Ellie Andrews Has Second Thoughts

by Ruth Saberton

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Does a bride-to-be ever know for certain that she's chosen the right man? Ellie Andrews is finally getting married. Or she will be if she drinks enough champagne to pluck up the courage for her trip down the aisle. The problem is that after months spent bickering over menus and table placements, Ellie's never felt more distant from the man she's supposed to be spending the rest of her life with. As last minute nerves take hold, a night of soul-searching sees Ellie reflecting back on old flames in a bid to reassure herself she's making the right decision. There's Rupert - adoring but dull; Jay - the teenage crush; Marcus - sexy but toxic; and Xander - a true friend. But as the sun rises and the ceremony looms ever closer, Ellie is still unsure if she's doing the right thing. Then an unexpected encounter turns her world upside down. Should she take a chance? Or should she stick with the choices she's made? As Ellie makes her way to the church, only one question remains: who will be waiting for her at the altar?

Release date: May 12, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 340

Sample

6.23 a.m.

I’m having a fat day.

Not the type when I pig out on the sofa eating my way through all the crumbs furring the bottom of the biscuit tin (because everyone knows the bits don’t add up). I’m not even having the kind of fat day when I catch a glimpse of my thighs in the glare of changing room lights and desperately tear off to buy some Spanx.

No, it’s worse than that because this is a seriously fat day, and although it’s not even half past six in the morning, I’ve already scoffed enough to double as a sumo wrestler. In fact, I’m sure I can feel my stomach growing with each passing minute, swelling and straining like a scene from Alien.

Well, it’s too late to worry now. I might as well carry on eating seeing as I’ve started. Besides, I’m going to need my strength today. So instead of following a workout DVD for a sweaty hour, I exercise my biceps by yanking open the freezer and lifting out some Häagen-Dazs. Walking to the drawer to fetch a spoon has to burn some calories too, right? You see, I really have thought long and hard about losing weight for today.

Honestly, since the small diamond solitaire was slipped on to my finger, I haven’t thought about much else.

At least I’ve tried not to…

In a frenzy of despair I polish off some left-over pizza and then make a round of toast and Marmite.

I promised myself faithfully that by today I’d be a svelte size eight and have better abs than Gavin Henson. I’ve had months of endless dieting time, weeks to discover a passion for running and a love of salads. I’d sworn that chocolate would never again pass my lips and vegging out in front of the telly would be just a memory. I’d start tomorrow, wouldn’t I?

Except that tomorrow never actually came, and now it’s today, the day I’ve had circled on the calendar for months. The sunny August day when I’m to be shoehorned into lacy underwear, poured into ivory silk and expected to look like a supermodel. If it weren’t so desperate it would actually be funny. Even Harry Potter couldn’t achieve that kind of transformation.

I close my eyes and experience for the millionth time a plunging elevator sensation. All we’ve done for months, the love of my life and I, is plan this wedding. We hardly ever see each other without the wedding planner in tow and I can barely remember the last time we had mad, passionate sex.

Or any kind of sex, actually, now I come to think of it…

If I could turn back time, would I still be doing this?

6.28 a.m.

‘Morning, Ellie,’ chirrups my housemate and best friend Samantha, bustling into the kitchen like a dreadlocked sunbeam and whacking four thick slices of Mother’s Pride in the toaster. ‘You’re up early! Excited, huh?’

‘Mmm,’ I reply. That’s one way of describing this piranhas-chewing-on-my-intestines sensation.

‘I was going to bring you breakfast in bed,’ she continues, attacking the Nutella with a spoon. ‘How does smoked salmon with scrambled eggs sound? And maybe a very small glass of champagne? Not too much though, babes, nobody wants to see a pissed bride.’

‘I’m fine for breakfast, thanks.’ I slap a virtuous expression on to my face. ‘I want to fit into my dress.’

‘You’re not still dieting?’ Sam wrinkles her nose. ‘Honestly, Ellie, I don’t know why you bother.’

