The Bridesmaid Pact

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010 This eBook edition published 2018

Copyright © Julia Williams 2010

Cover design © Lizzie Gardiner Designs 2018

Cover illustration © Shutterstock

Julia Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847560872

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780007371730

Version: 2018-05-18

For Karen, who was as bright and beautiful

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue Sarah

Part One To Have and to Hold

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Two For Better, for Worse

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part Three In Sickness and in Health

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Part Four Till Death do Us Part

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Things To Avoid On Your Wedding

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue Sarah

July 1981

It was Doris’s idea of course. Back then, everything tended to emanate from Doris. Beautiful, dappy, gorgeous Doris, with her brown ringlets, blue eyes, infectious giggle, and cute American accent. She was the glue that bound us all together. Like Sid the sloth in Ice Age, Dorrie was the sticky stuff that kept us together. Without Doris we were nothing. And even then we knew it.

‘It’s on, it’s on,’ she said, proudly brandishing the control of her parents’ state of the art Beta Max video machine. Though of course we didn’t say state of the art then. Nor did we realize that Doris’s parents, ahead of the trends as ever, had invested in a bit of technology that was going to be obsolete in a few short years. At eight years old, we were still marvelling at the idea of being able to watch our favourite TV moment of the year, again and again. And I was still pinching myself that I had been allowed to enter the inner sanctum of Dorrie’s vast mansion. Ever since she’d arrived at our school from America, like some exotic creature from another planet, Dorrie had fascinated me. I had longed to be welcomed into her life and now here I was.

‘Go straight to the kiss,’ Caz demanded, her dark eyes bright and concentrated, her hands thrust into her pointy chin, while her dark scrappy hair flopped over her face. She was always the most impatient one.

‘No, we have to watch it all,’ Beth was most emphatic on that point. Her serious, pale little face peeped up between two dark plaits. ‘I didn’t get to see it because my mum and dad are anti-royalsomething.’

‘Royalist,’ interjected Doris.

‘They don’t like the Queen,’ said Beth. ‘So I wasn’t allowed to watch any of it.’

Silently we were all amazed at this. All term we’d talked about nothing but the wedding, about what she’d wear and who the bridesmaids would be. We’d even had a day off school to watch it – Doris’s mum and dad had taken her up to London and they’d camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral and seen her go into the church and everything – and poor Beth hadn’t seen any of it.

‘Lucky Mom and Dad videoed it then, isn’t it?’ said Doris. ‘Now sssshhh.’

We all settled down on the beanbags and cushions, stifling giggles as we passed popcorn to one another in the room that Doris’s American professor dad called the den. Doris’s house was like nothing the rest of us had ever seen. We all lived in the suburban centre of Northfields, near our school, whereas Doris lived on the more countrified and posher side of town. Her parents had money but believed in state education, and as our school had the best reputation in the area, they’d sent her there.

You had to walk down a gravelly drive before you arrived at a massive house with ornate pillars, and a vast oak front door. The lounge was so big it could have fitted the whole of the downstairs of my house in, and the dining room had a table that seated twenty. And Doris’s dad had his own games room in the basement as well as a study, from where he would absentmindedly emerge from time to time to ask us how we were doing. Upstairs were five or six bedrooms and en suite bathrooms for every bedroom. Imagine that. Even Doris had one.

For me who shared a tiny suburban three-bedroomed semi with my parents and two much older brothers, it seemed like a fairy palace. I still couldn’t believe I was here. Doris was the most popular girl in the class. I had been thrilled when she chose me to be part of her gang. Being Doris, she’d generously allowed me to bring my best mate, Caz, along too and, together with Beth, the four of us were developing into firm friends.

It would have been easy to hate her, with her ringletted beauty, her film star mother, clever professor father, and her amazing house, but somehow, it was impossible to dislike Doris. She was kind and generous and funny, and hid her cleverness (inherited from her father) under a carefully cultivated dizzy blondeness – except of course, she wasn’t blonde. I was the blonde one and frequently felt at a disadvantage to the other three who always seemed to be quicker and cleverer than I was.

The posh voice of the commentator was describing the guests as they arrived and pointing out Prince Charles waiting with Prince Andrew for Diana to arrive. We all oohed and aahed as the carriages pulled up bearing the Queen and Prince Philip.

‘I have to have that dress when I’m a bridesmaid next year for my Auntie Sophie in Switzerland.’ Doris paused the tape so we could ogle the bridesmaids, who to our eight-year-old minds just looked perfect in their ivory white dresses, with puffy sleeves, full-out skirts and pale gold sashes. The little ones had flowers in their hair, and I longed for a pair of pretty white shoes just like theirs. After some critical discussion, we all agreed that Doris was much prettier than India Hicks (our favourite bridesmaid), and would suit the dress better. It never even occurred to me to think about any of us wearing the dress.

