A Night In With Grace Kelly

by Lucy Holliday

  Oh, I should say: that’s what I am, today. A bride.

  A proper one this time. Not one who calls off her wedding at the eleventh hour. Not one who’s about to marry the wrong man. A bride, instead, who – at long last – is about to marry the right one. The only one.

  Olly.

  He’s just sent me a text, actually; I can see it’s just pinged up on my phone on the dressing table in front of me.

  Can’t wait to see you. Let’s do this. Xxxxxxx

  There’s a very recent text from Dillon on my phone, too, that I’ve only just seen: I bet you make a fucking hot bride, Fire Girl. Have a wonderful day, sweetheart x

  I’m about to reply (to Olly; I’ll message Dillon another, more appropriate day), just to let him know that I won’t be late, or anything, when there’s an almighty howl from the back room.

  We’re at Starz In They’re Eye’z (yes, that’s how it’s written), Bogdan’s brand-new salon, a tiny jewel of phenomenal kitsch-ness at the Clapham end of Balham High Street. He only opened a couple of weeks ago, but he’s kept this Saturday morning completely free of other customers so that me, Cass, Nora and Mum can have our hair and makeup done here and get into our dresses before taking a smart white taxi-cab along to the wedding venue, a secret garden tucked away near Olly’s restaurant in Clapham. The smell of (hot pink) paint is still fresh here at Starz, and (hot pink) feathers are still moulting from the brand-new feather boas that Bogdan has artfully draped around all the bulb-lit mirrors, but the place is gorgeous. Not to mention a testimony to the Moldovan work ethic: Bogdan only ‘came out’ to his parents about his secret hairdressing career six weeks ago (he’s still not come out in any other sense, but I think we’re all assuming the hot pink and the feather boas will pretty much take care of that) and after all the shouting and wailing and threats of ignominious return to Chişinău had died down, Bogdan Snr was throwing out the tenant of the tiny corner newsagent that occupied this site and converting it into this salon for his beloved boy. Half a dozen Moldovans hammered and chiselled for three feverish weeks, and now you’d never know this place had ever been anything other than a supremely camp boutique hairdresser’s, with a nail bar in the back for pamper parties.

  The nail bar – currently being used as a dressing room – is where the howl has just emerged from, in fact, and a moment later, the door is thrown open to reveal Cass standing in the doorway.

  ‘Look at me!’ she shrieks. ‘It’s a fucking disaster!’

  We look at her. She’s bursting rather exuberantly out of a flesh pink bustier top, and pleasingly filling the matching ra-ra mini-skirt she’s wearing on the bottom. Her hair, piled into a gravity-defying up-do over the last two hours by an exhausted Bogdan, is looking lush and verdant, and unless you count the fact that I, personally, would have left off about six layers of that mascara and most of that ocean of lipgloss, I’m not seeing a disaster.

  ‘Cass,’ I say, ‘you look terrific. I mean, OK, it’s not the most traditional bridesmaid’s look, but I didn’t think traditional bridesmaid was what you were going for.’

  ‘You have to be fucking kidding me! Of course it’s a disaster! I’ve starved myself for almost three whole months, Libby, ever since you first announced this wedding, and I’ve still not got a proper thigh gap!’ She hoists her tiny skirt up far enough that we can see the lower slopes of her nude G-string, and flaps the hem around frantically. ‘What should I do? We’ve got half an hour until the ceremony, right? Should I see if I can fit in a couple of hundred squats before then? They’ll probably be more effective if I’m doing them in heels, too, so I’m in with a chance …’

  ‘Cass, for God’s sake. You don’t need to do two hundred squats.’

  ‘Lunges,’ suggests Bogdan, helpfully, ‘are more effective on deep inner thigh muscle that am suspicious you are wanting to be targeting.’

  ‘You know, Bogdan, I think you might be right about that.’

  ‘Am right. If you are hoping for lean look of Sarah Jessica Parker rather than hefty bulk of Fedor Kassapu.’

  ‘Who’s Fedor Kassapu?’

  ‘Is famous Moldovan wrestler. Is winning gold medal in Barcelona Olympics. Is my childhood hero. Is proving to me, in boyhood days, that is OK to be big of the bones, and that is OK to have the unusual amounts of body hair …’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Cass shrieks. ‘No, I don’t want to look like some huge, hairy wrestler! Lunges! I need to do lunges!’

