The Almost Wife: An absolutely gripping and emotional summer read Read online

  ‘Mark, I’ve done extra red cabbage and sage and onion stuffing for you this week – I know you love them – plus double pudding. There’s Eton mess and apple pie with Cornish custard, double cream, vanilla ice cream or all three if you like. Let’s see nine empty plates, shall we, and can someone help Joyce with those sprouts please!’ trills Gloria as the noisy clatter of cutlery on china begins and everyone starts reaching over each other to get to their favourite dish first.

  ‘You are a legend Glo, don’t I always say that Emily?’ says Mark, winking across the table at his future mother-in-law.

  ‘Yes you do and yes she is but you are also setting the bar dangerously high for me, Mum. I’ll never be able to match this when Mark and I move in together.’

  ‘Good, frankly, then you’ll still have to come here and let me do it for you!’

  ‘How is the house purchase going Mark?’ asks Bill, as Emily bristles slightly. It still amazes her how old-school her otherwise lovely dad is. She knows he still sees it as Mark’s responsibility to provide for her, despite the fact she’s been earning her own – admittedly low – salary as a nursery teacher for the past two years. OK, granted, she is still living at home, but that is about to change. She is a grown woman and she is about to become someone’s wife.

  ‘Well, thank you Bill, just got to keep a rocket up those solicitors, you know how lazy they can be. You have to chase them on everything.’

  ‘Mark showed me the pictures on Rightmove, Emily, and I think it looks beautiful, what a gorgeous first home for you both,’ adds Barbara. ‘And two bedrooms too, which will come in handy when…’ Mark’s mum can’t help herself and everyone sniggers at her usual lack of subtlety.

  ‘Wine, Emily?’ offers Gloria, cutting in protectively before her daughter feels the need to respond to Barbara.

  ‘I won’t actually Mum, thank you,’ realising by declining she might be fuelling Barbara’s suspicions that family plans could be imminent. ‘I’ve still got a bit of a headache.’

  ‘Still? Did you take the paracetamol I gave you last night? Occupational hazard I suppose. Well, get some pudding in you later, sugar always helps.’

  ‘Yes, every child in the nursery has the lurgy at the moment, so I’m probably getting another cold.’

  Emily adores her job running the toddler room at the local nursery and surrounding herself every day with the love and giggles of fifteen boisterous two and three-year-olds. But a job that starts at 8 a.m. and finishes at 6 p.m. and where mobile phones are banned, leaves no time during the day for any sneaky wedding planning. Between that and all the new house admin that needs her attention (despite what her dad thinks), the late nights have been racking up a bit and taking their toll on her less than glowing complexion and her now rather limp looking mousy brown hair. There is a limit to what she can expect Mark to do. He’s just as busy trying to win new business for the online travel agency he founded in their last year of university.

  An hour later and after Mark has cleared the table and stacked all the dishes into the dishwasher, flirting playfully with Glo as he does, the real business of the day can begin. Emily is immensely grateful for these family meetings when everyone pulls together with one shared goal – to make this wedding as magical as they all imagine it will be. But she also knows her dad’s uber efficiency is going to keep her awake again tonight, rolling around in bed like some demented rotisserie chicken, feeling just as hot and bothered from the rising fear about how many decisions she has to make.

  ‘OK, Philippa, would you like to kick us off with a cake update please?’ begins Bill. Here we go.

  ‘Absolutely. Last time we met, Emily, you didn’t seem fully committed to the fondant icing, so I’ve pulled together some ideas for a few different types of naked cakes – you know, the ones with no icing at all where you can see the filling, which is usually colourful berry fruit. I love this one,’ she continues, holding aloft an A4 image to a chorus of approving noises from around the table. ‘It’s five tiers of vanilla sponge, all sandwiched together with blackberries, strawberries and elderflower-scented buttercream. I’m sure I can do it – if you like it of course?’

  Thinking about cake when your belly is chock-full of apple pie isn’t ideal or comfortable. And it’s cake, isn’t it? Sponge, sugar, cream. Is there a bad decision? Maybe that’s irrelevant. These people need answers. Eight pairs of eyes look expectantly at Emily now – they want leadership, stuff to action, proper focus, a committed pursing of the lips and nod of the head to demonstrate she’s as serious about this as they all are.

