White Wedding (42 page)

Richard had kissed Bel properly on the mouth when they parted. His lips had been soft and insistent, his tongue entered her mouth and his arms crushed her to him. Bel had let
him because she wanted to be sure, and experiencing his kiss she was now as sure as she could be.

Once at home, she took her wedding ring out of her jewellery box and studied it. She had wanted to show off that ring so much when they bought it. It was a symbol of their union. The next time
she saw Richard she would, once again, be wearing it.

‘When do you want it back?’ Violet asked Freya as she picked up the dress, protected in its plastic cover.

‘Within a calendar month of the wedding, please,’ said Freya, wrapping ribbon around the box that contained Violet’s veil and tiara. ‘You can leave the dry-cleaning to
me.’

Then she surprised Violet by taking her chin in her hand and tilting up her face. ‘You are a very lovely girl,’ said Freya in her soft voice. ‘I wish you all the best that life
can give you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Violet, pushing down the rising tide of emotion. ‘It’s a beautiful dress and I’ll take good care of it.’

‘The dress is a good fit on a happy bride,’ smiled Freya, ‘but wild horses shouldn’t be able to drag down an aisle anyone that doesn’t want to be there.’

Violet bravely attempted a joke. ‘Thank goodness there’re no aisles in the registry office, then.’

Freya looked into Violet’s large sad eyes, which were the colour of spring bluebells. She saw all the thoughts, the frustration, the panic, the guilt in them before Violet dropped her
head, picked up her gown and the box and turned to go.

‘Be happy,’ called Freya, as Violet closed the door behind her. ‘Be as happy as I was.’

Violet hung the gown on one of the hooks at the side of the door in the shop and put the box of bridal accessories on the floor underneath it. Then she went into the kitchen,
washed her hands and started to weigh out ingredients to make some strawberry and white-chocolate ice cream.

The mixer was on full blast so she didn’t hear Pav enter. She wasn’t aware of his presence until she felt his hand upon her shoulder.

She cried out in momentary shock, whirled round, saw it was him and then felt his hands upon her arms, steadying her – his beautiful big hands that she would soon never see – or feel
– again. She couldn’t have stopped the tears with the Hoover Dam. Down her cheeks they poured while she stood there in embarrassment, trying to escape his hold.

‘My God, Violet, Violet, whatever is the matter?’ For a few moments he was unsure whether to let her go or hold her closer to comfort her. Then he pulled her against his chest and
Violet abandoned herself to his force, breathing in the smell of his leather jacket and the fresh-scented cologne that he wore. His arms were a sweet cage around her, then, suspecting that he might
not know how to let go, she stiffened and removed herself from his embrace.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

‘Come sit down,’ he said, draping his hand over her shoulder and leading her into the front of the shop and over to one of the tables. He stripped off his jacket and sat down
opposite her, a golden horse pole between them.

‘I am a very good listener,’ he said in his deep rich voice. ‘Last night I had to listen to my brother telling me that he is going back to Poland and leaving his wife. Again.
It’s not a good place to be, in that house. I come here for smiles and find you crying.’

Violet shrugged and dabbed at her eyes, hoping that she didn’t look like Chi-Chi the panda.

‘We are friends, I would like to think,’ said Pav. ‘So you can tell me what is making your big violet eyes so red.’

Violet swallowed hard at the intensity of his attention. She could feel that his sea-blue eyes with the thick dark lashes were locked on to her face and when she raised her head it was to see
that the stubble on his chin was longer in some places than in others as if he had been using a rubbish razor.

‘It’s nothi—’

‘Ah.’ Pav raised an admonishing finger. ‘Don’t say nothing. This is not nothing.’ He lifted a tear from her cheek with that same finger only for another to take its
place immediately.

‘I can’t say it,’ said Violet. Her head fell down again.

‘Try,’ said Pav.

‘Really, Pav, I can’t.’

She made to stand, muttering that she should carry on mixing, and Pav and his big artist hands reached over and pushed her down into her seat again, and the walls holding everything back inside
her began to crumble.

