I cannot tell you how sorry I am to do this to you right now, the night before our wedding. Believe me, my heart is breaking as I write. I comfort myself with the knowledge that your family is already with you and they will hopefully help you get through the worst of it. They’ll probably tell you that I’m an idiot. Perhaps they’re right, but perhaps I’m right and calling off the wedding now will save us both more heartbreak in the long run. Neither of us wants a divorce.
Maybe if I’m making a mistake, I’ll realise the day after we should have got married. I hope that you’ll give me a chance to explain myself in person one day. I am so sorry, my darling, that I won’t be there tomorrow, but right now, I know it’s for the best that we’re apart.
I love you.
Chapter Fifty
30 April 2011
The day after the royal wedding dawned like a midsummer day. By the time Diana Ashcroft awoke, the sun was already streaming in through the curtains of her childhood bedroom to stripe the duvet cover she had chosen for her eighteenth birthday (along with a car). Anyway, it seemed right that Diana should sleep beneath the brightly striped covers. They looked deeply unsophisticated to her now, but they were symbolic of Diana’s childhood. That night, her last night as an unmarried woman, had officially signalled the end of it, and just before she turned thirty. Praise the Lord.
Diana jumped up from bed and slipped into her pristine white dressing gown with the pink-princess coronet on the back. When she got to the top of the stairs, she saw her mother at the bottom by the front door, gathering up a pile of junk mail.
‘They don’t take any notice whatsoever of my “No junk mail” sign,’ Susie complained as she stuffed the pile of pizza menus and unsolicited estate-agent offers straight into a recycling bag. ‘Look at this – all of it’s rubbish.’
‘I don’t care about junk mail,’ said Diana. ‘It’s my wedding day! What time is Gran getting here?’
‘She said she’d be here by nine.’
‘Good. Nicole’s already texted to say she’s on her way.’
‘Are you sure she’s going to be able to manage on her own at Bride on Time?’
‘Melanie said that one of her assistants will lay the dress out in the back of Nicole’s car. You know, I still can’t believe that Melanie turned down the invitation to my reception.’
‘She must get invited to a lot of weddings,’ said Susie. ‘She probably gets a bit bored of them.’
‘I know, but my wedding is going to be seriously amazing. There are plenty of people who would kill to be invited. If she wants to be a miserable bag about it . . . I just hope you can remember how to loop up the skirt.’
‘Have you spoken to Ben this morning?’ Susie asked.
‘No,’ said Diana. ‘I called him to say goodnight when I went to bed and then I told him that I didn’t want to speak to him again until we’re standing at the altar. It’s bad luck otherwise.’
Susie nodded.
‘I’ve made you your favourite breakfast,’ she told her daughter. ‘Do you want to have it now, just you and your old mum, before all the bridesmaids arrive?’
‘Oh, Mum,’ said Diana, ‘you’re not that old, and you’d look amazing if you’d just have some Botox between your brows. I’m going to have it regularly from now on.’
Diana examined her face in the hall mirror. ‘I think I was right to get it done for the wedding, don’t you?’ She attempted to frown but only succeeded in producing ‘bunny lines’ radiating out from the sides of her nose instead. ‘I mean, it’s not as though I need to frown in my wedding photographs.’
Susie led the way into the kitchen where Diana’s favourite breakfast was all ready to go. She’d cooked Belgian waffles and smothered them with fresh strawberries and thick whipped cream. There was orange juice and a bottle of champagne on the table.
‘Your father sent the champagne over,’ Susie explained.
‘It’s not vintage,’ Diana complained. ‘Still, we’re having vintage at the reception, I suppose. What time is he coming over? I’m glad he’s not bringing that slag with him. I mean, I know they’re married now and everything, but I told him that today is my day and she still isn’t related to me.’
‘Quite right,’ said Susie.
