‘Yes, it does,’ and he laughed heartily. ‘I’d never thought of it before.’
‘I know it’s a bit naff, but it is the chef’s speciality here,’ Bel went on. Not that she could eat much of it as her insides were churning.
Then the main-course plates were taken away and strawberry tarts were served. Richard had just stuck his fork into the pastry when Bel asked him, ‘What do you think of the strawberry tart, darling?’
‘It’s really lovely,’ and he winked. ‘I like a bit of tart. I hope you’ve got something very tarty on under that gown.’
Bel placed her hand on her dress, where her heart was. ‘Under here,’ she said with her sexiest lopsided grin, ‘is something very wild and wicked especially for you.’
As the dessert plates were being collected, Bel stole a look across at her friends. She noticed that there was an empty space next to Violet; Glyn hadn’t come. Well, at least that was one less witness. Poor bloke, though. He obviously couldn’t face a crowd of strangers. Depression was a terrible thing. She had felt herself standing at the edge of a very deep, dark chasm recently and the only way she could pull herself back from it was to plan, scheme, hate.
The waitresses were gearing up to serve coffees, which meant the speeches were minutes away from starting. Bel’s heart was like a battering ram against her chest wall. She felt light-headed, slightly sick. She was seeing the world in slow motion: Liam standing, people starting to applaud as he called for order.
It was a typical Liam speech. As shiny and slimy as a snail trail. With a big beaming smile he talked about his sister-in-law being a beautiful bride, even though Bel knew that he must have been crying inside to have to adhere to that rule of protocol. He relished telling how she had tamed his wild brother. Bel wasn’t fooled. She was waiting for Liam to stick a big infected needle in her day.
‘So please raise your glasses to the bride and groom. Richard and Sh— Bel.’
He turned to Bel and the superior look on his face told her that he knew too. That split-second shushing sound wasn’t a mistake. She didn’t hear the toast. Her ears were full of her own heartbeat; it was the sound of an iron ball thundering down the barrel of a cannon, dangerous and unstoppable. Again in slow motion she watched her dad begin to stand, and she shot to her feet first. She waved at him to take his seat again.
It’s still not too late, Bel. Say ‘thank you for coming’ and sit down.
‘Bel, what are you doing?’ This from Richard, tugging at her hand. She ignored him.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. Just before you hear any more, I’d like to say thank you all for coming.’
There’s still time, Bel. Sit down and this will all be over. No one need ever know.
But a stronger, harder, nastier voice inside answered.
Fuck off, sensible thought. This day has been too long in coming. You sit down.
‘And thank you to Liam for a wonderful speech.’ She flashed a smile of such sweetness at Liam she hoped it would give him instant diabetes. ‘You truly are a master of the spoken turd, sorry, I mean “word”.’
A titter of unsure laughter rippled around the room in the pause that Bel then left.
‘I just want to tell you all how much I love Richard,’ said Bel. The room was filled with ‘aws’. ‘And even though we aren’t strictly related, how much I adored my cousin Shaden, my lovely bridesmaid.’
She raised her glass in Shaden’s direction and then drank from it.
Violet didn’t like this at all. Vibes were missiling from Bel and none of them were good ones.
‘I say “adore-d” because it’s past tense. I adore-d her until I found out that she was shagging my fiancé.’
Oh God.
Bel didn’t hear the gasps. She didn’t even notice Richard stand in front of her and try to reason with her, persuade her to leave the table and come outside to calm down – or sober up. But Bel was stone-cold sober and he couldn’t have budged her with Semtex. She was anchored to the spot with the three tons of hurt that had been stored inside her for two months, fermenting until they were rotten and stinking and toxic.
‘And according to the texts and emails I found, shagging, amongst other places, in the back of one of my dad’s vans, which she borrowed from him apparently to move some furniture. So here for your amusement is one of those many emails that passed between them.’
