Happily ever after isn’t always what you expect…
Polly Atkins, a Londoner living in New York City, is headed back across the pond for her wedding, a grand affair that has her older sister, Bella, in a whirlwind of excitement. Bella can’t wait to take over the wedding plans—and neither can Polly’s best friend, Grace, whose life as a wife, housekeeper, and mother is making her feel older than her twenty-eight years. She’s desperate to see Polly settle down in the same city—and the same life.
The only one who isn’t bursting with enthusiasm is Polly. Which is why, before things can get any more chaotic, she calls the whole thing off and lets go of the most perfect man on the planet. There’s no way that Polly is going to tell anyone why she’s changed her mind. Some secrets are best kept hidden. But Grace and Bella are determined to get Polly and her fiancé back together if it’s the last thing they do. After all, solving someone else’s problems has got to be better than dealing with your own….
HOLLY McQUEEN is the author of three previous novels. She lives in London. Follow her on Twitter at @HollyMcQ.
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There Goes the Bride
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Holly McQueen
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McQueen, Holly.
There goes the bride : a novel / by Holly McQueen.—1st Atria Paperback ed.
p. cm.
1. Weddings—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6113.C5868T47 2012
823’.92—dc23
2011035642
ISBN 978-1-4516-6093-7
ISBN 978-1-4516-6096-8 (ebook)
For Laura
Contents
Bella: Tuesday, November 17
Grace: Wednesday, November 18
Bella: Wednesday, November 18
Grace: Thursday, November 19
Bella: Saturday, November 21
Grace: Monday, November 23
Grace: Monday, November 23
Bella: Thursday, November 26
Grace: Thursday, November 26
Bella: Thursday, November 26
Grace: Tuesday, December 1
Grace: Wednesday, December 2
Bella: Tuesday, December 8
Grace: Friday, December 11
Grace: Friday, December 11
Bella: Tuesday, December 15
Bella: Tuesday, December 15
Grace: Friday, December 18
Grace: Friday, December 18
Bella: Thursday, December 24
Bella: Thursday, December 24
Grace: Friday, December 25
Bella: Friday, December 25
Grace: Wednesday, December 30
Bella: Thursday, December 31
Acknowledgments
There Goes the Bride
From:
[email protected]
To:
[email protected]
Date:
December 24, 2011
Subject:
Help
I know it’s Christmas Eve. And I know you’re halfway up a mountain in Colorado right now, wowing your half million nephews and nieces with your snowboarding prowess. It’s almost ten at night here, so you’re probably right in the middle of your afternoon ski. So I’m really, really sorry to disturb you.
I’m only emailing because you said I should always get in touch when things are not good. And things are not good just now. They’re not good at all.
I’ve just run out on my sister’s Christmas party. I know, I know—I’m getting good at running out on things, aren’t I? And you’re probably thinking, oh, that doesn’t sound too big a deal. Polly’s told me all about her sister, Bella, and I can’t say I’m surprised she’s done a runner from a Christmas party of hers. Especially if Bella’s annoying boyfriend was there (he was) and especially if her mum was getting tipsy (she was) and especially if Bella and her dad were engaging in competitive one-upmanship over the best way to heat up sausage rolls (they were). Anybody would make a sharp exit from a party like that!
But none of those things were the reason I left.
The surprise guest was the reason I left. Bella invited Dev.
That’s right. Dev.
I’ve no idea what she was thinking. Actually, what am I saying? This is Bella we’re talking about. I know exactly what she was thinking. That one look at Dev and I’d realize the error of my ways, and the wedding would be back on before you could say “Canapés, champagne, and a sit-down buffet for a hundred and thirty!” This is the way my sister’s mind works. Something goes wrong, you just pull your sleeves up and fix it.
I call off my wedding to the love of my life, she just pulls up her sleeves and fixes it.
But there isn’t any fixing this, Julia. There isn’t any fixing me. There isn’t any fixing of the things I’ve done.
Oh, shit, Dev is calling me. He’s calling me RIGHT NOW.
I’m not going to answer. I’ve not answered his calls in six weeks. I don’t need to start now.
Oh, thank God, it’s stopped.
Look, if you do happen to get this, maybe you could give me a call? Drop me an email, even, with some of your much-needed pearls of wisdom? Either way, I’d be so gratef
OK, now Dev is calling me again.
This time he’s doing our Code. Two rings, hang up. Two rings, hang up. He used to do it when he was calling me from work and his landline number would come up Withheld. I have a habit of screening calls, you see—too many years spent owing people money or forgetting to pay my bills—but I’d always want to pick up if it was him.
