Don't Tell the Groom (27 page)

But this is the last-ever secret I'm keeping from Mark. Once the wedding is out of the way there will be no other secrets that I keep from him. I mean it. I will even tell him about my secret shoe stash in the spare room. I will, honestly.

Without the excuse of a hangover to legitimise my lie-in, I really should get up. I don't want to get out of bed, but I have to as I promised Mark that I'd go and chat to Nanny Violet.

I haven't seen her since the time we were at the fête, and then I only saw her bright red shoes. And with the wedding only two weeks away I really want to get to the bottom of why she's acting so strangely around me. It was her insistence that we get married quickly and now it seems like she's getting cold feet.

Maybe I'll just go back to sleep for ten more minutes; after all, she'll be at church for hours yet.

By the time I finally summon the courage to go over to Nanny Violet's house it is after two o'clock in the afternoon. I found lots of important things to do at home like tidy out the kitchen cupboards and deep-clean the fridge. All things that really needed doing two weeks before I got married. And Mark says I can't prioritise tasks properly.

I ring the doorbell and the first thought that pops into my head is ‘Please don't be in'. Followed by my second thought, that I'm the meanest woman alive for thinking that. This is an old widow who looks forward to her relatives visiting her at the weekend and I want to be anywhere but here.

‘Ah, Penelope. How nice to see you. Do come in,' says Violet, opening the door.

I smile at Nanny Violet, but she's turned and is racing up the hallway to the kitchen before I can do my usual air kiss. Something is definitely not right.

I follow her into her kitchen. The kitchen is always roasting hot, no matter what the outside temperature is, as the Aga is permanantly on. Usually there's something comforting about sitting in Nanny Violet's kitchen but today there seems to be a chill in the air, and with the Aga on it has to be coming from Violet.

‘Did you want a cup of tea, love?'

‘Yes, that would be great. Thank you.'

I'm hovering in the doorway, not too sure whether I should sit down at the little breakfast bar or whether we're going to go into the formal lounge that Violet keeps for Sundays and visitors. It is Sunday, I suppose, and I am a visitor, so I just continue to hover.

‘Why don't you go and take a seat in the sitting room and I'll bring it through.'

‘Are you sure?' I ask.

‘Yes, yes. Go and sit down.'

It sounds a bit like an order and I go into the lounge.

I obviously haven't been here for a while as everything seems just a little bit different. I can't put my finger on it at first but then it dawns on me; the floral wallpaper has been replaced by a deep yellow paint. It suddenly makes the room feel warm and homely.

And look at those photos. Along the wall behind the sofa are a series of framed pictures of Violet's grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Phew, I'm even in one of the photos. I'm sitting on Mark's lap and we're gazing lovingly into each other's eyes. I have no memory of the photo being taken.

I know the photo must have been taken on Christmas Day as I'm wearing my ridiculously lovely reindeer jumper that everyone in the world, apart from me, hates. Mark says he takes offence to it as the red nose on the reindeer hovers where my left nipple is in real life, and he says that he has difficulty not just reaching out and giving it a squeeze. I think he's worried that other men might follow suit.

I must have had one Bailey's too many on that Christmas Day as I wasn't even aware of anyone with a camera. Except maybe Mark's brother, Howard. But surely he couldn't have taken these wonderful photos, could he?

‘There you go,' says Violet, entering the room. She places
my cup of tea on the coffee table before she takes up her normal position in the armchair.

‘I love the new decoration,' I say, as I sit down on the rigid sofa. You can always tell when a sofa isn't sat on very much as your bum doesn't mould properly into the seat.

‘Thank you, dear. Howard did it for me. I'm afraid he had it forced on him as little Rose drew on the wallpaper with crayons. To tell you the truth I'd always hated the wallpaper anyway. My husband had a number of talents, but hanging wallpaper straight was not one of them and the more I sat in this room the more I noticed.

‘Have a cake, dear,' she says, taking the plate of cakes off the tray.

