I Heart London (27 page)

‘It’s Notte by Marchesa,’ she replied, even though she clearly thought communicating with me was beneath her. I hoped I didn’t have chocolate in my hair. Or puke. I wouldn’t be surprised if the wedding party hadn’t bothered to mention that to me this morning. Personally, I would have been put off being rude to someone with a black eye. You could never tell what injuries the other person had walked away with. ‘They’re designer.’

‘Can you point me in the right direction?’ I fought to keep the smile on my face and pretend I hadn’t heard the second part of her response. The implication was very clear. They were expensive designer dresses that I couldn’t possibly afford. Just because I was dressed like a tramp did not mean I didn’t have the cash to back up my questions. Hadn’t she seen
Pretty Woman
? Wasn’t that law now?

‘These were the last two.’ She started edging away and actually made a little tutting sound as though I was holding up an empty bowl and saying ‘Please, sir, I want some more’.

‘Because I’m shopping for bridesmaids’ dresses.’ I jumped in front of her, eyes on the prize. ‘For my wedding. And these are perfect. I don’t suppose you know anywhere else that might stock them?’

‘I don’t work here.’ It was a miracle she could actually see the dresses, she was looking so far down her nose at me. ‘Ask someone who does.’

I watched as she walked away carrying my perfect bridesmaids’ dresses and suddenly saw red. They were
my
bridesmaids’ dresses. If I had those dresses, everything else would be perfect. Even if I didn’t know what sizes they were, how much they might cost or whether or not Jenny and Louisa would actually like them. All I knew was that cow wasn’t having them.

‘I don’t suppose there are that many people buying two of the same dress,’ I said loudly, making her jump as she added another two dresses to the pile on her arm. ‘Are you buying bridesmaids’ dresses?’

The woman turned and looked at me with complete disdain. Maybe I had been in America too long. Chatting to a stranger in a shop? Shocking.

‘No.’ I watched her decide whether or not to explain to me what she was doing. She opened her mouth, probably realizing I’d sod off sooner if she told me. ‘My daughter is making a film for college and she needs identical dresses for when they get ruined. It’s about zombies. Or something. They have to be pale so they show the blood.’

Two things occurred to me. One, I hated her and her daughter. Two, there was no way on God’s green earth was she taking these dresses and covering them in fake zombie shit. I looked at her once again. She was bigger than me. She was less hungover than me. She was wearing considerably higher heels than me. Without thinking about it, I snatched the dresses out of her hand and sprinted across the shop floor. Thankfully, and possibly due to the massive amount of Botox in her overly made-up face, the mother of the wannabe zombie movie auteur stood in shocked silence behind me. I ran like the wind, smiling at shop assistants as I went, my big yellow shopping bag bashing against my legs. ‘Hi, Mum,’ I gasped, throwing open the door and crashing into the changing room. ‘If a tall, black-haired woman comes this way, you haven’t seen me.’

‘Righto.’ She never took her eye off her phone.

‘Try these on,’ I panted, hurling the dresses at Jenny and Louisa, who were still bickering loudly. They were both staring at me, Jenny in a bright yellow Grecian goddess gown, Louisa wrapped in a pretty pink strapless shift.

‘Do it!’ I ordered. ‘Fast!’

Nothing motivated mardy bridesmaids like a maniac bride. They did as they were told instantly. And the dresses were perfect. Completely, one hundred percent worth the fashion hit-and-run.

‘Angie, they’re beautiful.’ Jenny preened in front of the mirror before testing out some suspect dance moves. ‘Marchesa?’

‘Notte by Marchesa,’ I confirmed. ‘And we’re saving them from a fate worse than death.’

Louisa pulled her hair into a loose ponytail and fluffed the layers. ‘I love it,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s so pretty.’

‘Excuse me.’ There was a sharp knock on the door before it opened to reveal a harassed-looking sales assistant. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen—’

She stopped mid-sentence, looked at Jenny and Louisa smiling in the Marchesa dresses, looked at me, hair a mess, more than a little flustered, then bit her lip and smiled. ‘Never mind.’ She started to close the door. ‘Nice dresses.’

I held a finger to my lips to shush Jenny and Lou and pressed my ear to the door. My two best friends gripped my arms tightly.

‘She came this way, with my dresses. She just snatched them.’

The voice of the enemy.

‘Our dresses? She wants our dresses?’ Jenny looked at me with horror. ‘She can’t have them, Angela, she can’t.’

‘Be quiet.’ Louisa hushed her with a slap to the back of the head. ‘She’ll have to pry them off our cold, dead bodies.’

