I’m trying to keep to the simple styles, given Cate’s buying for eight here. As my hand comes to rest on a short plain silk one, Immie gives it the thumbs up by waving her wine so hard it sloshes onto her jeans.
‘Definitely not.’ Cate mops Immie with a tissue, and vetoes the dress with one determined head shake. ‘In fact I can see the one I want from here.’ She gets up and reaches towards the floaty chiffon.
‘These are at the expensive end,’ I say, turning to Jess for back up.
‘We sell a lot more of these,’ Jess says diplomatically, whisking out an almost identical, much cheaper dress. ‘How about this one?’
‘No way.’ Immie gasps under her breath, and slumps down in her seat.
‘The first one’s definitely the one I want.’ Cate sounds decided.
‘Are you sure?’ I ask. We bridesmaids had mentioned paying for our own dresses, but we couldn’t afford these. She’s picked the most expensive bridesmaid dress in the shop. ‘Those are £595 each.’ That’s after the friends and family discount I’ve negotiated, too. ‘Times eight,’ I say, desperately trying to do the maths.
Jess holds up yet another dress, offering her an out. ‘Here, this one’s similar, but half the price. Not that I’m supposed to say it, but other dresses are just as well made for a lot less than the make you’ve picked out.’
‘Nooo, I’ll look like a pregnant fairy in all of these,’ wails Immie.
‘We’ll try the first one,’ Cate insists. ‘I’m only doing this once, I’m damn well doing it with bridesmaids looking how I want them.’ She reaches out, and smiles as she runs her hand over the fabric. ‘Dreamy isn’t it? I haven’t finally decided if I want them in cream or nude. It’ll depend which wedding dress I finally go for.’
Which reminds me, we haven’t even started on Cate’s dress, but that’s a whole other story. I pretend not to notice that Immie’s miming being sick over the arm of her chair.
Jess turns to Sera, who’s blinking at what she’s witnessing, and whispers, ‘Brides with firm ideas are a dream to work with, Sera. When you try to please all the bridesmaids everyone ends up compromising. It’s fabulous when a bride decides to please herself.’
Cate sends Immie a firm frown, then turns back to me. ‘This dress was in the wedding magazine I bought the morning Liam proposed.’ She folds her arms decidedly. ‘I’ve known all along those are the ones I’m having.’
What’s she talking about? She got engaged months ago. ‘So why are we even looking at others?’ I ask. What’s worse, I’m going through my own agonies here. My blotchy orange hair is going to look so cheap and trashy beside this upmarket dress.
Cate gives another grin. ‘It was to show Liam that we’d explored every option before we settled on this one.’
Immie’s aghast. ‘Times eight, and I’ve run out of fingers. I hope you’ve got something spectacular up your sleeve for when Liam finally does his calculations and finds out how much this is costing, Cate.’ Immie’s given up on her glass and she’s drowning her bridesmaid sorrows straight from the bottle.
‘I’m the accountant in the family. If Liam ever does the sums, he’s in for the dirtiest night of his life.’ Cate laughs. ‘Although this is nothing compared to the other thing I splurged on this week.’
Immie and I both squint at her. When did careful Cate turn into a cash splasher?
‘The marquee company got in touch with a special offer on the most gorgeous open sided tents. I couldn’t resist so I ordered two.’
‘What, instead of the main marquee?’ I’m not sure ‘open’ is a good idea, as for two …
From Cate’s airy waft of her hand, she might have been talking about tenner-a-go pop up tents, not three grand a time event venues. ‘No, I’ve ordered these as well, I thought they’d make a nice extra.’
I’m still picking my jaw up off the floor, but Immie’s covered it. ‘Liam’s going to be up to his boxers in filthy sex when this shit hits the fan.’ Eloquent as ever, she takes another swig.
Jess looks at her watch. ‘Time to try on then?’
She’s got a bride coming in for a final fitting at six, so she’ll have to go downstairs for that. Given Immie’s stroppy scowl from behind the prosecco bottle it may be no bad thing.
‘You go to your bride,’ I say to Jess. ‘Sera and I can carry on here.’
I knew I should have given Immie twice as much fizz before we started. With Immie the line between making her compliant and keeping her standing is indiscernible. She goes from saying no to falling over, with barely a second to catch her saying yes.
As Jess slips away, Immie’s starting to rant.
‘Do I look like I’m ready to be transformed into a trifle?’
To be fair, she’s a committed jeans and sweatshirt girl, so I’m not sure how this is going to go. The last time she wore a skirt out of school was probably when she was a carnival rosebud, thirty years ago. I don’t have to dig too deep to come up with the kind of bribe she’ll go for.
‘You try on the dress, Immie, and we’ll send Sera for another bottle of fizz.’
Sera grins at me and heads for the stairs.
Immie rolls her eyes, and sighs, but she gets up. As soon as she’s on her feet I shoulder her into the fitting room, shove the dress in with her, and whisk the curtain closed.
Cate and I take deep breaths as we retire to a safe distance.
Cate frowns and turns to me. ‘I’ve been thinking, you can’t struggle with a man as difficult as Rafe from now until September.’ She runs her fingers through her hair. ‘There must be something we can do to soften him up.’
I shrug. ‘He doesn’t respond to cake.’
Cate sniffs. ‘He probably needs a good roll in the hay, we’ll have to find him a woman.’
After Immie’s rundown on the history of his nonexistent love life, I grin. ‘Good luck with that one.’
‘There is one person he doesn’t object to.’ Cate’s lips are flickering. ‘Immie has him eating out of her hand. That has to mean something.’
I’m not sure I agree with Cate here. ‘It means she scares the bejesus out of him.’
‘But he spends a lot of time with Morgan,’ Cate observes.
She’s right about that. Morgan’s always dragging what I assume to be bits of broken tractor round the farmyard after Rafe.
‘Rafe wouldn’t take an interest in Morgan if he wasn’t interested in Immie, would he?’ Cate leans in, and she’s whispering. ‘In the interest of smoothing the way for my wedding …’ She says those two last words very close and very loudly. ‘I think you might need to sprinkle some cupid dust on Rafe and Immie, okay?’
I