I suppose, if I’m being honest, I want to pick up right now.
Maybe it’s because he did our Code. Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas. Maybe it’s because he looked so lovely, standing o
n Bella’s doorstep, wearing the coat I picked out for him in the sale last January, and the check scarf we bought to keep out the unseasonable cold when we spent this past Easter in Vermont. Maybe it’s because I feel so bad about running away from him earlier. About running away from him at all.
And there are things—you know, Julia, what things—that I know I owe it to him to explain. Seeing him tonight, even just for a couple of moments, seeing him all Dev-like and cozy in his coat and his scarf … it made me wonder if he just might understand after all.
Two rings again, now silence.
Right, here’s what I’m going to do. If he rings again, I’ll take it as a sign. And I’ll pick up. Even though you’re not here to advise me what to do, I’ll pick up. Just to talk to him. And maybe I won’t explain anything. Maybe I’ll just listen to his voic
OK, it’s ringing again. Got to go.
Love
Polly x
Bella
Tuesday, November 17
It’s going to be a busy few weeks, one way or another. Tonight my sister, Polly, is finally coming home, for good, after six years of living in New York. She’s getting married on New Year’s Eve, barely six weeks from now, and as her official chief bridesmaid and unofficial wedding coordinator—not to mention the only person in my family with an ability to Get Things Done—I’m up to the eyeballs with plans and to-do lists, trying to settle everything from the exact shade of the roses in Polly’s bouquet to the first draft of the inevitably fraught seating plan.
Oh, and it looks like I’m one step closer to getting a baby.
These two momentous events—Polly’s long-awaited return and my baby news—aren’t actually linked, by the way. I realize that I’ve made it sound as though my sister might be bringing back a baby for me all the way from New York, along with the cheap Kiehl’s products I’ve requested. Slinging the poor thing into the overhead luggage compartment on the plane, perhaps, or checking it in with her suitcases and waving it away as it trundles off along the conveyor belt.
I know. You may well frown. But it’s the kind of thing Polly might do with a baby.
Anyway, that’s irrelevant, because she isn’t bringing back a baby. (At least I hope she’s not; dear God, I hope she’s not.) It’s just that it so happens that earlier today I received a phone call from a woman named Samantha. She is an adoption social worker. And though we’ve not met before, from the moment she comes around for her initial visit later on this week, she’s the person who starts the process of deciding whether or not I am suitable to be given somebody else’s unwanted child.
On Samantha’s say-so, I could be judged to be either (a) a kind, generous person who just wants to give a child a good home, or (b) a sadistic monster planning to adopt a whole brood of needy children with the sole purpose of turning them out to work in the streets as beggars and underage prostitutes.
And convincing the social service that you’re in category A rather than B is a tough act to pull off, let me tell you.
Which is why, ever since the call from Samantha a couple of hours ago, my mind has wandered, for the first time in weeks, off Polly’s wedding preparations and onto all the preparations I’ll need to make to get myself and the flat ready for this visit. Food, mainly, is what I’ve been thinking about—what to serve to Samantha with her tea or coffee that will send out the signals that I’m kind/generous/keen to give a child a good home and not sadistic/monstrous/an exploiter of the vulnerable. A Sicilian lemon drizzle loaf, perhaps, sharp with citrus and moist with butter, and the pleasingly retro coffee cake that my stepdad Brian always likes to make for visitors. Plus I could get my best friend (and professional patissier) Anna to make her fabled chocolate cake. It’s made without flour, so it’s actually more like a mousse than a sponge, turning slightly fudgy with the addition of ground almonds, and it will serve me well if Samantha happens to be wheat intolerant.
I know, it’s probably absolutely ludicrous to be thinking about what kind of food I can serve my adoption social worker, but thinking about what food I can serve people is pretty much my go-to state of mind. I own my own catering company, you see. It’s a pretty small affair—just me and, for the last year or so, Anna—doing dinner parties, buffet suppers, or canapé events in my clients’ homes. But I’ve been building the business for five years now, and these days it’s doing so well that sooner or later I’m going to have to take on more staff, just to keep up with demand. It’s called Bella’s Bites—Polly came up with the name; mind you, I went along with it, so I suppose I’m as much to blame for its terminal tweeness as she is.
So this is why planning the right menu for Samantha’s visit is really just professional courtesy. Nothing to do with me being an uptight control freak.
Anyway, I’m using up all my uptight control freakery on Polly’s wedding.
“Babe?”
This is Jamie, my boyfriend, calling me from the living room.
