One day, when you’ve got a house full of screaming toddlers, you’ll look back on that bridal fair and long for those simpler times, Helen assured her.
Stop it, Kate responded. You’re making me want to get unengaged.
Don’t you dare, said Helen. I haven’t been to a decent wedding since 1998.
That was the year Helen, their mutual friend Anne and Kate’s sister got hitched. Kate had been bridesmaid three times.
That night, Kate had a dream about the last flat-share she lived in before she could afford to rent a place on her own. The dream did not bring back happy memories and when she woke up, she found herself thinking about the end of that particular period of her life and it filled her with fresh sadness.
It had all come to a head over the August bank-holiday weekend of 1997.
Kate was used to being woken in the middle of the night. The grotty Lavender Hill flat she shared with two Italian language students and an Australian beautician had a bus-stop situated right outside it. When the 345 to South Kensington via Clapham Junction stopped there, as it did several times an hour, the rumble of the ancient Routemaster’s diesel engine shook the entire building like a six on the Richter scale. When Kate took the single room in the flat, which was all she could afford on a trainee lawyer’s wages, she told herself she could live with it. And most of the time she could. But after a year, she was aware that she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since she moved in. It wasn’t just the rumble of the buses; drunken revellers tumbling off at the stop showed no consideration as they shouted their goodnights.
So when she heard someone scream at five o’clock in the morning that Sunday of the August bank-holiday weekend, Kate was not unduly disturbed. She rolled over to face her sleeping partner for the night. He was snoring lightly. His name was Jake, or Jack; she wasn’t entirely sure. She did know that she’d met him at the Sofa Bar, a funky wine bar further up Lavender Hill towards the Junction, furnished with old sofas that left you itching. Jack or Jake had been drinking there with someone she vaguely knew from law school. The connection made it seem safe to bring him home.
Why had she done that? Was he so good-looking? She couldn’t really tell in the soft orange glow of the streetlight through the cheap window blinds. Had he kept her in stitches all night? She couldn’t remember him having been particularly funny. Was it just that he had shown some sign of wanting her? That, Kate was beginning to understand, was pretty much the only connection between the men she had brought back to her flat in the previous six months. There had been five of them. Five lovers – if you could call them that – in the six months since she broke up with Matt, the boyfriend she’d had since her first term at university. Now Matt, a junior doctor, was engaged to an intensive-care nurse and had apparently just bought a family house in Edinburgh. Kate was . . . Well, Kate was twenty-six years old, working all hours, living in a shared flat, where there was never enough hot water for four girls to take four showers in the morning, and bringing home God only knows who in the hope they might turn out to be the One.
‘Are you the One?’ Kate asked the man sleeping alongside her. Fragments of the previous evening came back to her now. His name was Jack, definitely. He worked for Arthur Andersen. He came from somewhere up north. He liked rugby. He was wearing an England shirt. He had been drinking, unusually, sambuca. He told Kate that the three coffee beans in the bottom were supposed to bring you luck: health, happiness and prosperity. Or had he? Kate thought that perhaps one of her Italian flatmates had told her that instead.
Kate lay back down on her pillow. She knew she should get up and have a drink of water. Her hangover was already coming together nicely. But she didn’t want to clamber over Jack. Having agreed to three sambucas of her own after four large glasses of dog-rough red wine, she wasn’t certain she could make it without throwing up. If Jack was the One, it would hardly be the best way to cement their relationship. And so Kate tried to avert the worst of the hangover by lying very still and listening to the sounds on the street outside.
Down by the bus-stop, someone actually wailed.
‘Diana!’
Kate closed her eyes tightly. If someone was being murdered outside her flat, she didn’t want to know.
At eight o’clock, thirst forced Kate out of bed at last. Giuliana was already in the kitchen, making a cup of proper coffee with the pot that her mother had sent over from Milan. As Giuliana turned from the hob, Kate saw at once that her flatmate was red-eyed from crying.
‘She dead,’ said Giuliana. ‘She dead. She ’ad a car crash.’
The radio, tuned to Radio One as usual, played incongruous classical music. And then a news bulletin. Kate sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs and accepted an espresso as she took in the full story. Giuliana had never offered to make her coffee before.
‘She so young,’ said Guiliana. ‘Her little children.’
Kate expressed her disbelief and was surprised to find tears springing to her own eyes. It seemed impossible that the woman who had blossomed from a shy nursery worker and royal fiancée into the most famous woman in the world could actually have died. Then, as the flatmates were sharing their sympathy for the children left behind, Jack wandered in. He had his shoes in his hand as though he had been hoping to sneak out without waking anybody. He locked eyes with Giuliana over the coffeepot. There was a moment of confused silence.
‘Jack?’ she asked.
‘Christ,’ said Jack. ‘I thought this flat looked familiar.’
That’s how Kate discovered she had inadvertently brought home her flatmate’s ex-fiancé. And that’s why, whenever anyone asked her if she remembered where she was when she heard Princess Diana died, Kate would say, ‘I’d rather not.’
It was an awful day, one of the worst, but no matter how terrible it was, that day did mark the end of a particularly bleak period in Kate’s life.
