The Ballroom Class (5 page)

‘Well  . . .’ Lauren’s stomach freaked out at the thought of no hangover McDonalds till she was a married woman, but she steeled herself. It’s not for ever, she thought. Cinderella would not have wheat bloat. ‘Did you say you’d got a diet sheet from one of the magazines?’

‘I’ll dig it out for you.’ Irene finished fiddling with the coffee, and set a clear glass cup down in front of Lauren, the cappuccino capped with thick white foam. It smelled delicious.

I’ll give up from next week, she thought. ‘Ooh, that’s lovely. Are you having one?’

‘I’m sticking to peppermint infusions,’ said Irene and gave her a reproachful smile.

The thing was, Lauren thought, Irene
wasn’t
a Wicked Mother-in-law. She meant well, and was quite stylish for someone in her fifties, and nothing was too much trouble when it came to her and Chris’s wedding. She just had far too much time on her hands. Since Chris’s dad died and the life insurance paid off the house, she hadn’t had to work, unless you counted her three mornings a week at the charity shop on the High Street, which Lauren didn’t.

‘So, have you spoken to Christopher about him learning to ride a horse?’ demanded Irene, picking up her pen again. ‘Because he’ll need to get started with that if you want him riding into the ceremony to wake you up.’

‘Um  . . .’ Lauren hadn’t worked out how best to broach that with Chris. Chris still thought –
hoped
– they were having a simple church wedding and sit-down hotel meal. His idea of a big night out was the pub with his mates, followed by an all-you-can-eat at the Peking Tiger, followed by half an hour at Diamondz, the club at the far end of the High Street. But then it was all right for Chris: all his life he’d been the rugby-playing, in-crowd-leading, first-one-to-have-a-car, school-fit-lad type. It wasn’t a dream for him, like it was for her.

Irene’s pen paused, mid-note. ‘You haven’t told him about the horse, have you?’

‘Um, sort of  . . .’ Lauren fumbled. She hadn’t actually told her own mother about the horse yet, but there had been such a gorgeous photo in one of the wedding magazines, of a bride about her height, mounted on a pearly-white pony, looking so elegant and magical  . . .

‘Would you like me to have a word?’ suggested Irene with a sympathetic half-smile. ‘I am his mother, after all.’

The doorbell rang and saved Lauren from answering.

‘That’ll be Mum,’ she said, hastily getting up. ‘I’ll let her in. She’ll have a strong coffee, if there’s enough there – three sugars.’

Lauren didn’t miss the sotto voce tut that escaped from Irene when she thought she was out of earshot, but said nothing. After a long day wrangling with five-year-olds, her mum needed two cups of coffee in a row, three sugars in each, just to summon up the strength to get her shoes off.

Irene’s detached house was big enough to have a front porch, but not a single stray shoe or plastic bag escaped the wicker storage solutions lining the wall. Through the frosted glass, Lauren made out the small, round shape of her mother Bridget. As she opened the front door she caught her hurriedly stuffing the last chunk of a banana in her mouth while juggling a bulging Tesco’s bag and her battered leather tote.

‘Oops! You caught me – I was ravenous. Haven’t stopped all day. Hello, Laurie, love,’ said Bridget Armstrong, leaning forward to embrace her daughter.

Lauren hugged her, breathing in the familiar smell: primary-school children, and fresh wipes, and the Chanel No 5 which her dad bought her every birthday and Christmas. ‘For the femme fatale beneath the sensible shoes,’ he said, every year, and every year Bridget laughed in the same rueful way. A couple of times Lauren had suggested to him that maybe a foot spa or a gift certificate for a manicure might be more up her mum’s street, and he’d nodded and agreed, and given exactly the same thing.

She’d begun to wonder if it was some kind of a shared joke.

Bridget hesitated with the empty banana skin for a moment, saw nowhere to hide it in Irene’s pristine porch, then stuffed it to the bottom of her school bag. ‘So, how’s it going?’

‘Not so bad,’ said Lauren, stepping back to let her in. She and her mum used to talk about Lauren’s fantasy wedding in the little kitchen at home, to cheer her up when she’d traipsed home after another miserable netball match. The only problem was that, now it was all real, Bridget didn’t seem to grasp the first thing about the sheer scale of what planning a dream day actually involved.

