by Mike Gayle
Helen tried to take Phil’s advice and although months went by without the two of them needing to exchange a word, what with Christmas, Easter and various family birthdays there were other times when there was literally no escaping Caitlin. And although it would be natural to assume that over nine years, two family bereavements, and the handing over of countless tastefully selected and perfectly wrapped birthday and Christmas presents (presents that had quite clearly not been bought or wrapped by Phil), that hostilities would have ceased, this was not the case. Instead they continued to bubble under the surface waiting for the opportunity to erupt.
Inviting Caitlin to the hen weekend was Helen’s final olive branch to Caitlin for the sake of the man she loved and if she refused to accept it after this weekend, or at the latest after the wedding, she resolved to stop making the effort and cut Caitlin out of her life for good.
Helen was up in her room frantically stuffing one of the hotel’s tastefully designed straw tote bags with everything she needed for the morning when her phone rang.
‘It’s me,’ said Yaz urgently. ‘Listen I don’t want to panic you, but we might not have thought this whole thing with Caitlin through properly.’
Helen hadn’t got a clue what Yaz was talking about.
‘Think about it. We’ve just invited her to meet downstairs in the lobby haven’t we? Now I know she said she probably won’t come but what if she does and gets there before we do, introduces herself and the girls start telling her about what an amazing time they all had hanging out with Aiden? I don’t know whether you’d planned to tell Phil about bumping into your ex or not but if she gets to the girls before we do I guarantee you won’t need to worry about how to break the news to him.’
Yaz was right. This was exactly the kind of thing Caitlin would leap on. Grabbing her bag, Helen snatched up her key card and ran out of the room slamming the door behind her. Racing along the corridor at top speed she passed the lift and took the stairs, then pelted down several steps at a time.
Her heart pounding as if it was trying to escape her chest, Helen sprinted to reception to meet the girls.
‘I need to tell you something,’ gasped Helen thankful that there was no sign of Caitlin. ‘Is everyone here?’
‘All except Yaz,’ said Kerry.
‘Look,’ said Helen quickly, ‘it’s like this: for reasons that I don’t want to go into I need to ask you all a massive favour. Whatever you do don’t—’
Helen stopped abruptly as Yaz arrived frantically waving her hands.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ said Yaz still waving her arms. ‘I’m just thinking that you probably need to stop talking . . . now.’
Realising something was up Helen was horrified to see Caitlin standing behind her. In that instant Helen saw she had two options: she could allow herself to fall apart as she had done when she bumped into Aiden or professional Helen could get on with the business of being unflappable.
‘Caitlin,’ said Helen calmly, ‘great you’ve decided to join us. I was just getting the girls together to explain that they shouldn’t . . . drink too much.’
Caitlin looked confused. ‘Isn’t that sort of the idea of hen weekends?’
Clearly in agreement the others looked on perplexed.
‘I’m just saying that—’ An idea occurred to her and she pointed to Caitlin. ‘Where are my manners? Everybody, this is Phil’s sister, Caitlin, everybody this is Caitlin.’
It wasn’t exactly the most subtle of ways of getting her point across to her friends that they should keep their mouths shut about the events of the night before, but from the raised eyebrows and silent gasps that spread amongst the girls like a Mexican wave the message had clearly been received. But just to make sure that there weren’t any little slip-ups as everyone introduced themselves to Caitlin, Helen whispered to Yaz to brief everyone individually about what was and what wasn’t out of bounds to talk about with the evil one.
The girls made their way out of reception and along the outside path to the Spa. It was a beautiful cloudless morning, the perfect summer barbecue day and even though it was only mid-morning there was no doubt it was going to be a scorcher.
The area around the spa had been landscaped so that it was only once visitors descended the limestone stairs that the spa could be seen at all. Once there the girls knew they were in for a treat. The front entrance looked like a partially buried glass dome jutting out of the slope and as the girls marvelled at its architectural elegance the more confident they became that a building like this wasn’t going to be staffed by bored teens fresh out of beauty school.
Signing in, they made their way to the changing rooms where they hurriedly undressed and within a matter of minutes they were settled in the steam room and getting down to the main business of the day: conversation.
‘So Helen,’ began Ros, ‘How are all the wedding plans going? I bet you had it all sewn up months ago. You’ve always been the most organised person I know.’
‘Oh, you know how it is,’ said Helen, quickly. She wiped her sweat-laden brow with her towel. ‘Even when you’re organised, with something this big there are always things to do.’
As those who had experience began to exchange tales of their own wedding organisational nightmares, Helen reflected on Ros’s comment. It was true that she was highly organised; there was no way she could do her current job as a presenter and have fulfilled her role as a producer successfully without being organised, and yet she had somehow neglected to bring that same degree of organisational control to bear on what was supposed to be one of the most important days of her life. It wasn’t just that she had left the booking of the venue, the hiring of the caterers and the sorting out of the honeymoon to Phil (she argued that as he was his own boss he had more free time to do these things), it was that with less than a week to go she still hadn’t decided on a dress.
