ecember 24, 1996

Alice takes a deep breath as she opens the closet door and pulls out her dress. She lays it carefully on the bed, gathering her shoes, her veil, her stockings and garter, draping them gently next to the dress, amazed that in just a few hours’ time she will be wearing all of this. In just a few hours’ time she will be Joe’s bride.

“Here comes the bride,” she sings to herself, taking small, gliding steps down her hallway into the kitchen, smiling despite the butterflies, putting on the kettle to make herself another cup of coffee. She thinks she needs the coffee to stay awake, so badly did she sleep last night, but the adrenaline is already pumping, and she’s waiting for Emily—her maid of honor—to arrive, someone with whom she can share the excitement.

Walking back into the bedroom, she stands for a while gazing at the dress. While not exactly what she would have chosen, she can’t deny its beauty, how elegant it is, how impossibly stylish.

Alice had always thought she would have a country wedding. She dreamed, even as a little girl, of a small stone church; of walking through a white wooden gate in a soft, feminine puff of a dress, fresh flowers in her hair and a bouquet of hand-picked wild daisies in her hand. The groom had been unimportant: her fantasy had ended at the church door, but she knows the groom—even in her fantasies—would never have been as handsome, or as successful, as Joe.

At university, when she and Emily sat up late into the night discussing their knights in shining armor, Alice said she thought her ideal man would probably be an artist, or a craftsman, or a gardener. She had laughed as she said it, laughed at the unlikeliness of any lasting relationship, let alone marriage, given that her longest relationship at that time had been three weeks.

And before meeting Joe, her longest relationship had been three months. Not a good record, she had groaned to Emily when they were both planning on growing old together. “Means nothing,” Emily had reassured. “Once you find him you’ll be married for life. Me? I’ll probably get divorced after six months.” Alice had laughed, but even as she laughed she was thinking she wished she could be more like Emily, Emily who didn’t want to settle down, who was quite happy flirting and flitting from one boy to the next, who claimed to have been born with a fatal allergy to commitment.

So a country wedding with a group of smiling toddlers (she had hoped that by the time she got married, if she ever got married, someone somewhere would have been able to provide the smiling toddlers) throwing down a blanket of rose petals and giggling as they walked up the aisle behind her.

She had envisaged a sea of straw hats and floral dresses, the sun beating down on her bare arms as she emerged from the church hand in hand with her other half.

When Joe proposed, she had told him about her dream wedding, and he had smiled at her indulgently and said it was a lovely fantasy, but they couldn’t possibly get married in the country when both of them lived in London, and anyway, didn’t she agree that winter weddings were so much smarter? She didn’t agree, but felt she had to, because after all, Joe was paying for it. Alice’s parents didn’t have a penny, and Joe was determined to have a wedding that he judged fitting for the head of the healthcare business in Mergers & Acquisitions at Godfrey Hamilton Saltz.

They would have a lovely old Bentley to drive them to the church (bye-bye, shire horses and lovely old carriage), she would wear a simple but elegant gown (so long, cream puff of a dress), and a friend of his who was a jeweler would almost definitely lend her a stunning diamond tiara for her hair (see you later, fresh flowers).

So Alice went through the motions of planning her wedding. Every evening she would tell Joe of her decisions, and every morning she would have to phone florists, dressmakers, photographers to inform them that actually, she’d discussed it with her fiancé and the plans would be changing. Would they mind terribly, she would say, if instead of pretty mauve hydrangeas and tulips, they had dark red roses and berries, and not the dress she had designed with a tulle skirt to rival anyone in Swan Lake, but a sleek, simple sheath of a dress with long bell sleeves and a matching coat (Joe had flicked through some bridal magazines and showed Alice what would suit her), and so sorry, but actually they didn’t want informal fun pictures as they had discussed, but formal family groupings that would take place during the reception.

Alice drains her coffee and steals a quick glance in the hall mirror to confirm what she already knows: deep bags under her eyes proving that last-minute nerves are not just an old wives’ tale. Alice has spent the night tossing and turning, fear rising up in a wave of nausea, common sense trying to push it back down again. After all, isn’t she the luckiest girl in the world? What woman would not want to marry Joe? Joe with his winning smile and easy charm. His broad shoulders and playful humor. Joe who could quite feasibly have married anyone he wanted, and he chose Alice. Alice!

