How To Marry Your Husband (9 page)

Chapter Twelve: The Hen Night

Secretly Olivia hates hen nights – they’re full of beautiful drunk women who seem very confident of their sexiness and right to be beautiful, and drunk. Olivia is none of these. She’d much rather stay at home and read a good book, with maybe a glass of wine to accompany her. Ideally she likes doing this with Kieran, so they end up sitting companionably side by side on the sofa, both reading books and drinking wine.

The only difference in this vision of domestic bliss is that Olivia is reading a witty romance, and Kieran is reading something about tanks. Olivia doesn’t like tanks and considers that if she were ever inside a tank, she would suddenly develop claustrophobia and her head would implode. This is possibly what Kieran feels about witty romance. She’s never liked to ask outright – it would be rude.

Anyway, a hen night beckons and Olivia is morally bound to do it. She decides on a gossipy evening of wine and Italian food with her three favourite girlfriends, Jo, Anwen and Justine. It will make up for the fact she’s not having any bridesmaids, and even though her friends have expressed no negative opinions on this shocking decision, Olivia wants to be absolutely positive there is no bitterness curdling in the ranks. If bitterness can curdle.

Two weeks before her totally civilised hen night, she asks Kieran for the hundredth time (at the very least) if he wants to have a stag night. He looks at her, his face pale, as if she’s asked him to ski naked down Mount Kilimanjaro with a thorn in his bottom.

She smiles. “Ok, then, no stag night. Do you want to come with us? You know the girls anyway, and it’s no big issue. We’re just doing dinner.”

Actually, Olivia says this more out of politeness than anything romantic. Though she has started off thinking a hen night is weird, now she thinks it will be nice to have a proper event with her few close friends to mark the turning point from being single to being married. She’s not sure if feeling this way makes her into some kind of 1950s housewife, but that’s just the way it is. She can’t help her feelings.

Thankfully, when she asks him if he wants to join in with the girls, Kieran looks even more horrified. Maybe the thought of accompanying her on her hen night is even worse than being asked about a possible stag night. It certainly seems so.

She lets him off an answer; she likes to think she’s good that way. On the evening of her big hen night, Olivia is catching the 6pm train to get to London at around 7pm – Charing Cross to be precise, where she and the girls always meet for a few drinks before going to dinner. She hopes the restaurant is fairly quiet tonight – there’s nothing worse than having to lean over the table to hear what her friends are saying. Often in the past, Olivia has found herself nodding agreement to stuff she hasn’t heard properly in the hope it’s the right thing to do.

Before she gets dressed, she’s got a few domestic things to get sorted out. She needs to turn the electricity off to sort out the oven, but she’s not great at anything technical. Kieran’s not there – he’s staying at a friend’s tonight and she doesn’t want to ring him to ask his advice because she hates sounding wimpy, especially on her hen night.

Instead, she pops next door to ask the neighbour.

“Turn off the electrics and then rewire it,” the neighbour says. “Do you want me to come in and do it for you?”

Yes, Olivia does, but she doesn’t like to admit defeat so pretends an expertise she doesn’t have. “No, it’s fine, I’m sure I’ll manage, thank you.”

At home, she stares at the oven plug on the wall. How hard can it be? She turns the switch off and then tries to sort the wires out which have been lurking at the back for way too long.

The next minute she’s flying across the kitchen and lands sprawled on her bottom near the waste bin. Her hair feels wild and she’s shaking.

Hmm, that wasn’t exactly turned off, was it? When she’s feeling less shaky – which takes a lot longer than she has time for – Olivia trots next door again.

When the neighbour opens the door, he stares at her. It’s embarrassing she can never remember his name, but this is downtown suburbia, and remembering your neighbour’s name isn’t a key priority.

“What happened to your hair?” he says, still staring at her.

“I don’t think I understood what you meant,” she admits, feeling one hundred times a fool but she doesn’t have the time to stand firm for her feminist beliefs. “Can you help me?”

He does. He doesn’t laugh that much either as he explains that ‘turning off the electricity’ doesn’t mean just at the wall switch, but she should have gone and turned it off at the mains in the cellar instead. Oh well, the cause of feminism may have turned back fifty years, but the good thing is she’s not dead. Apparently, according to the neighbour, she’s been lucky.

