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25 DAVID

Three Days Until the Wedding

David knew that that Thursday, he and Mark were on hand to make the day as smooth as possible for Meg and Hannah. It was their only real role now. He had put Ray in charge of the shop from lunchtime. Though he thought he would have had more time to mentally prepare, the last few days had passed in a blur of deliveries and now the rehearsal dinner was here.

He was preparing a small bag of things that he worried Meg might need, which included water, tissues, lip balm and those small calming sweets, which were surely more of a placebo than anything. He also had a raincoat for her, since the rain was forecast to continue, and a few snacks in case she was hungry.

All week, David had been obsessively checking the weather app on his phone, and it kept changing for the next days until the wedding on Sunday, sometimes showing brilliant sunshine, sometimes telling him it would be overcast or even showing him alarming flashing storm clouds. He kept telling Mark that those signs often meant a bigger storm was coming, but Mark, eternally positive, had told him to focus on the things he could control.

‘Are you ready?’ he called to him from the kitchen.

He could hear Mark pulling hangers from the wardrobe and putting them back. ‘Nearly! I thought you said we weren’t going till three!’

‘I know but we could always go early.’ David was tying his shoelaces. He knew it was one of his most annoying habits, to have got ready early just in case and then been itching to leave.

‘I’ll be out in five!’ Mark shouted.

David waited patiently, checking himself in the mirror one last time. It was a rehearsal of the ceremony but it was also about some of the vendors coming to drop things off, so it wasn’t a full dress-up occasion. However, Meg had mentioned staying in the pub for dinner afterwards, which David was looking forward to, so he had made sure to dress up more than he would for a day working in a florist’s, whilst still being comfortable. He’d never liked fancy clothes. He had on a thick patterned jumper and soft chinos, paired with his trusty Skechers that saw him through twelve-hour days on his feet.

‘Right, I’m here,’ Mark said. He emerged into the kitchen wearing the exact same outfit. His jumper was a slightly different colour of green, and he wore boots not trainers, but otherwise they were like twin toddlers dressed up by their mother.

‘Oh no,’ Mark said. ‘Shall I change?’

‘One of us has to,’ David said. ‘Imagine her parents come and the first thing they see is this!’

‘Okay, give me two minutes.’

David checked his watch and phone constantly as he waited for Mark to get ready.

‘What a bad omen,’ David said when Mark re-emerged into the room wearing a shirt. He moved to show Mark the weather app on his phone.

Mark was smiling, shaking his head. ‘It’ll all be fine – stop worrying,’ he said, sitting down next to David on the sofa to put his shoes on again, before deciding not to and stopping.

‘I just wanted to say,’ he began, turning to face David. ‘Maybe I was too blunt about the wanting to get married, and how I said it. I can’t underestimate how your family will have made you feel, and I want to be sensitive.’

‘Thanks.’ David touched Mark’s knee. ‘That means a lot.’

‘I really mean it,’ he continued. ‘Seeing Meg and you the last few weeks, I don’t want to add any stress onto life for you, especially with everything happening with the shop. It’s important to me but we’re also a couple who have been together like this for years and years. If marriage isn’t right for you, then it’s not right for me. I shouldn’t have been … I don’t know, those ultimatums have never been very us.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re not saying much.’

‘Oh, I’m just thinking about the next few days,’ David said. ‘But I appreciate that. Really, I do.’

‘All right, shall we go?’

Out the front of the shop, David noticed Gus, Meg’s ex-boyfriend walking past. They quickly said hello but David insisted they were in a rush, and Gus waved him off.

‘No worries, David,’ Gus said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

* * *

The parts of the pub they were using looked plain and tired, but David felt confident they’d be transformed in a matter of days, particularly when Jacques had arrived to decorate and bring to life the designs he’d emailed over. David was just glad to be out of the drizzly grey weather. He reminded himself, as they greeted Meg and Hannah, that their job was to do whatever was needed, but also to keep everything calm and ticking on, to make Meg feel like everything was going to be okay.

