The Bride-To-Be's To-Do List, page 16
THE BRIDE-TO-BE’S TO-DO LIST
Lindsey Kelk
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
This edition published 2024
Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2021
Cover design by Ellie Game/HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Cover illustration: Tamila Svirska/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
eBook Edition © January 2024 ISBN: 9780008672898
Version: 2023-10-05
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
Also by Lindsey Kelk
About the Publisher
Introduction
When I wrote The Single Girl’s To-Do List, I was so happy with Rachel’s ending, mostly because it didn’t feel like an ending but a beginning. Rachel, our pathological people pleaser, had taken stock of her life and was ready to start living on her terms, and Dan, that sexy secret romantic, gave her the space she needed to do just that. As I’m sure a lot of us know, rushing from a failed long-term relationship into a brand new one doesn’t always go that well … But they never quite left my mind. What was Rachel up to now? Did Emelie make a go of it with Paul? What about Matthew and his not-quite-so-ex-ex? And of course, Dan. Hot, photographer who just randomly takes his shirt off, Dan. Could he and Rachel make it work?
Well, curiosity got the better of me and here we are. I don’t think I’ve ever had quite so many messages from people demanding a sequel than I did for The Single Girl’s To-Do List and honestly, I’m very sorry it took this long but may I present to you, The Bride-To-Be’s To-Do List! A short (but not that short) story that checks in on all our friends and hopefully answers a few questions. Fingers crossed you love catching up with the gang as much as I did and who knows? Maybe we’ll see Rachel again one day …
CHAPTER ONE
SUMMER 2015
‘I can’t believe this is it,’ I said, standing in the doorway of my Amwell Street flat. ‘I can’t believe I’m really leaving.’
‘I can’t believe how many coats of paint it took to cover up that bloody pink wall,’ Emelie muttered. ‘Nothing but neutrals from here on out, no matter how good an idea it seems at the time.’
Matthew slung his arm around my shoulders and smiled down at me. ‘Truly the end of an era. How does it feel?’
With the keys in my hand, I looked down the empty hallway, the ghosts of old photos haunting the wall, and shook my head. So much had happened here but, one horrible break-up aside, almost all my memories of this flat were good. The parties, the late-night conversations, the sheer volume of food I’d consumed from the Indian restaurant around the corner.
‘Extremely weird,’ I said, wiping away a tear that took me by surprise as I closed the door, locking it behind me and dropping the keys through the letterbox. ‘But it’s definitely time. Come on, Dan’s expecting us at the new place.’
‘He could have come to help,’ Em said, slipping her own spare key through the door. ‘What is the point in having a boyfriend if he doesn’t do manual labour?’
‘Emotional support? Shared hopes and dreams? A good hard shag on your birthday?’ Matthew unwound the last key from his keyring and posted it. My heart lurched as I heard it land on the doormat with a muffled clunk.
That was that.
‘He had to be home to let the internet people in,’ I explained. ‘I can’t be expected to live in a house without Netflix, can I?’
Secretly, I was more than a little bit annoyed that Dan hadn’t come with us. It was a big deal for me to sell the flat and he knew it. We’d been going back and forth on who should move in where for two of the four years we’d been together, shuttling back and forth between my place and his until the day we forgot where we were supposed to be and I went to his, he went to mine and we both sat on our own in each other’s flats bristling at the other, until he realized he’d cocked up and came home. Then, a month ago, a friend of a friend posted on Facebook that he was selling up and the moment I saw the house, I knew it was perfect for us. A tiny Victorian terrace not far from me, and if Dan sold his flat and I sold mine, we would just be able to scrape together a deposit in time to take advantage of Dan’s friend’s friend’s extremely acrimonious divorce. Naturally, my mum was very worried about the ‘bad vibes’ of buying a divorce house, but there was no room for superstition when it came to snapping up an end of terrace house in London with its own back garden and no upward chain. Plus, I told her she could sage the place before we moved in, which she did, and unfortunately it didn’t smell quite as much like a Diptyque Baies candle as I’d hoped.
And now it was moving day. The whole deal had all happened so quickly, there really hadn’t been time to process little things like feelings, not when I was too busy on the phone to mortgage brokers and estate agents and surveyors morning, noon and night, all while trying to do my job. You can’t really ask an entire set to hold on for ten minutes for you to take a call when you’re a make-up artist. Models don’t want to hold your handset for you to argue the toss over whether or not you’re prepared to paint your entire flat an impossibly dull shade of beige for a cash buyer while you’re doing their eyeliner. I knew this because I had done exactly that and saw the model whining about it on Instagram later that evening.
‘He better have dinner waiting,’ Emelie warned as she skipped down the steps towards Matthew’s car carrying one small box. ‘I’m starving.’
