The Wedding Dress

by Dani Atkins

  *

  Gran was waiting outside the doors of Sunnymede. I spotted her long before we crunched to a stop at the end of the gravelled drive. Her anxiety not to waste a single second by waiting for us in the comfort of the foyer tugged at my heart. There’s something very touching about the way the elderly dress, as though they’re in a totally different climate from everybody else. Despite the warmth of the day, Gran was wearing a woollen coat, with every single button done up. She even had a patterned silk scarf knotted at her throat.

  Far more concerning than simply wearing the wrong clothes was seeing the wrong expression on her face. The frail old lady waiting on the paving stones by the door wasn’t the smiling, confident pensioner I was used to seeing. This woman was pale – worryingly so – and her cheeks looked pinched and as dry as parchment. She also looked at least ten years older than my grandmother had done the last time I’d seen her.

  I was out of the car almost before it had drawn to a complete stop and ran towards her, my feet sending up tiny showers of gravel in my haste. I slipped an arm through hers, more for comfort than support, and led her towards the borrowed car. Jamie had also climbed out and was now holding open the rear passenger door. Gran needed help to fasten the seat belt, her fingers fumbling clumsily with the metal clasp. She’d never needed that kind of assistance before. This is just temporary, it’s because of the shock, I told myself as I scooted around the back of the car to climb in the other side. Gran will be back to her old self as soon as she knows Josie is okay. And if she isn’t okay, what happens then? questioned a troublesome voice that sounded so real I even glanced over my shoulder to see if someone had spoken those words out loud.

  ‘I’m going to sit in the back with Gran,’ I whispered to Jamie, ‘if you don’t mind?’ He smiled and shook his head.

  Gran was sitting bolt upright, as though good deportment might influence the outcome of the day. She was gripping the handles of her handbag with fierce pressure that was surely painful for her arthritic fingers. I laid my hand over hers, and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

  After volunteering the name of the hospital, Gran hardly said a word during the twenty-minute journey. We drove in silence except for Jamie’s running commentary of our ETA as the minutes counted down on the satnav screen. Five minutes from our destination Gran turned to me, her faded eyes flooded with tears that had yet to spill.

  ‘I’m very scared, Mandy.’

  ‘Oh Gran, I know you are. I am too, but they’ll be taking really good care of her, I’m sure of that.’

  With only two minutes left until our arrival, Gran finally let the thought that had been torturing her out of its cage. ‘What if we’re too late? What if she’s already gone?’

  I met Jamie’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. Mine were frantic, because I was very much afraid that was exactly what we might find when we got there. I don’t know what I’d have done if Jamie hadn’t spoken up just then.

  ‘They can work absolute miracles these days, Mrs Preston. You wouldn’t believe it. My grandad had two heart attacks, but after his treatment and the pills they gave him, he bounced back as good as new.’

  Gran looked at the blond-haired young man behind the wheel, realising – perhaps for the first time – that he wasn’t just some random cab driver. She looked to me with an unasked question in her eyes. I nodded.

  ‘Thank you very much, young man. That was very kind of you to tell me that. I’m glad your grandfather is doing so well.’

  *

  Jamie dropped us at the main entrance and then drove off to find a space in the hospital’s multi-storey car park. As we walked arm in arm through the revolving doors, I could feel the tension thrumming through Gran like a pulse.

  ‘Josephine Whittaker…’ said the receptionist, drawing out the name as though it was a conundrum she hoped to solve soon. She’d been scrolling through screen after screen on her computer for so long I was starting to feel as though my nerves had been fed through a shredder.

  ‘Ah, here she is,’ she declared at last.

  ‘Is she… is she okay?’ Was the receptionist even allowed to tell me if she wasn’t, I wondered?

  ‘Are you a relative?’ she asked, looking up from the computer. Gran, who’d lived an entire lifetime by the maxim ‘honesty is the best policy’, was shaking her head negatively. Fortunately, I hadn’t inherited her compulsive truthfulness.

  ‘Yes. Josie is my grandmother.’

