Bridesmaids Read online

  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

  Africa House

  64–78 Kingsway

  London WC2B 6AH

  www.simonsays.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  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.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  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 g
orgeous 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?’

  Chapter 2

  I would like to say it’s just the wedding that has prompted today’s pandemonium, but this scene is a microcosm of Grace’s life over the last five years. During that time, her stress levels have been not just through the ceiling, they’ve been through three floors, a well-insulated loft and a roof as well.

  The onset of this hysteria coincided with her return to full-time work after her daughter Polly was born four years ago. It graduated to a terminal case when baby number two, Scarlett (which is the colour of Grace’s face at the moment), came along last November.

  The contents of Grace’s bag are chucked onto the floor one by one before she eventually locates her stockings.

  ‘I really must be careful with these,’ she says.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she tears open the packet, removes one, and puts her toe into the foot of it with all the delicacy of a bricklayer pulling on a pair of Doc Martens. Predictably, her foot goes straight through the end of it with a rip that makes my hair stand on end.

  ‘Oh fff…’ she begins, but as four-year-old Polly walks in from the bathroom, she just about stops herself from saying something she’d regret. ‘God! God! God!’ she goes on. ‘They were my only pair. And they cost eighteen quid!’

  ‘What?’ I am incredulous. ‘For eighteen quid they shouldn’t just be toe-proof, they should be able to withstand a nuclear explosion.’

  Twenty-six minutes left. I may be a novice but I know enough to be aware that we should have made more progress than this. The whole place is starting to take on the air of an episode of ER.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘What can I do to help?’

  ‘Er, Polly’s hair,’ Grace shouts, sprinting into the bathroom in search of her necklace.

  ‘Come on, Pol,’ I say brightly. But the prospect of smearing Molton Brown moisturiser into the carpet seems more appealing to Polly.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ I repeat, trying to sound firm and friendly, as opposed to desperate. ‘We really need to do your hair. Really.’

  There is barely a flicker of recognition as she starts on the naran ji handwash.

  ‘Right, who wants to look like a model?’ I ask, searching for something–anything–that might persuade her to oblige.

  ‘Me!’ she exclaims, jumping up. ‘I want to be a model when I grow up!’

  I can barely believe my luck. Last week she wanted to be a marine biologist.

  I tie Polly’s soft blonde curls into two bunches, add a variety of sparkly clips, and look at the clock. Twenty-three minutes to go. My own dress is still hanging on the back of the door and all I’ve managed to do with my make-up is cover up the spot on my chin with some Clearasil.

  Deciding that my best tactic is to do a rush job on myself so I can then get the bride into her dress, I go into the bathroom and, perching on the edge of the luxurious roll-top bath, I start to apply my make-up with all the precision of a three-year-old in an Expressionist painting competition.

  When it is done, I grab my dress from the back of the door and pull it painstakingly over my head, taking care not to leave any deodorant snowdrifts down the side. Then I look in the mirror and survey the results.

  Not bad. Not exactly J-Lo, but not bad.

  The dress flatters my figure and that’s always a bonus when nature has bestowed on you a classically English build. It’s not that I’m fat. In fact, taken overall, my weight is near enough average. It’s just that the top half of my body (flat chest) and the bottom half (big bum) somehow look like they should belong to two different people.

  My shoulder-length hair is mousy by nature but has been borderline blonde for several years, courtesy of an early Sun-In addiction which has graduated these days to full-blown highlights.

  Today, it has been painstakingly curled–sorry, tousled–into a ‘natural’ look that took precisely two and a quarter hours and enough high-definition hair products to bouffant a scarecrow. And despite the haphazard application of my make-up, as well as the lingering annoyance of that zit, I’m starting to feel like I’ve scrubbed up pretty well today.

  I’m just about to leave the room to attend to Grace, when I spot my bag
at the side of the sink and realise I’ve forgotten something. Something crucial. Something that will finish off the look like nothing else. My ‘chicken fillet’ boob enhancers.

  More dramatic than a Wonderbra and–at £49.99–significantly cheaper than surgery, I’ve been dying for a suitable occasion to try these out. I shove them down the front of my dress and wiggle them into position, before I turn to look at the results.

  I can’t help but smile.

  I still wouldn’t make much of a Nuts cover girl, but it’s an improvement on what nature has bestowed on me. (Or not bestowed, should I say.) I’m just about to show my new assets off to Grace when I hear a yell coming from the adjacent room.

  The bride is having a showdown.

  Chapter 3

  ‘The chocolate favours have WHAT?’ shrieks Grace, gripping the hotel phone furiously.

  ‘Melted?’ she asks, her face growing redder. ‘How can they have melted?’ She puts a hand on her forehead.

  ‘Okay, how bad are they? I mean, are they still heart-shaped?’ There’s a pause.

  ‘Arrrghhh!’ She slams down the phone. Ouch.

  ‘So they’re not still heart-shaped?’ I ask tentatively.

  ‘Apparently they now look like something you’d find in a litter tray,’ she says, forlorn. ‘I haven’t got a bloody clue where my tiara is. Has anyone seen my tiara? Oh God, now I’ve lost that too.’

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ I say, trying to induce some calm. ‘It’s bound to be around here somewhere.’ Although we will need a satellite navigation system to begin to know where.

  ‘Mummy,’ Polly announces, ‘I’ve got no knickers on.’

  Grace slumps onto the bed. ‘This is great,’ she says. ‘I’m getting married in about fifteen minutes. I’ve got a hole in my stockings, I can’t find my tiara, I’ve just found a fake-tan streak on my knee, and now it seems I’m incapable of getting my daughter out of the room with any underwear on. Not only am I now at risk of being carted off by social services but I am also, officially, the worst bride in the world.’

  I sit on the bed and put my arm around her. ‘Cheer up, Grace. You just need to put things in perspective. It’s only the biggest day of your life,’ I joke.

  She wails. Look, I’m trying.

  ‘I’m meant to be walking down the aisle looking as elegant as Audrey Hepburn,’ she says. ‘At the moment, I feel about as elegant as…as…Peggy Mitchell.’