‘Sorry, not in there,’ the assistant chirped. ‘I can’t think what happened.’

‘I’m sure I saw her run in here.’

‘Nope. Sorry, can’t help.’

The three of us stood in the changing room clinging to each other.

‘I’m sure we can find something else for you.’ The assistant’s voice faded away and two sets of footsteps, muffled by plush carpeting, followed. ‘Come with me.’

I leaned back against the wall and looked at the girls. They looked awesome.

‘Totally worth it,’ I said, collapsing onto the floor.

‘This is nice,’ Mum commented as we took our table at the Wolseley, armed with several giant Selfridges bags. ‘Much nicer than the Ritz.’

‘Yes.’ I nodded, at Louisa, who still looked upset. ‘The Ritz is just overhyped. I’ve heard it’s better here anyway.’

‘I really thought they’d be able to fit us in.’ Lou busied herself by studying her menu while she spoke. ‘I mean, it’s a Wednesday afternoon. How busy can it be?’

‘We could have gone to the Soho House,’ Jenny said, brushing her long curls out of her face. ‘Although this is nice. I guess.’

No one replied. Mum, myself and Louisa were too busy reading the menu, wanting a wee and wishing Jenny dead respectively. Whatever sisterly love had been generated by the perfect bridesmaids’ dresses was lost when we were turned away from the Ritz for not having a reservation. The Wolseley was hardly a poor runner-up, but Jenny hadn’t stopped whining about all the places she could have taken us. First she wanted to jump in a cab and head to the Sanctuary, then it was Harrods, and now we were back to her obsession with Soho House. And nothing was offending Lou more than the fact she insisted on putting a ‘the’ in front of it whenever she mentioned it. Which was often.

We ordered the afternoon tea for all of us, everyone choosing a different tea, and then sat in silence. It wasn’t necessarily an awkward silence, but it wasn’t the most comfortable.

‘We’re ticking a bunch of stuff off the list today,’ Jenny said when the steaming silver teapots arrived. ‘Dresses, shoes, underwear. We’re, like, almost entirely sartorially sorted.’

After sneaking out of the dress department, we’d done brisk business in shoes, choosing black chunky Jimmy Choo sandals that would set off and toughen up the black bow on their girly dresses. I’d opted to destroy my mother’s credit card with some crystal-studded Louboutin platforms that I already knew I’d need to trade for the matching leather sliders I’d convinced her to purchase at the same time. I was in shoe heaven. Added to that, I’d forced everyone into Stella McCartney lingerie, not that it was a terribly tough job.

‘I’m gonna have to go through our make-up tomorrow and see what else we need,’ she mused, adding to her to-do list. ‘I really should have done that before now.’

‘I did say I could probably get a make-up artist,’ Louisa said. ‘And a photographer. Have you got a photographer?’

‘Oh, like you could get us into the Ritz?’ Jenny asked with feigned innocence. ‘And yeah, I have a photographer.’

I wanted to head-butt the table, but since I already had a lovely black eye coming through from my adventure over James’s shoulder the night before, I didn’t bother. Why was she being such a cow?

‘We really felt like the make-up artist made a big difference at my wedding.’ Louisa had clearly decided to fight this battle. ‘Also, I was going to talk to you about maybe having a play area for the babies?’

‘Multiple babies? Did you have another one when I wasn’t looking?’ I asked.

‘No, but other people will be bringing their kids, won’t they?’ Louisa looked to my mum for confirmation.

‘Your cousins have got children.’ Mum was clearly reluctant to get involved, either because she knew we were headed for a fight or because she was losing her game of iPhone Scrabble − I couldn’t be sure which. ‘But I don’t know if they’re bringing them.’

‘I’m just going to say it.’ Jenny prepared to make a declaration. ‘Kids make a wedding difficult. Sorry, but it’s true.’

‘At my wedding, we had loads of kids.’ Louisa flashed her wedding ring as though to prove a point. ‘And it was great.’

‘Alex texted me to say Craig and Graham have arrived.’ I changed the subject fast. God forbid that someone would ask me what I thought about who should be in attendance at my wedding. But actually, I didn’t know how I felt about having kids at the wedding. Mostly I was worried about sticky hands getting marks on my wedding dress. And that was just my sticky hands. ‘They’re going to play a show tonight or something. That’s their idea of a bachelor party.’

Mum and Louisa looked up at me.

‘Stag do,’ I translated. ‘I think their friend’s band is playing a concert, so they’re going to tag on.’

‘Do you want to go?’ Louisa asked. ‘I’d like to see them play.’