Since the first of her university friends began to get married Helen had had an image in her head of the perfect wedding dress so when Aiden had proposed, she set to work on making the dream become a reality by gathering together pictures ripped from magazines along with brief sketches of her own. Once she was satisfied that she had all the inspiration she needed she went to see the woman who had designed Yaz’s cousin’s gown which she had admired some months before.
The designer had seemed to understand what Helen wanted straight away and had shown her some beautiful swatches of material, which Helen knew would be perfect. Several fittings later and there it was: the fantasy dress of her dreams, a more beautiful reality than she’d ever expected: a floor length strapless ivory satin sheath dress exquisitely embroidered with antique beads and trimmed with vintage ribbon.
Gazing at her reflection in the mirror at the final fitting Helen felt every inch the princess that she had hoped to be. She had left the dressmaker’s nearly a thousand pounds poorer but with a joy in her heart she would have gladly paid ten times more to possess.
When she called off the wedding, the dress was the one aspect of the cancelled day that she wouldn’t allow anyone else to deal with, torn as she was between keeping it and giving it away. In the end, having bagged it up and driven to the other side of the city with the intention of donating it to a charity shop, she just couldn’t do it. As selfish as it was she couldn’t bear the thought of another woman walking down the aisle in her dream dress and she took the bag from the boot of the car, crossed over to the car park of a nearby pub and with tears streaming down her face threw the dress into an industrial waste container and walked away.
‘Are you having any, Helen?’
Helen stared blankly at Heather. She hadn’t got a clue what was being asked of her.
‘You’re a million miles away,’ teased Heather. ‘It must be all this steam! I was just asking are you having wedding favours on the table? I went to a wedding last summer and the couple were real green freaks and had put several packets of seeds on every table for people to take away and plant so as to offset the c
arbon footprint of the wedding!’
Helen was panic-stricken. ‘I hadn’t even thought about it.’
Heather looked mortified. ‘Sorry, babe! I didn’t mean to wind you up into a frenzy. It must be the full-time mum in me: I don’t feel normal unless I’m armed with a sixteen-page to-do list! Just step out of this circle of madness, I say, and do your own thing!’
Helen smiled weakly. Party favours were the least of her problems. At this rate she would be getting married in a tracksuit and slippers. She and Yaz had been looking at dresses for months now, starting with a wedding fair at the NEC in Birmingham and branching out to every bridal shop within a thirty-mile radius of Nottingham. And while there had been many hideous creations amongst the dresses she had seen (one in particular, a huge hideous pink meringue that could easily have been the star of its own TV documentary entitled My biggest gypsy wedding), there had also been plenty of tasteful and elegant dresses with which she had fallen in love. A cream taffeta dress in a bridal shop in Hucknall and another that could have been plucked straight from the set of a sumptuous Merchant Ivory production to name but two. And yet whenever the shop assistant asked if she would like to come back for a second fitting her response was always: ‘I do really like it but I’m going to carry on looking just that little while longer.’ And to anyone who asked what her dress was like (a question aimed at her on an almost daily basis) her reply was the same: ‘Beautiful. But I’m not saying anything as I don’t want to spoil the surprise.’
Helen knew it was madness to leave it this late and that even if she were to walk into a wedding dress shop first thing on Monday morning and choose the first dress, no matter how hideous, that she laid eyes on there was every chance that – this being July – they would be so overwhelmed with orders that even if she offered to pay them double they might not be able to get any alterations done by the Saturday morning. And what kind of bride doesn’t have a dress a week before her wedding day?
9.
It was approaching midday and the first beauty treatment of the day was complete. The girls stood in a circle in the changing rooms admiring the results of their joint manicure and pedicure.
‘What’s yours called again?’ asked Yaz, looking down at Helen’s feet.
‘Boutique Trash,’ said Helen.
‘So that’s pink then,’ said Yaz.
‘Looks like it,’ said Helen. She looked over at Lorna’s toes. ‘I like yours Lorna. What’s that one?’
‘Burnt Sunrise,’ said Lorna.
‘So that’s dark orange then,’ said Yaz.
‘I hate my feet,’ said Dee.
They all inspected Dee’s feet. ‘Don’t say that,’ said Helen. ‘You’ve got great feet.’
‘No,’ said Dee. ‘My ex used to say I’d got Hobbit feet and he had a point. Just call me Bilbo Baggins.’
‘I know you were married to him and everything,’ said Helen, ‘but your ex was more than a bit of an idiot. Your feet are beautiful and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’
‘I wish I had feet like Caitlin’s,’ said Dee, ‘Just look at them. They’re perfect.’
Everyone looked at Caitlin’s feet. Much as Helen loathed her, even she had to agree that in the world of feet Caitlin’s were right up there with those of Natalie Portman, Jennifer Anniston and Halle Berry.
‘She’s right,’ chipped in Ros, ‘They are gorgeous. That colour really suits you too.’
‘Thank you girls,’ said Caitlin beaming, ‘it’s weird but whenever I’m out in my strappy sandals I get loads of compliments about them.’
Helen smiled inwardly at the thought of people queuing in nightclubs just to get a glimpse of her sister-in-law-to-be’s feet.
