Rumours and Red Roses Read Free Page A

paid to let people know that you weren’t a pushover.
    It was easy for her mum to say that but then her mum spoke her mind and wasn’t much bothered whom she offended.
     
    Becky Andrews was in her late thirties when she met Simon and she had had a chequered love life before that. Twice engaged and the last time she had very nearly made it to the altar before her feet iced over. She managed to sell the frock – ‘beautiful cream satin off-the-shoulder wedding dress, size 14, never worn’ – for half the price she paid for it and within a disturbingly few months Terry had taken up with an ex-girlfriend and married her instead, so his new suit was not wasted.
    Her mum hadn’t spoken to her for three whole weeks following that debacle because she had bought the outfit and the hat and the arrangements were in hand for a fantastic post-wedding fish and chip supper and karaoke with a spot of line dancing thrown in to boot. Shelley had intended to send Becky off in style, booking a white stretch limousine to transport them from the church to the reception.
    Shelley was hell-bent on it being something a bit different from the usual boring reception with speeches. It was a good job her dad was dead, her mum said, because he would have died a death if he had had to make a speech in front of people, although they would be lucky to keep her Uncle Geoff from launching into something after he’d had a few. Becky sometimes wondered if the thought of Uncle Geoff doing his bit or seeing her mum in the wedding outfit, a tantalizingly see-through chiffon number, had not played a small part in her decision to abort the proceedings. That and the dreaded fish and chip supper, of course. She had no objection to fish and chips – loved them – but there was a time and place.
    ‘We’ll have plates ,’ her mum had said, her voice rising in exasperation when Becky dared to mutter about her reservations. ‘We won’t be eating them out of newspaper. And I’ve ordered individual custard tarts for pudding. Everybody likes a custard tart and it’s nice to do your own thing. We don’t want a boring buffet with sausage rolls and pork pies and stuff like that. That’s been done to death.’
    Her mum had always been a source of embarrassment. Her mum had always stood out from the other mums with her flashy hair and make-up and choice of clothes and Becky remembered the parents’ evenings at senior school with particular horror for her mum had, for some insane reason, thought they were occasions to ‘dress up’. Dressing up forher meant sparkle and fancy earrings and fake fur and the highest heels you could imagine. Plonking herself in a perfumed flurry in front of her form master with Becky beside her, Becky had seen him do a double take and could only imagine what might be said in the staffroom later.
    Heads turned when her mum came into a room. She drew the eyes like a lit Christmas tree and it got no better as she grew older. Try as she would, Becky could not persuade her mum to dress appropriately for a woman of her age. Her mum did something to clothes, even the chaste variety, simply by undoing one button too many or shortening the hem by a few worrying inches. She had an enviable figure, true, better than her daughter’s, but that was no reason to flaunt it. Becky was well aware that she had a lot of her dad in her, his shyness and his tendency to worry in a daft way about what other people might think. Her mum had no such inhibitions.
    ‘For God’s sake, Becky, what’s the matter now? You talk as if I’m in my dotage,’ she said when she saw Becky’s reaction to the would-be wedding ensemble that she had tried on for her. ‘No way is it see-through . Would I wear see-through to my only daughter’s wedding? Would I heck as like. It’s all in the mind. I know it looks it but I’ve got a nude body top underneath. Anyway, I’m hanged if I’m going to look matronly. It’s not my fault if Terry’s mum’s in her seventies.