Men like Joe did not usually look at women like Alice, or if they did, it was one quick, curious glance followed by instant dismissal, for the Alices of this world held nothing for men like Joe. The only child of adoring parents, he had been brought up to believe he was God (his mother’s fault), to believe that every woman would fall in love with him (his mother’s fault), and to believe that a woman’s role in life was to do whatever Joe wanted (naturally, his mother again).

Even now, on her wedding day, Alice feels like she has to keep pinching herself. Thirty years old and used to unrequited crushes on men who never seemed to notice her, Alice didn’t seriously think she’d ever find her other half. She might have had her dream wedding in mind, but in truth she was secretly convinced she would grow old with her cats, a kimono-clad spinster who would surround herself with eccentric people and end up living vicariously through her younger, prettier friends.

Alice has always thought of herself as rather plain. Everyone who knows Alice has always thought of her as rather plain. She was the shy, mousy girl in the playground who was always last to be picked for teams, and even then she knew she was only ever picked because it was a choice between her or Tracy Balcombe, and Tracy Balcombe had flat feet and B.O.

Alice was left until last because no one ever seemed to notice her. At age fourteen she had become known as Wallpaper, a name that would be said with a snigger, although frankly it never bothered her. She quite liked the fact that she faded into the background, that she could watch her classmates and think her thoughts without anyone ever bothering her.

It only started to bother her when she discovered boys. Up until then Alice had been quite happy with her horses. Her sketchpads were covered with badly drawn pictures of horse heads, mostly of her favorite, Betsy, complete with hearts saying “Alice loves Betsy,” and “Betsy 4 Alice,” and her daydreams consisted largely of Betsy and Alice steaming ahead to victory in local gymkhanas.

But one morning the girls of Lower IV awoke to discover hormones raging through their developing bodies, and Alice found herself dreaming of Betsy less and less, and more of faded jeans and a cute smile that belonged to a boy named Joe at the boys’ school round the corner.

They were on the same bus route, and Alice would stand in the newsagent’s for what felt like hours, pretending to flick through magazines, waiting for Joe to arrive. She would stand behind him, staring at the back of his head, willing him to notice her, and although, once or twice, he clearly felt her gaze and turned to meet her eyes, there was not a flicker of interest and he turned away to laugh with a friend.

It was to become a familiar pattern. Throughout her twenties Alice fell head over heels for men who didn’t notice her. Strong, handsome, confident men. Men who walked through life with an assurance that Alice coveted, that Alice hoped would somehow rub off on her if she got close enough, which she never managed to do.

Until she met Joe again.

She had known Joe for years. He had been a friend of Ty’s—her older brother—at school, one of the boys on whom she had had a huge, and painful, crush. She remembered watching him chat up the prettiest girl in her school at a local disco, watched him laugh and smile with her, his face moving closer and closer as he leaned in for a kiss, before taking her hand and leading her out the door.

Rumor had it that he had gone back to her house, kissed her good night, then an hour later shinned up the drainpipe and stolen her virginity. It was the stuff of which legends were made, and Joe was, even then, a legend. At fourteen years old he was going out with a twenty-year-old Danish au pair girl who lived round the corner. According to the boys in the class she was a cross between Farrah Fawcett and Jerry Hall.

Joe was responsible for a thousand broken teenage hearts, and Alice and Emily would sit for hours and talk about how much they hated him, each of them secretly longing for him to notice them.

And then one day the doorbell rang, and Alice ran to answer it, nearly fainting when she discovered Joe standing on the doorstep. Her fifteen-year-old heart threatened to give way as a hot flush crept up her cheeks, staining them scarlet.

Joe had raised an eyebrow, amused. Not his type at all, but he liked to see the effect he had on women. It reassured him, made him feel secure, and what harm would it do to encourage her a little, it was only a bit of fun.

“Hello, Ty’s sister,” he smiled, his voice low and flirtatious. “You look lovely. Are you going somewhere nice?” It amused him to see her blush further, and still more to see she had quite literally lost the power of speech. Alice managed to mumble something and stumbled away when Ty appeared.

