He clamped his lips together and Lily glared at him.
Three
Lily
Lily continued to give Matt the evil eye while he visibly battled to keep a straight face.
‘Hi,’ he said eventually.
Seriously, the things you had to do as chief bridesmaid when your best friend got married.
They’d just finished getting their hair done as a practice run for the real thing.
It was just the two of them, Lily and Tess, because Aaliyah wasn’t letting anyone near her hair – she was amazing at doing it herself and didn’t trust anyone else to touch it – and Meg’s hair was bob-length and she’d only had it cut a couple of weeks ago, so she’d refused to have anything done to it hairdressing-wise and was just having flowers in it. Wise,wisedecisions on both their parts as it turned out.
When Lily and Tess had set out for the hairdresser’s, Aaliyah had said she was going to FaceTime her kids and then read by herself in the hotel garden, and Meg had vaguely said she was going for a walk, which Lily suspected was going to involve Pythagoras, the handsome restaurant owner from the other night, who they’d justhappenedto bump into on the beach yesterday, after which Meg had wandered off with him and not returned until early evening.
The entire fifteen-minute walk from the hotel, Tess had raved about how amazing the hairdresser – who’d been recommended by a friend of a friend of her own hairdresser in London – was going to be, so Lily had genuinely not been worried at all, and when her stylist, Angela, had said that she’d had full instructions from Tess about what sort of style to go for, and would Lily like to leave it to her, she’d said yes, because Tess had excellent taste.
Big,bigmistake.
She’d almost screamed out loud when she’d seen herself in the mirror when Angela had finished, and had then spent a couple of minutes having to fight tears.
She now had afringe, andshort sides, for the first time in her entire life. She also had poodle-style curls in the rest of her hair and a ridiculous bow in them, and looked like total shit, but that was a secondary consideration because she could remove the bow and wash out the hairspray and poodle curls. She couldn’t un-cut her fringe and the sides, though. Angela had got her scissors out and said she might neaten up some of the ends. That had sounded okay, because it had not sounded like she was going to cutinchesoff.Whyhadn’t Lily paid more attention?Whyhad she just meekly said okay when Angela had turned her chair away from the mirror and said she worked better like that?
‘I didn’t think you were going to cut that much off,’ she’d said in an unsteady voice when Angela had turned her round to show off her stunning creation in the mirror.
‘It was just a little,’ Angela had said. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
It was not beautiful. It was a complete eyesore. It was the worst hairstyle Lily had ever seen and she’d had a colleague for a long time who’d been a fan of the pull-wispy-lengths-of-hair-over-balding-patch school of wishful I’m-not-really-going-bald thinking.
She’d really, really wanted to have the tantrum from hell.
‘Isn’t it?’ Angela had repeated.
Lily couldn’t have a tantrum. Tess was getting married in two days’ time and Lily was the never-freaking-out, supportive one. Ofcourseshe wasn’t going to have a tantrum.
‘Yep,’ she’d managed.
Andthen, while Lily had been busy screaming internally about her fringe and looking in the mirrors all around them and comparing Tess’sgorgeoushairstyle with her own hideous one, Tess had spied Matt walking past the salon door and had told Lily that she had to go and check with him that Tom was nowhere in the vicinity because Tess was sure that it would be terrible luck if Tom saw her with her wedding hairstyle before the moment when she began the walk down the aisle.
‘But I can’t go like this,’ Lily had said, gesturing at her own hair in horror. She couldn’t speak toanyhuman being looking like this, but especiallyMatt, and even more so after the scarf display incident yesterday. He’d think she’d turned into some kind of disaster magnet.
But Tess had hissed, ‘Lily, youhaveto or the whole wedding could be ruined. My wholemarriagecould be ruined. My wholelifecould be ruined.’
‘But I lookridiculous,’ Lily had said. Whispered, actually, so that Angela wouldn’t overhear and be upset.
‘Mymarriage,’ Tess had wailed.
Right.
Lily had felt so stressed from her bad hair and having to talk to Matt that she’d had to get her inhaler out and take some puffs before she’d left the hairdresser’s.
And now here she was, standing in the middle of the pavement, in front of Matt, who – like he had yesterday – was looking his usual handsome self, even better than he had done when they were younger, and with his hair obviously looking totally normal, and clearly torn between laughter and pity.
Which wasn’t surprising, because Lily looked like an eighties footballer, or an ageing rocker. Rod Stewart with a perm. A blonde Brian May.
It was really annoying. It was like fate was pranking her.
