A Summer Fling

by Milly Johnson

  ‘I think there must be more people here than there were at Princess Di’s funeral,’ said Anna.

  ‘Yes, and I wonder how many of them Dawn actually knows,’ replied Christie, accepting a small sherry from a waitress but passing on the ‘canapés’, a selection of Rubik’s cube-sized pork scratchings, foot-long sausage rolls, potted beef sandwiches on quartered oven-bottom cakes and sizzling-hot roast potatoes that took the fingerprints off anyone who happened to pick one up.

  The diners were squashed at the tables. Grace didn’t verbally comment on the meal, but the eyes she raised to Christie as she lifted up the plastic slice of meat on her fork before putting it back down again didn’t need accompanying words. Anna noticed the line of furry dust on the skirting boards behind her. Not the cleanest of holes, this place. Her eyes found Dawn and saw that her meal was virtually untouched. Calum was hooking up a piece of her meat onto his fork and she was telling him to go ahead. She looked like a Degas dancer on a Lowry background: totally and utterly out of place.

  After the meal, when tar-strength coffee was served up, Calum said that he ‘wasn’t one for speeches so he was just going to toast the bride’ and that was it. The best man more than made up for it with embarrassingly near-the-knuckle stories of Calum’s past love-life that were meant to reassure the bride that Calum would never stray, but ended up doing quite the opposite, much to the amusement of the, by now, loud and swaying Crooke family and entourage.

  People started to move into the main bar, Dawn included. She needed some air.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ said Muriel to the bride. ‘I’ve got some aunties and uncles that want to meet you.’

  ‘I’m off to the toilet,’ said Dawn. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘All right,’ said Muriel, holding her glass up for Ronnie to fill. She was ticking off the minutes now to the karaoke.

  On the wall, outside the toilet, there was a full-length mirror. Dawn passed it, then doubled-back and stared at herself. What looked back at her was the most miserable bride in the world, a truly unhappy woman. She would have no sweet memories attached to this dress. She could bag it up and return it tomorrow to Freya and not think twice about it. And she was sure Freya must have got her measurements wrong, because she could hardly breathe in it, it felt so tight around her body. Be brave, Freya had said. She hadn’t been brave at all; she had been stupidly and idiotically weak. As in the words of that last hymn: I am weak but Thou art mighty. She might as well have been singing that line to the entire Crooke clan. She had been pushed and shoved and cowed and controlled by them all because she wanted their love and their acceptance, enough to lie down like a sacrificial lamb. And all she had really earned was their resentment for being such a walkover. She looked again in the mirror and her eyes sprang open. She was going barmy. Her reflection was dressed in white and the colour wasn’t draining her at all because she looked tanned and healthy. She had a simpler affair on, ballerina length, cowboy boots, a Stetson and a waistcoat studded with rhinestones. Behind her was Al Holly, also in white. The smiles were bursting out of their faces because the couple in that mirror were in love. No woman should wear a wedding dress for a man she wasn’t in love with and she knew she would never feel the way about Calum Crooke that she had grown to feel about Al Holly. What am I doing?

  Oh, Dee Dee, what are you doing?

  Dawn’s eyes blurred over with tears and when she dabbed them dry with her fingertips the image had gone and she was Dawn in a floor-length ivory gown again, alone, crying.

  Dawn didn’t really need the toilet, she just wanted to escape a long line of Crooke second cousins three times removed. She did, however, desperately need to breathe. She felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the whole building and replaced with something heavy and cloying.

  Who’s that man? The man in the hat?

  Charlotte’s words bounced into her head and suddenly Dawn understood what she had seen in that photograph.

  We just want you to be happy.

  ‘Oh God, can I? Dare I?’ she asked the bride in the mirror. The bride nodded.

  Dawn slipped out of the fire exit at the side of the toilet door and into the bright sunshine of the day.

  Inside the toilet, Denise was reapplying her lipstick at the mirror, while Demi was squirting perfume down her cleavage.

  ‘Killer looks well in his suit, doesn’t he?’ she said. ‘I might have a go at him later when Liam isn’t looking. Did you hear him coughing when they said “Anyone here know why these two shouldn’t be wed”?’