The neighbour kindly sorts her oven out, in ten minutes. She thanks him profusely, gives him a couple of beers before he leaves, sends a quick prayer of gratitude skywards and gets ready for her night out.

In some ways, Olivia hates going up to London and wishes her friends live more locally, but they don’t. They either live or work in the big city and it’s easier for her to go up to them rather than all of them to come to her. Halfway through the train journey to Charing Cross, she does wonder why it is she’s the bride but she’s so easily fitted in with what they usually do. Maybe now would have been a good time to throw a Bridezilla fit and demand everyone comes to her? The thought makes Olivia laugh as she’s never had the balls to be honest about what she wants – except with Kieran.

Naturally, her sudden burst of laughter draws the embarrassed attention of the few people taking the journey with her and a couple of them shift anxiously in their seats. When she’s older, Olivia will take this opportunity to stare people down and if possible look even madder, but she’s only in her late twenties and hasn’t grown into her own zaniness yet. So instead she tries to look normal, grabs her book from her handbag and pretends to read it. She doesn’t even know what the book is called, but it’s the one she always takes on train journeys. She thinks it’s some kind of mystery romance but has never bothered (a) to read the blurb or (b) get beyond page 5. Most of the time on trains, she likes to daydream – it’s what makes the journey bearable.

It’s a relief when the train finally groans its way into the station. Olivia is quick to exit and trots through the ticket barriers and onto the street. She’s aiming for Covent Garden church and could take the tube but she’s not that lazy and she hates being underground. So she walks purposefully along the Strand, checking to make sure she’s not going to be hassled, her money is safe and she won’t miss her turning.

Olivia never misses the turning to Covent Garden but she always worries she may. She’s not good at directions and tends to memorise journeys beforehand as best she can. Directions don’t stay complete in her head, but always drift off into strangely spiky lines which never join up. She doesn’t share this with anyone but Kieran as she’s sure even her close friends would find this odd and maybe even laugh at her. Even though they never have, not unless she’s laughing at herself, which she does often.

Kieran doesn’t like it much when she laughs at herself – he says it’s a weird (though he doesn’t use that kind of word, but that’s how Olivia interprets it) thing only English women do, and instead Olivia should be proud of who she is and what she’s achieved in her life. She kind of agrees with him, but where she is in her life now, she can’t quite act on it.

Maybe one day.

Anyway, she’s the last one at the bar, and her friends have already bought a couple of bottles of wine to start them off. She yells a greeting across the crowded room, and Jo turns round and gasps.

“What the hell have you done to your hair?”

Olivia hasn’t done anything to her hair – in time-honoured fashion, she’s just given it a quick brush before heading out the door and it had looked fine then, post the shock. She pats it at once. “Have I got something on it?”

“It’s sticking up,” Anwen chips in. “Did you get stuck in the train door or something?”

By now, Olivia has her handbag mirror out and is trying to get her hair in the tiny square of glass at an angle where she can see it. When she does, she gasps too, even as Jo is attempting to smooth it down and giggling when she can’t.

“It keeps floating up,” Jo says. “Have you had a shock? Sit down. You look like you might need a glass or two.”

Now, that sounds good. If Olivia is going to go through her hen-night looking like a zombie having a bad hair day, then wine will be the only thing making it worthwhile. She takes a good gulp of the wine bar’s best Chardonnay (she loves Chardonnay even though it’s so unfashionable it’s almost retro) and explains about the electric shock in the kitchen.

Halfway through her story, and all her friends are laughing so hard they can’t even drink. So much for thinking they never did this! Even Justine, who has never been known to be cruel to anyone no matter how crazy they are, is smiling though trying not to.

“You mean you didn’t turn it off at the mains?” Jo asks again, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Well, honestly, you’re lucky to be alive, aren’t you?”

“I thought I was turning off at the mains, like the neighbour said,” Olivia protests though she knows she really has no excuse at all, and the phrase “Ditsy Woman” was surely meant for her. “I just did what he told me, or I thought I did.”

“Oh no,” Anwen shakes her head. “Don’t blame the neighbour. If you had died horribly, it wouldn’t have been his fault at all. How was he to know you’re a liability when it comes to DIY? Why didn’t you get Kieran to do it anyway?”

Olivia sighed. “I was trying to impress him …”

All three of her friends burst out laughing once more, even Justine, though she is the first to recover. “What did Kieran say about it?” she asks.

