Don't Tell the Groom

by Anna Bell

  I’ve never spoken to Violet about her time during the war, but Mark says that she doesn’t talk about it. My gran always did; she was a hairdresser and she had hundreds of funny wartime anecdotes. But not Violet.

  ‘Why does it make her sad?’ I ask.

  ‘Her husband was shot and killed not long after they were married. He was in a unit that landed on the beaches in Port-en-Bessin, Normandy.’

  I can’t help but gasp. I’d met Violet’s late husband, Albert. Who was this man killed on D-Day?

  ‘Ever so sad it was. She was like a changed woman after that. She stopped training to be a nurse and went away to secretarial college.’

  My head is starting to explode. Firstly, I find out that Violet was married before Albert and then I find out Violet was training to be a nurse?

  ‘I didn’t really see her much after that. She remarried, of course, but we still see each other every so often when our paths cross.’

  I look at Ted and I wonder for a minute what those years must have been like. Your friends being killed all around you; families’ lives torn apart. Yet those that lived coped and got on with their lives. I doubt our generation could do that with such humility.

  I spend most of the morning pondering about who Violet’s first husband was and whether Mark knew about him. It isn’t really the kind of subject that would have come up between us. I don’t think that even I could engineer it into a topic of conversation.

  Maybe that’s why Violet is suddenly acting so strange. Maybe all the talk of weddings is making her think of her weddings plural, and her two dead husbands. Poor Violet. It must be awful to have experienced such loss.

  ‘Your afternoon relief is here,’ says Ted, snapping me out of my daydream.

  I see Betty walking towards us carrying a wicker basket with a flask sticking out of it. And after one cup of extremely strong tea and two delicious homemade scones I make my way home to see Mark.

  It feels funny walking in and seeing Mark and knowing what I do now about Violet. I don’t really think that I can let him in on my insight – there would be far too much to explain: who Ted is; why I’m volunteering in the first place. I just have to put it to the back of my mind like the rest of the ‘don’t tell the groom’ information.

  ‘Hey, you were a long time at the gym,’ says Mark.

  ‘I had to run some wedding errands.’

  Technically that’s true: we do now have transportation. ‘We have wedding transport.’

  ‘Interesting that you use the word transport. You didn’t say car, which makes me think horse and cart.’ Mark reaches up and pulls me on to his lap.

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ I say, smiling.

  ‘Any way I can unseal them?’

  He starts kissing me in a way that well and truly unseals my lips. Unfortunately for Mark though, I can’t talk when we’re kissing.

  ‘The main question is, am I going to like it?’ asks Mark.

  ‘You’re going to love it,’ I say, smiling and sliding off his lap on to the sofa next to him.

  ‘Great. Well, you’ll be pleased to know I followed orders and got the suits today. Nice choice.’

  Wow, men finding what they’re going to wear for the wedding is far easier than it is for women. I’d given Mark a choice of three suits ranging from light grey to charcoal, and more importantly they were all in budget.

  ‘Glad you liked them. Which ones did you go for?’

  ‘The charcoal. You’ve just got to phone the shop and tell them what colour cravat you want us to have.’

  I nod, but I’m too lost in the daydream where Mark is standing there in the charcoal suit waiting for me at the end of the altar.

  ‘So how are we doing with the budget then?’ asks Mark.

  If ever there was a way to snap me straight out of a daydream, it is the word budget.

  ‘We’re in budget,’ I say desperately, hoping to get off this topic quickly.

  ‘Really? It’s just that the way you always talked about what you wanted for the wedding made me feel that the costs would start to spiral out of control.’

  ‘Well, they’re not,’ I say, a little defensively. Just because he is the accountant doesn’t mean to say I can’t budget too.

  ‘I didn’t mean it horribly. I just thought that once you started to realise how much everything costs we’d have to dig a little deeper. I guess I’ve been waiting for you to ask me for more money.’

  Mark would have given me more money? Now he tells me. I wonder how much he could give me and whether it would be enough to cover the magician or the doves. Or even something as basic as a band or a photographer.

