‘So, anyway, do you have any questions?’
‘Questions?’ Anna asked, finding her voice.
‘You know, about being a married woman. I know that you young women have done it all these days, full sex, fellatio even, but there are lots of things you encounter after marriage that you might not be expecting. Erectile dysfunction, for example, or a sudden interest in BDSM. When Graham began his bondage phase, well, at first I was horrified and then we got a whip off eBay and it was laughs all the way. I said no to swinging though, it’s not that I’m against group sex, it’s just other lady parts I don’t like the idea of.’
‘I think I’m fine on the sex front, actually,’ Anna said, shocked and awed by Angela’s indiscretions, even though she knew she should be used to her foster mother’s blunt talk by now. Although, to be honest, since they had returned from New York Anna had barely even seen Tom, let alone had sex with him. It was hardly surprising given that Charisma had moved into her flat, or the many number of things that had to be done in the last few days before the wedding, that Tom hadn’t been to the flat to see her, or that she hadn’t managed to go to his place. He had stayed at his parents’ house last night, and he would be there now, with his mum cooking breakfast, his dogs lying on his feet, hoping for snippets of bacon. That would be her official life too, after today, Anna realised. Family holidays in that house, Sunday roasts with his mum and dad. When they got back from honeymoon she’d go back home to Tom’s flat, let her own out to Liv and whoever she chose as her new flatmate and from that moment on everything would be plain sailing.
‘Good, now what about the doubts you are having?’ Angela got up and poured boiling water onto two sachets of instant coffee. Anna took the cup that was offered to her.
‘Doubts?’ she laughed. ‘What doubts?’
‘It’s written all over your face, dear,’ Angela said. ‘I’m not one to pry, it might just be a case of wedding jitters. I had wedding jitters when I got married too. I woke up on the morning of the wedding and I thought, God help me, I’m marrying an utter prick. And I told my mother about it and she said don’t be so ridiculous, I’ve paid for the hall hire, you’re getting married. And I did, and after a year or two everything settled down and by the time my darling Simon was born we were in love again. So for me, it really was just jitters, but I vowed to always make sure my children weren’t going through the same thing. I asked Simon too, even though it was clear how certain he was, and one day, when it’s Liv’s turn, I’ll ask her the same thing. But for now, I’m asking you. Are you sure you want to marry Tom?’
Anna opened her mouth and then closed it again, turning her face away from Angela for a moment. ‘Yes.’
‘Look,’ Angela said, covering Anna’s hand with hers, ‘I know you children think I’m borderline nuts.’
‘Not borderline.’ Anna smiled, causing Angela to lightly tap her on the back of the hand.
‘But, I know you. I know you and Simon and Liv better than anyone else on this planet. Don’t look at me like that; just because you came to me when you were nine doesn’t mean I haven’t obsessed about and worried about you just as much as I have my natural born children. Weren’t you listening to me when I said that I’m your mum?’
Anna nodded, wishing with all her heart that she could accept once and for all the offer of family love that Angela never tired of making her. What wouldn’t she give to look at the kind, caring, loving woman and truly think of her at last as her mother? Yet, even now, even sitting here on her wedding morning, it was the ghostlike memory of her real mother that haunted her. When she was alive nothing meant more to her than feeding her addictions, but even now, years after she had finally succumbed to them, it was her that Anna longed to both impress and escape, as futile as it was to want either.
‘Now,’ Angela continued, ‘something doesn’t seem quite right, not any more. Before this whole New York escapade and you found out about that lovely young stripper girl, you were so certain that this was the right thing. You were like a great white shark homing in on its prey, preparing to rip it to shreds, nothing could distract you.’ Angela gnashed her teeth ever so slightly to illustrate her point. ‘But now, ever since you got back, it’s like you are detached from everything. Like someone’s gone and fished you out of the sea and popped you in a whopping great tank and now you are just a spectator watching the action sail by and you don’t really care if you are part of it or not.’
