“I’m looking for a dress.” State the bleeding obvious. “A wedding dress.” Even worse. She could feel Ollie smiling next to her, shifting from trainer to trainer at the inherent weirdness of the occasion.
“Well, you have come to the right place.” Penny waited for Ollie and Jenny to laugh. They laughed. “What sort of gown are you looking for?”
Something about the word “gown.” It made her feel old and musty, or like someone about to be admitted into surgery in a hospital ward.
The shop assistant raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Modern?” Ollie offered.
Jenny nodded gratefully. “Yes, yes, modern!”
“Modern gowns for the modern bride,” repeated Penny with rehearsed enthusiasm. “If you’d like to follow me.” Feeling like schoolchildren in a lingerie department, she led them giggling to a rack of serious dresses, all lined up on a rail like different mismatching sections of one long billowing curtain. She could feel her heart start to slam. Just the sight of the dresses made her anxious. They were all so forbiddingly romantic. And she was so…so…prosaic somehow. Sophie used to be able to wear frills and flounces and look like Kate Bush. Whereas if Jenny so much as went near a lace hem she looked like one of those madwomen who wander around Portobello Market mumbling about the summer of 1974 and how better the area was before the bankers moved in.
“Like?” said Ollie, picking a cream column off the rail. “Not like?”
“Like.” Jenny nodded, trying to work out if like was love. No, not love.
“Do let me know if you’d like me to put any of them in the dressing room,” exuded Penny, block heels wedged in the deep pile carpet. She smelled a sale and clearly wasn’t going anywhere.
“This is cute,” Jenny muttered, fingering some intricate pearl beadwork around the neckline of a dress.
Penny was there in a flash. “Stunning! I’ll put it in the dressing room. What is your size?”
She felt embarrassed to be revealing such information in front of Ollie. “A size twelve?” She immediately regretted presenting as a question.
Penny gave her a quick once-over. “I’ll put a couple of fourteens in there too, shall I? The sizing varies so much from dress to dress.”
Jenny blushed again, hating the thought that Ollie would think she was trying to pretend she was slimmer than she was. Which, of course, she had been.
“I’ll let you know if we need any more help, thanks.”
Penny stepped backward with comic servility just as a twentysomething blonde and her equally blonde mother giggled into the bridal suite. Something about their excitability gave Jenny a pang of longing for a feeling she didn’t yet feel. She would soon. Yes, she would. As soon as she had her dress. Obviously, the dress was key. You couldn’t be a bridezilla without a bridal gown.
“This rocks.” Ollie held up a long oyster-colored dress with a pale blue sash around the waist.
She fingered the frilly sleeves. “A bit trannie?”
“You’ve ruined it for me now.” He flicked it away on its hanger, making a metallic whoosh sound on the tracks. “This one?” He held up a long white dress with barely any embellishment.
She cocked her head on its side. “Gorgeous. And yet. No sparkle.”
“You’re right. The girl must have sparkle.”
He was silent for a few moments and when she next looked up at him she could see that something had changed. He looked quite different from how he’d looked a moment before. He was frowning into the rack of dresses with a strange, distant look in his eyes. Oh, God. He was staring at a fifties-style dress, a dress just like Sophie’s wedding dress.
Sophie’s had been a vintage dress, cinched in tight at the waist, the skirt flouncing out as if hooped, filled with layer upon layer of petticoat, so that she looked like a Degas ballerina when she leaned forward. Most keenly Jenny remembered the morning of the wedding, its intimacy, the excitement. It was just her, Sophie and a makeup artist with pea green eyes called Lottie in a little boutique hotel with lilac upholstery. Jenny could still hear the hiss of the glasses of champagne and smell the basket full of untouched toast and croissants, a freshly showered Sophie sitting on a stool in her white hotel dressing gown, nervous and happy, a river of dark, freshly washed hair falling down her back.