‘Err, because I need to squeeze my size twelve self into a size eight wedding dress?’

She rolls her eyes. ‘You’re such a muppet. Why didn’t you just buy a bigger size? Dieting is pointless.’

Right. Like Sam Delamere knows anything about dieting. She makes Victoria Beckham look hefty.

‘Anyway,’ continues Sam, whacking chocolate spread an inch thick on to her toast, ‘you’re not fat. I was thinking you look really slim this morning.’

‘There’s an explanation for that.’ I peel down my pyjama bottoms to reveal a gargantuan pair of control pants. ‘Ta-da!’

‘Bloody hell!’ Sam sprays toast and Nutella across the kitchen. ‘What are those? They’re hideous! Tell me you’re not wearing them under your wedding dress? Your circulation will be cut off. Actually, never mind your circulation. You don’t seriously think you’ll get it tonight wearing those? He’ll need a crowbar to get into them!’

The pants are practically melded to my skin, a marvel indeed of modern underwear engineering. And yes, they bloody kill, but I wore them all night and I must surely have dropped a dress size by now.

‘This is the latest in slimming technology,’ I say proudly. ‘Bum bra and thinning pants combined.’

Sam shakes her head. ‘Ellie Andrews, you’re mental. You’re about to get married to a man who adores every inch of you. Don’t you think he knows what’s under the wedding dress by now?’

That’s thin people for you. They just don’t get it.

‘I want today to be about me,’ I say. ‘I want people to look at me and think I look beautiful, or at least as good as my sisters.’

Sam rolls her eyes again, because she’s heard this lament a few thousand times before. We met as first years at St Hilda’s School for Girls, hiding beneath the coats in the cloakroom in a desperate attempt to skive PE. A mutual love of Robbie Williams and loathing of lacrosse sealed a sacred bond and now, years on, we share a house in Taply-on-Thames and argue over who is actually going to marry George Clooney.

And just in case you’re wondering, George isn’t the lucky man.

‘Not this again,’ groans Sam. ‘Those sisters of yours are more plastic than Barbie! Don’t beat yourself up about not looking like them.’

I pull a face, because this is easy for Sam to say. If she’d grown up with four sisters who make Lily Cole look fat and ugly, Sam might have the McCain factory’s worth of chips on her shoulder too. Tall and leggy, with long manes of blonde hair, hourglass figures and creamy skin, my elder sisters have the ability to command attention wherever they go, and have earned themselves the nickname ‘the Amazing Andrews’. Being short and curvy, with curly brown hair and freckles, I’ve given up trying to compete with them. I like to think I make an interesting contrast.

‘Not another word about your sisters,’ scolds Sam, adding her plate to the mound of dishes in the sink. ‘You’ve got a million times more personality than any of them. You’re funny, you’re clever and you are not fat. You’re sexy and curvy. Men adore women like you!’

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the glass conservatory doors, but I can’t say I recognise the person Sam’s describing. The girl who stares dubiously back has wild corkscrew hair and hides her body under a billowing dressing gown. I don’t want to be funny and clever and have a good personality. That’s just compensation for not being beautiful and thin. After all, no one tells Kate Moss how clever she is, do they?

Sam shakes her head. ‘You’ll never believe me, no matter how many times I try to tell you. Talk about being screwed up by your family! Well, bugger them. This is your day and you’re bloody well going to enjoy every minute of it. You’re about to get married to a lovely man who totally worships you.’

Just why my fiancé loves me is one of life’s great mysteries. Of course I’m delighted he does and I was over the moon when he proposed, but recently I’ve been starting to wonder if we’re doing the right thing. After all, there’s more to a marriage than frilly frocks and a finger buffet.

‘I really hope I’m doing the right thing,’ I say nervously, as the stomach piranhas return for another munch.

