by Rosie Orr
Amid cries of ‘Beaut, Anna’ (Tara-Louise), ‘Nice one, Mum’ (Sam), ‘Oh Anna, what a lovely thing to say’ (Lucy) and ‘No sweat, mate’ (a profusely perspiring Tony), everyone embraced everyone else.
At last Anna disentangled herself. ‘And now, if you’ll all excuse me, I need the loo. See you later, Tony, Tara-Louise.’ She backed away, fluttering her fingers à la Tina at Lucy. ‘Back in a jiff.’
Sam was grinning at her. ‘I’ll grab you some more champagne, Mum.’
She smiled at him gratefully. ‘Lovely, darling.’
She didn’t start to run until she was sure she was lost to view among the crowd, but stopped suddenly as she cannoned into some guy with his back to her.
‘Sorry, I’m so sorry …’ Please God she hadn’t made him spill red wine all over himself.
He turned, and lowered the camera he’d been holding. Phew, not red wine, thank goodness. Of course – it was the wedding photographer. She’d noticed him taking photos of her several times, maybe Sam had asked for some specially. He grinned at her. She couldn’t help but notice his black hair in need of cutting, angular jaw, dark brown eyes …
‘No worries – reckon I’ve got quite enough shots of Widow Twanky over there already.’ He nodded his head in Tina’s direction; she was bending down, frowning, delivering a lecture to the youngest bridesmaid.
Widow Twanky? Anna burst out laughing.
‘Oops, sorry, she’ll be your son’s relative now – apologies. Sure, I bet she’s an absolute charmer when you get to know her.’
‘Oh, absolutely …’
They looked at each other for a moment. Anna stirred reluctantly. ‘Well, I must be …’
‘Declan O’Halloran.’ He held out his hand.
Anna took it. It was big, square, and warm – comforting. ‘Anna Hardy. Mother of the groom.’
He grinned. ‘I know.’
She turned away. ‘I must be getting on, if you’ll excuse me, Mr …’
‘O’Halloran’.
O’Halloran? Where had she heard …?
‘Just want to say what a beautiful colour your outfit is. Delphinium, I think that would be?’
She turned back. ‘Why yes, it is! Thank you!’
They looked at each other a moment longer.
Then she hurried away.
Mercifully, the foyer was empty. The roses and carnations had brightened it up considerably and the carpet had been vacuumed, though it occurred to Anna as she hurried past that the effect might have been improved if the vacuum cleaner had been put away afterwards rather than left in the corner by the lift.
The walls of the Ladies were bilious green marble, the bevelled mirrors above the grimy washbasins were dusty, the brass fittings tarnished, the grubby roller towel dangled limply to the tiled floor. The musty air was freezing, and the slightest sound echoed. No matter; she was the sole occupant, which meant she could compose herself without having to chat about fur stoles and six-inch heels to some crazed member of the Tina faction or incomprehensible hi-tech matters to some glossy twenty-something IT exec.
The first thing she had to do was calm bloody down, and the best way to do that was just breathe slowly and deeply until she felt better. Simple, really. Stepping out of her shoes, she laid her bag on the marble counter, trying to avoid the pools of liquid soap and tangles of unidentifiable hairs. Now… in and out … Good. Excellent. And again … in and out …
She was drawing in another deep breath when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Smeared and spotted it might be, but not smeared and spotted enough to prevent her from seeing that her pillbox hat was tilted at a rakish angle, several curls had come loose from their moorings and her nose was shiny. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Still, no good getting worked up about that now. Probably no-one had noticed. So concentrate, now, and it’s slowly … In and …
So you’re not designing, then?
… ooooout –
Not as if you actually got anywhere with it, is it?
With a shriek of rage, Anna snatched up her shoes and hurled them with all her force at the mirror. They hit with a satisfying thwack, but far from cracking the glass into the scarred and splintered shards she’d hoped for they slid limply down the pinkish smears of hair lacquer and mists of eau de cologne and fell with a dispirited plop into the washbasin. Jesus Christ – breathing wasn’t going to even begin to make her feel better. Bastard – she should have throttled him with his fluorescent bloody kangaroos. She began to bang her head against the mirror; this she found, helped quite a lot.
