Gypsy Wedding (25 page)

‘Now put this on,’ said Vicky, handing over the bodice. ‘I’ll turn my back.’

There was some rustling then Kelly asked her to zip her up, which Vicky did. She stepped back.

‘That is amazing! It’s just how I wanted it to look,’ she said, clapping her hands.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Kelly.

‘I’ve put a long mirror out in the main room,’ said Vicky, ‘so you can see yourself better. It’s too cramped in here for you to get a proper view.’

‘If I can get through the door,’ muttered Kelly.

Vicky helped her squash down the yards and yards of fabric so she could manoeuvre her way into the lounge.

‘Turn around,’ said Vicky. ‘What do you think?’

‘Dear God,’ said Kelly. Her mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ of horrified astonishment.

‘It’s fantastic,’ said Vicky, wriggling with happiness at the way the dress had turned out and completely failing to pick up on Kelly’s reaction.

Kelly continued to stare, slack-jawed, at her reflection.

At this point Shania bounced back into the trailer.

‘Ooh,’ she cried. ‘Oh my God, that dress is amazing. It’s wonderful. You are so clever, Vicky. Wait till Mammy sees it!’

Kelly remained silent as Vicky walked around the dress, twitching the fabric so it hung perfectly.

‘Gorgeous,’ she muttered. ‘Perfect.’ After a little while she noticed Kelly’s silence.

‘Aren’t you thrilled?’

Kelly took a deep breath. ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that less is more.’

Vicky was confused. ‘I’m not with you.’

‘The dress looked perfect in that picture you showed me. But now …’ Kelly plucked at the skirts. ‘Why don’t we get rid of some of the petticoats?’

‘What?’ Vicky was gobsmacked.

‘Try it like it was before,’ she ploughed on.

‘No,’ said Vicky, her voice high-pitched with indignation. ‘No. It’s grand as it is. Really. Isn’t it, Shan?’

Shania nodded vigorously.

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit over the top?’ said Kelly.

Vicky looked at her friend, her forehead creased with worry. ‘Over the top?’ Was it really? She gazed at her creation, trying to see it through Kelly’s eyes.

‘A bit … a bit freaky?’ Kelly added.

No – freaky it definitely wasn’t. She flipped. ‘Freaky?
Freaky!
Don’t be stupid,’ snapped Vicky. ‘There’s nothing “freaky” about this dress. If you hate it so much I suggest you take it off and forget about being my bridesmaid.’

‘I was just saying,’ said Kelly, defensively. ‘This isn’t normal, you know. Bridesmaids’ dresses are never this big. This is …’ Kelly searched for the right word but the best she could think of was, ‘… stupid.’

‘No, no. Just get the fucking dress off and get out,’ screamed Vicky. ‘Go on. How
dare
you be so rude about it? How dare you! This is how
I
want
my
wedding. This isn’t about you, this is about me. You can do what you want when you get married but this is
my
day. You can dress your bridesmaids in the sort of stupid shit your sort like, but I want mine like this. Understand?’

‘I didn’t mean …’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘The dress is big, though,’ said Kelly.

‘That’s how we like them,’ said Shania. ‘It’s how we do things. Not that you’d understand. You don’t belong at Vicky’s wedding. I don’t know what made her come up with the daft idea that it would be good to have an outsider there. Well, at least we know what you’re really like, what you really think of our ways before we get there. Probably best if you don’t come at all because you’d only hate it. Sneer at us too, probably.’

Kelly, her face white, bit her lip and turned around, with some difficulty. ‘You’d better unzip me,’ she said quietly.

Vicky leaned forwards and tugged on the zip. ‘Come on, Shania,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave Kelly to get changed into something she is happy to be seen wearing. Something that doesn’t make her into a freak.’

The pair left the trailer and shut the door behind them.

‘Typical bloody gorgio,’ said Shania, as they stamped across the park to get right away from their trailer and Kelly. ‘She thinks she’s so much better than we are. She was so rude about that dress and it’s beautiful. It really is, Vick.’

