Seventy Minutes Before I Do
There was a knock on the door of the bridal suite, and Miranda’s long red hair, now curled into tight ringlets, appeared around it. She was dressed in the same lilac floor-length bridesmaid dress that Clara was wearing.
Audrey gave a single nod to her mother, a thank you for the letter, and then she quickly stowed it in her white clutch. She would open it when she had a moment alone.
‘Oh wow, look at you! I’m going to cry!’ Miranda said, coming in and waving both hands in front of her face.
‘Miranda came to the hairdressers with us,’ Vivien said, pressing a hand gently against her hair-sprayed updo. ‘Doesn’t she look fabulous?’ Miranda pulled self-consciously at the rigid ringlets. ‘Right, I’ll leave you girls to it. Nothing worse than a crowded green room. I have to speak to the violinists about their positioning in the church, and help Debbie stow the confetti somewhere dry. Can you believe we didn’t have a wet weather confetti plan? Utter madness!’
Clara emerged from the bathroom, and she and Miranda both complimented each other on how good they looked in the same dress.
‘You both look lovely,’ said Vivien, seeing Clara and turning back from the door. ‘Now, I know you two missed the rehearsal last night, but has Audrey filled you in on the entrances and exits?’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve been the worst bridesmaid,’ said Miranda. ‘I couldn’t get yesterday off work for the rehearsal, and then this morning the hairdresser took forever.’
‘It’s fine.’ Audrey waved a hand in the air.
Vivien coughed, keen to be heard. ‘You’ll follow Audrey down the aisle, and then walk out with one of the groomsmen. Clara if you could walk with Mark, the tall chap, and then Miranda, you’ll walk down the aisle with the best man, Paul.’
Miranda’s eyes suddenly took on a pained expression and her chin began to wobble. Though she and Paul had broken up over a year ago, Audrey knew it had been a significant relationship for them both, and there might still have been feelings there.
Audrey caught Clara’s eyes. ‘Maybe the other way around.’
‘Yes, Miranda’s taller than me, it might look better if she walks with Mark,’ Clara added.
‘Fine, fine, work it out among yourselves.’ Then Vivien turned back to Audrey, squeezed her arm and said, ‘You have the parachute, I know you do. Now all you need to do is jump.’
As soon as Vivien left the room, Miranda’s face crumpled.
‘Sorry, that was tactless of her.’ Audrey winced, putting an arm around Miranda.
‘Sorry.’ Miranda wiped at her cheeks, and Clara ran to get her a tissue. ‘This is your day, and I’m your bridesmaid. I shouldn’t be making it about me.’ But as she said ‘me’, she erupted into tears and it came out ‘meeeeeeee’.
‘I don’t own the day,’ said Audrey, feeling surprisingly stoical suddenly. What with Clara and Hillary having wobbles about motherhood and their careers, what was one more life crisis thrown into the mix? ‘Is it awkward, with you and Paul?’
‘Not especially. We were getting on really well at dinner last night. It’s just, I’ve been a bridesmaid eight times, and today I remembered that saying. You know, “Always a bridesmaid, never a... a bride” and, and, I’m probably never going to get married.’ Her voice escalated in pitch as she spoke, until it was a tiny squeak.
‘That’s not true,’ said Clara, putting an arm around her. ‘You look completely fabulous. You have your shit together, this Fred guy you’re with is super-hot.’ Clara gave Audrey an apologetic look for bringing Fred into this. ‘And you know getting married isn’t the only end goal, right?’
‘Only married people say that,’ Miranda said, blowing her nose loudly on another tissue. ‘And I don’t look fabulous, I look like some insane children’s book character with these stupid ringlets.’ She tugged again at her hair. ‘And Fred isn’t even really my boyfriend; he’s a random guy I roped into coming with me at the last minute because I couldn’t face going to my brother’s wedding alone, especially with Paul here.’ She looked up at Audrey. ‘Sorry, I know I shouldn’t have brought some random guy to your wedding.’
Miranda looked so dejected and full of misery that Audrey’s heart ached for her.
‘Don’t worry about that, you could bring fifty random guys if you wanted to. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to be a bridesmaid. I know you’ve been asked by so many other friends, I just—’
‘No, no, this is my issue, I’m so honoured you asked me.’
Clara stood up and retrieved something from her bag. It was a box of chocolates that spelt out ‘Just Married’ in chocolate lettering.
‘I bought these for Audrey, but I think you might need them more.’ Clara opened the box and tactfully jumbled up the letters before handing them to Miranda. As she popped a chocolate M into her mouth, Miranda seemed to calm down.
‘Everyone tells you it will work out, your person will turn up, trust that fate has a plan. But what if it doesn’t? I have friends in their forties who waited, who held out for the perfect guy, and now they’re too old to have kids and they’re alone and you know that’s fine if that’s what you chose, but some of them didn’t choose that. Some of them bought into the notion that there’s someone perfect out there for everyone, and maybe if they’d settled for that guy who was fine, they’d be married now with two lovely kids, not alone with three cats in a one-bedroom flat in Roehampton.’ Miranda had three cats and lived in a flat in Roehampton.
Audrey looked at Clara as Miranda stuffed a chocolate J and S into her mouth at once. She’d had no idea Miranda felt like this.
‘And the worst part is, talking to Paul at the rehearsal dinner, I... I just don’t know what went wrong there. He’s so great and funny, and he smells so inoffensive. You know how I have issues with dating because of my highly attuned nose. Most men smell dreadful.’ She sniffed. ‘Paul might have been olfactory perfection, and I screwed it up.’
‘You still like Paul?’ Audrey asked.