As she fumbled to pull out a folded sheet of paper from up her sleeve, Richard again tried to pull her to her seat but she pushed him off. Bel’s voice was strong as she began to read, but the hands holding the sheet of paper were shaking. Some of her fingers had long false French-manicured nails on them; she had bitten the others off in the last half-hour, ripping them from the nail bed. They thrummed but she was glad of the pain because it was another factor which helped to drive her on.
‘“Dear Big Dicky”.’ No one even tittered. ‘“It’s done, thank God, so you don’t have to worry any more – and neither do I. The B-word will never know. Had a few cramps and unpleasantness, but it was a small price to pay. Silly us, getting that carried away. Good job I did an early test and we didn’t leave it any later. Can’t wait to see you tonight. I’m going to eat you for supper – and breakfast.”’ Long-stored-up fat salt-filled tears started to plop down Bel’s cheeks on to the snow-white tablecloth.
‘Oh God,’ said Violet. ‘Max, should we go to her?’ They stood up.
‘No one move, please,’ said Bel with the aggression of a severely hacked-off headmistress heading up an assembly full of coughing children. The room was locked in an excruciatingly uncomfortable vacuum of silence. Everyone and everything with a mouth held it agape.
Bel picked up her champagne glass.
‘“The B-word” would like to raise a toast: to the Stinking Bishop and the Strawberry Tart,’ she said and sank the contents in one. ‘May you both rot in hell.’ With one fluid movement that a bullfighter would have been proud of, Bel reached over and whisked the cloth off the cake. A beautiful three-tiered pure-white confection was revealed and on the very top layer were three figures – a golden-haired bridesmaid in red with her knickers down, leaning over a table, a groom with his trousers to the floor behind her – and a short spiky-haired bride walking off with her fingers raised behind her in a large V.
Richard reached for her hand. Bel removed it with a mighty jerk. Then she marched out of the reception at the speed of Usain Bolt approaching the finishing line.
There was stunned silence for a few seconds before a low hiss of gossip broke and people sprang into action. Faye ran out first, followed by Violet and Max, then Trevor, who would have been in the lead had his knee not been playing up. They were all just in time to see the waiting taxi zoom off.
‘Jesus,’ whistled Max.
‘I knew something wasn’t right,’ said Violet, on the edge of tears.
‘Excuse me,’ called a young man coming from behind the reception desk. ‘I’ve been asked to give out these envelopes. The bride . . .’
Max leaped over. There were two – one for Max and Violet, one for her dad.
Max ripped open the envelope and held it out so Violet could read it too.
Dear M & V,
Despite what you’ve just seen, I’m okay. I wish I hadn’t invited you to the wedding. I wouldn’t have, had we met a month later. I need to be by myself for a bit so don’t worry. Don’t try to ring me; the mobile will be switched off. I’ll be in touch with you about your wedding, Max. I won’t let you down. I’ll be there for the dress fitting (if you decide to have me).
I’m so so sorry for putting you to any expense or trouble. I just had to do this.
Bel xx
A devastated Trevor read his out so Faye could share the words. There were a lot of apologies in the first paragraph.
Then:
Dad, tell everyone I’ve ripped up their cheques. I shan’t be cashing them. I’m sorry they’ve all splashed out on outfits, but no doubt the gossip value will be worth it. I’ll be in touch. Do
n’t worry about me. Sorry to leave you to sort this out but, rather selfishly, I hate Richard and Shaden far more than I love anyone else at the moment.
Chapter 17
Bel climbed out of the taxi and headed straight for the car waiting outside her apartment with her suitcase already packed in the boot. Also in the car was a box of food that she had hastily collected in the last few days, although she had no appetite for any of it. It contained stuff that didn’t take much thought to eat: Pot Noodles, tins of soup and rice pudding, coffee, tea, some powdered milk, a family pack of KitKats. There was no time to go into the flat and change her dress; it was the first place they would all come looking for her. At least, she knew her dad would. Richard – she wasn’t sure about. She couldn’t face any of them yet. She couldn’t even face herself in the mirror. She bunched herself and her dress into the front seat of her Merc, let out two huge lungfuls of air and then stuck the key in the ignition.