Nicole’s red Mini, a present from her father on her thirtieth birthday, pulled onto the driveway. Susie dashed out to help her bring the dress inside. Even though Nicole had taken a king-size duvet cover to the bridal salon, the dress could barely be contained. Susie tucked the escaping frills back in before she and Nicole carried it to the front door between them as reverently as if it were the ancient relic of a saint.
‘Careful!’ Diana yelled as Nicole tripped over the front step and dropped her end of the precious cargo. ‘For heaven’s sake, is it all right?’
‘I think I might have broken my toe,’ said Nicole.
‘Put some ice on it,’ said Diana as she checked the dress for any damage.
The hairdresser arrived at the same time and unloaded enough hair products to dress the entire cast of Glee. The make-up artist was ten minutes late, having got stuck in traffic. Fortunately, Diana had built quite a margin of error into the proceedings.
‘Have you spoken to the groom this morning?’ the make-up artist asked as she mixed up a light tangerine foundation that would match Diana’s face to the rest of her body.
‘No. I told him last night I wouldn’t speak to him again until we got to the cathedral. Everybody knows it’s bad luck to talk to the groom before the ceremony.’
‘Oh, I thought it was just bad luck for him to see you in the dress. I didn’t know it extended to talking before the ceremony too. I couldn’t stop ringing my husband on the day of our wedding. I drove him mad. I think I just couldn’t believe that he was actually going to turn up.’
‘I’m not worried about that,’ said Diana. ‘Ben knows what’s good for him. If he doesn’t turn up, I’ll have his balls on a barbecue.’
‘Ben will be there,’ Nicole concurred. ‘He totally loves her. You’ve never seen a man so in love.’
Diana smiled at her reflection in the mirror as if to say, ‘And why wouldn’t he be?’
‘Nicole, will you tell Mum to make me a cup of tea?’
Nicole scuttled away.
‘My mum is so excited,’ Diana told the make-up artist. ‘She’s been driving me crazy all morning. All this is for her, really. All this fuss. I would have had something simple, but through me I wanted Mum to be able to have the wedding she never had.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ The make-up artist brushed blue powder onto Diana’s eyelids.
‘Isn’t it?’
The doorbell rang again.
‘Photographer’s arrived.’
Chapter Fifty-One
Kate’s father went to wake her with a cup of tea, made exactly how she’d always liked it: weak as water with a splash of milk. Alongside the tea was a boiled egg with five Marmite soldiers and a handful of ‘Congratulations’ cards that had arrived in the post that morning. John knocked quietly on the spare bedroom door.
No answer.
He knocked again.
Still nothing.
Elaine was eager to see her daughter at the start of this momentous day.
‘We’ll have to wake her up. The hairdresser’s going to be here in forty-five minutes.’
This time, Elaine knocked and pushed the door open simultaneously. What she saw surprised her. The bed was made. Kate was nowhere to be seen.
‘Is she already up?’ John asked.
‘I haven’t seen her.’
There was nowhere for Kate to hide in the bijou retirement house they’d downsized to.
‘She can’t be in the house,’ said John. ‘She must have gone out.’
‘But where’s she gone? She’s getting married at lunchtime.’
‘Maybe she went for a walk.’
‘Wake up, John. She’s done a runner,’ said Elaine. ‘That’s what’s happened. She must ha
ve climbed through the window. The blind’s all wonky – look.’
‘But why would she do that?’
‘Tess said she was acting strangely when we went on that spa day, and she didn’t seem right when she came back from the dress fitting on Thursday afternoon. She looked like she’d been crying. I should have said something. I didn’t dare. I didn’t want to start her off. Oh, I thought it was just wedding jitters.’ Elaine started to tear up. ‘Everybody gets wedding jitters.’
‘Did you get wedding jitters?’ John asked his wife.
‘Of course I did.’
‘Then maybe there’s no need to panic just yet. It’s only nine in the morning. The wedding is three hours away. There’s plenty of time for Kate to come home and put her dress on.’