‘Ellie! Get a grip! Of course you are. Will you please go upstairs and start getting ready?’ Sam places her hand in the small of my back and gives me a shove. ‘We’ve got loads to do before the hair and beauty girls arrive and Poppy turns up with the flowers. Why don’t you go and run yourself a relaxing bubble bath and leave everything to me? I’ll even crack open some champagne so we can celebrate your last morning as a single girl.’

My last morning as a single girl. Oh. My. God.

In seven and a half hours I’ll be following in my sisters’ footsteps down the aisle of St Jude’s, Taply-on-Thames. An hour later and I’ll be married.

I’ll never be able to eat toast in bed again or snog another man.

Not that I want to snog another man. But eating toast in bed’s a different thing entirely…

‘Don’t look so worried, it’s not as though you haven’t had enough practice at weddings,’ Sam points out, misreading the terror on my face. ‘You’ve been a bridesmaid four times, remember?’

As if anyone who’s been forced to wear sickly pastel satin four times could ever forget it.

‘Have a swig of this,’ she orders, shoving a foaming champagne flute into my hand. Unfortunately, the manicurist has Super-Glued talons on to my own bitten stumps and, like a cat that’s lost its whiskers, my poor fingers haven’t a clue where they begin. Acrylic scrapes against the icy glass and my hand closes around thin air.

The champagne flute hits the slate floor, showering my French-manicured toes with glass and icy liquid.

I stare down, aghast. The pair of champagne flutes was an early wedding present and now only one remains intact. Is this an omen?

‘Of course it bloody isn’t.’ Sam is scathing when I voice this thought. ‘Get a grip, Ellie! Everything’s going to be fine. I solemnly swear as your chief bridesmaid that I’ve got everything under control, so just relax.’

I’d be more relaxed walking on hot coals. My experience of weddings hasn’t exactly been positive. The fact that I’m getting married at all is a triumph of hope over experience.

‘Give me that,’ I say, taking the champagne bottle with slightly too much force. ‘I need a drink.’

Sam laughs, but her green eyes are worried.

As I climb the stairs, swigging champagne from the neck of the bottle, I reflect that in many ways if it hadn’t been for Sam I might not be getting married at all. Things could have turned out very differently.

I shut my bedroom door, rest my head against the cool wood and close my eyes. The events that have led me to this point flicker through my mind like a badly edited home movie. Have I made the right choices? Have I chosen the right man? Am I doing the right thing? Or will I wake up tomorrow and regret this?

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

Breathe, Ellie, breathe!

The alarm clock says it’s not even seven a.m. yet. Outside the day is all pearly new and the birds are singing. There’s hours to go before I leave for the church.

Plenty of time if I decided to change my mind.

Not that I’m going to change my mind. That’s just the nerves talking. I haven’t got any more doubts about getting married today than any other bride would have. Every girl’s allowed a few nerves on her wedding day. It’s only natural to be a bit apprehensive, because getting married is probably the biggest and most important decision anyone ever makes. I’m choosing my life partner. The rest of my life is at stake. If I wasn’t nervous, there’d be something wrong with me.

This churning feeling is totally normal and there’s a perfectly good cure for it. Thank goodness Sam opened the Moût. A few more mouthfuls of champagne and all my nerves will vanish…

6.55 a.m.

With the door of my bedroom firmly shut and the best part of a third of a bottle of Moût inside me, I start to feel slightly less panic-stricken. Perching on the bed, I try to pretend this is just an average Saturday morning. In a moment I’ll meander downstairs for a bacon sarnie and watch a bit of kids’ TV before trawling round the shops with Poppy and enjoying lunch in The Riverman pub. For a moment such is the power of my imagination that I’m almost looking forward to a bowl of cheese-smothered nachos and a glass of icy Chardonnay, until I catch sight of my wedding dress hanging on the outside of the wardrobe and my heart starts racing again.

