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TESS

The present

What would Kate Middleton do?

Easy, I thought, fidgeting with the letter that had just arrived and forcing my shaky legs as far as the bedroom window for a few nice, deep, soothing breaths. Kate Middleton would stay serenely calm and at all costs not let a potential disaster like this get to her. She’d call Carole and Pippa who would instantly rush around to her side with wise words of wisdom and support. She’d book herself in for a nice, relaxing blow dry, shoehorn herself into a neat little coat dress from Reiss, then get back out there, arm clamped onto Prince William’s with a bright smile plastered across her face.

It’s impossible to plan any wedding without a blip and it would seem that this is mine. So now I just have to figure a way out of it, that’s all.

‘Oh, I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OKAAAAYYY!’ I hear my dad warbling from out in the back garden, as he waves the hedge trimmer in huge threatening swoops, Darth Vader-style. All to the soundtrack of electronic buzzing that’s only marginally more deafening than that instrumental bit in Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’, and Christ alone knows that’s bad enough.

‘Jacko? You’ll do yourself an injury!’ Mum yells from the kitchen window. ‘If you lose a limb cutting back those bushes, you needn’t come crying to me, you roaring eejit.’

‘I cut down treeeees, I wear high heels, suspenders and a braaaaaa! I wish I’d been a girlie, just like my dear Papa!’ Dad keeps on screeching in a surprisingly passable baritone, considering that Mum never tires of reminding him how useless he is in all other walks of life.

‘And where’s Tess gone? I thought she was out there helping you?’

‘She was meant to be, but she vanished the minute the post came,’ Dad shrugs. ‘More wedding shite, I suppose.’

I can hear the conversation as loud and clear as that. The only problem is that as I’m listening, the four walls of my bedroom tilt a bit and I suddenly have to focus very hard on breathing.

In for two, out for four, in for two and out for four …

‘Tess, are you in the loo?’ Mum yells up the stairs. ‘You’ve been up there for ages. Are you a bit constipated, do you think?’

‘No, Mum,’ I somehow manage to squawk back down at her, in a voice I barely even recognise as my own.

Stay by the window and keep breathing, just keep breathing.

‘Well I think the base of the wedding cake is nearly done, are you coming down to do a Mary Berry on it?’

‘Did I hear you say wedding cake?’ Dad butts in from the garden, switching off the hedge trimmers. ‘Ahh lovely, you can cut me a nice, juicy, big slice while you’re at it. I’m starving.’

‘It’s not for you, it’s for the guests; I wouldn’t waste it on you. Now you just pick up those branches and stop annoying me,’ is Mum’s comeback, as she slams the kitchen window firmly shut.

All this is for me, I remind myself, trying my damnedest to blank out the letter that’s just arrived; this curt, five-line letter that’s just caused my whole world to shift on its axis. Which side is it if you’re having a heart attack? I wonder. Left or right? Because right now my breath will only come in short, jagged shards and the tightness around my chest is almost making me want to black out.

Twisting the letter in my hand, I force myself to keep on breathing and look down onto the garden, to the grass, the leaves, to my mother’s petunias in full bloom, to the peaceful, lovely sight down below. To absolutely anything that might take my mind off this.

Exactly half an hour ago, I hadn’t a care in the world. There I was, out the back helping Dad with the garden, mowing the lawn and picking up dead leaves. Half an hour ago, I was happily bustling in and out of the kitchen checking on the wedding cake base and trying to convince Mum to relax and leave me to it. That I’d take care of everything. That getting married at home needn’t be the huge stress-inducing nightmare you’d think. That I could expertly organise my wedding reception in our own back garden and that I could easily manage all the catering myself. That with a bit of imagination, Bernard and I could have a simple, intimate, homely wedding and save ourselves a complete fortune in the process.

No, not now, this cannot be happening now.

I have a marquee arriving in a few weeks’ time, for God’s sake. I have fifty-five guests and counting descending on us and I still have to do all the marinades before the big day. I have to hire the glasses, cutlery and dinner plates, and that’s before I even get started on the flowers. I somehow have to get twinkly lights dangling all over our back garden, so it’ll look all magical and elegant when the sun sets. I have all my pals roped in to help me with what little free time they can spare. I have lists and more lists and daily targets that, until a short half an hour ago, I was confidently on top of.

From the minute I convinced Mum, Dad and my sister Gracie that we could have the reception here, I’ve been at pains to reassure them that a home wedding needn’t be a nightmare. That it could all be simple and stress-free and just beautiful.

‘We’ll put on one helluva show,’ I proudly told my family.