‘Why is it always you?’ Caz burst out furiously. Her untidy black hair tumbled over her dark eyes, and two bright points of red flamed her cheeks, her attitude spiky and pugnacious, as ever. ‘Why can’t the rest of us get to wear that dress? Just because you’re rich and we’re not!’

‘That’s not fair!’ Doris leapt up and shouted. ‘Don’t I always let you have my stuff and invite you over?’

‘So you can feel good,’ spat back Caz, eyes blazing, ready as ever to take on the world. ‘I know you only have me here because you feel sorry for me.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Beth, timidly. Ever the peacemaker, she could never bear any of us fighting. ‘Caz, I think you should say sorry.’

As Caz’s best friend, I felt duty bound to take her part, though I didn’t think she was being fair either. As the prettiest, richest one of us, and the only one who was going to actually be a bridesmaid, I felt that Doris was quite within her rights to lay first claim to India Hicks’s dress. I might have felt jealous of someone else, but I couldn’t feel jealous of Doris, who generously shared all that she had with us. I had only just become accepted into her circle and I was loath to do anything to get me ejected from it. But Caz and I had been friends from the first day of St Philomena’s primary school, when something about her uncared-for appearance tapped into my innate need to look after people. I had to stick up for her.

‘Doris, you do usually take charge,’ I said reluctantly. Like Beth, I always hated confrontation. And a part of me seethed that just as I’d got to being accepted by Doris, here was Caz trying to muck it up for me again. As she always did. I loved Caz to bits, but why did she have to be so angry all the time?

‘Do I?’ Doris looked stricken, her blue eyes filling with tears, and I felt even worse. ‘Gee, I don’t mean to. I’m really sorry, Caz, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Seeing her lower lip begin to quiver, and tears dangerously start to wobble down her cheeks, Caz softened uncharacteristically. Perhaps even hard as nails Caz couldn’t resist Doris’s charm.

‘It’s OK,’ she said sulkily. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you either.’

Relieved that everything had gone back to normal, Doris ran to the huge kitchen and produced ice creams for us all as we settled down to watch Diana finally emerge from her carriage, arranging the voluminous train as it blew in the wind, to more oohs and aahs and squeals from the four of us. She stood up to go up the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral and we squealed some more, as the dress was revealed in all its puffed-sleeve, huge-skirted glory.

‘That dress,’ I breathed, ‘is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘She’s just like a fairy princess,’ said Beth.

‘It’s so romantic,’ I said. ‘I hope my wedding day is like that.’

‘I’m going to have that dress when I get married,’ announced Doris solemnly.

‘I think she looks like a marshmallow,’ said Caz, who didn’t have a romantic bone in her body.

‘How can you say that?’ I cried. ‘This is just like a fairytale wedding.’

‘I don’t believe in fairytales,’ growled Caz. ‘There aren’t any happy endings in real life.’

We all threw our ice cream wrappers at her, and settled down in blissful silence to watch as Charles Windsor took Diana Spencer to be his lawful wedded wife.

‘To have and to hold, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part,’ we chanted in unison.

‘That’s so cute,’ said Doris. ‘I want to marry a prince when I grow up.’

‘Me too,’ said Beth earnestly, fiddling with her plaits. ‘I believe in happy endings. I’m going to grow up, get married and have lots of children, so there.’

Caz snorted, so we sat on her. By now we were getting bored of the video, so Doris fast forwarded to the kiss, which we watched over and over again, ecstatically imagining what it would feel like to have a boy kiss you on the lips like that. I thought it must feel very rubbery.

‘We should make a promise,’ Doris said suddenly. She was like that. Full of odd ideas that seemed to come from nowhere.

‘What, like some kind of pact?’ said Beth.

‘What’s a pact?’ I said.

‘Like a really, really important promise,’ said Beth. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Dorrie?’

‘Sure do,’ said Dorrie. ‘We should promise to be friends forever and make a pact that we will be bridesmaids at each other’s weddings.’

‘I’m never going to get married,’ declared Caz firmly.

‘You can still be a bridesmaid though,’ said Doris. She was impossible to resist, so even Caz was persuaded to stand in a circle with us. We all raised our hands together and held them up so they touched.

‘We solemnly declare,’ intoned Doris, ‘that we four will be friends forever.’

We looked at each other and giggled before reciting after her, ‘And we promise that when we get married we will only have our three friends as bridesmaids. And we promise that we will be bridesmaids for our friends.’

‘From this day forth, forever and ever, shall this vow be binding,’ said Doris. And then she made us cut a lock off our hair, and bind them together. She put the locks of hair, two dark, one light brown, and one fair together with a signed written copy of the words we’d solemnly declared in her special jewellery box.

