Kate's Wedding (20 page)

How had that happened? Kate asked herself that night in bed. How had her simple, chic city wedding become a ‘country-house-hotel’ extravaganza? It was just like the dress. The moment she saw her mother’s eager face, she was doomed. Kate could not disappoint her, especially not now.

But it’s my day
. Wasn’t that what Kate was supposed to say? Everyone always bangs on about it being the bride’s day, but the fact was, it wasn’t Kate’s day any more, from the dress to the venue. Even Kate’s guest list was under scrutiny. Now that the potential invitees had increased from 40 to 150, her mother had mentioned at least a dozen family friends who would appreciate an invitation. None of this was what Kate had envisaged, and yet she felt that she couldn’t complain. Officially, it was her day, but she also wanted the day to reflect Ian’s desires. Ian seemed to want to get married on a bloody golf course! And then she wanted the day to make her parents happy too. If, as Tess had suggested, being more involved with the wedding would give their mother something to focus on other than radiotherapy, then how could Kate deny her the opportunity to take control?

‘You know that Mum will make sure it’s tasteful,’ said Tess.

Kate had a flashback to her encounter with the chair-dresser at the bridal fair.

It didn’t matter, Kate tried to tell herself. Nothing mattered except actually getting married and becoming man and wife. Man and wife? How about woman and husband? Kate thought. OK. Nothing mattered except becoming woman and husband. It really didn’t matter if the day didn’t reflect Kate and Ian’s personalities as long as they signed the register and everybody had a good time.

She rolled over to look at Ian. He was sleeping soundly again. None of this seemed to bother him. He swore blind that he wanted to get married in that golf-course hotel, but Kate had the distinct impression that he would have married in a yurt, just so long as he didn’t have to make any effort to plan it. Increasingly, she began to think that Ian didn’t want to have to make an effort for any reason at all.

Chapter Thirty-Four

‘How does he love me? Let me count the presents.’

That was Diana’s mantra on Valentine’s Day. For Diana, 14 February was every bit as important as Christmas and her birthday. Not for her the old-fashioned romance of an anonymous Valentine’s card. Diana expected a card, a gift (a significant gift) and an evening on the town. Ben knew not to disappoint. It wasn’t worth the grief. What Diana wanted, Diana got, starting with a lot more time off.

Diana had, as threatened, given up her part-time job right after Christmas. Since then she had thrown herself into wedding preparations. The blackboard in the kitchen formed the centre of operations. Every day a new to-do list appeared in neat white chalk letters. There was one column for Diana’s responsibilities and one for Ben’s. Ben couldn’t understand how, though he was still very much in full-time employment, he seemed to have easily as many items in his column as Diana did in hers.

‘Yours are just little things,’ she explained. ‘I don’t think you appreciate how much pressure there is on me. I’m not just planning a wedding; I’m planning the rest of our lives.’

Certainly, she appeared to have taken to micromanaging Ben’s time. They never seemed to have a night to themselves any more. Friday evenings were now taken up with dance lessons for that all-important first dance. They inevitably ended up in a row when Ben accidentally stepped on Diana’s toes. Meanwhile, Saturday nights now meant another bloody dinner party.

‘I want to share our happiness with our friends,’ said Diana. ‘I like having people round for dinner.’

Ben liked to go down the pub and stand in a corner with his mates while Diana and
her
mates took up another corner of the room. He liked to go somewhere where it was too loud to tune in to the women’s conversations. He did not want to have to sit round the dinner table listening to Diana and Nicole talk about the wedding plans again. Ben was certain that Lucy had arranged a three-day conference for 200 people in Dubai with considerably less fuss.

But Diana wanted to play the domestic goddess. She invited people that Ben had never met before to share their weekends. It seemed the only criterion for an invitation was that the invitees were married.

‘Being engaged makes everything different,’ she explained to Ben. ‘We can’t hang around with all those single people any more. It isn’t right you being out with your mates when they’re on the pull. Someone might get the wrong idea about you.’

Given that his record was far from spotless, Ben could only accept the sentence handed down. No more socialising without his bride-to-be.

Diana ordered a hostess trolley from John Lewis online and threw herself into Delia’s complete cookery course. The only good thing about those Saturday-night dinner parties was the food. The rest of the week, Diana was on a strict diet.