‘Leave it,’ said Vicky. She didn’t want to dwell on Kelly’s reaction. What was wrong with having big fluffy petticoats? They looked wonderful. She couldn’t believe how rude her friend had been about the dress. Friends didn’t say things like that to each other, not about their wedding plans. But then she’d been pretty rude back to Kelly – and Shania hadn’t helped.

What a fucking mess
, she thought as the sisters sat on a bench in the sun, both simmering with indignation and anger. Vicky wasn’t entirely sure that all her anger was with Kelly – just most of it. But Shania needn’t have weighed in and she herself had made things worse. Gah – it was just an all-round sodding shambles.

Despite her anger at what Kelly had said and her cruel criticism of the dress, she couldn’t bear the way that she and Kelly had left things. This was so wrong – all those years of friendship blown away by a stupid row over petticoats. Vicky got her phone out and rang Kelly’s number.

Straight to voicemail. She was being blanked.

Vicky wasn’t having this. She had to make it up with Kelly right now. She couldn’t have Kelly going off like this. She had to make it up with her before the wedding. They
had
to make up before the big day. Maybe Kelly wouldn’t be completely happy about wearing a traveller bridesmaid’s dress, but Vicky was sure she could talk her round – if Kelly let her talk to her – and explain it from a traveller’s point of view. The trouble was, if Kelly continued to blank her phone calls there was nothing she could do. Vicky realised with a sick feeling that she didn’t even know where Kelly lived. She only had a mobile number for her and no other information at all.

There was no way she was going to lose Kelly. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, her mother always said. Vicky recalled that she once asked her mother ‘Why not?’ after a particularly bruising spat with Shania.

‘Because with every day that passes it becomes twice as hard to make up again,’ she’d said. ‘You get more and more convinced that you are right and your sister is wrong and she feels the opposite, just as strongly, and neither of you backs down and, to be sure, by the time a week has passed you never will and you’ll end up hating each other till you go to your graves. I’ve seen it in other families. It’s how feuds start.’

Vicky had been so scared of her mother’s dire warning that she always tried to take heed of the advice. There had been that one time she and Shania had really fallen out, back in the previous summer, but they’d made up the next morning. And since then they’d had the odd row, but they’d never fallen out really badly. Not like she and Kelly just had. She had to make up with Kelly – and quickly. She and Kelly had too much history, too many shared memories for them to part on such bad terms. Vicky jumped up and raced back to the trailer but when she got there the dress was back on the bed and the place was empty. Kelly had fled.

Vicky sat on the bed and began to cry.

It had all come to a head. She was so tired. She had worked so hard on the dresses and her college course; the weekend at the horse fair had been exhausting and now this. It was the final straw. It was her wedding day in only a few weeks, she should be on cloud nine, ecstatic, but instead, recently, she spent half of every night awake, racked by doubts about her and Liam, she’d just fallen out with her best friend and to cap it all she’d been told her dresses were freakish and stupid.

Miserably she tried to get hold of Kelly again and once again her call was blanked. She sighed. Sitting here feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to solve anything. Maybe she ought to go and see Liam. He’d cheer her up, or maybe he’d know how she could make it all better.

She wandered over to his shed where he and his dad were busy working on the orders they’d taken at Stow.

‘Hiya,’ she said as she went into their workshop.

Jimmy took one look at her sad face, muttered something about a tea break and left the pair of them alone.

‘What’s up, hon?’ asked Liam, laying down his plane.

Vicky sighed. ‘I’ve just had a row with Kelly.’

‘Oh babe, I’m sorry. What’s she done now?’

‘She hates her bridesmaid’s dress.’

‘Why? I mean, what brought this on? She’s seen it before.’

‘Not completely finished. Not with the petticoats and everything.’

Liam didn’t understand and he rubbed his face as if that would make everything clear. ‘But that doesn’t make it so very different, does it?’

‘According to her, she now looks like a freak.’

‘Stuff her then.’