She had watched, awestruck, as Sophie had got more beautiful with each stage of the prep process: hair dried and curled, makeup applied, diamonds clipped to her ears, blue lace garter snapped to her thigh, flower behind the ear. Sophie had worn a red flower behind her ear that day. Jenny had helped Lottie wire it and pin it on, holding the spare pins between her front teeth. She remembered wondering what it must feel like to be so blessed. Never in her wildest dreams would it have occurred to her that Sophie would be dead a few years later. Or that she’d be here choosing a wedding dress with Sophie’s groom.
She felt a shudder of guilt. In her haste and selfishness to convince Sam of the platonic nature of her relationship with Ollie she’d not considered Ollie’s feelings. She put the dress she was holding back on the hanger. “Let’s go, Ol.”
“But we haven’t found your dress.”
“I can get my dress another time.”
“This is the time.” He slipped his arm around her waist. She felt the cuff of his suit against her skin. “I want to help you, Jenny. I really do.”
She blinked back unexpected tears. There was a part of her longing for him not to facilitate any of it. For him to stop the wedding, to tell her it was too much too soon. To tell her to stop being such a bloody idiot, and to lead her away someplace dark and quiet until the feelings that were mashing up her head abated. “You’re sure?”
“Sure. You need to try this shit on.”
Penny appeared by their side. Jenny tried to ignore her.
“I hate trying stuff on.”
She could hear Penny tutting beneath her breath.
“How many weeks until the wedding?”
“Four.”
Penny gasped before whipping their choice of dresses away to the dressing room with a stagey kick of the heels.
It didn’t take long for the changing room to whiff of sweat as she struggled into dresses, out of dresses. And yes, annoyingly, the shop assistant was right. In two dresses out of three she was a fourteen. She couldn’t help but dislike like those dresses. She yanked on the size twelve off-white column number, plain apart from a sash bow studded with crystal—just the right amount of twinkle?—and emerged self-consciously from the changing room, not knowing how to dangle her arms, aware of her corset-fortressed bosom spilling over the neckline. “This one?”
At first Ollie didn’t say anything. He just stared.
“You don’t like it?” She shyly pulled up the dress to hide her cleavage.
“You look beautiful.”
Jenny blushed, fiddled with a bit of handmade lace. Had she found the One?
“But…”
There was a but! She deflated.
“It doesn’t show off your shoulders.”
“My shoulders?” Jenny had never noticed her shoulders. No one had ever noticed her shoulders. It was like noticing her elbows. Her shoulders were entirely unremarkable.
“Try on the one with the cutaway sleeves.”
“You’re not meant to do cutaway sleeves over the age of thirty-five.”
“Says who?”
“I don’t know, the fashionistas. Women who know about these things.”
“I think we know what Sophie would say.”
“Bollocks to that.” She leapt back into the dressing room and eyed the sleeveless dress combatively. It looked heavy and overly worked, the kind of dress that would look stunning, as Penny might say, on the sylphlike twentysomething with the waist-length blonde hair in the next-door cubicle. Plus it was size fourteen.
It was harder to get into than the others. Penny had to lower it down over her face like a piece of armor. A sharp tug on the inner corset lost her a lungful of breath. Then there were d
ozens of pearl buttons that ran up the spine, each one requiring the fingers of an elf to fasten.
“Almost there!” Jenny called out to Ollie through the curtains, as Penny fastened the last button. “Don’t run off to the pub just yet.”
“Stunning,” sighed Penny, standing back, hand at her throat.
Jenny stole a glance at herself in the changing room mirror. The dress made her look different in some way she didn’t quite understand. It was genuinely hard to tell if she looked lovely or totally awful.
“Come on,” Ollie called from the other side of the curtain.
She yanked back the edge of the curtain. Penny gave her a little push on her flank, as if nudging a horse from its box, and she nearly fell out of the dressing room. Under his gaze she could feel herself sweating. “Awful?”
“Look at yourself in the mirror.” Ollie held her by the shoulders and swiveled her round to face the long gilt mirror. “Do you realize how beautiful you look, Jenny?”
She caught her breath. It felt like the corset had just been yanked two inches tighter.
