White Wedding (8 page)

It was a source of annoyance to Vanoushka Bosomworth-Proud that her sister’s house had more rooms than hers. And an orangery. Vanoushka would have sold her liver for that orangery, but her
husband’s financial advisory business wasn’t nearly as profitable as her brother-in-law’s confectionery factory. Treffé Chocolates had started life as Trevelen Chocolates
– a two-man business consisting of Trevor and Helen Candy. It didn’t do that well, though, and was wound up. Helen died within the year and Trevor went back into business management,
only to marry his secretary – Faye – who reignited all his dreams of being a chocolate magnate, and thus Treffé Chocolates was born. They worked well, and hard, together and
Trevor had learned a lot from mistakes made the first time round. Now Treffé had stretched over the sea, first to Germany then to France and Belgium, giving the experts there a run for their
money. Their products had won many awards and the company was defying the recession and rising from strength to strength. Bel only wished the success story had been her mother’s and not
Faye’s.

‘Hello, darling,’ said Trevor, coming to the door to greet the daughter who always rang the bell to gain entry rather than just walk in, even if both Trevor and Faye told her that
the Nookery was as good as her home too. He had a pipe lodged between his lips and he removed it in order to give Bel a peck on the cheek. With his large ears, thinning grey hair and easy way, he
had more than a passing resemblance to Bing Crosby. ‘Come in, come in. And by the way, I have a bone to pick with you. Why haven’t you banked that cheque I gave you for the wedding
yet?’

He smacked his daughter’s bottom lightly as she walked into the house.

‘No rush, Dad. Too busy at the moment,’ said Bel.

‘Hello, darling,’ chirped Faye. She’d appeared at the lounge door wearing some sort of pale blue kaftan that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else. But on tall, slim Faye
it looked like something a top model would have worn, and the shade was stunning against her expertly dyed caramel-blonde hair, which was piled into a messily perfect bun.

‘Hi, Faye,’ called Bel. As in recent days, more so than ever before, the smile on her lips didn’t quite reach her eyes. Because Faye was one of them – a Bosomworth
– even if she was the only one of the three sisters who didn’t still cling to their maiden name to force a double-barrel. But blood was thicker than water, after all.

‘Glass of champagne?’ asked Faye. ‘Come and try this new fizz from France.’

‘Thanks, but I’m driving.’

‘Driving? You can’t drive tonight; it’s the family equivalent of a hen night. Leave your car here and pick it up tomorrow,’ Trevor nudged her. ‘We’ve got this
champagne in especially for you. It’s called Belle de la Nuit. Come on, Bel, let your hair down. This is the last time you’ll be with us as our “Miss Candy girl”.’

‘I’ll be okay with just the one glass, Dad. I’ve got to keep a clear head – I have so much to do in the next couple of days,’ she said, more than half wishing she
could lift a bottle of Belle de la Nuit to her lips and drink it in one.

‘All right, then, if you’re sure,’ sighed Trevor, handing her a glass of bubbly. ‘It’s so nice to see you here. You don’t come often enough, you know. And
we’ll probably see even less of you when you’re married.’

‘You’re welcome any time, you know that,’ said Faye, nodding heartily as she moved towards Trevor. He slipped his hand round her and something flicked at Bel’s heart.
Even now, after all these years, she wanted to rush between them and say, ‘He’s mine, not yours. Mine and Mum’s.’ Trevor and Faye had always been affectionate with each
other, hand holding, darling this, sweetheart that. Even after twenty-eight years of marriage.

‘Have you changed your mind about the house?’ asked Faye. ‘I notice it’s still for sale.’

‘Nope,’ said Bel. ‘I told you, I’ve gone off it.’

This was another lie that hurt to tell. She had fallen in love with Bell House when she and Richard had found it three months ago – even the name made it sound like it was meant to belong
to her. So everyone was stunned when she announced the following month that she was no longer interested in it.

In the same week she told Richard that she wouldn’t be staying at his flat any more until after the wedding. And he wasn’t to stay at her apartment either. She said she wanted her
wedding night to be special – unforgettable. Something worth waiting for. Explosive.

Richard was next to arrive, just as Bel took a huge gulp of the zesty fizz. She felt it trace a cool path down to her stomach. Then she pulled in a deep breath as her gorgeous, suave and
sophisticated fiancé made a perfect-white-toothed smiling beeline for her.

