‘Absolutely not,’ Mitzi said. ‘Mayhem, madness and bedlam reigns. Your buttonhole’s here somewhere. The deep-red rosebuds there, look – under the cat food. You look great. Did you buy that suit in London? What a lovely colour. Old gold – and with that dark-red shirt and tie you look extremely festive.’
‘Jennifer chose it,’ Lance said, shoving the Bollinger in the fridge, then fixing the rose into his lapel, and trying not to preen. ‘We’ve got co-ordinated outfits.’
Mitzi laughed. ‘I might have guessed. Mind you, it was very kind of Jennifer to do our faces. A nice thought.’
‘She does have them from time to time.’ Lance pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. ‘And you look gorgeous.
Even in your dressing gown.’
‘Thanks – but wait until you see the girls. They were pretty before but she’s transformed them. Much as I hate to say it, Jennifer’s very good at her job.’
‘I know. Mitzi – your friend. The dentist …’
‘Won’t be here today. We’re no longer together. So there’ll be no awkwardness.’
‘There wouldn’t have been. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.’
‘So am I.’
Mitzi, who’d tried really hard not to think about Joel all day, felt her throat start to tighten. She looked away quickly.
‘Are you nervous?’ Lance said softly.
‘Very. You?’
‘Terrified. And a bit sad. I mean, I always thought, when the kids were young, that we’d be sharing their wedding day like proper parents. I know we are, but well, you know …’
Mitzi nodded. She knew.
‘I’d better go and get dressed.’ She looked round the kitchen. ‘Will you be okay for a minute? The girls shouldn’t be long. Lu’s supposed to be helping Doll get ready – but no doubt it’ll be the other way round.’
‘No doubt.’
They exchanged smiles of friendship, fleetingly sharing a history and a lifetime of parental memories.
Half an hour later, Mitzi, feeling a million dollars in the mediaeval green velvet dress, slowly came downstairs again. Lance was lounging on the sofa in the living room, his face dark in the flickering firelight.
‘Wow,’ Lance gave an approving nod. ‘Spectacular. Absolutely gorgeous. Very Queen Guinevere. And – oh, double wow!’
Mitzi turned and looked as Doll and Lulu came into the room. She sniffed back tears of love and pride.
Lu, in her dark-red slinky dress and with her festive hair
and her beautifully made-up face, had been transformed from eco-warrior to heart-stoppingly beautiful woman in a stroke.
Doll, blonde and elegant, looked as stunning as only a bride can. The dress skimmed and shimmered over her slender body, the tiara sparkled in her glossy hair, and with the swansdown boa and the long satin gloves, she looked like a fashion plate.
‘Aren’t we clever?’ Lance looked at Mitzi as he stood up and kissed both the girls. ‘To have produced such beautiful daughters? All your doing, of course.’ He kissed Mitzi too. ‘They inherited your genes. Let’s drink a toast – to the three most beautiful women in Hazy Hassocks …’
‘Don’t let Jennifer hear you say that.’
The Bollinger was fetched and the toast drunk and then there was the last-minute rushing backwards and forwards for purses and bags and trips to the loo.
‘Shay’s outside!’ Lu peered out of the window. ‘Time for us to go, Mum – oh my God! Doesn’t he scrub up well? I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off him! Look at him!’
They all looked. It was the first time any of them had seen him in a suit. The sombre formal clothes on his rangy body and with his tousled streaky hair, were an incredibly sexy contrast. He looked, Mitzi thought, good enough to eat.
‘We’re a very glamorous lot, aren’t we?’ Mitzi said, trying not to think how superb Joel would have looked in his suit too. ‘Okay then, we’ll leave you two to it.’ She hugged Lance and kissed Doll again. ‘Good luck, darling. You look incredible.’
There was another round of hugging and kissing.
‘Oh, by the way,’ Lance said, ‘just in case you’re late back tonight, I fed Richard and Judy while I was in the kitchen. And put down some extra food and clean water.’
‘So did I!’ Mitzi, Doll and Lulu chorused.
*
In the December darkness, the church, decorated for Christmas, had an air of age-old mystery. Candles, hundreds of fat white candles, flickered, casting dancing shadows up the worn stone walls and across the ceiling. Holly and ivy twined everywhere, and the ends of the pews were garlanded with deep-red rosebuds and sprigs of mistletoe.
Mitzi, having left Lulu shivering in the dark church porch while Shay returned to collect the Bandings and the Spraggs, hurried down the aisle and made a brief diversion to the right-hand side where Brett and his family were sitting.
