‘Jenny, I’m out of my depth here,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know where to start.’
She stilled. The faint smile on her face faded. He’d shocked her, he thought. Whatever she’d been expecting it hadn’t been that.
There was a long silence.
She could keep up the play-acting, he thought. And she was definitely considering it. The role of subservient employee was a defence. He watched as indecision played on her face. Finally she broke. Her face was incredibly expressive, he thought. He saw the exact moment she put away the play-acting and decided to be up-front.
‘Two weddings,’ she said. ‘The biggest problem is the dresses. We need to get things moving. There are three local women with the capacity to sew fast and well.’
‘Contact them.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re all up to their ears in Christmas preparations.’
‘Then what-?’
‘There are a couple of oldies I know who love baby-sitting,’ she said. ‘They have very quiet Christmases, so they may be prepared to help. Jonas Bucket had an accident at work some years ago and is confined to a wheelchair. He loves Christmas cooking. So if I…’
‘What are you talking about?’ He was lost.
‘Mary, Sarah and Leanne are my seamstresses,’ she said patiently. ‘Mary and Sarah have small kids, and Leanne’s having eighteen people for Christmas dinner. If I ask them to sew for me they’ll say no. But if I say I’ve already organised childminding and cooking and house-cleaning-and someone to set Leanne’s table-then they’ll jump at the chance to escape by sewing. Now…’
‘Now what?’ he said, stunned.
‘You’re the boss,’ she said, ‘but if I were you I’d sit down and write the menu for the Barret and Anna wedding. We need to get the food ordered right away. They’ve elected to do a Christmas theme, so we’ll keep it like that. Roast turkey and all the trimmings.’
‘For a sophisticated-?’
‘She did say pink tulle,’ Jenny said, though she sounded a bit less certain of her ground.
‘So she did,’ Guy said, thinking fast, and then looked up as the doorbell tinkled.
It was Kylie. She was dressed in pregnancy overalls with a white T-shirt underneath. With her face flushed with either nerves or excitement, and her blonde curls tied up in two pigtails, Guy decided she looked like one of those Russian Mazurka dolls. If you pushed her she’d topple over and then spring right up.
‘Hi, Kylie,’ Jenny said, and Guy winced. This woman was a client. His first Australian Carver Wedding…
‘Mum just rang me,’ Kylie said, with a nervous look aside at Guy. ‘She says Mr Carver’s agreed to do my wedding.’
‘He has,’ Jenny said. ‘But there’s no need to change your plans. We’ll do your wedding exactly as we’ve planned it.’
‘No,’ said Kylie.
There was a moment’s silence. ‘No?’ Jenny said at last, cautiously, and received a furious shake of her head in reply. ‘You don’t want a wedding?’
‘Of course I want a wedding,’ Kylie said. ‘Me and Daryl are really excited. But…’
‘But what?’ Jenny asked.
‘It’s Mum’s wedding,’ she burst out. ‘And Daryl’s mum’s. They’ve been at us for ever to get married, and of course we want to, but we didn’t want this. We thought maybe we’d just have the baby and then go somewhere afterwards and get married quietly. But from the minute we told them we were expecting they’ve been at us and at us, until finally we cracked. And that dress…Mum had you make it for me when I was sixteen. She chose it. Not me. Every week since then Mum gets it out and pats it. Do you know how much I hate it?’
‘No,’ Jenny said, stunned.
‘I can’t tell you,’ Kylie declared. ‘But I loathe it. I would have gone along with it. Fine, I said to Daryl, whatever makes them happy. But when Mum rang and said I could have a Carver Wedding I thought suddenly, A Carver Wedding! I could maybe have it like I want. Elegant. Sleek. Sophisticated. Something so when our kids grow up they’ll look at our wedding photos and think, Wow, just for a bit our parents weren’t assistants in a butcher’s shop. If you knew how much I hate pink tulle…’
‘Your six bridesmaids are in pink tulle,’ Jenny murmured.
‘Exactly.’ Kylie’s colour was almost beetroot as she desperately tried to explain herself. ‘It was bad enough when I was skinny, but now I’ll look like a wall of cupids coming down the aisle, with a sea of pink tulle coming after.’ She turned to Guy. ‘They say in the fashion magazines that you can perform miracles. Get me out of cupids and pink tulle. Please.’
There was a deathly hush.
‘We can’t,’ Jenny said at last. ‘Kylie, the dresses are finished. There’s less than a week to your wedding, and we have another enormous wedding to cater for on Christmas Day.’
The passion went out of Kylie like air out of a pricked balloon, and defeat took its place in an instant. She’d expected this, Guy thought. Her request had been one last stand, but defeat had been expected.
‘That’ll be for someone rich, I’ll bet,’ Kylie said, but it wasn’t said in anger. It was said as a fact, and there was a wealth of resignation in her voice. ‘Someone who can afford any wedding she wants and who has enough guts to stand up for it.’
Guy looked suddenly at the girl’s hands. They were scrubbed almost raw. There were jagged scars on two fingers.
‘You work in a butcher’s shop, Kylie?’ he asked her, and Kylie bit her lip.
‘Yeah. Morris’s butchers next door. That’s why I could come so quickly. But I should be back there now.’
‘You’ll work there after you’re married?’
‘Course I will,’ she said. ‘It’s Daryl’s dad’s shop, and there’s no way we can afford for me to stay home. We’re having a week’s honeymoon staying at Daryl’s auntie’s place. I’ll have another week off when the baby’s born. Then we’ll set up a cot in the back.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. It was dumb to ask. I gotta get back.’
She sounded totally resigned, Guy thought. Accepting.
Jenny was watching him.
What had Kylie said when she first arrived? They say in the fashion magazines that you can perform miracles.
He couldn’t perform miracles. Of course he couldn’t. But…
‘Anna wants pink tulle,’ he said slowly, and Jenny nodded. She seemed…cautious.
‘That’s no problem. We can order more.’
‘But Anna will be more than happy with a kitsch wedding,’ he said. ‘Jenny, you said you have three through as he spoke. ‘From the sound of the fax they sent me, kitsch is exactly what she wants. And Anna has six bridesmaids.’
‘So?’
‘So we swap,’ he said, and his organisational mode slipped back into place, just like that.
Jenny’s presence-Jenny herself-had somehow thrown him off course. He’d been feeling out of control since yesterday, but suddenly now he’d slipped back behind the wheel, knowing exactly where he was going.
‘We’ll take Kylie’s wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses and we’ll alter them to fit Anna and her followers,’ he said. ‘Jenny, you said you have three dressmakers ready to go? Let’s get the measurements and get them started. Kylie, your bridesmaids…’
‘Mmm?’ She was staring, open-mouthed. ‘What’s kitsch?’ she said.
‘What your wedding was, and what it won’t be any more,’ he said. ‘My alternative bride and her friends will think it’s fun. It’s fun when you’re not forced into it. Do your bridesmaids all have little black dresses? The sort of thing you wear when you want to be elegant?’
‘Course,’ Kylie whispered, not seeing where he was going. ‘I mean, everyone has to have a black dress. For when you dunno what else to wear.’
‘Would they be upset to lose the pink tulle?’
‘You have to be kidding. They hate pink tulle as much as I do. Two of them are my sisters, and three of them are Daryl’s sisters, so they have to do what our mums say. The other one’s my best friend, and Doreen says the pink tulle makes her look like a Kewpie doll.’
