Julia Williams - The Bridesmaid Pact

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2010 This eBook edition published 2018

Copyright © Julia Williams 2010

Cover design © Lizzie Gardiner Designs 2018

Cover illustration © Shutterstock

Julia Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847560872

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780007371730

Version: 2018-05-18

For Karen, who was as bright and beautiful

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue Sarah

Part One To Have and to Hold

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Two For Better, for Worse

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part Three In Sickness and in Health

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Part Four Till Death do Us Part

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Things To Avoid On Your Wedding

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

July 1981

It was Doris’s idea of course. Back then, everything tended to emanate from Doris. Beautiful, dappy, gorgeous Doris, with her brown ringlets, blue eyes, infectious giggle, and cute American accent. She was the glue that bound us all together. Like Sid the sloth in Ice Age , Dorrie was the sticky stuff that kept us together. Without Doris we were nothing. And even then we knew it.

‘It’s on, it’s on,’ she said, proudly brandishing the control of her parents’ state of the art Beta Max video machine. Though of course we didn’t say state of the art then. Nor did we realize that Doris’s parents, ahead of the trends as ever, had invested in a bit of technology that was going to be obsolete in a few short years. At eight years old, we were still marvelling at the idea of being able to watch our favourite TV moment of the year, again and again. And I was still pinching myself that I had been allowed to enter the inner sanctum of Dorrie’s vast mansion. Ever since she’d arrived at our school from America, like some exotic creature from another planet, Dorrie had fascinated me. I had longed to be welcomed into her life and now here I was.

‘Go straight to the kiss,’ Caz demanded, her dark eyes bright and concentrated, her hands thrust into her pointy chin, while her dark scrappy hair flopped over her face. She was always the most impatient one.

‘No, we have to watch it all ,’ Beth was most emphatic on that point. Her serious, pale little face peeped up between two dark plaits. ‘I didn’t get to see it because my mum and dad are anti-royalsomething.’

‘Royalist,’ interjected Doris.

‘They don’t like the Queen,’ said Beth. ‘So I wasn’t allowed to watch any of it.’

Silently we were all amazed at this. All term we’d talked about nothing but the wedding, about what she’d wear and who the bridesmaids would be. We’d even had a day off school to watch it – Doris’s mum and dad had taken her up to London and they’d camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral and seen her go into the church and everything – and poor Beth hadn’t seen any of it.

‘Lucky Mom and Dad videoed it then, isn’t it?’ said Doris. ‘Now sssshhh .’

We all settled down on the beanbags and cushions, stifling giggles as we passed popcorn to one another in the room that Doris’s American professor dad called the den. Doris’s house was like nothing the rest of us had ever seen. We all lived in the suburban centre of Northfields, near our school, whereas Doris lived on the more countrified and posher side of town. Her parents had money but believed in state education, and as our school had the best reputation in the area, they’d sent her there.

You had to walk down a gravelly drive before you arrived at a massive house with ornate pillars, and a vast oak front door. The lounge was so big it could have fitted the whole of the downstairs of my house in, and the dining room had a table that seated twenty. And Doris’s dad had his own games room in the basement as well as a study, from where he would absentmindedly emerge from time to time to ask us how we were doing. Upstairs were five or six bedrooms and en suite bathrooms for every bedroom. Imagine that. Even Doris had one.

For me who shared a tiny suburban three-bedroomed semi with my parents and two much older brothers, it seemed like a fairy palace. I still couldn’t believe I was here. Doris was the most popular girl in the class. I had been thrilled when she chose me to be part of her gang. Being Doris, she’d generously allowed me to bring my best mate, Caz, along too and, together with Beth, the four of us were developing into firm friends.

It would have been easy to hate her, with her ringletted beauty, her film star mother, clever professor father, and her amazing house, but somehow, it was impossible to dislike Doris. She was kind and generous and funny, and hid her cleverness (inherited from her father) under a carefully cultivated dizzy blondeness – except of course, she wasn’t blonde. I was the blonde one and frequently felt at a disadvantage to the other three who always seemed to be quicker and cleverer than I was.

The posh voice of the commentator was describing the guests as they arrived and pointing out Prince Charles waiting with Prince Andrew for Diana to arrive. We all oohed and aahed as the carriages pulled up bearing the Queen and Prince Philip.

‘I have to have that dress when I’m a bridesmaid next year for my Auntie Sophie in Switzerland.’ Doris paused the tape so we could ogle the bridesmaids, who to our eight-year-old minds just looked perfect in their ivory white dresses, with puffy sleeves, full-out skirts and pale gold sashes. The little ones had flowers in their hair, and I longed for a pair of pretty white shoes just like theirs. After some critical discussion, we all agreed that Doris was much prettier than India Hicks (our favourite bridesmaid), and would suit the dress better. It never even occurred to me to think about any of us wearing the dress.