‘You really are brilliant at analogies,’ Anna said, as kindly as she could, hoping to deflect the fact that Angela had pretty much hit the nail on the head. She was right, it wasn’t that Anna had felt doubts, or fears or even had any negative feelings for Tom since she got back from New York, it was just that she hardly felt anything at all.
‘I’m not going to sit here and lecture you,’ Angela said, despite it being apparent that that was exactly what she was going to do. ‘But I just want to say that it doesn’t matter that this wedding cost you a ridiculous amount of money that you wouldn’t let us pay anything towards, and it doesn’t matter that the dress you had made can only be worn on one day of the year, and is frankly – though gorgeous – very over the top, especially for you. Nor does it matter that your friends and family are risking their lives to get through the snow today to make it to your wedding. None of that matters: if you are not sure about marrying Tom today, then don’t do it. All you have to do is let yourself feel what it’s like to be happy, and follow that feeling and never ever stop, even if I do have to freeze a ton of canapés for the next year or so.’ Angela leaned over. ‘Or do it, you never know you might get lucky like me and find out after a few years that it wasn’t a terrible mistake at all. There, hope that’s helped.’
‘It has so helped,’ Anna lied, but needing her foster mother to know how much it meant to her that she had come at all. Before Angela could get up to leave Anna flung her arms around her and hugged her very tight, taking not only Angela but also herself by surprise.
‘Thank you,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you for coming here and being bonkers and showing me how much you care, again. I just … I want you to know that you caring about me has made the world of difference to my life. It doesn’t matter that you never adopted me, it just matters that you have always been there and …’ Anna hugged Angela once more. ‘Finally, I think I understand that, so thank you. Thanks for everything, Angela’, she said. ‘Thanks for everything, Mum.’
‘Just pull it tighter,’ Anna said, as Liv and Charisma, who even now was still trying to wrangle herself a job as bridesmaid, pulled at the lacing on her corset.
‘It fitted me fine at the fitting,’ Liv said, as she heaved one last time on the ribbons. ‘Maybe you had too many burgers in New York.’
‘Oh my God do you want to die?’ Anna exclaimed, over her shoulder. ‘If I could move right now, you would totally be dead.’
‘Here.’ Charisma nudged Liv aside and, sticking her knee in the small of Anna’s back, braced herself and yanked so hard that the corset finally closed, and Anna, though possibly turning slightly blue, had exactly the waist that she wanted as Charisma double-tied the bows.
‘In the world of burlesque you have to know how to do up a corset,’ Charisma said, looking pleased with herself. ‘Now, how about you sack that ugly stick insect girl from your wedding party and give me her dress. I know I’ve got bigger tits than her, but I promise not to upstage you with my incredible cleavage. Well, I don’t promise, it’s hard to defy such a force of nature.’
‘Are you talking about me? You’re talking about me, aren’t you?’ Liv said, laughing and outraged at once.
‘No, you are the hot bridesmaid,’ Charisma said. ‘Or at least you will be until Anna gives me a matching dress, then you will become second hottest bridesmaid, second most likely to get laid. I mean sack the one with the teeth and dead-fish eyes.’
‘No,’ Anna said. ‘I will not sack Tom’s cousin Kathryn from the wedding party even if she does look like she recently kissed a p
rince and turned into a frog. She is less pretty than me and the main criteria for bridesmaids is that they are less pretty, not that they are sluts who can’t stop getting their tits out. Or ex-wives!’
‘So you’re saying that I’m less pretty than you?’ Liv pretended to be offended.
As the three women laughed, just for a moment Anna felt the happiness bubbling in her chest and she got the feeling that everything was going to be all right after all. She was going to marry Tom, just as she had dreamed of, and the rest of her life would be one peaceful, beautiful flat horizon, without a single corner or bend in the road for anything unexpected to hide behind.
And then dead-fish-eyed cousin Kathryn put her head round the door, and proved that life never went that way.
‘The wedding band bloke is here to see you, something about the set list?’ she lisped through her crooked teeth. ‘I said Tom was dealing with that, but apparently he needs to talk to you about your song choice. Something to do with Joni Mitchell’s “River”?’
