One Step Too Far (12 page)

“Sit down, you bloody idiot,” she hissed, only half-joking, but it was too late, a couple of colleagues were there getting breakfast and one of them squealed and went, "Is that what I think it is?” and then Emily’s boss heard, over at the toast machine, and before she knew it there was a whole group of people around her and Ben, oohing at the ring, congratulating them, hugging them, and although Emily usually hated being the centre of attention, in this instance she found she didn’t really mind.

17

On the first day of my new job I re-wear my black dress – I don’t have anything else suitable for an advertising agency – and Angel lets me borrow her accessories again, in fact she says I can keep them but I tell her not to be so daft. I get up early but still have to wait for the bathroom, Erica just beats me to it. When she eventually comes out, the bathroom is steamed up and stinks of sulphur and mouthwash, and I wonder if she’s as poisonous inside as she looks on the outside. Although I try to smile she scowls at me as she scurries past, wrapped in a short faded towel that shows off her perfect little legs.

I still don’t have flip-flops, but I’m getting used to my bathroom regime now – trying not to touch any of the surfaces, trying to avoid the mouldy shower curtain slithering against my body, then once I'm clean standing on one leg whilst I hold the shower head to rinse the bottom of the other foot, drying it with the towel I’ve hung over the shower rail so it doesn’t make contact with any of the surfaces, easing my dried foot into my waiting slipper, showering my other foot, half in, half out the bath, drying it and sliding it into the other slipper. I’m sure eventually I’ll get used to it, lower my standards, but at the moment this is the way I can cope.

Brad and Erica are in the kitchen and he's friendly but she's not. Why is such a nice guy with such a bitch? I try not to let her bother me, I should be used to it from growing up with Caroline, and I sit quietly at the table with a bowl of muesli and a mug of strong sweet tea like my mum used to make me.

I leave before I need to, I mustn't be late, and it’s just one line to Oxford Circus and it only takes me half an hour. I walk along Oxford Street and then turn left up Wardour Street and find the office a hundred yards up, on the right. It’s 8.25, I’m too early. I look at the shiny plate glass windows, through which I can see furniture shaped like internal organs, and the fancy sign above the double doors, and I look at my dreary dress and boring ballet pumps, and know I don’t look good enough. It’s Day Five, Friday in my first week in London and I stand outside this gleaming tribute to four people’s egos and find myself wanting to turn and run – but to where? Maybe I should have moved to the sea, I used to love it there.
Get a grip, Cat. You’ve already run away, you can’t do it again. This is it now.
I shove away memories from happier times, smooth my dress and adjust my scarf, and lurk outside for a few more minutes, until it’s time to go in.

18

Caroline adjusted Emily’s veil for the final time and they both looked in the mirror as two very different girls stared back. The bride was open-faced, natural-looking, with dark blond hair piled up high above her long neck. She wore a white satin jacket with fitted sleeves and tiny buttons down the front. Her matching skirt was panelled and kicked out just at the knees, and her shoes were high and forties style. The short veil finished the outfit off, and Caroline thought she'd never seen her twin look so glamorous. Emily had been worried about her sister doing the dress, she really wasn’t sure she could trust her, but Caroline had seemed so eager she thought it would be rude to say no, she was a designer after all – and besides she might react badly, get really upset. But Emily needn’t have worried, she was delighted with the result.

Caroline was wearing hot pink, daringly short, and she had clashing bright auburn hair, cut into a geometric bob with a thick fringe, like when she was three years old. Her make-up was garish. You could hardly tell they were sisters.

Frances came into the room and saw her two girls standing together, and she noticed how happy they both looked, and yes, even close, like twins should be, and she hoped that maybe they could be more of a proper family at last. Even Andrew seemed a bit more available to them these days, slightly less vacant. It was weird to think it, but perhaps Caroline’s stay in that mental hospital had done them all good, one way or another. The staff had done a marvellous job in coaxing Caroline back into sanity, and then Frances’s insistence that her daughter move home for a while had been a surprising success. After the initial shock of the loud angry music and the bathroom-hogging and Caroline’s natural obnoxiousness, it had been cathartic for all of them. For the first time ever it was just Frances, Andrew and Caroline. Emily had already moved out to her tiny flat on the other side of Chester, and Caroline no longer felt in competition with her twin, at least not on a day to day basis, and it had been good for her. She’d been back with her parents for over two years now – none of them expected it to last anywhere near that long – and she'd appeared to soften, Frances thought, to finally gain some lovability. She’d got an admin job at a fashion house in Manchester and seemed to be doing well – Frances was thrilled for her. Caroline even seemed to hate Emily a little bit less these days, and she'd made her look so
beautiful
today. Frances felt her eyes fill unexpectedly with tears and she pulled herself together, in case she ruined her make-up.

