Too ‘mother of the bride’? She turns away doesn’t care. Somehow in the cold light of this bright and breezy Wednesday, it looks too conservative. She takes in the sensible navy of her ensemble. She stares at the dress and jacket hanging against the shiny white of the hotel’s wardrobe door and thinks of her beautiful girl, getting ready all alone at her flat. And suddenly, at this eleventh hour, she worries about her daughter. She throws the phone on to the bed and looks back at her reflection.

She badly needs to make this stop but simply has no time today. A notification of yet another direct message. She imagines the picture, framed on the piano at home – the dress forever too pink.Īnd now her phone buzzes on the dressing table. But it looks so wrong now that she fears today’s photograph will haunt her forever. She does not want to disappoint her mother they had such a very lovely day choosing this dress. She gets out of bed and moves to her wardrobe, the bubble of panic in her stomach growing as she holds the dress on its hanger against her frame. There is no lipstick in the world that can fix this. She pinches her cheeks and tries to imagine how the addition of make-up might help. She sits up to see her reflection in the mirror across the room. The daughter sighs at the memory but is wondering now if there was some trick if the shop mirror was smoked and they had not realised just how bright the dress would look in daylight. Her mother loved it immediately – there were tears. In the shop mirror a month back it had seemed softer somehow. This morning, in this new and unforgiving beam of light, the pink is all at once. On its hanger on the wardrobe door last night, the dress looked fine. And suddenly, at this eleventh hour, she realises the colour is all wrong.Ī shaft of sunlight has broken through the crack in the curtains. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.Īmazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of, Inc., or its affiliates. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Teresa driscoll her perfect family