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  “I think the interior will seal the deal.” Angus opened the box. A built in mp3 began to warble a bad version of ‘The Power of Love’ as a pink butterfly flew out and around the table. He tilted the box to reveal the invitation card. “Of course, the butterfly would be colour co-coordinated too.”

  “No.”

  “No, you don’t want it colour coordinated?” Adele asked.

  “No, I don’t want a butterfly. It’s ridiculous. We aren’t going to a garden show. And you can scrap the music, too.”

  “But it’s Celine Dion.”

  “Sam hates Celine Dion. He’d strangle me. What happened to good old invitations in an envelope? Plain, quality parchment or something?”

  “But they’re so last year…. And that Jennings cow is watching our every move.”

  I was starting to lose my cool. Again. I drew in a breath letting it out as slowly as I could, knowing it was pointless. They weren’t going to listen. “I don’t care if she’s on the lawn doing karaoke to LMFAO. I want something plain and simple. It’s to be white or cream with black font and some ribbon or something.”

  “Diva,” Amanda muttered.

  “Watch yourself,” Mel replied. “And remember whose wedding this is.”

  “I can hardly forget, now can I?”

  “Show us something else,” Mel said, ignoring her.

  After an hour the table was littered with rejects ~ silver, gold, sequined, even balloons ~ some of the examples were so outlandish I was almost reduced to tears. I thought we’d exhausted every possibility until Penelope pulled something from a box at her feet. It was quite unlike anything else she’d shown us.

  “This was one of my first designs. I don’t use it much any more. The brides all seem to want something flashier but I could modify it for you if you like it.” She held up a small cream rectangle embossed with gold that sat in a flat satin lined box. It was so thin and unpretentious; we’d even be able to send it by regular mail.

  A smile bent my lips for the first time that afternoon. Mel and I nodded to each other.

  “Can I pick the font? And the satin colour?” I looked over at Penelope.

  “Yes. I could put some…”

  “NO!” I interrupted her. “I want it like that.”

  Amanda raised her eyebrows at her mother and muttered, “I told you. No taste. ”

  Patricia turned to Penelope, giving her a look I couldn’t decipher.

  “What about…?” Penelope attempted. I could see she was caught between wanting to please me and giving some satisfaction to Patricia.

  “No,” Mel repeated. “Jesus, are you people deaf?”

  Angus sat down. He pulled the invitation box towards him and studied it. “I think this could work,” he said to Patricia. “We can use the black silk interior and stamp the initials of the bride and groom on the top of the box, like so.” He scribbled some rather fancy letters in a crest shape onto a piece of paper. “Maybe in gold?”

  “Yes. That’d be nice. In fact, it’s perfect,” I smiled. At last. Success.

  Mel picked up her handbag and pulled her car keys from inside. “Well, now that that’s sorted, I must dash. I’ll see you on the weekend, Millie.”

  I stood up to walk her to the door. “Thanks for coming to help.”

  “It’s fine. Only a bitch knows how to handle a bitch. You would’ve been eaten alive without me. And don’t you go signing anything either. I meant what I said about that pre-nup.”

  I held the front door open and waved her off down the drive. “Thanks again. Mel. You’re a gem.”

  “Pleasure, Babe. Pleasure.”

  “Oh, Mel?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Since when did I have a legal team?”

  “Since Johnny and I decided over cocktails the other night that we’d best arm you for a fight. You’re dealing with the big boys now. You’ve got to get in the game.”

  But it wasn’t a game. It was my life.

  *****

  With the next couple of hours free ~ well, until I had to start the school run for Adele ~ I decided to stop in at The Lederhosen and see how Alex was doing. She’d seemed a little put out that I hadn’t included her in the picking of invitations. Even though she was working and wouldn’t have been able to come anyway, my reasoning had fallen on deaf ears. Alex seemed to think that dealing with a large Greek family gave her the ability to mediate on any scale. I don’t think she’d ever dealt with the likes of Patricia and Amanda though.

  When I got to the bar, she was finishing the lunch shift. She was standing behind the servery, putting away the last of the cutlery.