  Whenever there is a birthday, anniversary, graduation or just about anything that calls for a cake in the village, Philippa is the go-to woman. She ran her own bakery business back in the day and loves nothing more now than playing a star role in creating the most special cake of all – the wedding cake. This is her very gratefully received wedding present to Emily and Mark.

  ‘I had elderflowers on my wedding cake,’ pipes up Joyce from her roast potato coma, the words belching out of her, accompanied by what sounds suspiciously like a broken snore.

  ‘That’s decided then,’ confirms Emily, grabbing the first opportunity to power down the agenda.

  ‘Wonderful,’ says Bill. ‘Which brings us neatly on to the bunting. Have you had much joy on that yet, Janet?’

  Emily is marrying in the same church where Glo and Joyce said their vows and in a bid to make them both feel included she suggested at the last meeting they retain some of the beautiful details that both generations before her incorporated into their days.

  In the make do or mend mentality of the mid-50s, Joyce chose to forgo flowers and instead decorated the church with pretty lace bunting, patched together from old tablecloths, napkins, cushion covers and whatever else she could get her hands on at the time. Emily asked Janet, the craftiest among them, to see if she could source some of the original lace from a couple of old black and white photographs that she’d been given. If she managed it, Emily wanted to recreate the bunting to hang around the marquee which would host the reception in her parents’ beautiful English country back garden.

  ‘It’s good news, Emily!’ beams Janet. ‘Several hours trawling Etsy has finally paid off. I have located a woman in Yorkshire who says if we can email her an image of the lace, which I have already described to her in great detail anyway, she will be able to reproduce it – at surprisingly little cost. We just need to work out how many bunting flags you think you need.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ volunteers Bill. ‘I know the precise dimensions of the marquee so I will do the equation later.’ He writes the words bunting maths on his pad under the heading Actions.

  ‘I’m impressed, Janet. I honestly never thought you would manage it,’ smiles Emily.

  ‘Well, this is going great guns! What’s next?’ Bill is scanning down the list of everything they must achieve today. ‘Oh yes, a garden makeover update from me actually. So, I’ve cancelled my birthday celebrations next weekend so I can do the final bit of landscaping with Mark before we really start to think about what planting we need then I think we should…’

  ‘No, Dad!’ interjects Emily. ‘No way. I know how much you enjoy your annual golf weekend with the boys and I don’t want you cancelling it on my behalf.’

  ‘Don’t be silly darling, I made him cancel it months ago. Don’t even speak of it!’ chimes in Gloria. ‘He can play golf any time. Your only daughter gets married once, this is far more important.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ roars Barbara, fuelled by two large glasses of the Grigio. ‘And if you don’t mind me jumping ahead on the agenda Bill,’ – he absolutely will, thinks Emily – ‘can we please talk about dress shopping now?’

  ‘OK, I know you are all desperate to be in on this but I really need to manage your expectations please,’ says Emily. ‘I have no desire to be married in a dress so enormous it’s visible from the moon – it’s just not for me. So please don’t be disappointed if I go for something a bit more… s
ubtle than you all have in mind.’

  ‘Oh, come on! At least try the whoppers on, will you?’ pleads an obviously deflated Barbara. ‘Humour us a little, please.’

  ‘Let’s just get you into a few dresses shall we?’ adds Gloria, obviously praying that once the tulle takes over Emily will finally become the Bridezilla they all hope she’ll be.

  ‘Urghh, to be continued, but for now I’ve booked an appointment at The White Gallery in Little Bloombury next Saturday lunchtime. I’ll understand if any of you can’t make it – obviously you aren’t invited Mark – but they haven’t got another appointment for weeks so it has to be then. Who would like to come?’

  Mark aside, and with the exception of John because this is way beyond my area of expertise, everyone around the table raises a hand, including her dad. Good God, what next, wonders Emily, all of them piling into bed with us on the wedding night?