Anna stopped smiling. ‘Tell him to fuck off,’ she said, turning her back on Kathryn. ‘Go on, tell him to fuck off and don’t come back.’
‘That’s a bit extreme,’ Liv said, as Charisma snorted a laugh of surprise. ‘Do you want me to go and see him? Or at least tell him to see Tom. I must say, he’s here early, I didn’t think the band arrived till five.’
‘It’s not the band,’ Anna snapped. She lowered her voice and hissed in Liv’s ear, ‘It’s Miles.’
‘Miles, what’s Miles doing here?’ Liv forgot to whisper.
‘Shit,’ Charisma said. ‘Miles is here. Now this is what I call a wedding.’
‘Who’s Miles?’ Kathryn asked.
‘Just tell him to FUCK OFF,’ Anna said.
‘If you want to be so rude you can tell him yourself, I’m sending him in.’ Kathryn pouted and, before Anna could stop her, she was gone.
‘What does Miles want?’ Liv asked her. ‘Today of all days!’
‘I don’t know!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘How the hell would know?’
‘Well, you know enough to want him to fuck off, so what is it you think he’s here for? Did something happen between you in New York? Were you lying to me all along, because if you’ve cheated on Tom …?’
‘No!’ Anna insisted. ‘Nothing actually happened. We didn’t do anything. All we did was hang out and talk and … and … he talked about kissing me, about what it would be like and how much he’d like to, but we didn’t actually kiss. And then he said he wasn’t going to ask me not to marry Tom and he left and that’s it, so I don’t know why he is here now.’
‘Maybe he wants to talk about having sex with you,’ Charisma said. ‘I wouldn’t mind listening to that.’
‘And do you have feelings for him?’ Liv demanded.
‘No!’ Anna said. ‘No, I don’t think so. I know I don’t think so. He got me muddled up, but then I came back and I got things straight and I don’t want him to muddle me up again, so go out there and do your duty as my bridesmaid and tell him to fuck off!’
Anna whirled round to find Miles in the doorway, dressed in his trademark tatty jeans and boots, a battered leather biker jacket and his windswept hair giving the impression that he’d just arrived on a Harley.
‘Miles!’ Anna exclaimed, stamping her foot so that her full skirt rustled and fluffed. ‘Why are you here?’
‘You look amazing,’ Mile said, with a lopsided grin. ‘Wow, that is some dress. You look like a really beautiful toilet roll fairy.’
Charisma laughed out loud, and Liv had to cover her mouth. It was only Anna who did not crack a smile.
‘Go away!’ she told him, pointing at the door. ‘Fuck off!’
‘No.’ He shook his head, coming into the room. ‘Look, I was in Texas, Texas, when I realised. And I have taken three planes for the last two days, and seriously risked my very new, very dream job to come here and say to you what I should have said to you in New York and didn’t. Every day since you left, I’ve been replaying over and over the things I said, and the things you said and wondering why I couldn’t just put it down to experience and move on, and then I got it. And I asked for forty-eight hours off a job I’d barely started and flew pretty much the wrong way round the world to get here, now at this precise moment, to say it right, before it is too late. So if you want me to go, you will have to throw me out.’
Anna looked from Liv to Charisma, who were waiting with bated breath.
‘Give us a moment, please,’ she said.
‘What!’ Charisma exclaimed. ‘No way!’
‘Liv! Please?’
Caught between her loyalty to Anna, and her very real need to know what the hell was going on, Liv decided she wouldn’t find out unless she let Anna say whatever it was she had to say to Miles. She grabbed Charisma’s hand and tugged her towards the door.
‘Anna,’ she said just before she left, ‘you have five minutes to get your make-up on before you are due to leave for the church.’
‘And that’s a forty-minute job to get you looking halfway decent, at least,’ Charisma added.
‘I know. I’ll be two minutes, I promise you.’ Anna sent Liv a pleading look, and reluctantly, her face full of concern, Liv began to close the door.
‘Tom is the finest man I know,’ she said, just as she drew it shut. ‘Remember that.’
‘Get on with it then!’ Anna gestured impatiently at Miles.