Oh God, the diet. Ben felt as though he had been put on a diet too. Since the night of their engagement party, Diana had not touched a drop of alcohol. ‘Pure, liquid sugar,’ she announced. Neither had there been a loaf of bread in the house, except if they had guests. Biscuits were a distant memory, as were crisps and tortilla chips. It was miserable.

Suddenly, they had to go to the cathedral every Sunday too. The bishop may have been swayed by Dave’s excellence as a kitchen-fitter, but that did not mean that Diana and Ben could get away with paying only lip service to the idea of being part of the congregation. Diana did not mind too much. Each Sunday gave her a chance to dress up. She daydreamed through the sermons, imagining herself walking up the aisle to the delighted ‘Ooh’s and ‘Aah’s of her wedding guests. It was almost as much fun to walk in slightly late to the Sunday Eucharist.

‘Who is that elegant woman?’ Diana imagined the usual parishioners, who were uniformly dowdy, wondering.

Ben sat through the same sermons, focusing on the thud of his headache and wondering if he would ever get a Sunday lie-in again. And then, after the service, they would inevitably end up at the shopping centre. There was no end to the list of items Diana absolutely ‘must have’ in connection with the big day. Even Sunday afternoons were no longer sacred. Susie or Nicole would inevitably pitch up at some point, to go over the parts of the wedding machinery that were under their auspices. Ben simply couldn’t understand how Diana could have given up her job and yet still need to spend all weekend comparing floral arrangements and different kinds of sponge cake. He could only be thankful that he didn’t have to pay for it.

The wedding was going to be a ridiculously big event. Diana’s guest list looked set to dwarf that of Kate Middleton and Prince William. Her very first draft list had come to 187. The final cut was nearer 250 on her side alone. Even if Ben only invited his immediate family and closest friends, the list would soon hit 300.

‘Do you know two hundred and fifty people?’ Ben asked. ‘I mean, people you don’t know through Facebook.’

Diana straightened up as she prepared to defend her position. ‘I do know a lot of people, and you can’t ask someone without inviting their other half.’

‘But that means there will be people that neither of us know at the wedding. I haven’t met any of this lot.’ Ben indicated a group of eight names.

‘They’re from work. There is no way I can cut these people. You have to understand that my friends come in sets. I can’t invite one of the girls from the office without inviting all the others. Likewise, if I invite only half my friends from school, then you can bet that someone will be offended. I don’t want to offend anyone, Ben. You never know when you’re going to want them on your side.’

Ben examined the list again. On it were at least half a dozen women that Diana never seemed to have a kind word for. Now all of a sudden they were people she couldn’t afford to offend. It wasn’t even as though she had to face them at the office any more.

It wasn’t just the cost of it. Dave Ashcroft had made it clear that nothing was too good for his daughter, his only child. As far as Dave was concerned, Diana could invite the whole city. Ben, however, did not really like the idea of such a big party.

‘Why not?’ Diana asked him.

She didn’t seem to think that simply preferring a smaller event, peopled by guests they actually knew and cared about, was a good enough excuse.

‘We’ve got to fill a cathedral, Ben. A cathedral! It’s going to look rubbish if we only have people in the front two pews.’

Thank God Diana’s father had money. The recession didn’t seem to have hit him too badly. It was a relief, since he had lent Diana and Ben the deposit for their starter home and Ben was far from being in a position to pay him back.

On Valentine’s evening, Ben was acutely conscious of how little he could afford the charm he had bought for Diana’s horrible bracelet. She looked at it briefly. ‘The Eiffel Tower! Does this mean you’re taking me to France for the weekend?’

‘No,’ said Ben, ‘it means it’s the only Tiffany charm I could find that you don’t already have.’

Diana pushed the little blue box to one side.

‘Never mind. I’ve got some good news. Dad says that for our wedding present he’s decided to pay off our mortgage.’

Ben felt as though Diana’s words formed another golden rope round his wrist.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Kate hid her disappointment when she awoke on Valentine’s Day to discover that Ian seemed to have forgotten it. He had left for work early that morning, leaving her sleeping. When she got up, Kate saw that he had opened her card to him and put it in pride of place on the mantelpiece. The book she had bought him was on the kitchen table. She could find nothing for her.