  Another hour passes as Bill rattles through a shortlist of locally recommended florists, the pros and cons of various catering options for a reception to feed seventy, council requirements for guest parking and residential noise restrictions after midnight. His list of actions has grown to fifteen points and, at his polite insistence, everyone gets their diaries out and agrees the date of the next meeting. Nearly three hours after they all first sat down, Joyce has nodded off again and is quietly dribbling out of the left corner of her mouth. She has been moved to the more comfortable Chesterfield in the lounge and Emily’s headache has reached epic proportions.

  As they finish up, Emily kisses Mark goodbye, thanks everyone for all their amazing efforts and disappears upstairs to the same bedroom she has slept in her entire life for some much-needed quiet time – totally over the wedding talk for one day. Her single bed still plays host to her four favourite childhood teddies including a very tired looking tiny pink one she’s had since the day she was born. There is an old Polaroid picture somewhere of it lying next to her in the hospital crib, dwarfing her newborn swaddled body. She knows hanging on to them is a bit ridiculous for a twenty-seven-year-old woman but she couldn’t bring herself to bin them or even sentence them to the darkness of her parents’ cobweb-filled attic.

  Emily collapses on to the bed, happy but tired, looking up at a wall covered in the proud achievements of a conscientious schoolgirl. She returned from a weekend away with Mark recently to find the results of Gloria’s under-stairs cupboard tidy were now framed and hanging there – a mix of swimming and gymnastics certificates, a class photo taken before her sixth-form leaver’s ball and a framed local newspaper article showing a toothy Emily, aged seven, crossing the finishing line first in a school charity fun run. But Gloria didn’t stop there, she has also framed Emily’s teacher-training graduation certificate, next to a picture of her and Mark on graduation day, tossing their mortarboards high into a bright blue summer sky together and finally her professional diplomas, all four of them, charting Emily’s progress through to fully qualified nursery teacher. Emily allows herself a wry smile. She didn’t have the heart to tell her mum they looked a bit, well, juvenile, killing any idea of passion that the single bed might not have already extinguished. It’s pretty hard to think about devouring your fiancé’s half naked body when your goofy seven-year-old self is staring down at you from the bedroom wall. Come to think of it, maybe that is her mum’s idea? Anyway, what does it matter, she is moving out soon so why risk offending her mum by saying anything?

  Emily reaches for the tab of paracetamol tablets still on her bedside table from last night, pushes two more through the silver foil and swallows them whole with a gulp of stale water. Then she picks up her mobile phone and searches through her contacts for the number of Liz, her boss at the nursery. In the two years she has worked there Emily has never called in sick, but judging by the stubbornness of the drill going off in her head, she thinks a warning of a no-show tomorrow might be wise. She feels dreadful. She has a new boy starting in the morning and his nervous mum has already warned Emily that he’s going to be teary. She’s been doing the job long enough to know this means it’s the mum who’s going to be teary. She wants to be there to make it as pain-free as possible. Feeling slightly reassured that she has at least scanned his new starter profile and prepared all the things his mum had written that he loves most – some musical instruments, touch-and-feel picture books and some small wooden jigsaw puzzles. Someone else could easily take over if necessary. Emily closes her eyes, just for a second to enjoy the quiet. By 6.30 p.m. she is already fast asleep on top of her bed, still wearing the wrap dress and clutching pink ted.

  5

  Jessie

  ‘What now?’ Jessie huffs as her mobile phone starts to ring. She exits The White Gallery, en route back to Willow Manor to sort out that pathetic planner. She glances at the phone, thumb already hovering over the decline button when she realises it’s Adam and quickly accepts the call. She could do with hearing his strong confident voice right now.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous, where are you?’

  ‘Hi, honey. I’ve just finished a dress appointment and I’m on my way back to Willow Manor to run through some details.’

  ‘Cool. I’m just calling to let you know that Lady C has invited us over for an early supper this evening. You know they’re bloody itching to get in on the wedding planning, so I said no probs, we’ll swing by at six-ish.’

  ‘Tonight!’

  ‘Yeah, we’re not doing anything are we?’

  ‘Um…’ lacking the presence of mind to invent something, Jessie has no choice but to add: ‘lovely idea, I’ll come home now and start getting ready.’ The dread immediately takes hold, wiping any trace of the smile from hearing Adam’s voice clean away.