Giuliana would not forgive Kate her mistake. As such, it was impossible to stay in the flat, and a couple of weeks later, Kate moved out of the shared flat and into a tiny bedsit on her own. She had no choice. She couldn’t face another flat-share with strangers. Her best friends, Helen and Anne, were already both living with their future husbands. It was the first time Kate had lived alone, and she liked it. At the same time, Kate cut down on her drinking and resolved to stay away from one-night stands. Freed from the tyranny of regular hangovers, she started taking her job more seriously, setting herself on the path to early partnership. Pretty soon she was earning enough to put down a deposit on a little flat in Stockwell.
In a way, Princess Diana’s death had focused Kate’s mind as much as Giuliana’s fury. We don’t know how much time we have, was the message she took from Diana. Just as important as taking her job more seriously and cutting back on the booze, Kate would not waste another moment mourning Matt.
Of course, Kate had lapses. Her love life was not entirely successful from 1997 on. She had certainly wasted a long time on Dan, but at last, thirteen years after that awful weekend, her life could safely be said to have come together well. She had Ian now. If only her mother could get through the cancer, life would be pretty much perfect. Waking up the day after the bridal fair, Kate prayed that everything would be all right.
The last time she had prayed so hard was January 1997, when Matt left her. It hadn’t worked then. Making coffee later that morning, Kate wondered what had happened to the man she used to love.
Chapter Twenty
3 December 2010
‘Darling, please. Just for me. You said I could have whatever I wanted.’
Diana stuck out her bottom lip. Ben knew she was doing it deliberately, playing the little girl whose father could refuse her nothing. Ben had seen Diana’s father crumble in the face of that look a thousand times. Well, Dave wasn’t being asked to dress up like bloody Prince William for an ‘engagement shoot’. Ben wasn’t going to crumble for that.
‘What do we need an engagement picture for, anyway?’ Ben had asked. ‘I’ve neve
r heard of that happening.’
‘All the best photographers offer an engagement shoot these days,’ Diana was only too happy to explain. ‘It’s not just a freebie. It’s an ideal way to get to know the bride and groom ahead of the day. Get to see what angles they look best from. Hear more about their vision for the day itself.’
‘Vision?’ Ben echoed.
‘Yes, vision. And I envision our wedding as the best day of our lives. I want the photographs to match and that, Ben, means taking it seriously from the start. You can’t expect the photographer just to turn up on the morning of the wedding and get it right.’
‘But dressing up as Kate Middleton and Prince William? That’s not what I call taking it seriously. That sounds like a joke.’
‘Ben,’ Diana snapped, ‘why do you have to question everything I ask of you? I want to recreate that engagement shoot because I think we will look great in it. Everyone says I’ve got something of Kate Middleton about me and you are much better-looking than Prince William. Besides, it will be fun.’ Diana linked her arm through Ben’s arm and laid her head on his shoulder. ‘And it’s appropriate. We got engaged on the very same day as them, didn’t we? And we’re getting married the day after the royal wedding. They’ve been going out for about the same length of time. That makes their story really relevant to ours. I think it would be a nice touch to have a picture like their engagement picture.’
‘Are you going to make me pose like Prince William when we get married too?’
‘Of course not. Our wedding day will be entirely unique. This is just for a laugh. We’ll do the Kate and Prince William pics, but we’re going to take lots of engagement pictures in our own clothes as well.’
‘Lots? How long is this going to take?’
‘I already told you you’re going to need a whole day off,’ said Diana.
‘I don’t have a day to take before the end of the year. Not since I took three days off for your birthday.’ And especially not since Diana had announced that she wanted to leave her ‘unsatisfying and overly demanding’ part-time job at the end of January. Though she had gone quiet about it for a while, Ben still wasn’t sure he had persuaded her against that particular idea and the thought that he hadn’t and that from 1 February he would be entirely responsible for all their bills was giving him sleepless nights.
‘I thought you said that you were important in your office. Surely someone will cover for you. They know how important this wedding is to you.’
Ben said that he would do his best, though he doubted that anyone in the office would consider an engagement shoot to be important. Not when there were deadlines to be met. In the end, he had to call in sick.
The day of the engagement shoot was every bit as busy as a shoot for a high-end advertising campaign. Not only would the wedding photographer and his assistant be in attendance, Diana had also insisted that her top choices for wedding hairdresser and make-up artist be there. It would be a good opportunity for them to try out her wedding look and for Diana to be certain that she wouldn’t have to look elsewhere. Never mind that having the hairdresser take a whole day out of her usual salon schedule would cost the best part of £300.
‘You could just go into the salon in the morning,’ Diana’s father suggested when she told him how much he would need to transfer to her bank account.
‘Do you want a nice photograph for your mantelpiece or not?’ was Diana’s response.
