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‘He said …he said, I can keep the engagement ring.’
‘Ah, that’s nice of him,’ said Madge with a benevolent smile. ‘He was always very generous like that.’
‘And the honeymoon.’
‘Heart of gold, really.’
Mum shot her a poisonous look.
‘But how can I go on my honeymoon on my own?’ I wailed.
‘I’ll come with you, Minty,’ Helen said.
And so at ten to five Helen and I left the Waldorf in a cab – she’d already dashed home to get her passport and a weekend bag. And we were waved off by everyone, which felt rather strange; I decided, in the circumstances, not to throw my bouquet. I left it with all my wedding gear, which Dad said he’d take back to Primrose Hill. And as I crossed the Thames in the taxi with my bridesmaid instead of my bridegroom, I kept thinking, ‘Where’s Dominic? Where is he? Where?’ Was he still on the bus? Unlikely. Was he back in Clapham? When had he decided on his course of action? Was it pure coup de théâtre, or a genuine éclaircissement – and why was I thinking in French?
‘I don’t think he’ll be back,’ Madge had announced, as she sipped her coffee.
‘What makes you so sure?’ Charlie enquired testily. Tempers were frayed by now.
‘Well, once he makes up his mind about something he never changes it,’ she said, patting her perm. ‘Like I say, he’s got such integrity like that.’
‘Oh, why don’t you shut up about Dominic’s blasted “integrity”?’ said Amber, with a ferocity which struck me as rude. ‘Look what he’s done to Minty!’
‘Well, it is unfortunate,’ agreed Madge, with an air of regret. ‘But much better to pull out now than later on.’
‘No!’ I said in a voice I barely recognised as my own. ‘I’d rather he’d gone through with it, just gone through with it, and divorced me tomorrow, if that’s how he felt.’
‘But he’s got such a lot to lose,’ she said.
‘Well, I’ve lost all my dignity!’ I replied. ‘It’s so humiliating,’ I wailed, as I tried to avoid the pitying looks of the catering staff. ‘And in front of every single person I know.’ And it was then that I suddenly regretted having let Dominic persuade me to invite half the staff of London FM. How could I work there again, after this? I looked at my napkin – it was smeared with mascara, which annoyed me because I’d paid £24 for it and had been assured by the woman in the shop that it was completely waterproof. I looked at my watch. It was ten to four, and the train to Paris was at five fifteen.
‘I think you should go,’ said Dad again.
‘Why don’t you go,’ I said, ‘with Mum?’
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s the Anorexia Association Ball on Tuesday. I’ve got to look after Lord Eatmore, he’s the sponsor.’
‘Go with Helen, Minty,’ said Dad. ‘That way, if Dominic wants to ring you, he’ll know where you are.’
Oh yes. Dominic would know that all right. The George V. The Honeymoon Suite. That’s what he’d asked me to book and, very obediently, I had. So that’s where he could ring me. He could ring me there and explain. Perhaps he’d even come over and talk to me in person. But deep down, I knew he wouldn’t – because I knew that Madge was right.
In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the heroine, Hester, is made to wear the letter ‘A’ on her dress. ‘A’ for Adultery. ‘A’ to indicate her public shame. As Helen and I swished through the Kent countryside on Eurostar, I thought, maybe I should wear ‘J’, for jilted. This would save people constantly coming up to me in the coming weeks and asking me why I looked so strained, and why I hardly ate, and why I had this mad, staring expression in my eyes. It would be the emotional equivalent of a black armband, easily read from afar, and leaving nothing to be said – except perhaps for the occasional, and entirely voluntary, sympathetic gesture.
And I thought too, as I gazed at the sunlit fields, of how incredibly unlucky I’d been. I’d had more chance of being blown up by a terrorist bomb, or hit by a flying cow, than being deserted, in church, mid marriage. And I thought of Sheryl von Strumpfhosen and of how she’d got my horoscope so horribly wrong: ‘Your love life takes an upward turn this weekend,’ she’d written. Upward turn? And then I remembered my marriage manual, Nearly Wed, and a grim smile spread across my lips. I thought as well of all the kind things people had said as I left the hotel. ‘Chin up, Minty!’ ‘Probably all for the best …’ ‘Expect he’ll come running back!’ ‘Thought you looked lovely, by the way.’ They had crawled and cringed with embarrassment, brows corrugated with confusion and concern. I’d felt almost sorrier for them than for myself. I mean, what do you say? And then, I realised, with a heart like lead, that it wasn’t just the people who were in church. It was the hundreds of others who’d read that I was engaged.
