by Corri Lee
As far as I knew, Monday’s Miracle were still playing in the evening. What I didn’t know was that they were arriving two days before the wedding and staying with us.
“Putting up rockstars, get you.” Esme stared dreamily across my studio to a wall-mounted canvas of Blaze on stage, back in the day. “You’ve not done at all badly for someone with no discernible talent.”
“Hah. Thank you.” I stuck my tongue out at her as I inched through the door she was holding open with her foot. In my arms was a box full of RSVPs that had already been checked a thousand times over, but needed checking again for final numbers—apparently. I doubted many other grooms were quite so figure obsessed. “I don’t believe you let me finish grovelling.”
“I don’t want you to grovel. Like I said earlier, you did me a favour.”
We walked down to the lounge expecting to find Daniel and Jonathan cooing over flower arrangements, but instead arrived to find it empty, no sound but raised voices outside. A delivery van had pulled up and Blaze looked to be screaming at the guy in the drivers seat.
“Jones’ Bakery... How long until the wedding?”
“Four days.”
And the cake was being delivered already. Looked serious. I probably should have gone out there as back up. On the other hand... “You never told me about this job you’ve been for.”
“Ah, the job. But first—the back story.”
With a graceful wave of the hand, Esme beckoned me over to a couch and sat with her feet tucked up underneath her. She’d never had the grooming to pass herself off as a member of the elite, but she had the natural poise of a debutante on her side if she ever wanted to try.
“My career has been great but I’ve purposely been holding myself back to avoid my face being seen. I’ve turned down more acting auditions than I could count, offered on my voice alone, but I’ve been so scared of my waste of space mother finding me. I’ve been so damn careful for so damn long.”
“So explain to me how lifting the veil on you was a favour.”
“Because, little Emmy White, one split second lapse of caution caught me out. It also taught me that there are much bigger things in life than whether a ghost breaks out of it’s grave. So what if she tracks me down? Now everybody knows my face, nobody is going to stand by and watch her extort me. Your personal life always becomes public access if your name goes up in lights. Shit, it’s pretty much part of the job description. By the time the old hag found me, I’d already sold my story to a magazine and had a few of your dear old dad’s goons as body guards. She can’t get near me, not anymore.”
Everything seemed to have worked out for Esme, but as glad as I was for it, I still didn’t feel any better about the circumstances under which it had happened. I’d fucked up big time, and I wasn’t going to stop trying to compensate for it, no matter how fortunate the consequences had been.
“Do you need a kidney or something? Because I have no idea how to make up for being an idiot in four days.”
“Emmy, I wouldn’t take a kidney from you for all the tea in China. It would hardly lengthen my life expectancy after the shit you’ve put your body through. But trust me, you’ll have longer than that to kiss my pert little butt-cushion.”
“Are you asking me to do a Blaze and send you daily love notes via email?”
“Well, I’m not saying no to that but daily serenades in person might be nice.”
“That’s a hell of a commute, Es.”
“Emmy.” She smiled at me but I already knew what she was going to say, on some profound level. “I was going to keep this for a wedding present, but seeing as you actually turned up; one of the golden rules is that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And I know a man committed to a film that had a female lead drop out last week, so...”
“You’re my new on-screen sister-in-law.” I’d had enough sentimentality to keep up to date with the latest news with Blaze’s upcoming film. The publicity around us had drawn so much attention to his new fledgling Hollywood career that the media was well and truly on the pulse before filming had even started. “Esme, that’s great. I’m so pleased for you.”
And yet, my face showed nothing. Despite my chest feeling pumped full to capacity with pride and happiness for my best girl friend, I couldn’t make that joy apparent with words or expressions.
“Emmy, are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know whether to be worried, or whether I was just having a weird moment of apathy. “It’s disorienting, really. Everything is going to well, like everyone wants, but it all just seems too shiny and rehearsed to be real.”
“It could be the new medication,” she pointed out carefully. “You’ve been backwards and forwards between time zones a lot recently. And you’re just coming around from what I hear was a somewhat psychotic breakdown. It’s just right that you’re fragile. But honestly...” Her head dipped towards me, closing the gap between us to speak in a whisper. “Don’t tell your fiancé down there I said this, but you’ve had a lot to surpass to survive in this relationship, and a run of shit luck spanning nearly a decade. It would be crazy if you weren’t feeling a little cynical or sceptical. Anyone else would feel the same way in your position—that or they would have given up already.”
I suppose if I’d felt spiteful, I’d have made a mental list of all the extreme circumstances I’d been put under to be with Blaze. It would have been really easy to point out to him all the ways he’d done me an injustice to make him see how lucky he was. I could have been one of those women who have to be the alpha in their marriage.
Or I could have dropped dead and rotted. I hadn’t ever viewed what we had as a score board, each of us trying to be the ‘better’ half of the couple. If I did, I’d have been very resentful.
“Yeah, it’s probably the drugs,” I grumbled moodily, unable to shed the idea that something was going to go horribly wrong. “Just keep me distracted.”
