White Wedding Read online

  Milly Johnson is the sparkling and irrepressible author of six bestselling novels. She is also a columnist, greetings card copywriter, poet and after-dinner speaker. Her books are about the universal issues of friendship, family, betrayal, babies, rather nice food and a little bit of that magic in life that sometimes visits the unsuspecting. Find out more at http://www.millyjohnson.co.uk or follow Milly on Twitter @millyjohnson.

  Also by Milly Johnson

  The Yorkshire Pudding Club

  The Birds & the Bees

  A Spring Affair

  A Summer Fling

  Here Come the Girls

  An Autumn Crush

  First published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd 2012

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Milly Johnson 2012

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  PB ISBN: 978-0-85720-896-5

  EBOOK ISBN:978-0-85720-897-2

  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.

  Typeset in Bembo by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  This book is dedicated to all the wonderful staff at Shawlands Primary School in Barnsley, especially Dave Lucas, Fiona Taylor, Lisa Hepworth, Louise Barradell, Alison Asquith, Joanne Prigmore, Sue Clark, Linda Adam, Wendy Lindsay, Jane Williams, Jean Thickett and Headmistress Jill Brookling who will be long remembered with smiles and fondness. You have all given us and ours such wonderful happy years and treasured memories. Precious lifelong friendships have been made at your gates and within your walls. You all went the extra mile and beyond for our children and we couldn’t have wished for a more wonderful school.

  Thank you all.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Belinda’s Wedding

  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

  Max’s Wedding

  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

  Violet’s Wedding

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  ‘Oh hello again,’ said Max McBride, looking across as the shop door opened with a tinkle and seeing an increasingly familiar face. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

  ‘I think you’re stalking me,’ replied the tiny, spiky-haired Bel, coming inside quickly to escape the February chill. ‘Either that or I’m stalking you.’

  The two women smiled at each other. Five times they had visited this White Wedding bridal shop now and on every occasion it was to find the other one there. It was only a wonder that the third lady who also seemed to move in their orbit was absent – the pale woman with silver-blonde hair, whom Max was certain had gone to her school. She remembered a girl in the year below whom the other kids used to call ‘Ghost’ because of her unusual colouring.

  ‘What are you looking for this time, then?’ asked Bel.

  ‘I’m only browsing really,’ Max answered. ‘We’re having a small wedding, no fancy frills. But I just can’t help myself looking.’ That was the truth of it. Her fiancé, Stuart, wasn’t a man for fuss. Plus, as he said, a wedding ceremony should be about two people and their vows, and though Max had nodded in agreement, her head had immediately started building up a list of embellishments; dress, cake, veil, flowers . . .

  ‘What about you?’ Max asked.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ smiled Bel. ‘I was just passing and thought I’d call in and see if anything took my fancy.’

  ‘Are you having a big wedding?’

  ‘A hundred or so guests,’ said Bel. ‘Although it started off as fifty and will probably end up as two hundred.’

  The more the merrier, she thought with a little kick in her heart. Her wedding day couldn’t come quickly enough for her now and she wanted the whole world to hear her say the words ‘I do’ to Richard. She couldn’t wait to be his other half, ‘her indoors’ – his wife. Recently, she thought she might burst open with joy at the thought of becoming Mrs Belinda Bishop.

  ‘Are you both all right or do you need some help?’ asked the shopkeeper as she approached them. She was a tall, elegant lady: grace personified. She exuded an air of calm that spread through the lovely shop and made it an almost magical place to mosey around. She wore a name badge – Freya – above her left breast. It seemed too modern for a lady of such advanced years, yet at the same time the delicate femininity of it
fitted her exactly.

  ‘I’m okay, thanks,’ said Bel. ‘I’m just looking. Again.’

  ‘Me too,’ added Max, with a little sigh in her voice. She could buy half of the stuff in this shop if she let herself off the leash. It was torture really, trying on tiaras and headdresses, knowing that she would end up wearing a plain beige functional two-piece suit for the registry office service that would bind her and her partner of seventeen years together. But ever since she discovered this shop quite by chance a few weeks ago, she hadn’t been able to resist coming in. It was princess-heaven for Max to wander up and down the long, narrow shop that was packed to the gills with all manner of wedding paraphernalia. Her childhood bedroom had been filled with boxes of play jewellery, crowns and frilly dresses and when anyone asked her what she was going to be when she grew up, her answer was always ‘a princess’.

