‘I’m sorry about slagging him off,’ said Max, giving her a nudge. ‘I was out of order.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Violet with a kind smile. They know I’m not happy.
An hour and a half later and Violet and Bel were reading magazines and flashing off their lovely silver-tipped pink-gel nails; Max was sitting in a chair having false lashes glued on to her eyelids while diamanté hearts and tiny pink roses were being applied to her new two-inch talons.
‘They are so gorgeous,’ said Violet, marvelling at Max’s hands.
‘Not exactly understated, are they?’ chuckled Bel.
‘Gypsy-chic,’ said Max.
‘Your mum and dad won’t even recognize you,’ said Violet.
Max laughed. ‘Mum and Dad gave up on me being low key long, long ago.’
‘Can’t wait to see your eyelashes,’ said Violet.
‘Just on the last few,’ said Jane, the eyelash-fitter. ‘They’re really something.’
‘I’ll bet,’ nodded Bel. She was expecting to see someone resembling Danny La Rue any moment now.
‘O-kay,’ said Jane a few minutes later, reaching for a mirror and readjusting Max’s chair to an upright position. ‘What do you think?’
‘Shift the mirror out of the way, Max, I can’t see,’ said Bel impatiently.
‘Hang on,’ said Max.
Then she moved the mirror and grinned at her friends. Two feathery bats appeared to be fluttering their wings on her eyelids.
‘Christ on a bike,’ said Bel. ‘They are big.’
With her stained skin, big nails and flappy eyelashes, Max really was morphing into a gypsy bride. And what’s more, she was loving every minute of it.
Stuart knocked back some extra-strength ibuprofen to counteract yet another migraine that was prodding at his temple. He looked at the clock in the kitchen as he lifted a glass under the cold tap. He had twenty-two hours of being a single man left. If Jenny Thompson hadn’t blasted into his life he would be happy now, looking forward to a life with lovely Max. And she was lovely . . . fun, kind, big-hearted, sexy: the complete package. So what was his brain playing at? Maybe everyone was right and this was an extreme case of pre-wedding nerves. Oh God, he wished it was, but he knew deep down that it wasn’t.
The house phone rang as he was scrubbing the kitchen wall again because it still had a distinct whiff of cider about it.
‘Hello, love,’ it was his mum. ‘You all right today? Do you need anything?’
‘No, I’m fine, ta.’
‘Your dad has just taken the cake to the Lamp.’
‘Cheers.’
‘Do you want me to drop all your wedding presents off or will you collect them?’
Stuart laughed. ‘All. You make it sound like there are loads.’
‘Well, there are quite a lot, yes.’
‘Who from?’
‘All the family. And quite a few neighbours.’
‘Aw, why did they do that?’ sighed Stuart. ‘I thought people only bought presents when they were invited to the wedding.’
‘Well, they are, aren’t they?’ said his mum, without thinking. Stuart heard her slight gasp of panic and picked up on it straight away.
‘Who’s invited?’
There was a suspicious silence on the end of the phone now.
‘Mum?’
‘Oh I wish I hadn’t rung now,’ his mum’s voice was shaky.
‘What’s going on?’ said Stuart. ‘Mum?’
‘I’m not supposed to say anything.’ His mum sounded really flustered now.
‘Mum, I’ve got too much on my mind for games so please just tell me, will you?’ said Stuart, trying to keep calm. He heard his mum give a resigned sigh.
‘Max invited a few extra people to the wedding, that’s all. As a nice surprise for you.’
‘For me?’ Stuart laughed drily. ‘No, Mum, she didn’t do it for me. How many extra people did Max invite?’
‘I don’t know,’ said his mum. ‘Auntie Maggie and Bob are coming, Cyril, Phyllis, Kevin, our Sandra and Ken, the Robinsons, the Jacksons next door . . .’ The list went on and on and on.
And, knowing Max, she’d have balanced that out with numbers from her side of the family.
‘Don’t say I told you,’ said his mum. ‘Please. I feel awful. I only rang to ask you about what to do with the presents.’
