‘Yes,’ said Elaine. ‘In any case, today they’re doing two main courses for ten pounds. We could have Sunday lunch for twenty pounds. I don’t think I could cook a roast for that if I bought all the ingredients from Marks & Spencer.’
‘I’m hungry already,’ John agreed.
They had reached the gravel driveway of the Grange Hill Hotel. There was no romance to it. John feared for the bodywork of his new Passat and refused to drive at anywhere near the recommended ten miles per hour. A queue of traffic built up behind them like a funeral cortege as John stuck to two miles an hour so that any gravel thrown up by the wheels would not damage the shiny red paint of his pride and joy.
Kate, sitting in the back with her sister (just like old times), blushed at the thought of the traffic behind them, though unlike drivers in London, none of them resorted to blowing their horns. Still, the thought that other people might be wondering what on earth her father was thinking took Kate back to a great many incidents in her childhood, when her father’s idiosyncrasies had made both her and Tess squirm.
At last they reached the car park, which was full to overflowing, and got their first view of the Grange Hill Hotel. There was the beautiful ivy-covered archway, where so many newlyweds had posed for wedding pictures . . . Possibly because there was nowhere else to pose for a decent picture. The archway, which had looked Victorian or older in the photograph on the website, was attached to a block straight out of the 1960s. Less old hunting lodge than Travelodge.
‘Not exactly very picturesque, is it?’ Kate commented.
‘The gardens are supposed to be nice,’ said Elaine.
It was hard to tell. Every spare patch of grass had been commandeered. The reason why the car park was so full was that most of the cars parked out there were in fact for hire. There were Rollers and Bentleys and old-fashioned Mercedes, all polished to glistening and bedecked with ribbons.
‘I can do any colour of ribbon you like,’ a chauffeur told a concerned-looking bride.
There was even a London taxi, tricked out with a white rosette on the bonnet.
‘You could have one of those,’ said John. He picked up a leaflet. ‘Says here it’s four hundred quid for the day.’
‘Four hundred quid?’ said Kate. ‘Dad, I could hire a real London taxi for less than that. Just about. Besides, getting in a cab isn’t exactly a treat for Ian and me.’
‘How about a horse?’ asked Tess.
A dopey-looking grey stood at the end of a row of Rollers, its head hanging heavy. It looked as though it couldn’t pull a muscle, let alone a carriage with a bride and a groom and a dress that was three stone in weight.
‘Remember Kerry’s wedding,’ was all Kate needed to say.
The girls’ cousin Kerry had hired a horse to take her to her wedding. While she was in the church saying her vows, the horse had expired right outside the door. The wedding guests, including the bride and groom, had to be held inside the nave until the knacker’s van came to take poor old Dobbin away.
‘Besides, you’re not getting me in a horse and carriage in the middle of London. I’m not Kate Middleton.’
Kate Middleton fever had already infected the wedding industry. Right inside the doorway was a sign proclaiming, ‘Kate Middelton dress’s upstairs.’ Kate rolled her eyes at the multiple errors, but Tess insisted that they see the frocks anyway. Alas, the signwriting skills of the stallholder were reflected in the quality of the product. The opulent blue silk of Kate Middleton’s engagement dress had been translated into a searing electric-blue polyester. Still, the dresses seemed to be flying off the hangers. Kate and Tess watched three brides fighting over the last size twelve.
‘Do you think they’re planning their own engagement pictures?’ Tess asked.
‘Do ordinary people have engagement pictures?’ Kate mused.
She was about to find out.
Chapter Seventeen
Diana Ashcroft coolly reached over the heads of three much fatter brides to pick up a Middleton dress in a perfect ten. She held it against her body and twirled in front of the mirror like a little girl playing dressing-up.
‘Oooh,’ said Susie, ‘that’s lovely.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Diana. ‘I’m going to get one for our engagement photos.’
‘Now that’s a good idea.’
‘I’ll try it on.’
Moments later, Diana emerged from the makeshift changing cubicle in that dress, wearing it with such aplomb (and such a frighteningly smug expression on her face) that the three other brides all gave up the fight for the size twelve and drifted off in the direction of the nearest free cupcake.