  ‘I half-expected Clampy to turn up at that moment.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have put it past her. Did our Calum ’fess up to Dawn in the end about him shagging her on his stag night?’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s never ’fessed up before, has he? Stupid git, he was cutting it too near the bone there.’

  They both froze as they heard the flush in the end cubicle, which neither of them had noticed was occupied. Bending to take a fearful look under the gap at the bottom of the toilet door, they saw a flash of white material touching the floor.

  ‘Shit!’ mouthed Demi. ‘It’s Dawn. Out!’

  She and Denise teetered outside, giggling nervously. Despite their promise to stay sober, they’d both had at least one bottle of Lambrini each since leaving the church.

  *

  At the other side of the car park, Dawn saw the welcome sight of Anna, Grace and Raychel clustered around Christie who was having a cigarette. Christie was trying to cut down and didn’t smoke much these days, only when she felt the need to have a few calming puffs in her lungs. This was one of those days.

  ‘Hello, love,’ said Grace as the beautiful bride strode out towards them. ‘Are you having a lovely day?’

  ‘No,’ said Dawn, desperately clutching at Grace’s hands. ‘Oh, girls, I’ve made the most dreadful mistake. Can you help me?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Christie.

  ‘I’ve been pathetic, I know I have. I’ve married Calum because I was too scared to back out but I don’t love him. I love Al Holly and he’s asked me to go to Canada with him and I said no but I want to more than anything and I have to because he’s the one in the photo and I’ve been ignoring my own feelings and what Aunt Charlotte said and what she saw and what my mum and dad were trying to tell me . . . I know none of this makes sense to you but it does to me because I’ve seen myself in the mirror and I know where I should be.’ She took in a well-needed breath. ‘Yes, I’ve never been more serious in my life. Help me!’

  Christie dropped her lit cigarette to the floor and killed it with her yellow heel.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘We’d best get cracking then, hadn’t we?’

  Chapter 85

  They sprang into action like a well-oiled military elite force trained from birth for such manoeuvres.

  ‘Get in the car,’ said Christie, fishing out her keys from her yellow handbag. ‘Quick.’

  They moved as one into Christie’s BMW, Grace in the front, the other three squashed up in the back with Dawn’s frock, which was so big it almost constituted another person. They did a totally synchronized belt-up and Christie slammed the automatic gear lever into drive.

  ‘Where am I going? Direct me!’ she said, looking in her rear-view mirror at the pub. Their exit hadn’t been spotted, despite the squeal of her wheels as she took the corner like James Bond.

  ‘Is that the right time?’ said Dawn, pointing to the clock on the dashboard.

  ‘To the minute.’

  ‘Oh Jesus. I’m going home first. Turn left here and follow. I’m picking up a suitcase, then I’m catching a bus.’

  ‘Would this be a tour bus full of cowboys?’ asked Raychel.

  ‘Yes, it would.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ said Anna. ‘What time does it leave?’

  ‘I’ve got half an hour. Oh God, what will Calum’s family say?’

  They noticed she was more worried about his family than the man himself.

&nb
sp; ‘Sod his bloody family. This is the time to think about yourself for once.’ This from Anna.

  ‘Am I doing the right thing?’

  ‘God knows!’ said Grace. ‘But you’re young enough to take a chance, love. And anyone looking at your face over the past few weeks could tell you were doing the wrong thing.’

  ‘I should have stopped this wedding months ago!’ said Dawn, dropping her head into her hands.

  ‘Well, that’s as may be,’ said Grace. ‘But you’ve stopped it now. We’d all be a lot wiser if we could visit our past selves.’ As she knew only too well.

  ‘I bet there’s a hold-up,’ said Dawn, because the traffic stream seemed to thicken as they hit town. But there wasn’t. As if by magic, every traffic light either stayed on or turned to green at their approach. Christie broke the speed limit but reckoned the risk of a fine would be worth it.

  ‘Right, stop at the second to the last house on your right!’ commanded Dawn.

  Christie screeched up to Dawn’s front door. Raychel pulled Dawn out of the car because her frock was making it impossible for her to get out unaided. She was shaking too much to get the key in the lock so Grace snatched it from her and did the honours.