‘Hello, stranger,’ he said, draping his arms round her shoulders and kissing her firmly on the lips. ‘This separation is killing me, you know.’ He leaned in close to her
ear. ‘I have a constant hard-on like you wouldn’t believe.’

She gave his crotch a surreptitious single stroke. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, licking her lips. ‘It’s really only hours away to our wedding night.’

‘Hello, Richard,’ Faye interrupted, handing him a glass of champagne and clinking hers against it. ‘What a happy evening we’re going to have with you both here
together.’

A car pulled up harshly in the drive, spraying gravel everywhere. Martin’s Aston Martin. Like everything else he had, it was being paid off monthly. He was obsessed by the need to keep up
with the Joneses – the Joneses in his case being his sister-in-law and her husband, who, it grieved him to think, could have paid for his car and his house with change from their arse
pocket.

‘Vanoushka’s here,’ Faye trilled, running to the champagne bottle to pour out three more glasses, for her elder sister, brother-in-law and niece.

‘Whoopee,’ said Bel drily to Richard. ‘At least it will be nice to see Shaden. You haven’t seen her for ages, have you?’

Richard didn’t appear to have heard the question. Instead he whispered in Bel’s ear, ‘So how many times do you think Martin will say the word “investment” tonight,
then?’

‘Oh at least forty-five,’ smiled Bel, enjoying the sensation of his arm round her, squeezing her into his side. It felt so nice she wanted to cry. Her bottom lip began to tremble.
She hadn’t figured tonight would be so hard.

Vanoushka was first through the door, with her perfect bottle-blonde hair, Botox-frozen head and Goodyear-tyre lips. She made Jackie Stallone look like Shirley Temple. She kissed the air at
either side of her younger sister’s ear as she breezed in on a perfume cloud of something as heavy and spicy as a Moroccan market. They could probably smell it in Morocco, as well –
she’d put enough of it on for that to be possible.

Behind her came the heavily jowled Martin, who’d also had a bit of work done recently. His eyebrows were virtually lodged in his crown. There was nothing frozen about his eyes, though, as
the little beady blue circles roved around the hallway, taking in everything, checking for things that were different from his last visit.

His greasy lips spread into a smile as he air-kissed Faye too and shook Trevor’s hand. Bel prepared herself for ordeal by air-kissing, although ‘Uncle Martin’ didn’t
air-kiss her – he laid his big slobbery lips on her cheek and his hand was more on her bum than her back, as usual. Then he grabbed Richard’s hand, nearly breaking it off with the shake
he gave it.

Then in came Shaden, looking more like a clone of Vanoushka every time Bel saw her, which was rarely these days. Gone was the mousy-haired, lumpy, quiet thing who had been like a little sister
to Bel as they were growing up. They’d found common ground in jumping on the trampoline in the garden, playing hide and seek among the many trees behind the Candys’ old house and a
desire to snog Simon le Bon. They’d been close, until Shaden’s twenty-first birthday, when she – totally out of the blue – announced that her mother was giving her a boob
job as a coming-of-age present. Bel had laughed, presuming she was joking. Shaden didn’t even wear foundation and skipped past the make-up pages in girls’ mags.

Ten years after her pneumatic breast implants, Shaden was unrecognizable as the girl Bel knew. Waxed and preened, teeth straightened and whitened, lips inflated to pout-perfect standards, weekly
spray-tanned, hair bleached to Californian blonde – much to her mother’s delight, Shaden Bosomworth-Proud had become a miniature Barbie whose knockers arrived in a room five minutes
before she did. Only her nose remained the same: long with a small bump near the top. Bel didn’t doubt that her conk would be the next thing on the plastic-surgery list and probably would
have been done already if Martin hadn’t been struggling financially for a few years, although no one would believe that from the family face they showed to the world.

Shaden had acquired a glam set of her own friends who swarmed around her as if she were a queen bee, and she no longer had use for the cousin who used to outshine her at every turn. In fact Bel
hadn’t seen her – or heard from her – since choosing the bridesmaid’s dress in Leeds.

‘Hi, coz,’ Shaden smiled at Bel, and whereas years ago she would have bounced over and thrown herself on Bel, now she teetered over on her huge spiked heels and kissed the air inches
away from her cheek. Bel watched as she greeted Richard the same way: brief, perfunctory, polite.

‘I can’t believe the wedding is only two days away,’ smiled Faye. She was getting some really heavy creases round her eyes when she laughed, thought Bel. She obviously
hadn’t had any of the work done that her two older sisters favoured.