“Well, I’ve not told him yet,” Olivia has to admit. “He’s not going to be happy, I can tell you.”

“Of course he isn’t,” Jo says. “It wouldn’t be any kind of a wedding if the bride was burnt to a cinder, would it?”

The rest of the hen night goes much as Olivia expects, and it’s exactly the kind of evening with her friends that she loves and treasures. They finish their drinks and move on to the nearest (and good) Italian restaurant. More wine follows and cocktails – no evening out with the girls is ever complete without a banana daiquiri – and then comes coffee, more chat and home.

Perfect.

When she arrives home, one thing is sure however – Kieran definitely isn’t happy about her kitchen electricity crisis once she’s drunkenly told him about it. He grips her shoulders, stares with deep anxiety into her eyes, and then hugs her so tightly she wonders if he’ll ever let go.

“Next time,” he says hoarsely, “you ask me first, okay?”

“Okay,” she says with a brief hiccup. “I promise.”

Chapter Thirteen: The Wedding Day

When Olivia wakes up on the morning of The Day itself, it takes a moment or two for the reality to sink in. This is their wedding day, their actual
real-live wedding day
! She and Kieran are staying at her mother’s house, near the church they are going to get married in at 2 o’clock this afternoon.

It’s sunny outside, so she gets up with a hundred percent more enthusiasm than she usually musters for the morning, and smiles at the day. It seems important she does so. She whispers a small prayer and then goes to wake Kieran. As usual, he’s caught in sleep and reluctant to leave it, so she bounces down on the bed and gives him a totally enormous hug.

“It’s our wedding day today!” she yells, even though he’s so close she could whisper (whispering isn’t Olivia’s strong point and never works for her as people always tell her to speak up – though then again they could be joking, it’s hard to say). “Are you excited?”

“Yes, can’t you tell?” Kieran manages to reply between kisses. Her mother chooses this exact moment to come in to the room, carrying a tray, a pot of tea and two mugs. Bliss indeed.

“Mum! Aren’t you supposed to knock or something?”

“But, darling, I could hear you yelling from downstairs so I assumed poor Kieran would be awake by now. Tea will keep your strength up.”

And, with a wink she is gone. Mothers, eh. Olivia grabs her tea and heads to the shower. Once she’s done, she gets dressed as her fiancé takes his turn in the shower. It’s 8.30am. Debbie the make up lady is due at 12noon so there’s bags of time. She’ll do her own hair – it’s just about survived the disaster area of Bernie and she really doesn’t want anyone messing it up now. Mum and her stepfather have probably been awake since at least 6.30am, but that’s the countryside for you. Here, 8.30am is a lie-in.

Downstairs, Olivia’s parents have already had breakfast so she quickly lays out cereals and orange juice for Kieran, and pops the kettle on before raiding the bread-bin.

“Mum, have you got any multi-grain?” she shouts out as her mother is busy tidying up in the living room in case the family drop by on their way to the church – which they’ve promised they would do.

“Right hand side of the bread bin,” the answer comes back. “And there’s some of that coffee you like in the cupboard above!”

Olivia discovers both just as the kettle finishes boiling. “You’re an angel, Mum. Do you want another coffee?”

“Yes, I know. And no thanks. I’m saving myself until your aunt gets here.”

Olivia can’t help smiling at that – her aunt Jenny is a coffee-fiend and will probably drink them out of house and home if they let her.

“What’s this about coffee?” Kieran’s voice echoes down the hallway. The scent of the Douw Egberts has done its trick, once again.

“In the special mug,” Olivia replies and pushes the drink into his hands.

Kieran stares at the mug and bursts out laughing. It’s bright blue with a cartoon picture of a bridegroom jumping for joy – at least Olivia hopes it’s joy – in front of a crazy cartoon church. She has a matching one of a bride in pink. They’re gifts from her mother who saw them in a catalogue and couldn’t resist.

The one good thing about them is they’re not the terrifying gypsophila slippers her mother bought her for their engagement. Kieran gives her mother a hug, as Olivia thanks her. “We’ll take them on honeymoon,” she promises.

“And never bring them back?” her mother queries, with half a smile on her lips. Maybe she’s not as easy to fool as Olivia has thought.