She was still banging away when she heard the door open behind her, and footsteps clacking across the floor. Christ. Quickly, she jerked her head back a couple of inches and pretended to be checking her eye make-up in the mirror as the footsteps came to a halt beside her and the new arrival started to do something energetic to her hair. By sheer good fortune, Anna’s bag was within reaching distance on her other side. Taking out her mascara, she applied another coat, humming in what she hoped was a casual, light-hearted fashion. Found her eyeshadow, and smoothed on a touch more. Licked the tip of her little finger and smoothed her already smooth eyebrows. Damn, there wasn’t much more she could fix with her head tilted back and her eyes half-shut – but the figure beside her showed no signs of going. But that must mean her head-banging hadn’t been spotted. In which case she could powder her nose, fix her curls, straighten her hat and get the hell out of there. Taking care to keep up the humming, she rummaged busily in her bag for her powder, straightened up, looked in the mirror – and met Tara-Louise’s eyes.
‘Hi there, Anna.’
‘Tara-Louise! Gosh, I didn’t realise it was you.’ From the look on her face she had seen the head banging.
‘Just came to spritz some more Glamagloo on my extensions and do a bit of backcombing. Jeez, I tell you, they’re more trouble than flaming implants.’
‘Ah.’ Sod her shiny nose, and she didn’t care if the rest of her hair collapsed and her hat fell down the lav. ‘Well, I’m just going to pop into the loo.’
‘Strewth, some dunny this is, isn’t it? Like something out of a horror film, you know, that Shining one, where Warren Beattie – no, Jack Nicholson …’
‘Golly, yes. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘Anna?’
Tony’s going to laugh himself sick when I tell him what I saw.
Turning away, Anna headed briskly for a stall.
Tara-Louise followed her. ‘I just wanted to say –’ She stopped and swallowed. ‘Look, Tiny …’
‘Tony.’
‘Yeah, sorry. Tony’ll kill me if he finds out I’ve blown the gaffe, but the way he’s always knocking you makes me want to chunder, I’m not kidding.’
Chunder? Didn’t that mean throw up? Anna turned round slowly. Tara-Louise stood gazing at her, twisting her hairbrush, its pink shell-encrusted back twinkling in the dim light like some unlikely Fabergé jewel. ‘Pardon?’
‘It gets right up my jacksie, mate.’
‘It does?’
‘Yeah. If I was you I’d get dirty with him. Give him a good smack in the mouth. The way that whacker treats sheilas, honestly …’ Turning back to the mirror, she began to backcomb her fringe vigorously. ‘I don’t mind telling you, I’m sick of it. Plus I’ve had it up to here with the way he always makes me let him wear the maid’s uniform every time we have a naughty.’
‘He does?’
‘Yeah, the flaming mongrel. So here goes …’ Laying down her brush, she swivelled round to face Anna again. ‘Not only is yours truly not a brain doctor – I’m not his flaming fiancée, either.’
Anna returned slowly to the washbasins. ‘You’re not?’
‘No way, mate. Hired me from a flaming agency, didn’t he?’
‘Agency? You mean as in …’ Anna swallowed. ‘Escort agency?’
‘Yeah. Elite Escorts of Sydney. Must have cost him a fortune for a whole week, plus he booked Special Services. Though we flew tourist, mean bastard.’
That was Tony, all right. Now Anna knew she wasn’t kidding.
‘But why? I mean surely he could have brought a girlfriend?’
Tara-Louise burst out laughing. ‘Are you joking? He’s got his girlfriend minding the store while he’s away. Mate of mine lives pretty close to it, Candy-Chantelle – she works for another agency – so I got her to take a look. Always useful to know what the bloke’s got going on at home, in my line, though gotta say Candy-Chantelle didn’t say much – couldn’t speak for laughing.’ She adjusted an extension. ‘Must be a real dog.’
Chassis’s not in bad shape, considering
Removing her hat, Anna began to unpin her hair. She needed something to do with her hands to stop them shaking, and anyway she’d have to take it all down before she could pin it up again.
Beside her, Tara-Louise turned to the mirror and scrutinised her reflection. ‘Strewth, my right eyelash’s starting to go walkabout.’ Taking a tiny tube of glue from a compartment in her bag, she unpeeled what appeared to be a row of tarantula legs from her eyelid and began to repair the damage. She giggled. ‘Oh, and he hasn’t got a chain of design agencies, either.’