  “Hey,” I slung my shoulder bag down onto the counter.

  “D’you mind? I’ve just wiped that.”

  “Sorry.” I picked up my bag and put it on the carpet at my feet. Clearly, she was still miffed. “We picked the invitations. You should have seen the things they wanted us to have. Oh. My. God. Insane. There was this one box thing….”

  Alex gathered a load of dry forks and turned away from me. “Look, I’m super busy. Can we talk about this later?”

  “Um, sure. I guess. I just thought….”

  “Sam’s out in the bar, why don’t you go and tell him?”

  I have to admit I was a trifle hurt at the brush off. “Because we had lunch together two hours ago and I can’t talk weddings with him. He’s not interested in invitations.”

  Alex swung back. “And you think I am?”

  I walked around into the servery. I knew Alex was upset but this was over the top even for her. She was never the upset type. Wrapping my arms around her, I gave her my best hug.

  “You’re crushing the prongs of the forks into my boob.” A small grin tilted the corner of her mouth.

  “Sorry,” I repeated, pulling away. “So, what’s wrong? Is it the invitations? ‘Cause you know I would have asked you if you weren’t working. You are the Maid of Honour.”

  “Yeah. I know. I’m just… well, I got this email from Angus. She reached under the counter and rifled around in her bag, retrieving her iPhone. She opened her mail box and handed the phone to me. At the top of the inbox was a message titled ‘training sessions.’

  “I mean, don’t you think this is taking the whole thing a bit far?” she asked. “I know I’m a bit overweight but I’ve lost five kilos since you asked me to be your bridesmaid. Now you want me to go to Personal Training? If this is what I have to do to be your friend, I’m not sure I want to be in the wedding any more.”

  My eyes scanned the message. “Look, I didn’t know anything about this. God, I’m so sorry. I already told Angus that he wasn’t to mention anything to you about weight.”

  “So you think I’m fat, too?”

  “No. God, no. I was defending you against them. I would never demand you to get skinny for my wedding. I like you how you are and I told him that. If I was that shallow I’d never have asked you in the first place, would I?”

  “I guess not.”

  I handed the phone back to her. “I’ll call Angus right now and tell him to get off your back.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “But I thought….”

  “Yeah. So did I but when I read the rest of the letter, I realised the training thing’s free. I could never afford a personal trainer under normal circumstances but seeing as Sam’s mother’s paying, why not? And I do want to look nice in the photos, especially if I have to stand next to the Glam Brigade.”

  I giggled and gave her a hug. That was my Alex. “Hey, do you want me to come with you? I wouldn’t mind toning up a bit and we could motivate each other. I’m such a sloth about exercise. And now I don’t work here anymore I have way too much time on my hands. The gym could be my new hiding place.”

  “Mrs. Brockton that bad?”

  “Amanda’s worse.”

  I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my shorts and speed-dialled Angus to set it up. I could hear his cries of rejoice already. All I needed now was the stylist.
/>   Chapter 7

  Next Generation Health and Fitness at King’s Park was possibly the most intimidating place I’d ever been. It was where the beautiful ~ and loaded ~ people hung out. Bikes and treadmills lined the windowed walls. Tall girls who looked liked they’d just finished shooting for Marie Claire or Vogue or something stood on them and around them wearing teeny climate control singlet tops and short shorts that looked more like my undies than something you’d exercise in. Their breasts were so perky they didn’t need sports bras. Their bums were so toned I bet they’d never seen a pair of Spanx. This was obviously all a show. These girls didn’t need to work out. From the look of them, they didn’t even eat. Pity that Alex and I stood out like Michael Jackson fans at a Metallica concert.

  Wearing our exercise gear ~ circa 2010 ~ of leggings and Christina t-shirts I’d got the fateful night of the concert-slash-prank-gone-wrong, we presented ourselves to the very smart and very thin looking girl at the counter. Her nametag read ‘Imogene’ but ‘rude’ would have been more apt. Amazed that she could glance up from whatever it was she was doing on the computer while simultaneously looking down her nose, I gave her a smile. To say she gave us the once over would be being polite.