Lauren didn’t mind cutting her mum some slack because it wasn’t as though she’d ever had to organise one before. Billy, Lauren’s older brother by fourteen years, emigrated to New Zealand when she was eleven, and married there, totally doing her out of being a flowergirl, which was what she’d dreamed about before graduating to bridal fantasies. David, her other brother, had got married up in Scotland when she was fourteen, and his wife Vivienne had sorted out the whole thing, up to and including her foul tartan outfit. Vivienne was an event manager and wouldn’t even let Bridget choose her own corsage.

No wonder Mum’s a bit out of it, Lauren reminded herself. She hadn’t even heard of bridal showers.

‘I’ve got one bit of good news.’ Bridget unwound her scarf and hung her parka up next to Irene’s white wool wrap coat. ‘I spoke to Marjorie in the canteen about the cake. You know, the sugarcraft lady? She does lovely wedding cakes, with homemade marzipan, and she’d give me a staff discount.’ She winked, her bright brown eye vanishing, then sparkling open again, like a dormouse. ‘Three tiers for the price of two! And a sugarcraft bride and groom thrown in. If you tell her what your dress is like, she can make them look like you and Chris.’

‘That’d be nice,’ said Lauren automatically. It would have been nice too, if she hadn’t seen the enormous tower of heart-shaped croquembouche enmeshed in golden spun-sugar Irene had ripped out of
Central Brides
magazine.

Enmeshed. Croquembouche. God. Getting married really expanded your vocabulary.

‘Shall I tell her yes, then?’

‘Tell who yes?’

Irene emerged in the doorway to the diner-kitchen, brushing imaginary dust off her immaculate cream trousers. Not for the first time, Lauren thanked her lucky stars that the chances of the two mothers wearing the same outfit were low to minimal. Although the chances of Irene turning up in something white and bridal were worryingly high.

‘The cake, Irene! I think that’s one thing we can cross off the list. How are you? What a lovely pair of trousers.’

‘Mwuh.’ Irene squinched her face round to airkiss Bridget, who did not, as a rule, do social kissing. ‘Jaeger. All in the cut.’

‘Very nice. Ooh! Is that a cup of coffee I can smell? I’m just about ready to drop.’

‘I’ll put the machine on again,’ said Irene.

‘Poor Mum,’ said Lauren, following her through to the kitchen. ‘Kids playing up?’

‘And the rest. If I put all the little devils on the naughty step every time they deserved it, we’d need a four-storey infant school. Oooh!’ She sank down on to a stool, and sighed with relief. ‘You’ve got that to come, Lauren.’

‘Mum! I’m twenty-two! I’ve got years before we even
think
about having kids,’ Lauren protested. Then she saw Irene’s face freeze as she frothed milk in her special silver jug, and she added, ‘I mean, all in good time, eh?’

Irene tipped her head on one side and gazed balefully at her. ‘Well, I hope you won’t make us wait too long,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to be a grandmother. Of course, you are already, aren’t you, Bridget? It must be wonderful.’

‘Of course it is,’ agreed Bridget, eyeing the coffee.

‘Aren’t you sad they’re so far away, though?’ Irene paused, the cup and saucer held within tantalising reach. ‘That’s a terrible shame.’ She sighed and put the cup down. ‘Would you like some sugar?’

‘Yes, please.’ Bridget stirred the foam into the coffee with brisk movements, then sipped it straight away, not even stopping to comment on the loveliness of the Italian deli cups, bought by Irene on holiday in Milan. ‘Ah, lovely – I needed that. So, where have you two got to?’ asked Bridget, cheerfully, unaware of the faint moustache of foam on her upper lip.

‘Well, we’re definite about the fairy-tale theme, but which one
exactly
is still under discussion.’ Irene drew her notebook towards her and reviewed what she’d written. Twenty years as an executive-level PA didn’t vanish overnight. ‘Did you have any thoughts?’

Bridget directed a straight primary-school teacher look at her daughter. ‘So we’ve abandoned the Jane Austen wedding idea now?’

‘Yes,’ said Irene.

‘Er, yes,’ said Lauren, wishing Irene wouldn’t make it sound as if she was the one making all the decisions. ‘Thing is, I tried on some of those empire-line dresses that were in that magazine and they  . . . To be honest, they weren’t that flattering.’

