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Three Hours Before I Do
‘Do you feel that?’ asked Clara as Audrey came through the door of the bedroom. ‘It’s like the whole house is creaking in the wind. It feels like the end of the world out there.’
Clara was sitting on the window seat, looking out at the rain, which had started again in earnest. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe you should be getting married in an ark.’
‘Or a swimsuit,’ said Audrey.
‘What happened to you at breakfast? You disappeared,’ Clara said, turning away from the window to face her.
‘I just needed a few minutes of quiet,’ she explained. ‘I went to see them setting up the tables downstairs and the miniature bride jumped off the top of the cake, right in front of me.’
Clara narrowed her eyes at Audrey, tilting her head in concern. ‘There were too many people at breakfast, weren’t there? Did Fred say something to you?’
Audrey shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine. I’m going to go and shower and wash my hair. We’ll get dressed. It will all be wonderful.’
Telling people that she’d seen the bride figurine make a suicidal leap off the wedding cake was not going to help anything. She’d let Granny Parker’s omen talk get inside her head. This had to stop.
In the bathroom, Audrey ran the shower and sat down on the closed loo seat. She pulled out her phone and was confronted with the article about Benedict again. If anything felt like a bad omen, it was this. She found herself googling his name, something she hadn’t done in years. His website announced an upcoming exhibition at the Tate Modern. There were photos of pieces of his work she recognised, sculptures he had shown her years ago in his gallery. Why did she do this to herself? She knew why, though. His last words to her loomed large, like the curse of an evil wizard in a fairy tale: ‘I hope one day you will love someone, maybe even plan to marry them, and someone comes along and takes it from you.’
Audrey shook her head. Why was she endowing his words with some kind of prophetic significance? She needed to focus on happier things. She scrolled to one of her favourite photos, saved on her phone. It was her, aged ten, at her mother’s wedding to Brian. She was holding both their hands; Brian was looking at Vivien, but Vivien’s eyes were on Audrey, and she looked besotted. Her arms began to itch again. She turned off her phone and tossed it down on the bathmat. No more scrolling today. She loved Josh, she wanted to marry Josh, everything else was just messing with her head.
She had a shower and washed her hair, the soapy water stinging the rope-burn on her neck. Emerging from the steamy bathroom, Audrey found Clara sitting on the bed attached to a double breast pump.
‘Wow,’ Audrey said, ‘that is... loud.’
‘Sorry, sorry, I know, baby stuff, ugh. I’m only feeding them a couple of times a night, so I hoped my boobs wouldn’t notice, but apparently, they have. I’ll just drain them now and then I’ll be all yours.’
‘Thank you for being here, Clara,’ said Audrey, sitting down next to her friend, and marvelling at the strange machine currently sucking milk into two small bottles with a strange voom, voom, voom, sound. ‘I know it hasn’t been easy for you to get away.’
Audrey noticed the lines beneath her friend’s eyes, the stray greys in her hair that had not been coloured in, the lines on her forehead that remained even when her face was not in motion.
‘It looks hard, this mothering thing,’ she said gently.
Clara stifled a sob. ‘Don’t! You’ll set me off. My hormones mean I’m on the edge of crying whenever I pump.’
‘You had twins, seven months ago,’ Audrey said. ‘I wouldn’t have held it against you if you’d said no to being my Maid of Honour.’
‘I would have held it against me,’ Clara, said, running a finger beneath each eye to stop her mascara from smudging. ‘You don’t have babies and then bail on your friends when they need you. I’m not going to be that person.’ She shook her head. ‘Besides, you’re making out like it’s a chore to be here – I got an uninterrupted night of sleep last night, I’m living the dream.’ And then she burst into tears. ‘I miss them so much.’ And then she laughed through the tears. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was going to miss them like this. When I’m with them, they need me constantly, it makes me feel like I’ve lost who I am. Then, when I’m without them, it’s like a part of me is missing. I can’t even think about going back to work in a few months. How am I going to do the job I used to do, going to gigs all night? I just can’t see how it’s going to work.’
‘I think it’s probably normal to feel that way, and you are doing an amazing job.’ Audrey rubbed her friend’s shoulder. ‘Maybe work will let you evolve your role, go to less gigs?’
‘You know what these musicians are like, they expect you to be available all hours.’
Audrey felt for her. She knew it was not going to be easy for Clara to do her job nine to five, and Clara loved her job – it was her identity, or at least, it had been.
‘I know what will cheer you up. Shall I get the dress out?’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Clara said, clapping her hands, her face brightening.
Audrey walked over to the heavy-duty, white drycleaning bag hanging on the back of the closet door and carefully pulled the zipper. Inside, the dress was wrapped in cream tissue paper; just the sound of the paper made Audrey feel like a child on Christmas day. It was one of her mother’s dresses, the one she’d worn to marry Audrey’s father.
‘Wow,’ said Clara. ‘You’re lucky your mum kept it so well.’
Clara detached herself from the milking machine and screwed tops onto the plastic milk bottles. Then she pulled up her blouse and helped Audrey take the dress from its paper and plastic tomb. It was a cream silk, fitted gown with a cowl neckline and a low back, with tiny silk buttons all the way to the floor. Audrey had deliberated over hundreds of different dresses. In the face of such overwhelming choice, she’d opted for one that meant something. This dress had a connection to both her parents, on a day when only one of them could be here.
They laid the dress on the bed. Clara pulled up a pre-designed ‘Wedding Day Playlist’ on her phone, then she set about drying and styling Audrey’s hair in front of the dressing-table mirror. As she tonged pieces into loose curls and sang along to ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ by Laura Nyro, Audrey felt a wave of gratitude. Her friend, who had been through the toughest year of her life, who was clearly exhausted and emotional, and worried about the future, had still found time to make her a wedding playlist, to pick up the wedding plate, to buy her wild flowers. Maybe all this debate about soulmates missed the real love story, the one she had been lucky enough to have for nearly twenty years now.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Clara asked, narrowing her eyes at Audrey in the mirror.
