Chapter 4
Officially engaged, I called the one person who would be the most delighted.
‘Mom, I’m getting married! Mil and I just came to an agreement.’
‘Oh my word! Honey, that’s wonderful!’ She actually sounded happy, which I took as a very bad sign considering Mom’s desultory taste in men.
‘This is great news. You really are a fast worker. But we will have to put our skates on if we are to organise everything. Registry office, obviously. You are nearly forty, after all.’
‘Mom, I’m thirty-two.’
‘Exactly. Now, I’ll start looking at dresses.’ And then musing to herself: ‘At what age is white deemed inappropriate?’
‘I definitely don’t want white.’
‘Probably best. Cream. Off-white. Champagne.’ Mom had studied French at college and she never missed an opportunity to show off her accent. ‘I think crème fra?che or café au lait or crème br?lée…’
The whirlwind had begun. But wasn’t this what I wanted? The distraction of planning a wedding?
‘And your hair, Kerry-Anne. You’ll have to grow it so we can put it up. A chignon perhaps. You’ll need to take supplements to improve… everything. You need to stop straightening your hair for a bit. It’s like hay.’
It was best to just give in to Mom. Resistance was futile. ‘Supplements, got it. Grow hair, tick. Eat crème br?lée, no problem.’
‘Talking of which, Kerry-Anne, try to eat a little less between now and the wedding? Most brides embark on quite a strict regime and perhaps you should do the same?’
‘Mom, I think I’m fine the way I am.’
‘Of course you are! I’m not saying you aren’t. But a wedding, all those eyes on you, and you know how judgemental people can be. It’s just to save you, that’s all.’
‘Mom, we can talk about it next week.’
‘Come over. We’ll have lunch. A salad or something. And we’ll start planning.’
Feeling strangely pleased, my mind began to race forward, thinking of all the hours I would now have to devote to wedding planning and therefore wouldn’t have to think about anything else that was going on in my life.
And instead of everyone asking me how I was doing after Caitlin, they would ask me about the wedding.
Perhaps we should have a huge one, as Mom suggested, that would surely take a great deal of time to plan and the stress would absorb us all for months and years to come.
And by the time it was all over, everything that had happened would be in the very distant past.
My phone rang. It was Johnny. ‘OMG, Kerry-Anne,’ he said. ‘Like, Oh. My. God. Like, really?’
‘What are you on about, Johnny?’ I said, airily, even though I knew full well. He and Mom were thick as thieves. She would have called him the moment she got off the phone with me, even before crowing to Mitzi or calling the hotels.
‘Milhouse Fartlett? Like, really?’
‘Johnny,’ I said, cooly, ‘you’re repeating yourself.’
‘So, it’s true, then? You’re about to marry a man who has no discerning good points. Not one! He wears navy blazers with gold buttons, as though he is a sea captain. And I’m pretty sure he has never been on a boat in his life. Kerry-Anne, I implore you. You’ll regret it.’
‘Milhouse and I are good together. We’re a partnership.’
‘Shaggy and Scooby-Doo were a partnership! But no one said they should be married.’
‘Well, it would have worked if they had,’ I said, refusing to be riled by Johnny’s histrionics. ‘They were very good together, like me and Milhouse. And anyway, Johnny, don’t you want to be uncle and fairy godfather to any babies…’
‘Oh God.’ He now sounded weak. ‘I forgot about procreation. You want mini-Milhouses…’ He sounded sickened at the thought. ‘Tiny children in gold-buttoned blazers and horrible deck shoes.’
‘I’d dress them properly. I promise. No mini blazers. But maybe gold buttons on their pyjamas.’
‘But why, Kerry-Anne? Surely you’re not that desperate? Why don’t you value yourself more?’ he pressed. ‘Why are you settling for second best?’
‘I do. And I’m not. It’s all done now, Johnny. We’ve agreed.’
‘So, disagree.’
You’d think, now he was in his thirties, Johnny would have learned to keep his nose out of my life. But he’d been meddling in it since the day he was born.
‘I can’t.’ I paused. ‘And it’s making Mom happy. She’s already planning the wedding.’
‘Mom needs to lay off weddings,’ said Johnny.
‘She’s had too many herself and now you are fulfilling her weird insatiable nuptial need.
Anyway, it’s not the right time for you, you’re grief-stricken because of Caitlin.
You prioritise everyone over yourself. You never put yourself first, it’s time that you took time to connect with your feelings. ’
‘You really have been in California too long,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you know us Dalys like to bury feelings deep inside.’ I laughed, hoping he would too at this shared joke about our dysfunctional family.
‘You need to talk about Caitlin, you really do,’ he said. ‘Talking about Caitlin, good. Marrying Barflett, bad.’
‘I don’t want to talk about Caitlin,’ I said.
‘I know you don’t!’ He was practically shouting now. ‘But you should!’
‘No, I mean that I have no need to talk about her. I remember her in my own way. Everyone keeps trying to force me to talk about her.’ But he was right, I knew he was.
I just wasn’t ready to talk about her or think about her.
If I started, I sometimes felt I might never stop and then I wouldn’t be able to work or do anything else.
‘I loved her too, you know,’ said Johnny, his voice soft. ‘I can talk to you about her. You must miss her.’
There was a catch in his throat I refused to acknowledge. God, why did Johnny have to be so emotional? Why hadn’t he grown out of it?
‘I don’t want to talk about it now,’ I said. ‘And you can’t make me. I am going to marry Milhouse. It’s all arranged. Now, Johnny, you’re going to be there on the big day and you’re going to smile and act like you’re really happy for me. I did it for you when you and Mike were married.’
