White Wedding (3 page)

‘Thanks, but I’ll pass on the biscuit.’

‘It’s only one biscuit, Letty. You’ll not get fat on a jam ring.’

‘I said I’m stuffed, Glyn,’ said Violet.

‘Oh. I nipped to the shop and got them in especially,’ said Glyn, his smile falling into a glum downward arc.

Violet watched his bottom lip start to curl over. She reached out and took a chocolate finger to pacify him. The sunshine flooded back into his expression again as he stared at her, relishing
the sight of her eating one of the biscuits that he had so lovingly bought for her. When she was a little girl, Violet used to dream of being looked at so intently by a man.

‘How tired are you?’ he asked.

Oh God.
‘Very,’ Violet replied, forcing out a yawn. ‘And I’ve got a full day ahead of me tomorrow.’

‘Oh. Okay,’ he sighed. Again that little cloud had floated over his head. ‘I put the electric blanket on tonight as it’s a bit chilly. It’ll be lovely and
extra-cosy in bed.’

Violet tried not to roll her eyes. She hated climbing into a bed that was already warm. She liked cool cotton sheets and sleeping with the window open so that a breeze could waft over her during
the night. Glyn always had the heating turned up to full blast and all the windows closed. Violet found it hard to breathe in his flat sometimes.

She went through the pretence of drinking some more before taking her mug to the sink and pouring the tea down the drain. Then she sneaked her half-uneaten biscuit into the flip-top bin in the
corner.

‘I’ll just have a quick shower,’ she announced, heading for the bathroom.

‘Want some company?’ Glyn winked at her and snatched another biscuit.

‘Not worth it, I’ll only be in for two minutes. I’m too tired to stay in there for long. See you in bed,’ she called briskly.

She would rather have had a long hot soak in the bath, but at least by saying that she was taking a quick shower she had more chance of some privacy. Still, she half expected to feel the
waterproof curtain shift and then his naked body pressing into hers from behind. But, for once, that didn’t happen. He was waiting for her in bed, though; ready to slip his arms round her and
cuddle into her back until he fell asleep. Then she shifted ever so carefully away from his sweat-sticky fleshy stomach to the furthest edge of the bed.

Max floated home on a vision of billowing net, silk, satin and white horses. She swaggered up the drive to the front door of her double-fronted detached house imagining that
she was swathed in the world’s biggest frock, the train stretching so far behind her that she needed binoculars to see the end of it. Hundreds of lights were sewn into the material, their
glow soft and as fuzzily gorgeous as a soft-focus portrait. Gypsy Margaret had pink flashing flowers sewn on her dress. Max imagined butterflies for herself, with such vividly coloured wings that
they showed up on Google Earth. At almost six foot tall, with curves that made the Alps look like a Dutch landscape, Maxine McBride was not built for subtle. And there was no place for anything
discreet at a gypsy wedding.

Stuart was still up when she got home. He was watching a documentary about some old cricket player who had recently died. Max felt so happy about her newly revised plans for her wedding that she
almost squashed her fiancé when she plonked herself on the sofa beside him and threw herself at him for a kiss.

‘You’ve been on the vino, I see,’ he laughed. ‘How many glasses have you had, then?’

‘Not that many,’ she replied. ‘I’m just high on life.’

‘Have you eaten or shall we be really naughty and order a pizza?’

‘Oh Stuart, I couldn’t fit in so much as a Tic Tac,’ said Max, puffing out her cheeks. ‘Bel made a very large and garlicky chilli.’ Then she breathed on him and he
pretended to choke.

‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘I look forward to having relations with you tonight, then.’

‘Ooh, are we doing it?’ squealed Max. ‘I’ll go and eat a tube of toothpaste, shall I?’

She made to get up, but Stuart pulled her back.

‘Don’t you go anywhere,’ he said. ‘A mere smidgen of garlic won’t put me off rogering my wife-to-be.’

‘So what’s put you in such a randy mood?’ chuckled Max as Stuart moved in for a snog. ‘You must watch programmes about dead cricketers more often. Can we buy some on
Blu-Ray? Does that constitute cricket porn?’

‘What’s put me in a randy mood is actually seeing you for once. I’ve almost forgotten what you look like,’ said Stuart, pushing his lips against Max’s. ‘If
you aren’t working you’re talking weddings with your new mates.’

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ said Max, thinking what Bel had said about blow-jobs being the way to a man’s heart. Or at least, so she hoped, to the changing of it.