  I sensed Gran had turned to look at me, and I only hoped that none of her incredulity was visible for the receptionist to see.

  ‘She’s been taken up to C4, the elderly patient unit. If you take the lift, then turn right and keep walking, you’ll find it.’

  ‘They didn’t say how she was,’ Gran said quietly, addressing her words to the closed lift doors as it carried us up to Josie.

  ‘That doesn’t mean it’s bad news.’ I reached for Gran’s hand, or she reached for mine, I wasn’t sure which, and we held fast together for what felt like an interminable journey to the fourth floor.

  I breathed in deeply as we followed signs for the ward, my lungs filling with the smell of the hospital. A nurse buzzed us into the unit; another directed us to the reception desk; and a third motioned us, with an apologetic hand, to wait as she finished up a telephone call. It seemed wrong that all these people, these strangers, knew the fate of the woman Gran loved, and yet we were still in the dark. Finally, the nurse behind the desk finished her phone conversation. There was a kindness in her eyes and an air of calmness that soothed like a salve on a wound.

  ‘She’s still a bit disorientated and confused, and quite sleepy from the drugs we’ve given her for the pain, but I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see you.’ I don’t know how Gran felt, but I was just happy to hear Josie still being spoken about in the present tense.

  The nurse led us a short distance down the corridor to a bay of eight beds and nodded to the one in the furthest corner. A shape, so slight it could easily be mistaken for a rucked blanket, was barely discernible beneath the covers. If it wasn’t for the froth of grey curls on the pillow, I wouldn’t have known who it was. But Gran did.

  Something very strange happened as we crossed the bay to reach Josie’s bed. Gran suddenly seemed to draw on an inner well of strength. Her hand fell away from mine and all at once she was walking taller, straighter and even faster as she hurried to the side of the woman she loved.

  ‘Well, there you are,’ Gran declared as she approached the bed, as though Josie had been guilty of playing a mischievous game of hide-and-seek rather than being occupied with evading death that day.

  The nurse had been right, Josie was doped up to the eyeballs. Her focus was clearly off and I had no idea how many of us she actually saw approaching the bed, but that didn’t matter because there was only one person she needed to see, and she was right there beside her. Gran reached for Josie’s hand, which was lying slackly on the hospital mattress. Carefully avoiding the canula embedded into the papery skin, she squeezed her fingers and then bent down and very tenderly kissed Josie on the lips. It was the most beautiful thing I think I had ever witnessed, and suddenly I was crying.

  Despite my best efforts to stifle it, a tiny sob escaped and Gran looked over her shoulder at me.

  ‘Hush, Mandy. None of that now. Josie is going to be absolutely fine.’

  Josie’s lips were moving soundlessly, as though the events of the day had robbed her of speech, but her eyes never once left Gran’s face. She was looking at her in a way I hoped someone would one day look at me. As though a world gone wrong was suddenly put to rights, simply because I was in it.

  I excused myself, mumbling something about giving them some time alone, but in truth I had a feeling I was about to start bawling and I really didn’t want to do that in front of them. I half stumbled back on to the main ward and headed blindly in the direction of the exit, only to be brought to an abrupt halt when I barged into the solid wall of someone coming the other way. Two stron
g arms tightened around me, which would have been decidedly overfamiliar if they hadn’t belonged to the boy who was proving more important to me with every passing minute.

  ‘Hey. Hey, Mandy. It’s me.’

  I nodded dumbly into the wall of Jamie’s chest, my tears soaking into his T-shirt. Without releasing me, he managed to manoeuvre us both into a small day room for the patients. Thankfully, it was empty. He sat me down on a cracked vinyl-covered armchair, and dropped to a crouch at my feet. His eyes were troubled as he looked up at me.

  ‘No. It’s not that,’ I quickly assured him, between hitching sobs that were finally slowing down. ‘Josie’s okay. Gran’s with her now.’

  Jamie let out a long, slightly uneven breath. ‘Phew. You had me worried there for a minute.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered, and then almost lost it all over again as he tenderly reached up and began wiping away my tears with the pad of his thumb. Mascara smudges mingled with the oil ingrained inside the whorls of his fingerprints. ‘I must look a mess,’ I said, with a shaky laugh.