  ‘Well, you can, gorgeous, but it is only 11 a.m. and we’re not due there for another seven hours. It’s only supper, no big deal.’

  This might be only supper to Adam but Jessie knows this must go better than her last meeting with Lady C – aka Adam’s formidable mother, Camilla Coleridge – and her husband, Henry. They popped in unannounced one Saturday morning to find her slumped on the sofa like some giant hungover slug while Adam was, of course, out for a run. As she struggled to conceal herself under a sheer Heidi Klein silk kaftan, the conversation was awkward and stilted. Henry asked endless questions about what she had planned for the day when the unspeakable truth was making love to their son as often as she could manage. The fifteen minutes they all waited for Adam to return felt like an eternity – the moment he did, his charm melted the atmosphere like warm fingers on an ice pop. But the damage was done, the judgements were made… in Jessie’s mind at least.

  ‘Jessie, can you hear me? Jessie?’

  ‘Yep, I’m on my way,’ and she disconnects the call before Adam can say another word. No time for chit chat now, not even with him.

  Jessie knows she’s got off very lightly with Adam’s family, until now. There were a couple of large parties around Christmas but as Adam’s relatively new girlfriend, she managed to deliberately slip into the background, avoiding anything more than a few quick pleasantries before the hosts were swept away by their more gregarious guests. But supper with his parents in their home, on their private estate, as his fiancée, is a whole new level of exposure.

  I need a decent blow dry and then time to think of a gift to arrive with that looks thoughtful but not too try-hard. Then what the hell am I going to wear?

  Out of the corner of her panicked eye, Jessie sees the planner approaching, this time with Willow Manor’s general manager in tow; safety in numbers.

  Have I got time to read the Telegraph cover to cover? What’s going on in the world? What’s my view on Brexit, I need to get one, why don’t I have one?

  ‘Not now!’ she barks in the planner’s general direction, raising a hand like a policewoman directing traffic.

  I wonder if any of Adam’s Country Life magazines are still lying about, I need a handle on the concerns of your average minted landowner.

  The planner and manager halt abrupt
ly, musical-statue-like, before Jessie changes her route across the lawn to avoid them altogether, leaving them unsure whether to take up the chase or retreat. Perhaps noticing the ferocious scowl on her face they wisely choose the latter. Picking up her pace, Jessie tears at the clasp on her bag, searching for the car keys.

  They’re going to ask me what my parents do, what am I going to say? They’re going to ask me what I do, what am I going to say? Play tennis a lot, get my hair done and shout at wedding suppliers? This is going to be horrific.

  So much of what she’ll have to admit tonight won’t look good to them, Jessie’s sure of it. For a start she doesn’t work, having resigned from the property company where she was an executive assistant almost as soon as the ring was on her finger. She resisted Adam’s suggestion to quit for weeks, but in the end she couldn’t argue around his logic. He wants her around more and feeling that desired was just too persuasive in the end. Her salary was miniscule compared to his wealth and when he played his trump card and offered to put her name on the deeds to the Cheltenham house, she felt secure enough to take the leap. But how will that look to the Coleridges if they ever find out? She managed to meet, ensnare and then live off Adam, all in the space of three short months, that’s what they will assume. Then there is the small matter of her unappealing background, and only a catalogue of bare-faced lies is going to conceal that.

  Adam knows, of course, but that will make it much harder for her to gloss over as she normally would. She can hardly sit there evading questions about her schooling and pretend that her parents’ property is not an always-cold council house when a few weeks ago Adam was sat in her mum’s lounge unable to remove his coat and watching his frozen breath hang in the air as he politely nibbled on a cheap pork pie. Knowing she could only delay the visit for so long, that day she watched as he made such a fuss of her mum, winning himself so many brownie points that by the time they left he was firmly in the can-do-no-wrong camp. Her eyes remained glued to his sweet face for the entire car journey home afterwards, searching for any sign of exasperation, anything that would confirm the visit was a chore, an act. But there was nothing. Then when their naked bodies became tangled together in bed that night, she knew for sure there was no pretence. He wanted every part of her.