Oh, I really am in the doghouse as far as Violet is concerned. She's only gone and bought in Viennese Whirls. I hate them with a passion and she knows it. I just find the cream so sickly. But not taking a cake in Violet's house is a sin in itself, so I reach over and take one anyway.

‘Did Howard take the photos?' I ask.

‘Yes, he's quite good, isn't he? Ever since Caroline bought him that fancy camera at Christmas he's been inseparable from it. You should see the photos he shows me of the children. Poor little loves. I bet being at home for them is worse then being a celebrity on the red carpet.'

The whole Howard and camera thing had passed me by. I
guess we haven't seen them a lot lately. Maybe I'll pop round and see them after this. Not that Howard will be there though – he'll be doing goodness knows what with my husband-to-be. I wonder if I can ask his wife about him taking the photos for the wedding as she wears the trousers in their relationship anyway, from what I can tell.

I bite into the shortbread that would be so delicious if that was all that was in it, and then the taste of the warm cream and jam hits me. They're wrong, wrong, wrong.

‘So how are the wedding plans going? Getting any lastminute jitters?'

I'm ignoring the hopeful tone in Violet's voice like she is willing me to be having second thoughts.

‘No. No jitters. I'm just really excited. I can't believe that I'm going to get married in two weeks!'

‘I know. It will come round before you know it.'

‘I hope it doesn't come round too quickly. I still feel like I have loads to do before the big day, and I've got the hen do next weekend.'

‘It wasn't like that in my day. We didn't even have a hen do. Well-wishers just popped in for a cup of tea. Now it's all Blackpool and Vegas. I watch the telly. Big waste of money, if you ask me.'

I guess things were really different then. You didn't know, like Violet, if your husband was ever going to come back
from the front line. I guess hen parties would have seemed too trivial back then.

I desperately want to ask Violet about the conversation I overheard with her and Ted, and what he told me after. But I can't think of a clever way to manipulate the conversation.

‘Mind you, weddings are a big waste of money too these days, if you ask me. They don't seem to last five minutes before they ditch each other and are on to the next.'

‘I agree with you that people do spend too much on weddings, but not everyone gives up on their marriage. A lot of people still have long happy marriages.'

I see Violet raising her eyebrows. Does she honestly think that Mark and I won't be together this time next year?

‘You don't have anything to worry about with me and Mark; we're like two peas in a pod.'

‘Are you, now?' asks Violet.

She holds my gaze as she drinks her tea and it makes me shiver like someone has walked over my grave.

‘Violet, have I done something wrong? It's just you seemed so excited about the wedding and now you seem to be encouraging Mark and me to break up.'

‘I'm not doing anything of the sort.'

Great. Now Violet is pouting. I'm not letting her get away with this. Just because she is nearly eighty-eight, it does not mean to say that I'm going to drop it.

‘Yes, you are. You've been giving me funny looks ever since we decided on May for the wedding. What's wrong? Are you ill?'

I promised Mark I'd be subtle and not come straight out with this, but it just sort of slips out.

‘No, I'm not ill. Whatever gave you that idea?'

‘Mark was worried as you called him Geoffrey.'

‘I did? Oh,' she says.

Perhaps I should have kept that to myself. Nanny Violet has gone very pale – the colour has completely drained from her face.

‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you,' I say.

Mark is going to kill me. I was supposed to subtly see whether his nan was ill, not cause her to have a heart attack. She didn't look ill when I first walked in, but now she looks positively peaky.

‘No, dear, you were right to tell me. I don't want Mark worrying. He has enough to worry about with your upcoming wedding without thinking I'm about to keel over.'

‘Just because he doesn't know any details about the wedding does not mean that he has something to worry about,' I say.

‘Oh, Penelope, it isn't the actual wedding I was referring to; it's your little secret.'

Now, if my life was actually an
EastEnders
episode then this
is the moment where the duffers would go off and viewers would be left hanging, wondering what's going to happen next. But as this is my actual life there is no dramatic music playing. Instead it is my turn to go pale and lose all the colour from my face.