An hour before the ceremony, Ben was getting dressed in his best man’s bedroom, which was at the back of the hotel and was one of the few that didn’t have that expansive sea view. He was pleasantly surprised that everything was going so well – dinner last night had been seamless, entirely devoid of bad behaviour – but he was still wary, he knew better than to assume Brown family events would be incident-free. He still found Caroline prickly, and she had that knack of making people so nervous of what they said that they said silly things that she then took pleasure in mocking – but she had definitely improved, and there was nothing concrete that she'd said or done over the wedding to upset anyone. She’d even made Emily’s wedding dress which had secretly worried him, but Emily seemed pleased with it, so he shouldn’t fret. Ben didn’t know why he felt so anxious. This was meant to be the happiest day of his life, they were getting married in the most romantic hotel in the world, with its heady setting and improbable back story, and he knew that Emily was the most unbelievably perfect girl for him.

There was a knock on the door. Good, that must be Jack with the waistcoat, he thought. He finished tying his tie and was tucking his shirt into his trousers as he opened the door.

“Oh. Hello,” said Ben. There was something about Caroline that always made him uneasy, and seeing her now looking absolutely stunning propped up provocatively against the doorjamb made him shift his gaze quickly from her startling blue eyes to her vivid pink mouth, down the length of her silk dress and smooth exposed legs, towards the floor.

“Here it is, Benny boy,” said Caroline and she held out the magenta waistcoat she’d designed for him. “Sorry it’s late, I was just doing some last minute adjustments.” Ben didn’t like the waistcoat much, but he was happy to wear it for Emily, as long as she thought it looked good. He reluctantly let Caroline help him into it, and then she insisted on doing up all the tiny buttons, protesting that his fingers were too big and that he would mark the silk. She seemed to take ages and when she’d finished she looked him up and down slowly, as if he was naked.

“Wow, you scrub up well,” she said. “My darling twin sister has certainly hit the jackpot.” He went to move away, embarrassed, but she leaned into him then and whispered, “Good luck, Ben, I hope you and Emily will be very happy together,” and before he could stop her she kissed him, right on the mouth, very gently, and for a nano-second Ben felt his body respond, and then he pulled away and muttered thanks and shut the door.

He put on his new shoes and they pinched a bit, and his cheeks were flaming, but he was ready. His best man, Jack, poked his head around the door. “You nearly ready, mate? Hey, you’re looking terrible, are you OK?”

“I’m fine, just last minute nerves I think.”

“Well, everything’s cool, the registrar’s here, I just saw Frances and Andrew, they’re dressed, and people are beginning to arrive. I’ve given the hotel the music, it all works. Everything's going to be fine.”

“I hope so,” said Ben.

“Oh Christ, you’re not having second thoughts are you? I need to get you a drink.”

“No, no, it’s not that. I’m certain about Emily, I’m just not so sure about her family.”

“Well, be grateful it’s that way round,” Jack said and laughed. “Come on. There’s nothing a beer won’t settle,” and he took Ben by the arm and the two of them walked together to the bar.

Andrew had noticed Danielle as soon as they’d arrived the previous evening. Caroline had moaned on and on that she didn’t have a boyfriend to bring, how she hated coming to these things on her own, and so in the end Emily and Ben had asked if she’d like to invite a friend instead. She and Danielle had been close in London – it was Danielle who’d called Frances the night Caroline had her “episode,” as they now called it, if
it
ever needed to be referred to. Danielle was still living in London, but she’d travelled all the way down to Devon specially, and now she was here she was glad she’d made the effort. She thought the hotel was splendid, a Gothic extravaganza with a huge flower-filled terrace and a view to die for. There was an immense great hall that was so chilled, even on a summer’s day, that it had real fires blazing in monster fireplaces on either side of the room. Creaky creased leather Chesterfields made three sides of a square around each fire, heavy mud-coloured curtains flanked the windows, rendering the room pleasantly gloomy. A sweeping staircase led up to the minstrels’ gallery that went the whole way round the hall, and it was off here that each of the hotel’s 12 rooms was found. The bedrooms themselves were in direct contrast to the great hall: bright, sunny, sea-soaked, with dove grey walls and white Egyptian cotton sheets and bolster cushions, and bathrooms with fancy soaps and clawed foot silver baths. Danielle absolutely loved it here, and everyone had been so friendly, in Andrew’s case a bit too friendly, but Danielle was used to dealing with that sort of thing, and besides he was actually quite dishy for his age. She was the type of girl that men found attractive although women often didn’t see it, and she was cheerful and open which she knew sometimes sent out the wrong signals, but that’s just the way she was, she didn’t see why she needed to change.