Neither was it just a matter of ensuring that the bride-to-be looked as good as possible. Ben was sent off for a haircut, while Susie, who had also taken a day off at her daughter’s insistence, helped to ‘dress the set’. The set that day was Susie’s living room. Though she lived in a house that was built in 1989 from a design based on four shoeboxes, Susie’s decorating taste tended towards the baroque. With its heavy velvet curtains and dark wood bookshelves (which housed a collection of leather-bound DVDs), her living room could easily pass for a stateroom in a palace. To add to the effect of opulence, Diana had ordered enough cut flowers to make a bee reach for the antihistamines. There were roses in every colour imaginable. Diana and Susie spent an hour deciding which shade of flower would match the fake blue Issa dress, only to come to the conclusion that none of them quite worked and, when he came back from the barber, Ben would have to go in search of some plain white roses that were a whiter white than the white roses Diana had already rejected.
‘Surely a rose by any other name,’ Ben mused when Diana told him what she wanted.
‘What are you on about, Ben? Get to the florist’s before they all go. People are waiting.’
Finally, two hours after it was scheduled, the shoot was able to start. Pete, the photographer, made a good job of hiding his impatience as his subjects got into position. The ‘royal’ poses were first. Diana had studied the newspaper cuttings carefully and was able to get into character right away. Ben found it altogether more difficult. He really had very little in common with the heir to the throne other than that they were both male and liked rugby. He was happy, sort of, to stand alongside Diana with his best ‘regal’ look on his face, but he drew the line at having to look more William-like, which would, as far as he could see, involve getting a bigger set of teeth.
‘Come on,’ said Diana. ‘It won’t work if you don’t put your all into it.’
‘I am not going to pull a Prince William face,’ Ben insisted. ‘I can’t.’
‘You can,’ said Susie. ‘Look. It’s easy. Look at this picture again.’
Susie did her own heir-apparent impression. It was frightening realistic.
‘Perhaps he should just smile naturally,’ said Pete. ‘Everyone will get the idea. In my experience, pastiches work much better if there’s a little hint of difference, a touch of the real couple coming through.’
Diana disagreed. ‘But he’s not trying at all. You can’t stand like that, Wills.’
‘Wills? My name is Ben, for God’s sake. Now you can’t even call me by my own name.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Diana, blowing little kisses in his direction. ‘You look so princely I just forgot. One more time. Just one more time, please. I’ll be nice to you all day.’
‘All right,’ said Ben. ‘Just for you.’
Diana draped her arm through Ben’s so that her engagement ring was perfectly on display. At least, a ring was on perfect display.
‘Where’s your engagement ring?’ Ben asked, as he clocked a very different-looking bauble on his fiancée’s ring finger. The extravagant diamond ring that had cost him so dearly had been replaced by a dazzling blue sapphire in a collar of diamonds. It was a replica of Princess Diana’s engagement ring with a central stone so big it could only be a fake. He hoped his Diana had put her real diamonds somewhere safe. Ben was still paying for them, after all.
The new ring wasn’t a fake.
‘They did a part exchange,’ Diana explained. ‘But what you’d already paid didn’t quite cover it. It was three hundred pounds more. You can pay me back later.’
‘You said you didn’t mind what engagement ring I chose. I chose that other ring for you.’
‘I know, but . . . this is what I’ve really always wanted. I didn’t know it until I saw Kate Middleton wearing one, but I really love it. It’s so unusual.’
Unusual? There were probably thousands of rings exactly like it circulating the country right now.
‘But I thought you loved that other ring?’
‘Isn’t it a girl’s prerogative to change her mind?’ asked Diana.
‘Am I allowed to change mine?’ Ben muttered under his breath.
Pete had seen many things, but he had never seen anyone look quite as uncomfortable as the groom he was photographing that morning. The results were not good. The bride – a real Bridezilla – really knew how to pose, but in just about every picture her fiancé looked as though he would rather be eating his own feet. After half an hour, during which Ben did not loosen up, even with the application of a glass of cava from the ce
lebratory bottle that Pete always brought along to engagement shoots, it was time to give up on Diana’s royal dream.
‘I think we should try some shots of you guys in your own clothes now,’ Pete suggested.
Diana scowled at Ben. ‘You didn’t make any effort at all.’
However, the other photographs were not much better. For the rest of the afternoon Diana was in a sulk and barely addressed a word in Ben’s direction. Sure, she turned on a megawatt smile whenever the camera was pointed in her direction, but she had no smile for her fiancé’s benefit. Instead, Pete thought with a slight chill, she seemed to be directing all her best expressions at him. Pete hated it when a bride flirted with either him or his assistant. It really wasn’t right. But then misplaced flirtation was far from being the only thing that wasn’t right with this particular pair.
The phrase ‘The camera never lies’ was rarely far from Pete’s mind when he first met a new couple. A micro-expression caught on film – or digitally, as it was these days – could reveal a whole different story behind a so-called happy event. While Diana had her make-up touched up for a fourth time, the photographer and his assistant went through the frames they’d already captured and shared a knowing glance when they came to a picture in which Diana’s face was frozen in an unfortunate tooth-baring expression that brought to mind the American serial killer Aileen Wuornos en route to her trial.
‘Delete?’ suggested the assistant.
‘No, I think I might keep this,’ said Pete, transferring the picture into a file that he would not show his clients but which might raise a smile from several of his photographer friends. ‘It’s Kate Middleton meets 28 Days Later.’
Kate's Wedding Page 9