Stuart injected as much calm into his voice as he could. ‘It’s fine. I shan’t say anything.’ But Stuart didn’t feel calm at all. He felt cold rage shudder through him like an earthquake. He should have known.
He put down the phone and made for the study, where he dragged out that pink file from under Max’s desk and snapped off the lock with his bare hands.
Chapter 73
Stuart lifted up the bill and tried to absorb the words he was reading.
Shelleybrations
One 7 x 5 foot pink Princess Palace cake
To be delivered to Higher Hoppleton Hall,
Friday 1 July
A seven by five FOOT cake? And why the fuck was it being delivered to Higher Hoppleton Hall? He found the answer to that in the thick pile of invoices – all paid in full. Higher Hoppleton Hall-headed notepaper: a reception for fifty people. And how many bottles of pink champagne? Then there was an invoice for flowers: displays to be delivered to Higher Hoppleton and the church; two trailing pink bouquets and one giant JEWEL-ENCRUSTED teardrop bouquet destined for their house on the morning of the wedding. An invoice for a spa-weekend honeymoon package, a receipt for a wig, a photographer, balloons – bloody balloons? Then an invoice for three dresses for HOW MUCH? He looked at the total on the White Wedding invoice and winced. But even that was aced by the next invoice in the pile: a Cinderella coach and six white horses. Then he saw the Polaroid of Max and Bel and Violet in their gigantic dresses and the long-dormant volcano inside him finally erupted.
That was it. The end for them. His anger left him in a flash and was replaced by a composure that was unreal. His migraine cleared up like magic. He could have laughed, really. She’d done his dirty work for him. Calmly Stuart went and packed a suitcase and waited for Max to come home.
Chapter 74
There were fifteen missed calls on Max’s phone when she retrieved it from her bag after she’d paid the Nail Diamond bill. Violet had to access the voicemail for her as she couldn’t press the small buttons with her new long nails.
‘Ring me urgently,’ said Jess’s breathless voice. ‘Whatever you do, don’t use the medium/dark San Maurice spray.’
With the aid of Violet again, Max rang Jess.
‘Jess, what’s up?’
‘Max, tell me you haven’t used that spray yet,’ Jess pleaded.
Max felt cold dread drench through to her bones. ‘Why?’
‘Oh God, you have, haven’t you? Oh shit. Okay, okay, don’t panic,’ said Jess, panicking.
‘Jess, what’s wrong with it?’
‘Okay, okay, keep calm, keep calm,’ said Jess on the verge of hyperventilating. ‘That box of sprays I brought up to your office has been flagged up as a faulty batch.’
‘Faulty how?’ Max was confused. She looked in the mirror and everything appeared fine. It hadn’t streaked, it hadn’t come off on her clothes . . .
‘It’ll get darker over the next forty-eight hours. Much darker.’
At her end of the line, Jess waited to hear Max explode. She didn’t expect to hear her chuckle and say, ‘Excellent.’
‘Max, did you hear me? I said . . .’
‘Cool your jets,’ said Max. ‘Obviously I’m glad it’s been spotted, and of course we’ll have to recall any product that has left the warehouse—’
‘None has yet,’ Jess interrupted. ‘We’re safe.’
‘But, as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine,’ said Max. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror. It looked as if she was going to get the third coat that Bel banned, after all.
Chapter 75
Max screamed when she wal
ked into the kitchen and saw Stuart sitting at the breakfast bar. She ran to the other side of the door and talked to him through it.
‘What are you still doing here? You aren’t supposed to see me. Go away, Stuart.’
‘Max, we need to talk,’ he said, in a level, quiet tone. He didn’t feel dread or fear or guilt. He felt relief, if he was honest. And free.
‘You can talk to me without seeing me,’ said Max, still through the door.
‘Max.’ He drew in the deepest breath his lungs would allow. ‘I can’t marry you.’
There was a long silence, then still through the door came the single word:
‘Eh?’
‘Come into the kitchen.’ Even Stuart marvelled at how collected and in control he sounded.
When Max finally realized that this wasn’t a joke and edged into the kitchen, Stuart saw a woman he didn’t recognize: a dark-skinned woman with eyelashes the size of a flamenco dancer’s fan. She looked like the stranger she was to him at that moment.
