Chapter 17 The Wedding Day
The Wedding Day
The sunshine pouring through the gap in the curtains had awoken Tam before her alarm did, but she hadn’t slept well and the make-up lady had her work cut out with those tired eyes.
It was a perfect day for the perfect wedding.
And Tam looked like the perfect bride in her beautiful dress.
She overrode the directive Natasha had sent through the night before to the make-up artist of ‘dewy and modest’; she wanted to wear the brightest red lipstick in the box and for her hair to be a magnificent cloud, not straightened to a sheet.
She wanted to feel like the version of Tam Remington when she was at her happiest for this – the happiest of days.
But she didn’t feel happy. She felt wrong.
And it wasn’t wedding nerves. Thoughts had been tumbling around in her head all night – Meredith’s words about her colours fading, Anna knowing that something wasn’t right with her, but mainly Jack Cesaroni.
His present to her had been ironic because he had put a cat among the pigeons in her life.
She tried to shake him out of her head, she had no right thinking about him today.
She and her father in the Rolls were only a couple of minutes late, due to some workmen dealing with a leak on a street, so Davina’s own waterworks shouldn’t be affected. She’d waited for her dad to tell her she looked beautiful, but he hadn’t.
The bridesmaids were outside the church and not even the sharp morning sunlight could add any interest to the olivine shade of their dresses. When she emerged from the car, Meredith smiled at her and mouthed the words, ‘You look gorgeous.’ Natasha didn’t say anything, but her face said everything.
The organ music started and Tam began to walk in her lace pumps down the plush red carpet of the aisle.
Tam noticed Anna sitting at the back in her Battenberg hat and she really needed her smile to fortify her.
Ahead was her groom in a beautifully cut morning suit and just for a moment she imagined Jack Cesaroni in his stance, his wide shoulders and strong arms, his long legs, his lopsided smile as his eyes turned to find her.
But there was no smile on Harris’s face, no joy.
Instead, all she could see was judgement.
She could read in his expression that he did not like her dress, her hair, or her bright lipstick.
And as her father pressed her hand into Harris’s, she saw in the stiffness of his back that there was no bend in any part of him.
‘Dearly beloved . . .’
‘How could you turn up like that? In that dress, with that hair?’ Harris growled, the words squeezed through his furious lips for her ears only. ‘And I told you not to be late!’
Tam stared into his eyes, inches from hers, as with those words came a clear and certain realisation.
She was not enough for this man, and wouldn’t be until she was totally squashed out of shape to fit his list of ‘acceptables’.
She was not loved and valued as she deserved to be because she was – to borrow another man’s word – exceptional.
The word had lodged in her head with good reason, because she was worth much more than what lay on the other side of her wedding vows – and the old Tam Remington still residing inside her knew that.
She had felt sorry for Meredith without realising they were the same, crushed under the expectations of others.
And it would never get any better for her, which is why she had cheered Meredith on for making the decision to break free.
But it was way too late for Tam now she was here, at the altar, at her wedding, with two hundred plus people watching her .
. . wasn’t it? It would be madness to do anything other than go for damage limitation, apologise for daring to be herself, follow the script, say ‘I do’ even though her heart was screaming ‘I don’t’.
In that moment, she felt like a Jack-in-the-box that had been pushed down until the lid had almost closed, but just in time she had sprung up with her Ruby Woo big smile and mad hair. And she wouldn’t be pushed down ever again.
Without another thought, Tam turned to Meredith, handed over her bouquet and smiled at her in a way that said everything, then in her lovely lace pumps she walked back down the aisle and out of the church into the light.