Because it was in the papers, of course. In the engagement columns of both the Telegraph, and The Times. That had been the first cog to turn, setting in motion the invincible wedding machine. And then I regretted putting it in on a Saturday, when it would have been spotted by everyone I know. And so for months to come I would have to explain again and again that, ‘No, I’m still Minty Malone, actually,’ and ‘No, I didn’t get married, after all,’ and ‘No – no particular reason, ha ha ha! It just didn’t, you know, work out.’ ‘These things happen,’ I’d have to say, brightly. ‘All for the best and all that.’ Oh God. I was interrupted from Bride’s Dread Revisited by the distant clink of a trolley.
‘Please eat something,’ said Helen. ‘The steward’s just coming –’ She reddened.
‘Up the aisle?’ I enquired bleakly.
‘Please, Minty,’ she said, as he approached. ‘You didn’t eat anything at lunch.’
Eat? I was still so shocked I could hardly breathe.
‘Champagne, madam?’
Champagne? I never wanted to see another glass of that as long as I lived.
‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘You have it, Helen.’
‘Lamb or duck, madam?’
‘Neither, thanks.’
‘Nothing at all for madam?’ enquired the steward with an air of concern.
‘No. Nothing for madam. And, actually, it isn’t madam, it’s still miss.’
The steward retreated with a wounded air. Helen picked up her knife and fork.
‘I’m sure Dominic will be back,’ she said, trying to comfort me, yet again.
Helen’s like that. She’s very kind-hearted. She’s very optimistic too, like her name, Spero – ‘I hope.’ In fact, her family motto is Dum Spiro, Spero – ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ Yes, I thought, Helen’s always hopeful. But today she was quite, quite wrong.
‘He won’t come back,’ I said. ‘He never, ever changes his mind about anything. It’s over, Helen. Over and out.’
She shook her head, and murmured, for the umpteenth time, ‘Incredible.’ And then, determined to cheer me up, she began to regale me with other nuptial nightmares she’d read about in women’s magazines. The groom who discovered he’d married a transsexual; the best man who didn’t show; the bride who ran off with a woman she’d met at her hen night; the collapsing or flying marquees. Helen was an expert. Helen knew them all.
‘Did you hear the one about the coronation chicken?’ she asked, as she sipped her Bordeaux.
‘No.’
‘It claimed five lives at a reception in Reigate.’
‘How dreadful.’
‘Then there was this awful punch-up at a marriage in Maidstone.’
‘Really?’
‘The bride spent her wedding night in jail.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘And there was a woman in Kent who was married and widowed on the same day!’
‘No!’
‘The groom said, “I do,” then dropped stone-dead. Heart attack, apparently, brought on by all the stress.’
‘Oh God.’
‘And I know someone else whose granny croaked at the reception.’
‘Really?’
‘She went face down in the trifle during the speeches.’
‘Terrible,’ I murmured. And though Helen meant well, this litany of wedding-day disasters was beginning to get me down. I was glad when we pulled into Paris.
‘Well, perhaps it’s for the best,’ she said, as we got off the train. ‘And I’m sure you’ll meet someone else – I mean, if Dominic doesn’t come back,’ she added quickly.
And I thought, yes, maybe I’ll meet someone else. Maybe, like Nancy Mitford’s heroine, Linda, in The Pursuit of Love, I’ll encounter some charming French aristocrat right here at the Gare du Nord. That would be wonderfully convenient. But there were no aristocrats in sight, just an interminable queue for the cabs.
‘Le George V, s’il vous plaît,’ Helen said to the driver, and soon we were speeding through the streets, the windows wide open, inhaling the pungent Parisian aroma of petrol fumes, tobacco and pissoirs. At the bottom of Rue La Fayette stood the Opera House, as ornate and fanciful as a wedding cake, I reflected bitterly. Then we crossed the Place de la Concorde and entered the bustling Champs Elysées.
‘Elysian Fields,’ I said acidly. The sight of a shop window full of bridal gowns dealt me a knife-blow. A wedding car festooned with white ribbons pulled past and I thought I was going to be sick. Ahead of us was the Arc de Triomphe, massive and emphatic. It seemed to mock me after my decidedly unheroic disaster in St Bride’s. I was glad when the driver turned left into Avenue George V, and we couldn’t see it any more.
‘Congratulations, Madame Lane!’ The concierge beamed at me. ‘The Four Seasons George V Hotel would like to extend to you and your ‘usband, our warmest félicitations! Er, is Monsieur Lane just coming, madame?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he isn’t. And it’s still “mademoiselle”, by the way.’ The concierge reddened as he called a bellboy to take care of our bags.
‘Ah. I see,’ he said, as he slid the registration form across the counter for me to sign. ‘Alors, never mind, as you English like to say.’
