Bridesmaids
Jane Costello is a former journalist for newspapers including the
Liverpool Echo
and the
Daily Mail
. Most recently, she was Editor of the
Liverpool Daily Post
(under her real name, Jane Wolstenholme). She lives in Lancashire with her husband and son.
First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 2008
An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Jane Costello, 2008
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster Inc.
The right of Jane Costello to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: 1-84739-481-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-84739-481-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Otis, with all my love
Thank you…
To Darley Anderson for spotting the potential in my first few chapters and encouraging me to write on. Without his wisdom, this book wouldn’t exist. Also, to his wonderful team, particularly Emma White, Madeleine Buston and Zoe King.
To Suzanne Baboneau and Julie Wright at Simon & Schuster for agreeing to publish
Bridesmaids
in the first place and then, with Libby Vernon, editing the book so brilliantly.
To my friends and former colleagues at the
Liverpool Daily Post
and
Liverpool Echo
, for providing at least a smidgen of inspiration for this book’s (completely fictional) newspaper and its journalists.
To my parents, Jean and Phil Wolstenholme, for their love and support–and for being the best unpaid publicists any author could wish for.
To Nina and Peter, Will and Gemma, Gregg and Hannah and all the other friends whose weddings have, over the years, provided ample material with which to write
Bridesmaids
and probably at least ten sequels.
Finally, special thanks to Jon Brown for the best wedding I ever attended (my own) and for the love, encouragement and extra childcare duties which fell to him while I was writing this book.
The Forest of Bowland, Lancashire,
Saturday, 24 February
My best friend is due to get married in fifty-two minutes and the hotel suite looks like day three on the main field at Glastonbury.
The room is strewn with random items of wedding paraphernalia–and I include the bride herself in that category. Grace is still in her dressing-gown, with only half of her make-up done. I, meanwhile, have spent the last ten minutes frantically trying to revive the flowers in her hair after she trapped them in the car door coming back from the hairdresser.
I give her curls another generous whirl of spray and throw the empty can onto the four-poster bed.
‘You’re sure it’s all secure now, Evie?’ she asks, hurriedly applying her mascara in a huge antique mirror. I’ve used enough hairspray to keep Trevor Sorbie in a comfortable retirement, so am reasonably confident.
‘Definitely,’ I say.
‘It doesn’t look unnatural though, does it?’ she goes on, picking up a tub of bronzing balls.
I tentatively touch her curls. They feel like they’re made of fibre-glass.
‘Course not,’ I lie, strategically re-positioning bits of foliage over some of the thirty-odd hairgrips. ‘Your flowers are perfect. Your hair’s perfect. Everything’s perfect.’
She looks at me, entirely unconvinced.
We’re in the bridal suite at the Inn at Whitewell, in the Forest of Bowland, a piece of countryside so beautiful it inspired Tolkien’s Shire in
The Lord of the Rings
, and so tranquil that the Queen herself has said she’d like to retire here. Which is fair enough because she’s probably in the 0.001 per cent of the population who could afford to.
In any case, we haven’t even looked at the scenery; there just hasn’t been time. And the gorgeous suite with its sweeping window and antique chic is completely wasted on us at the moment.
‘Great! Excellent. Good! Thanks,’ Grace says breathlessly. ‘Right. What now?’
Why she’s asking me, I don’t know. Because nobody could be less qualified to advise on an occasion like this.
First of all, I’m just not used to this wedding malarkey. The last one I went to was in the mid-Eighties, when my mum’s Cousin Carol married the gangly love of her life, Brian. Within three years he’d run off with a seventeen-stone painter and decorator. Carol was devastated, despite the undeniably professional job her rival had done on their hall, stairs and landing.
For those nuptials I wore a puffball skirt and wouldn’t let go of the pageboy’s hand all day. If I’d known then that that was going to amount to one of my life’s most meaningful relationships, I’d have tried to remember his name.
Which brings me to the second reason why Grace would be better off asking the grandfather clock in the corner for advice: I doubt very much that I’ll ever be getting married myself.
Before you get the wrong impression, I should explain an important point. It’s not that I don’t
want
to get married–I’d love to. I just don’t think I ever will.
Because the fact is–the very
worrying
fact is–that I have now reached the grand old age of twenty-seven and can honestly say that I have never been in love. I’ve never even come close to being in love. By which I mean I’ve never actually managed to stay with someone for longer than three months. In short, I am to commitment what Pamela Anderson is to AA bras. A very poor fit.
The funny thing is, I encounter plenty of people who think this ought to be a cause for celebration. They assume that my inability to be tied down makes me young, free and thoroughly liberated.
But that isn’t how I feel. Like everyone else, I read
The Female Eunuch
in sixth form and didn’t shave my armpits for three weeks, but I just
know
emancipation isn’t meant to be like this.
A typical case is Gareth, with whom I split up last week. Gareth was–
is
–lovely. Nice smile. Good heart. Decent job. Lovely. And, as usual, it all started well, with pleasant evenings over a bottle of Chianti in Penny Lane wine bar–near where I live in Liverpool–and lazy Sunday afternoons at the cinema.
But we’d barely been together four weeks–he was suggesting a three-night caravanning holiday with his mum and dad in North Wales–when I knew that it was just too late.
I had ceased to think about the cute little dimple in his chin and couldn’t stop thinking about the dirt under his toenails. And the fact that the most intellectual thing on his bookshelf was a copy of
Auto-Trader
. And–oh well, I won’t go on.
Suffice to say, I’m aware that nothing he did or said was all that terrible and, certainly, it doesn’t compare with what some women have to put up with. Yet, while I kept telling myself there were worse things a man could do than think that George Eliot was that bloke from
Minder
, I knew deep down he wasn’t for me.
Which is fine. Except they never seem to be for me.
Anyway, after a gap of twenty-two years, I’ve now got three weddings lined up in one year and I’m a bridesmaid at every one of them. Although if today’s dramatics are anything to go by, I’m not sure my nerves are up to it.
‘Shoes!’ Grace declares as she stomps around the bedroom, flinging items out of the way.
I look at the clock: thirty-one minutes to go. Grace is now pacing around like a teenager waiting for the results of a pregnancy test. She picks up her lip-brush and hesitates.
‘Maybe I should get my dress on now,’ she says. ‘No, wait, I need my stockings. Oh, hang on, should I touch up my hair with the tongs first? What do you think?’
What do I know?
‘Er, stockings?’ I offer.
‘You’re right. Yes. Stockings. Christ, where are they?’