LITMIR.BIZ

       9

      ‘What do you think, Aunt Maeve?’ asked Saz King, turning back and forth before the big cheval mirror in her bedroom, holding out her ruffled skirts, inviting favourable comments.

      Saz was feeling pretty damned pleased with herself. She loved being with Richie and couldn’t wait to be married to him. Richie made her feel special, adored. He was a little older than her – eight years – and sometimes she did think: What’s all that about? Was she looking for a father figure because Dad was gone?

      Well, maybe she was. Whatever, she felt happy today. She relished being the centre of attention and was eager to marry stoic, stable Richie because yes, all right, with him she felt safe.

      Maeve King, Si’s wife, looked at her niece and thought, She’s the most beautiful girl in the whole world but my God! – she’s the spitting bloody image of her mother.

      Incredible to think that Saz was twenty-one years old, astonishing to think how fast the years had flown by; how one minute she’d been a bewildered and grief-ridden nine-year-old child, and then the next, pow! All grown up. And so eerily like Lily, too.

      ‘Oh Saz! I think you look lovely,’ said Maeve, choking back a tear.

      She was determined to make this a happy day for Saz, the best of her entire life. She thought of what Si had told her last night, about his brother Freddy kicking off because Lily was out. Maeve thought that Freddy was mental, a bit of a mouth-breather. Si and Leo had always been the brains of the outfit. No one had told Saz that Lily was out. Si would have thrown a fit if they had. He had discussed it with Maeve, of course he had; but they’d agreed it was best that she didn’t know.

      ‘Do you think the veil’s too much?’ asked Saz.

      ‘No, it’s perfect,’ said Maeve.

      She thought that Saz couldn’t have looked more exquisite if she’d tried. Money was no object, of course; never had been, not in the King family. If a King woman wanted something – a swimming pool, a diamond necklace, a designer wedding dress, voilà! It appeared as if by magic.

      Saz was turning and preening in front of the mirror, smiling secretively at her reflection as sunlight poured through the big balcony windows, highlighting her shimmering loveliness in fairy motes of gold and silver.

      ‘You got your garter on?’ she asked.

      Saz smiled and raised the ruffled hem of the dress to reveal white silk Jimmy Choos, white stockings and a blue berib-boned garter. ‘Right here,’ she said.

      ‘Don’t let him twang it,’ warned Maeve with a laugh. ‘That’s a family heirloom, that is.’

      Think your mother wore it too, shot through her brain, then she wished it hadn’t. She frowned. Why did she have to keep thinking of Lily today?

      The answer was simple: she was taking Lily’s place; so, even if Lily wasn’t here, her spirit was hovering over the proceedings like a rotten odour. They’d all moved on with their lives. Maeve and Si had become guardians to their two nieces, and to lessen the upheaval for the girls they had rented out their own place just up the road and moved into The Fort. They had never used the master suite; too many memories, and all of them unsettling.

      ‘Where’s the car? Isn’t it here yet?’ Saz was now demanding fretfully, going to the window, looking out.

      Saz might look like Lily, but deep down she wasn’t like her mother at all. Saz was quicksilver, but Lily had been like rock: calm, immovable, a bit of a house mouse really, but with an aura of stillness and strength about her. Maeve could still remember the first time she’d ever seen Leo weave his testosterone-and-bling-laden spell over Lily. They’d all been crowding around his flash car after school – they’d all been mates, all familiar with each other – and the other, bolder girls, Mary and Becks, Adrienne and Julia, had been all over Leo and his pals like a rash: teasing, flirting, flashing their big smiles, their coltish legs and their pert, perfect teenage boobs. Maeve had joined in a bit, although she was no beauty, not like some of the others; but Lily had hung back, uninterested.

      Maeve shook herself.

      This was Saz’s big day and she was going to make sure that she enjoyed it. It was not Lily standing there, but Saz, Maeve told herself firmly. But Maeve remembered that she had been a bridesmaid when Lily had married Leo in eighty-seven. Maeve had thought Lily might go for a Princess Di-type thing, all puff sleeves and full skirts, but Lily had stayed true to type and worn a simple ivory shift – with a large bouquet of cream roses to conceal the bump of her pregnancy.

      And here was the result of that pregnancy, standing before Maeve now. A beautiful full-grown woman who shared her mother’s bone-deep and effortless brand of glamour. Lily had always looked good – Maeve had envied her that. Maeve had to work hard at looking good, particularly now an early menopause had hit her like a ton of shit and she’d gained two stone almost overnight.

      Maeve had made a special effort today, because she was acting as ‘mother of the bride’, wasn’t she? Today of all days, Maeve had to look good. So she had squeezed her short, dumpy form into pull-in pants and a fuchsia pink silk dress and matching jacket, with a little ‘fascinator’ clip-on waterfall of feathers and flowers sitting atop her streaked blonde new Judy Finnegan-type hairdo.

      But looking at her lovely niece she had to admit that, beside Saz King, she just looked like mutton done up as spring lamb.

      Jesus, just look at her, she thought.

      Saz was wearing a tight-fitting pearl-studded gold satin bodice that showed off her full breasts to their best advantage, tapering down to display a neat waist before flaring out into a huge, impossibly full skirt that was a cascade of opulent cream silk ruffles. The train was small, balancing the massive length of the skirt. Saz’s long blonde hair was swept up behind a pearl-encrusted tiara. Her face, with its neat nose, large, serious, navy blue eyes (now those weren’t like Lily’s, and thank God for it) and wide, smiling mouth had been professionally made up. She glowed with radiance. Suddenly

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