‘How did you know?' I say in practically a whisper.

I mean there was no way of her finding out. I've been so careful.

‘I saw you in the community centre. I go there sometimes, and I saw you.'

Oh, I had been careful, but I'd also gone to the gamblers' support meetings at the community centre. She would only have had to ask at the front desk what the room was rented out for and she'd have been told.

I can't speak to Violet. I'm so ashamed.

‘I thought you had a secret. You looked so shifty when you were setting the wedding date. I recognised it. I, too, had a secret on my wedding day.'

‘You did?'

I'm barely listening to Violet as my mind is racing ten to the dozen. Thoughts of whether she'll tell Mark or his family are buzzing around my mind.

‘Not to Mark's grandfather, but I was married before.'

If she had started this story five minutes ago I would have been delighted that she'd almost read my mind and answered
the question about her first husband. But now I can't get excited that she's opening up.

‘Geoffrey?' I say as a guess.

‘Yes, his name was Geoffrey. Lovely fellow he was. All tall and dapper. I knew him a bit from our childhood and then we started courting when I left school.

‘Then one day, not long after we started stepping out, he signed up for the war and off he went. We wrote to each other, of course. How I loved to get those letters. After his basic training he asked me to marry him. We decided that when he was next on leave we'd set a date.'

Violet pauses and it makes me realise how sucked into the story I am. I've momentarily forgotten about the pain and mayhem that's about to ensue and instead I'm hanging on every word.

‘Then what happened?' I ask.

Of course I ultimately know the ending, but for some reason I don't think that is why Violet is telling me this story.

‘He was away for a long time. He went off to North Africa and I didn't hear from him as much. I tried not to think about him as I couldn't bear the worry. It was after the first year of our engagement, and I hadn't seen him in all that time, that I started to become friendly with one of his friends. Theodore had been invalided out of the war after he was
shot in his shoulder and he had started working at one of the factories. He often accompanied me to the dances – not that he could dance. At first it was so that he could look out for his friend's girl. But as we spent more time together, we started to realise how much we had in common. And one night when he walked me back to my mother's we kissed. Not just a kiss of friends, but something more.

‘I felt awful the next day. I'm sure you know all about that feeling. All loss and regret and wishing you could go back and change how it happened.'

I can feel myself welling up at Nanny Violet's story. That is exactly how I feel with Mark. I do desperately want to go back into my very own DeLorean time machine and rip up my mood boards sooner and then I never would be in this very sorry post-bingo mess.

‘Geoffrey sent a telegram later that week and told me he was coming back on leave the next weekend. I didn't have time to wonder whether I should cancel the wedding or not. I just booked the church and told my relatives. By the time Theodore found out he was livid, and he told me that I should be marrying him, not Geoffrey. But I had made my promise; I was going to marry Geoffrey.

‘And I did just that. I felt guilty
every
day of our short marriage. I felt that I'd let him down by not being honest with him. I decided that I would tell him when he came back,
when the war was over. Only he died on the beaches of Normandy. Twenty, he was.'

Violet stops talking and I see her wipe a tear from her eye. Every instinct in me is telling me to rush up to her and give her a massive hug, but I know that she wouldn't want me to. She's far too proud for hugs.

‘And what about Theodore?' I ask. Even though I know that Violet didn't end up with him.

‘Theodore felt just as guilty as I did when Geoffrey died. He did try to take me out after, as friends again, but I wouldn't let him. I couldn't spend time with him as he just reminded me of how awfully I'd behaved with both of them.'

‘But you must have been so young.'

‘I was sixteen. But sixteen in those days was mature, mind. I'd left school at fourteen and been working for two years by then.'

‘And so you met Albert after?'

‘A few years after. I met him when I was nineteen. Because of my relationship with Geoffrey I'd learnt how important it was to be honest with one another, and I never, even in the sixty-five years we were married, kept anything from him.'