The doleful notes of Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead played as Emily walked down the makeshift aisle created between rows of cream fabric-covered chairs in the garden overlooking the sea. Frances had thought it was a strange choice of music, but only Emily and Ben knew its significance, how it had framed their first tentative embrace, and they were happy. They'd decided on a small wedding, only 40-odd people, where everyone they'd invited would come because they loved them and were happy for them, where there was no backbiting about the bride’s dress or how the marriage would never last. In the beginning Emily had even wondered whether they should run away and get married on a beach somewhere, she didn't want to upset Caroline, she'd said, but Ben had put his foot down for once. He'd reminded her of the amazing hotel on the cliff in Devon, of how they’d talked hypothetically of what a great place it would be for a wedding, and how they’d both known at the time but hadn’t dared acknowledge that they were referring to their own. Caroline would be fine about it, he’d said, it wasn’t their fault she hadn’t met anyone, and anyway she was much better about things like that these days. And so far, Emily thought, Caroline had been more than fine: she actually seemed happy for them, which was lovely.

Andrew and Frances stood together watching their eldest twin take her vows, and it made them think back to their own wedding day and how long ago that was. Had Andrew meant his vows at the time, they both wondered, and neither knew the answer and they both supposed it didn’t matter now. As she faced the flat still water Frances’s thoughts kept drifting away to earlier times, to their honeymoon, the awful births, the exhausting early years of their daughters' lives – to how she’d been surprised that Andrew hadn’t left her once the twins had grown older, she’d known all along there’d been someone else. Andrew was thinking about how different his life may have been if it had been Victoria he’d married, if he’d met her first, and he wondered for the thousandth time why he hadn’t just upped and left his family, surely love is more important? But it was too late now. He thought about how he’d tried to have it all, to keep Victoria, keep his family, and he saw how instead of making everyone happy it had damaged all of them. Victoria must have felt used, strung along by the end, he knew that. After she finally finished it he'd been so utterly bereft that what else was there to do but slide into his pattern of one-night stands and dispiriting affairs? He’d found then that he needed Frances after all, needed her steadiness and calm, someone to come home to.

And what was Frances’s excuse for not going? She stood close to Andrew, willing him to take her hand, knowing that, despite all his lies and flakiness, she still loved her husband – he was in many ways a good man and still so handsome, and besides how would she cope on her own?

“So I now pronounce you husband and wife,” said the registrar, a gentle-toned Welshman who'd managed to make the short wedding service meaningful, perfect, as his words hung on the breeze. “You may kiss the bride.”

As Ben leant forward and gave Emily the tenderest of kisses, Caroline shifted in her seat and yawned.

The wedding breakfast was served outside on mismatched china plates and was a simple buffet of rare roast beef and an enormous whole salmon, with eight different salads and freshly dug new potatoes. Pudding doubled as the wedding cake and was the biggest pile of profiteroles Emily had ever seen, even better than she'd imagined. The weather was faultless, and as it was July she hadn’t even bothered with contingency plans, she’d been that confident that the sun would shine on her and Ben, on their happiness. All she wanted was for everyone to eat lovely food, drink champagne and enjoy the view, and she wasn’t too fussed about anything else. “Right people, right location, how wrong can we go?” she’d said, and Ben had loved her even more that she wasn’t one of those women who turned tedious over their wedding plans, agonising over the colour of the ribbons on the menu cards or which flowers to have in the table sprays. Caroline swanned about with a glass in her hand, flashing her dancer’s thighs, going on about how she’d designed all the outfits, annoying Jack’s wife by continuously flirting with him, paying people compliments that sounded like insults. As the afternoon wore on, she became that bit louder, that bit brittler, and when she started saying loudly how she wished she could find herself a nice husband too, but one who wasn't a doormat like Ben, Frances took her to one side and suggested quietly that maybe she'd had enough.