Katie Fforde - Wedding Season

There was a note on the kitchen table that was still covered with the remains of his cooked breakfast: You were on the tea rota. You owe Edna a haircut.

Bron sighed. It wasn't that she particularly minded doing Edna's hair for nothing, it just seemed rather heavy payment for standing in for her tea duty. Unlike Bron, Edna lived for cricket. Even without the need to make sandwiches and bake cakes she would have been there, watching the chaps, clapping at the right time, knowing what the score was.

As Bron collected the dishes and put them in the dishwasher she wondered how she could have not realised that getting involved with Roger meant giving up her weekends to cricket. He'd asked her to go and watch him on their second date, and he'd looked so utterly wonderful in his whites that she had fallen in love with him – or maybe, in hindsight, it was just in lust. Either way they had both faded into habit and convenience now.

As she had got into her white Rolls-Royce to go to the church, Ashlyn had added her pleas to her mother's and begged Elsa to stay on for the wedding. Sarah had to be there anyway, Elsa too, now she'd been promoted from dressmaker to bridesmaid; it seemed a shame, Ashlyn had said, for her to be left out. 'Besides, my lip-gloss may need reapplying after a few glasses of fizz.’

Bron had told Ashlyn she was perfectly capable of reapplying her own lip-gloss and sadly waved the bridal car away.

Bron would have much preferred to stay at the wedding. She had worked very hard to help everyone look beautiful and she got on well with Sarah and Elsa, although she hadn't known them long. Bron had done the hair for a couple of weddings organised by Sarah, and because Bron was reliable, Sarah said she would always encourage brides who didn't have a favourite hairdresser to use her.

But could she be reliable when her freelance work caused such trouble at home? She sighed, and thought back to a little incident that had happened just as she was leaving. She had put her last box into her car and was about to close the boot and go home when a large, yellow Labrador bounded up to her.

‘Major!' a male voice had said. 'Here!’

The voice appeared from behind the side of the house. It belonged to a tall man wearing a suit that didn't really fit him. There was a thinner, longer dog of indefinable breed close to the man's heel. The yellow dog bounced away from Bron like a ball ricocheting off a wall and landed by the man.

‘He didn't frighten you, did he?' he asked as he came within earshot.

‘Oh no,' said Bron, glad of the diversion. She didn't want to go home; any little delay was welcome. 'He's lovely. Hello, Major.' As the dog was by her side again and she was rubbing his chest, it seemed only polite to use his name.

'Ashlyn wanted him to come to the wedding and wear a blue bow round his neck,' the man explained. 'But everyone agreed it would be hopeless unless he was well and truly worn out first. I've been walking him since dawn, more or less. I'm the gardener,' he explained. 'I'm now going to find the blue bow and be ready to greet the wedding party when they come out of church so he can be in the photos.'

‘Lovely!' said Bron.

‘Aren't you going to the wedding?' the man went on. `No, I'm just the hairdresser.'

‘I can't believe Vanessa – Mrs Lennox-Featherstone – didn't invite you.'

‘Yes she did, but, sadly, I can't come. I must get home.' The man had smiled. 'Shame.’

Bron had thought it was a shame too.

Roger came home at about ten, when his favourite shepherd's pie looked less golden-brown and more dried-up. Bron had made it as a peace offering although her tired bones would have much preferred to slump in front of the television with a glass of wine and a bowl of pasta. She'd had to get up incredibly early to be with Ashlyn on time. 'Hi, darling! How did it go?' she asked, trying to show some enthusiasm.

‘Great! We won. You should have been there.' He looked at her under his eyebrows, the double meaning clear. 'Don't bother to dirty a plate, I'll eat it out of the dish. I'm starving. Mm. This is great!’

No kiss for her then, but he'd stopped greeting her affectionately a long time ago.

Pleased, though, that she'd got this right at least, Bron pulled out a chair and sat down to watch him eat. He didn't seem to want to talk and, as she was tired too, neither did she. When he'd finally finished, he threw his fork down and said, 'We're going to Mum and Dad's for lunch tomorrow, did I tell you? I think Mum wants her hair doing.’

As Sunday lunch with his parents was an almost weekly ritual she hadn't unpacked her car. She didn't mind doing Roger's mother's hair, but she did wonder if Roger, an accountant, would have spent every weekend doing someone's books for free.

She had a bath and went to bed. Why was it that Roger was so free with her services as a hairdresser, but when she wanted to work for herself, to actually get paid, he didn't like it? Somehow along the way the balance of their relationship had gone wrong. They were no longer equal partners.

Lying as near to the edge of the bed as she could get without actually falling off, she realised that they never had been, really. She and Roger had moved in together too early in their relationship; mostly, she realised, because her parents had been moving to Spain and she had nowhere else to live. She'd never lived on her own or with girlfriends – getting together with Roger seemed a natural progression.

Now she was a bit stuck. It was Roger's house and although she had some savings, she would find it hard financially to live on her own. Hairdressers' wages were not good unless you worked at a top city salon. She couldn't even apply for jobs in somewhere like London or Birmingham without a lot of lying, and then supposing they didn't want her?

No, it was probably better to hope this was just a phase they were going through and to try to work on the relationship – at least until she had a chunk of money behind her. Running-away money, people called it.

To her huge relief, Roger didn't reach for her when he finally came to bed. She wouldn't have refused him, she didn't hate him, but his lovemaking didn't do for her what it had in the beginning. He still pressed the same buttons, went through the same routine, but for her it had stopped working. Once he had turned her insides to melted chocolate just by looking at her, now his kneecaps tended to bang into her shins in a way that not even the most dedicated masochist would appreciate. She sighed and eventually went to sleep herself.

The following morning, when she had put stain remover on all the patches of grass on Roger's whites before putting them to soak, and was checking that she had Roger's mother's favourite semi-permanent hair dye in her kit, her mobile rang. It was Elsa.

After the 'Hi! How are yours Elsa said, 'They were thrilled with how it all went, and I totally love my hair! I can't stop running my fingers through it. Ashlyn's mother told me what a sweet girl you were and what a shame you couldn't come to the wedding. It was good you managed to fit in a quick comb-out for her, when she wasn't on the list.'

‘I'm so glad it was all a success.'

‘But I must give you back your clips that you used to keep the headdress on with.'

‘Oh, you don't need to worry about that!’

`No, I want to.'

‘Well, if you'd like to pop over this evening, I'd love to hear all the details.' Bron didn't often invite her friends over – she could never quite forget it was Roger's house -but she felt it was OK to do so sometimes. Roger surely wouldn't object to Elsa – she was young and pretty and didn't laugh too loudly or anything likely to make him wince. And she did want to hear about the wedding. She gave Elsa the details and then told Roger.