Here’s Looking At You. Mhairi McFarlane

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      She just didn’t like the full range of girly things that Aggy did. Such as nights spent on the sofa with Vogue, toe separators, Essie polish, spoon wedged in Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Me Up, white iPhone welded to her ear on the gossip grapevine. Instead of Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, Aggy travelled in a Fiat 500 with rubber eyelashes on the headlamps and a bumper sticker revealing the worrying news for Saudi oil barons that it was Powered by Fairy Dust.

      Anna was glad she liked Aggy’s intended. Aggy was capable of marrying lots of men Anna wouldn’t like, but luckily it was the affable, laddish Chris, a painter-decorator from Hornsey. He sincerely loved her sister and also knew when to say, ‘That’s henshit, Ags.’

      They were tying the knot in the splendour of the Langham Hilton ballroom this Christmas.

      Since the family dinner where Aggy arrived wearing a diamond solitaire the size of a glass brick and her sister and her mum did lots of squealing, Anna had felt the tiniest bit nervous.

      The one thing Aggy couldn’t successfully manage was her own expectations. Anna was pretty sure the way the wedding was being organised was thus: Aggy choosing exactly what she fancied (which was usually at the top price point), and finding a way to pay for it afterwards.

      Chris looked increasingly hangdog each time Anna saw him. Chris would’ve been happy with an Iceland party platters buffet at the Fox & Grapes, driving them to the venue in his company van, furry trapper’s hat sat on head, ear flaps flapping, singing along very loudly to Smooth Radio.

      At this rate, Anna feared her sister might end up adjusting her priorities too late to save causing damage to sanity, relationship and credit rating.

      ‘Bubbles before we start!’ Sue said, pointing to a silver tray with three flutes and a bottle on the marble-topped coffee table, next to a pile of glossy bridal magazines and a bowl of water with floating lotus flower candles.

      Aggy was only a mouthful through hers when Sue cried, ‘Let’s get you into the first dress!’

      Aggy and Sue disappeared through the beaded curtain and Anna and her mother exchanged smiles and tapped their feet.

      ‘Do you think Aggy’s in for the long haul here?’ Anna said eventually, scanning the scores of lampshade skirts.

      ‘Of course she is, Aureliana! It’s till death do you part.’

      ‘No, I meant …’

      ‘Dum dum de dum!’ Sue sing-songed, holding the beads back for Aggy to re-enter, unsteady on cream satin bridal shop stilettos. She was in a halterneck gown with a simple A-line skirt and lots of Swarovski sparkle.

      ‘Oh, lovely!’ Judy said.

      ‘Anna?’ Aggy asked, uncertain.

      ‘Your collarbones look nice. I’m not sure about the cowgirl rhinestones though. Could be worse. I give it three enchanted slippers out of five,’ Anna said. ‘It’s … cut quite revealingly around your ta-ta’s, too.’

      ‘The modern way is to show slightly more skin,’ Sue said, through a taut smile. Then reassuringly to their mum: ‘Nothing tacky. Merely a hint of what lies beneath.’

      Anna tipped her head to one side. ‘Hmmm. I’m getting significant side boob, with the promise of full udder swing if she leans down to kiss a flower girl.’

      ‘Ah no way, I don’t want some rancid randy vicar being all “to have and to hold”.’ Aggy did a Rocky Horror pelvic thrust.

      ‘Agata, the vicar will not be randy!’ Judy exclaimed. ‘Stop this!’

      ‘We can tighten it,’ said Sue, shooting Anna a look that suggested Sue was already doing some tightening of her own.

      ‘Er mer GERD.’ This was Aggy’s latest expression. ‘Did I ever tell you what happened to Clare from work? Strapless dress, bridesmaid trod on the train walking down the aisle, pulled it right down,’ Aggy indicated waist level. ‘But Clare said she didn’t mind because she’d dropped five grand on saline implants in the Czech Republic. She was like,’ Aggy pointed at her chest with both her index fingers, ‘Feast your eyes, it’s a banquet.’

      ‘Surely a properly fitted dress couldn’t be pulled down that far?’ Judy said. ‘That’s a failure of the boning.’

      Anna and Aggy exchanged a look.

      ‘Maybe like Aggy said, she was an exhibitionist. Maybe she’d booby-trapped it,’ Anna said, making a ‘winding a handle’ movement and a whirring noise.

      ‘Possible, she was quite a rowdy skanger when she got a drink in her. Marianne said Clare with wine was like a Gremlin with water,’ Aggy said. ‘She used to show clients her bikini-line tattoo that said mama is forever in Sanskrit and our boss had to tell her to stop because the older ones haven’t heard of vajazzling yet and she could upset them.’

      ‘What does mama is forever mean?’ Anna asked.

      ‘Her mum died of an aneurysm in Bluewater. It was a tribute.’

      ‘A tribute in the form of writing on her fanny? Who wants that? Mum, would you like me to get RIP JUDY down there?’ said Anna.

      ‘I can’t say how I’d feel if I’d died,’ her mum said. ‘I think I’d rather have a memorial fig tree at St Andrew’s.’

      ‘So that’s a pass to this one?’ Sue interjected, desperately.

      Anna felt a whisper of remorse that Judy wasn’t sitting next to someone who’d do firework show gasps of ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at the gowns, but to some extent you played the role that fell to you in a family. There was no question Anna had pulled the voice of reason straw in hers.

      People often reacted with disbelief that Judy was their mother, firstly because she was youthful-looking and expensively blonde-streaked for her fifty-something years. And secondly, what with coming from Surbiton, entirely un-Italian looking. She was inordinately proud of her daughters’ continental heritage and made a point of using their full names. Their father, funnily enough, was less of a fan, pronouncing Aureliana and Agata as ‘not traditional’.

      ‘Your mother goes and registers these fooling names behind my back, saying it was her hormones! She does this twice! Can you believe it?’

      Anna certainly could believe it. It was also very like her dad to let her mum have her way.

      ‘Mum. How is Aggy paying for all of this?’ Anna said in a low voice.

      ‘She has a good salary. And savings. And Chris has money.’

      ‘Not that much money. Do you not think this might be getting out of hand?’

      ‘You only do it once. I know it’s not your sort of thing, but it’s her special day.’

      Anna bit her tongue. She’d have a quiet word with her dad instead. The family had two distinct factions: Anna and her father’s more sober self-containment, and her mother and Aggy’s silliness. As Aggy changed again, Anna feared Sleeping Beauty was the start of a very long hike around London’s upscale dress shops.

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