‘There,’ she said, with satisfaction. ‘Now we’ve taken an oath and we can never ever break it.’

Part One To Have and to Hold

Caz

December 1995

‘Have you heard the news?’ Dorrie came bursting into the champagne bar at Kettner’s, where Sarah and I were tucking into a bottle of champagne to celebrate her engagement. I was glad to see Dorrie. The tension between Sarah and me these days was nigh on unbearable. I thought she was making a terrible mistake, but when I said as much she accused me of jealousy. I couldn’t fault her on that, I was jealous that Steve had chosen her not me, but I still thought she’d regret marrying him.

As it was Christmas, the bar was heaving with partying office workers, and it took Dorrie a while to reach our table. Sarah was on an early shift and had got here first, while the photo shoot I’d been working on had descended into a pre Christmas bash, so I had escaped before I got too plastered and decided Charlie was the thing I needed in my life right now. I had enough complications as it was, I didn’t need to bring him into the equation.

‘Ooh, champagne, lovely,’ said Dorrie, squeezing herself into a spot in the corner. ‘Lucky I’m skinny isn’t it?’ She took off her faux fur black coat, to reveal a polka dot black and white vintage dress, which she’d matched with bright red boots. With her Rachel from Friends haircut and her fabulous figure, it was no wonder that nearly every man in the room turned to look at her. But as usual Dorrie was oblivious to her effect on people. She really had no idea how much people adored her, which was part of her ongoing charm. She soon had Sarah and me in stitches, and any latent resentment festering between us was temporarily forgotten.

‘No Beth yet?’ Dorrie asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I did ask her but she’s been so low since Andy the bastard dumped her, I’m not sure she’ll make it.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ said Dorrie. ‘We should make it our next project to get Beth a man.’

‘What do you mean, our next project?’ said Sarah suspiciously – Dorrie had a habit of involving us in her schemes to make the whole world happy – flicking back her short fair hair. She always said she wore her hair short because it made work easier, but I rather suspected she’d gone for a Meg Ryan look because Steve fancied the pants off her in When Harry Met Sally. Which was just one of many reasons I thought Sarah was making a big mistake.

‘Doh,’ said Dorrie. ‘The Bridesmaid Pact, remember? You’re the first one to get married, so we all have to be your bridesmaids.’

‘Don’t I get any say in the matter?’ laughed Sarah.

‘Nope,’ said Dorrie.

‘You said you had some news?’ I said.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dorrie. ‘Haven’t you heard? It’s all over the papers. Charles and Di are getting divorced. Can you believe it? It’s so sad.’

‘Er, yes,’ I said. ‘There’s the small matter of his infidelity, her infidelity and all that three people in a marriage stuff. I’m surprised after that Panorama interview the Queen didn’t march Di off to the Tower. All that doe-eyed blinking. They’re as bad as each other.’

‘Yeah well, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ Sarah muttered bitchily.

‘Meaning?’ I said.

‘Meaning I feel sorry for Di,’ said Sarah. She smiled at me sweetly, but there were daggers in her eyes.

I was about to retort that some men just couldn’t keep it in their trousers, when Beth pitched up. She looked wan and too thin, as she was wont to do. Her black hair was greasy, and she wore a frumpy grey coat that looked as if it belonged to her mother. My heart sank. She was in such a bad way. I longed to give her a makeover, but I’d tried that once before, and she’d pushed me away.

‘Hi,’ she said, shyly. Even after all this time, Beth was still timid with us. I longed for her to come out of her shell a bit more. It was unlike me to care about someone the way I did about Beth, but something about her vulnerability touched me. Maybe it was my way of feeling superior. People mostly felt sorry for me. It was nice to feel sorry for someone else for a change.

‘Congrats, Sarah. When’s the big day?’ Beth had taken off her coat to reveal a dull blouse with big lapels and a ghastly bow, and a dark skirt, which hung limply from her skinny frame. Damn, it was difficult to sit there and not suggest ways of improving the way she looked, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. A haircut would be a good start. She’d look good in a bob, I thought, though probably not the longish one I sported, which I’d modelled on Uma Thurman’s in Pulp Fiction. She needed to cut those lanky locks into a shortish bob that framed her pretty oval face.

‘Thanks, Beth,’ said Sarah. ‘We haven’t fixed a date yet, but we’re probably going for September ’97.’

‘Why not next year?’ I said. ‘What’s the delay? Surely you want to get on with it, just in case he changes his mind.’

‘Caz!’ Beth looked at me shocked. ‘That was a bit mean.’

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, ‘bit uncalled for.’

Sarah didn’t say anything, and glossed over my bitchy comment with, ‘I just want everything to be perfect.’

