The Bastard Takes a Wife (13 page)

Madame Bouchard’s bakery was as unimpressive
in the interior as it was on the outside though it did have a sort
of quirky charm. The jarrah timber floors were scrubbed and
shining. The walls, the colour of double cream, were bare apart
from a huge clock that hung over the back of the counter. Two large
glass cases displayed a selection of cakes and pastries. It
reminded me of the shop in my favourite Johnny Depp movie,
Chocolate
.

We walked over to the counter and Angus
placed a manicured finger on the bell. A small cat-like woman
appeared from a door that led to the back of the shop. She had the
sort of grey hair that only a few women are fortunate enough to be
graced with as they age. The type that’s such a perfect colour it
makes them look younger and more stylish. And she clearly wasn’t
young.

Madame Bouchard had high cheekbones and
rather large brown eyes surrounded by unnaturally long black
lashes. Her eyebrows were carefully shaped and it was easy to see
that even in her latter years, she took great pride in her
appearance. I could picture her as a young woman, sitting in a
street café drinking café au lait and smoking cigarettes. She was
so, well, French. A large smile lit up her face as she came around
the counter to greet us. She wasn’t much taller than Paige. It
would have been very easy to lose her in a crowd.

“’
Allo
Angus,” she cooed. “And you are
Millicent, no?”

It’s amazing how the French accent can make
any name sound pretty. I could have been a Gertrude and been
satisfied the way she said it.

“Yes. But I prefer Millie.”

“Millie.”

She nodded.

“These are my two of my bridesmaids, Melanie
and Kirby.”

“A pleasure, no,” Madame Bouchard nodded
again. “And where is your young man?”

“He’s running late but we can start without
him. That’s fine.” And anyway, the girls and I had a tonne of stuff
to get done after this. I didn’t have time to wait while Sam did
what ever it was that was holding him up.

“Very well. Now after our conversation on ze
phone, I rack my brains for ze perfect cake for lovely couple and I
am thinking what about White Chocolate Angelfood Cake with ze
raspberry filling and white chocolate butter cream icing? We top
with ze delicate swirls of milk and dark chocolate and kitsch bride
and groom made from fondant,
oui
?”

It sounded so good, I almost began to
drool.

“Oh
oui
, Madame. Most definitely
oui
!” The woman was a French mind reader. This was what Sam
and I wanted. And it sounded as if I’d found it without having to
try thirty different cakes.

“Right-ho,” she said. “I go get ze samples,
just to get ze taste absolute correct and pictures of bride and
groom and cake shapes and we make ze decision, yes?”

I nodded with enthusiasm.

As Madame Bouchard left, I slipped my phone
from my pocket and tried Sam’s number again. It went straight to
message bank. Sam hated message bank. He never checked his messages
justifying that if the caller was that desperate to reach him,
they’d call back. I sent him a text instead.

Where are you? I’m already trying
cakes!!

There was no reply.

“I wonder where he’s got to? Maybe he stopped
to check out the suits? I asked him to have a look and see what he
thought the other day. It’d be like him to try and get all the
errands done at once.”

“I’ll ring The Lederhosen and see if he’s
left,” Mel said.

“I can try the tailor shop. I, like, have
them on speed dial,” Kirby smiled.

I didn’t bother to ask why she would need a
tailor’s on speed dial. I knew the explanation would be beyond my
realm of comprehension.

“And I’ll try his work mobile, shall I?”
Angus asked.

Pulling his phone from the purpose-designed
padded pocket in his bag, Angus dialled Sam. No answer. He sent a
text. No reply. Then he tried Sam’s mother. If there were one
person guaranteed to know where Sam was, it’d be Patricia. We’d had
to email her our appointment schedule every week in advance so she
could reach us at all times. God knows why.

“Hello, Mrs. Brockton? It’s Angus Adams
calling. I was wondering if you’d seen Sam today? Millie and I are
at the bakery and I was under the impression that he was going to
be in attendance but he seems to have been delayed.”

The sound of ranting, like angry chipmunks,
emanated from the earpiece in Angus’s phone. Angus’s shoulders
tensed as he held the device away from his ear. His face took on a
rather pinched look. “Right. I’ll tell her.”

