No One Wants to Be Miss Havisham

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Locking the Mini, Edie walked to the flat and wondered why she’d rushed. She could've at least taken the time to dry her hair.

“I’ll just be a few more minutes,” Mel promised as she ushered her in.

Edie followed her through the living room that the front door opened straight on to. The room was cluttered with fashion magazines and boy’s toys. Games consoles and mountain bikes.

Edie carried on down the narrow corridor and into the kitchen dining room at the back of the house. The summer sun streamed through the glass ceiling of the extension.

Mel disappeared into the bedroom while Edie settled herself on a stool at the breakfast counter and tried not to notice the sink full of dirty dishes. Edie itched to wash them and to stack the listing pile of magazines into a perfectly arranged tower. Instead she chewed on her thumbnail. The edge was ragged and she grimaced as she noticed the polish was almost completely gone.

“OK, Edie you have to promise that whatever happens I am NOT to snog anyone or do anything that I might regret tomorrow morning,” Mel called from the bedroom.

Regrets? Surely getting married would give Mel enough regrets. One more wouldn't break the bank.

“I’ll make sure!” Edie replied, because she knew that as a maid of honour she had certain responsibilities.

“Oh and I hope Mum will be OK. Aunty Celia has had to pull out so I’m not sure how she’ll feel being the only one of her generation at the weekend.”

“I’ll look after her,” Edie replied.

Thank God, she thought, another grown-up. Now there would be someone as uncomfortable with all the pink glitter and stupid games as she was. Maybe this way she wouldn’t miss Jessica’s acerbic asides so much.

Thirty minutes later Edie had persuaded, cajoled and threatened Mel into the car. As it was they would be cutting it fine to make it to Bath, or rather the house outside Bath that had been rented for the weekend, in time for lunch.

Edie roared out of Clapham and hoped that they would at least be in time for the manicurist and massage therapist some enterprising sort had booked to visit them that afternoon.

“OK, we have to be at the restaurant for seven thirty,” Jo, one of the other bridesmaids called over the high pitched and slightly hysterical voices of the hen party spread around the kitchen and living room of the Cotswold house.

“And as it said on the invite… LBDs, that is Little Black Dresses everyone! And I’ll be supplying the accessories.”

I’ll just bet you will, thought Edie.

She’d caught a glimpse of what looked like feather boas in a rainbow of colours in a bag that Jo had slipped upstairs. She had also overheard people talking about fairy wings and tiaras. Why didn’t they just tattoo ‘hen party’ on their foreheads and have done with it?

Edie went upstairs, her body more relaxed than it had been since the whole haunting thing had started. She might not enjoy the rest of the weekend but she had definitely enjoyed the wonderful massage. The therapist had set up his table and oils in the study cum library downstairs. The fact that the therapist was male and quite personable hadn’t passed any of the party by. And the manicure; she inspected her nails. Perfect. Now no one would know she was stressed.

The hen party included the other two bridesmaids, Jo, Mel’s best friend from uni and Sophie, Barry’s sister. Edie couldn’t work out why Mel thought she had to include her but maybe it was a love thing?

She shook her head; there was no point in worrying about it. They were stuck with Sophie. The rest consisted of Mel’s mum, Maggie, and a collection of uni and work friends.

In the master bedroom that she was sharing with Mel, Edie took her overnight bag and began to unpack. Her toiletries, nightdress and clothes for tomorrow were all there, but no little black dress.

“No,” she whispered.

She was sure she had packed it.

Edie thought back and suddenly she could see it in its dress bag still hanging on the back of her bedroom door. Put there so she wouldn’t forget it.

Yes, she was going mad.

“What’s up?” asked Mel as she came into the bedroom.

“I seem to have forgotten my dress,” Edie said quietly.

Mel’s mouth dropped open.

“You forgot something?” she came and sat on the bed, looking up at Edie concerned. “Are you OK, Edie? Is it work?” Edie noted that she didn’t ask if it were a man.

“No, I’m fine,” she said.

If you count seeing dead people as fine, she thought.

“Well, if you’re sure. You do seem a bit distracted…” Mel waited and looked at Edie expectantly. Edie wasn’t elaborating because if she did they would be on their way to the hospital rather than a nightclub.

Mel shrugged her shoulders and continued. “Good thing I bought a spare. Do you need shoes as well? Because someone else might have some,” Mel went to her bag and started pulling out a mess of black material.

“Actually I bought three dresses because I couldn’t decide and someone was rushing me!”

Edie blushed.

Untangling the three dresses Edie and Mel stared at them as they lay on the bed.

“Ah…” said Mel.

Ah indeed. The dresses were all on the ‘lacking in material’ side of fashion. And then of course there was the fact Edie was taller and curvier than her petite elfin friend.

“This one is stretchy,” Mel picked up a jersey dress which looked demure in front, which was unusual for anything of Mel’s. “Give it a go.”

Edie looked at it dubiously

“It looks like a tubey grip,” she said.

“It stretches. It’ll be fine” Mel said.

Five minutes, later having puffed and panted and wriggled into it, Edie stood red-faced looking at herself in the mirror.

“Obviously you’ll have to go commando,” commented Mel, “and you can’t wear a bra because of the back.”

“The back?”

Edie swivelled round and saw that what the dress had in coverage at the front was more than made up for with a lack of material at the back. The dress scooped down and fell in folds just above her bottom.

“But you’ll be fine, you’ve got the body for it,” Mel said as she straightened the seams.

“Body maybe, but not the mind,” Edie said.

Or lack of it she thought.

“I’ll wear what I came in,” Edie stated.

“What, you can’t!” wailed Mel. “The whole little black dress thing is a theme… Jo and I had it all planned. If you don’t wear it, it’ll throw everything out. We won’t all match.”

Why on earth was she the maid of honour? There was no way she could back out. She was supposed to be calming Mel down not winding her up. She was going to have to do this.

“I’ll do it but I’m not wearing heels!”

“They aren’t too high are they?” Mel asked later as Edie tottered out to the waiting taxis in the only pair of shoes that had fitted her in the whole house. She’d tried to force her feet into a pair of Jo’s ballet shoes but it turned out the only person with the same size feet was Sophie.

“I look like a hooker!” she hissed back.

“No you don’t. Admittedly you don’t look like you. But you scrub up very well.” Mel grinned and then swinging her pink feather boa, adjusting her large garish tiara and wiggling her fairy wings she went to join the other hens in the cars.

Edie’s nose tickled from the bright red feather boa that she had been presented with as she’d come downstairs and she hoped that the tiny silver tiara that she had managed to find wasn’t too obvious in her hair; the hair that ever since this morning’s fiasco refused to sit flat.

I look like I’m on the pull she thought grumpily as her Achilles tendons twinged from the vertiginous heels that she wore. They consisted of a few strips of leather attached to the Everest of heels. She now knew why Sophie had happily passed them over. She’d need a few drinks to just numb her toes that were already complaining about the funny angle.

“I’ve heard that the professional rugby players all go to the club we’re off to tonight,” crowed Sophie, flicking her mane of red hair over her shoulder. Edie shuddered; so they were going to be fighting off Neanderthals all night. She tried to get into the taxi without the nonexistent skirt part of her dress riding up round her waist.

“Phwoar! I love rugby players…” giggled Mel.