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: Chapter 3

I’m dreaming that I am being lightly but repeatedly tasered. And then I realise my phone is buzzing on the nightstand.

I reach for it, squinting at the series of messages, rolling my eyes at each one – the first three are wedding guests who need to update their dietary preferences, including one woman who doesn’t want any wedding cake.

The wedding cake is not compulsory, I tap back.

I know, she replies. I just don’t want to be offered any or I’ll eat it.

I flump back on the pillow but take some satisfaction in the next message – the couple whose last Instagram post was a gushing, ‘My life began when I met you!’ are now insisting on being seated at different tables, with no direct sight lines.

Fortunately the venue is unphased by the updates. ‘We also have a selection of heels for those women who travelled in their flip-flops and forgot to pack their party shoes and Savile Row ties for the men.’

I can see why Charlotte settled on this particular stately home.

All is well with the guest situation, I type, reassuring her that I am on top of my duties before I even ask how she’s feeling, because that would be her priority despite it being the day before she says ‘I do’.

We have a small problem with the mother-of-the-bride, she taps back.

I sit up and call her immediately. ‘What is it?’

‘She’s not coming.’

I catch myself before I say ‘Thank god!’ out loud.

‘We were supposed to be having a special mother–daughter night before the wedding.’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ I say. Now’s not the time to point out that this was only going to bring stress and puffy eyes. As Jay might say, these two were cut from very different cloth . . .

*

With her white-blonde river of hair, Charlotte looks like someone who entered the world aboard a Viking longship on a misty fjord, as opposed to in a hoarder’s bedroom in a Kilburn tower block. The clutter and chaos of her upbringing somehow birthed a world-class organiser, which only served to put her further at odds with her mother. The two of them were always pulling in opposite directions, with literal tugs-of-war over certain household items.

‘But I might need it one day!’

‘You already have seven of these that you don’t use, three of which are broken and two are still in their original packaging!’

You get the idea.

Charlotte thrived with the structure of school and even streamlined a number of the office filing systems they still use to this day.

It was these skills that first attracted her husband-to-be Marcus. Charlotte was hired to take his firm’s annual banking banquet to the next level and just hearing her say ‘Consider it done!’ gave him goosebumps. He found himself making excuses to call so that he could revel in her decisive precision. When the time came to meet, he was already three-quarters smitten and watching her respond with calm efficiency to the non-stop queries from her staff finished him off.

The only downside to Charlotte, as far as he could tell, was her ethereal beauty, putting her in a different league. Marcus did the very best with what he had – barbershop shaves and bespoke suits, designer watches and convertible cars – but the aristocratic ties that had previously bagged him dates meant nothing to her, so for a while he was at a loss for how to impress her. Then one day they had to forgo a gala dinner to babysit his niece and nephew and it dawned on him that she was far happier at home in loungewear than being paraded around like arm candy. She also really, really liked how neat and tidy he was. So he took a chance and popped the question. I don’t know what surprised us the most – how quickly she said yes or the fact that they would now beat Gareth to the altar. In just a matter of hours . . .

‘I had thought I might spend the eve of my wedding in quiet meditation,’ Charlotte says, bringing me back to our current conversation. ‘But then I just started spinning out, worrying about everything and—’

‘I’ll come straight after work,’ I tell her.

‘Really?’ Her voice brightens.

‘Well, it’s going to be a wrench tearing myself away from my sagging mattress for your four-poster but I’ll do it.’

‘Oh, thank you! Do you think we should invite May?’

Jeez! First her mother, now May? Anyone would think she’s trying to sabotage the ceremony.

‘She can’t come.’

‘She can’t?’

‘No. She’s getting a tattoo.’

‘The night before the wedding?’

‘It’s a much sought-after artist. In from Japan, for one day only.’ My lie gets more elaborate. I would feel bad if the alternative wouldn’t be such a disaster. I picture May attempting to fill Charlotte’s head full of doubts about Marcus and then, when that didn’t work, locking her in the wine cellar. ‘Anyway! I should get ready for work!’

‘Don’t forget to bring your wedding outfit so you can come straight here,’ Charlotte instructs.

‘And you don’t forget to breathe amidst all your last-minute cross-checking.’

‘I won’t,’ she sighs. ‘It’s right here – number four on my list.’