She wanted to be alone with her brain, a few boxes of Kleenex and a big fat bottle of red wine for a couple of days. And that is why she set off for Emily, the larger of the two adjoined Bronte Cottages that her dad owned out on the edge of the West Yorkshire moors. She had always had a set of keys for them, although she hoped her dad didn’t remember that.
Emily was a substantially sized open-plan snug-as-a-bug cottage, with oak panelling on the walls, an inglenook fireplace and a darling bedroom upstairs with white-painted eaves. Next door, Charlotte was a tiny doll’s house of a place. And next to that was Anne, an old stable that her dad had always meant to convert, but never had. Some moody, rainy moors were just what she needed. Total bitter isolation.
Damn, she suddenly realized that she’d left the wine on the worktop in the kitchen. She squealed up beside a shop called I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Booze and ignored all the sideways looks she received as an angry bride buying two bottles of Koonunga Hill on a £9 special deal.
The light was falling early when she arrived at Bronte Cottages. Grumpy, dark clouds were gathering in the skies. She twisted the car up the hill and parked, then slid the key into Emily’s slatted wooden door. She planned to throw herself on to the big squashy sofa there and crack open one of the bottles of red wine. She wouldn’t even care if it spilled over the cheap frock because before she went to bed that night she intended to rip it off and incinerate it in the wood-burning stove. She grabbed her suitcase in one hand and expertly carried the two bottles of wine by their necks in the other.
The cottage felt incredibly warm when she entered, which was strange because it was so old that it took a few hours to lose the chill after it had been standing empty for longer than a day . More unusually, the kitchen light was on. And whoever had been here last hadn’t done a good job of tidying up because there were newspapers spread on the table.
She put the bottles of wine down and gathered up the papers. As she glanced at the front page she saw it had a picture of the prime minister getting an egg thrown at his back. Hang on, she thought. That happened yesterday.
She checked the date on the newspaper. She barely had time to absorb that it really was today’s paper when a boom of a man’s voice behind her made her jump.
‘Who the bloody hell are you?’
She turned to see a tall bare-chested man with wet darkest-brown hair and a towel wrapped round his waist. Had she not been in a man-hating mood her pupils would have dilated and danced all over that chest. As it was, she just saw a man. A bastard with a penis.
‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ the bride threw back.
The man scratched his head. ‘Am I dreaming this? Are you real? Or am I the victim of some voodoo spell?’
‘If you don’t get out of this cottage in five minutes, I’ll ring the police. They don’t take kindly to squatters in this neck of the woods,’ said Bel indignantly.
‘I’m not a squatter. I’ve rented this cottage. So I’ll be obliged if you carried on your fancy-dress party in another house.’
‘You’re renting it? From whom?’ cried Bel. Could this day get any worse? ‘For how long?’
‘Just hang on a moment,’ said the man, dripping water all over the wooden floorboards. ‘I don’t have to answer questions from you. And how did you get in, anyway?’
‘And I don’t have to answer questions from you,’ snarled Bel, grabbing her bottles of wine and clutching them to her chest.
‘No, all you have to do is turn round and go out of the door before I ring the police to come and take you to a nice cosy cell.’ He took a step forwards and Bel took one backwards.
‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on me,’ she warned. ‘This is my family’s cottage and you are trespassing.’
‘I’ve told you,’ the man’s eyes narrowed in anger. ‘I am renting this from a friend of a friend.’
‘Called?’
‘Trevor Candy, if you must know. And I’m renting it for as long as I want – it’s an open agreement. Satisfied?’
‘Oh,’ said Bel. She didn’t know her dad ever rented out the cottage. As far as she knew, it had been standing empty for over a year, which is why it seemed the perfect place to escape to.
‘Oh indeed.’ The man had his arms crossed now and was tapping his foot, waiting for her to go.
‘Well, I’m sorry for interrupting you.’ Bel sounded anything but sorry. Her mouth might have said ‘sorry’ but the tone said ‘bollocks to you’.
He nodded as if accepting the apology that both of them knew wasn’t an apology at all.