  Jamie shook his head, his blond hair swinging, mimicking that thing photographers do with wind machines. ‘Never more beautiful,’ he contradicted quietly. It was a lovely compliment from someone who turned every head they passed, and I would treasure it later, once we knew for sure that Josie was going to be okay.

  *

  The passage of time was marked not by the clock, but by the growing accumulation of empty vending machine cups on the table. Gran was still at Josie’s bedside, and I was beginning to think we’d need a crowbar to prise her away from it. I drifted between the ward and the day room, splitting my time between the two people I cared about. Josie was surrounded by a disturbing number of tubes, monitors and machines that bleeped alarmingly whenever she moved.

  ‘They’re only there to help her,’ Jamie said reasonably, putting aside an ancient copy of a gardening magazine he’d already flicked through half a dozen times as we waited. ‘Although I remember being scared shitless the first time I saw my grandad hooked up to that many machines.’

  I caught hold of his hand, and threaded my fingers in his. ‘I forgot to thank you for saying that before to Gran. It really helped her.’ I leant in and kissed him, which felt like a much better way of showing my gratitude. ‘You never talk about your grandfather. I feel bad that I didn’t even know he’d had two heart attacks.’

  Jamie’s eyes held mine, and something flickered in his.

  ‘Three, actually. In the end, he had three. But your gran didn’t need to hear about the last one.’

  His meaning was clear, and I opened my mouth to say I’m so sorry or That’s really sad, and no one could have been more surprised than me when instead the words that tumbled out of it were: ‘I love you.’

  We were frozen in the moment. Jamie’s eyes were locked on mine, and my heart was beating so loudly I could no longer hear the muted sounds of the ward or the monitors. All I could see was Jamie, all I could feel was Jamie, and then suddenly the moment was shattered as the day room door flew open and another, altogether more familiar, voice broke the spell we were under.

  ‘Mandy! Where the hell is your grandmother?’

  *

  ‘Dad!’ I cried, breaking away from Jamie as though I’d been electrocuted. Beyond my father’s suited shoulder, I saw the top of my mother’s head. ‘And Mum,’ I added unnecessarily. My face was hot with embarrassment from what they’d just seen, and possibly even heard. ‘What are you both doing here?’ They entered the day room, which suddenly seemed uncomfortably overcrowded.

  My father dug into his jacket pocket and withdrew a crumpled sheet of paper. I recognised the familiar slant of my handwriting. ‘“Have taken Gran to the hospital”,’ he read, waving my note around as though he was a barrister using it as evidence in a court case. It was easy to see the fear beneath the anger, which my carelessly composed note had caused.

  ‘Oh,’ I said guiltily. ‘I see what you must have thought. I should probably have written “Have gone with Gran to the hospital”.’

  ‘You think?’ Dad asked with unexpected sarcasm. ‘Do you realise I spent most of the drive here believing it was my mother who’d been taken ill?’ His voice was an irate growl, but I knew it was just a defence to cover up how worried he’d been.

  ‘Your mum couldn’t get through to anyone at Sunnymede, and it wasn’t until we were almost here that we discovered your grandmother was just a visitor and not a patient.’

  ‘Your phone is turned off,’ Mum reproached quietly.

  ‘I thought you had to do that in hospitals,’ I replied, in what was probably a very flimsy defence.

  Dad made a noise like an angry bear. ‘So where is your grandmother right now?’

  My eyes flashed briefly to Jamie’s, but there was nothing he could do to make this scene any less uncomfortable.

  ‘Gran is with Josie right now. She’s not left her side since we got here.’

  More ursine noises. Fortunately, Mum was much more sympathetic. ‘How is Josie doing now?’

  My dad shot her a look, but she flashed one back of her own and he backed down.

  ‘It was a heart attack, which isn’t great at her age, but I think she’s more comfortable now. Shall I tell Gran you’re here?’ I asked, reluctant to leave Jamie alone with my parents, but even more worried about taking my father to Josie’s bedside.