‘But you were happy for me! You didn’t have to act!’
This much was true. It had been a lovely day and I’d worn yellow and made a funny speech at the reception, and even Mom had become overexcited and danced to Donna Summer for hours.
‘Johnny, I have to go…’
‘Wait, Kerry-Anne, please, I beg of you, what the hell are you thinking? The man has got as much personality as one of Oprah’s wigs.
Actually, her wigs have far more personality.
At least they have a raison d’être. Fartlett is one of those people who are born, exist, and then die and no one knows what to say about them at their funeral.
He liked to play golf. He had a selection of very boring ties. ’
‘Johnny, this is the man I have decided to marry. And you should be happy for me.’
‘But I’m NOT!’ His voice cracked like a soprano with laryngitis.
‘How can I be? I can’t lie to you, Kerry-Anne!
I’m just one of those people who can’t tell a lie.
Perhaps it is one of the myriad reasons why I am Grandmother’s favourite…
’ He paused and I could imagine himself smiling.
Johnny often performed purely for his own entertainment.
‘You’re my sister and if there’s one person I have to be straight-up with, it’s you.
Remember when I told you your pixie cut was a mistake?
And the fact that red is very much not your colour?
How much money have I saved you by you not buying all those red clothes?
Well, this time it’s serious. You can’t marry him. ’
‘I can and I will.’
‘I’m calling Granny Annie. Recruit her to my cause to save my favourite sibling.’
‘Only sibling.’
‘Only and favourite. Look, I gotta go. I’m calling the Big G now.’
And then he had the gall to put the phone down on me.
Tara came into the office with my afternoon coffee. ‘I’ve rescheduled the meeting, updated your calendar, and booked your Pilates class,’ she said, placing the cup down. ‘Extra shot and extra hot.’
‘Thank you. By the way, bit of news. I’m getting married. Now, it won’t be until next year… but…’ I expected to see her smiling but instead she looked horrified.
‘To Milhouse?’
‘Of course to Milhouse!’
‘Milhouse Bartlett?’
‘The very same.’
‘Oh God.’ The colour had drained out of her face. ‘Congratulations. Wonderful news.’ Her smile was frozen to her face.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tara…?’
‘No, nothing… well… it’s just a rumour. I heard it yesterday. On the PA grapevine. You know we know everything but sometimes things aren’t true…’
‘But they usually are.’
She was looking at me with the concern I was now so used to.
‘What rumour, Tara?’ My blood was suddenly cold.
‘It’s nothing. Just a rumour.’ She tried to smile.
‘Tara, out with it.’
‘Okay. So, right.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘Right, so I heard today from someone who works for someone who knows the PA to the head buyer in Bloomingdale’s…’ And then it all spilled out. ‘The head buyer is a woman…’
‘Good for her.’
‘She’s called Sarah-Jane Lacey and she’s been having a relationship… with…’ She paused, as though it was a game show and she was about to reveal the star prize. Except this wasn’t the kind of prize you’d want to take home. Instead of life-changing, this was life-shattering.
‘Tara,’ I urged, impatiently, ‘come on! Who was she having a relationship with?’
‘Milhouse Bartlett the third, the man you are marrying!’
‘Definitely the third, not the second? Or…’ I was grasping now. ‘The first? Although he’s eighty, but…’ It was feasible, I reasoned, trying to work it all out.
Tara reached for her phone and showed me an online profile of some woman, all blonde hair blowing in the breeze, smiling brightly for the camera. Head buyer for Bloomingdale’s womenswear, Boston. Beautiful and successful.
‘But…’ I rasped like someone who hadn’t drunk water in weeks.
Was this the end? Mil wasn’t a textbook Hollywood hero or Captain Wentworth or whatever his name was in Caitlin’s copy of Persuasion of whom she talked rapturously on those late-night hospital vigils.
But at least Milhouse was someone, which was better than no one.
‘But how do you know? I mean, Milhouse isn’t exactly Jonathan Bailey.
He’s not God’s gift to womankind. He’s not even his mom’s gift. ’
‘No…’ Tara agreed. ‘But people do crazy things.’ She looked so sure and I was aware of the PA WhatsApp group and that the information contained within was watertight.
I stood up in a rush. ‘I have to see him.’
‘Not a good idea. I can—’
‘What? Schedule me an appointment with him? A breakfast meeting, book a conference room?’
‘No. None of that. I am just advising caution. Calm.’
‘Calm? I don’t have time for calm!’ The famed Daly cool head was suddenly non-existent.
Had I been fooling myself all along that we were a family of chilled-out emotional automatons, when really we were as headless as every other family?
Mom had been married four times which wasn’t exactly sensible, and Johnny was, well, Johnny.
And now I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown simply because of an unfounded rumour.
I gathered myself. ‘I’m fine now,’ I assured her. ‘Everything’s normal.’
‘So you are not going to see him?’
‘Yes…’
‘Yes you are or yes you aren’t?’
‘Yes, I am going to see him.’
‘No…’
‘Yes.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘He’ll be at his office. We can go there.’
She gave me a disapproving look. ‘Is this the Kerry-Anne we know and love? The award-winning business leader who had her own foundation at the age of twenty-two.’
‘You forgot top ten attendee of my gym. I need to know it’s true.’
‘Who do you trust more, Milhouse or the PA network?’
I wanted to say Milhouse, I really did. But the PA network was unimpeachable. ‘I’m still going.’
‘Only if I come with you,’ she said. ‘Caitlin would go with you, wouldn’t she?’
‘She was my ride or die…’ I stopped. ‘Until she…’
‘Come on, let’s go and see stupid-ass Milhouse.’