‘All right? Not nervous?’
‘I’m okay – I think.’ Brett looked serious. ‘She is going to turn up, Mrs B, isn’t she?’
‘Of course she is. She’s on her way. And please, after today, could you call me Mum?’
Brett grinned. ‘Not a chance, Mrs B.’
Smiling, Mitzi sat alone in the left-hand front pew and felt almost as though she’d stepped back in time. The colours of the Epiphany were vibrant, and the nativity scene – all worn wooden figures, the far-too-big star and bundles of straw – in front of the altar, was exactly as it had been when she was a child.
There was something very comforting about the sameness.
Merle, the organist and one of the Baby Boomers, was playing a selection of carols very softly, and peered round from her seat and grinned. Mitzi grinned back then smiled across again at Brett’s family in the opposite pew. They looked as nervous as she felt.
The church began to fill very quickly. Mitzi kept turning round and mouthing greetings. Thanks to the vicar being a bit High Church, the air was rich with the scent of pine needles and incense, and the heating was going full bore. The velvet dress would have been a disaster with a more parsimonious parson.
Pews on both sides were now filled to bursting. It was like
Hair
all over again. Mitzi had a fleeting worry about
whether there’d be enough food for this lot at The Faery Glen. She recognised nearly everyone, although some of Doll and Brett’s friends were unfamiliar. And goodness – had Tarnia and Snotty Mark actually been invited? Their outfits were pure Hollywood and Tarnia’s hat would have put Ascot to shame.
There was a rustling behind her as Flo and Clyde and Lav and Lob eased themselves into their seats. Mitzi swivelled round to greet them with mutual exclamations of ‘Don’t you look lovely’. Lav and Lob had, in deference to being in a place of worship, abandoned the cycle helmets and wore matching hats bedecked with glossy paste fruit and lots of feathers. The rest of their outfits were all limp lace, fingerless mittens and paisley layers – pure Hinge and Bracket.
Flo and Clyde, in drop-waisted suits with more than a slight aroma of mothball, looked as though they’d stepped from the pages of
Good Housekeeping
circa 1955.
Oh, and there was the dental surgery crowd: Viv with her short and stout husband who worked in the hardware shop in Winterbrook and who she always introduced at functions as ‘Derek, my tiger’, and Mr and Mrs Johnson looking very elegant, and Tammy in an unsuitable mini skirt and thigh boots holding hands with Gavin, Flo and Clyde’s adenoidal grandson from the Big Sava check-outs – but not Joel.
Of course, not Joel.
Mitzi had made her own second wish last night, silently, but that wasn’t going to work. Granny Westward said the wishes had to be spoken aloud – and she certainly hadn’t made any mention of more than one wish. So, happiness all round was what she’d wished for – and who could ask for more?
Well, yes, she could and had, but she was a grown-up. She’d cope with the disappointment. And anyway, there was possibly something blasphemous thinking about herbal magic while in church. There’d probably be a thunderbolt.
‘You look really nice.’ Jennifer had slipped into the pew
behind Mitzi. ‘I’m sorry I was rude about you wearing green. It’s gorgeous with your hair and colouring.’
‘Thanks,’ Mitzi turned round, ducked under the brim of Jennifer’s hat, and tried not to giggle. Jennifer was wearing old gold and dark red – exactly like Lance. They looked like Torville and Dean. ‘And thanks for all your help today. You’ve made such a difference to us all. Look – don’t sit there – come in here. There’s plenty of room.’
‘But the front pew?’
‘You’re Lance’s wife,’ Mitzi said without irony. ‘He’ll be in here when he’s done the giving away bit. You should be with him.’
‘Thank you ever so much.’ Jennifer swapped pews in a designer rustle and a waft of bank-breaking scent. ‘It’s ever so kind of you.’
Merle suddenly cranked the organ up from a sotto voce version of ‘Silent Night’ and harumphed into ‘The Entry of the Queen of Sheba’. Mitzi, turning with everyone else to watch Doll and Lance make their entrance, felt the tears gather and sniffed them back.
Doll, cool and controlled as always, looked radiant and beautiful; Lance was bursting with pride; and Lu was simply gorgeous.
Her family, Mitzi thought, as they reached the chancel steps beside her, was stunning.
She could smell the cold December air on them and feel their excitement. Brett’s eyes were glowing with love as he stepped forward with his best-man brother.
Mitzi stood up with the rest of the congregation. The candles sparkled on the zirconias in Doll’s tiara and on the sequins in her hair. Sequins? Had Pauline used sequins? On everyone? Including Lance?