‘You aren’t leaving this table until you talk,’ he said.

Violet’s eyes were in full betrayal mode now, pumping out tears faster than she could wipe them away. ‘I . . .’ she began.

She was shaking, as if things inside her were physically breaking down, shifting, rushing to freedom.
Oh God, dare she say it?
She sensed the words rise within her, rumble past her voice
box; she felt her mouth form itself for their exit.

‘I don’t want to get married,’ she said on a frightened low breath. She felt engulfed by a crashing weight of guilt for releasing the sound to the air.

‘Then don’t,’ said Pav gently. ‘Tell him.’

‘I can’t,’ sighed Violet. ‘I’m everything to him. Really. Everything he does is for me. When I met him, sixteen months ago, he was like a kicked puppy. He was so
gentle and caring and desperate to love and be loved.’

She didn’t think he’d understand.

‘Let me guess,’ Pav mused. ‘Maybe you had not been treated so well in the past and this attention was . . . nice for you.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Violet nodded, and she felt encouraged to go on. ‘It was so flattering to be cared for the way he cared for me. Nothing was too much trouble;he sought my
approval for everything he did. It felt lovely to be so . . . so revered. I moved in with him too quickly, I know that now, but he was so kind and I wanted to return the favour by helping him
through his breakdown.’

‘Do you love him?’ asked Pav, taking a serviette from one of the opened boxes on the floor and handing it to her.

‘No.’ Violet took it, shook it open and buried her head in it.

Even talking like this was making her feel as if the air had been removed from the room and replaced with something difficult to pull into her lungs.

‘You need to calm down and breathe deeply,’ said Pav slowly, breathing with her, inviting her to join the rhythm until she felt able to carry on talking.

‘I began to feel trapped, stifled, buried. More and more I started to do all the trademark things like tell him he was silly when he tried to kiss me, say I was tired when we went to bed.
I never liked it that I couldn’t have any privacy in the bathroom.’

‘Why didn’t you just lock the door?’

‘He had the lock taken off. He was scared that I might have an accident in the bath, he said.’

She saw Pav’s expression darken.

‘Violet, you must not marry this man.’

‘I know, but I can’t get out of it.’ There was real rising panic in Violet’s voice now, bordering on hysteria. ‘I want to stop it but everyone has bought outfits
and is looking forward to it and my nan wants to see me married and she’s ill. And his parents have bought us presents and they’ve had their caravan cleaned especially . . .’

Pav’s hands came out and grabbed her wrists and it shocked her into silence.

‘These are not reasons for getting married, Violet. This is why you get married.’ He dragged her hands on to his chest where his heart was. She felt the slow, steady thump underneath
his shirt, the rise and fall of his ribcage. ‘Because you feel a person in here.’

‘You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know, Pav,’ Violet cried. ‘But if I don’t go through with it . . .’ Her voice folded again.

‘What?’ Pav was still holding her hands on his chest. ‘What will happen if you don’t get married?’

‘He’ll kill himself,’ wept Violet, totally breaking down. ‘That’s what he tried to do the last time I left him. He won’t fail again and it will all be my
fault.’

‘Where’ve you been, Susan? You were hours,’ said Nan impatiently, as Susan appeared in the doorway with a cheese sandwich.

‘I’ve been in the kitchen getting this for your lunch,’ said Susan, quelling the urge to snap. Not because she was angry at the old lady, but because she was dog-tired. Nan had
wet the bed again during the night and she’d had to get up and strip and change the sheets. And Susan was worried. Nan was going downhill too fast. And it was killing them both that such a
proud woman was wetting her bed.

‘I don’t like cheese. I never have,’ said Nan, wrinkling up her nose as Susan put the sandwich plate down on the table in front of her.

‘You do,’ said Susan. ‘You love cheese.’

‘Don’t tell me what I like and what I don’t like,’ Nan said crossly, as if Susan were a naughty child.

Susan sighed and tried not to look as sad as she felt. ‘Shall I get you something else?’

‘I’ll have tinned salmon,’ said Nan, aggressively pushing the plate across the coffee table as if the sight of it offended her.