‘I don’t think I’ve seen that dress look so good on anyone today,’ the stallholder said obligingly.
‘Ben is going to love it,’ Diana said, as she smoothed the fabric over her hips. ‘I’ll take it. How much?’
‘It’s two hundred pounds,’ said the stallholder.
‘Two hundred?’ Susie exclaimed.
‘It’s made in the same factory where Issa have all their dresses made,’ the stallholder explained. ‘I’ve got a contact there. So you could say it’s a genuine Issa dress without the label.’
Though in fact there was a label sewn into the back of the dress Diana tried on. It said, ‘Isa.’
‘I’ve got to have it,’ said Diana, handing over the card from the joint account. ‘Ben is going to be so amazed that I managed to get hold of one. I only hope he’s got a decent enough suit to play his part. I think the one grey suit he’s got is a little bit shabby.’
‘He’s got more hair than Prince William, though,’ Susie pointed out.
‘Oh, yeah, that reminds me I need to choose a hairdresser. I mean, these pictures are going to be around for ever.’
‘We’d better find you a photographer first.’
Diana had a list of possible candidates gleaned from other brides, but she happily led the way into the photography section of the wedding fair, where fifty jobbing snappers vied for her attention. She browsed their portfolio albums with the cold eye of a magazine editor looking for the photographer who would shoot that year’s Christmas cover. She didn’t mind who she offended with her snap appraisals of the photographers’ strengths and weaknesses. In fact, she told her mother that she thought they would be grateful for her feedback because it would give them an idea of what they needed to change if they wanted to get more business.
‘Too old-fashioned,’ Diana pronounced one photographer’s samples. ‘Though perhaps it isn’t the photography that’s old-fashioned but the bride. She’s got that frizzy-haired kind of look that’s very 1980s.’
Diana was unaware that she was commenting on a photo album the photographer had produced for his sister and brother-in-law. The photographer just stood there and took the criticism on the chin. He needed all the work he could get. He even agreed that perhaps the bride wasn’t the most photogenic he had ever had the opportunity to work with. It would be so much easier to get a good angle with someone as classically beautiful as Diana.
‘You know what,’ he told her, ‘you might want to consider going for a more old-fashioned approach yourself. With the classic lines of your face, you should go for something timeless.’
‘Hmm.’ Diana put a finger to her cheek while the photographer pretended to frame her profile. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ She let the photographer explain his fees.
In the end, however, Diana chose a photographer who claimed that he had worked with Victoria Beckham.
‘Before she was in the Spice Girls,’ he admitted when Diana pushed, ‘but they were great photos. One of them was used in her autobiography. The early years.’
‘Have you photographed any other celebrities?’ Diana asked.
‘Fern Britton,’ the photographer told her.
‘I bet it was hard to get a good angle on that,’ Diana laughed.
‘I’ll have a much easier job with you.’
Diana called her father and had him give the photogr
apher his credit-card number. Pete, the photographer, tapped Diana’s big day into his diary and they set up the engagement shoot. Diana put a big tick next to ‘photographer’ on her to-do list.
Chapter Eighteen
This is such a waste of time, was the thought that ran through Kate’s head as she trailed her sister and mother around the first room. Her father, claiming fatigue after the previous evening spent babysitting Lily, had excused himself to the hotel bar for a cappuccino. He was now sitting on a sofa in the hotel lobby, listening to one of eight wedding singers who would be performing that day, belting out Whitney’s ‘I Will Always Love You’. How Kate wished she could join him, but that wasn’t possible. They were here to find inspiration for her wedding, after all. She had given up protesting that all this guff was just irrelevant for her simple register-office do.
Prior to visiting this, her first ever wedding fair, Kate had been under the impression that getting married really shouldn’t be too difficult. She had never understood those brides who complained of ‘wedding stress’. Why should joining your life with that of the man you loved be stressful? she’d asked herself.
Perhaps it was the chair accessories that did it . . .