‘… and not disgrace ourselves in front of the Pritchards,’ Mum finished the sentence for me, with just a tiny bit more ice in her voice than I’d have liked. ‘Because, frankly, I could do without that snobby shower looking down their noses at us any more than they already do.’

‘Now Mum, it’s not a “who lives in the posher house” competition,’ I told her as soothingly as I could. ‘I don’t want my wedding to be about the haves and the have-nots. It’s going to be simple and small and more importantly, cost-effective. Have you even seen what hotels charge for wedding receptions these days? Thirty grand and upwards! And that’s before you even buy a bottle of water for your guests. Besides, the Pritchards will be dream wedding guests, wait till you see.’

‘Hmm,’ Mum sniffed doubtfully. ‘Well, if I have to listen to one more patronising remark out of them, I’m warning you, Tess, I won’t be held responsible.’

The Pritchards are my future in-laws, you see, and in sharp contrast to us, they live in an elegant two-storey, over-basement, Victorian redbrick statement home in Donnybrook. They’ve got about five reception rooms that they hardly ever use, including a drawing room, a conservatory and a sitting room with dusty hardback books piled everywhere which they insist on referring to as ‘the library’.

My family, however, have none of the above. And so for one day and one day only, our modest and very ordinary little semi-d in an estate full of houses just like it, is about to be transformed into fairyland; a bit like a low-budget Santa’s Grotto on Christmas Eve.

At least, until half an hour ago, that was the plan.

I stick my head closer to the window, savouring the lovely, soothing spring breeze and as the minutes tick by, gradually begin to feel more and more composed. Better. At least now my heart rate seems to be heading back down into double digits. Definitely better.

OK, I try my best to think calmly and rationally, gulping in one last mouthful of fresh air before snapping the bedroom window shut. So according to this letter a major problem has arisen, but I’m going to deal with it efficiently and with minimal stress. I’ll tell Bernard, of course, because he’s officially the most understanding man on the planet and if he can’t think of a way to get me out of this, then no one can. Then I’ll mention it to my nearest and dearest on a strict need-to-know basis only, because this is surmountable. After all, people manage to wangle their way out of situations like this all the time, don’t they?

Besides, it’s just not possible. True, there’s never a good time for an axe like this to fall, but the timing here really couldn’t be much worse. In one month’s time, Bernard and I are getting married; it’s as simple as that.

So trying my best to channel Kate Middleton, I trip downstairs with the letter clutched in my fist to somehow break the news to my wedding-planner-in-chief. Which would be Mum. I find her in the kitchen, walloping the hell out of the Magimix, busy making the icing for my wedding cake.

‘Where did you disappear off to? You’re supposed to be here helping your dad and me,’ she says crossly when she sees me coming into the kitchen. Bear in mind this is a woman who’s got about two hundred pounds of lamb cutlets in the deep freeze. You don’t mess with a woman with two hundred pounds of anything in the deep freeze.

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say in a wobbly voice I barely recognise as my own, ‘but the thing is, Mum, something a bit, well, unexpected has just come up—’

‘You’re as bad as that oaf out the back garden. Now grab an apron and start making yourself useful. You can drain the rum marinade off the sultanas and dump them into the mixture. Barring your father hasn’t already drunk the rum himself, that is. Which, to be honest with you, I wouldn’t put past him.’

‘Mum, you’re not listening to me—’

‘Jesus, Tess, you’re worse than useless! What was the point in you taking time off work to help if all you’re going to do is stand there and let me do everything? May I remind you, madam, that getting married at home was all your bright idea?’ Then turning back to her Magimix, she mutters darkly, ‘getting married to Bernard in the first place was all your bright idea too, let’s not forget.’

Now normally that last sentence would automatically trigger The Conversation. The same bloody conversation I’ve been having with just about everyone ever since Bernard and I first got engaged. But under the circumstances I let it slide and instead just shove the letter under Mum’s nose, then wait the approximate two-second delay while she processes it.

But there’s silence. A long, bowel-withering silence.

‘Well, this has to be a joke,’ she eventually says, all the blood suddenly draining from her face. ‘Maybe something Monica and Stella would do to get a rise out of you before the hen night?’

Monica and Stella are my two best pals and although they both love a good giggle as much as we all do, there’s no way in hell they’d ever contemplate doing something this cruel.

‘It’s not a joke. This isn’t the girls messing. Look at the headed notepaper. This is legit. Believe me, it’s about as legit as it gets.’

It says a lot about just how serious this is that Mum abandons her Magimix and slumps down wearily at the kitchen table, unable to say much else.

She doesn’t need to though.

The crumpled look on her face tells me everything I need to know.