  Led by Dawn, they flew up the stairs. Grace pulled two suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe. Anna emptied underwear drawers into them and threw hangers of clothes on top. Raychel was gathering shoes. Dawn’s dress, by now, felt as poisonous on her as Hercules’s shirt but there was no time to change.

  ‘Where’s your mobile and charger? Bank books? Make-up? Jewellery?’ Grace said, thinking back to the important things she had needed to take from her own house.

  Dawn opened a drawer and gathered up everything in it.

  ‘It’s all here!’ she said.

  ‘Is your passport in there?’

  ‘Yep. Everything.’

  ‘You are so beautifully, wonderfully, fantastically anal!’ said Anna with a face-splitting grin. She gave Dawn a big smacking kiss on the mouth. God, she loved women! They were magnificent in a crisis.

  ‘I just wish my thoughts were anything like as organized,’ said Dawn. She grabbed her two guitars from the side of her bed and said, ‘That’s it. I’ve got everything I need. Let’s go.’

  She didn’t even give the house a backward glance as they set off like a rocket in the direction of the Rising Sun.

  Chapter 86

  ‘Where’s the bleeding bride?’ said Muriel. ‘Your Uncle Walter and Auntie Enid are ready for off and I’ve looked everywhere for her.’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Calum, who suddenly realized he hadn’t seen her himself for a while. The bar had rather held his attention and all the back-slapping chat with his mates.

  ‘Have you two seen her?’ said Muriel to her much subdued daughters.

  ‘Er, no,’ said Demi, exchanging glances with her sister.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Muriel. She’d never seen her daughters so quiet before.

  ‘Nowt!’ said Denise.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Calum, suspiciously looking from sister to mother.

  ‘Come on, out with it!’ said Muriel, hands on her large, pink-clad hips. She carried on asking until one of them started to talk.

  ‘It might be nothing, right,’ began Denise hesitantly. ‘But you know earlier when we came out of the toilet and asked you where Dawn was and you said she’d gone to the toilet—’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Muriel, preparing herself. She couldn’t tell where this was going yet, but it didn’t sound too good so far.

  ‘Well, we all must have been in the toilet at the same time—’

  ‘Fucking wow,’ said Calum, about to turn back to his mates. He hoped his sister never decided to write crime novels.

  ‘Carry on,’ said Muriel. Now her arms were folding which signified that she wasn’t happy by a long chalk.

  ‘Well, we didn’t realize anyone was in with us—’

  ‘Go on,’ said Calum, all ears now. ‘GO ON.’

  ‘And we . . . we . . .’ Demi was nearly crying now.

  ‘We started talking about our Calum and Mandy Clamp on his stag night,’ Denise ended the sentence for her sister.

  ‘We aren’t sure if it was her in there though,’ Demi put in.

  ‘Although whoever was in there had a long white frock on,’ added Denise.

  ‘Didn’t you go back and check?’ said Muriel, rubbing her forehead in disbelief.

  ‘Er . . . no. We didn’t think to.’

  Calum swung around, clutching his hair.

  ‘You didn’t think to! Who else would have a long white frock on here? Some gate-crashing angel? Aarrrghh!’ He flew at his sister but was dragged off before his hands made contact by Denise’s bloke, Dave, who thumped the groom right in the jaw and sent him flying over the table.

  ‘I don’t care if it is your wedding day, mate, you don’t fucking hit women.’

  ‘They aren’t women,’ screamed Calum. ‘They’re thick, blabber-mouthed, idiot, marriage-wrecking tarts with shit for brains.’

  ‘You’re the one with shit for brains, you cocky twat! There’s only the bride that didn’t know you’d shagged Clampy on your stag do, so how long do you think it would have taken her to find out anyway?’ Denise roared at him.

  ‘No there wasn’t, but they do know now don’t they, you stupid cow!’ said Calum, looking at the gob-smacked faces around him.

  ‘Well, you should have kept it in your trousers, then there would have been nothing to tell, shouldn’t you, wanker?’