Kate went into her new office and put her head down. She had a lot to prove. That was much more important than Valentine’s Day. Lunchtime passed. Still nothing from Ian. Kate had thought that he would make amends for having forgotten and perhaps send her an emergency bunch of flowers. No. Kate found it hard not to look disappointed when three enormous bouquets arrived and were distributed among various girls in the office. Ian hadn’t even sent her a text to thank her for her card and gift.

‘What did Ian get you?’ one of her new colleagues asked. That made things even worse.

‘Oh,’ said the colleague when Kate admitted that Ian had forgotten. ‘That’s what men are like! The minute they’ve got you, they give up trying.’

‘It certainly seems that way,’ said Kate.

‘I’m sure he’ll have a surprise for you when you get home.’

‘It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t,’ said Kate. ‘It’s just a Hallmark holiday.’ She said it in such a way that she almost believed it.

Then Helen texted,
I hope Ian remembered V Day.

He didn’t,
Kate responded.

Mark got me a new filter for cooker hood,
texted Helen.
Married life.

Later that afternoon, Matt called. Kate had fallen into a pattern of speaking to him often since they had gone for their catch-up drink in December. There were plenty of excuses for a chat. She was grateful to be able to discuss Elaine’s ongoing treatment. But they had fallen into talking about everything else too. Matt knew all about the politics in Kate’s new office, for example. She told him things about her new company that she simply didn’t bother to tell Ian. Ian didn’t do office politics, and when she had tried to discuss the machinations of her own colleagues in the past, he had simply told her to ignore them. Matt seemed to understand that it wasn’t always that easy. Kate was aware that he was becoming quite a confidant.

‘Did you get my card?’ asked Matt.

‘What card?’

‘The enormous one covered with fluffy bunnies. It was attached to the hundred red roses.’

‘Oh, that card,’ said Kate.

‘I expect you couldn’t find it under all the other cards you were sent. I imagine Ian bought up Interflora.’

‘Not quite,’ said Kate. ‘How’s your Valentine’s Day so far?’

‘Total bag of shite. It’s Valentine’s Day and the only thing the postman dropped off at my house this morning was a letter from my soon-to-be ex-wife’s solicitor, claiming that I’ve got much more money than I ever knew I had and she wants half of it. How’s your mum?’

‘Starts radiotherapy next week.’

‘You coming down?’

‘I expect so.’

‘Call me. I could do with a night out.’

‘That’d be great.’

Kate was aware as she put the phone down that her mood had improved immeasurably at the thought of seeing Matt again. There was nothing to it, though. Nothing that might explain why she still hadn’t mentioned their renewed friendship to Helen, for example.

When she got home, she found that Ian had made a special effort to make up for having forgotten to mark the most romantic day in the calendar. He handed her a bedraggled bunch of roses as she walked into the kitchen.

‘I got them from the garage,’ he said.

‘You could at least pretend they’re from Moyses Stevens,’ said Kate.

‘Don’t want you to think I’m wasting all our money on furbelows.’

There was little chance of that. ‘What’s this?’

Ian had laid the table. On both the plates he had put out was a Marks & Spencer ready meal, still in its box. A bottle of wine from no vineyard Kate had ever heard of stood in the middle of the table.

‘All this for less than ten pounds.’

‘Great,’ said Kate.

‘We don’t have to eat it here. We can eat it in front of the television.’

‘Even better.’

From time to time, especially when she was with Dan, Kate had craved the simplicity of a television dinner. There were never any television dinners with Dan, unless he was feeling very unwell. At first, that was wonderful, but gradually Kate came to realise that by keeping up the romance, Dan was keeping her at arm’s length. He was preventing her from becoming part of his ‘real’ life. By contrast, Ian had never hidden anything from Kate, but sometimes she thought such a total lack of mystique was just as bad as Dan’s refusal to let Kate see his ‘day to day’. As she looked at the cheap bottle of red, Kate tried to remember the last time Ian had taken her out. He really did seem to believe that now they were engaged, there was no longer any reason for them to ‘date’.