Faith - Lesley Pearse [87]
She found the perfect one, a lovely cream crêpe number with intricate beadwork. Cut on the bias, it clung to her slim hips and accentuated her cleavage. With a little feather ‘fascinator’ pinned in her dark hair, she looked like a Hollywood star. She insisted on buying Meggie a gorgeous twenties black velvet jacket trimmed with jet beads, and afterwards they went to the roof garden at Derry and Toms department store, and had afternoon tea.
Meggie had never been there before, and she could hardly believe there could be a real Italian garden, complete with streams and even real live flamingos, on the top of a tall building. She was so excited she could hardly sit down, but Laura seemed a bit preoccupied and Meggie asked what was on her mind.
‘It’s the wedding really,’ Laura sighed. ‘Am I doing the right thing marrying Greg?’
Meggie was only eighteen then and she’d been working as a prostitute for almost a year. While other girls of her age were having fun, camping out at rock concerts, smoking dope and dropping acid and sleeping with anyone they fancied, she had to spend every evening with men old enough to be her father. It was hell forcing herself to sparkle when she knew that a glass of watered-down champagne would lead to yet another loveless, sordid scene in a hotel room. She always told herself that at least she was at the top of her profession, that she didn’t have the indignity of having to work the streets. But as she came home in the early hours of the morning in a taxi, still smelling of her clients’ sweat, sometimes bearing bruises where they’d been rough with her, she often thought that she would happily settle for marriage with a rich man, even if she didn’t love him, just as long as he was good to her.
‘Do you like Greg?’ she asked her sister.
‘Of course I do,’ Laura replied with some indignation.
‘And you fancy him?’
‘Yes, a lot as it happens.’
‘Well, that’s what love is, isn’t it?’ Meggie replied.
Laura laughed. ‘Other people seem to think there’s a lot more to it than that,’ she said.
‘Well, he’s rich, good-looking too, that is if that photo you showed me is a good likeness,’ Meggie went on. ‘What more could anyone want?’
‘I kind of thought that when I met Mr Right we’d sort of melt together, that there would be no doubts, no what-ifs,’ Laura said wistfully.
‘That’s just the claptrap they write in books,’ Meggie insisted.
‘You are so cynical sometimes,’ Laura said, looking hard at Meggie. ‘Was it Vince that did that to you?’
‘Maybe, but I observe people too. Okay, you see couples mooning over one another when they first meet, but that soon fades. I expect even Mum felt that way about Dad once, and look where it got her. You can be a whole lot happier with money than without it.’
‘But Greg always seems to want me to be something I’m not,’ Laura said sadly. ‘Take our wedding – he will really want me in one of those crinoline, long-train numbers, a veil and all that, but that isn’t me. I’m not a pure little virgin that went to church every Sunday and I’d feel a fraud dressed like one. That dress I’ve bought is me, I want glamour, excitement and to look sensational. He should know what he’s getting.’
‘Are you afraid he wants the little woman who will kowtow to him?’
‘I know he does. I dare say he’s got dreams of burying me in the country with half a dozen kids around me too. But he doesn’t tell me these things, I guess that’s the real problem, we don’t ever talk about what we both want.’
‘Then maybe you should put the wedding off?’ Meggie suggested. ‘Tell him you can’t go through with it until you have discussed everything.’
‘I’m not good at