Bel was unloading the dishwasher when her mobile went off. She picked it up and looked at the name on the screen: Richard.

She pressed the ‘connect’ button. ‘Hi,’ she said sweetly.

‘So, had a nice time tonight?’ he asked.

‘Lovely, thank you. You can’t go wrong with food, wine and girly gossip. What about you? What have you been doing?’

‘I’ve been doing some very boring work. Friday night and I’ve been number-crunching. Can you believe?’

‘Of course I believe you,’ Bel’s laugh tinkled down the receiver. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Shall I come over and give you one?’

‘Naughty, Richard,’ purred Bel. ‘You know perfectly well there is a bonk embargo on us until after the wedding.’

‘But Bel, my knackers are the size of basketballs.’

‘No buts. Think how good it will be on the wedding night. Think about me unbuttoning your shirt and kissing your chest.’

‘I’d stop talking like that if I were you,’ replied Richard breathlessly. ‘It’s cruel.’

Bel slipped into full seductive Fenella Fielding mode and lasciviously gave Richard a few more examples of how good their wedding night was going to be. She enjoyed teasing him. Boy, was she was
going to blow his head off next week.

She put down the phone after working him up to such a pitch that his head – and other bodily parts – were in danger of exploding. She relished the thought of him wanting her and
counting off the days until she did all the things she had just promised. Richard couldn’t even imagine the half of what was waiting in store for him on their wedding day.

Violet tried to sneak out of bed without waking Glyn, but failed, as usual.

‘Come back to bed,’ he yawned, attempting to pull her into his chest.

‘I have to get up and go wedding-dress hunting.’ She shrugged off his hold but he didn’t seem to mind because the reason for her desertion pleased him.

‘I can’t wait to be married to you and for you to be Mrs Violet Leach,’ he said as she gathered up her clothes. When she didn’t say the same back to him, he sat up in bed
and prompted her.

‘Well? You’re supposed to say, “I can’t wait to be married to you either, Mr Leach.”’

‘Of course,’ said Violet with a tut. ‘You know that.’

‘Men need to hear the words just as much as women do, you know.’ He sank his head back on to the pillow. ‘Sometimes . . .’ he began, then stopped with a heavy sigh.

‘Sometimes what, Glyn?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, in a sad low voice. The word trailed in the air like a hook in the water with a big fat worm on it waiting for the fish to bite. But Violet was in no mood for a
‘why the dramatic pause’ game and took herself into the bathroom to get washed and dressed.

When she returned to the bedroom for her shoes she found Glyn still staring up at the ceiling with that glum expression on his face. She tried to ignore the accompanying
small-but-meant-to-be-heard sighs and said breezily, ‘Right, I’m off. I’ll see you later.’

‘What time?’ His head turned slowly to her. She saw that his eyes looked a little watery.

‘Oh it may take three hours, possibly four. I’ll ring you if I’m going to be late.’

‘You could be gone four hours?’ Glyn’s eyebrows knotted together.

‘Yes
.
I’ve got to go to the shop after the dress hunt. I’m meeting a painter up there, remember? I’ll be back for lunch.’

‘Well, I’ll cook us something really nice.’ Glyn held out his arms for a hug. Violet leaned over him and turned her mouth away abruptly when he tried to kiss it.

‘Watch out – I’ve just put my lipstick on,’ she said.

‘I’ll kiss your cheek, then.’ He studied her face as they drew apart. ‘Is that a new shade of lipstick? It’s very bright.’

‘Yes, it’s new. I wouldn’t have said it was bright, though,’ said Violet.

‘What was wrong with the old colour?’

Violet tried not to react. It was hard sometimes not to scream at Glyn.

‘Nothing was wrong with it. I wanted a change.’

As soon as she shut the flat door, Violet knew that Glyn’s brain would be over-analysing why she had veered from the path of neutral colours and ventured into the realm of darker shades of
lippy. She expected he would have devised a list of questions about it by the time she got home.

Glyn carried on staring up at the bedroom ceiling and listened to the sound of Violet’s car driving off. The question whirling round in his head was: why was she wearing
a different lipstick? What did it mean? He threw himself out of bed and dragged open the curtains to cast some light into the room while he searched through Violet’s drawers to see what else
she had bought recently that was different. He knew something was amiss. And he would find out what it was. It never crossed his mind that a new lipstick could be anything as simple as an act of
rebellion against a corset-tight existence.