“Hey, Joe,” he said, grabbing his coat. “Hope you’re not chatting up my sister,” and they both laughed at how ridiculous that would be, as they disappeared up the path.

But Alice had been spun into a fervor. She had called Emily immediately, and Emily had come round to analyze, inspect, and dissect every word. They had locked themselves in Alice’s bedroom, each slumped on a beanbag, squealing with excitement as they went over and over the one sentence he had uttered, trying to understand what it meant.

“Say it again,” Emily pleaded. “Tell me again what he sounded like when he said, ‘You look lovely.’ ”

They formulated a plan of action. Worked out exactly what Alice would say to Joe when she next saw him, what tone of voice she would use, what she would wear when he took her out, because clearly, he was interested, and whether she would let him go to base one or base two on the first date.

Joe never noticed Alice again.

Fourteen years later Alice had a thriving catering business. She had finally managed to get over Joe and pass six O and two A levels, had gone to catering college, and from there to a yearlong cooking course. At twenty-nine years old she had an occasional staff of three who helped her prepare and serve gourmet dinners for women too busy, or too lazy, to cook.

Alice tended to stay in the background at these dinner parties. She loved cooking the meals beforehand, but stayed in the kitchen making sure nothing got burned while the other girls served canapés and cocktails. Occasionally, should the host or hostess demand, she would come in to receive praise, reluctantly but graciously, smoothing back the loose curls that had escaped her ponytail as she handed out business cards.

She had a small flat with a large kitchen in Kensal Rise, her two cats, Molly and Paolo, and a tiny social life thanks in part to the success of her business and in part to her natural shyness.

Her last relationship—the three-monther—had been with an actor called Steve, but three months of massaging the chip on his shoulder had taken its toll, and she was grateful when one of his auditions actually came to fruition and he took off to Manchester to do rep for three months. They promised to stay in touch, she would come up to visit, but she knew it was just a formality.

So there she was, in the kitchen of her dreams, in the basement of a large house in Primrose Hill. The kitchen was almost back to its pristine state, the plates stacked neatly in the dishwasher, the crystal goblets already draining next to the sink, and her casserole dishes cleaned and waiting in the boot of the car.

The guests were drinking espresso, with homemade petits fours, and Alice said good-bye to the two girls helping her out, knowing that the only thing left to do would be to wash up the coffee cups, and she could manage that perfectly well by herself.

“Oh, you must meet Alice.” She heard the hostess banging down the stairs in her high heels. “She’s an absolute angel, and the food’s fantastic. Also”—her voice dropped an octave or two—“not at all expensive compared to some of the others.”

Bugger, thought Alice. Time to put my prices up. She grabbed a cloth to appear busy and practiced smiling, a bright sparkly smile that would invite more business, quickly polishing the granite worktops as she heard the footsteps come into the room.

“Hello, Alice,” said a voice that she would have known anywhere.

“Hello, Joe,” she said, the smile replaced with a deep scarlet flush.

Joe walks up to greet his ushers, who all crowd round him in a conspiratorial huddle.

“Well?”

“Did you do it?”

“Was she worth it?”

“Could you resist?”

“Bloody better have been worth it, the amount we paid.”

“Didn’t know whether you’d have the energy.”

“So come on then, Joe, what was she like? Did you succumb?”

Joe smiles beatifically and raises a hand to quiet the masses. “Boys,” he says, as they wait with bated breath. “It’s my wedding day. Show some respect.”

“Seriously.” Adrian, his best man, puts an arm around Joe’s shoulders and leads him away from the boys. “She cost a fortune, and I just want to know if you got your money’s worth.”

“You mean your money’s worth?” Joe grins.

“Well, yes. So did you?”

“Don’t you mean, did I actually fuck her?”

“No,” Adrian shakes his head. “I’ve known you since you were eleven years old. Of course you fucked her. So did you get our money’s worth?”

Joe had sworn his womanizing days were behind him, had vowed he would be faithful, causing much mirth among his friends. The evening before, on his stag night, they had organized a high-class call girl to be waiting in a limo. It was a test, they had said, a test to see whether he really would be faithful.