Hairpins showered into Anna’s washbasin. ‘He hasn’t?’
‘Cripes, no.’ Tara-Louise affixed the tarantula legs to her eyelid once more and pressed them firmly into place. ‘Just a corner shop in Newcastle.’
‘Newcastle?’
‘Little suburb just outside Sydney. Jeez, what a dump.’
And you’re cooking, you say.
Anna picked up the pink hairbrush and began to tug it savagely through her hair.
Tara-Louise examined her other set of lashes critically, then turned her attention to her lip gloss. ‘Rubbish, these cheap brands. If that’s wet look, I’m the Pope’s salsa instructor.’ Sighing heavily, she produced a turquoise plastic pot, applied more, then tilted her head on one side thoughtfully. ‘Though to be fair, he did say it had a photocopier.’
A corner shop.
A photocopier.
But hang on – this trip must have cost him a fortune. Air tickets (albeit tourist class), car hire, hotel room … And there was a good chance the size-too-small safari suit and flashy tux had been bought specially for the occasion – there couldn’t be a lot of call for either in the suburbs of Sydney.
Anna laid the hairbrush down very carefully on the counter. Getting Tony to part with money had always been like trying to part a heroin addict from his fix.
She remembered their first meeting. She’d been standing in the canteen queue at college when the tall, blond Jude Law-lookalike ahead of her had flashed a blinding smile and started chatting. After five minutes he’d asked her to lend him a fiver until his grant came through. Hard up herself, but already fatally smitten, she’d lent him a tenner and bought him lunch. He never repaid the tenner, or reciprocated the lunch, but she’d attributed that to his preoccupation with his Work. Before she knew it, he’d moved his few belongings into her bedsit and she was cooking him supper every night. Not long after that, she’d found she was pregnant.
Marriage hadn’t changed things. The first Christmas they were married, she’d asked if she could have as a present a secondhand hoover she’d spotted for sale in the Brighton Argus small ads. He’d smiled vaguely, criticised at length the brilliant riot of sunflowers on the fabric design she’d just completed and asked where supper was. On Christmas morning he’d placed an enormous gift-wrapped box under their tiny tree; inside, wrapped in layer after layer of festive wrapping paper (she could remember even now her excitement as she ripped them off, sure that he’d decided to surprise her with something much more exciting) was a red plastic dustpan and brush.
Fatherhood hadn’t changed things. She’d been the only new mother on the ward whose husband never brought flowers – or anything else, for that matter – at visiting time …
Unless he’d recently undergone conversion to some religious faith (unlikely in view of the unpleasant remarks he’d made about her job/appearance/solo status) or discovered he had some ghastly terminal disease (unlikely in view of the burgeoning paunch and aggressively healthy tan) there was some ulterior motive behind his visit. She turned abruptly to her companion. ‘Tara-Louise? Why’s he doing all this?’
Tara-Louise applied a final slick of gloss, her forehead furrowed in thought. Then she replaced the lid on the little pot and regarded Anna earnestly in the mirror. ‘Reckon the bastard thinks he’s got something to prove.’
Anna looked away and started to wind her hair into a chignon; Tara-Louise pencilled a beauty spot above her upper lip. Anna was trying to deal with a particularly troublesome curl when she caught Tara-Louise’s eye in the mirror.
‘Well, the bugger’s dead right about one thing, anyway.’ Tara-Louise shovelled her makeup back into her bag with a flourish. ‘He has.’
They stared at each other for a moment, then started to laugh.
It was some time before they managed to stop; whenever Anna hiccupped to a halt, Tara-Louise would relate some anecdote about the journey from Sydney (‘… mile high club – he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Trouble was …’) and whenever Tara-Louise managed to regain control, Anna would regale her with memories of her marriage (‘Pink rash. He was absolutely convinced he’d got …’). After some time Anna looked at her watch. ‘Christ – the wedding breakfast’ll be starting any minute. We’d better be getting back. I’ll just finish fixing my hair.’