‘Stuart, what’s up with you?’
‘This,’ he said, and he picked up the stack of wedding invoices. ‘This is what’s up with me.’
‘Oh bloody hell,’ tutted Max. ‘Why did you go snooping?’
‘Why did you do it?’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Why did you take over?’
‘I didn’t take over,’ argued Max. ‘I just added a few bits.’
‘A Cinderella pumpkin carriage and six white horses? A dress that costs more than my wage for two years? Shall I go on?’ He shook the invoices at her. ‘I booked a reception as a surprise for you at the Lamp and my mother made us a cake.’
‘The Lamp?’
He waited for her face to crease with displeasure. He imagined he saw that it had.
‘Yes, the Lamp. I’m sorry it obviously isn’t good enough for you, Max, but it was good enough for me and just for once we were going to have what I decided on our wedding day, weren’t we?’
‘I didn’t say that it wasn’t good enough,’ said Max. ‘You’re doing that thing again that you always do: implying that I don’t think anything you do is good enough when it is. It annoys the hell out of me, Stuart. Why shouldn’t it be good enough for me? My name’s Maxine McBride not Tamara bloody Ecclestone. Why didn’t you tell me you’d booked a reception?’
‘It was a surprise, Max.’
‘So was Higher Hoppleton Hall.’
Stuart pressed at his temple.
‘You rode roughshod over me, as you always do, Max.’ His calm was slipping. His frustration was starting to ooze out from his pores. ‘What I want and what I can afford isn’t good enough for you, whatever you might fool yourself into believing. You whip out your Visa and have to alter things to what you want, and you do it every single time.’ He swept his arm around the room. ‘I didn’t want this house. I wanted the smaller one in the town, but Max has to have her own way. I didn’t want that bloody car, but we have to have his and hers matching shitting BMWs. And I didn’t want a swanky wedding. I wanted you and me, our closest friends and family and some vows. And you knew that, which is why you arranged all this –’ he slammed the invoices down on the work surface – ‘behind my back. Because it’s your way or the highway.’
Tears were now glistening on Max’s enormous eyelashes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d do what you usually do and tut and just . . .’
‘. . . Give in? Let you have your own way?’ he butted in. ‘Because that’s what I always do. Good old soft-touch Stuart.’ He shrugged off Max’s hand when she reached out towards his shoulder.
‘You might as well have cut off my cock.’
‘Stuart!’
He laughed. And it was a hollow, bitter sound. ‘You don’t make me feel like a man. You make me feel like a ponce.’
‘Please, Stuart. Is this pre-wedding ner—’
‘Don’t even think about saying it,’ he covered his ears. ‘Oh God, I wish it were. But it’s not. It’s the tip of a very big iceberg, Max. And it’s sunk us.’
Max was frightened now. She and Stuart had never argued like this. There was a tone in his voice she hadn’t heard before. ‘Stuart, we’ve lasted seventeen years.’
‘We’ve lasted because I’ve let it last,’ said Stuart. ‘I’ve put myself and my wants and my needs in second place every single time. And you’ve put my wants and my needs in second place every single time. I don’t think I’ve been happy for a long time, Max.’
‘You don’t think?’ Max snapped in confusion. ‘What do you mean, “you don’t think you’ve been happy”?’
Because I thought I was in love with you until I really was with someone else, said Stuart inside. But it would have been too cruel to say it aloud. Instead he looked around him at the swanky kitchen with the designer gadgets and uncomfortable chrome bar stools.
‘All this stuff makes you happy, Max. But it doesn’t make me. We want different things. We have for a long, long time, really, if we face it. I don’t want to live here any more. I don’t want to take second place to your work, I don’t want to drive around in a car you’ve bought for me, I don’t want to eat alone at night, I don’t want to spend weekends by myself . . .’
He picked up the suitcase that was out of sight behind the breakfast bar. Max’s hands flew up to her face.
‘Stuart, don’t be daft. You will be at the church tomorrow, won’t you? You wouldn’t let me down.’