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘nobody’s even going to see your thigh gap …’

  ‘Well, of course they’re not, because I don’t even have one!’

  ‘… unless you’re planning on performing some sort of exotic dance at the end of the ceremony, or something,’ I finish – a tiny bit nervously, because it’s always possible that Cass is in fact planning an exotic dance at the end of the ceremony. Having recently dumped Joel’s best man, Nick (who didn’t turn out to be remotely gay but did turn out, unfortunately, to be a tightwad) she’s on the prowl for a new man. Olly’s friends – unsuspecting souls that they are – won’t have the slightest idea what’s hit them. ‘Come on, Mum,’ I add, as Mum emerges from the dressing-room, radiant in the crimson Oscar de la Renta number she maxed-out her credit card on for my previous wedding. ‘Tell Cass she looks stunning, and to stop worrying about some silly thigh gap.’

  ‘Darling, Libby’s right. You do look absolutely stunning. All eyes will be on you, Cass, I absolutely guarantee it.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ I say, drily. ‘Just what a bride wants to hear on her wedding day.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Libby, you know what I meant!’ Mum looks over at Cass, (who’s started a routine of deep lunges, using Bogdan’s tree-trunk of an arm to help her balance in her teetering heels) to get her support. ‘Honestly, Libby, there’s no need to turn into a bridezilla. This day’s not only about you, you know. And it’s all very well for you, finally marrying the man of your dreams, but your poor sister is getting absolutely desperate to meet a man worth settling down with …’

  ‘I’m not desperate, Mum!’ Cass hisses at her. ‘And if you tell any of the men at the wedding anything of the sort, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Honestly, the pair of you!’ Mum throws up her hands in despair at her daughters. ‘Where’s all this stress and aggression coming from, on a day that’s supposed to be filled with joy, and love, and excitement?’

  ‘I’m not stressed, Mum, I promise you.’ Because nothing is going to rile me on this longed-for day; absolutely nothing. ‘And trust me, I’m brimming with more than enough joy and love for all of us.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mum says, distracted already. ‘But look, can we just have a quick moment to discuss how green and sick your father’s going to feel when he sees how amazing I’m looking these days?’ She gives a little scarlet twirl. ‘I mean, this is so flattering on me, isn’t it? I’ve no idea what his new wife is going to be wearing, but I can’t imagine she’ll hold a candle to me.’

  Which isn’t exactly the sort of joy or love I thought we were just talking about.

  But thank God, it really is time for me to head into the back room myself and get Nora to help me put my own dress on, so I can leave Mum to her gleeful twirling and Cass to her frantic lunges, and go and have a properly bridal moment of my own.

  Nora, in the back room, has just finished pulling on her own far more appropriate bridesmaid’s dress, a pretty pale grey prom dress that skims her burgeoning bump, and is already heading for my dress, draped over the back of the Chesterfield sofa.

  Yes, Bogdan’s taken charge of the Chesterfield. Just for now, just until Olly and I find ourselves a new flat together, one with a living room big enough to house it plus all our other combined furniture. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll decide to let Bogdan keep it here instead even when we do find a new flat. After all, thrilled as I’d be to see any of my Hollywood goddesses emerge from its refurbished interior again, it’s not as if I actually need any of them now. Marrying the love of your
life pretty much puts paid to all that.

  ‘Come on, Lib!’ Nora chivvies me. ‘It’s already half past one, and we don’t want to be on the way a minute later than quarter to two! Now, let’s get you into your dress. Ohhhhh,’ she adds, unable to prevent a little sigh escaping her as she lifts it off the sofa. ‘I still can’t get over how gorgeous this is, Libby. It’s going to make you look like a movie star!’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about that,’ I say. ‘But you’re right about the dress.’

  It’s a stunner, all right. I’ve been incredibly chilled-out about this entire wedding from the moment we decided to do it (the morning after we woke up in Olly’s bed together after the day of the discovery of the Mystery Cheese, just FYI) but the one thing I was pretty adamant about was the style of the dress. And this is what, after some serious vintage-store trawling and several visits to a clever seamstress, I’ve ended up with: a 1950s full-skirted, princess-length number in pure white lace, all the better to set off Grace Kelly’s gloves that I’ll also be wearing.

