Erica Greendale's perfect wedding day has been hijacked by her jilted almost-lover Gavin McClain and secretly resentful Maid of Honour Helen. To avoid the public screening of a deeply compromising hen-night video featuring the bride herself, she must follow all of Gavin's instructions, while somehow getting through the ceremony and beyond...
It scarcely mattered, Erica thought, who found her in her desolation. What, after all, were her options? Tell Stephen? Tell her parents? That would wreck her marital prospects and the family name at a shot, destroying the occasion in which she had pleaded with her father to invest so much. Every straw at which she clutched left her drowning in desperation.
It was Helen who came to her rescue, sweeping into the room in shimmering royal blue. "Erica we're waiting for you in ... God, what's the matter?" She shifted presents and sat down beside the weeping bride, enfolding her in comforting arms. "You're all messed up, your mascara's running. Whatever's happened?"
Erica looked up through tear-stained eyes to see her friend in the silk dress they had spent so much time choosing—bared shoulders, slim cross-straps, tight and sequined around the bust, then flowing in a glossy river the length of her body. It set Helen's figure off well. So glamorous, yet so tasteful, like everything else she'd picked for this wretched ruined occasion. "I can't say, Helen. It's too dreadful."
"It can't be that bad," Helen consoled. "If it's second thoughts, I'm sure most brides have them on the actual day. Is it Gavin?" Erica looked at her in fright. "Well you were quite taken with him a while back, weren't you? Was it seeing him with that other girl? Are you worried about your feelings for Stephen?"
"No, no, it's not that, I love Stephen!" Erica asserted hurriedly. "It's nothing to do with Gavin, not in that way ..." She faltered, remembering the awful movie which had been screened for her, the head bridesmaid lying unconscious in the scene's background. "Helen," she asked desperately, "do you remember anything else about the stupid hen night? Was anyone filming?"
"Filming? What are you talking about?"
"That damn pill messed up my head, Helen. Tell me what you remember."
"Well ... there were a bunch of cocktails, the strippers arrived, they were strutting their stuff, then... Well... It all got hazy after that. Erica, what is all this? Tell me!"
So Erica told, and wept all through the telling, while Helen stared in mounting astonishment. She told almost all, including the blank in her memory, the footage of her with the strippers—"On my knees, Helen, sucking on them, sucking on them both, for Christ's sake! Letting them ... you know, in my mouth, all over my face! Do you want all the damn details?" (It was coming back to her as she told it - the smoothness of the dancers' buff bodies, the pulsing hardness of their young cocks, the rush of semen that had sluiced out her mouth.) Then she explained Gavin's possession of the evidence and all his threats and outrageous demands. She couldn't quite bring herself to describe Clementine's interference with her, or the sex-toy currently planted in her pussy.
"How did this happen, Helen? Who brought the camera to the party? Who started the filming? Wait, the video guy's in on it as well, the guy you recommended to me ..." Her mind was working furiously now, trying to make connections, as she sat wringing her hands. "Gavin can't have been there, can he? So who was it? Who would have done that, Helen, who hates me that much?"
Her friend sat silently for a moment, face grave. "It's ... I ... Shit, I can only think of one person who might have done this."
"You can? Helen, tell me!"
"Babe, I think it must have been Eloise." Erica frowned at her in consternation. "It's something I overheard her say early on during the hen-night when you went off to the bathroom. You know how garrulous she can be after a few drinks. And how spiteful."
"What did she say?"
"She's always been jealous of you, I think. She's had a crush on Gavin for the longest time and couldn't stand that you'd dated him and then got to leave him for someone else. She was calling you all sorts of things. 'Daddy's little princess ...' Seriously, you don't want to know. 'Irritating ...' 'Childish ...' I forget most of it. 'Prissy little bitch', that was another one. It doesn't matter. The thing is she had a camcorder with her that night and she knew the strippers were going to be there."
"Oh my God!" Erica was appalled at the treachery. She had gone so far as to invite Eloise Mayhew to the evening part of the reception.
"I'd asked her about them following her birthday party," Helen continued. "She seemed a bit too zealous that I hire them. God, Erica, that and the molly - I feel so responsible."