Rod showed the four of them to the marquee outside, which they had ambitiously set up for the beginning of summer. It was flapping slightly with the wind, and David worried about the noise on the day, whether they’d be able to hear the speeches. Rod ran through the plan for the benches and chairs, which would be bought in the next couple of days and moved inside after the ceremony. He ran through the timeline for setting things up the day before, like what his team would sort and what was Meg and Hannah’s to arrange. Hannah told Rod about her parents coming on the Saturday to help, and how they’d be around for all the last-minute details early Sunday morning. Meg stood awkwardly, with no updates from her own parents.

Next, they were shown the storage area in the basement, reached by the same set of stairs at the back of the pub where you went into the marquee. The room was painted white, but you could see dirt and stains on it, and David made a paranoid note in his head to put everything in plastic bags and be careful with anything delicate.

‘I guess I’ll leave you to it then,’ Rod said, swinging a set of keys around his fingers. ‘I’m upstairs if you need anything.’

‘Thanks, Rod,’ David said. ‘We appreciate it.’

Over the next couple of hours, David and Mark tried to keep light-hearted chat going with Meg and Hannah who actually both seemed nervous in different ways. David was sure they were both affected by the wait to see if Meg’s parents arrived, but whilst Meg had gone into a silent sort of trance, Hannah was jittery and particular, getting irritated with people for how they carried things, or if they said something slightly negative that might add to Meg’s stress.

Jacques arrived, enlisting them all to carry boxes from his car into the storage area, which they stacked on the floor. David noticed how Jacques somehow ended up not carrying anything. The seamstress from the bridal shop, Susan, arrived, delivering one huge box with one of the most important things inside, Meg’s dress. Everyone hovered around it, and Hannah even told Mark to go and wash his hands before touching it, though Meg wouldn’t let her even take a peek. David stacked it on a table, protected it with bin bags and reminded himself to take it home to his that evening.

David checked the schedule Meg had given them all, a printed copy each with their name on the top, running through essential items and jobs, and the schedule for today and the day itself. David ticked everything off in his own head, anything that needed to happen before Sunday. Angie would be dropping the cake off on Saturday, Ramon was parking the truck later tonight and there were some deliveries of their drinks and special glasses coming on Saturday. Just before five o’clock, the celebrant arrived and David was again surprised with how tall Caleb was. When he extricated himself from his smart car, it was like he was being unfolded.

‘Hello! Back again,’ David said, shaking his hand.

‘Nice to see you,’ Caleb said, getting a small briefcase from the back of the car. ‘This must be the place?’

David showed him the pub and took him through to the back where everyone was hovering in the marquee.

‘Hi, everyone, I’m Caleb,’ he announced. ‘I’m just going to sort some things, then we’ll start at five-thirty?’ He put his briefcase on the side and started sorting papers.

David checked his watch, noting that it was five minutes past five.

‘Is that okay with everybody?’ Caleb looked round at the group. ‘No need to look terrified – this is the easy bit.’

Meg looked nervous but smiled back at him. Hannah put her arms around her.

‘So we’ve got the couple, that’s the important thing,’ he said. ‘Hannah, you’ll start up here as discussed. Meg, are we still waiting on … your dad was walking you, is that right?’

Nobody said anything, and it seemed Caleb suddenly remembered what he’d been told when he’d come to visit.

‘He’ll be here. Let’s give it till half past,’ David said. ‘If not, Plan B!’

‘All right,’ Caleb said, and David checked his watch again. ‘I just need to get something from the car,’ he added. They all said goodbye to Jacques who said he’d see them on the day. David kept glancing to the door and then looking away. A watched pot never boils, or Mark’s version: A watched pot never sprouts.

At twelve minutes past, Meg’s parents weren’t there. Everybody was standing in the marquee, waiting, and the occasional asides people had been saying to keep up the good cheer had got further and further apart until David couldn’t remember who had been the last one to speak.

‘Is that rain?’ Mark said, and indeed, there were the tiny incremental drum noises of rainfall against the tarpaulin.

‘Oh, that’s annoying,’ Hannah said.