  Bel had just picked up a pair of tiny silk boots when the doorbell tinkled again and in walked a woman with long silver hair and deep-violet eyes.

  ‘Well, blow me,’ laughed Bel. ‘How weird is this? We were just wondering if you’d turn up.’

  ‘Fancy meeting you two here,’ said the pale-skinned lady with a chuckle.

  ‘We’ve done that line,’ smiled Max. ‘Anyone fancy a coffee across the road when we’ve finished shopping here?’

  Belinda’s

  Wedding

  Chapter 1

  Three months later

  ‘Oh my GOD, look at that.’

  ‘Yep, I’ve seen it.’

  ‘And that. Oh look at that.’

  ‘If she says “look at that” once more I think I just might murder her.’

  ‘Look, LOOK at that.’

  ‘Right that is it.’ Bel picked up a small cushion and launched it at Max’s head. Her mouth was so wide open she could have swallowed it whole had it landed on target.

  But Max was too mesmerized by the world of the gypsy brides on the television screen to react when the cushion bumped into her shoulder. She had never seen anything like it. Those huge crinolines that the bride and her twenty-five bridesmaids wore, the Cinderella coach, the cake – bigger than the house she was born in – it was all so over the top, unbelievable . . . fabulous. It poked at the place inside her brain that still kept safe her latent fantasies about growing up and becoming a princess and dressing every day in a sparkling tiara and a swishy long frock. ‘Look at that as well.’

  ‘Can’t you say anything else but “look at that”?’ Bel pretended to be exasperated with her.

  Violet half chuckled, half sighed. ‘Do you know, Max, I’ve known you for only a few weeks but I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever be the type to be lost for words.’

  But Max still wasn’t listening. She sat entranced as a huge cloud of white net squeezed out of the Cinderella coach. The train went on for ever. The narrator was reporting that there was over a mile of material in the petticoats alone.

  ‘Fill up, Lady V?’ asked Bel, tipping the bottle neck towards Violet’s glass.

  ‘I shouldn’t really,’ Violet replied, not taking a breath before adding, ‘Oh go on, then, if I must.’

  ‘Good girl, and yes you must. This is my official hen night, after all. I’m not counting the family “ordeal” on Thursday.’

  Bel lifted her lip in an Elvis sneer. She was looking forward to having a meal with her dad, and Richard would be there of course, and her cousin and bridesmaid, Shaden; but so would her Botox-frozen-faced step-aunt, Vanoushka, and her husband, slimy Martin, with his sausage fingers that were magnetically attracted to women’s arses. Her stepmum, Faye, would be there too, naturally, making sure that the evening was as flawless as possible. The one thing Bel would wholeheartedly credit her for was her hosting skill.

  ‘This must be a bit of a shit hen night for you,’ said Max, giving her friends some attention while the adverts were on. ‘I thought you might have wanted to go to a club with loads of your mates.’ Not spend it cooking chilli con carne in your apartment for two women you barely know.

  Bel shrugged her shoulders. The truth of it was that she didn’t have any real friends. One by one, they had dropped away over the years; Sara had married a German, moved to Frankfurt, turned into an earth-mother and churned out five children, possibly more by now. Though they had been inseparable through their childhood and teenage years, they didn’t even swap Christmas cards any more. Bel knew deep down that her inability to bear children and Sara’s fecundity had sadly got in the way of their relationship. Amy had moved to London and got in with a weird bohemian crowd, and Shaden . . . well, suffice to say that she and her cousin had grown very far apart in adulthood.

  ‘Couldn’t be arsed going out. I just fancied a quiet night in with a bottle and a bit of light company,’ sniffed Bel, knocking back half a glass of wine in one. Max and Violet exchanged a quick secret glance, both suspecting what the other was thinking: that this wedding-uninterested Bel was very different to the woman they had first met at the White Wedding shop, the one who walked on air, smiled a lot and said ‘Richard’ a damned sight more than she said it these days.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Violet asked, but tentatively, because she had picked up very early on that Bel was a woman who played her cards close to her chest.

  ‘Yes, I’m perfectly fine,’ said Bel with a firm nod.

  ‘I expect you’re knackered, aren’t you?’ asked Max. Maybe that would explain the tired circles under her new friend’s eyes.

  ‘Totally,’ Bel affirmed and poured herself another wine.