‘Did you see the news?’ said Beth.

‘About Charles and Di?’ said Dorrie. ‘I know. Isn’t it awful?’

‘Oh come on,’ I laughed. ‘Dorrie, how can you take it so seriously? Two people we don’t know and are never likely to meet are getting divorced. People do it all the time.’

‘I know,’ said Dorrie, ‘but it was such a fairytale. And now it’s gone wrong.’

‘It is really sad,’ said Beth.

‘Fairytales, schmairytales,’ I snorted. ‘There’s no such thing as a happy ending.’

‘Blimey, that’s cynical,’ said Sarah. ‘Even for you.’

‘Yeah, well,’ I said, ‘I haven’t had the luck some of you’ve had.’

I was overtaken with a sudden feeling of bitterness, and I got up to go to the loo, just to get away for five minutes. In the safety of the toilets, I stared long and hard at myself in the mirror, before leaning back against the cold tiles. I thought about Sarah and Steve and the things I’d promised never to think about again. Why did I always make such a mess of things? And now I was ruining my best friend’s special night.

‘Pull yourself together, girl,’ I admonished myself in the mirror, reapplying my bright red lipstick as a means of boosting my confidence. Face fixed, I went back to meet the world head on.

When I got back, a slightly geekish-looking bloke was sitting in my place. He was tall and gangly and wore dark specs, and was mooning over Dorrie, who seemed to be mooning back.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’ I said, squeezing back into the tiny space the guy had left.

‘Oh yes, sorry. Caz, meet Darren. He’s a microbiologist and works in the next lab to mine.’

Dorrie might look like a film star, but she’s actually super bright and has a fantastically clever job in some kind of medical research that I wouldn’t pretend to understand.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Darren.

I went to shake his hand, and he pulled it away.

‘Sorry, too many germs,’ he said. ‘Do you know the average person never washes their hands after using the toilet?’

‘Well I do,’ I snapped. ‘Why don’t you carry antibacterial spray around with you and have done with it?’

‘I do,’ said Darren. ‘You never know what anyone else has been touching.’

I burst out laughing. ‘Dorrie, your friend is priceless. I shall call him Yakult Man.’

Darren blushed.

‘Don’t mind Caz,’ said Dorrie, ‘she’s not like other folk.’ She touched his arm lightly, and he didn’t pull away.

They sat staring at each other for a bit till Sarah, Beth and I felt quite awkward.

Eventually, Darren got up.

‘Best be off,’ he mumbled. ‘Places to go and all that. Have a great Christmas. Nice meeting you all.’

He walked away, back to his mates who were at the bar, looking the worse for wear.

‘Is he for real?’ I marvelled. ‘You’ve kept him quiet.’

‘There’s nothing to keep quiet about,’ protested Doris. ‘He’s a work colleague is all.’

‘Oh, is he?’ I nudged Doris. Yakult Man hadn’t made it to the bar. He had turned round and was striding purposefully back.

‘You see, the thing is…well…’ he said.

‘Well?’ said Dorrie.

‘Well, I was wondering, if you’re not too busy…I’m sure a gorgeous girl like you has got plenty of dates, but if you hadn’t…’

‘I haven’t,’ said Doris with a grin.

‘Well. If you haven’t…Did you say you hadn’t?’

‘Sure did.’

‘Oh. That’s OK then. It’s all settled. Great.’

He smiled a dopey smile and walked away again.

‘Er, what’s settled?’ she called after him. He stopped and turned around, grinning at her.

‘You, me. A date. Next week. I’ll ring you.’ He continued walking away, backwards this time, until he bumped into a couple of drunks who spilled beer all over him. Our last sight was of him rushing to the toilet, no doubt to get rid of all the millions of germs that had just been dumped unceremoniously on top of him.

‘Dorrie Bradley, how do you do it?’ said Sarah, clapping her hands over her mouth and giggling her head off. ‘That’s the nuttiest proposition I’ve ever heard.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘I wish someone would do that to me,’ sighed Beth.

‘Your turn will come,’ said Sarah. ‘Look at me.’

Yes, look at you, I thought silently, but kept my mouth shut for once. This was Sarah’s night.

‘To Sarah and Steve,’ said Dorrie, raising a glass. ‘Long life and happiness.’

‘Sarah and Steve,’ we all echoed.

‘And here’s to the Bridesmaid Pact,’ continued Dorrie. ‘I can’t wait to fulfil it.’

‘One four all and all four one,’ we chorused the mantra of our childhood, before downing our drinks in one. I put my glass down and sat back and looked at Sarah. For someone who was celebrating the happiest event of her life, she looked remarkably pensive. I hoped I hadn’t done that to her.