*

I gaze up at the wisteria-garlanded castle, all sandy stonework and chunky crenellations. I can picture Charlotte leaning out of the top turret window, her river of blonde hair accented with butterflies as she waves to her adoring courtiers. Hashtag real life fairytale. And then I try to think how I would feel if this was my wedding . . .

Nothing.

For someone who has premonitions, I’ve never been able to picture my wedding day. I can see Gareth in some rustic setting with as many woodland creatures as guests, May in an underground nightclub in Berlin for her second time around, and if Jay decided to settle down, sometime in his eighties, he would try to top having Liza Minelli singing ‘Single Ladies’ at the altar. But me . . .?

‘I found a bottle of non-alcoholic gin!’ Charlotte runs towards me whooping.

‘You say that like it’s a good thing,’ I say as I hug her.

‘Well, it would be too weird to not have a drink but we don’t want to be hungover for the wedding.’

‘Quite right,’ I say, noticing that her eyes are uncharacteristically shadowy.

‘I’ve got fresh lemons and ice and we’ll put on a face pack and pretend we’re at a spa.’

She takes my arm as she leads me through the arched stone entrance, dominated by a dramatic flourish of a staircase. To the right are the wedding rooms – one for the ceremony and one for the dining and reception. Charlotte won’t let me see either.

‘You have to wait until Gareth has completed positioning the flowers. The design is sublime.’

‘What’s over here?’ I point to the intriguing half-size door to the left of the stairs.

‘That’s the old snug bar. It’s really cosy and characterful, lots of dark wood and booths to hide away in. People can step out of the fray if it gets too much with all the music and dancing.’

I can’t wait for the dancing. Especially as Charlotte has planned a sequence of tunes from our school years.

‘And through here?’ I take a step forward.

Charlotte stops me before I nose too far. ‘That’s the owner’s quarters so out of bounds. The ladies’ and gents’ are either side of the staircase.’

‘Got it.’ I look around. ‘This time tomorrow this is going to be a-buzz with people in their finery toasting a woman who looks just like Charlotte Dixon but is now Charlotte Davenport!’

She gives a little squeal. ‘Let’s crack open the fake gin!’

I had felt a little dubious about spending the night in the honeymoon suite, lest that be my only experience of it in life, but thankfully Charlotte is saving that for Marcus. ‘It’s in a turret, up this winding staircase with all these different levels. You’ll see it as soon as my hair is done tomorrow. It’s all on the schedule.’

‘Remind me how many times we have to chew our toast in the morning?’ I tease.

She ignores me and instead leads the way to our shared room for the night. If this is just a basic room, I can only imagine the grandeur of her suite.

‘It’s funny how posh people can get away with really outlandish wallpaper that anywhere else would look bizarre,’ I note as I take in the tropical jungle design. In a world of Elephant Ear paint and rose gold everything, the rich jewel colours seem incredibly decadent.

‘I hope you don’t mind sharing the bed,’ Charlotte says as she prepares our drinks in heavy cut-glass tumblers.

‘I might just curl up on this rug it’s so plush!’ I kick off my shoes and wriggle my toes in the soft teal textile. ‘Where are your things?’

‘I already unpacked. My case is in the wardrobe.’

You can tell a lot about a person by how they inhabit a hotel room. I have a gift for marking every available surface in a matter of minutes, even if I’m only travelling with a carry-on. With Charlotte, everything is tucked neatly away, her beauty products symmetrically aligned. May’s the same way. She still has a key to my flat and sometimes makes an excuse to come over before I get home from work so she can re-colour-code my wardrobe and untangle my jewellery.

Charlotte hands me my drink, we clink ‘To love in all its forms!’ and then she leads me to the surprisingly modern bathroom where two sheet face masks are set on the marble countertop.

‘Ooh, I’ve always wanted to use one of these but was too afraid to try one home alone.’

‘Afraid?’

‘Not that my skin would react but that I’d forget I had it on, catch sight of my reflection and think some freaky masked killer had broken in.’

Charlotte laughs and then positively snorts as we struggle to apply them.

‘I think you’ve got yours upside down!’ I feel hysteria kicking in. ‘No, that bit goes around your ear!’

‘My ear? My ears don’t need a facial.’

‘It’s just to hold it in place.’

‘Where are my nose flaps?’ she squeaks.