  ‘That’s good, then. That you’re all right, I mean. Not that you’re totally knackered,’ Violet said. Yes, that made sense. Bel had arranged her whole wedding alone, so she must have the energy levels of a dying sloth at the moment.

  Bel smiled at their sweet concern. She had grown to like these two women enormously in the relatively short time she had known them. So much so that she wished she hadn’t been so impulsive early on and invited them to her wedding. Still, she couldn’t think about that now – what was done was done and she had to keep her head focused and her heart totally out of it.

  ‘I thought we might meet your bridesmaid tonight,’ said Max. It was a little odd that the maid of honour wasn’t at the hen night while she and Violet were.

  ‘She was supposed to be here but alas she’s got a cold and didn’t want to pass on her bugs.’ The lie fell effortlessly from Bel’s lips.

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Violet.

  ‘Yes, she’s so considerate of my feelings,’ nodded Bel. Dear Shaden. The thought of her cousin punctured a dangerous hole in Bel’s composure.

  ‘I hope you’re having those nails done before next Saturday,’ noted Max, nudging Bel.

  Bel curled her bitten nails away from sight. She had gnawed them down to the quick and they throbbed.

  ‘How’s your new ice-cream parlour coming on?’ asked Bel, batting attention away from herself before she said something she regretted, before she let them in. Violet was leasing a recently built small shop more or less across the road from White Wedding.

  ‘Oh it’s perfect,’ sighed Violet with a beaming smile. ‘I can’t wait to open up. I’m just sad that Nan won’t be able to work in it with me. She loved helping me in the old place that I ran.’

  Violet had told them all about her beloved Nan, sadly in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Nan lived with Violet’s mum, Susan, who was her widowed daughter-in-law. ‘Mum found her slippers in the fridge the other day.’

  Violet laughed a little, but there was a very sad quality to the sound. The old lady, once so sparky and fit, seemed to be getting frailer by the day – physically as well as mentally.

  ‘Oh bless,’ Bel wrinkled up her nose sympathetically.

  ‘When’s the grand opening?’ asked Max. ‘I love ice cream.’

  ‘Well, the space is completely plastered and whitewashed now,’ Violet bubbled with excited glee, ‘so I put an advert in the Chronicle last week for an artist to paint a mural on the wall
. I’m meeting one up at the shop tomorrow afternoon, actually. I reckon that I should be open for business by early August.’

  ‘Who’s going to work with you if your nan can’t?’ Bel muffled, through a mouthful of tortilla chips.

  ‘Glyn?’ Max suggested. ‘Or is that a really bad idea?’

  ‘That is a really bad idea,’ said Violet, with quick protest. ‘Could you honestly work with Stuart and Richard all day then go home and spend the night with them as well?’

  Bel considered the question and wanted to laugh out loud. Maybe once upon a time she could have, but not now.

  They didn’t know that much information about each other’s fiancés yet, but what they had gleaned from their conversations was that Richard was a drop-dead gorgeous high-flying banking executive who had been in Bel’s life for three years, and Stuart was head warehouse storeman for a local supplier of nuts and bolts who Max had been courting since they were sixteen. About Glyn, the others knew least of all. Apparently he and Violet had been together for just under a year and a half and he had been off sick from work for most of that time – something to do with a mental breakdown – so neither Bel nor Max thought it fair to press her for details about him, however much they wanted to.

  ‘Max, another wine?’ asked Bel.

  ‘Absolutely,’ replied Max, holding out her glass. ‘I might as well take advantage seeing as I’m getting a taxi home. So, are you going to keep hold of your mother’s wedding dress for your own daughter, then? That would be fabulous, wouldn’t it? Three generations of women all wearing the same gown.’

  Bel had told them ages ago in White Wedding that she didn’t need to buy a dress as she would be wearing her mum’s gown down the aisle. This was especially poignant as her mother had died after complications in childbirth.

  ‘I can’t have kids,’ Bel said as undramatically as possible to spare Max’s feelings. ‘I have a rubbish womb. I won’t bore you with the tedious medical details, blah blah, but it will never happen for me.’ She watched that familiar mask of sympathy fall on to the two female faces in front of her. ‘It’s okay. It’s something I’ve known from having an operation as a kid. Ironically my stepmother has the same condition. She can’t conceive either. “I can’t have kids and neither can my mother” – ho ho.’