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
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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.
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.’