  ‘Please,’ said my dad expressively.

  I flew from the room as though there were flames at my heels.

  *

  Gran didn’t want to leave Josie, and only agreed to do so when I promised to sit with her until she returned. Two pairs of worried eyes followed Gran as she went in search of her son. I tore mine away from the corridor when I felt Josie reach for my hand.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mandy, for causing everyone so much trouble.’

  I looked down at the frail old lady who held my grandmother’s future happiness in her hands.

  ‘Josie, nothing could be further from the truth. You don’t have to apologise for anything. All you have to do is get better as soon as you can. That’s all any of us want.’

  *

  I never did find out what Gran said to my dad, but it was a considerably chastened and mollified individual who was waiting for me back in the day room after Gran had once again resumed her position at Josie’s bedside.

  Dad cleared his throat several times, as though there was a troublesome obstacle in there that was blocking the words he was trying to get out. I think it was called pride.

  ‘I understand you were the one who drove them to the hospital this afternoon?’

  I liked the way that Jamie stood up a little straighter as he prepared to be taken to task by my father. There was nothing of the boy about him as he stood there waiting for whatever was coming his way; he was all man.

  ‘Yes I did, sir.’

  My father’s eyes flickered in what I liked to think was surprise at the deference in Jamie’s reply. Dad didn’t have a violent bone in his body, but even so when he began to raise his right arm, I instinctively flinched. But there was no need to have worried, for in a move I’d never have predicted in a million years, he held out his hand to Jamie.

  It hovered in the space between them for several moments, purely because I don’t think Jamie could quite believe what he was seeing either. Then, almost in a rush, he placed his slightly oil-stained hand in my father’s waiting one. My eyes must have been virtually on stalks as the muscular arm decorated with tattoos solemnly shook the one covered in a Marks and Spencer Italian silk suit.

  ‘Thank you for taking care of my family today. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘I was happy to help out,’ Jamie replied, giving me a ‘see-this-wasn’t-so-difficult’ kind of look.

  But I knew Dad far better than he did, and leaving it there would have been one miracle too many for the day.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you must have somewhere else you need to be now, having spent so much time here already. So pl
ease don’t feel you need to stay any longer.’

  It was an artfully polite eviction, but an eviction nonetheless. Dad was a bit of a chess fanatic, and he was looking so pleased with himself that I was almost expecting him to utter a self-congratulatory ‘Checkmate’ under his breath.

  But Mum was one step ahead of him, as I was beginning to realise was actually always the case.

  ‘That’s a great idea, Gerald. Why doesn’t Jamie take Mandy home, and we’ll wait here until visiting time is over and then drive your mother back to Sunnymede?’

  I almost felt sorry for Dad, who realised too late how expertly he’d been outmanoeuvred in his very own game.

  ‘I’m sure you must both be starving,’ Mum continued, ‘so why don’t you pick up a pizza on the way home?’ She nodded meaningfully at my father, who in a daze realised he was left with no other option but to extract his wallet. Poor Dad, he had the look of a man who was replaying the scene in his head, wondering how it had all gone so horribly wrong.

  ‘That’s okay, sir,’ said Jamie, as Dad tried to pass him a twenty-pound note. ‘I can pay for our meal.’ I truly don’t think I’d ever been more proud of him than I was at that moment, and also – surprisingly – a little sympathetic for my dad.

  *

  We did pick up a pizza on the way home, but Jamie drew the line at letting us eat it in the car. ‘Pete’s a reasonable bloke, but he won’t be happy if the courtesy car smells of mozzarella and anchovies in the morning.’

  As it was still not yet dark, we decided to have an impromptu picnic supper in the park. Jamie spread his denim jacket on the ground in lieu of a blanket, and we sat on a grassy slope overlooking the boating pond, which was glistening as though shot through with gold as the sun sank lower in the sky.

  ‘Will your dad give your gran any grief on the way back to the home?’ Jamie asked, tearing off an enormous triangle of pizza from the box between us.