Erica protested. Yes, the pill had turned out a disastrous idea and she was paying a price for it, but her friend could never have guessed how Erica would behave, not if the bride hadn't even known it herself. Not could she have appreciated the level of Eloise Mayhew's vindictiveness. Helen, however, was not finished. "No, you don't understand. I'm remembering now ... It was Eloise who suggested the video guy, you know, Scott? She really sold him to me, that's why I put you and Stephen in touch with him. Shit ..." Erica's whirlwind of concerns spun even stronger. "I don't know if this matters," Helen added, "but she suggested Alan the photographer as well."
"Oh my God," Erica moaned disconsolately, "it's a conspiracy. What am I going to do, Helen? I can't have everyone find out what's on that disc! Oh Christ, I can't believe I
did
that! Can we prove it was Eloise?"
"I doubt it, certainly not in time. And realistically we can't deal with Gavin, not today. Not without risking those discs going out."
Erica was crestfallen. She found herself dependent on her friend's wisdom, looking to her urgently for a way out.
"We can try and sort out his evidence afterwards," Helen muttered. "I'll do all I can, but right now all you can do is go through with the wedding."
"Oh God!" It was a near-silent wail of despair; she could feel the tears starting to build once more. "I can't do it, Helen, I can't stand up there and marry Stephen knowing what he—what Gavin wants from me."
Helen seized her by both shoulders. "Now look," she said firmly, holding Erica's mournful gaze, "you've got to pull yourself together here. You want to marry Stephen, right?"
"Yes, yes I do," Erica sobbed.
"Then today is the one chance you get. And if you have to give yourself to Gavin McClain in order to do so, then that's the price you pay, yeah? See it as an act of love to Stephen if you like." Erica was shaking her head in denial, but Helen pressed on. "Look, babe, you're doing this thing. You're going to get through today, I promise. I'll be with you every step. You've got a church full of people waiting for you and you're going to get out there and give them the wedding they're all here to see, okay?"
It took a lot more convincing on Helen's part, along with explanations to Mrs Greendale and other concerned parties, but eventually Erica was talked around. Helen was right—whatever her hen night slip-up, she owed it to Stephen, to the guests and to herself for God's sake, to go through with this. Gavin could take her—she could only imagine how thoroughly he would—but she could not let him ruin everything. She had to be strong, had to face this trial with grace and fortitude.
"Let's get you to the church, that's the first step," Helen said gently, and Erica let her friend guide her to the other bedroom, where her beautiful dress awaited.
She felt numb as Zoe from the salon adjusted her make-up. "It's not a wedding without a few tears from the bride, right?" the girl said, as she reapplied mascara. It seemed unreal to be helped inside her dream gown in this fairy-tale gone horribly wrong. She stared at herself once more in her parents' mirrored dresser, Helen and Zoe framing her. The corseted white bodice was embroidered with seed pearls, before the skirts flowed in a satin river down to her slipper-clad heels. The dress showed off her full bosom and tight waist gorgeously with its heart-shape, leaving her naked shoulders on display—an exquisite fusion of taste and sensuality. The long gauzy veil tumbled all down her back and the pearl necklace warmed on her skin like in the Carol Ann Duffy poem she had loved at school.
"Unlucky, pearls," an aunt had warned her sagely. "You don't want to wear them on you wedding day." How Erica had laughed the superstition off. She was so grief-stricken, as the words came back, that Zoe had to apply the matching earrings for her.
"You look beautiful," the girl said in awe. "The perfect bride."
Everyone else's reaction approximated to that one. Her mother looked ready to cry. Her dad swept aside all his irritability and held her with outstretched arms as though she was a porcelain doll. Kate and Camille, in crystal-blue dresses matching Helen's, gathered around and hugged her.
"You okay?" Camille whispered in concern, squeezing her hand.
Erica would have confided totally in Camille once; it occurred to do so now, but too much contact had been lost. Today her lot was thrown in with Helen. "I'm fine," she said, shoring up her strength and forcing a smile. "It's just nerves, that's all."
"I'm sure you have nothing to worry about." The smooth voice chilled Erica to her centre and caused her pussy to clench. Gavin was strolling from kitchen to hallway, Clementine on his arm, looking darkly amused. "What could go wrong for such a gorgeous bride on her wedding day?"