Oh Lord. This really is it. I’m getting married, really and truly married. At this very moment, all our nearest and dearest are en route for Taply-on-Thames, clutching presents from the long list we made. Like someone in a dream, I’d agreed that I needed a Dyson, and of course I couldn’t live without a pasta maker, when actually I was more than happy with my ancient Hoover and diet of tinned spaghetti.

A panicky sweat breaks out between my shoulder blades. What was I thinking by adding a pasta maker to my list? I’ve never felt the need to make pasta before getting married, so what’s going to change afterwards?

The answer to this, of course, is everything. I’ve seen each of my sisters get married and transform from cocktail-swilling party-goers into goddesses so domesticated that Nigella looks slovenly in comparison. Then, after the wedding and the smart dinner parties, along come the chubby babies and endless conversations about first teeth and first steps, followed shortly by fretting about catchment areas and waiting lists.

I feel faint. I can’t have a baby! I’m not old enough for all that responsibility. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Besides, I’m rubbish at looking after things. I even killed the school stick insects when it was my turn to take them home for half-term. So what if I was only five and didn’t realise it wasn’t conducive to their health to give them a bath? I haven’t changed that much since then. Goodness knows what damage I could do to a poor baby.

I chew my new acrylic thumbnail. Everything’s got out of hand. I never really wanted a big church do and the guest list longer than Mr Tickle’s arm. This wedding has taken on a life of its own, and although it’s exactly what my mother wanted, I’m having panic attacks on an hourly basis. I don’t need six bridesmaids, a ring bearer or a five-course reception.

I take another gulp of champagne and bubbles shoot up my nose, making me cough. Great. Now I’m too stressed even to drink.

Putting the champagne aside, I fall backwards on to my bed, yelping with pain when my head encounters something hard. Sitting up quickly, I discover I’ve walloped my skull on my sister’s wedding album, loaned to me as a shining example of what the photographer will also do for us. This album is thicker than War and Peace, edged with brass and studded with a huge treasure-chest-style lock, the imprint of which is now stamped into my head.

Maybe I can postpone the wedding due to head trauma?

I pick the album up and the heavy volume falls open at one of the group photos. There, beneath the tissue paper, is a scene already seared into my memory – for all the wrong reasons. My sister Annabelle is beaming into the lens, all big blue eyes and golden curls, her slender hands clutching a bouquet of fat pink roses while the little flower girls tumble at her satin slippers. Our parents flank the happy couple, but my gaze is drawn to a red-cheeked bridesmaid in a tight peach frock who’s trying desperately to disguise a Cheddar Gorge cleavage with her bouquet while she hides behind the other guests.

I shake my head in despair. Hadn’t I tried to diet then too? How depressing. I flick through the album and pause at a photo of the wedding party, tracing one dear face with my finger, filled with regret. If I had my time again, would I do things the same way? Or would I make some very different choices?

I remember my sister’s wedding day vividly. It may have been just over two years ago, but I’m still suffering from post-traumatic stress. Whenever I try to identify the precise point when my life began slipping out of control, I always return to Annabelle’s wedding. Not that my life was exactly a bed of roses before that. If I’m honest, it was more like a bit of scrubby wasteland choked up with weeds and rusting tin cans, but at least they were my weeds and my tin cans.

I was happy in my own way. Just how did I get from there to here?

Snapping the album shut and trying hard not to look at my own beautiful wedding dress, I recall that meltingly hot June day when, poured into peach satin and looking more porcine than Miss Piggy, I prepared to follow my sister down the aisle…

‘I look like the Michelin Man!’ I wail, pirouetting in front of the mirror and grimacing. Peach satin is such an unforgiving fabric. It really isn’t my fault I look like a sausage splitting its skin.

My sister Annabelle wrinkles her perfect nose. ‘I thought you said you were going to lose weight for today?’

I tug at the fabric straining across my chest, making me look more like an exile from the Playboy mansion than a demure maid of honour. ‘Are you sure the dressmaker got the measurements right?’

‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my dressmaker,’ Annabelle snaps. ‘You’re the problem. Luckily nobody’s going to be looking at you. It’s me they want to see.’

Brides only choose bridesmaids’ dresses in order to make themselves look even better, it’s no secret. Why else would a normally sane woman dress her adult friends and siblings in revolting pastel hues and more frills than Barbara Cartland’s knickers? Annabelle’s been quite blatant about this, and like all brides has stuck to the sacred commandment thou must find a bridesmaid with a bigger arse than thine. For good measure she’s even stuck a massive bow on mine.

I’m more aware of these ugly truths than most twenty-seven-year-olds, because Annabelle’s wedding is the fourth time I’ve been recruited for bridesmaid duty. This is the price I’ve had to pay for having four older sisters, as if being picked on and tormented for my entire life wasn’t enough. Seriously, family weddings are the twenty-first-century equivalent of the press gang. One moment you’re trundling along in your own sweet way, going to work, having disastrous love affairs and getting horribly plastered at the weekends; the next you’re whisked away to dress fittings, make-up sessions and church rehearsals. Then, after hours of being used as a human pincushion, you end up wearing something even Jordan wouldn’t be seen dead in.

Weddings are hell in lace, especially when you’re put in charge of three headstrong bridesmaids and a pageboy who’s intent on excavating the contents of his nose.

‘Cut it out, you little monster!’ I yank my nephew’s finger from his nostril. Then, with the practised skill of one four times a bridesmaid, recently promoted to maid of honour, I simultaneously pull Imogen’s peach skirts down from over her head and remove the roses from Laura’s mouth. Tear-filled infant eyes regard me resentfully, bottom lips wobbling, but my heart is hardened by hours of wedding rehearsals, so I just fix them with my most chilling stare. Inside, though, I’m also longing to throw myself on the floor and have a good old-fashioned tantrum.

‘For goodness’ sake, Ellie,’ snaps Annabelle. ‘Keep those brats under control!’

She glares at me from beneath her foaming veil. This is her big day and my sister isn’t going to let any of us forget it. On this perfect summer Saturday, Annabelle Andrews is about to fulfil her greatest dream. After years of make-believe weddings, cutting off my Barbie’s hair and forcing it to be the groom, months of trying on practically every wedding dress in London, and driving the entire family to the brink of a nervous breakdown, my big sister is finally getting married.

So much for feminism. As I listen to Annabelle yapping on about the joys of wedding lists and taking Mark’s name, I realise that for her the sexual revolution really is something that happened to everybody else. The sooner she’s married, quits her job in the art gallery and takes her new husband’s wallet for a spin in Harvey Nicks, the happier she’ll be.

And the sooner this wedding’s over, the happier I’ll be. I’ll be able to eat a sausage roll or maybe even a Big Mac without looking over my shoulder.

Once at the church, Annabelle goes into full diva mode. ‘Is my veil straight?’ She tilts her chin a little while I tweak and fuss obligingly, feeling like Mammy attending Scarlett O’Hara. ‘Is Mark here yet?’

‘We’re the ones who are late,’ I mutter through clenched teeth. Annabelle’s instructed the chauffeur to drive around the block three times just to make sure the journalists from the Daily Mail have had time to arrive. The fourth Amazing Andrews wedding is guaranteed to make the social pages, and my sister wants every column inch that her manicured hands can grab.

‘God, Ellie, you really should have dieted.’ Annabelle eyes me critically. ‘Make sure you’re standing behind the children in the photos.’

As the rich tones of the organ ring out with ‘Ave Maria’, only the fact that I’m twenty-seven and not seven stops me socking her in the mouth. Annabelle always knows exactly how to get to me, like the time she joined match.com on my behalf (‘It’s the only way you’ll ever find a man’) and tried hard to persuade me to go on a date with Steve from Slough who enjoyed trainspotting and birdwatching.