‘How could you not be when you’ve worked so hard all day long?’ Matthew asked, one eyebrow raised as he staggered under the weight of a box filled with everything we’d found during our last sweep of the house. It always took twice as long as you thought it would and you always found twice as much as you expected to, they were the unwritten rules of moving house. Actually, they were probably written down somewhere, I just hadn’t had a lot of time to do my usual research.
‘If he hasn’t, I’ll murder him,’ I told her. ‘Which would trigger his life insurance policy on the mortgage, so that would work quite nicely.’
‘I’m always here to help,’ Emelie replied, smiling serenely.
‘Dan?’ I called as I opened the door to our new house.
‘Excuse me,’ Matthew grunted, pushing me out of the way as he barrelled upstairs to the bathroom. That man had never been able to hold it.
‘I don’t smell food.’ Emelie gave me a judgmental look as she ran a clean fingertip along a dusty shelf and raised an eyebrow.
‘We literally moved in this morning,’ I said with narrowed eyes as I moved through the house, looking for signs of life. ‘Dan? Where are you?’
He wasn’t in the living room, the kitchen or the downstairs study but thanks to the big French doors in the kitchen, I finally found him. Out of earshot and fiddling with a huge wooden box at the bottom of the garden.
‘What has he been buying now?’ I muttered, dreading the thought. Moving had not brought out the more frugal side of Daniel Fraser. Night after night, I had fallen asleep while he trawled the internet for the best bargains, because of course we needed an outdoor grill and a multi-camera outdoor security system and an inflatable hot tub, and these purchases simply could not wait. Admittedly, I wasn’t that upset about the hot tub, but he didn’t need to know that.
‘Hey,’ I called as I opened the French doors and stepped out into the garden. Our garden. ‘We’re back.’
‘Oh. Hello. I thought you’d be gone longer.’ Dan looked up quickly, dark curls all mussed up and his cheeks flushed red. He pressed his back against the crate and it didn’t take a genius to know he didn’t want me to see what was inside.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, hands on hips.
‘Close your eyes, count to ten and I’ll tell you.’
‘Matthew and Emelie are inside,’ I said, not quite convinced. ‘Matthew’s having a wee.’
‘Then count to five and I’ll make it quick. But you have to close your eyes!’
Shaking my head, I closed my eyes and folded my arms over my chest as I counted, goosebumps prickling my skin underneath my coat. It was cold for July but cooler temperatures made for better moving wea
ther, so I tried not to be too mad about it. As long as it was warm enough to leg it down the garden to the hot tub when it arrived, I would accept a midsummer cold spell.
‘Are you counting?’ Dan shouted over the sound of some shuffling, swearing and slightly concerning hissing. ‘Ah, fuck off, go on, piss right off.’
‘Sorry?’ I peeked out of one eye to see him shooing away a little grey tabby cat.
‘Not you,’ he replied as the cat rubbed itself against his legs. ‘Start from the beginning!’
I closed my eyes again and counted loudly. ‘Five, four, three, two—’
‘Two and a half.’
‘Two and a half,’ I corrected myself with an irrepressible smile. ‘And one.’
I opened my eyes as the music started, one of my favourite songs spilling out of the practically invisible outdoor speakers he’d fixed all around the garden (hours of research assured excellent sound quality) and there, in the middle of a lawn was Dan, down on one knee with a ring in his hand and a little grey cat sniffing his arse.
‘Dan.’
I covered my mouth with my hands, completely taken by surprise.
‘I love you, Rachel Summers,’ he said, his grin so wide I thought the top of his head might pop off. ‘I think you already know I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I would like the rest of the world to know it too. How about we make this official?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, trying not to laugh or cry or fall over. ‘Yes, please.’
‘What are you waiting for?’ he asked, pushing the cat away as it began humping his leg. ‘Come and get the bloody ring then.’
My shaky legs managed to cross the garden towards him before I crumpled to my knees, pulling him down with me and pressing my lips against his, the cat bouncing up onto the wooden crate. I felt him place the ring on my finger before I even thought to look at it. It didn’t matter, I knew it would be beautiful, what mattered was the moment, and the fact he had somehow managed to organize a surprise proposal without me having the faintest idea and—
‘Shit! Dan! Watch out!’
Suddenly, the lid of the huge wooden crate was on the floor and dozens and dozens of birds burst out, shooting up into the sky. I threw myself at the ground, covering my head with my hands, waiting for the sound of beating wings to dissipate before I opened my eyes to see my new fiancé laid beside me, laughing hysterically.
‘They’re doves.’ Dan clutched at his chest and gasped for breath as the neighbour’s cat jumped and twisted in mid-air, desperately trying to catch itself a snack.
Thankfully, it failed miserably. ‘They’re meant to be romantic.’