Kate had visited the Grand Bazaar in Marrakech, but nothing had prepared her for the atmosphere in that first room, which was dedicated to everything you needed to host a wedding breakfast. In the stark conference room with its beige wallpaper and equally beige prints, a hundred vendors faced maybe thirty brides. Kate felt like she had a mark on her forehead.
‘Have you thought about your cake?’ someone asked her.
‘Have you hired a cake stand?’ asked somebody else.
‘Have you considered how you’re going to be dressing your chairs?’
‘Dressing my chairs?’
While her sister and mother aimed doggedly for a tower of cupcakes, looking neither to the left nor right as they moved, Kate had made a rookie mistake. Fascinated by the idea that chairs needed dressing, she had accidentally engaged with one of the vendors. Now she would have to listen to the spiel.
‘People commonly overlook one of the most important details of any wedding day,’ the vendor explained. ‘You’ve paid thousands for your dress, your bridesmaids’ dresses, the flowers, the cake, the three-course meal at the reception . . . You get to the hotel and you realise . . .’ The vendor clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘Oh my God! I’ve forgotten the chairs!’
‘Don’t most venues provide chairs?’ asked Kate naively.
‘Oh, yes, they provide chairs. Of course. But have you seen the kind of chairs they provide? Tatty, dirty, possibly not even matching. And even if you’re lucky and the chairs are not that bad, do you really want to risk getting red-velvet upholstery when you’ve gone to such an effort with your simple salmon-pink scheme? It’s a nightmare.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
The vendor carried on. ‘I can make sure that chairs are no longer a worry.’ She directed Kate’s eye to the three chairs arrayed behind her. They were all draped in plain white cotton covers. The vendor flourished a handful of ribbons.
‘Have you chosen your colour scheme? Name your colour.’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Go on. Any colour.’
‘Purple,’ said Kate.
The vendor pulled out an imperial-purple band. She looped the ribbon round one of the white-covered chairs and tied it in a wonky bow. ‘Ta da! Now isn’t that better than red velvet?’
Kate nodded.
‘It’s the finishing touch that will make all the difference. And at just fifteen pounds for a chair, you can hardly afford not to do it.’
Fifteen pounds didn’t seem like an awful lot of money for a chair, Kate agreed.
‘Not for the whole chair,’ the vendor explained. ‘Fifteen pounds for the hire of the chair cover and the ribbon. And an extra five pounds per chair if you don’t want to have to tie the ribbons yourself.’
‘So twenty pounds per chair is what you’re really saying?’
‘It depends on the ribbon. If you want a difficult colour or you also want some tulle . . .’
Kate shook her head. ‘I don’t want to waste your time,’ she said.
‘You don’t want to think about chair-dressing?’
‘I really haven’t decided if we’re having chairs at all. Maybe we’ll do a Moroccan theme,’ she ad-libbed.
‘We can also provide floor cushions.’ The vendor was undeterred.
Kate backed away trying to calculate that woman’s fee per hour. As a lawyer, Kate often found herself having to justify her hourly fee, but twenty quid to fling a cover over a chair and tie a piece of silk round it? That was just spectacular. It wasn’t even as though the woman had much talent when it came to making bows.
‘I just had the most ridiculous conversation about chair accessories,’ she whispered to Tess, who had joined a circle of brides round a cupcake stand. ‘Twenty quid a chair. I tell you, I’m giving up law.’
Tess nodded.
The cupcake vendor was explaining her own tariff of extraordinary prices. ‘The price is per cupcake and varies according to how many you have. They start at seven pounds fifty per cake. Hire of the cake stand is extra.’
‘This is insanity,’ Kate said without moving her mouth. ‘How much does it cost to make a cupcake?’
The samples were passed around. Tess politely nibbled on a cake iced with a picture of a shoe.
‘And a shoe? For crying out loud,’ Kate hissed. ‘What’s this obsession with grown women and shoes?’
The vendor must have heard.
‘You can have any design you like. I’ve done shoes and handbags and sweet little dresses on padded hangers.’
‘For weddings?’
‘Yes, for weddings. Of course.’
‘I don’t think shoes and handbags are quite my fiancé’s style.’
