear you ask?

Says a lot about a man, doesn’t it?

Well, Gary’s a riding instructor with his own stables in Crawfordsburn. Julie met him in 2002 when she was learning to ride a horse. She was seeing this older man called Bert at the time and she was tinkering with the idea of getting married. Only tinkering, now, she hadn’t set a date or anything. She was talking about a Robin Hood theme, hence the horse-riding lessons. Bert was a paper products (loo-roll) millionaire and a very keen rider himself. Julie didn’t love Bert but he was filthy rich, as it were. ‘People will always need toilet tissue.’ That was Bert’s motto.

We had quite a few laughs over it. Until Julie fell off the horse into a deep puddle of sticky black mud and Bert laughed his head off. Big mistake. Nobody laughs at Julie twice. She swiftly dumped Bert for Gary Devine, just as soon as she’d washed off the mud in the stables’ showers. Julie moved in with Gary that evening, actually.

‘I’m going to stay in a new spa in Galway.’ That was Julie’s follow-up nugget of news. She took a thick gold-edged business card out of her handbag and laid it gingerly on my knee. ‘That’s the name of the place, there. They’ve got shocking-pink armchairs in the foyer.’

So they had. There was a picture of the foyer on the business card. Shocking-pink armchairs, all present and correct. Lots of glass walls and exotic flowers in tall vases. An indoor stream and some gorgeous hunks in white towelling robes standing casually by the stairs. Having a
cosy little chat, by all accounts. It all looked so natural and spontaneous. Not! Bully for you in your white robes, I thought resentfully.

Normally, I’d be extremely impressed with shocking-pink armchairs in the foyer and gold-edged business cards but that day I could feel the sands of time shifting beneath my feet and I knew that both our lives were on the cusp of major change. Don’t ask me how I knew. I mean, Julie was only breaking up with her boyfriend. It happens all the time. People get together and they split up again. But this was different. Call it a woman’s intuition. I just knew the transition period would be long and difficult for everyone concerned.

‘I see,’ I replied in a whisper.

‘Super place, so I hear,’ Julie went on. ‘I expect I’ll spend more time lying by the pool than being slathered in smelly potions and all that caper but I’m so looking forward to the peace and quiet. Windows right down to the ground, they have. See? It’s like being outside except, of course, it’s warm.’

We both peered at the card again. It did seem a five-star sort of operation, which was only what I expected of Julie Sultana. She wasn’t likely to lie low in a rural guest house with tufted chenille bedspreads and crumbs in the jam. Julie is nothing if not stylish.

And then, break-up announced, she got on with the rest of the business instructions.

‘Now, Mags, will you be able to cope with Dream Weddings on your own while I’m away? Only, my mobile will be switched off in case Gary rings me. Which he’s bound to do. Let’s see, there’s that peasant shindig coming
up tomorrow afternoon, for a start. I should never have taken them on as clients. What possessed me? Janine Smith and the rest of her motley crew! Never less than six of them clumping into the lighthouse for appointments, sometimes with small kids in tow. Mags, no more under-twelves in the lighthouse! We don’t want one of them falling down the bloody stairs. Right?’