Biting my tongue and promising myself that in just over two hours’ time I’ll be getting sloshed on all the free booze, I psych myself up to follow Annabelle’s rose-trimmed backside down the aisle, trying hard not to think about my own Lopez-esque derrière. Like my sister says, nobody’s looking at me anyway. Pretty much the story of my life.

‘Ready?’ asks the vicar.

Annabelle nods slowly, not wanting to dislodge her headdress.

‘Marvellous!’ He turns to me. ‘Now, my dear, when you’re happy with that train, give the bride a sign.’

‘Any sign I want?’ I ask hopefully. Flipping Annabelle the bird would make me feel so much better.

The vicar winks at me over his bifocals. After enduring two strenuous wedding rehearsals, having to repaint the porch to match Annabelle’s colour scheme and nearly breaking his neck on her endless train, he’s got the measure of my sister and is probably gagging to flick a few V-signs himself.

‘As long as it’s polite,’ he replies, to my great disappointment.

Might as well get this over with, I decide, tugging halfheartedly at the enormous train. There. It looks fine, or at least as fine as something that would be better suited to sitting on top of a loo roll ever will. Giving my sister the thumbs-up and the baby bridesmaids a shove, it’s all systems go and we’re walking with excruciating slowness down the aisle, Annabelle smiling mistily at the congregation and undergoing a miraculous transformation from Attila the Hun to Wedding Dreams Barbie.

St Jude’s is absolutely packed; wedding guests in large hats and starchy suits spew from each row of pews, craning their necks to get a good look at the bride. The two front rows on the left-hand side are reserved for my family, who by now are very used to such occasions. It’s actually no wonder that what remains of my father’s hair is grey. The cost of four big weddings could probably have sorted out the national debt. Even the swathes of pink and white roses would go a long way towards decreasing my overdraft.

Unfortunately for my father, Mum outdid herself last year with Emily’s wedding. Everybody agreed that it could have given the royal family a run for their money; my father muttered darkly that he needed the royals’ income to bloody well pay for it all and that he wished he’d done a Henry the Eighth and cut my mother’s head off when she produced daughter number one. How we all laughed, except for my poor father. Still, it was way too late now; the pattern was set. Each sister’s wedding had to equal, if not outdo, the one before it.

Well, Dad can relax after this bun-fight, because there’s absolutely no way I’m going to be following in Annabelle’s silk-slippered footsteps. No, I have enough stress in my life without adding some man’s dirty laundry and washing-up to my lengthy list of things to do. I’ve absolutely no desire whatsoever to meet Mr Right, float down the aisle and stagnate into coupled-up life. I’m happy being single.

At least, I will be happy once I am single. But that’s another story.

We pigeon-step down the aisle, and when the gaggle of bridesmaids and pageboys finally collide at the altar, a respectful hush falls over the congregation. This is the point in the proceedings where Mum dabs at the corner of her eyes, taking care not to smudge the make-up applied at such cost by the beautician, and where my nephew attempts to pull the girls’ dresses up. I glare furiously in his direction and draw my finger across my throat. Now is not the time for a game of doctors and nurses.

‘Ellie!’ hisses Annabelle, shoving her vast bouquet in my direction and almost suffocating me with pollen. ‘My train!’

Hastily I gather up acres of lace and silk into some sort of order and shoo the children into a pew. I can feel the underarms of my dress beginning to get damp with a most unladylike sweat.

Placing the bouquet down beside Imogen, I heave a sigh of relief. Another duty ticked off the trusty mental list. Soon I’ll be stuffing my face with canapés and swigging all the free booze. Andrews family weddings do have some advantages. All I have to do until then is keep the ankle-biters from killing each other and sing a few hymns. I’ll just perch on this pew, take the weight off my poor tortured feet and sit it out for a bit. Easy-peasy.

As I sit, I catch the eye of the best man, Rupert Moore-Critchen, who smiles at me with a soppy look in his melting Malteser eyes. I twist around and check out the pew behind to see which of my divine sisters might be the cause of his mushy expression,. . .