‘I do mind,’ I pointed out. ‘I mind very much, actually. But I was persuaded not to waste the trip, so I’ve come with my bridesmaid, instead.’ Helen gave the concierge an awkward smile.
‘Eh bien, why not?’ he said. ‘The Honeymoon Suite is on the eighth floor, mademoiselles. The lifts are just there on your right. I ‘ope you will enjoy your stay.’
‘I think that’s rather unlikely,’ I said. ‘In the circumstances.’
‘Please remember, madame –’
‘–oiselle.’
‘– that we are entirely at your disposal,’ he went on. ‘At the George V no request is too big, too small, or too unusual.’
‘OK. Then can you get my fiancé back?’
‘Our staff are on hand night and day.’
‘He ran off, you see, in church.’
‘If you need help, unpacking your shopping …’
‘In front of everyone I know …’
‘Or you’d like something laundered or ironed …’
‘It was so humiliating …’
‘Then we will be pleased to do it for you.’
‘It was awful.’
‘At any time.’
‘Just awful.’
‘We are here for you round ze clock.’
‘It was terrible,’ I whispered. ‘Terrible.’
‘Oui, mademoiselle.’
The marble reception desk had begun to blur and I was aware of Helen’s hand pressing gently on my arm.
‘Come on, Minty,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go and find the room.’
To call it a ‘room’ was like calling St Paul’s a church. The bedroom was about thirty feet long, with an enormous walk-in wardrobe. There was also a private sitting room, a huge bathroom, a separate shower room, and a terrace. The walls were painted a soft yellow, and there were antiques everywhere. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling; its lustre drops looked like tears.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said, sinking into the boat-sized bed. I looked at the huge bouquet of congratulatory pink roses and the bottle of chilling champagne. ‘It’s lovely,’ I said again. ‘It’s just so …’ A hot tear splashed on to my hand.
‘Oh, Minty,’ Helen said, and she was almost crying too. ‘Incredible,’ she repeated, putting her arm round me. ‘Just unbelievable.’
‘Yes,’ I wept, ‘but it’s true. He did it. And it’s only now that it’s beginning to sink in.’
‘But why did he do it?’ she said, shaking her head.
‘I don’t know,’ I sobbed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, Minty – you’re well out of it,’ she said, furiously blinking away her tears. ‘You don’t want a man capable of such a cowardly, despicable act. You’re well out of it,’ she reiterated, crossly.
And I thought, I’m going to keep on hearing that – again and again. That’s what people will say: ‘You’re well out of it, Minty. Well out.’ And though it won’t help, they’ll be right. It’s bad enough when a man breaks off his engagement, but doing a runner in the church? Outrageous! ‘You’re well shot of him!’ everyone will tell me confidently. ‘What a cad!’ they’ll add. Oh God.
Helen stood up and opened the French windows. I followed her out on to the terrace. Pretty pots of tumbling geraniums stood in each corner, and a white satin ribbon had been threaded through the wrought-iron balcony. The table had been laid, for two, with a white damask cloth, sparkling silver cutlery, gleaming porcelain, candles and flowers. The perfect setting for a romantic sunset dinner à deux. I just couldn’t bear it.
‘I’ll ask them to clear it away,’ I said, bleakly. Then I sat down and took in the view. Ahead of us, to the right, was the Eiffel Tower, its cast-iron fretwork now illuminated like electric lace. To our left was the spire of the American Cathedral, and, further off, the gilded dome of Les Invalides. And then my eye caught the Pont de I’Alma, and the eternal flame by the tunnel in which Princess Diana had died. Worse things happen, I thought to myself, with a jolt. This is dreadful. Dreadful. But no one’s dead.
‘You will come through this, Minty,’ Helen said quietly. ‘You won’t believe that now. But you will. And I know you’ll be happy again one day.’ And as she said that her gold crest ring glinted in the evening sun.
‘Dum Spiro, Spero,’ I said to myself. Yes. While I have breath, I hope.
‘Audrey Hepburn stayed here,’ said Helen excitedly in the hotel dining room the following morning. ‘And Greta Garbo. And Sophia Loren. And Jerry Hall.’
‘And Minty Malone,’ I added bitterly, ‘the world-famous jiltee – and winner of the Miss Havisham Memorial Prize.’
Lack of sleep had left me in an edgy, sardonic mood. It wasn’t that Helen’s presence in the bed had disturbed me – it was so big I’d hardly noticed. It was simply that I’d been far too stressed to sleep. So at two a.m. I’d got up and wandered around the suite in my nightie, wringing my hands like Lady Macbeth. Then I’d rung reception.