“I will pass,” he had said assuredly when they told him of their plan, and several saketinis later made his way out to the limo, fully intending to tell the call girl thanks, but no thanks. He was greeted by a mane of the exact shade of honey-blond hair that he loved, legs that went on forever, and a Wonderbra that was truly wonderful to behold.

“Oh, shit,” he groaned, climbing into the car. “I suppose a final fling wouldn’t hurt.”

It was a marathon, extraordinary, incredible night. He had woken up this morning at the Sanderson Hotel feeling guilty as hell and then felt a hand start to slowly stroke his thigh, and, oh, what difference would a morning screw make? After all, she’d clearly been paid for the night. And it’s only sex.

And Alice will never know.

“So did you get our money’s worth?” Adrian persists.

“She was a six-foot Russian blonde with a figure that would make Lara Croft jealous and a mouth that never slept. What do you think?”

Adrian doubles over and groans in envy. “Fuck,” he spits through his teeth. “I knew it. So was it the best night of your life?”

“Adrian! Please!” Joe looks shocked. “Tonight will be the best night of my life.”

“But it was a close second?” Adrian grins.

“Very, very close. And as a final fling Svetlana couldn’t have been more perfect.”

“Svetlana?” Adrian snorts with laughter. “Was that her real name?”

“Do you know,” Joe says nonchalantly, turning to head back to the church, “I don’t actually care.”

Joe had never thought he was going to get married. Had been quite happy living the quintessential bachelor lifestyle, but by his early thirties he’d started to think it might be quite nice to have some permanence, someone to come home to, to look after him.

The problem was that the girls he went out with were about as far away from wife material as you could possibly get. Yes, they looked great. Tall stunning blondes, the occasional brunette or redhead, they were all polished to perfection, but were so cold, so brittle, Joe sometimes thought that if he bent them the wrong way they might snap.

They were women who were waiting for a rich husband to provide them with a lifestyle their beauty had led them to believe they could expect. They had no careers, avoided the news as if they could catch something nasty from it, couldn’t cook, didn’t clean, had never ironed a thing in their lives (“Darling, if God had meant us to iron he wouldn’t have invented dry cleaners”), and had a deep-rooted fear of marrying a man who couldn’t afford a “woman that does.”

They expected certain things of Joe—dinners at the Ivy and Hakkasan, nights out at Atticus and Home House, the odd treat from Harvey Nicks—and in return they gave him unlimited performance sex, little pressure (these girls knew that the best way to hook their fish was to let the line run as long as possible), and the guaranteed envy of every man he knew. It was only once they started expecting commitment that Joe would turn around and tell them in the nicest way possible that they’d had a wonderful time together, but that he knew it wasn’t meant to be, and on he would go to his next conquest.

He knew he didn’t want to marry a woman who wanted him only for his bonus (although his looks and personality weren’t exactly negligible), and he knew he wasn’t going to find the woman he would marry in the trendy bars, restaurants, and clubs he frequented, but there was something about glossy, streaky blond hair, a leg clad in Wolford stockings, breasts pushed up in La Perla that he just couldn’t resist.

And then he met Alice. Alice who turned scarlet when he said her name, who remembered him from school, even when he had no recollection of ever meeting her. Alice who had loose mousy curls and didn’t wear a scrap of makeup. Who wore cheap black leggings and baggy shapeless sweaters to disguise her curves. He wouldn’t normally have looked twice at a girl like Alice, but he was amused by the way she blushed every time he looked at her, and there was something very sweet about her, and sweetness was not a character trait he was used to in women.

She was sweet, and she was grateful, which in turn made Joe feel generous and kind, rather like a benefactor. She didn’t expect anything of him other than his company, and when he gave her what she wanted she seemed in a state of permanent disbelief that he would be with a girl like her.

Plus, he realized very quickly that Alice had a huge amount of potential. She was a lovely girl, she could cook fantastically, she’d definitely look after him, and it wouldn’t take much to make her look a whole hell of a lot better. With a diet, a decent hairdresser, and a new wardrobe, she’d be a whole new woman by the time he’d finished with her.