‘Your lift’s here,’ said Stuart, hearing a car horn beep outside. He pulled back the blind and waved at Violet and Bel. He saw two hands flapping back at
him.

‘Ooh lovely,’ said Max. ‘Quick, kiss me before I go.’ She threw her arms round him. They were on eye level with each other when she was in her heels, although her
darkest-red hair piled up in its customary bun gave her the final height advantage.

‘Am I covered in lippy now, as usual?’ Stuart asked, dabbing at his mouth.

‘It’s one of those ones that don’t come off,’ Max replied, her standard shade of tomato-red lipstick totally intact. You can scrub at it with a Brillo pad and it’ll
still be there.’

‘So how do you get it off?’

‘You scrub at it with two Brillo pads,’ laughed Max.

Stuart shook his head. All that make-up lark was beyond him. He was glad he wasn’t a woman. He couldn’t think of anything worse than having to start off his day faffing about with
eye colours and the like, as Max did every morning.

‘Where are you all going, anyway?’

‘Looking at wedding dresses.’

‘Why are you going, then?’

‘To give Violet the benefit of my expertise,’ Max trilled casually.

But Stuart, who had known Max for seventeen years, could smell a rat. He scratched his short mid-brown hair and narrowed his usually smiley brown eyes at her.

‘What?’ she said, such a picture of innocence that she made Anne of Green Gables look like a deranged Chucky doll.

‘You do remember that we are having only a quiet registry-office do? A very, very low-key registry do?’

‘Yes, of course I remember, Stuart. How could I forget?’ Max’s eyelashes were batting. He knew she was up to something when she blinked like that.

‘We agreed to keep it simple. No fripperies,’ he stressed. ‘We don’t need all those things after living together for so many years. It’s just a
formality.’

‘I know what we agreed,’ huffed Max, adding to herself:
but it ain’t going to happen
.

‘Good,’ said Stuart with some relief, picking up his toast. He knew that Max being Max, she wouldn’t be able to resist a few wedding extras, but as long as they only stretched
their plans a little, he could live with that. He wouldn’t begrudge her a bouquet or a hat to go with the smart beige suit she had bought.

Max decided to plant the first seed. ‘Anyway,’ she sniffed, ‘I want to go with them to the wedding shop because I haven’t one hundred per cent decided what I’m
wearing yet.’

‘I thought you had.’ Stuart stopped mid-crunch on his toast. ‘What’s that suit hanging in the wardrobe for, then?’

‘It’s frumpy,’ said Max, waving her hand as if the gesture would make it magically disappear. ‘And it gets frumpier every time I look at it. Plus, you’ve seen it.
And it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride’s outfit before the wedding.’

She noticed the way he was studying her. ‘Don’t worry, blah blah, plain and simple.’ Then she stuck out her tongue at him.

‘Well, don’t come in looking like a toilet-roll-cover doll if you buy another outfit, because I’ll run off.’ He laughed but there was a warning lacing his words.

‘As if,’ Max twinkled. ‘Although I am planning to get married only the once so a white dress might be rather nice.’

‘Maaax.’

Violet beeped her car horn again. Max jumped to order.

‘Okay, I’m offski. Back later, darling. I won’t be that long.’

‘Good,’ said Stuart, chewing on his toast again. ‘It might be nice to spend some time with you at a weekend for once.’

‘Let’s do lunch,’ suggested Max. She blew him a kiss as she opened the front door, then she trotted down the garden path in her tall pin heels.

‘What have you been doing?’ Bel shouted through the window of Violet’s pink mini, adding, as a grinning Max opened the car door and got into the passenger seat,
‘We’ve been waiting hours.’

‘I have been busy making mischief,’ said Max, patting her gravity-defying bun.

‘What sort of mischief?’ asked Violet, slipping into first gear.

‘“My big fat gypsy wedding” Step One sort of mischief,’ Max answered, clipping herself into her seat belt. ‘I’m building Stuart up to it slowly. First,
I’ve told him that I’m probably not going to be wearing the crappy wedding outfit that I bought. Then I’ll add more details on a need-to-know basis. You wait, he’ll be
booking a 747 to arrive in before I’ve finished with him.’

Violet didn’t know what sort of man Stuart was, but she had no doubt that if Max couldn’t bring him round to her way of thinking, he must be made of stone.