And she did. For the next three days, I was committed to constructing decorations, complaining about petty details and stamping my feet for discounts. For the next three nights, I slept like shit, plagued with mental images of satin bows and sugared almonds.
And for the next three nights, I dreamt that I was back in Natasha’s bedroom, post killing. Not riddled with panic. Not even moving. Just a corpse like her, lying lifeless by her side on the mattress.
Neither of us were spared a hellish afterlife. Neither of us was saved.
Both of our lives ended that night. To carry on walking through, as I had, was an abomination. Sixty-five days after the unexpected death of Natasha Valentine, the Reaper came back for me and he held no prisoners. My borrowed time as Emmeline Tudor came to an end. Life and death would never be the same again.
My wedding day started out with me reaching across the bed to find an empty space, and instantly feeling miserable. Blaze was a field away, at his mother’s house, with his grooms-men. I had rooms full of my wedding party around me, yet I felt so alone.
The house beneath me was already buzzing with life; Ivy and Tallulah panicking over misplaced items and Esme verbally battering off newsrooms and independent columnists over the phone. The ground floor kitchen wafted out the aroma of extremely strong coffee and food I felt too sick to even think about eating.
Then it hit me. Three things, actually. The horrific cramps, the migraine and the earthy breeze coming in through a door left open.
I was about to get my period and there’d be a bad storm. On that day. On the day of my outdoor wedding.
“Who pissed on your chips?” My ever-loud big sister shoved in past me, jolting my shoulder just slightly, but it felt like it’d bruise. Tallulah circled around to stand in front of me and pulled a face. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
“How much did you drink last night?”
“A glass of wine, maybe three.” Maybe a bottle. We’d gone out on the town the previous night to celebrate my last day of marital freedom—it would have been rude
not to drink with everyone else.
Her lip curled up at the corner, the curve and angle a perfect match to her raised eyebrow. “I’ve seen how much you can put away, so I’m calling bullshit. You look like you found the bottom of a bottle of brandy then let someone fuck you in the shitter with it.”
“Thank you, Tally. Always good for a compliment when I need it most.”
As bad as it tasted, I took the cup of coffee she passed me and sat down at the kitchen table with my face down against the wood. It was going to be a bad day, I could tell. Everything was going to go wrong, I just feel it in my bones.
“You having second thoughts?”
I lifted my head enough to narrow my eyes across the room at Tallulah. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you’re way out of his league?” Undoubtedly, that was the nicest thing she’d ever said to me.
“What do you want? What bad news have you been sent to bestow upon me?”
“Caroline’s here.” I groaned and folded my arms over my head. “You have to know that this dress fits, Emmy. No good putting it on an hour before the ceremony to find out it’s too big again.”
“You know about that?”
“Duh,” Tallulah tutted. “She’s the biggest gossip in London. She told us as soon as you were out of earshot.”
“Just fabulous.” Disgruntled, I shoved my chair back and stood. If trying my nightmare frock on again would banish Caroline back to her hole to hide with the other guests until the sunset ceremony, I’d gladly do it to get her out of eye-shot.
We’d spoken briefly over the phone, and Blaze had taken and barked out my new measurements for her to work with. A little disbelieving of my weight gain, she said she’d work day and night to give the gown some ‘flexibility’. Basically, I figured she was going to give it a little nip and tuck, and rely on the corseted back to widen out enough to cater to my needs.
Sure enough, I walked into the lounge and Caroline immediately hit me with a proud little speech about how she’d taken in the top half of the dress at the seams, extended the strip of O-ring rivets to down below the waist into the train and added in a ‘modesty panel’ so no skin would be on show. Blah blah blah.
“All right, then,” I sighed, dreading every second of the oncoming fitting. “Let the games begin.”
Caroline’s assistant carefully unpacked the bridesmaid and maid of honour dresses from their garment bags, then politely gestured towards the stairs so we could go somewhere a little more private. My dress, unlike my mental health, apparently remained secret.
Naturally, Caroline hopped ahead of me and snatched the biggest garment bag from the poor assistant’s hand. A talon-fingered hand rushed at the zip, and...
Nothing. She became very still and very vacant. Esme, my mother and a make-up artist had assembled and were watching in quiet confusion by the time Caroline spoke again.
“Brooke, dear. Fetch the other bag from the van, silly pet.”
Her assistant stammered slightly, presumably thrown off by the saccharine sweet endearment. “There is no other bag, Miss Caroline.”
“The white bag. Please, sweetheart.”
“That is the white bag.”
“No, this is eggshell.” Looked white to me... “I asked you to bring the white bag I hung on the rail, not the eggshell bag hung on the back door.”
With a burst of unexpected and pent up frustration, the pretty young girl huffed and rolled her eyes. “That is the white bag you hung on the rail. I picked up the ‘eggshell’ bag and you told me to put it back.”
It was quite clear from that point that mistakes had no place in Caroline’s life, particularly not those she’d made herself. Tomato-faced and flustered, she reeled out the names of other assistants to call, just to be told they’d been sent overseas or dismissed over other silly ‘discrepancies’. Nobody left to blame, she threw the garment bag down on the couch and dropped like a stone into the seat next to it.