I try to help her but keep going limp from laughing. ‘Oh my god, are you on sideways now?’ I ask, eyes streaming.

‘Don’t cry, you’ll dilute the serum!’

Finally we settle, side by side on the giant bed.

‘How are you feeling about your mum now?’ I ask.

‘Like I’ve dodged a bullet.’

I smile.

‘I didn’t want to deprive Mum of her special mother-of-the-bride moment but it turns out she wanted no part of it. She doesn’t really like to leave the house now. Marcus thinks she needs some professional help, but she’s surely not that bad. Is she?’

It’s a good thing the mask is hiding my expression. ‘That’s certainly nothing you have to fix or decide right now.’ I try to move her on to cheerier topics. ‘Let’s just try to savour this special time – the night before your wedding!’

‘You know the only thing that would make this better?’

‘Actual gin in the gin?’

Charlotte turns to me. ‘If we were having a double wedding – remember when we were fourteen and we swore that’s what we were going to do?’

‘Well, it’s a good thing you decided not to wait for me for that!’

‘Oh Amy!’ she sighs. ‘I want so much for you to meet someone who loves you as much as I do.’

I experience a little pang. ‘Thank you.’

Her head tilts to the side. ‘Do you ever wonder about Rob?’

‘Funny you should ask, I looked him up the other day – three kids and one more on the way.’

‘Oh.’

Rob Mead is my longest relationship to date – six whole months. Of course, I knew from our first kiss that he was going to leave me but on this occasion it was for a job in New Zealand, not another girl. The way he was looking at me in my premonition of our airport goodbye was incentive enough for me to withstand knowing of the impending departure.

‘That must have been so tough,’ Charlotte notes.

‘It certainly imbued every moment with a sense of poignancy,’ I admit. On the one hand I wanted to make the most of him while he was here, and on the other I always felt like I was carrying around a sense of loss. ‘Plus, it was weird knowing that he got the job before he did.’

‘If only you could have bet on that at the bookie’s.’ Charlotte sighs then gives a sudden shudder. ‘You know, I still get chills thinking about Mick.’

I nod. ‘Me too.’

We met at an indoor rock-climbing party. He was talking about a trip to Pembrokeshire to try it for real and when we kissed on our pub date I saw myself in a hospital bed. A nurse handed me a mirror to inspect the bruises on my face – I was all swollen and bashed up and my jaw hurt – had I taken a tumble? Was he injured too? But then in he walked and my whole body went cold with terror. He was the perpetrator. I remember my nails digging so deep into the nurse’s hand that she ushered him straight out of the room. I was so freaked out by the vision that my hand was actually shaking when I reached for my drink. I excused myself from the pub saying that I felt a bit faint, which I did, and when he followed up with a text I went into graphic detail about my upset stomach so he would never see me in a romantic way again. It worked for me but I hate to think of the next girl he zoned in on. If only everyone who kissed him could see what danger lay ahead.

After that I went through what May called my ‘Kiss Me Quick!’ phase – swooping in at the earliest opportunity because I felt I couldn’t trust my judgement and needed some insight into the man’s character before I’d even agree to go for coffee. Sometimes we would place bets on what the outcome might be – runs off with another man, wildly jealous, sentenced to life imprisonment . . .

Of course, it hasn’t always been so extreme, there are milder reactions – basically when I like them less at the beginning and despise them less at the end. That feels more like a ‘Sorry, no dice. Thanks for playing, better luck next time.’ And, yes, I do get back hours of my life that I would have wasted on the wrong person but it’s a bit like school – you might not like every subject but you end up with a well-rounded education. I’ve always felt I’m missing out on the practical aspect – the actual relationship with all its highs and lows. But would you keep turning the pages if you already knew how your love story was going to end? It’s like putting a stack of money on a roulette number when you know you are going to lose. Or buying an expensive sweater that will no longer fit after three wears. Mind you, if I really fancied them, I did try to apply the sentiment ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, and do it anyway.

Charlotte giggles as we start to peel away our masks. ‘Remember when you tried the Pretty Woman angle?’

This isn’t quite how it sounds – no thigh-high PVC boots required. I just wanted to have a physical encounter without all the spoilers so I told the guy in question that I had a fantasy about cutting straight to sex with no kissing. Crafty, right? I could be as oblivious as the next woman about what was coming next. But that just proved to be extremely uncomfortable in all senses of the word. If I’d kissed the guy in question, I would have seen myself making a hasty exit after an excessive barrage of grunts and commands. At least the sex worker motif paid off in that sense – the bedroom activities were strictly limited to an hour.