‘Is everything arranged, then?’ Vanoushka asked her.

‘I . . . I . . . think so,’ began Faye, looking to Bel for comment.

‘I’ve done everything myself. I didn’t want any help,’ explained Bel.

‘Oh? Why not?’ asked Vanoushka in her plummy tones. She always spoke very slowly, feeling that added an extra notch of class to her voice. ‘It’s quite an undertaking to
arrange a marriage by yourself, Belinda.’

‘I knew what I wanted so it wasn’t necessary to involve anyone else.’

Vanoushka would have raised her eyebrows if she could. Bel knew that when Shaden got married, Vanoushka’s nose would be well and truly stuck into the business of organizing the wedding.
Although Shaden was quite happy playing the field for now. She was holding out for a multimillionaire with a dicky ticker and no concept of the phrase ‘pre-nup’.

‘I don’t know yet what we’re going to be eating at the reception,’ laughed Richard.

‘Even you haven’t had any involvement? In your own wedding?’ Vanoushka looked horrified – at least as much as she was able to.

‘Well, Liam and I have picked our suits. That’s about it,’ he replied. ‘And I’ve arranged the honeymoon in Las Vegas. The Bellagio.’

‘Very nice,’ sniffed Martin. ‘Although I’d have gone for the Venetian myself.’

Like he would know, thought Bel, pressing down on the snarl her lip wanted to make. He was only saying that to intimate that he was a savvy world traveller. Bel bet that he wouldn’t know a
Ritz hotel from a Ritz cracker.

‘Still, in our circles it’s a bit odd, surely, for the bride to arrange everything herself,’ said Vanoushka, sounding exactly like the snob she was.

‘I want everything to be a surprise,’ Bel smiled sweetly. If only they knew how much scheming this wedding had taken. It was hard enough work organizing the original one, but when
all the plans had to be changed . . .

‘Are we allowed to know what we’re having to eat, then?’ asked Martin, holding out his glass for a refill. Food was constantly on his mind. ‘Lobster? Beef?’

‘That’s another surprise,’ Bel carried on smiling, as beatifically as Mother Teresa.

‘I love lobster,’ announced Martin, his pronounced paunch grumbling.

‘That’s lucky,’ beamed Faye. ‘Because that’s what we’re having today. Come to the table, everyone. The caterers are ready to serve us.’

Vanoushka’s face nearly turned the lime-green shade of instant jealousy. Lobsters and caterers and champagne. And a wedding in a couple of days that would have cost a small fortune, most
likely.

‘Don’t forget to put that cheque in the bank,’ Trevor reminded his daughter yet again as they walked arm in arm into the dining room. ‘I haven’t strictly paid for
your wedding until you do, you know. And that’s not right.’

‘I know, Dad,’ said Bel, adding to herself:
But that’s the idea
.

Bel noticed that Shaden sat as far away from Richard as she possibly could at the table. Faye relinquished her seat so that Bel could sit next to her father. That was sweet of her, Bel conceded
grudgingly. Mind you, she had him 24/7 so she could afford to let him go for an hour or so.

At the other side of her Bel felt Richard squeeze her leg and her heart beat against her chest wall. He really was so handsome. She’d thought that from the first day she met him in her
office three years ago. The new business contact at the bank, he’d breezed in exactly on time for their appointment, tall and cocky in a black Armani suit . From the moment his soft and sexy
ice-blue eyes locked on to hers, she’d almost dissolved into a pool of drool.

‘When are your parents arriving from France, Richard?’ asked Trevor, as a waiter served him with a pot of buttery shrimps.

‘They’ll be flying over as we speak, with my brother who’s been out there for two weeks.’

‘Such a shame they couldn’t have got an earlier flight and joined us,’ said Faye.

Bel rather thought that Madeleine and Monty Bishop had timed their flights from an early summer stay in their crumbling residence in the Dordogne deliberately. They came from old-money and
didn’t like to think that their precious elder son was marrying into the common nouveau riche. They were the coldest people Bel had ever met. ‘Oh no, I don’t do demonstrations of
affection,’ Madeleine had said, twisting away from Bel when she had first met her and bent to kiss the shrewish little woman with the bright beady eyes of a seriously pissed-off hawk.
Madeleine was so brittle that Bel hadn’t a clue how she could have survived the impregnation shag without shattering into a million pieces. Monty was a snob of the highest order too. They
made a wonderfully suited couple.