  Oh, and I’ve spritzed myself with some of Marilyn’s vial of Chanel No 5, and Audrey’s tortoise-shell sunglasses are all nestled in my white lace wrist-held bag, just so I can feel as if they’re with me today in (no pun intended) spirit.

  My grandmother’s cathedral-length vintage-lace veil, the one that led to my nasty accident almost two years ago, has been expertly re-fashioned, by the same clever seamstress, into the fly-away veil that I’m already wearing, cleverly pinned into my hair by Bogdan before he put the finishing touches to his Dream Fringe.

  ‘Come on, Nor,’ I say, with a smile, as I hear her start to gulp with sobs the moment I step into my dress, and she starts buttoning me up at the back. ‘We’ve got a whole ceremony and reception to get through!’

  ‘Then you should have thought of that before you decided to make me the happiest woman on the planet by marrying my brother!’

  ‘Second happiest,’ I point out.

  ‘Oh, God, what are you doing to me?’ she howls. ‘Besides, I’m pregnant, Lib! I won’t be held responsible for my hormones.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad I’m making you happy.’ I squeeze her hand as I turn round, which only sends her off into a fresh round of sobs, huge choking ones this time that actually send me dashing back into the main salon to find her a glass of water.

  At the sight of me in my dress, there are a couple of gratifying sighs of admiration from Mum and Bogdan, and an enraged shriek of jealousy from Cass (which is pretty much the same thing as a sigh of admiration) but there really isn’t any time for much more than that. After Nora’s sipped her water and blown her nose roughly a dozen times, it’s out to the waiting white taxi with all five of us, Cass still lunging every step of the way for maximum toning effect.

  Generously by Mum and Cass’s standards, I’m even allowed the most comfortable position in the taxi, with Cass and Nora either side of me and Mum and Bogdan opposite. And it’s only now that we’re actually on our way that I start to get butterflies in my stomach. Because these last three months have been such sheer bliss that I’ve not had the slightest fraction of a soupçon of a hint of nerves about the Big Day. But, right now, knowing that people are waiting for me to arrive at the Metro Gardens … that my dad will be there, that all eyes will be on me, that Olly will get his first look at me in my wedding get-up … it’s more butterfly-inducing than I’d have thought. I’m just glad, now, that the traffic is pretty light, so there’s no stress about Saturday afternoon snarl-ups making us late, and we can whizz easily along Clapham Common Southside towards our destination. We’re almost there when Mum starts to get all teary-eyed, too (though I can’t help but suspect there’s just a teeny part of her that’s competing with Nora’s rivers of emotional tears and – bless him – with Bogdan’s thinly disguised sniffles) and I’m just wondering if there’s any chance at all if Cass is going to up the ante and fling herself to the taxi floor in keening hysterics when something out of the window catches my eye.

  We’re passing Nibbles, Olly’s restaurant, and Olly himself is at the top of a very precarious-looking step-ladder, a paintbrush in hand, right outside.

  So precarious, in fact, that as the taxi pulls to a halt at the nearby lights, I can see that the ladder is wobbling beneath his weight, and looking dangerously close to …

  ‘He’s going to tip over!’ I shriek, and before any of my weeping bridal party can stop me, I’ve pulled open the taxi door and am leaping out, pretty precariously myself, through a lane of traffic, to his side.

  I’m too late, though, because the ladder has in fact tipped, and he’s fallen eight feet down to the pavement, landing hard on his backside, before I can reach him.

  ‘Ow!’ he yelps, followed by an astonished, ‘Libby?’

  ‘God, Olly! Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes … I think so … my bum hurts,’ he says, before glancing down at his beautiful white shirt. ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ he says, because there’s a huge black paint stain smack in the middle of it now, from the paintbrush he was holding – and which is now on the pavement beside him – when he fell. ‘This is all Bogdan’s fault.’

  ‘Libby!’ comes the voice of Bogdan himself, from the taxi. ‘What are you doing? Is the terrible luck for the grooming man to be seeing the bridal lady before the wedding!’