As if in slow motion, like his body had run
out of batteries, Angus bent over the side of the table and put his
phone back into his bag. He was down there for a considerable
amount of time and it wasn’t to compare Kirby’s heels with his own.
I was convinced he was attempting to prepare himself for what I’d
do when he told me what Patricia had said. Obviously, it was going
to be bad.

At last, he sat, straight-backed against the
chair. He adjusted his bow tie and took a deep breath. “It appears
that Sam will not be joining us today. He’s left instructions for
you to choose whatever cake you like. He also said Amanda is on her
way to help you.”

I knew it. I just knew it.

“Why?” Mel asked. “Does he think we’re
incapable of tasting a bit of fucking cake by ourselves?”

“Sam’s mother is poorly. He’s staying at the
hotel to look after her.” Angus appeared to cringe as if he thought
I was going to throw something at him. Luckily, the table we were
at was empty.

I sat for a moment letting his words sink in.
How had this happened? Sam had been all set to come when I’d
reminded him on the way home in the car last night. He’d gone so
far as to tell me how he’d cleared his morning schedule.

Now his mother was ill? Patricia had been
fine when she’d been telling me how pathetic my choices were. More
than likely she was having a tantrum because she didn’t like our
idea for the cake and was annoyed because I wouldn’t compromise.
That was it. She was resorting to dirty tactics. And Sam had been
sucked into the middle of it.

Mel shook her head in disgust. “That woman’s
a piece of work. She’s doing this on purpose to get at you. And the
stick insect sister is only coming to get you to change your
mind.”

At least I wasn’t alone in my suspicions.

“This is unbelievable,” I said. “After the
effort he went to, to clear his diary. I thought he was
excited.”

“Absolutely ridiculous. Where the fuck are
his balls?”

“Like, in his mother’s hand by the sound of
it.” Kirby’s full pink mouth pouted in disappointment. “You know, I
always thought Sam was, like, the strong one of the boys. Gosh,
even Rambo wouldn’t have chosen his mother over me.”

As Madame Bouchard re-emerged from her
kitchen, a wooden tray of cake samples spread over the surface like
all my ideas of heaven in one place, I lost my appetite. I didn’t
care. Sam’s mother had gotten in his ear, convincing him he didn’t
need to be here. And worse, he’d listened. He’d made a complete
fool out of me in front of the girls and Angus. He was meant to be
the big tough rugby player who was going to take care of me forever
and he was bending to a whim of his mother’s. Again. What was wrong
with him?

Madame Bouchard placed the tray on the table.
I looked at the heavenly amounts of chocolate cake that under other
circumstances would have signified some sort of reaction in my
loins. Then I had the idea to trump all ideas. If Patricia wanted
to play dirty and use my fiancé as the pawn, I’d take a roll in the
mud, too.

“Which is the most expensive?” I asked.

Madame Bouchard pointed.

I took up a fork and cut off a small slither,
putting it to my mouth. It was glorious. “I’ll have that one
please. Now. Flavouring. Which would go best and costs the
most?”

She pointed, I tasted. It was excellent.

A small smile of knowing formed on Mel’s lips
as she forked a mouthful of the two samples into her mouth. “Oh
Millie, you sneaky bitch.”

“She asked for it.”

Twenty minutes later, decisions made and head
held remarkably high, I walked out of Madame Bouchard’s bakery just
as Amanda appeared. Angus was scurrying along behind, somewhat in
shock I think at what had occurred. I had done a complete back flip
and ordered the most elaborate wedding cake known to man ~ in the
flavours I wanted. Madame Bouchard had done a mock up on her techie
cake building software and sent it as an email to Sam and
Patricia’s phones. God, I hoped Sam’s mother would fall over and
die with shock when she saw the monumentally up-scaled computer
version of the original cake idea. At five times the original size
and with the kitsch bride and groom now dressed in edible 14ct gold
and silver, it cost somewhere around fifteen grand, I think. If
that cow wanted me to spend money, then spend money I would. Well,
until Sam grew some balls, stood up to his mother and we got back
to some form of normality. I was not going to live my life bending
to the whims of that dragon.

