White Wedding
Milly Johnson is the sparkling and irrepressible author of six bestselling novels. She is also a columnist, greetings card copywriter, poet and
after-dinner speaker. Her books are about the universal issues of friendship, family, betrayal, babies, rather nice food and a little bit of that magic in life that sometimes visits the
unsuspecting. Find out more at
http://www.millyjohnson.co.uk
or follow Milly on Twitter @millyjohnson.
Also by Milly Johnson
The Yorkshire Pudding Club
The Birds & the Bees
A Spring Affair
A Summer Fling
Here Come the Girls
An Autumn Crush
First published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd 2012
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Milly Johnson 2012
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
PB ISBN: 978-0-85720-896-5
EBOOK ISBN:978-0-85720-897-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in Bembo by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
This book is dedicated to all the wonderful staff at Shawlands Primary School in Barnsley, especially Dave Lucas, Fiona Taylor, Lisa Hepworth, Louise
Barradell, Alison Asquith, Joanne Prigmore, Sue Clark, Linda Adam, Wendy Lindsay, Jane Williams, Jean Thickett and Headmistress Jill Brookling who will be long remembered with smiles and fondness.
You have all given us and ours such wonderful happy years and treasured memories. Precious lifelong friendships have been made at your gates and within your walls. You all went the extra mile and
beyond for our children and we couldn’t have wished for a more wonderful school.
Thank you all.
Prologue
‘Oh hello again,’ said Max McBride, looking across as the shop door opened with a tinkle and seeing an increasingly familiar face. ‘Fancy meeting you
here.’
‘I think you’re stalking me,’ replied the tiny, spiky-haired Bel, coming inside quickly to escape the February chill. ‘Either that or I’m stalking you.’
The two women smiled at each other. Five times they had visited this White Wedding bridal shop now and on every occasion it was to find the other one there. It was only a wonder that the third
lady who also seemed to move in their orbit was absent – the pale woman with silver-blonde hair, whom Max was certain had gone to her school. She remembered a girl in the year below whom the
other kids used to call ‘Ghost’ because of her unusual colouring.
‘What are you looking for this time, then?’ asked Bel.
‘I’m only browsing really,’ Max answered. ‘We’re having a small wedding, no fancy frills. But I just can’t help myself looking.’ That was the truth of
it. Her fiancé, Stuart, wasn’t a man for fuss. Plus, as he said, a wedding ceremony should be about two people and their vows, and though Max had nodded in agreement, her head had
immediately started building up a list of embellishments; dress, cake, veil, flowers . . .
‘What about you?’ Max asked.
‘I haven’t a clue,’ smiled Bel. ‘I was just passing and thought I’d call in and see if anything took my fancy.’
‘Are you having a big wedding?’
‘A hundred or so guests,’ said Bel. ‘Although it started off as fifty and will probably end up as two hundred.’
The more the merrier, she thought with a little kick in her heart. Her wedding day couldn’t come quickly enough for her now and she wanted the whole world to hear her say the words
‘I do’ to Richard. She couldn’t wait to be his other half, ‘her indoors’ – his wife. Recently, she thought she might burst open with joy at the thought of
becoming Mrs Belinda Bishop.
‘Are you both all right or do you need some help?’ asked the shopkeeper as she approached them. She was a tall, elegant lady: grace personified. She exuded an air of calm that spread
through the lovely shop and made it an almost magical place to mosey around. She wore a name badge – Freya – above her left breast. It seemed too modern for a lady of such advanced
years, yet at the same time the delicate femininity of it fitted her exactly.
‘I’m okay, thanks,’ said Bel. ‘I’m just looking. Again.’
‘Me too,’ added Max, with a little sigh in her voice. She could buy half of the stuff in this shop if she let herself off the leash. It was torture really, trying on tiaras and
headdresses, knowing that she would end up wearing a plain beige functional two-piece suit for the registry office service that would bind her and her partner of seventeen years together. But ever
since she discovered this shop quite by chance a few weeks ago, she hadn’t been able to resist coming in. It was princess-heaven for Max to wander up and down the long, narrow shop that was
packed to the gills with all manner of wedding paraphernalia. Her childhood bedroom had been filled with boxes of play jewellery, crowns and frilly dresses and when anyone asked her what she was
going to be when she grew up, her answer was always ‘a princess’.
Bel had just picked up a pair of tiny silk boots when the doorbell tinkled again and in walked a woman with long silver hair and deep-violet eyes.
‘Well, blow me,’ laughed Bel. ‘How weird is this? We were just wondering if you’d turn up.’
‘Fancy meeting you two here,’ said the pale-skinned lady with a chuckle.
‘We’ve done that line,’ smiled Max. ‘Anyone fancy a coffee across the road when we’ve finished shopping here?’
Wedding
Chapter 1
Three months later
‘Oh my GOD, look at that.’
‘Yep, I’ve seen it.’
‘And that. Oh look at that.’
‘If she says “look at that” once more I think I just might murder her.’
‘Look, LOOK at that.’
‘Right that is
it
.’ Bel picked up a small cushion and launched it at Max’s head. Her mouth was so wide open she could have swallowed it whole had it landed on
target.
But Max was too mesmerized by the world of the gypsy brides on the television screen to react when the cushion bumped into her shoulder. She had never seen anything like it. Those huge
crinolines that the bride and her twenty-five bridesmaids wore, the Cinderella coach, the cake – bigger than the house she was born in – it was all so over the top, unbelievable . . .
fabulous. It poked at the place inside her brain that still kept safe her latent fantasies about growing up and becoming a princess and dressing every day in a sparkling tiara and a swishy long
frock. ‘Look at that as well.’
‘Can’t you say anything else but “look at that”?’ Bel pretended to be exasperated with her.
Violet half chuckled, half sighed. ‘Do you know, Max, I’ve known you for only a few weeks but I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever be the type to be lost for
words.’
But Max still wasn’t listening. She sat entranced as a huge cloud of white net squeezed out of the Cinderella coach. The train went on for ever. The narrator was reporting that there was
over a mile of material in the petticoats alone.
‘Fill up, Lady V?’ asked Bel, tipping the bottle neck towards Violet’s glass.
‘I shouldn’t really,’ Violet replied, not taking a breath before adding, ‘Oh go on, then, if I must.’
‘Good girl, and yes you must. This is my official hen night, after all. I’m not counting the family “ordeal” on Thursday.’
Bel lifted her lip in an Elvis sneer. She was looking forward to having a meal with her dad, and Richard would be there of course, and her cousin and bridesmaid, Shaden; but so would her
Botox-frozen-faced step-aunt, Vanoushka, and her husband, slimy Martin, with his sausage fingers that were magnetically attracted to women’s arses. Her stepmum, Faye, would be there too,
naturally, making sure that the evening was as flawless as possible. The one thing Bel would wholeheartedly credit her for was her hosting skill.