Even though he’s not taken a massive amount of interest in the whole thorny adoption process just yet, I’m kind of hoping that—along with the trio of cakes—Jamie might be my secret weapon in impressing Samantha the social worker. After all, it’s the hardest of hearts that isn’t melted by his swoony Cork accent, and let’s face it, he’s not exactly tough on the eyes. He’s six foot four and gloriously chunky, with a handsome face, naughty, chocolate-colored eyes, and a year-round outdoorsy tan, thanks to his work as a landscape gardener, though he hasn’t done too much of it lately, so the tan is in danger of fading a little bit. When we first met, he was running his own firm, Keenan Landscapes. It’s how we met, in fact, when he was working on the garden of one of my dinner party clients in Maida Vale. But over the past few months, Keenan Landscapes has kind of … fallen by the wayside. It’s the lingering effects of the recession, mostly. Though I can’t really explain why the demand for chichi catered parties would have risen steadily while the demand for a hunky Irishman to come and mow your lawn, pressure-wash your patio, and plant you some rhododendrons has plummeted like a stone.
I head through to the living room, where he’s sitting on the sofa with Wii football playing on the TV and the upchuckers, or whatever the controls are called, in his hand. He’s in his usual scruffy state—ripped jeans, a crumpled hoodie, and a three-day growth of stubble—but he gets away with it. If anything, the just-got-out-of-bed look just makes him even more swoony.
And yes, of course I wonder what a man as attractive as him is doing with me. I wonder this on a fairly frequent basis.
“Hang on a moment, Bells,” he says, even though he was the one who called me. He’s breathing in very sharply through his lips and teeth, putting every ounce of concentration he can into the game … then he falls back onto the plumped-up cushions, whooping with triumph, as his team scores the desired goal. “United three, Arsenal nil!”
“Fantastic!” I’ve learned, in the course of our two-year relationship, that Jamie is touchingly excited by any interest I show in his beloved Manchester United, whether it’s the real team or the virtual kind. (And, to be honest, whether it’s real interest or the virtual kind, he’s touched either way, even if he must know I’m occasionally faking.) “Did you want something?”
“I was just wondering if you could drop me at the pub on the way to meet your sister. You’re leaving at seven-ish, yeah?”
“The pub?” I try to keep my tone nonjudgmental. “I, um, thought you might be coming to the airport with me.”
“Oh, come on, Bells, United are playing Bayern tonight. I want to watch the game with the boys.”
Ah, yes, The Boys. The whole time I’ve known Jamie, he’s come complete with The Boys. They’re an ever-shifting group, nomadic in nature but with a core set of defining characteristics that include: a persuasive Cork accent; a capacity for prodigious quantities of alcohol; and a slavish devotion both to their mothers and to Manchester United (not necessarily in that order). And they’re traditionalists, too—though they’re always perfectly pleasant to me when we
meet, it’s pretty clear that girlfriends are not welcome on certain sacred grounds, namely The Pub, The Five-a-Side Pitch, and Old Trafford.
“But Jamie, you said you’d come to the airport to welcome Polly home.” I don’t want to sound like a nag, but he did say this. Even if it was, almost certainly, under the influence of alcohol. “And to help me deal with my mother. You know how good you are with her.”
The flattery is half working, but I’m battling against the unbeatable lure of Manchester United.
“And Grace might be there,” I add casually. After all, if flattery doesn’t work, appealing to his penis might.
I’m right, because his eyes light up. “Gorgeous Grace? The one you don’t like?”
This is unfair.
I don’t dislike Grace, my sister’s lifelong best friend. It’s just … well, I always feel she has a bit of a problem with me. She’s one of those women—always was, in fact, one of those girls—who a lot of other women find it hard to take to. It’s not just that she’s extremely beautiful—or gorgeous, thank you, Jamie—although she does happen to be exactly that: tall, blond, and still slender as a reed despite having had two children. It’s more that she’s just a couple of crucial degrees away from warmth. Not glacial, exactly. And not even, at least not when she’s making a real effort, chilly. She’s just kind of … tepid.
“Yes. Gorgeous Grace.”
Jamie screws up his face, caught in a heartrending struggle between spending the evening in the company of one stunning woman or twenty-two sweaty footballers.
The sweaty footballers win.
“Yeah, but we’re playing Bayern, babe. It’s a huge game. Besides, you know your sister isn’t my biggest fan. You’re better off going without me.”
I know, from experience, that there’s no point arguing. “All right. But you have to promise, Jamie, here and now, that you won’t have a huge game to watch on Saturday.”
There Goes the Bride Page 1