‘Max, you want the wedding, not the groom,’ Stuart said, and he walked out and left her sobbing into her perfectly manicured hands.
Violet rang Max just before she went to bed.
‘You all right?’ she asked. ‘Nervous?’
‘I’m cool, calm and collected,’ said Max, trying her damnedest to press down on the wobble in her voice. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow.’
‘Well, just thought I’d give you a quick ring before I turn in. Has Bel phoned you?’
‘She texted.’
‘So, see you bright and early at yours. Sleep well.’
‘Mwah.’
Max put down the phone and switched off the light. She would be glad to see the back of that day. As far as tantrums go, that was Stuart’s finest hour and he had worried her for a while. But she knew he was at Luke’s because she had driven past and seen his car there. And his hired wedding suit had gone, so he had taken it with him. He would be there at the church tomorrow having slept on things, she was sure of it. He’d shake his head at her dress and the cake, but he’d pose for photographs and eat the lovely food and be happy because she had written an extra chunk of her vows that evening and she would promise never again to take over from him and alter his plans. She’d learned a big lesson today.
No way would he really walk out on her the night before their wedding, she was sure of that. After seventeen years, she knew him inside out.
Chapter 76
While the others were changing into their pink dresses upstairs, Freya was lacing Max into her dress from the back. Her hips were padded with special cushions that Freya had made for her because the weight of the dress would have scarred her otherwise. She had twenty-five petticoats on underneath her gypsy wedding gown and Max wished she’d asked Freya to make her a pair of wheels as well as she hadn’t a clue how she was going to walk in it. Max’s dad was waiting patiently in the kitchen with the shock-prescribed scotch that he needed when he saw the colour of his daughter’s skin, which wasn’t dissimilar to their walnut wardrobes at home. Not mentioning those eyelashes.
‘Stuart stormed out on me yesterday after a row,’ Max suddenly blurted out in a momentary lapse of self-control. ‘I’m only ninety-nine per cent definite that he will be there today. Does that happen a lot?’
‘The day before a wedding is often a very precarious time,’ said Freya, pulling hard on the ribbon. ‘People’s fears about change are at a high. Even if they’ve lived together for years, the feeling of uncertainty is thick in the air.’
‘Pre-wedd
ing nerves?’ asked Max, fishing for hope.
‘Sometimes,’ replied Freya.
‘What if he jilts me?’ said Max, forcing bravery into her voice.
‘Then he’s the wrong man for you. Now, try to sit down on this chair, please, and check I haven’t laced you in too tightly. You do still need to breathe.’
Freya picked up the operating box that switched on the lights under the dress and attached it with clips to Max’s left fingerless lace glove. Then she put on Max’s wedding boots for her and buttoned them up. They were four-inch-heeled, stiff white silk and embroidered with M & S in pink stitching. Then Freya took out the towering twinkling tiara and threaded it carefully into Max’s Marge Simpson-high wig.
‘I’m scared, Freya,’ admitted Max, pushing down hard on the tears that threatened to dampen her enormous eyelashes.
Freya walked round to the front of Max and placed her warm hand on Max’s cheek.
‘This day, this wedding, will make you realize what is truly important in life, I promise you that. You must hold your head up high and own your wedding. Be that gypsy bride of your fantasies in this dress and see where it leads you.’
Max felt a surge of strength blast through her. Freya was right. The only way through today was to brazen out whatever came her way, like a strong gypsy woman. She’d have her big fat over-the-top day. She had wanted it for too long.
Chapter 77
For over two hours the previous evening, Luke had made Stuart sit on his huge leather sofa while he tried to drill some sense into him.
‘It’s not love, it’s infatuation,’ he said about Jenny.
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Stuart adamantly. ‘And, anyway, Jenny is just a part of it. Even if she doesn’t want me, it’s over between me and Max.’
‘Because she invited a few of your relatives to watch you get wed?’
‘You know it’s more than that,’ Stuart said. Luke had never seen his friend as calm nor as resolute. ‘We’re too different, Luke. You’re more her type than I ever was. You both want the same things: big houses, fancy jobs.’
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