  The more I think about how the money can be spent, the more I keep thinking what we have still to do. Wait, correction: what I have left to do.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mark, it’s all under control.’

  ‘Great. More to spend on the honeymoon, then.’

  Oh, my God. I haven’t even thought about the honeymoon. Well, not since before we got engaged. I’ve been so preoccupied with wondering how there’s going to be a wedding that I’ve forgotten all about what comes next.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to treat you to the honeymoon. I don’t think our fifteen grand could have included that,’ says Mark.

  I wince. It would have done if I hadn’t gambled it away.

  ‘So where are we going to go?’ I’ve always seen myself on a tropical beach somewhere, strutting around in my bikini, with a perfect tan, telling anyone who I met that I had a husband.

  ‘Well, I was thinking that I could not tell you. You know, get you back for the “don’t tell the groom” stuff.’

  I suck my cheeks in. How would I know what to pack? I don’t think Mark quite understands that a beach holiday can be so different depending on where it is. What if it was somewhere hot and humid like Malaysia, where I’d need a ton of anti-frizz products to keep my hair under control in the humidity? Or if it was more of a backpacky place like Thailand I’d tone down my dress and shoe collection.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to tell you. I don’t want you packing absolutely everything under the sun just because you don’t know where you’re going.’

  Mark has clearly seen the look of horror on my face.

  ‘So,’ I say, tickling him so that he has to tell me quicker.

  ‘Mexico.’

  ‘Mexico? I have always wanted to go to Mexico.’

  I have, honestly. I want to climb all the pyramids and the ruins of the Aztecs and the Mayans and I want to go diving with turtles. And the beaches. I’ll need some more bikinis for the beaches.

  ‘I know you have; that’s why we’re going.’

  God, I love Mark. He really does know everything about me. Or at least everything I’ve let him know. Once the wedding is over, I am never keeping a secret from Mark again.

  I lean over and kiss him in thanks.

  ‘Mexico,’ I say again. ‘I’ll have to dig out my Español phrase book.’

  ‘I guess you will. Oh, by the way, we got an RSVP back from Michelle and Graham.’

  I do a mental flick through my Rolodex of Mark’s friends to remember exactly who they are. I think they’re university friends or cricket friends.

  ‘Can they come?’

  ‘No, they can’t come as they’ve got another wedding to go to.’

  Yes, I scream in my head. I nearly do a victory lap with my arms in an aeroplane around the living room. That’s what I want to do. At this stage in proceedings anyone who doesn’t come is all extra money in the budget. That seventy pounds we’ve just saved means the difference between me buying my wedding shoes from a shoe discount shop or from Next. I’m so over the Jimmy Choos, I have resolved that they’ll never be.

  ‘But they have sent us £50 worth of John Lewis vouchers.’

  ‘Blimey, that was nice of them. I don’t even think I’ve met them.’

  I wonder if it would be too cheeky to ask Mark for the John Lewis vouchers. After all, I do still need my weddin
g shoes and maybe that would be an option.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll have fun spending that after the wedding. That reminds me, quite a lot of people have been asking what we want for a wedding present, seeing as you didn’t put a gift list in with the invitations.’

  I hadn’t put one in deliberately. With me having spent an awful lot of money it somehow feels wrong to get everyone to give us lovely presents.

  ‘I forgot,’ I say, lying.

  ‘That isn’t like you. I thought you had your china pattern picked out already in John Lewis?’

  ‘I had.’ It’s a beautiful Jasper Conran for Wedgwood pattern. It was a classic design which I hoped would be classy and timeless. But somehow it doesn’t seem important any more.

  ‘Well, I had an idea about that and the holiday. I’m looking to book it through a company that can add extras to the honeymoon.’

  I start to feel uncomfortable about people contributing to our honeymoon when I’ve blown so much money. It feels wrong. ‘I don’t think we should get people to pay for the honeymoon.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not. It’s excursions on our honeymoon.’

  ‘Excursions?’ That could be interesting.

  ‘Yeah, look.’