  “Hi, I’m Millie McIntyre. Alex and I have an appointment with Jackie at 2pm.”

  Imogene rolled the mouse and clicked a few buttons, consulting the computer diary. I was waiting for her to tell us there’d been an error; that nobody dressed like us could possibly come into Next Generation.

  “Jackie’s in Studio 2,” she said. “That way.” She raised a bony finger and waggled it in the direction of the hall and away from the main gym area. Clearly, only certain people got to work out in full public view. We weren’t them. We set off in the direction given.

  At the door of Studio 2, another tall, slim girl walked towards us. “You must be Millie? And Alex?”

  She was wearing a fitted polo shirt and short shorts that showed off one of the best sets of lightly tanned legs I’d ever seen on a girl. Her blonde hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail and a pair of black-rimmed glasses framed her face. Everything about her screamed ‘lets get physical’.

  “I’m Jackie, I’ll be your trainer. Here for a bit of a tone up are we? Getting ready for the big day?”

  We nodded.

  “So what’s your exercise routine been like, say, in the last six months?”

  “Uh, non-existent,” I replied, feeling rather sheepish that I’d been too busy to take any ‘me’ time.

  “What about you, Alex?”

  “Zero. I’m Greek. I’m allowed to be comfortable in my chubby little body.”

  Jackie was pokerfaced. Fitness was no joking matter.

  She led us over to where some free weights were lined up against a wall. Two exercise mats were set up on the floor and a rowing machine, medicine ball and bike had been placed in a sort of circuit.

  “All right then. Set to get going? We’ll start slowly. We don’t want to kill you on the first day. We want you to come back. Now, are there any areas you’d like me to target in particular?” She looked me up and down and ticked a few things on her clipboard.

  “Not really. Just a general work out’ll be fine.”

  “I’d like to lose a bit more weight if I can,” Alex added. “I’ve lost five kilos.”

  Jackie gave her a smile. “I can handle that, no problem. Lots of cardio is the requirement for that. Now get your bum on the elliptical and get warm. We’ll start in ten minutes. Oh and this is Pammy, by the way. She’ll be training with you today, if that’s okay?”

  I looked over to see a short woman of sixty or so sitting on the exercise bike. She had very thin toned legs and a rather large tummy that was she trying to hide in an oversized t-shirt that read ‘Miss Universe Training Squad’. A shock of bright red dyed hair stood on end all over her head, punk fashion.

  “Hi girls,” she said. “Are you new?”

  “Yep.”

  “God, I am so not in the mood for this today. If Jackie gets on my case, I’m as likely to tell her to get stuffed.” A cheeky glint twinkled in her eye. I could tell she meant every word.

  Jackie looked up from the clipboard, where she’d been filling in more notes about Alex and I. “Shush up and pedal Pammy, you talk too much.”

  “You should be more respectful of your elders.”

  “You don’t pay me to be nice, old girl. You pay me to get you fit. Now shut up and get those legs working.”

  “She’s a tyrant,” Pammy whispered, after Jackie turned her back to us. “Works me like a dog. I nearly vomited during the work out last week.”

  Alex glanced at me, a look of terror on her face. “Oh my God.”

  “Nothing to worry about. If wants me to do too much crazy stuff, I tell her I’ll do it when she does. Then I remind her who pays her wages. Works every time.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.”

  Me, too, I thought. It’d come in handy next time Angus had one of his stupid ideas.

  By ten minutes into the workout, I was convinced that I was dead. Either that or the victim of some terrifying new form of torture. My legs were beyond jelly and my heart was pumping so hard, I could see what Pammy meant about wanting to throw up. Dragging my eyes up from the floor, where I was doing sit-ups with the medicine ball above my head, I looked in the mirror, not surprised to see a beetroot red face surrounded by a wad of wet matted hair looking back at me.

  Alex didn’t look much better. A rivulet of sweat had trickled down the side of her face, past her collarbone and found its way into her cleavage. She’d given up trying to wipe it and was now concentrating on trying to keep her body upright. I could tell she didn’t want to get whooped by a granny.