‘But she could be on a plane out of Southampton Airport by now! Oh, John, what are we supposed to do?’
Tess was ringing the doorbell. Lily sprang into the hallway ahead of her.
‘Where’s Auntie Kate? I want to put my dress on.’
Elaine’s expression said it all. Tess cottoned on at once.
‘She’s gone, hasn’t she? I knew it! Didn’t I tell you the other night?’
‘I should have asked her! Oh, I don’t believe it. She must have been in such a state. You don’t think she’s done something stupid?’
John invited his granddaughter to share a boiled egg and Marmite soldiers in the kitchen before his wife and younger daughter could reach hysteria pitch in the hall. Too late. They were already there.
‘I’m going to call the police,’ said Elaine.
‘Not yet,’ said John. ‘Let me go and look for her first. I’m sure she won’t have gone far.’
‘But she might have done something stupid.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything stupid about deciding not to marry if you don’t want to,’ said John.
‘Oh, you idiot!’ Elaine swatted him with a tea towel. ‘You know I’m not talking about that. Go out and bloody well look for her, and the minute you find her, you tell her that whatever she wants to do is perfectly OK with me. I just want her to know that we love her no matter what, and I want her to come home.’
‘I’ll tell her,’ said John, shrugging on his coat.
Tess had been listening from behind the half-open kitchen door, desperate to keep track of the drama unfolding while at the same time making sure Lily was kept in the dark about her aunt’s disappearance until the last possible moment. Now she had to speak up.
‘Tell her the same from me, Dad. Tell her that if she’s not going to go through with it, I am a hundred per cent behind her. Tell her that Mike, Lily and I love her too, whatever she does.’
John nodded.
‘Oh, sod this,’ said Tess. ‘I’ll tell her myself. Mum, you keep an eye on Lily. I’m going out with Dad.’
‘I should come too,’ said Elaine, her voice close to cracking.
John and Tess shared a look that they had shared many times before. It was shorthand for ‘We have to keep her out of this.’
‘No, Mum. You stay here with Lily. We’ve got to make sure that there’s someone in the house in case Kate decides to come back here before we find her.’
‘OK,’ Elaine conceded. ‘Should I call Ian?’
‘Don’t call Ian,’ John and Tess said at once.
‘Grandma!’ Lily called from the kitchen. ‘I want to make a cake.’
Elaine squeezed her husband and her younger daughter. ‘Coming, Lily. I’ll see what we’ve got in the cupboard.’
Outside the house, Tess called Mike to ask him to get down to her parents’ place as quickly as possible. Then she and John divided up the terrain. At the top of the road, Tess would turn to the left, while John and Snowy, Tess’s dog, turned to the right. The plentiful walking that had made it such a pleasure for Tess’s parents to move down to the coast was now presenting a real problem. Would Kate have chosen to go towards the common, or would she have gone down to the sea?
‘I’ll take the seafront,’ said John. His grim expression spoke of the potential agonies of that path.
‘Dad,’ said Tess, linking her arm through his momentarily, ‘she won’t have done anything like that. Kate may have been confused, but she wasn’t suicidal. I’m sure that before you know it, one of us will be walking her home.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Come on, Dad. We know so.’
They came to the main road and took their different directions.
Tess’s plan was to cut through the housing estate to the alleyway that led to the common. Since she and Mike had moved down to the south coast for his work, Kate had visited them often. Kate would often accompany Tess when she walked the family dog around the scrubby land towards which Tess was now headed. They’d shared some happy afternoons there, sitting on the dry grass while the dog made friends with its fellow canines and Lily gathered posies of wild flowers. It had been the scene of many deep and meaningful conversations. Away from the possibility of being overheard by Mike, and while Lily was still too young to be interested, Kate and Tess had talked about everything. Tess knew Kate’s darkest secrets and vice versa. In any case, the common seemed an obvious place for Kate to aim for on her own.
