of bridal perfection that is Serena. She is wearing a stunning piece of ivory couture. The bodice is tight and form fitting and the skirt is a huge masse of tulle. The gown is adorned with thousands of crystals and she easily looks better than anything I saw in my brief flick through the magazine. Sadly, the elegant radiance of the dress is not matched by Serena’s attitude. Her face is a worrying shade of puce and her expression is one of fury.
“How dare you allow me to try on the dress in this state when it’s clearly nowhere near finished!” she screams, “This is totally unacceptable!”
“Serena?” enquires her mum, “The dress looks fine to me?”
Serena turns on her mother.
“Fine? Fine! It’s not supposed to look fine. It’s supposed to look perfect. It obviously doesn’t fit and I asked for extra crystals to make it extra sparkly. Whilst they’ve charged me for them, it clearly hasn’t been done!”
The sales assistant seems to find her tongue.
“Actually Madam, it has. Every extra bead has been applied and I’m sure the six ladies we had working on your dress can account for each of them.”
Serena makes a loud ‘humph’ noise, rather like an angry bull. I decide to try and talk some sense into her.
“And it fits you like a glove!” I exclaim, “It looks like it was made for you!”
I’m not lying. The dress is immaculately tailored to every curve on her body. It’s a fabulous creation and I’m failing to see how she can criticise it. Apparently however, I know nothing.
“Bullshit!” she screams, “Look at the gaps!”
She points to her bust and I completely fail to see what she is trying to show me. Noting my confusion she continues, “There’s a huge gap! It looks totally baggy and cheap!”
“No Serena, it really doesn’t. Take some deep breaths and relax. You look amazing. Stunning.” I mentally cross my fingers in the hope that she sees reason. No such luck.
“Don’t you patronise me Lauren!” she shouts at me “I know when I’m being fobbed off. I bet you just want me to look crap so you can try and look good next to me. Fat chance!”
She deliberately puts emphasis on the word ‘fat’ and I have to summon all of my self control not to say something that I know will inflame the situation further. Instead, I straighten my shoulders and turn to walk out.
“I’ll be outside. When you’ve calmed down we can talk about this sensibly.” Without giving her a chance to reply I push the curtain to one side and return to my seat a few meters away.
Do all women who become brides turn this crazy? How do their fiancés’ deal with them? I sit and contemplate the situation. I can fully understand now why Ewan is concerned about his wife to be; I mean I can’t be sure that he would have proposed if she’d had been acting like this at the time.
Serena appears to have forgotten her earlier rudeness and keeps barking instructions through the curtain at me to check her phone for text messages. Her phone remains silent and having made sure that it would make a noise if any communications were received, it remains on the table next to me. Eventually she comes storming out of the changing area and snatches it from its position. I try and protest that I have been doing exactly as she’d asked, but she ignores me and retrieves the phone. When it is obvious that she hasn’t received any messages she curses loudly and throws the phone to the floor before storming back to resume the fitting.
Curiosity gets the better of me and I pick the phone up from its resting place underneath my seat. I quickly flick to the call registry and see that in the last twenty-four hours, Serena has tried to call Rivers thirty two times. He hasn’t called her at all. There are only two text messages in her inbox, both from him. The first is from a few weeks ago. It reads as follows:
“Darling, how could I possibly cope without you? You’ve been my saviour. Let me show you how much you mean to me tonight.”
The second is just as worrying:
“I’ll tell Lucinda soon, I promise. We just need to sort this out first then I’m all yours.”
As if on autopilot I take my own phone from my bag and turn in to camera mode. Quickly, I take photos of Serena’s phone, showing both of the