The morning passes easily, and Olivia’s not as nervous as she assumed she would be. It’s probably because Kieran is with her and he’s always been a calming influence. Has her own vitality (a family trait) made him any livelier? She’s not sure but she hopes so. She wants their marriage to be the proverbial two-way street, even though there’s nothing she hates more than expressing herself in clichés. Oh well, it’s her wedding morning and so she’s allowed to entertain a cliché or two. Getting married is probably a real-live cliché anyway.

At eleven o’clock, her aunt and family arrive. As always, Olivia’s aunt sweeps in and fills the house with laughter and noise. She’s that kind of an aunt, and Olivia loves it. Aunt Jenny hugs and kisses everyone she can find in the hallway with huge enthusiasm and then takes out a cough sweet from her copious black bag.

“Terrible cold I’ve got,” she says. “Hope I don’t give it to any of you.”

Now she tells us, Olivia thought, and – as if they were of one mind, she, Kieran, her mother and stepfather run for the zinc tablets in the kitchen cabinet. She’s impressed that even though her stepfather beats them all there, he actually gives the first tablet to Olivia. Getting married has raised her cachet in the immediate family, that’s for sure.

“Why didn’t Jenny tell us before she kissed everyone?” he whispers.

“Hush,” her mother whispers back. “Perhaps she just forgot? Anyway, you know what she’s like – she can’t help her enthusiasm.”

“We’ll all be fine,” Kieran interjects. “The adrenalin from the wedding day will get us through. We’re all too hyped up to be ill.”

Olivia hopes he’s right – the last thing she wants is a spluttering, snorting honeymoon. Aunts, eh!

Jenny and the entourage stay about half an hour before departing. She still manages to drink 3 cups of coffee, one after the other. They’re planning lunch at the local pub before the wedding. Everyone’s glad they don’t stay and expect to be fed – nobody’s prepared for any catering, however light.

Olivia washes her hair, using the ultra comfort shampoo and gel the emergency hairdresser gave her. Thank goodness her hair feels almost normal now and isn’t itchy any more. She doesn’t want the hassle of it during the ceremony – surely they’re nothing more offputting than a bride frantically scratching at her head while she’s saying those hugely important words.

Speaking of the words, she and Kieran have been practising even though they don’t have to memorise anything – they just repeat what the vicar says. But Olivia has been living with the existential terror of Kieran promising to ‘obey’ rather than ‘cherish’ and she can’t bear thinking about the fallout amongst her friends from
that
disaster.

Kieran has reassured her it doesn’t matter if he slips and says ‘obey’ as he already does so anyway, to which her answer was a grimace and a deep sigh. She’s positive this is nonsense but even if she is a super-scary fiancée destined to become a nag-bag wife, Olivia’s not keen on letting other people into the secret. So they’ve practised and he’s got it right each time. She hopes their luck will hold.

She’s just finished drying her hair and teasing it into shape when the doorbell rings and she hears her mother’s surprised greeting in the hallway. After a second or so, Olivia’s mother calls her down.

To Olivia’s shock, Bernie is grinning up at her and clutching a bag teeming with brushes and hairdresser accessories, some of which Olivia is sure probably started off their life as sex toys.

“I’ve come to help you with your hair,” Bernie says.

Olivia glances at her mother, who is frowning. Olivia thinks her mother is sure to say something nice, so nice that – horror of horrors! – she may well find the pesky woman doing her hair just for the sake of courtesy. So, for once in her life, Olivia gets in first.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve already done my hair, as you can see. I don’t need any help, but thank you so much for coming.”

Okay, it’s not the great wave of rage and bitter comments this woman so much deserves – so perhaps Olivia is more of her mother’s daughter than she likes to admit – but it makes the message clear and at least she hasn’t actually thanked Bernie for helping. That would be a total failure in the Bitch Stakes.

With that, Olivia turns on her heel – something of a skill on her mother’s narrow staircase – and trots upstairs again. While she sorts out her underwear, she can hear the sound of the kettle boiling and the murmured voices of Kieran, her mother and Bernie in the kitchen. Luckily, her stepfather has bypassed the war zone by dint of being in the garden. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Olivia hears the sound of the front door opening and closing, then another pause and Kieran’s footsteps coming upstairs.

He pops his head round her old bedroom door. “You’re safe,” he says with a smile. The dreaded Bernie has departed, and the day is saved.”

So far so good then, Olivia thinks as she kisses him. She hopes there won’t be any other nasty surprises.

