was the self-appointed Look of Now expert. She set up her laptop and delivered a PowerPoint presentation of some of the options, given current fashions. She had cleverly produced images of Richard and Bella which were to scale and transferred dresses across to slot on to the Bella figure.
Every time anyone stopped speaking, Lady Pansy broke in with what the Queen had worn at her wedding, the Dowager Queen, Richard’s aunt the Princess Royal … She described the dresses in loving detail. They were all clearly meringue on the grand scale.
Bella said clearly, ‘Thank you, Lady Pansy. We have understood the precedents very clearly now.’
She was not seething any more. Her indignation had cooled to an icy determination to stop Lady P in her tracks. She stood up.
‘So let’s get this out of the way now. I will not go down the aisle to meet Richard wearing some vast crinoline that makes me look like the Dame in a provincial pantomime. It’s not my style. Please, everyone, strike that option now.’
She sat down. Lottie applauded. Lady Pansy was temporarily hounded out of sweet superiority and glared with fury. Bella ignored her and turned to her grandmother on the other side of the conference table.
‘Georgia? You haven’t said anything yet. What do you think?’
Georgia considered. ‘A wedding dress makes a big statement. And you need to remember what the back of it says. The photographs will all show the front. But in the church—’
‘Cathedral,’ put in Lady Pansy loudly.
They all ignored that.
‘In the church everyone will be looking at your back throughout the service. That young man who likes to design backless wedding dresses seems to me to be asking the congregation to join the bride in – well, almost deceiving the bridegroom. Sneering at him, even. I’m sorry, Lottie. I don’t think they’re very kind.’
‘Hadn’t thought of that one,’ said Bella cheerfully, her temper restored. You could always rely on her grandmother to come out of left field. ‘OK, Georgia. Dress must be kind. What else?’
Lady Pansy snorted audibly.
‘Of course, it’s all about the way line and colour are combined. Something very white and severe could say “I’m not for touching”, for instance. Myself, I think that some of those boned tops, which cut into the flesh, look as if the bride is constrained. In a straitjacket, if you will. Not comfortable and not … free.’
Lottie laughed aloud. ‘Well, that’s knocked out the collections of at least three designers I know, Georgia. That’s narrowed it down.’
‘If you want my advice, Bella dear, I think you have to consider the message you want to give the congregation. And, more important even than that, the message you want to give your husband. He’s the most important person there for you, after all. Isn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Bella, feeling her ears go pink and knowing there was not one single thing she could do about it. ‘Yes, he is. Good thinking, Batwoman.’
But if the discussion was a success, the beauty parade of designers was not. Once they grasped that meringue was out, they pitched hard for their own most recent collections. Bella sat there with a frozen smile on her face, feeling it was more and more hopeless, until eventually one man said, ‘Everything happens around the Bride. A wedding is a picture, with the church and congregation as the frame, and the Bride the blank canvas to which I apply the image of the Day.’
There was a brief flurry. Suddenly Georgia was on her feet, elegant and deadly.
‘May I clarify something?’ she said, very courteously. ‘You just said that my granddaughter is a blank canvas?’
He did sense danger but not enough to sidestep it. ‘Just for the purposes of the Day …’ he began airily.
He was stopped dead in his tracks.
‘You are a very silly man. You do not know how to do your job. Please leave.’
That was when things changed, Bella thought afterwards. Up till then, the Press had either loved her or given her the benefit of the doubt. Even the grumpy Daily Despatch hadn’t actually attacked her. But soon there was a rumour that Bella had told favourite-of-the-stars designer Jonas Krump that he was a silly man who did not know how to do his job. And the backlash started.
It wasn’t all bad. The Morning Times did a very nice piece about her family, including Neill’s upcoming appearance as a Viking, and ran a profile of her bridesmaids in their weekend supplement. A charities magazine did an evaluation of her