‘I think I just had a heart attack,’ I whispered, my heart pounding. Still lying on the lawn, I brought my left hand up to my face, looking at the ring for the first time. It was gorgeous. A single oval diamond set in what looked like an antique gold band, surrounded by three smaller diamonds, clustered on each side. He knew me so well, it was one hundred per cent what I would have chosen for myself and I loved it.
‘What is going on out here?’ Matthew yelled from the kitchen door. ‘It’s like the fucking Birds in the bathroom.’
‘Rachel, there’s no food,’ Emelie whined. ‘Can we order pizza? And yes, I do mean, can you order pizza?’
The two of them froze by the French doors, taking in the scene in front of them, me still huddled in a ball on the grass, Dan still doubled up with laughter and the last remaining doves fluttering just out of reach of the world’s most frustrated cat.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Dan asked me to marry him,’ I explained, holding my hand up in the air.
They were across the grass and piled on top of us before I could even finish my sentence.
‘About bloody time,’ Matthew commented, grabbing my wrist to check out the ring.
‘I’m just so ‘appy!’ Emelie bleated, her latent French-Canadian accent coming out as she began to sob. She’d been in the UK since uni but it still appeared when she got overemotional. Or when she thought it might come in handy. ‘Although there is bird shit all over your coat, Rach. You should get that cleaned right away.’
‘Maybe, when we tell people about the proposal, we leave that part out?’ Dan suggested as she pawed at my back with a tissue.
‘Happy to,’ I confirmed, leaning over to give my fiancé a kiss. ‘Extremely happy to do that.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘If I’m being brutally honest,’ Dan said as he turned out the bedside lamp. ‘This isn’t how I imagined celebrating our engagement.’
I peered down the bed to see Matthew and Emelie snuggled up together on our blow-up mattress, completely unconscious.
‘Next you’ll be telling me you don’t want them spending the wedding night with us,’ I replied as Em started to snore. ‘And you’re the one who didn’t want to move any boxes to make space for them in the other rooms. It was either sleep in here or kip in the bath.’
‘It’s not raining,’ he muttered. ‘I would have found the energy to throw up a tent.’
My eyes closed and I smiled as I ran my thumb over the band of my engagement ring, just to check it was still there.
‘We don’t own a tent.’
‘Well, there’s a perfectly good crate out there.’
Much to Emelie’s delight, we had indeed ordered pizza, then proceeded to put away two bottles of champagne, a bottle of rosé and two thirds of the bottle of vodka Dan found in one of the kitchen boxes when he went searching for post-pizza snacks. Matthew managed to send a semi-intelligible text to his husband to let him know he wouldn’t be driving home, and I couldn’t find it in me to put Emelie in an Uber on her own after she fell asleep on the lawn, curled up around next door’s cat. Instead, I fired off a brief text to Paul, my little brother and her boyfriend, to say she was safe and staying with us but so far, I’d had no response. There was trouble at the mill, I could feel it in my waters, but this wasn’t the time to dig. She was my friend, he was my brother, but their relationship was their business. I could stay out of it. For now.
‘We could still celebrate,’ Dan suggested, sliding his hand down the length of my body and resting it right above my arse. ‘If we were very quiet.’
‘We’re not shagging with my friends at the bottom of the bed,’ I replied, head blissfully fuzzy as I worked my way into the nook under Dan’s right arm. ‘I’m thirty-two, not seventeen.’
‘Not even a blowie?’
I slapped his hand away before moving it up to the relative safety of my shoulder.
‘Maybe we should stay celibate until the wedding,’ I suggested lightly. ‘That might be nice.’
‘Point taken.’
‘Come here,’ I ordered.
I raised my face to give him the kind of kiss I hoped would let him know celibacy was the last thing on my mind. Just because I didn’t want to stealth bone with my best friends in my bedroom didn’t mean I didn’t want him so badly it hurt.
‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to sleep with a hard on?’ he asked in a strangled voice. ‘That’s just cruel.’
‘They’ll be gone tomorrow,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll celebrate properly then.’
Dan ran his thumb along my lower lip. ‘I’m going to hold you to that.’
Even though we’d been together for years now, even though I’d known him for so much longer, the ring on my finger made everything feel new again and for just a second, I considered waking my friends and calling two taxis to take them literally anywhere.
‘I love you,’ I whispered, nuzzling into his chest as he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. ‘And I’m going to marry you.’
‘A fine threat,’ Dan said through a yawn. ‘See that you do.’
And with a smile on my face and my best friends on the floor, I drifted off into a deep and happy sleep beside my fiancé.
The next morning was brutal. It was a long time since I’d had anything like a proper hangover and living in a storage unit masquerading as a house did not make it any easier. Dan was up and out before I’d even pried myself out of bed, having cunningly booked himself on a shoot that meant he couldn’t help me with the unpacking ‘as much as he really wanted to’.
I was willingly entering into a marriage with a liar.