‘I’ll go, then, Mr . . .’ She left a space for him to supply his name. He didn’t. When she looked at his eyes they were travelling up and down her wedding dress as if trying to work out what her story was.
‘Yes, it’s a wedding dress,’ snapped Bel. ‘A real one, not a fancy dress one. Okay?’ She turned on her heel and, carrying wine bottles and suitcase, had to struggle alone with the front door because he didn’t come to her assistance.
Shit and double shit. That wasn’t in the plan at all. She could stay in tiny, freezing, uncomfortable Charlotte or – better still – get a hotel for the night and assess the situation again in the morning. Then she noticed the front passenger tyre on her car. Flat. Treble shit. She’d thought she could ‘feel the road’ for the last few miles. Well, wasn’t that just the bloody icing on the cake? She thought disasters like this happened only in rubbish ‘B’ horror films.
‘What next?’ she screamed at the sky. ‘What bloody buggering bastard next?’
There was a grumble above and a big spot of rain landed slap bang in her eye. A rainstorm had broken. That’s what was next. Seconds later the heavens opened.
There was nothing for it but to take the second key and open up Charlotte. Bel scurried towards it as a spear of lightning shot through the sky. Charlotte was totally freezing when she opened the door. She could feel the cold air rush past her to go outside to warm up. At least it was clean – because her dad employed a woman in the nearby village to come in every so often and keep on top of the dust. Not that there was that much to clean in Charlotte.
The ground floor of the cottage consisted of one room only. There was a two-seater battered leather sofa and an extendable coffee table – which doubled up as a dining table – in the front half; a small run of cupboards and worktop, a two-ring hob and a tiny round sink constituted a kitchen at the back. There was a store cupboard under the stairs, which rose to a bedroom big enough for a single bed, a wardrobe and a bedside table, and a bathroom so compact that even an estate agent would have trouble describing it as anything other than a shoebox. This was bijou living to an nth degree, although apparently it once housed a family of eight. They must have had to sit on each other constantly, thought Bel. And they certainly wouldn’t have been able to do any hokey-cokeys at Christmas.
The trouble was that all the sheets and towels, pillows, quilts and pans were in Emily – stuff that she hadn’t brought with her because she hadn’t even considered she’d be staying in this mouse hole. A
nd there wasn’t even a damned television in Charlotte either, only a small radio next to a kettle so old it boiled in Latin.
As she stepped over the threshold, she heard a tear. The bottom of her dress had caught on a splinter on the door. It appeared the dress-tearing ritual had begun itself.
Chapter 18
‘Well,’ said Stuart, and he said all that needed to be said in that one word. His eyebrows were stuck up in the ceiling fans. They had good company because a lot of others were lodged up there too.
There was a variety of activity going on. Richard had made a hasty exit with the seedy Liam, and a tearful Shaden was led out sandwiched protectively between her mother and father. Vanoushka’s free arm was primed in position to give a Bruce Lee chop to move anyone out of the way who invaded their personal space. Richard’s enormous-hatted mother had a ‘told you so’ smirk on her face as she conversed animatedly with her sandy-moustached husband.
Trevor seemed in shock and wet-eyed. He walked back into the reception with Faye trotting at his side.
‘Erm, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know what to say,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘I think I can safely say that the celebrations are at an end. Er . . .’ He looked round him at the sea of faces and froze. Faye stepped forward and took over.
‘Please, everyone, feel free to stay and collect yourself, and if you want a cup of tea or a brandy or anything, please order it at the bar and we will pay for it, of course. Trevor and I are so sorry you’ve been inconvenienced. We can’t say any more than that at the present time. Thank you for coming and please bear with us.’
‘It’s gone straight through to Bel’s voicemail,’ said Violet, clicking off her phone.
‘Did you expect anything else?’ said Max.
‘No, but I thought I’d give it a go.’
‘Do you want to drive over to her flat?’ asked Stuart.
‘She won’t be there,’ said Max. ‘Bel has obviously had all this arranged for a long time. I expect that’s why she didn’t wear her mother’s dress.’
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