‘You are much less impressed by my grand romantic gesture than I thought you would be,’ Miles said.
‘Is that what it is? A grand romantic gesture?’ Anna asked him. ‘Why, Miles? Why are you here, when … you and I, we are nothing to each other?’
‘That’s not true,’ Miles said. ‘We are something to each other. We might not know that we are meant to be, we might not be sure that there isn’t another person in the whole world for us, yet. But, Anna, the early signs are very good.’
‘“The early signs are very good”,’ Anna repeated. ‘Miles, this is my wedding day!’
‘I know, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think …’
‘That I should throw all of this away and see how dating you goes, while you’re on a world tour, and I’m working in London. Is that what you’re proposing?’
‘When you put it like that it doesn’t seem so appealing …’ Miles began, running his fingers through his hair, searching for the right thing to say.
‘Look, Miles,’ Anna said, ‘you and me in New York, it was … it was wonderful, actually. Being with you was … well, I was different with you. And I liked the person I was. And maybe, maybe if you hadn’t bought me that kiwi cocktail, and maybe if we’d actually gotten round to talking to each other that evening, then perhaps who knows, things might have been different. But we didn’t. We missed our moment. New York was just a … a detour … a pit stop. And now I’m getting married and you are going on tour and there is nothing else to be said.’
Miles stood perfectly still for a moment, and Anna watched as the determination and adrenalin seeped out of his body.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘What am I doing here?’
‘Well, there you go then,’ Anna said, surprised by just how deeply the ease with which he gave up his foolish quest stung her, but glad at least that now she knew.
‘I mean, why did I come all this way if I wasn’t prepared to go for it and say how I feel for once, instead of hedging my bets, sitting on the fence, playing it safe? This is no time to play it safe. This is the rest of our lives.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Anna asked him.
Taking two swift steps forwards, Miles took Anna’s hand and dropped to his knees.
‘What the …!’ Anna exclaimed.
‘I love you, Anna,’ Miles said, stopping her in her tracks. ‘I can’t claim to have loved you from the moment we met – the time I nearly killed you – but definitely from the second you sang with me onstage, and you were so terrible – I’ve definitely loved you since then.
I tried not to fall in love with you, I tried really hard. I mean you’re complicated, and I’ve got this job and, oh yeah, you’re getting married in twenty minutes. But it’s happened, and I’m not going to lie about it or try and be cool any more. I love you, Anna. So don’t marry Tom. Get out of that dress, come to Texas with me, come on tour with me, never ever leave my side again. I know I should have said all this in New York but I’m saying it now. I love you, Anna, don’t marry Tom. Come with me.’
Anna snatched her hand from Miles and took two tottering steps backwards until her thighs collided with the bed and she sat down with a thump.
‘Miles,’ she said, finding that she wanted to say his name over and over again, but forcing herself not to. ‘You have to go. I’m leaving to get married in four minutes and …’
‘Don’t send me away because you need make-up,’ Miles said, still on his knees. ‘You don’t need make-up, you look stunning just as you are.’
‘I’m not sending you away because I need make-up,’ Anna said. ‘I’m sending you away because a year ago I promised to marry a man who I … I love and respect. And who apart from forgetting to mention his first wife, has never done me any wrong. He will be a good husband to me, and a great father to my children and I know exactly what our life together will be like. It will be good, and calm, and friendly, and secure and … I can’t back out on him now Miles. I just can’t. I’ not brave enough.’
‘You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met,’ Miles replied, but Anna shook her head.
‘Even though you love me too?’ Miles said.
‘I never said that,’ Anna told him, but even as she said it, she reached forwards to touch his face. ‘I never said I love you.’
Miles got up. ‘OK, I’m going,’ he said. ‘It’s fine, I get it. Maybe you need some time for all this to sink in. My flight leaves in just under two hours. So, I’ll be at Luton Airport until then, that’s when I catch a connecting flight to Paris. You know where to find me and if you don’t come then I’ll know how you feel. And I’ll know that at least I told you everything that was in my heart. Goodbye, Anna.’
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