‘Best let it clear before Sunday,’ David replied.

‘Hello, everyone!’

David couldn’t believe it. He spun round to see Meg’s mum enter the marquee, closely followed by who he presumed was Meg’s father, George, who up till now he’d only seen in photos of a much younger version of the couple.

‘The man upstairs told us where to find you,’ Ava said, marching over to Meg, ignoring everyone else in the room, no awareness of the silence she was breaking dramatically. They had both dressed up for the occasion, he in a suit and tie, her in a dress, no hat, despite Meg having insisted it was casual. Maybe that message had got lost with everything else that had gone on. While Ava was trying to take control, as she had in the shop, George looked awkward, as if embarrassed by the situation. They got closer and David could see that whilst Ava seemed older than him, George couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than him and Mark.

David saw Meg looking lovingly back to Hannah, before approaching her parents.

‘You came.’

‘Of course we came.’

Meg hugged her mum, and then shook her dad’s hand, and everybody in the room stared in silence. Meg looked happy but tears had begun to fill her eyes, and David was sure she was running through a whole range of emotions.

‘Well, this isn’t exactly a wedding party,’ said her mum, her voice slightly higher-pitched than David had remembered. ‘Where is everyone?’ She said it in a jovial tone, and despite the fact every hair on David’s body was standing on end, he tried to pretend this was all normal, or in any way manageable.

‘It’s just the rehearsal, Mum,’ Meg said quietly, following her parents as they approached Hannah, who greeted them kindly, as if nothing untoward had happened.

Ava turned towards David, before a flicker of recognition entered her face. ‘You’re that florist! What are doing here?’

David heard Mark draw an intake of breath behind him.

‘How do you know David?’ Caleb asked Ava.

‘I know you went to Savage Lilies, Mum,’ Meg said. ‘David told me.’

‘I—’

‘I know you too!’ George said, turning to Mark. ‘From St Helens?’

‘Yes, I’m the school counsellor,’ Mark said. ‘It’s nice to meet you both, properly and outside of work.’ He reached out a hand. ‘We’re friends of Meg and Hannah’s.’

George coughed and Ava seemed to be slowly realizing they might be a couple.

‘David’s been helping Meg out,’ Hannah said.

‘Right,’ Ava said. ‘Is this it then, Meg, us and these … men?’

She gestured toward Caleb, who was staring awkwardly at the floor, and Mark, who was watching with a serious expression on his face.

‘Yes, Mum,’ Meg said. ‘It’s literally just to run through the day. I did text …’

‘Oh I know, but texting can be so confusing.’

‘Okay.’

Was that going to be her cover for the last four months? Was that anything near an excuse? David pursed his lips.

‘We’ve got some bits from the car,’ she continued. ‘A few surprises. Will you all come and help?’ Before anybody could respond, she was climbing the stairs.

Intrigued, David followed the group as Meg’s mum kept up a steady stream of comments about the weather and if the clouds would last, and how you didn’t want it too hot, and how the pub food seemed okay, and obviously it was a different kind of wedding. You wouldn’t have a wedding ceremony in a pub in her day! She delivered it all with such confidence, David was nearly taken in, before realizing that what she was saying undermined all of what he and Meg had done and what they’d had to do. He had performed a role that she and George always should have taken on. Suddenly, in an anger that coursed through his body, he wasn’t sure why they were all standing in the car park now, or why they had listened to her. He felt Mark touch his arm and mouth to him: Just let this play out.

At the car, a large purple people carrier, Ava started to tell people to take boxes of things out, and carrying one or two each, the group did as she said. Due to the rain, nobody wanted to stay outside or question anything, and so they were soon back down in the storage basement.

‘Mum, what on Earth is in these boxes? You know I’ve planned—’

‘Sorry we’re coming in a little late, but we’ve spent the last week sorting lots of things you’d need for—’

‘I think we might have—’ David began.

‘David …’ Mark said, warningly.

‘Ever since I came into the shop …’ Ava said.

‘We wanted to …’ George added.