  “How much longer?” she gasped.

  “Only twenty minutes. Legs up. Come on. Suck in those tummy muscles,” Jackie chirruped.

  “Twenty minutes. I thought the sessions were only thirty minutes long?”

  “They are. You’ve only been at it for ten. Now get those legs straighter.”

  Alex groaned and attempted to roll her eyes at me as she heaved her legs up and down in the hamstring machine. “Don’t say I never do anything for you.”

  “Think of the end result.”

  “What? My funeral?”

  From the other side of the circuit Pammy flipped a free weight into the air and began to bench press like a pro. “You’re not that fit, are you, young Alex?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Give it a month and you’ll look like me.” She snorted loudly at her own humour.

  God. I hoped not. Pammy, bless her, ran rings around us in the fitness stakes but I wouldn’t swap bodies with her for a million bucks. She was more of an orange than an hourglass.

  “I don’t think I can last much longer,” Alex puffed. “Can we slow down or get a drink or something?”

  “Sure… in, ah,” Jackie checked the time, “Ten minutes. Change stations.”

  I put down the medicine ball and rolled to my knees. Until that moment I’d never known the meaning of the word tired. “We don’t have to do this, you know. I don’t want you to change because of some misguided idea that you think you have to compete.”

  Completely defeated, Alex was trying to remove her legs from the clutches of the hamstring thingy. Her whole body had taken on a pinkish glow that didn’t look healthy. “I’m not. And it’s fine. Truly. I’m just not that used to exercise.” She bent down to pick up her towel and with a loud clang whacked her forehead on the metal footrest.

  Shit.

  “Alex! Oh my God. Are you alright?”

  A large lump began to surface on the top of Alex’s head. It looked like she was giving birth to an egg. From her skull.

  “Quick, lay down,” Jackie screamed. “I’ll get an icepack.”

  Pammy looked up from her Sumo squats. “That’s one helluva way to get out of a workout,” she snorted, and kept on pumping.

  *****

  That night, I l
ay in bed on the phone to Sam. I was sore in parts of my body I hadn’t known existed before that exercise session but I was way better off than Alex.

  “You should’ve seen her head, the lump was as big as a tennis ball,” I said. I’d driven her straight to the Emergency Department at St John of God where I’d been subjected to an hour of wailing while we waited for a doctor to see us. Sometimes having a Greek girl for a friend was too much. She was so O.T.T with the emotions. Even the receptionist had offered to get her a painkiller to keep her quiet.

  “Is she okay, though?”

  “Yeah. I think her pride was hurt more than anything. She wanted to do well. She’s been on a diet you know.”

  “A sore head shouldn’t stop her from training.”

  “No, but her pride will. There’s no way I’ll ever get Alex back in that gym again after the looks we got as we left. She was mortified. Not that I blame her. We got our bums whipped by an old lady.” I’d already relayed our meeting with Pammy at the gym. I didn’t need to elaborate.

  Sam chuckled. “Wish I’d seen it.”

  “No. You don’t. And I’m calling Angus in the morning. We don’t need anymore of that silliness before the wedding.”

  On the other end of the phone, I heard Sam yawn.

  “Am I boring you?”

  “No, I’m knackered, that’s all. It’s been a busy week. Early night for me, I think.”

  “Me too. ‘Night.” I blew him a kiss through the phone.

  “Love you.”

  “You, too.”

  It was only after he’d hung up that I realised he hadn’t even asked how the wedding preparations were going.

  Chapter 8

  Ladies night at the Club. A major event on the social calendar for the season and one I was looking forward to. All week long I’d been in a war with Angus and Patricia. If it wasn’t the wedding cars, it was the photographers or the cameramen who were to film the event ~ though why Western Australia should be interested in a six minute mini-special on Today Tonight was beyond me. Now she was making noises about the song Sam and I had chosen for our first dance as husband and wife. I mean, was nothing sacred? Didn’t she realise that this was the only time Sam and I would ever dance together? The weekend after the wedding would see me back to the reserves roster.