At twelve o’clock, Olivia has a couple of slices of toast and a banana. Everyone else is nibbling away as if it might be their last ever meal – even Kieran – but Olivia doesn’t want her stomach to bulge so much in her wedding dress that it gets to the altar before she does. Still, she’ll be wearing her special hold-all knickers so it may just be worth a chocolate biscuit. She ends up eating three – oh well, it’s best to keep her strength up.

Now, if only her push up bra can do its job, she’ll be the perfect bride. Hang on though, who wants to be the perfect bride? Kieran’s marrying her, not some slim perky blonde. She’d better remember it.

After lunch, Olivia ascends the stairs to the Wedding Dress Room – this is neither her bedroom nor that of her mother and stepfather. It’s the room her grandma used to sleep in when she came to stay. Funny how suddenly this day – this moment – has become about Olivia and The Dress, and Kieran and what he’s wearing have taken a gentle backward step. Just for a little while. Maybe all brides feel this way at some point, and she finds she’s enjoying it.

Resisting her mother’s offer of help and giving Kieran a bright smile, Olivia slips into her grandma’s old bedroom and shuts the door quietly behind her.

The world disappears at once – just as it did when she first kissed her fiancé so many years ago. Olivia gazes at her dress. It looks perfect in its see-through cover. It hangs there holding every single one of her hopes and dreams and all she has to do is reach out and accept them. She never knew she would feel like this but she does, and she’s glad she can still surprise herself after all this time with how much she loves Kieran and wants to be with him.

She closes the curtains, switches on the light and takes the dress down before laying it softly across the bed. All her clothing is already placed on Grandma’s old eiderdown: push-up bra (if it works), hold-all knickers, suspenders (blue), stockings (pale grey). The headdress and shoes are next to the bed, both in their boxes. She broke the shoes in a couple of days ago by scoring the undersides with a knife – thank goodness for wedding magazine advice – and walking around the garden in them. In the dry, of course.

Olivia dresses quickly – she’s never liked hanging around. She prefers to get things done and be on to the next task, whatever it may be. Still, she spends long moments gazing in the mirror and thinking she looks pretty damn good, even without the make-up. The dress fits like a dream, and indeed a couple of weeks ago when she went for the fitting, the dressmaker even had to take it in a jot. Planning a wedding is apparently very good for the diet.

Leaving the shoes by the side of the bed for now, she slips out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. There she puts on an old apron her mother has lent her to protect the dress, and lets the wonderful Debbie – who has been patiently waiting downstairs for a whole ten minutes – work her make-up magic.

Olivia’s more than pleased with the result. She thinks she’s scrubbed up well, all things considered. Even her hair passes muster. By now, it’s 1pm, an hour away from The Time, and the photographer is due. She runs back to the bedroom, puts on her shoes and goes downstairs to find Kieran.

Half-way down the staircase, her stepfather walks out of the living room and in the direction of the downstairs bathroom. He glances up towards her, presumably caught by the shimmer of ivory against the stairway’s golden carpet. He looks away for a second, and then comes to an abrupt halt before staring up at Olivia again.

“You look very good,” he says, blinking. “Very good indeed. Well done.”

Then, being a man of few words and even fewer emotional outbursts, he coughs and hurries away to the bathroom.

Olivia smiles and feels like at least a million dollars. Of all the compliments which are going to come her way throughout the course of the day, this is the one she will remember and treasure her whole life.

In the living room, Kieran has his back to her and is gazing out of the window. When she closes the door with a soft click, he turns round, and then a huge smile slowly lights up his face.

“You look beautiful,” he says.

Olivia gives him a big grin before landing a kiss on his cheek (she wipes away the lipstick afterwards).

“You don’t look too bad yourself either,” she says. “We make a lovely couple, darling.”

It’s true too. Kieran looks even more handsome than usual (if such a thing is possible) in his dark grey suit, white shirt and olive green tie. An olive-coloured handkerchief peeks out of his top pocket and the look is complete.

There’s a special squeeze of the hand from her mother, and then the photographer arrives.

Steve is as kind and efficient as he was when they chose him. In the garden, Olivia realises for the first time how much effort her stepfather has put into getting the flowers and lawn just right. He’s even trimmed the hedge at the front and made an archway above the front gate which is perfect for couple shots. She’s not noticed it before as she always comes in through the back door.