“Then call my bloody husband, you incompetent twit!”
“Sure,” the assistant laughed. “I’m the twit.”
“And now you’re the incompetent twit on the unemployment line. You’re fired.”
“Thank you!” She threw her hands up and, honestly looking emotionally a tonne lighter, grabbed the car keys sat on my coffee table with a flourish. “Good luck getting home, you old witch, because the van is mine. And your husband—who totally isn’t banging his male apprentice—is across the field cupping the groom’s in-seam.”
I watched, stunned, as one flighty, seriously pissed off but wildly triumphant brunette slammed out of my house and went screeching out of the driveway in a knackered old Transit van. Once the dust settled over the gravel, I reassessed the last few minutes and turned calmly to Caroline.
“Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure what I just witnessed was you opening the ‘eggshell’ garment bag of the wrong wedding dress, not having anyone available in London to bring it here, and you firing the only person able to drive you back to fetch it yourself. By deductive reasoning, that would mean my dress is still in your shop and nobody can get it here on time.”
She lowered her head, looked up at me sheepishly and pursed her lips. “I told that stupid girl that this was important. She should have double-checked.”
“If it was that important, you would have double-checked before the van started moving!”
My eyes flashed a blinding white. Dizziness ensued. Bile in the back of my throat, I felt the familiar burning wetness in my nostrils before I heard the gasps that confirmed it; yes. Nosebleed.
“Christ, sit her down!” Someone—or sometwo—hoisted me up into the cradle of their joined arms and set me down cautiously on the couch. I didn’t care if blood was dripping down my face or how clammy I’d gotten. I wanted to know what was going to be done about my damn dress. Everyone I knew was in Wales. Everyone but—
“Mrs. Reynolds,” I gasped. “My old boss, Chris’ mother. He’s picking her up later on. He can bring it back with him!”
“That would leave no time for alterations...”
“Then you want to hope it fits.” Caroline was in touching distance, so I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Because your ex-assistant took the van with all your equipment, and for every step I have to take wearing a bridal gown that doesn’t fit like a glove, I’m gonna break one of your fucking bones. Starting with these. Do you understand the words I am speaking?”
“Clear as a bell, Miss Tudor. I’ll speak with the best man immediately.”
“You do that.”
At which point, my mother started wailing and screaming my father’s name at people like a profanity; as a threat and a punishment. About the same time, I announced that I needed a drink. The only way I was going to through the day was by being smashed.
“Oh no, you mustn’t!” A boney hand clapped over the rims of the glass I was working toward putting wine in. “Emmy love, you can’t walk down the aisle stinking of booze! What will Blaze think?”
“I’m sure Blaze has already thought of this idea himself and will be just about sober enough to stand up straight for twenty minutes. So if you don’t mind.”
Ivy didn’t release the glass, so I snatched up the bottle and swigged from its neck. Covered in blood, a shower really felt like more of a necessity than a common courtesy, so I was completely justified in raising the bottle high in a solemn toast, raised the middle finger of the other hand and told them all to go fuck themselves.
Or not. Five minutes later, I was sobbing on the bathroom floor over the whole dress debacle, convinced that everyone hated me.
“Emmy?” Esme tapped on the door twice before walking right in anyway. An idiot would have looked at her and thought her hair and make-up were done for the wedding several hours too early. Someone smarter would know she was in her version of slouch mode, and just naturally beautiful—the outright bitch. “Your old man and Chris have taken a bloody chopper of all things to London for your dress. They’re not going
to tell dear Lottie, just land close to her house and march in. Poor woman is probably still in her rollers and nightie, so there’ll probably be some delay.”
Lottie? She had to mean Mrs. Reynolds. I’d worked with the woman for years, yet I never knew her first name. That was nuts and a little inhospitable of me.
“You like Chris’ mum.”
Esme half-smiled and sat down on the heated tiles next to me. “I like mums in general, funnily enough. It’s interesting to meet the child then the parent just to see the little ways they’ve influenced each other.”
“You like my mum.”
She glanced shiftily sideways at me and shook her head. “I’m not after a new mother figure, Emmy. I’m fond of her because she’s so much like you. In these past months, she’s been the second best alternative and I admit I’ve become a little protective. You’re do very alike in ways you wouldn’t realise. For one, she blames herself so much for your anorexia. You’re the only other person I know who beats themselves up over something they can’t take blame for.”
“What does that mean? Like what?”
“Natasha.”
For a brief moment, my reaction was panic. I honestly believed that Esme somehow knew about my involvement in Natasha’s death. Exhausted tears burned the back of my eyes; too wet and weary to cry anymore. A confession danced on the end of my tongue.
“Why would you bring her up today, of all days?”
“I didn’t... No, Emmy.” Startled, Esme shuffled around in front of me and took my hands. “Nobody blames you. It was an accident waiting to happen. You’d never have lasted long without Henry finding out, even if you were comfortable with it.”
“What has my father been saying to you?”
“Nothing! What... I don’t understand why you’re so upset about this now. You’ve had a long time to get your head around the idea. You never could have known that Blaze was married.”