‘I think we’ve all got great feet,’ said Helen diplomatically, in a bid to move the conversation on. ‘And we should definitely give them an airing when we go out tonight. Who’s up for it?’ Helen counted up the hands. The vote was unanimous.
‘Toes out for the lads it is!’ laughed Carla who had been single so long that she feared it might become permanent. ‘I’ve got a good feeling that Gunmetal Rose is going to be my lucky colour!’
Fully dressed, the girls made their way out of the spa with the conversation focused evenly between what they fancied for lunch and how long they would need to get ready to go out to dinner that evening. Helen herself was happy that for a few moments at least she wasn’t thinking about wedding dresses and was content to listen to the others but as they headed to the restaurant her heart stopped. Aiden and two of his friends were coming towards them.
From her position at the back of the group Helen could see from the body language of her friends that they were unsure how to react. Most of them simply chose to ignore Aiden and his friends while others, never having had to blank a complete stranger with whom they had spent half the night drinking, offered an embarrassed half wave that Helen hoped had gone unseen by Caitlin.
But Aiden had seen Helen and fully intended to try and talk to her.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Yaz, quickly. ‘Do you want me to go over and tell him you can’t speak?’
Helen shook her head. ‘No, you carry on to the restaurant. Tell the girls I’ll be along in a minute but don’t wait and whatever you do don’t let Caitlin out of your sight.’
Helen’s breathing deepened involuntarily as she began to walk towards Aiden who was stood standing in the middle of the grass. She wondered whether he was going to make her walk all the way over to him but then he began to walk towards her.
‘Morning,’ said Aiden as they met halfway.
‘Morning.’
‘Just been to the spa?’
Helen nodded. ‘We all had our nails done.’ She dangled her newly manicured hands in the air as if he needed proof.
‘Nice,’ he replied studying them. ‘You won’t believe this but I had manicures for a while. Back in the early days I was doing a cable show, my agent clocked how filthy my nails were and so she set up regular appointments for the eight weeks I was doing the show and then billed the cable company.’
‘And did you enjoy them?’
Aiden shrugged. ‘Not enough to carry on. It’s too much of a detail thing. Us blokes are too big-picture orientated to think whizzing into town to have some bird do our nails and make small talk is worth the effort.’
Helen laughed. ‘It’s hard to know what to do first: marvel at the ease with which you can insult half the population with your simplistic worldview or ask a follow up question about what this so-called “big-picture” is that you’d rather be doing than appear on TV looking like you spend your spare time rooting through rubbish bins.’
‘What can I say?’ asked Aiden. ‘I’m a guy. We don’t sweat the small stuff.’ He shifted his weight uneasily. Helen could feel a question coming.
‘Did your friends enjoy last night?’
‘Yes, thanks. Obviously some of them were a little worse for wear this morning, but they were pretty unanimous about having had a good time. Thanks for that, it was really good of you.’
‘It was nothing. They’re a great bunch of girls and the lads really enjoyed being around them but I can’t say that you weren’t missed.’
Helen blushed. ‘Thank you. And I apologise. It’s just that it had been an incredibly long day and I was shattered. I guarantee you, I’d have been no fun at all.’
Aiden nodded as though he understood but Helen didn’t think for a moment that he believed a single word she had said.
‘I know this is awkward for you,’ he began, ‘and well . . . it’s awkward for me too. But isn’t it weird that of all the places we could be this weekend we’re both here? Maybe this is a good opportunity for us to clear the air.’
‘You’re not trying to tell me that you, world renowned sceptic Aiden Reid, believe in something as airy-fairy as fate? Next thing you’ll be telling me that you Cosmic Ordered this whole thing up.’
Aiden laughed. ‘Look, all I’m saying is that we’re here and the chance
s of that were pretty slim. So why not make the most of it?’
‘And do what?’
‘Give me half an hour of your time.’
Helen sighed. Had she walked a bit faster she could have avoided this whole sorry saga. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But make it ten minutes.’
Aiden began walking purposefully though it soon became apparent that he wasn’t sure where he was going.
‘What exactly are you looking for?’ asked Helen as they reached the far edge of the hotel.
‘I’ll know it when I see it.’
‘Some things never change.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’m just thinking about the summer you were supposed to be best man for your friend Mike’s wedding in Darlington. Only we didn’t get there until—’
‘—the whole thing was over!’
‘And all because you absolutely refused to ask for directions to the church.’
Aiden chuckled. ‘Mike was so annoyed about having to get his granddad to do the honours that he didn’t speak to me for months. I can’t believe you’re still going on about that.’
‘What can I say?’ replied Helen. ‘Some things are too amusing to forget.’
They continued down a tree-lined path that eventually reached a slow running stream. There were a number of smart-looking modern loungers and wooden benches scattered around under the trees but it was quiet and empty.
‘I read about this spot in the brochure,’ said Helen. ‘I’d planned to come down here at some point and read my book.’
‘See,’ said Aiden. ‘And there was you thinking I didn’t know where I was going. That’s the genius of me: appearing haphazard but actually in total control.’