Julia Williams - The Bridesmaid Pact

‘Why is it always you?’ Caz burst out furiously. Her untidy black hair tumbled over her dark eyes, and two bright points of red flamed her cheeks, her attitude spiky and pugnacious, as ever. ‘Why can’t the rest of us get to wear that dress? Just because you’re rich and we’re not!’

‘That’s not fair!’ Doris leapt up and shouted. ‘Don’t I always let you have my stuff and invite you over?’

‘So you can feel good,’ spat back Caz, eyes blazing, ready as ever to take on the world. ‘I know you only have me here because you feel sorry for me.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Beth, timidly. Ever the peacemaker, she could never bear any of us fighting. ‘Caz, I think you should say sorry.’

As Caz’s best friend, I felt duty bound to take her part, though I didn’t think she was being fair either. As the prettiest, richest one of us, and the only one who was going to actually be a bridesmaid, I felt that Doris was quite within her rights to lay first claim to India Hicks’s dress. I might have felt jealous of someone else, but I couldn’t feel jealous of Doris, who generously shared all that she had with us. I had only just become accepted into her circle and I was loath to do anything to get me ejected from it. But Caz and I had been friends from the first day of St Philomena’s primary school, when something about her uncared-for appearance tapped into my innate need to look after people. I had to stick up for her.

‘Doris, you do usually take charge,’ I said reluctantly. Like Beth, I always hated confrontation. And a part of me seethed that just as I’d got to being accepted by Doris, here was Caz trying to muck it up for me again. As she always did. I loved Caz to bits, but why did she have to be so angry all the time?

‘Do I?’ Doris looked stricken, her blue eyes filling with tears, and I felt even worse. ‘Gee, I don’t mean to. I’m really sorry, Caz, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Seeing her lower lip begin to quiver, and tears dangerously start to wobble down her cheeks, Caz softened uncharacteristically. Perhaps even hard as nails Caz couldn’t resist Doris’s charm.

‘It’s OK,’ she said sulkily. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you either.’

Relieved that everything had gone back to normal, Doris ran to the huge kitchen and produced ice creams for us all as we settled down to watch Diana finally emerge from her carriage, arranging the voluminous train as it blew in the wind, to more oohs and aahs and squeals from the four of us. She stood up to go up the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral and we squealed some more, as the dress was revealed in all its puffed-sleeve, huge-skirted glory.

‘That dress,’ I breathed, ‘is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘She’s just like a fairy princess,’ said Beth.

‘It’s so romantic,’ I said. ‘I hope my wedding day is like that.’

‘I’m going to have that dress when I get married,’ announced Doris solemnly.

‘I think she looks like a marshmallow,’ said Caz, who didn’t have a romantic bone in her body.

‘How can you say that?’ I cried. ‘This is just like a fairytale wedding.’

‘I don’t believe in fairytales,’ growled Caz. ‘There aren’t any happy endings in real life.’

We all threw our ice cream wrappers at her, and settled down in blissful silence to watch as Charles Windsor took Diana Spencer to be his lawful wedded wife.

‘To have and to hold, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part,’ we chanted in unison.

‘That’s so cute,’ said Doris. ‘I want to marry a prince when I grow up.’

‘Me too,’ said Beth earnestly, fiddling with her plaits. ‘I believe in happy endings. I’m going to grow up, get married and have lots of children, so there.’

Caz snorted, so we sat on her. By now we were getting bored of the video, so Doris fast forwarded to the kiss, which we watched over and over again, ecstatically imagining what it would feel like to have a boy kiss you on the lips like that. I thought it must feel very rubbery.

‘We should make a promise,’ Doris said suddenly. She was like that. Full of odd ideas that seemed to come from nowhere.

‘What, like some kind of pact?’ said Beth.

‘What’s a pact?’ I said.

‘Like a really, really important promise,’ said Beth. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Dorrie?’

‘Sure do,’ said Dorrie. ‘We should promise to be friends forever and make a pact that we will be bridesmaids at each other’s weddings.’

‘I’m never going to get married,’ declared Caz firmly.

‘You can still be a bridesmaid though,’ said Doris. She was impossible to resist, so even Caz was persuaded to stand in a circle with us. We all raised our hands together and held them up so they touched.

‘We solemnly declare,’ intoned Doris, ‘that we four will be friends forever.’

We looked at each other and giggled before reciting after her, ‘And we promise that when we get married we will only have our three friends as bridesmaids. And we promise that we will be bridesmaids for our friends.’

‘From this day forth, forever and ever, shall this vow be binding,’ said Doris. And then she made us cut a lock off our hair, and bind them together. She put the locks of hair, two dark, one light brown, and one fair together with a signed written copy of the words we’d solemnly declared in her special jewellery box.

‘There,’ she said, with satisfaction. ‘Now we’ve taken an oath and we can never ever break it.’

December 1995

‘Have you heard the news?’ Dorrie came bursting into the champagne bar at Kettner’s, where Sarah and I were tucking into a bottle of champagne to celebrate her engagement. I was glad to see Dorrie. The tension between Sarah and me these days was nigh on unbearable. I thought she was making a terrible mistake, but when I said as much she accused me of jealousy. I couldn’t fault her on that, I was jealous that Steve had chosen her not me, but I still thought she’d regret marrying him.

As it was Christmas, the bar was heaving with partying office workers, and it took Dorrie a while to reach our table. Sarah was on an early shift and had got here first, while the photo shoot I’d been working on had descended into a pre Christmas bash, so I had escaped before I got too plastered and decided Charlie was the thing I needed in my life right now. I had enough complications as it was, I didn’t need to bring him into the equation.

‘Ooh, champagne, lovely,’ said Dorrie, squeezing herself into a spot in the corner. ‘Lucky I’m skinny isn’t it?’ She took off her faux fur black coat, to reveal a polka dot black and white vintage dress, which she’d matched with bright red boots. With her Rachel from Friends haircut and her fabulous figure, it was no wonder that nearly every man in the room turned to look at her. But as usual Dorrie was oblivious to her effect on people. She really had no idea how much people adored her, which was part of her ongoing charm. She soon had Sarah and me in stitches, and any latent resentment festering between us was temporarily forgotten.

‘No Beth yet?’ Dorrie asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I did ask her but she’s been so low since Andy the bastard dumped her, I’m not sure she’ll make it.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ said Dorrie. ‘We should make it our next project to get Beth a man.’

‘What do you mean, our next project?’ said Sarah suspiciously – Dorrie had a habit of involving us in her schemes to make the whole world happy – flicking back her short fair hair. She always said she wore her hair short because it made work easier, but I rather suspected she’d gone for a Meg Ryan look because Steve fancied the pants off her in When Harry Met Sally . Which was just one of many reasons I thought Sarah was making a big mistake.