‘I still think it’s very cool,’ Charlotte says as we peel away our masks. ‘One day it will serve you well.’

‘Would you want to know about you and Marcus?’ I ask as I rub the excess moisturiser into my skin.

‘If I could go back to our first kiss?’ She frowns.

‘How about if you could kiss him at the moment you are declared husband and wife and know whether you were going to make your paper or diamond anniversary, would you?’

She looks freaked out. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I love him and I’m happy and I don’t want anything to spoil this feeling.’ And then she blinks as if the penny has finally dropped. ‘Oh Amy, I’m sorry. I never really realised.’

‘Don’t be!’ I wave away her concern.

She’s quiet for a moment and then ventures, ‘You know, there is someone interested in you coming to the wedding . . .’

I roll my eyes. ‘Your cousin Elliot doesn’t count.’

He’s had a weird crush on me since we were teenagers. Charlotte briefly moved in with his family when she was going through a rough patch with her mum and then felt obliged to invite him along when we went out as a group. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, definite boy band fodder, but whenever he came out with us I would feel his eyes upon me. I don’t know if it was because my boobs were starting to kick in or, more specifically, out but there was something creepy about his stare and the way he always ended up sitting next to me. One time we shared a bumper car at the fairground and he repeatedly threw his arm across my chest on the pretext of protecting me from the moment of impact, never mind that he was the one hurtling us headlong into every available surface.

‘I was thinking about his spin-the-bottle party the other day—’

‘Let’s not go there!’ I cut in. ‘I still have nightmares about that near-miss.’ I reach for my faux gin. ‘I suppose I should be flattered that he’s still interested twenty years on. But I’m not.’

Charlotte gives a little smirk. ‘I wasn’t talking about Elliot.’

My head snaps round. ‘What?’

She purses her lips. ‘I promised I wouldn’t say anything.’

‘Promised who?’

‘The guy.’

‘What guy?’

‘I don’t know him well but he saw your picture when Marcus and I were working on the table plans and he expressed an interest. He made me promise I wouldn’t say anything so he wouldn’t feel self-conscious when he approached you.’

‘He’s going to approach me? Do you think I’ll like him?’

Her face falls.

‘Oh great.’

‘You never know, though. Look at me and Marcus!’

I nod, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘So, talk me through the plans for the day again . . .’

Three times Charlotte rushes out to check on things in the out of bounds rooms and each time I pledge I’ll go for a simpler ceremony. By the time we climb into bed I finally have a vision for my wedding day – a Vegas drive-thru.

We’re just getting ready to turn out the light when Charlotte turns to me and says, ‘Amy, I want you to know that I’m never giving up on you replaceing your love. I might be getting married but I’m in this as much as you and I’m always looking out for your heart. Even when you want to give up, I won’t.’

A tear slides down my cheek, my heart hurting a little from the sweetness of this sentiment. ‘That’s so kind of you.’ My voice wavers. ‘Now, please stop worrying about me and let yourself be happy.’

‘If you insist,’ she replies, turning out the lamp. But even in this shadowy light I can see the ruck in her brow.

I study her for a moment and then ask, ‘Why did you really want your mother to be here tonight?’

She gives a half-smile. ‘It’s silly.’

‘Tell me.’

She turns to face me. ‘When I was a little girl, she used to smooth my brow to try to stop my brain going nineteen to the dozen. She always had the coolest fingertips . . . I thought maybe she’d do it one more time, so I could have a good night’s sleep before the wedding.’

‘You haven’t been sleeping?’

She shakes her head. ‘There’s just so many details to think of – it has to be perfect.’

I’d be wasting my breath arguing that point. Instead, I press my hand to the icy dregs of my drink on the nightstand. ‘Just relax now,’ I say in my best meditative voice. ‘Find a comfortable position, let the tension in your shoulders go. That’s right,’ I say as she settles into the pillow. ‘Breathe in for seven, out for seven . . .’

And then I reach over and gently smooth her forehead, from the middle of her brows, sweeping up to her hairline, over and over again, until she falls asleep . . .