All She Ever Wished For. Claudia Carroll

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СКАЧАТЬ I won’t,’ says Mum. ‘Apart from Auntie Agnes, Brenda next door and Jill from the choir, I promise I won’t show a single soul. Now come on out, we’re all dying to see you.’

      So I step out of the cubicle and swish my way up to a dais in the middle of the shop, then pirouette around so they can all get a really good look at the dress.

      ‘Well?’ I ask excitedly. ‘What do you think?’

      ‘Oh, my darling,’ Mum says, welling up a bit. ‘You’re just … beautiful. The dress is even lovelier than I thought it would be. Now give me a nice big smile while I take a few snaps.’

      ‘Absolutely stunning!’ says the saleslady, bustling over to me with a pincushion to hand. ‘It’s like the dress was made for you!’

      Said saleslady, by the way, is called Cindi ‘with an i, not a y’, as she pointed out to us, and she even looks a bit like a Cindi, with swishy, long blonde hair extensions and a big, bright smile. She’s one of those bubbly effervescent women who almost seems to talk in exclamation marks and from day one she’s been nothing but shiny, positive and upbeat through all my changes of mind and last-minute panic attacks over the dress.

      ‘Do you think it works?’ I ask nervously, though looking in the mirror, I’m actually cheeky enough to think that it does. It’s the simplest dress you could imagine, just a plain white silk sheath, with spaghetti straps and a tiny fishtail swish to the ends, so it makes a little train as I walk around in it. No long veil for me. I decided against it at my very first fitting when I realised that against my pale, freckly skin, it made me look like a younger Miss Havisham.

      So instead I’m just wearing a plain diamond clasp in my hair to hold it off my face. It’s my ‘something borrowed’ from my pal Stella, who bought it in Claire’s Accessories and wore it to her own wedding last year. I thought it would be particularly lucky because it was at this wedding that Bernard took me outside for a moonlit stroll when the dancing was in full swing, then out of the blue, proposed. Right down on bended knee and everything. Even though he ended up putting his back out, the poor dote. In fact, I spent my engagement night up in our hotel room holding an ice pack to his lumbar region, with him apologising profusely for our having to cut the night short.

      Ahh, happy memories.

      ‘Ooh, look at you, you’re breathtaking,’ coos Cindi.

      ‘You’re like a film star,’ says Mum, with the camera focused firmly on me. ‘Just stunning. Now keep smiling till I get a few more photos.’

      ‘Have to hand it to you,’ says Gracie with her arms folded, taking me in from head to toe. ‘You certainly scrub up well. Looking good, babes.’

      The three of them give an impromptu little round of applause and I giggle and twirl again feeling like a princess as Mum fires off another volley of camera shots.

      ‘So who’s the lucky guy then?’ Cindi asks innocently, from where she’s bent down on her hands and knees at my feet, making the tiniest little adjustments to the hem of the train.

      But now, after a dream afternoon of laughter and messing and chat – there’s total silence. Not a peep out of Mum or Gracie, absolutely nothing.

      ‘Have you been engaged for long?’ Cindi persists, to an even deeper silence this time. All I can hear is the tinny sound of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March being piped over the sound system. And still not a word from either Mum or Gracie.

      By now the silence is starting to get uncomfortable and I’m sure poor Cindi must be wondering why, after a whole afternoon of bright giggles and chatter, there’s suddenly a pin-drop silence in the room. I swear I can almost see it writ large across her big, hopeful face … did I just say the wrong thing?

      I look over to Mum, but she doesn’t say a word about her son-in-law-to-be, instead she just stays firmly focused on her reflection in the mirror, this time with a giant dish-shaped hat on her head that’s so ridiculously oversized it looks like you could pick up Sky Atlantic on it. Not a squeak out of Gracie either as she stares at herself in the mirror, shifting from this angle to that and pointedly saying nothing.

      ‘He’s called Bernard Pritchard,’ I eventually tell Cindi, flushing scarlet red in the face and breaking this horrible silence, seeing as how it looks like no one else is going to. ‘And he’s lovely,’ I can’t resist throwing in. ‘You’d like him, everyone does.’

      Yet another unbearably long drawn-out pause and for a split second, Gracie and I lock eyes, me willing her to say something, anything, but she just glares into the mirror, now totally avoiding eye contact with me, the way she always does whenever she’s struggling to keep her mouth shut. I swear I can physically sense steam coming out of her ears, cartoon-like, from the stress of having to bite back her tongue.

      ‘So the groom’s name is Bernard?’ Cindi chats away, innocently skating over the surface tension that’s almost pinging off the walls.

      ‘Yes, yes that’s right,’ I answer automatically.

      ‘Well I’m sure he and all your family get on like a house on fire.’

      ‘He’s a lecturer in City College,’ Mum eventually chips in, while Gracie just stares blankly ahead, mouth firmly zipped.

      ‘And he has a really good pension plan and everything,’ Mum adds, to still total silence from Gracie.

      Except this time the silence has somehow turned into something much, much angrier as Gracie and I stare each other down, me willing her to say something nice about her brother-in-law-to-be, her glowering right back at my reflection in the mirror, like she’s determined not to blink first.

      Lovely Cindi finally seems to sense that there are thunderclouds brewing between bridesmaid and bride-to-be, so she excuses herself and steps out of the room on the pretext of getting some more safety pins.

      Which is when I seize my moment.

      ‘Jesus, would it kill you, Gracie?’ I ask her straight out.

      ‘What are you talking about?’ she asks blinking her blue eyes, faux innocent.

      ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about,’ I say, deliberately trying to keep the sharp, stinging hurt out of my voice.

      ‘Now, now, girls,’ says Mum from over at the dressing table. ‘We’ve been having such a lovely day. There’s absolutely no need for the pair of you to start into each other. There’s a time and a place for conversations like this and that’s certainly not here and now.’

      ‘Mum, tell her!’ says Gracie defensively. ‘I never even opened my mouth and she’s still having a go at me!’

      ‘No, you didn’t open your mouth,’ I say, ‘and that’s exactly my point. For God’s sake, Gracie, it’s less than a month to go to the big day and yet when a total stranger asks you about the man I’m about to marry, you still can’t find it in yourself to say a single good word about him?’

      ‘Well what do you want me to do?’ is her comeback. ‘Be a complete hypocrite and pretend that I don’t think you’re about to make the biggest mistake of your life?’

      ‘Come on now, girls, there really is no need for this,’ Mum hisses warningly, ripping a fascinator off her head and turning СКАЧАТЬ