  ‘You know what, Bogdan?’ Olly says, crossly, getting to his feet. ‘It’s actually pretty terrible luck for the grooming man to be hiring you the night before his wedding to change the sign above his restaurant! That’s what’s bad luck!’

  He points up to where the word Nibbles is usually painted above the plate-glass windows.

  It says, now, Libby’s instead.

  Or, to be more accurate, it says Libby’z.

  ‘Is problem with this?’ Bogdan asks, indignantly.

  ‘Yes! I spotted the z just as I was leaving the place five minutes ago after checking that things were all set here for us to come back to the reception,’ Olly says, with an exasperated glare in Bogdan’s direction. ‘Bloody hell, Bogdan! It was all meant to be perfect for … for you,’ he adds, suddenly looking down at me instead.

  All the exasperation vanishes from his face, to be replaced with an expression of open-mouthed awe.

  ‘My God, Libby,’ he utters, after a moment. ‘You look … Wow.’

  ‘You don’t look exactly shabby yourself,’ I say.

  This is an understated way of saying what I really want to say (but which I feel isn’t exactly bridal) which is that he looks, as Dillon might put it if he weren’t talking about his arch-nemesis Olly, extremely fucking hot. The paint-spattered white shirt fits his muscular body to a tee, and I can tell it’s only going to look even better when he puts his smart charcoal-coloured suit jacket back on over the top. His usually-scruffy hair is … well, it’s still fighting its natural scruffiness, to be honest, but it looks eminently touchable, and his gorgeous, open face is looking lightly tanned after all this unseasonably warm mid-March weather we’ve been having.

  Olly. My Olly. My very, very soon-to-be husband.

  ‘You didn’t need to start re-painting signs and re-naming places just for me,’ I go on, suddenly feeling slightly shy.

  ‘Oh, Libby. Darling. I just wanted you to have the surprise when we arrived here later on.’ He reaches down for my hands and interlaces his fingers through mine. ‘This place was always meant to be named after you, so what better time to put it all right than the moment we get back here together as husband and wife? God,’ he adds, with a sudden laugh. ‘That sounds a bit grown-up, doesn’t it?’

  Before I can reply, there’s a fresh call from the still-waiting taxi.

  ‘Darling, honestly, it really is the most terrible luck for Olly to be seeing you before the ceremony,’ Mum yells across the pavement. ‘I saw both your father and Cass’s father before my weddings, and those marriages turned out to be utter disasters! Of course, you do have to take into account the fact that your father was a complete shit, and Ca
ss’s father …’

  ‘Hi, Marilyn,’ Olly calls back to her, manfully taking control of the situation in the way he always seems to manage to do with my complicated family. He even pulls me a little closer towards him, perhaps instinctively signalling to her that he’s not about to let me take any crap from her today, of all days. ‘You all look great, by the way! But you know what – if Libby’s OK with it, maybe she and I will just walk the last little way to the ceremony by ourselves, and see you all there?’ He glances down at me. ‘I mean, I don’t know what you think, Lib, but in my opinion we’ve already weathered enough bad luck to withstand that kind of superstition.’ His hands squeeze mine, gently. ‘I’m pretty sure you and I are going to be able to tough anything out, right?’

  I smile up at him. ‘Right.’

  ‘Oh!’ He suddenly looks concerned. ‘Unless there are any issues with unsuitable shoes …?’

  This is why you marry a man like Olly. He thinks about those kinds of details. He thinks, as it turns out, about me, before he thinks of anything else.

  I go up on tiptoes (not that far, actually, because I am wearing pretty unsuitable heels; heels that I know Audrey and Grace would disapprove of as much as I know that Marilyn would love them) and place a soft kiss on his even softer lips.

  ‘I’d love to walk there with you,’ I tell him. ‘Let’s do it.’

  The grumbles from most of the occupants of the taxi (not Nora, who’s just started sobbing again) are brought to an end, fortunately, by the fact that the taxi driver takes matters into his own hands and pulls out into the traffic again to drive the last few hundred yards to the venue.

  But for now, we’re alone.

  Olly glances down at his spattered shirt. ‘Oh, God … should I go in and get one of the waiters to swap shirts with me?’