Tara-Louise inspected her critically. ‘No offence, but it looks a heck of a lot better down. It looked great when you were brushing it. Why don’t I …?’ Quickly, she unpinned Anna’s hair and arranged it in a glossy curtain around her shoulders. ‘There you go.’ Tara-Louise surveyed the result with satisfaction. ‘Eat your heart out, Julia Roberts. Take a look, mate.’
Taking a tissue from her bag, Anna wiped the mirror clean.
Her eyes were clear, her cheeks pink from laughing. The blue velvet glowed, the corsage of tiny cream orchids lent le tout ensemble a festive air. She looked, it occurred to her with surprise, happy. She was about to pick up her bag when she was struck by an appalling thought. ‘Christ, Tara-Louise – Tony’ll have fed Sam the whole pack of lies by now. God knows what it’ll do to him if he finds out the truth – he’s over the moon everything’s turned out so well. And Lucy, too.’ Not to mention sodding Tina, who’d probably order sodding Father O’Malley to annul the union on the spot if she discovered that the extent of Tony’s design franchise was a single corner shop in a Sydney suburb and that his fiancée was actually a high-class escort rented for the wedding.
‘No worries there, mate – we’re flying back tomorrow.’ Tara-Louise handed Anna her bag, picked up her own and winked at her. ‘And you can bet no-one’s gonna hear a chook’s cheep about any of this from me.’
Anna kissed her on the cheek.
Arm in arm, they hurried out of the Ladies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Grand Hotel’s enormous dining room, with its flaking mushroom-distempered walls, high cracked ceiling and beige polyester drapes, normally had the allure of a station waiting room. Today, however, it was transformed. A great many round tables draped with white damask cloths, set with polished crystal glasses and shining silverware, had been placed in clusters round the room; in the centre was a smaller table bearing a cake composed of so many elaborately iced and curlicued tiers that Anna finally gave up trying to count them. Fronds of delicate greenery spilled over the silver plinth, rose petals had been scattered liberally over the table’s pale pink cloth. Tall beeswax candles glowed everywhere, softly illuminating the bowls of cream roses set at the centre of the guests’ tables, winking off the crystal and silver.
The effect was magical.
Everyone had gathered for the wedding breakfast, and the room was filled with the hubbub created by the (mostly) cheerful guests as they argued, laughed and (occasionally) broke into song. Three longstanding family feuds were repaired, and a new one was begu
n: two flirtations among the IT faction developed promisingly, one of them being consummated in the gents between the first and second courses and resulting in a pregnancy that led to marriage the following Christmas. One of the plumper waitresses had her bottom pinched frequently by an elderly business colleague of Eamonn’s so drunk that when she finally slapped his hand he slid quietly off his chair with a loud fart and thence under the table, where he fell asleep and wasn’t found until next morning when the cleaner was hoovering.
If Tina had scored a personal triumph with the decor of the top table, where the gold-embossed tablecloth was liberally swagged with lime-green ferns and the roses were a violent tangerine hue, she had, thought Anna grimly as she lifted her glass to her lips, excelled herself with the seating plan; there might be no way she could keep the Mother of the Groom off the top table but at least she could make sure she was seated between the wedding breakfast companions from hell. Anna spent the first course listening to Lucy’s Great Uncle Liam recount in great detail his problems with his new dental plate, which he removed and brandished in her face whenever he wished to demonstrate a particularly startling point – the way one of the croutons accompanying the lobster bisque had wedged itself between the bright pink plastic palate and a glistening false molar, for example, or the Pimms stains that had dulled the silver wires and which he wagered no amount of scrubbing with lav cleaner would remove.
Since Great Uncle Liam was Lucy’s godfather, and had let Anna know as she sat down that he hadn’t yet made up his mind whether he would be leaving the considerable fortune he’d amassed from manufacturing plastic light-up models of Jesus (the top of the range version had a flashing crown of thorns and stigmata that glowed in the dark, apparently) to his god-daughter or the local cats’ home, she was only too aware of the need for forbearance. Mercifully his attention had been claimed by his other neighbour as the waiters placed their pheasant royale before them. Her stomach rumbling with hunger, Anna was cutting into the tender meat with a sigh of relief when she felt a hand on her knee. Jesus Christ. Tina had placed Father O’Malley on her right, with instructions no doubt to grill Anna on her religious beliefs and bring her Into the Fold by the time liqueurs were served.