  Mark reaches over and picks up his laptop and pulls up the window of a fancy-looking holiday company.

  ‘What we do is when we’ve picked our resort we just choose all the activities we want to do. They have the prices next to them and people can either pay for the entire excursion or part of it. Look, we can tick a candlelit dinner at the lighthouse restaurant.’

  ‘Oh, that looks fabulous.’

  ‘Or we could go snorkelling with turtles on a catamaran cruise.’

  ‘I want to do that,’ I say excitedly.

  ‘Why don’t you check you like the resort I’ve picked first and then we can look at what we want to put on the list. Then, if you’re happy, I’ll phone the company and book the trip. We can email everyone and let them know about the list.’

  Just like that, easy peasy. See how organised my fiancé is? If he was organising the wedding he’d have dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s by now. He wouldn’t have a list as long as his arm still to do.

  ‘Just three weeks and a day more and we’ll be on the plane to Mexico,’ says Mark.

  It sounds so simple when Mark says it like that. If only he knew the truth.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I haven’t looked at my mood boards for a long time. They’re entangled in my head with the brightly coloured electronic balls flying across my computer screen. It was almost like I stuck something on the mood boards and then tried to make the dream come true by playing bingo.

  It all seems so silly now. I’ve got mood boards and Pinterest boards full of enough stuff to make Kim Kardashian’s wedding look like it was on a tight budget.

  None of these details matter. Not the wedding favours from Jo Malone or the box of flip-flops for my female guests to change into for the evening, to soothe their tired feet. Well, maybe just the Swarovski crystal-emblazoned knickers with ‘Mrs Robinson’ sewn on the bum for the wedding night. But apart from those, it was all the puff that seemed important but in reality no one would ever remember. Or at least I can’t remember it from any wedding I’ve ever been to.

  The bit I always, without fail, remember about weddings is the first dance. It’s my favourite part of a wedding. It’s the first time the bride and groom are finally reunited after running around like headless chickens all day. After the first minute or so of awkward swaying and after other people flock to the dance floor, I always watch the looks the bride and groom give each other. You can tell a lot from those looks.

  Now when I stare at my mood boards it doesn’t make me lust in the same way it used to and my fingers don’t get twitchy wanting to go in search of the bingo balls.

  Maybe I’ve grown up over the last few months, or maybe I’ve just realised that a wedding is not about the day but a whole lifetime of marriage. Whatever it is, I actually feel like I’ve changed as a person. Cue emotional Westlife music that would appear if this was some cheesy segment on an X Factor-type show.

  The worst thing about all these revelations is that I’m dying to tell Mark. He’d be so proud of me, his irresponsible fiancée all grown up. Only to tell him would mean telling him the whole story and he would be full of disappointment and frowns. Mark is not an attractive frowner.

  I give the mood boards one last look before I pick them up and start ripping them to pieces. All the nights I spent carefully collating them and now I’m ruining them in seconds. It feels amazingly liberating.

  I just about stop myself from burning them. It might be cathartic, but I’m sure that Mark wouldn’t be too impressed if I burnt the house down.

  The doorbell goes and I quickly pick up the little pieces of my fantasy wedding and put them into the bin where they belong.

  I open the door and I’m comforted to see both Lou and the big box of chocolate fingers in her hand. I’m going to gloss over the bag of grapes she’s holding too, as surely they’re for a sick relative she’s visiting afterwards.

  ‘Hiya,’ I say. ‘Dinner is almost ready.’

  By this, I mean that I’ve got the takeaway menu out of the drawer and I have put it on the kitchen table. It was ready to read as soon as Lou got here.

  ‘Great, let’s order. I’m so hungry. This eating for two is so difficult.’

  Lou has come round to keep me company as Mark is off on his stag do, or stag weekend that it has become. He’s gone pheasant shooting in Scotland. That is all he is doing, or at least that is all that I’m being told he is doing, as quite frankly I’d rather not know. I’m more than happy with a ‘what goes on on tour stays on tour’ mentality. Mainly because I know that Mark won’t do anything dodgy, and I’d rather not know that he had some strange woman’s breasts in his face. But pheasant shooting, that’s all men in wax jackets and cigars. No boobs there.