“I think you should wear dresses like this every day.” He walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Sam’s going to want to rip the fucking thing off.”
“Truly stunning,” said Penny, hand at her throat.
“It’s the one, Jen.”
She looked at her reflection again. Now that Ollie had given the dress his seal of approval she loved it too. It was the dress! It was an amazing dress!
“Sold?”
Jenny swallowed hard. “Sold.”
So why did her hand shake so badly as she handed over her credit card at the till? Penny grabbed one end of the credit card to take it. Jenny didn’t let it go. Penny pulled. Jenny didn’t let go. Her mind had started to whir with one word. D-d-d-d-d. Dominique. Dominique. Dominique. Why was it repeating on her now? She’d done her best to put it behind her and believe Sam’s explanation. She thought she’d put it to bed.
“May I?” Penny said tersely, strengthening her grip on the card.
“You alright, Jenny?” whispered Ollie, giving her a funny look.
“It’s so much money. I’ll only wear it once.” Dominique. Dominque. Dominque.
Penny gave her a tight, mirthless smile, releasing her fingers from the credit card. “Perhaps you’d like to sit down and take a moment.”
“Jenny, you, more than anyone, deserve a beautiful dress.” Ollie put an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry about the money. Don’t you love it?”
She could taste the salt of tears in the back of her throat. “Yes, but…”
“If you wouldn’t mind moving aside a little,” said Penny, irritated now, “I will serve the next customer while you…make up your mind. Thank you.”
The mother and daughter pair stood behind them, the mother clutching a flamboyant white feather headdress. They were still giggling.
“Stop,” said Ollie suddenly. Everyone turned to look at him. He dug into his back pocket. “I will pay for the dress.”
“No! Don’t be ridiculous. You absolutely can’t pay for the dress!” protested Jenny, mortified at the turn of events.
“I want to.”
“It’s not the money…” she began, suddenly not quite knowing what it was.
“Shh. My call.”
Penny’s hand shot up like a piston to grab Ollie’s credit card. As she determinedly shoved it into the card machine, she looked up at Jenny and winked. “It’s your lucky day.”
Thirty-four
Ollie bought the wedding dress?” Sam is saying, hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white. He doesn’t look happy, not at all. From up here, somewhere near the car’s padded ceiling, I can see a vein pulsate on the top of his shaved head. Feel sorry for Jenny now.
“Yeah.” Jenny squeezes her lower lip with her fingers. She has Heathrow’s lost luggage depot around her eyes. She doesn’t look happy either. And she should do because the dress that Ollie bought her really is beautiful. When Jenny unzipped it from its cover last night I settled on its folds like a moth, absolutely still on its silk. She spent the good part of an hour just staring at that dress, walking around it, viewing it from different angles, like someone in a gallery puzzling over a painting.
“Is there anything the guy can’t do? No wonder half the women in north London are wanking off about him.” He gives her a sidelong, confused glance as he says this. Like he can’t quite work out what’s going on. He senses change in her, I think, sniffs it like a wolf in a changing wind, but he can’t identify it. To be perfectly honest, nor can I. What’s going on with my Jenny?
“He’s just gay enough!” Jenny says brightly, sounding slightly rehearsed.
Sam doesn’t smile. He slams the horn at a van driver. “Yeah, yeah. Sophie probably cut his balls off.”
Jenny rolls her eyes and looks despondently out the window. Senses this conversation is not going perfectly to plan.
“That’s the problem with good-looking women.” He spits out the word “women.” “I see them in my office all the time. They castrate their husbands, thinking it’s what they want, but the moment he submits to her she runs off with her personal trainer.”
Jenny is gazing out the window, not listening, her wide blue eyes somewhere else. “It’s beautiful, Sam.”
“Sounds it. You two, out shopping.”
She turns to him and grins. “I’m talking about the dress.”
Natch.
Sam pulls up outside Tash’s house, today’s meeting venue. “That’ll be twenty quid, Miss Vale.”
“Will a kiss do?” She bends over to kiss him.
