My Secret Lover

bridal department of Debenhams, but
the assistant gave it away with ‘Oh! Hello again!’ after the initial ‘Do you
need any help?’
    Also, I don’t like any of the dresses
she has picked out.
    I don’t like white or ivory or cream.
Too sacrificial. I don’t like anything with lace or little pearls on it.
There’s nothing worse than the metallic grey colour they call oyster. Even white
is better than the wedding dresses designed for women who don’t like white. I’m
talking crimson velvet bodice and white satin skirt, or gold all over, or,
worse, pink.
    I don’t, actually, like long dresses
at all because they remind me of those paralympic fairy dolls you stick on the
top of the Christmas tree who have a normal plastic torso and a paper cone
covered with net instead of legs. I have quite good legs. They are my best
feature. The only time Joanna is ever envious of me is when I’m wearing pedal-pushers.
But you cannot wear pedal-pushers to a wedding, or even a miniskirt. I could
just about get away with it from the waist down. But you can’t wear a mini with
a thirty-six-year-old face, unless you’re Liz Hurley. Not that she, of course,
is getting married.
    ‘I think I’ll just buy a nice dress
from Monsoon,’ I say. ‘Something bright,’ I add, to show willing.
    ‘Don’t know why you’re bothering to
get married at all,’ says my mother.
    ‘Marriage is not just about dresses,’
I say.
    ‘I just want you to look lovely,’ she
says, despairingly.
    ‘But even if I have half a mile of
tulle swathed around me and a headdress of real diamonds, I am not going to
look lovely, am I? Let’s face it,’ I tell her in the café over a cheese scone
that’s so dry it crumbles to a heap of sand on my plate. ‘What I’ll look like
is someone trying to look lovely, and everyone will say, “Doesn’t she look
beautiful?” but feel sorry for me behind my back. The tiara will make it
worse.’
    ‘I wish you weren’t so hard on
yourself,’ Mum says.
    She makes it sound like a criticism.
My mother makes most things sound like a criticism. If I volunteer to go and
see her on a Sunday, she’ll say, ‘All right then, but I can’t cook you lunch,’
as if the visit is for my benefit not hers.
    Now she’s implying that it’s my fault
that I’m not pretty because I’m too hard on myself, when in fact it must be
something to do with her. She is pretty, but she gave all her pretty genes to
Joanna, although to be fair, she couldn’t have known that she was going to have
another girl later.
    ‘I’m only being honest,’ I reply, in
that terse, uptight way I have only with her.
    ‘You’ve got a lovely smile,’ she
says. ‘If only you’d let us see it occasionally.’
    ‘I do smile,’ I tell her, crossly.
    Just not with you.
    My mobile rings.
    ‘Lyd! Hi! Look, dashing, but I’ve had
a word with— My sister makes a noise that’s halfway between a sneeze and being
stabbed with something very sharp. ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘Fine. Busy. She says that the
characters mean “Woman reckless with money...’
    The penny drops. Joanna has shown my
minicab card with the Chinese characters to her feng shui expert, whose name
most people would pronounce Jung Choo, but Joanna is the sort of person who
says words in foreign languages properly. She always puts on a real French accent
for fait accompli for instance, and duvet.
    ‘…which is an odd name for a
restaurant...’ That’s the last time I tip a minicab driver.
    ‘Shall I have Kim do a search for
synonyms?’
    ‘No. It’s fine. Joanna?’
    ‘Yes?’
    She’s still there, but impatient.
    ‘Do you know a really good Chinese
restaurant?’ She has a quick word with someone in the background.
    ‘Somewhere called Mr Kong.’
     
    ‘That was Joanna,’ I say to my
mother.
    ‘How is she?’
    ‘Busy.’
    ‘Joanna’s always busy. Usually I talk
to her nice young man,’ says Mum. She’s always preferred Joanna.
     
    I say I’ve got a headache rather than
face John Lewis in Brent Cross. And then I feel guilty, even though she says
she’s got plenty to do. I drop her home and she doesn’t invite me in. I can see
from the way she hurries up the front garden path that she’s as eager to be rid
of me as I am of her.
    At the front door, she turns and
gives me a forlorn little wave of disappointment or dismissal. It’s hard to
tell at this distance.
    As usual, our outing has left me
feeling unhappier than I was when we met. The lid of my