‘I haven’t got any salmon but I’ve got tuna,’ said Susan. ‘Will that do?’

Nan folded her arms across her thin chest. ‘I suppose it’ll have to.’

So Susan went into the kitchen and buttered some more bread. She could hear Nan in the next room singing to herself. It was one of those songs that she had taught Violet when she was a child
sitting on her knee at bedtime. It was a song about a fairground horse.

When Susan went back into the lounge, Nan was singing it to the chair opposite, as surely as if she had a real audience. Susan felt her heart snap like a biscuit inside her.

‘A year ago I realized that I had to leave Glyn,’ Violet went on, as Pav took her hands from his chest, put them down on the table and covered them with his own.
‘I began to find all the attention too much. On the evening when I decided I was going to tell him I was moving out, I went home from work to find the flat covered in rose petals and
champagne on ice waiting for me. He had cooked lobster, oysters, caviar, you name every romantic gesture and it was there. He dropped to his knees and produced a ring and I had to say no. He was
heartbroken, panicky, kept questioning me on and on about what was wrong, what he could do to make me change my mind. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t listen. He refused to accept it
was over. It was awful. He was distraught.’ Violet puffed out her cheeks. Telling Pav about that horrible evening was making it feel very close again.

‘There was a big room above the old shop I used to rent and I intended to stay there for a few days until I’d sorted out my head. I’d been there for only four hours when Joy
– Glyn’s mum – rang me on my mobile to tell me that he’d taken an overdose and was in hospital. A massive one. It wasn’t a piddly little cry-for-help overdose;
he’d really intended to kill himself. He left me a note saying that he loved me so much that he couldn’t live without me, and a note to his parents to say thank you and that he loved
them. But in his drugged state he rang them to say goodbye. Afterwards he said he couldn’t remember doing it and was angry at himself because he really did want to die. He said that everyone
had wasted their time saving him because as soon as he was out of hospital he was going to do exactly the same again. Joy and Norman were in a real state when I got to the hospital. They’re
in their seventies. They had to hook Norman up to an ECG because the shock of it was affecting his heart rhythm and they thought he might be having a cardiac arrest. Glyn’s their only child,
you see. The lucky thing was that Glyn’d taken so many tablets his stomach had thrown most of them back up.’

‘And you agreed to marry him?’ put in Pav. ‘To stop him killing himself.’

‘In a nutshell,’ nodded Violet. ‘I moved back in with him hoping that I could help him shift his depression so that he didn’t rely on me so much for approval. Then
I’d be able to leave him without him feeling that his life was over. The wedding was booked a year in advance. I thought that would give me plenty of time to get him well.’ Violet
groaned like an animal in pain. ‘It sounds mad, I know – why in this day and age am I marrying someone when I don’t want to? I didn’t think it would get this far. There
seemed to be lots of time, but Glyn was getting worse not better. He was relying on me more not less and it got even harder to get out of it. The wedding date was getting nearer and nearer and Joy
was asking me when I was going to get a dress and so I had to start looking for one to stop them realizing what I was really meaning to do. Then they started talking detail and Mum bought an outfit
and . . . I’ve made everything worse by letting things get this far. The rejection would be far worse now. He will succeed in killing himself if I leave him and his parents will never recover
. . . All I can do is go through with everything and keep trying to make him independent and then divorce him . . . but he’s talking about us having children . . .’

Violet’s head fell forward as if she were totally spent. There, it was done, admitted, and it changed nothing.

‘Oh Violet, this is not good,’ Pav’s voice was patient and understanding. ‘You cannot marry this man.’

‘I can’t find a way to leave him without killing him. He loves me so much.’

Pav squeezed her hands. ‘Listen to me, Violet. This is control, this is obsession, this is not love. You have to stop his game. He will not kill himself.’

‘Pav, he will.’

‘No, it’s twisted. He rang his parents last time to rescue him. He wants to control you and he can’t do that when he is dead.’

Violet lifted up her head knowing that she must look a total wreck, not that she cared any more.

‘If you stay, it is you who will die,’ said Pav.