Mother of the Bride
3 women. 1 wedding. Whose big day is it anyway…?Grab your big hat and pearls for the funniest read of the year, a must-read for fans of Carole Matthews and Jane Green.Molly Foster's daughter Jess is getting married…To Molly's delight - and surprise. And with Molly's show featuring a wedding countdown, the whole town of Wells-next-the Sea is ecstatic - even as Molly worries that groom-to-be Max's commitment may not be all it seems…Meanwhile, Jess's control freak step-mother Marnie is determined to turn the event into a chi-chi society bash - a world away from the day that Jess envisaged.But does Jess really know what she wants? Especially when she meets the gorgeous Oliver… Though there's no going back now - is there?Can Jess take back control of her wedding - or will the mothers of the bride run the show?
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Mother of the Bride
Kate Lawson
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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A Paperback Original 2010
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009
Copyright © Kate Lawson 2010
Kate Lawson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Ebook Edition © MARCH 2010 ISBN: 9780007370979
Version 2016-09-23
Mother of the Bride is dedicated to Speedy and the Hellhound, to my lovely boys, their gorgeous women, and my brilliant friends, to Maggie Phillips, my good friend and agent, and all the great people who I sing with in Singers Inspired. You know who you are.
Table of Contents
Lunchtime on the last Bank Holiday of the summer and Molly Foster was standing on the quay at Wells-next-the-Sea close to the radio car, where a man dressed as a bear was juggling rubber herrings. Alongside him stood an Elvis impersonator in a white jumpsuit and rhinestones, and beside him a woman called Linda, who knitted jumpers from the fur collected after grooming her three Newfoundlands – encounters that were all in the day’s work for a presenter on a local radio station.
Molly had one side of her headphones pressed to her ear, keeping the other one off so that she could hear the activity on the quay. The last track had played out and the East Anglian Airwaves FM station jingle was coming to a close. Ready with the mike, all the while nodding and smiling inanely at her guests, holding eye contact so they didn’t wander off, Molly was waiting for the moment when they went live to air.
‘You okay? All ready?’ she mouthed. Everyone nodded in unison, all except Elvis who curled his lip and said, ‘A-huh-huh. ’
‘Here we go then,’ she said, smile widening.
Phil, her broadcast assistant, should have been doing the sheepdogging but, thanks to some technical glitch, he was hunched over in the back of the radio car – a converted people carrier with a retractable mast that the station used for outside broadcasts – fiddling with the control panel.
Molly hoped that what she could see billowing out from the open door was steam from Phil’s coffee and not smoke.
Meanwhile through the headphones, Molly heard her producer, Stan, back at the studio, cue in her next caller. The music faded out at which point Molly said, ‘Great track, that. Perfect for a sunny day by the seaside – speaking of which, we’re here live on Bank Holiday Monday at beautiful Wells-next-the-Sea as part of our Great British Summer Days Out series. We’ve got some fantastic guests lined up for you in today’s show. But first of all on line one we’ve got Maureen from Little Newton, who wants to talk about – what is it you’re talking to us about today, Maureen?’
‘Death,’ said Maureen in a monotone. ‘I want to talk about how it felt when my cat Smokey died.’
‘Right,’ said Molly, pulling faces at Phil, who had stopped fiddling and was now busy flirting with two teenage girls in bikinis.
‘I’m sure that we all feel very sorry for your loss, Maureen. I know that my pets are very important to me but we were hoping that you were going to talk to us about your memories of the good old British seaside holiday – kiss me quick, fish and chips on the prom.’ Molly jollied the unseen woman along.
‘Smokey loved fish, particularly the heads,’ said the unstoppable Maureen. ‘We used to save them for him. Little tinker used to bury them down the back of the sofa if you didn’t watch him. I had him cremated last March. Fourteen, he was. I’ve got the urn here with me. He loved the radio. Not you but that other chap, the one with the glasses, what’s his name?’