  After deliberating over the menu for a very long time, we settle on a variety of Thai dishes and I phone through the order.

  ‘I hope it doesn’t take too long, I’m worried that the baby will start eating me,’ says Lou.

  ‘Have some grapes,’ I say, pushing the bag across to her. It still is weird bringing fruit to a girlie night in.

  ‘Thanks. I know I broke the cardinal rule of nights in, in that they aren’t carbs or chocolate, but I thought I’d better balance out the crap for the little nut’s sake.’

  I’m not the only one doing the changing around here. Since Lou shared her news with me I’ve started to notice changes in her too.

  ‘Right then. Now I’ve got my vitamins in me again, what’s on tonight’s agenda?’ asks Lou.

  That’s a very good question. I’ve had the foresight to write a list of what we needed to do. Or at least I started to write a list and it scared me as it didn’t seem to be ending. Instead I’d decided we should just wing it.

  I feel like we deserve to wing it as we’ve already had a really productive day. Today not only did I get Lou and my sister Becky to finally go bridesmaid-dress shopping but we also bought dresses. Gorgeous purple floaty dresses. I’m just slightly disappointed that Lou actually doesn’t look like a whale in hers and instead she looks radiant. Maybe that’s the problem with having a pregnant bridesmaid: the fact that they glow.

  And this afternoon, Lou agreed to lend me her Polaroid-type camera so that guests can put their photos in the guest-book. Cool, huh? It might not be a photo booth that posts photos to Facebook, but I’m sure our guests will be pleased that I made the sacrifice as now they will have something to eat instead.

  ‘Shall we start with the wedding cake?’ I suggest.

  ‘Good choice. Naturally you’re having chocolate fudge cake?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t eating it?’

  ‘Well, this trimester seems to be better for the cake. So that’s a yes?’

  ‘That’s a hmm. I don’t think my mum would approve.’<
br />
  ‘OK, well, perhaps doing the whole flavour thing is a bit premature. Maybe we could start with the costs and stuff first?’

  ‘Sensible plan. Now I can’t afford to spend much on it, so that rules out every bakery and cake-maker. I’m left with two options: either I make one or I buy one from a supermarket.’

  ‘Make one? You and baking don’t mix. And don’t you look at me. I’m going to be up to my eyes in gingerbread-making in the run-up to your wedding.’

  ‘It would definitely be the cheapest option,’ I say, looking hopefully at Lou. She, at least, can bake a cake that comes out of the oven edible.

  ‘Would it really, though? Do you have the right size tins?’

  ‘No, but how much could they be?’ I ask.

  I swivel the laptop round and Google cake tins. Blimey. No wonder people charge that much for wedding cakes when tins are that expensive. When am I ever going to use the 15 cm cake tin needed for the top tier again? To justify that type of price I’d need to be baking a lot of those little cakes.

  ‘OK, perhaps it isn’t the cheapest option. Looks like it’s a supermarket cake then.’

  ‘What about cupcakes? Aren’t they cheaper?’ asks Lou.

  ‘Nope.’

  I had already Googled that and wished that I was blessed with the ability to bake cupcakes. For such a little cake they were surprisingly expensive, and if only I had a talent I could have made some money on the side for my wedding fund.

  ‘Right, show me these supermarket cakes then.’

  We surf our way through a number of different supermarket sites. The cakes are all pretty and some of them get really good reviews. It’s just that theyr’e missing that little (as the French woman inside me would say) Je ne sais quoi.

  ‘I think that the best option would be to get the plain ones from M&S and then we can decorate them,’ says Lou.

  ‘But how would we decorate them? And look, we can’t stack them on each other.’

  I’m exasperated. I know that half an hour ago I was singing the virtues of how much I’d changed, but you know what? I haven’t. You see, the cake is one of the few things about weddings I actually remember. From Phil and Jane’s profiterole tower to Lou and Russell’s tiered chocolate fudge cake with fudge flowers all over.