A Bad Bride's Tale Read Online Free PDF

that it’s going to be one fabulously groovy party.” Patti winked, sending an avalanche of green eye shadow onto her left cheekbone. “I’ll see to that.”
    Stevie’s heart sank. What was her mother going to do—arrive on a white stallion à la Bianca Jagger?
    Chris brushed a stray overcooked chunk of carrot off his tweed jacket. “It’s perverse that we’ve spent years conjuring up highly creative excuses to avoid all the relatives and then, suddenly, we’ve invited them— en masse —to this house. It’s going to be . . .”
    Stevie was deflated. The chipped blue jug swam in front of her eyes. It felt like there was a flood of tears inside her ready to seep out of the nearest available orifice. Maybe she was premenstrual. Maybe it was hormones. Maybe she was overly emotional at seeing Sam again after all this time.
    Sam touched her lightly on her pale, freckled forearm. “It’ll be great, Stevie.”
    “ Ab-sol-u-ment! ” exclaimed Patti, thick silver Rajasthan bangles clattering like a parade of Hare Krishnas. “Anyway, folks, no going back now!”

    FOUR Æ

    the green vw golf screeched to a halt on cowley Road, leaving a scar of stinking black rubber across the tarmac. A man stuck a furious bald pink head out of the car window. “Fuck- ing look where you’re going, woman! You nearly got yourself killed!”
    “Sorry, sorry.” Stevie walked shakily over the road, grateful as her foot—still attached to her leg—hit the curb. Since moving to Lon- don ten years ago, she treated all provincial roads like rustic bridle paths.
    “Hey!” someone shouted.
    Stevie jumped. What had she done now? But, no, thank God, it was Lara, smiling and waving, wearing a fitted black dress and red patent-leather wedges, incongruously glamorous in this part of Oxford student-land.
    “Christ, Stevie. I saw that,” Lara said, wide-eyed with concern. “Are you okay?”
    “A bit wobbly, but no radical changes to the wedding dress nec- essary.”
    Lara kissed her on both cheeks. “You’ve got to look where you’re going, hon.”
    “I know, I know. But I was checking out that cloud, the big gray stormy one up there.” Stevie craned her head back. “Isn’t it spectac- ular?”
    “Girl, you almost joined it.” Lara shook her head. “Anyway, for- get the damn cloud! This is very, very exciting.” She banged out a drumroll with her hands. “Da da da! Are you ready for the final dress fitting?”
    “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
    “Let’s go then, missus.” Lara slinked her arm into Stevie’s, and the friends walked along Cowley Road until they got to James Street.
    “Turn left. Dressmaker is this way,” said Stevie, her pace slow- ing, feeling a growing sense of trepidation. It all felt a bit final. “Yes, that’s Gina’s house, the one with the green door.”
    As they rang the doorbell, Lara squeezed Stevie closer. “Don’t be nervous. You will look drop-dead gorgeous in that dress, I just know it.”
    Gina, a dressmaking member of Patti’s book group, had agreed to alter a satin 1930s dress that Stevie had unearthed from the dusty basement of a vintage shop on Portobello Road. A neat needle-thin woman in her sixties, she showed them into the studio–cum–living room with long slim hands. “Girls, I’ll leave you to try them on. Lovely, lovely. Call me when you need adjusting.” She closed the door behind her with a click.
    “You first,” said Stevie. “I insist because I’m the bride.”
    Lara stripped down to her matching polka-dotted turquoise- and-pink underwear. “I am so grateful you aren’t making me wear a shapeless sheaf of lilac,” she said, stepping into a pale gray prom-
    style mid-calf dress with a full fifties-style skirt, its silk layers rustling against each other like summer leaves. “It’s sadistic when brides do that. Zipper me up, love.”
    Stevie gave the zipper a sharp tug. The dress’s bodice hugged her best friend’s petite hourglass figure like a violin case.