Tess thought about some of the conversations she and Kate had shared recently. As young children, they had been inseparable. The teenage years had them at each other’s throats, and there was a tricky period when Tess first got married, but they had grown to appreciate one another more and more as each year passed. They shared the unique bond of siblings whose joint experiences are impossible to replicate in any ordinary friendship. Who else but a sibling really knows what your family life was like?
Had their family life doomed Kate to make the decision not to marry after all? Kate had always idolised their father. Their parents’ marriage was a textbook example of getting it right. Was every relationship Kate had doomed to fail because it couldn’t live up to the idyll of their childhood?
Tess had certainly discovered marriage to be rather less than she had hoped for. It did get boring, being with the same person for years without end. Motherhood, too, was dull and grinding more often than it was a joy. Tess wondered if it was in fact the way she had groaned and moaned about her own married life that had made Kate decide she would be better off with the constant round of spa breaks and shopping trips of single life.
They had all so hoped that she would marry Ian. It was obvious from the first time the family met him that Ian adored their precious Kate as much as they did. Had they put too much pressure on her to say ‘yes’? It was just that he was such a breath of fresh air after the Dan years. How strange it had seemed that Kate could have been in a four-year relationship with a man they’d never met. Before that, the only boyfriend of any real significance was Matt. Tess had never really liked Matt. She found him smug and cocky. It was hard to imagine he had much of a bedside manner even now. Tess knew, of course, that her sister had been seeing something of him.
If Kate really had decided to do a runner, then the rest of the day was going to be a nightmare. Tess knew that her parents would get over a cancelled wedding eventually. The important thing was that Kate understood that she had the right to choose in favour of her own happiness, because once the ring was on her finger, it would be a whole lot harder. As she stepped onto the common where she had often contemplated her own great escape, Tess could vouch for that.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Melanie had stayed up half the night trying to put together a suitable message to send to Keith via his Facebook account. It wasn’t easy. How on earth do you start an email to the ex-husband you haven’t seen in over a decade? Do you have to authenticate yourself first? Melanie had set up a Facebook account for the purpose of trying to track Keith down. It bore her name, but there was little else to prove that she was who she said she was. No photograph. Why shouldn’t Keith just delete her message right away?
What was her motivation for doing this? Did she really think that any let
ter she sent would be gratefully received? Over the years that they had been apart, the righteous anger Melanie had once felt that she ‘wasn’t getting her needs met’ had mellowed so that at last she could see how unreasonable she had been. Keith had hardly been getting his needs met either. However, it was possible that Keith, who had so generously shouldered all the blame back then, had come to see things quite differently.
Melanie decided in the end that she would not send the message. Not yet. Besides, despite the royal wedding, that Saturday was to be no different from any other Saturday at Bride on Time. The last thing Melanie needed was to be preoccupied and waiting for an answer. There were brides to be dressed. Melanie prided herself in never having let a bride down, and she wasn’t about to start.
Heidi and Sarah were both in the salon early.
‘The royal wedding just sort of fizzled out after you went home,’ said Sarah. ‘We went to the pub in the afternoon, but it was just like any ordinary Friday only with free sausage rolls.’
‘Not even good sausage rolls,’ Heidi chipped in.
‘Are you all right?’ Sarah asked then. ‘We know it must be hard for you, thinking back to 1981.’
‘It is hard,’ said Melanie brusquely, ‘but life goes on.’
‘You are brave, Mel.’
Maybe, not right then, but soon, she would have to tell Heidi and Sarah that life was very much going on in Keith’s case. She wondered how they would react when she told them she was not in fact a widow but a divorcee and she had spent the previous evening looking for her ex-husband on Facebook.
‘We’ve got fifteen girls today,’ said Heidi. ‘I feel like collapsing already.’
‘Oh, here’s to their happy ever afters,’ said Sarah, raising her coffee mug, ‘and here’s to my early night.’
Kate's Wedding Page 23