Lu’s eyes were huge as she leaned towards Mitzi. ‘It’s snowing!’ she whispered. ‘Really snowing! See – dreams can come true …’
The Faery Glen was going to be bursting at the seams. After the wedding service and the photographs, the convoy of cars had snaked round the village green and along Hazy Hassocks high street. The snow, huge fat flakes tumbling from the darkness and still settling, had impeded the journey.
The village was fast disappearing under a white eiderdown.
‘See!’ Lu said delightedly as she clambered from Shay’s car outside the pub, ‘I told Doll those Dreaming Creams would work! Isn’t this just brilliant?’
‘Amazing,’ Mitzi agreed, easing herself from the back seat where she’d been cheek by jowl with Lav and Lob. ‘Cold, but absolutely amazing …’
The Faery Glen was already crystalline-covered and the flakes were falling past the illuminated sign, faster and faster, huge goose feathers, swirling into a blur.
Doll had been ecstatic. The happy couple had been covered by snow as well as confetti outside the church, and the photographs had been taken in the nave.
‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …’ everyone had sung as they slipped and slithered merrily down the church path towards their cars.
Shay, making sure Lav and Lob had been safely installed inside the pub, grinned at Mitzi and Lu from the doorway.
‘Are you two coming in, or are you staying out there to make a snowman?’
‘Tough call,’ Lu grinned back, before teetering through the snow on her unfamiliar high heels.
Shay caught her in the doorway and covered her icy face with kisses.
Mitzi, with snowflakes settling in her hair, swallowed the lump in her throat and made her way towards the pub. Doll and Brett, Lulu and Shay – happy, healthy, in love. What more could any woman want?
Otto and Boris had worked wonders. The Faery Glen, already looking festive for Christmas, was a mass of wedding decorations: bells, banners and balloons, hearts and flowers, cascades of twinkling lights, white cloths over all the tables, the log fire roaring.
‘We’ve put your food in with ours on the tables at the far end,’ Boris said, pouring champagne into Mitzi’s flute. ‘Sort of mix’n’match.’
‘Lovely,’ Mitzi nodded. ‘Thank you – this is wonderful.’
The wedding breakfast ebb and flow of laughter and dozens of splintered conversations rose around her. The entire congregation was there. The whole village and then some. She spoke to everyone. Doll and Brett, glowing with happiness, circulated. Shay and Lu didn’t. They’d retired to an inglenook and were sucking champagne from each other’s fingers.
‘Super, Mitzi!’ Tarnia shrieked, arm in arm with Jennifer. ‘Super!’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Lance said, raising his champagne flute to her. ‘Just perfect.’
‘It is,’ Mitzi agreed. ‘And listen to that wind – if it’s still snowing we’ll have a whiteout by the end of the evening. This is better than I could ever have dreamed …’
Well, very nearly.
In an almost detached manner, Mitzi watched as the guests wolfed down the Green Gowns and the Dreaming Creams and the Mistletoe Kisses. She laughed to herself.
Hazy Hassocks on the razzle hardly needed any herbal help – the evening would probably degenerate into an orgy.
‘Mind if we join you?’
Lu, lustfully immersed in licking Moët et Chandon from Shay’s index finger, looked up irritably.
Carmel, holding hands with Augusta who was clutching a massively piled plate, was beaming at them.
‘S’pose not,’ Lu muttered ungraciously, squeezing round even closer to Shay so that Augusta’s huge hips would fit into the inglenook. ‘Are you enjoying yourselves?’
‘Very much. It’s a really great party and you look stunning,’ Carmel said. ‘And we won’t – er – disturb you for long. We just wanted to ask you a question.’
‘Fire away,’ Shay beamed. ‘The building of particle accelerators is my specialist subject.’
‘Oh, ha-ha.’ Carmel reached for a Green Gown from the top of Augusta’s pile. ‘No, we wanted to know if you’d heard of any places to live. We—’ she smiled lovingly at Augusta ‘—want to be together. As you know we’re both lodging with families at the moment, and well – er – things can get a bit difficult. We’ve both handed in our notice at our present places, but the house we were going to share has fallen through, so come the New Year we’ll be homeless.’
Augusta managed to remove her face from the food for a moment. ‘We’ll take absolutely anything. Anything just so as we can be together. We just hate having to sleep apart.’
Shay and Lu nodded in sympathy.
‘Actually,’ Shay said, ‘there’s a cottage for rent on the village green and—’