‘It’s like your dad says. Everything you—’

‘I think what everybody’s trying to say,’ Hannah said diplomatically, ‘it’s the wedding is in three days, so I’m not sure what we …’

‘I can see there’s resistance.’ Ava sighed, her voice louder like David imagined her admonishing a class of thirty. ‘So I’ll just show you.’

Ava seemed absolutely fine to interrupt anybody and so David stayed silent for fear of being spoken over again. Hannah rolled her eyes. Meg looked again like she was going to cry and David took a step closer to her.

‘Your mum’s been very busy this week,’ George said. ‘Please listen to her.’

From the boxes, Meg’s mum was unwrapping all sorts of things.

‘I’ve got décor, here, candle wrappers to stop the wax and you’ll need serviettes, and an arch here that needs to be put together. There are balloons somewhere. They all match.’

David watched as George said nothing. He couldn’t tell if George agreed with how his wife had behaved, and the message was a clear one from both of them, delivered by Ava, or whether he was just following his wife’s lead. David hated him for either one.

‘Mum, where did you even get all of this?’

‘Hello?’

There was a new voice, and David wondered who else could possibly be added into this unique scenario. Would they be able to make it better or worse? Surely not worse. As David was thinking this, a short man was coming down the stairs, and Meg’s mum introduced him as an old family friend, and a florist. David felt his arms tense with stress. This was worse.

‘William sorted it all.’

The man entered, and began to look at what was already in the basement; everything Jacques had brought earlier was commented on, or moved out of the way. David had to stop him putting a large mud-covered plant pot on the wedding dress box. He started to talk about the flowers he’d buy in, what Meg’s bouquet would look like, and how early he’d have to come here on Sunday to do it all. He mentioned the elegant table flowers he’d do, not whatever was on the planner sheet he seemed to have picked up without anyone noticing. David desperately wanted to snatch it from his hand.

The man suddenly had a pen and was leaning against a table, scribbling away, murmuring something about how you couldn’t have speeches before a wedding breakfast.

‘I can’t believe you’ve left it all this late,’ he said, finally taking a breath. Looking around, he must have suddenly realized five people were staring at him open-mouthed, and that maybe he should tread more softly. He took a step back towards Meg’s parents.

‘I haven’t left anything too late.’

Meg was turning red. David willed on that she would get mad, rather than upset. He realized she hadn’t spoken in a long time; none of them had.

‘I’ve sorted everything on my own, and with the help of David, because you, my parents, were ignoring me! Why have you brought all of this stuff? Three days before … this is … crazy.’

‘I’m not going to be called crazy. I’m your mother. If you’re going to get married,’ Ava said, ‘you’re going to get married properly. You may have set your sights on this … public house, but I’ll be damned if I’m showing my friends photos of a wedding that looks like a night at the local boozer.’

‘Well, I’m surprised you’re even showing them any photos! Since you’re so ashamed of me!’

‘Darling, of course we’re not ashamed.’

‘Then why do you keep ignoring my texts? Why didn’t you mind when I said we didn’t have space for any of your friends?’

‘I—’

‘EXACTLY!’ Meg was shouting now, unable to keep a lid on whatever had been brewing for the last few months, or indeed, David thought, her entire life. ‘I had flowers. I had—’

‘Darling, we called William as a last resort, after going into your shop—’ she shot a filthy look at David ‘—where all I got was attitude, and I presumed you’d told some stranger about how terrible we are—’

‘I was just defending the flowers they’d already chosen …’

Mark was tutting behind him.

‘Are you tutting at me?’ David said.

‘No!’ Mark said. ‘At them! How dare you both come in here—’

‘Look, we really don’t need more flowers,’ David said. ‘We’ve sorted all of those from my shop a long time ago, and actually I’d be losing money if—’

‘Well isn’t that brilliant, Meg,’ Ava said. ‘The one family friend I do bring and you won’t even let him help. This is not how I brought you up.’

Meg was now staring at the ceiling trying not to cry, and Hannah had an arm around her protectively. ‘What’s happening …’ she muttered.