‘But she’s my friend.’

Liam looked sceptical and sighed. ‘I know you
think
she is but I’ve always had my doubts.’

Vicky nodded sadly.

‘Her life and ours,’ Liam went on, ‘they’re just too different. And now she’s made you miserable. Maybe this is for the best. Maybe you’ll be happier if you never see her again.’

‘No,’ whispered Vicky. ‘Just because she didn’t like the dress it doesn’t mean that she’d try to do me down. She’s my mate; it’s just the dress she doesn’t like, she’s not waging a war against me.’

‘It’s enough for me that she’s upset you. And I don’t want her to be able to do that to you again. I don’t want you seeing her, you hear me? I don’t want to risk her making you unhappy ever again. I hate it when you’re sad, Vicky, I really do. This is for the best, Vick, trust me.’

‘But … but you’ve always trusted
me
in the past, you’ve always been on
my
side. I thought you liked her. Liam, I don’t want to lose Kelly’s friendship. Just accepting that she’s gone really isn’t a solution. I thought you’d tell me how to put it all to rights.’ Vicky stared at him, bewildered. What she’d wanted from him was a hug and a bit of sympathy, not to be ordered to stay away from Kelly. She had every intention of making it up with her best friend. She didn’t know how, and it was probably going to take a while, but she was going to do it. Or rather she
had been
going to do it. But if Liam was going to be like this, Vicky’s friendship with Kelly was becoming even more precarious. Vicky didn’t know what to say and having just had a bruising argument with Kelly she certainly wasn’t up for one with Liam.

‘Right,’ she said, trying to put a brave face on things. ‘Best I make plans for just six bridesmaids then.’ She knew she might sound as if she didn’t really care but inside she felt as if she were being torn apart.

And who could she talk to about this? Shania was livid with Kelly; Liam didn’t understand; her father hated all gorgios and her mother would side with her husband. The one person she could have relied on to talk through such a problem was Kelly – how ironic was that?

When she got back to the trailer, Kelly’s discarded dress was there as a reminder of their row. It was also a reminder that she now had a storage problem for all the petticoats. She didn’t have any room for this petticoat, let alone another six – no, she only needed space for another five now. There was no way she’d be able to fit all of them in the family trailer. There was nothing else for it: she’d have to go against what Liam had said and she’d have to make it up to Kelly. She was sure she’d be able to persuade Liam that Kelly wasn’t so awful when she’d succeeded. And she didn’t want to make it up with Kelly
just
because of those damned petticoats. Yes, of course it was an excuse but she really wasn’t that shallow. There was also the stark realisation that Kelly represented a part of her life she didn’t want to leave behind completely. If Liam really put his foot down and refused to let her see Kelly again she’d lose touch with her altogether – for ever.

Feeling completely blue, Vicky hung up the green silk skirt, folded up the bodice and began stuffing the net underskirt into a bin bag. It wasn’t ideal but at least it crushed it down small enough to shove in a cupboard. Not, she thought sadly, that it would matter if this one got crushed beyond recognition, not if Kelly really wasn’t going to come to her wedding.

She tried ringing her again: nothing. There had to be a way of getting an apology to her. An idea zoomed into her brain. Jordan! Excitedly she dumped the petticoat, which instantly exploded out of the bin bag, and scrolled through her phone. Somewhere in the phone’s call history had to be that text that Jordan had sent her the day she’d got her results. It was nearly a year ago. Would her phone still have it? She scrolled through the ‘Inbox’ file. Almost every text had come from a named friend but then she came to one that had come from an unknown person, a text that her phone could only identify by the caller’s own number. It had to be it. Vicky scrabbled around in her brain but she couldn’t think of any other messages that she might have made to or received from people who weren’t already in her phone’s address book. This had to be Jordan.

With a slightly shaky finger she hit ‘call’.

‘Vicky?’

‘Jordan?’

‘Of course it is. Who did you think you were calling?’

‘I’m sorry, of course it is.’ She paused. Now what did she say?