“A snog, thank you.” He holds Jenny’s pretty, round face in his hands, thrusts his tongue into her mouth. It’s a short, sharp snog.
“Gosh,” laughs Jenny, hopping out of the car and away from that long, hot tongue pretty bloody quickly. “I shouldn’t be too long. It’s just a catch-up meeting with the girls, really. Hey, you shooting straight home?”
“Where else do you think I’d be going?” he says, suddenly defensive, face slamming shut like the car door.
Temper, Sam. Temper.
In a small monochrome apartment not far from St. Albans a woman is preparing for Sam’s arrival. She is zipping up a black dress. Beneath the dress is lingerie, black with pink velvet trim. It matches. She is lighting a scented candle—Invigorating Gingerlily—which illuminates the heart-shaped contours of her face. She sinks into her rose pink sofa, waggles one heel-shod foot back and forth, back and forth, slapping the sole against her skin, and waits. She doesn’t know that she has a fleck of red lipstick on her front tooth. There is something terribly vulnerable about this fleck on the tooth, the flaw in her makeup.
The distance between her and Sam narrows and narrows until there are just a few clouds between them, five miles, a street, a paved drive. He pulls up, squeezes the skin between his eyes, steps out of the car, shoves his blue shirt into the back of his jeans where it’s ruched up. He has a panel of sweat on the back of his shirt in the shape of a crucifix. He knocks three times, not softly.
She opens the door wide, face full of hope and lipstick. “Hey.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Thirty-five
Crisis!” Suze declared with rather too much relish for Jenny’s liking. She’d been hoping for a good nose around Tash’s apartment and a gossipy catch-up and instead it seemed like she’d walked into one of the government’s emergency Cobra security meetings. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
“There are rumors, Jenny. Rumors.”
For one dreadful moment she thought they might be inferring something about the wedding dress. She hadn’t thought how it might look. “What? What is it?”
“On Saturday night a friend of a friend of a friend saw Ollie out drinking with one of his mates at the Royal Oak.” Suze waited for her words to sink in.
Jenny felt a big sense of relief. It had nothing to do
with her. “This is bad?”
“There was a lot of drinking,” added Lydia, pausing for effect. “And laughing.”
“It must be stopped,” Liz said in a German accent. “Immediately.”
Jenny laughed.
“Liz!” said Tash crossly. “This is serious.”
Jenny straightened her smile. “Was the drinking out of control?” She remembered Sam’s comment about them all being addicted to Ollie’s grief and felt a little uneasy.
“Well, they ended up in Chicken Cottage. You don’t end up in Chicken Cottage unless you’re trollied,” said Liz.
“Sorry, I’m not with you. What’s the big deal?”
“You tell her,” mouthed Tash to Suze. Tash’s eyes flashed dangerously.
“Jenny, I’ll cut to the chase. There was talk of a woman…” began Suze, wincing slightly as she said the word “woman.”
Jenny felt the hairs prickle on her arms. “A woman?”
“This friend of a friend…”
“…of a friend,” added Liz waspishly.
“…heard Ollie talking about how he had…feelings for this woman.” Suze stopped. “Well, sexual comments were made.”
So it had happened! He’d moved on. Jenny clamped her hand over her mouth. “Fuck.”
“Yes, that word was mentioned,” said Liz with a glint in her eye.
“It’s too soon,” said Lydia, her eyes filling with the inevitable tears. “He’s far, far too vulnerable.”
Jenny felt a wave of nausea whoosh over her. She was struggling to hold it together now and wanted so badly to dart out of that door and run down the hill, back into the crowded, anonymous fug of the city.
“What the hell shall we do?” asked Tash.
Breathe. That’s what she must do. Breathe. Jenny took a deep breath and gagged on her sip of wine. “I guess it was going to happen,” she managed.
Suze touched Jenny’s hand with her soft, pudgy fingers. “It’s more complicated than that. We think we know who the woman is.”
Her heart started to thump in her chest. “Who?”
“Cecille.” Suze spoke as if the answer pained her. “Cecille.”
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