‘Oh, you’re the bride! I thought perhaps you had a daughter getting married,’ said Mrs Cupcake.
Kate took the woman’s leaflet, but the moment the conversation was over, she dropped the leaflet on the floor. And then promptly felt guilty and picked it up again. To alleviate her guilt, she made a show of reading the leaflet’s opening paragraph. Apparently, Mrs Cupcake had given up a ‘high-powered job in the City’ to indulge her ‘passion for baking’. Kate wondered which bank had let such an obvious asset go. Seven pounds fifty for a flipping cake you could pick up for twenty pence at a Brownies’ bring-and-buy sale. If that woman was really as busy as she claimed, she had found a way to turn flour into gold.
Kate was ready to leave the bridal fair long before her mother and her sister, but they insisted on the scheduled lunch in the hotel’s restaurant. Kate tried to make her excuses over the roast lamb.
‘Want to get back to London before the traffic gets bad,’ she said.
She just wanted to get the hell out of there. If she heard one more version of ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, she thought she might scream. Not even the restaurant was safe. A Prince Charles impressionist was making the rounds of the tables, explaining how he could bring a bit of class to any ordinary wedding reception by announcing the speeches in the style of the future king.
‘Keep that man away from me,’ Kate hissed to her sister.
As if lunch wasn’t stressful enough, the strain of not mentioning the cancer was telling on everyone. Kate knew that her father wasn’t just tired from having looked after Lily. He was exhausted from all the bad news. Despite having plastered on the make-up, Elaine was looking grey with worry. Tess’s forced jollity was bordering on insanity. And somehow, pretending to be excited about bloody cupcakes just made the whole thing worse.
Diana and her mother were having an altogether better time. The Prince Charles impersonator who had given Kate the creeps was exactly what Diana was looking for.
‘We’ve got to have the Prince Charles impersonator, Mum, to tie in with the royal-wedding theme.’
Susie ag
reed that it was an excellent idea. It would fit in with the theme. Plus, Prince Charles’s £500 fee was one less pair of Louboutins for her ex-husband Dave’s new wife.
‘Quick lunch?’ Diana suggested. ‘Then I want to talk to someone about chair-dressing.’
Chapter Nineteen
While Kate was enduring the strained happiness of lunch in Washam, lucky Ian had spent the afternoon watching West Ham play Wigan. Ian was nuts about West Ham. He had been a season-ticket holder ever since he could afford it and attended home matches without fail. He had quite a group of mates among the regulars in his stand. They met for lunch before a match and went for a few beers afterwards. Kate could smell the beer on Ian’s breath as he hugged her when she got in.
‘How was the bridal fair?’ he asked.
‘A bit like my worst nightmare. I had no idea what a performance planning a wedding could be.’
‘Do you think so? It’s not going to take over my life,’ said Ian.
Kate sighed. ‘I feel like it’s already taking over mine. I don’t know why I let Tess persuade me to go. Can you believe there was some woman charging seven pounds fifty for a cupcake?’
‘Is that good?’ Ian asked.
‘Of course it’s not good,’ said Kate.
‘I could eat a cupcake now,’ said Ian. ‘Is there anything in the fridge?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Kate. ‘It doesn’t have a see-through door. Why don’t you have a look?’
‘Can’t be bothered,’ he said.
Kate frowned. She knew he would have eaten something had she put it right in front of him. He was just too lazy to fix something for himself.
‘Shall we watch some telly?’ Ian asked. ‘I’ll even let you watch a fascinating documentary about Prince Charles’s “other mistress” if you’re good.’
‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ said Kate.
‘Football highlights it is.’
Kate sat beside Ian on the sofa, but her mind wasn’t on the football. Instead, she carried on a text conversation with Helen, bringing her up to speed with Elaine’s treatment plan and telling her all about the horrors of the bridal fair. Helen responded in kind with the horrors of a Saturday spent ferrying small children to swimming class and ballet practice. Her youngest child had vomited in the pool. These texts were what Helen called her ‘mummy moans’.
Kate's Wedding Page 8