‘Is this what I think it is?’ While they were shouting, Mark seemed to be peeking into other boxes, and then in horror, seemed to be pulling out a second wedding dress in a huge plastic sleeve. ‘I didn’t know you were doing an outfit change, Meg.’

‘Mark, I think …’ David was shaking his head at Mark slowly. Mark suddenly looked mortified, before realizing this was one of the boxes Ava and George had brought.

‘Mum …’

‘It’s my wedding dress,’ Ava said, putting her hands on her hips. ‘I think it would be a nice family tradition if you wore it. I don’t mind if you need to alter it. Obviously you went ahead and got rings without asking anyone …’

There was a pause before anybody spoke, and David was sure he’d heard Caleb actually gasp.

‘Over my actual dead body am I wearing that,’ Meg said.

‘Meg!’ George said.

‘Hey, leave her alone,’ David said. He knew he should be keeping quiet but he couldn’t bear it.

‘Yeah, this is …’ Hannah began.

The stairs creaked – seriously, who now? – and suddenly Gus was in the room. That must have been why he’d said something earlier about seeing them. David hadn’t realized they were that close again.

‘Hi, everyone,’ he said. He was wearing a shirt and chinos. ‘How’s it going? Thanks for having me, Meg.’

‘Sorry, Gus, what are you doing here?’ Hannah said. ‘Said with love.’

‘Ava texted me, about the dinner tonight.’

‘Mum, why?’ Meg asked.

‘I thought your ex-boyfriend should be here. You were always very close …’

‘He’s like a friend of the family,’ George added.

‘You haven’t seen him in ten years!’ Meg was back to shouting. ‘You didn’t like him at the time, actually – sorry, Gus – you were just happy I was living what you thought was a normal life. Oh my God!’

‘Sorry,’ Gus said, taking steps back towards the stairs. ‘I really thought I was invited, if your mum texted me.’

‘No, that’s fine, Gus,’ Meg said. ‘It’s not your fault. You weren’t to know my parents are crazy !’ She was staring at both of her parents, who looked aghast. ‘Gus is gay, anyway!’

David saw Mark open his mouth to comment but he stopped himself.

‘Angus is not gay,’ Ava said. ‘He was your boyfriend.’

‘He is, actually,’ Hannah said.

‘Me and Meg actually was the phase,’ Gus said.

‘Angus is not gay,’ Ava said. ‘I saw you in the ASDA last year and you didn’t say a word.’

‘I actually go by Gus now …’

‘Well why would he tell you?’ Mark said.

‘He is gay,’ Meg said. ‘He’s dating a boy who makes tacos.’

‘Well we’re actually only texting.’

‘He’s not,’ Ava said.

‘I really am,’ Gus said, shifting his weight awkwardly.

‘Okay,’ Ava said. ‘Whatever.’

‘You thought you’d bring my ex-boyfriend, and I’d suddenly swap out my fiancée for a man, didn’t you?’ Meg rubbed at her temples. ‘Wow, you actually really thought that would work.’

‘We didn’t think anything, ’ Ava said. ‘Like I’ve mentioned – and I don’t know why you’re shouting – I think if you’re going to go ahead, we should be involved. You should have a proper wedding the family can be proud of. We’re your parents. Now, have you thought about food?’

This seemed to be the final straw, and Meg burst into tears. Hannah and Mark stood either side of her to comfort her.

‘Of course I—’ Meg began, before convulsing into sobs.

‘Why doesn’t everybody go upstairs?’ Hannah said. Nobody moved. ‘ Now , please. I think there needs to be a family discussion here to sort everything out.’

They all filed out, and David wanted to smile to Meg, to assure her it would all be okay, but even he wasn’t sure. She was sitting down now, shoulders heaving as she cried, and he knew he couldn’t help. She wouldn’t even look at him. He followed the others up the stairs silently, and wished, with everything he had, that this week could go differently for Meg, whilst feeling a sudden shame in his own guts that he couldn’t place to any thought except one. What if everything I’ve done has actually made this worse?