‘I think what Lauren means is that they made her look as if she was four months gone,’ explained Irene. ‘And that’s all very well for those girls that
are
four months gone, but there’s no point making things look bad when they’re not. Isn’t that right, Lauren? We were both agreed, weren’t we, and so were the girls in the shop. White just doesn’t do much for you, not with your colouring. You want to look peaches and cream, not Bride of Dracula.’

Lauren’s head jerked back and forth between Irene and her mother.

Bridget stirred her cappuccino with a deliberate casualness that Lauren knew at once was put on. ‘I didn’t know you’d tried them on.’

‘I popped in on my lunchbreak,’ she said, quickly. ‘The dress shop was just round the corner from Irene’s charity shop, so she dropped in to give me a second opinion. It was just a spur of the moment thing. We can go again this weekend if you want to see for yourself. But honestly, they were grim.’

‘Very much so,’ agreed Irene. ‘Not that you won’t look fabulous in the
right
dress, Lauren. We just need to find it. At least we can cross empire line off the list now.’

‘It’s just difficult,’ sighed Lauren. ‘They look so lovely in the magazine spreads, but then when you get them on  . . .’ She grimaced. ‘. . .  it’s not what you hoped.’

‘You’d look gorgeous in a bin bag, love,’ Bridget insisted. ‘I still don’t know how we managed to produce such a stunner in the first place.’ She beamed proudly at Irene. ‘I always told her that she’d be grateful to be tall like a model when she grew up. Not a shrimp like me.’

Lauren squeezed out a little smile. That was typical of her mother. Always looking on the bright side. She’d never had to stand with the lads in school photos.

‘I know,’ said Irene. ‘It’s a great comfort to me how much our Christopher looks like Ron. He’s the image of him in his youth. Anyway  . . .’ She looked pained, and drew the notebook towards her. ‘So to recap, Snow White’s Lauren’s theme preference, or Sleeping Beauty. Which I myself think would be more romantic.’

‘But I’ve had this idea about the dwarfs  . . .’ Lauren tried, to no avail.

‘Whichever – you’re going to need to sign up for some dancing classes now,’ Irene went on. ‘According to this magazine, most people leave it far too late to learn, and then they make a mess of it on the big day, what with nerves  . . .’

‘And champagne, if I know Lauren,’ Bridget added.

Irene looked up at Lauren. ‘Now you don’t want that, do you? I’ve been looking into it and apparently there’s a class starting tomorrow in the Memorial Hall in Inkerman Street. Shall I get you and Christopher signed up?’

‘You think Chris’ll go to dancing lessons?’ asked Lauren, dubiously. ‘They’ll love that at work.’

Chris was the assistant showroom manager at the car dealership his dad had run for years, before dropping dead of a heart attack just after the speeches at his lavish sixtieth birthday party (‘The way he’d have wanted to go,’ Irene insisted. ‘Surrounded by his friends, with a drink in his hand.’) Chris was just as natural a salesman as his dad – good at chatting cars and rugby with male customers, just boyish enough to make the ladies want to mother him. The blond good looks and cheeky smile didn’t hurt, either. But ballroom dancing wasn’t something the lads at the rugby club were going to let him get away with.

‘Well, why not tell him about the horse-riding lessons, and if he won’t do that, suggest dancing instead,’ said Irene, briskly. ‘One or the other?’

‘Horse-riding lessons?’ enquired Bridget. ‘Have I missed something?’

‘We were thinking about creating a Sleeping Beauty theme with Chris arriving on a horse, like the prince in the story,’ Lauren explained. ‘Then we could both leave on it, at the end of the ceremony.’

‘And what would you do with the horse while you were in church?’

‘Ah,’ said Lauren. ‘Well. I was thinking we could have the service in the park? They’re licensed to do ceremonies and we could get that pagoda bandstand whatsit, and cover it in roses so it looks like a bower, or we could do something with thorns that Chris has to cut his way through to get to me, and  . . . What?’

She looked up to see her mother glaring at her as if she’d said something stupid. The smile had vanished from her mother’s eyes.

‘What?’

‘Lauren,’ Bridget said firmly, ‘your dad and I are happy for you to plan whatever you want for your reception – eight-tier cakes, bridesmaids dressed up as rabbits, whatever you like – but you’re getting married at St Mary’s. You’re not getting married in the park.’ She raised her hands. ‘Isn’t that right, Irene?’