  Suddenly all hell was let loose. Denise lunged forward with her false nails in claw mode. Empty Head came to Calum’s rescue and, by mistake, lamped Demi. Then Demi’s new boyfriend, Liam, waded in with fists raised for anyone that moved before he was promptly flattened by Muriel’s handbag. Then someone threw the top tier of the cake and Bette, trying to escape, slipped in it. The last sight Calum saw before he woke up in hospital with concussion was Bette’s giant buttocks descending on his head.

  No one noticed Mavis Marple and her big white serviette full of nibbles slip away. She had rested it on the floor, the food tied up safely inside, when she went to the toilet and heard those women talking about the groom and his stag night. Despite the plentiful supply of sausage rolls still available, this was one wedding that was just too rough for her.

  Chapter 87

  ‘So you’re really going mad and doing it then?’ said Raychel.

  ‘Do you think I am mad?’ said Dawn.

  ‘I think this is the most sane you’ve been since I met you,’ said Anna. ‘Follow your heart, kiddo. Be brave.’

  Be brave. That’s what Freya had said. Was that the magic in her dress after all? Is that why it felt so tight and uncomfortable? As if it didn’t want to be worn for an unhappy occasion? Anyway, if it was, it had worked. She couldn’t wait to get it off, beautiful as it was. She would send it back to Freya with her compliments and hope that a future bride wore it for the right man. All that money wasted. And she didn’t give a flying fart.

  ‘Oh, and before we forget, here’s your wedding present.’ Christie fished in her pocket and dropped an envelope of cash into Dawn’s lap. Then more fell on top of it as the girls emptied their purses onto her.

  ‘No, I couldn’t possibly—’

  ‘Yes, you can, you’ll need it,’ said Grace.

  ‘But it’s a wedding present and I’m not really married.’

  ‘It’s for the next wedding.’

  Dawn smiled a big wide arc that took up most of her face. Her whole heart seemed to swell up at the thought of getting married in cowboy boots. She knew she would. She’d seen it. She felt her mum and dad relaxing in heaven. They just wanted her to be happy and she jolly well was going to be. For all of them.

  ‘Am I legally married now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Christie. ‘But I think you’ll find it’s voidable. Let a solicitor sort all that out for you. You just concentrate on being love’s crazy cowboy young dream.’

  ‘My
head feels like a tumble-drier,’ said Dawn, rubbing her temples. ‘I’ll never be able to thank you all for this. I can’t believe I’m doing it.’

  ‘Better late than never,’ put in Grace.

  ‘We all want signed CDs when you record those albums,’ said Raychel, pressing her hand on Dawn’s shoulder. Her touch felt so comforting that the tears rose to Dawn’s eyes and she let them flow out because these were happy, sweet tears and they felt warm and welcome on her cheeks.

  ‘I absolutely love you all to bits,’ said Dawn. ‘You’ve been like mothers and sisters to me. I’ll miss you like hell.’

  ‘We will miss you too,’ said Anna. ‘How will we cope without that mouth of yours and learning all about women who have sex with sheds? Oh God, now I’m filling up.’

  ‘Hang onto your hats,’ said Christie, stealing a look at the clock. It was showing 3 p.m. exactly and there was the tour bus in front, about to nudge out of the car park into the road.

  Christie stamped her foot down on the accelerator, honking her horn like a mad woman, then she braced herself, hit the brake and her posh car skidded to a perfect stop alongside the bus.

  ‘Oh hellfire, I’m stuck!’ shrieked Dawn. The car door handle was lost somewhere in the folds of her dress and her very big handbag.

  Raychel had to jump out and open Dawn’s door from the outside. Anna applied leverage and pushed Dawn and her giant frock out of the car. She would have been wedged on the back seat for eternity without help.

  Al Holly came bounding down the bus steps and froze as his feet hit the ground. His face bore all the signs of a man who thought he was hallucinating and if he moved the vision would disappear. Dawny Sole had thought she would fly into his arms but the opposite was true. She moved slowly towards him, her eyes locked on his. How could I ever have thought I could live without him? she asked herself.

  ‘You’re here,’ he said in a croaky whisper. ‘Is this a second goodbye?’

  ‘No,’ smiled Dawn. ‘This is a great big fat hello.’