‘Actually, yeah. That’s a really good idea.’ I brightened at the idea of seeing Alex on stage. It was a treat that I never got tired of. ‘I’ll ask him where it’s going to be.’

‘You can’t crash your fiancé’s bachelor party.’ Jenny pulled my phone out of my hands. ‘And you can’t spend your bachelorette night watching your fiancé play with his band. That totally defeats the object.’

‘It does?’ I said, deflated.

‘Of course it does.’ She turned off my phone and handed it back. Cow. ‘You’re supposed to wear something inappropriate, get wasted and dance up on some hot piece. You can’t do that in front of your man.’

I didn’t bother to mention I’d already accidentally done that the night before. Instead I just shook my head and gave a rueful smile.

‘All good suggestions, but I think I’d rather go and see Alex play.’ I was trying very hard to keep things light. ‘Let’s see what he says.’

‘If you want to go and see Alex play, that’s what we’ll do.’ Louisa was speaking to me but looking at Jenny.

‘Whatever. We’re still going to karaoke,’ Jenny said, adding something to her notebook that I couldn’t see. ‘And to the Soho House.’

‘Will you stop fucking calling it
the
Soho House?’ Louisa screeched with a sudden vehemence that made me drop my teacup. ‘It’s just
Soho
House. There is no
the.
’

Christ on a bike.

‘That’s what they call it in New York,’ I interjected before Jenny could retaliate. There was no need for blood to be spilled over afternoon tea. We’d already dropped an F-bomb. ‘They call it
the
Soho House. It’s like to-mah-to to-may-to.’

‘Tomahto tomayto bollocks.’ Louisa slammed both hands down on the table and stood up. ‘I’m sick of you defending her. She’s not a child − she doesn’t need babying.’

‘I know,’ I whispered, not really sure what to do. ‘I’m not defending her. I’m defending … American language usage?’

Even I didn’t buy that.

‘You are defending her.’ Louisa started gathering her things and wiping away stray, angry tears. ‘You do whatever she tells you to. It’s pathetic. Yes, Jenny, no, Jenny, three bags fucking full, Jenny. Why don’t you just marry her and be done with it?’

‘Lou, calm down.’ I started to panic as people began whispering. ‘Sit down, please.’

She stopped for a moment, arms half back in her cardigan, handbag in hand.

‘Hey, Louisa.’ Jenny cocked her head to one side and picked up her water glass. ‘Did you throw a tantrum at your wedding, too?’

And that was that. Without another word, Louisa threw her bag onto her shoulder, knocking one of the teapots flying across the floor with a tremendous clattering racket, and stormed straight out of the door.

‘Well done,’ I said, turning to Jenny. Now I was furious. ‘Well bloody done.’

‘Me?’ Jenny opened her eyes wide. ‘What the fuck did I do?’

‘I think someone had better go after Louisa,’ Mum said quietly. ‘And someone probably needs to apologize to the manager.’

‘I think Jenny probably needs to apologize to everyone she’s ever met,’ I snapped, trying to wriggle out from behind the table. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

I turned to point at Jenny with as much threat and rage as I could muster. ‘And don’t you dare eat my scones.’

In the seventeen seconds it took me to get outside, Louisa had vanished. In the thirty seconds it took for me to turn my phone back on and dial her number, she’d either turned hers off or got on the tube. Either way, I was buggered. Back inside the Wolseley, Mum was trying to pacify Jenny. I could hear her bandying around phrases that included ‘fuck Louisa’, ‘fuck London’ and the all-encompassing classic, ‘fuck this shit’. If Louisa had dropped the F-bomb, Jenny was detonating an F-nuke. It was the Hiroshima of expletives. I had nothing to better it with. Instead, I stood beside the table with my hands on my hips, basking in the warm glow of every sodding nosy mare in the place staring at me.

‘What?’ Jenny shrugged.

As befitting such a stiff-upper-lip establishment, our spilled tea had not only been cleaned up but had been replaced. In New York, we would have been dragged out onto the street by our hair or applauded, depending on the borough. Here, we’d been given cake. Lovely England.

‘What?’ I rammed a mini-scone into my mouth to stop it from saying something it might regret. Dear God, that was good. ‘You are unreal.’

‘I’m just trying to make sure your wedding isn’t some provincial, red-neck shit-show.’ Jenny’s face started to turn red. ‘It’s not my fault your best friend wants to turn your wedding into a pre-school tea party. Angela, she wanted to hire a clown. A. Clown. I didn’t tell you, but yeah − a clown.’