anyway, are we? You’re my perfect girl. Why would I ever want to divorce my perfect girl?’
‘And I’d never divorce you in a million years,’ she smiled back at him, randomly marvelling at just how handsome he looked in the candlelight.
‘Well you know something?’ Damien went on. ‘Then what possible difference can this make? It’s just a signature on a piece of paper, that’s all. It means absolutely nothing to me.’
Three glasses of champagne later when dessert was being cleared, he’d got her thinking it was actually all in her own best interests really. And Damien could be so persuasive when he wanted to be.
‘Look at it this way,’ he’d said, eyes glinting in the dim light. ‘If you do sign, then in one fell stroke it proves two things to the old man: firstly, that you’ve absolutely no interest in the King family fortune and never had, and secondly, that you’re marrying for love and nothing else. Plus it would certainly get you off on the right foot with the in-laws, wouldn’t it?’
And by the time they called his driver around to take them home, light-headed from the champagne, Kate had already borrowed a biro from a passing waiter and signed on the dotted line.
The present
‘I look like the Irish flag,’ says Gracie, my baby sister and bridesmaid, shoehorning herself into the slinky little bottle green shift dress that she picked out for the big day months ago.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’re gorgeous!’ I say brightly, sticking my head around the fitting room door, so I can get a good look at her parading up and down in front of the mirrors outside.
‘And it’s too tight. Either I’ve put on weight or else it just doesn’t bloody well fit properly.’
‘You’re as thin as a pin and it looks like a perfect fit to me.’
‘Is it too late to get something else instead?’ she whines, staring in the giant mirror ahead of her and fidgeting with the sleeves of the dress, almost as though they’re itching her.
‘You know right well it is,’ I tell her firmly, going back into my fitting room. ‘Besides, can I remind you that you’re the one who insisted on wearing that dress in the first place? So in fairness, it’s a little bit late to back out now.’
‘I know, but what in the name of arse was I thinking?’ Gracie insists. ‘A bottle green dress against my head of carroty-red hair and freckly skin? By the time you throw in the white posy, I’ll look like something off a St Paddy’s Day float. You should have held me back, you should have ripped the bloody thing off my back when there was still time.’
‘You’re absolutely stunning, Gracie, love,’ my mother coos over from a plush white armchair at a dressing table in front of a mirror, where she’s sipping Prosecco – at half three in the afternoon by the way – while trying on fascinators and having an absolute ball for herself. ‘A good spray tan will sort you out and wait till you see. You won’t know yourself.’
‘I promise you this much, Mum,’ says Gracie, ‘if I ever get married, I’ll run away to the registry office just to spare you all this malarkey.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ says Mum, balancing her glass precariously on the edge of the dressing table. ‘And admit that deep down you really love dressing up. Besides, gay women have white weddings all the time these days, you know. Look at Ellen DeGeneres and your woman, what’s her name, the tall blonde one that used to be on telly.’
‘Not this gay woman, thanks all the same,’ says Gracie.
The three of us are in The Bridal Room as it happens, which is this really exclusive shop outside Kildare town, about an hour from Dublin. It’s boudoir luxurious in here, with plush velvet seating, deep pile cream carpets and, as you’d expect in a bridal showroom this posh, glasses of Prosecco on tap. It’s my last fitting before the big day, hence my dragging Gracie and Mum all this way for the ride. And so far, in spite of all the behind the scenes trepidation about this wedding from my side of the family, it’s been fairly stress-free for all of us. So far, at least.
In fact I’d go so far as to say that this really is the joyous, happy, fun day out that I’d hoped for, and as an added bonus, I’m not having to listen to yet more long drawn-out lectures from my nearest and dearest about why Bernard and I will never work out and how I’m about to make the biggest mistake of my life, etc., etc.
I’ve been putting up with that for months now and I can’t tell you how lovely it is to have a single day free of it. But then to a man, everyone around me has expressed doubts about Bernard, and the closer the big day gets, the more ominous those doubts seem to grow.
At this late stage, I’m basically sick to the gills of having to endure comments along the lines of, ‘he’s way too old for you!’ ‘You’ve absolutely nothing in common!’ ‘He’s so bloody boring!’ ‘You’re just doing this on the rebound!’ And somehow the most stinging of all from my dad, ‘ah pet, are you sure you’re doing this for the right reason? You know what they say, marry in haste, repent at leisure. And I’m not just saying that because I’m having to shell out a fortune for the bleedin’ thing either’.
To date, though, it’s Gracie who’s been the cheerleader-in-chief of all the doom-mongers; try as she might, she and Bernard just can’t seem to connect on any level whatsoever. ‘I feel like I’m about to lose my only sister,’ she told me after a few drinks too many when we first got engaged. She was a bit pissed and I think she might have forgotten that she ever said it in the first place, but I certainly didn’t.
It hurt then and it hurts even now to remember.
In fact Mum is the only one who doesn’t seem to think that I’m heading for the divorce courts anytime soon. Not that she ‘gets’ Bernard and all his constant references to obscure artists she’s never heard of and exhibitions in galleries she’s never so much as set foot in.
‘I suppose he’s solid and dependable,’ is about the most lukewarm thing she’s ever said to me in his praise, ‘with a permanent, pensionable job and everything. So if nothing else, you’ll always have a roof over your head. And I’ll say this much for him, he’s certainly not the type who’d ever cheat on you.’
Implication heard loud and clear and with that single sentence, Mum well and truly damned Bernard with faint praise. You may not exactly be marrying the love of your life, was her subtext, but I suppose you could do a whole lot worse.
And we all know exactly who she’s referring to when she says ‘a whole lot worse’.
Back to The Bridal Room though and maybe it’s the Prosecco, maybe it’s the fact that it’s a beautiful, sunny spring-like day and we’re all out of Dublin on a girlie jaunt, but right now the three of us are in great form, all my nerves and stress temporarily banished for the day as I focus on just having a lovely time with my nearest and dearest.
‘Right then, are you all ready?’ I call from inside the fitting room.
‘Come on out, love, I have the camera ready,’ Mum says.
‘Take