Amanda stopped in front of us. She looked up
at the sign and down at us and plastered a smile on her face that
was clearly faker than the manufactured diamond Kirby wore to scare
unsuitable men away.

“Oh hello,” she said. “I’ve been up and down
this block for the last twenty minutes looking for the shop. Its
rather non-descript isn’t it?”

Ha. She’d never be able to say that about my
wedding cake.

*****

Sam slammed the pictures of our wedding cake
down on the desk. He was fighting hard to keep a lid on his anger,
a side of him I had never witnessed before. His eyes were bulging
and a vein had popped up on the side of his neck and was throbbing
in snycronisation with his words.

“What’s this?”

“That’s our wedding cake.”

“Don’t be smart, Mill’ you know what I
mean.”

It looked like the tables had turned. At
last, I was the one in charge. If he thought I was going to let his
mother run our lives, he had another thing coming. “I’m not being
smart. You told me to choose what I wanted and this is what I
want.”

“But I thought we were having the ‘small
tasteful cake’ with the cute couple on top? What happened to
that?”

I tried not to smirk. I could feel him
squirming at the sheer enormity of this cake. “It’s the same cake.
Just bigger. And bling-ier. Your mother should love it.”

Sam picked up the picture and turned it on an
angle. He squinted as if trying to shrink it in his mind. His face
went red like he was going to explode and his voice rose to a pitch
I’d never heard in a man before. “It’s fucking huge! Since when did
this become what we want?”

“Since your mother decided to pull that
little stunt this morning so you wouldn’t be able to come to the
cake tasting. I felt like a fool, Sam. You left me there with Angus
and the girls.”

“But Mum was sick. She had one of her
turns.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. She was no
more sick than I’m freakin’ Beyonce in disguise. She put that on so
you’d stay home with her. She wanted to show me who’s in charge.
Then she sent Amanda along to talk me into something I didn’t want
because she thought I’d back down if you weren’t there. It was
divide and conquer. She never wanted us to have a simple cake and
if you’d been there that’s exactly what we would have ordered.”

“So you thought you’d spend…” he peered at
the faxed quote, “Fourteen thousand eight hundred dollars?”

“And fifty cents.”

“But why?”

“Because one of us has to stand up to her
and, clearly, it wasn’t going to be you.”

“Jesus, Mill’, I never realised you were such
a bitch.”

I stormed out of the room. Surely, there had
to be someone in this world who understood.

*****

I sat at the bar at The Lederhosen, a basket
of sodden lukewarm chips in front of me. Every now and then, I
picked one up and looked at it then put it back in the basket. This
whole cake episode had left a funny feeling in my mouth and I had
no appetite at all. Instead of wanting to gloat, I wanted to throw
up. Had I become just like Sam’s mother by playing such a dirty
trick? Was I the bitch Sam had called me? God, I wished this stupid
wedding was over and Sam and I were at the B&B in Lombok,
drinking Pina Coladas on the verandah.

Alex was behind the bar, stacking the dirty
glasses. She’d been promoted to Bar Manager while Diane was in
hospital having a boob reduction. I’d been thrilled for her at the
time, but now I never seemed to see her anymore. She was always
working or at the gym. She was never available to talk like she
used to be.

I’d been ranting for a few minutes before she
spoke.

“You did what?”

I slid my finger into the chip basket and
flipped over a couple of chips. None appealed. “I ordered a massive
wedding cake.”

Alex was looking towards the other end of the
bar. She didn’t seem to be giving me her full attention. An old man
was waving a twenty-dollar note in the air and screaming,
“Girlie.”

“Hang on a sec’.” She raced off to serve the
customer, then paused to refill someone else’s beer on the way
back. At last, she stopped in front of me, leaning her hip on the
bar and giving her top a hoist up around the cleavage. She was
wearing a new, smaller uniform, which was extremely short but
looked good on her. The straining buttons were a thing of the past.
She looked flushed from the rush but sort of happy. Maybe it was
the extra responsibility.

“So, what’d you do that for?” She smoothed
her apron and fluffed up her dirndl skirt. I wished she’d look me
in the eye so we could have a proper conversation. “I thought you
wanted a small cake?”