Lauren had been the queen of debating at school. She hadn’t lost it.
Dianne wishes she could explain about the anger thing but she can’t. They won’t get it.
‘If you can’t do something about your behaviour, we’re taking ourselves out of your life. You have to go to the island or accept the consequences,’ Lauren had said.
Dianne is going to the island.
She’ll pretend to join in.
Dianne can pretend at Olympic level.
She doesn’t want to change.
Why would she?
India knows exactly what she wants her wedding to be like.
For starters, she’s chosen the dress: well, she has a top three.
Number one is an ivory column dress in heavy silk satin that shimmies down her long legs and makes her look a little bit Grace Kelly. Her wedding flowers consist of a calla lily arrangement, and her copper hair will be in a slightly distressed bun at the nape of her neck.
The number two is a different vibe altogether: an antique lace garment with a demure heart-shaped neckline and teeny cap sleeves that somebody’s great-grandmother made. In India’s mind, it’s a dress which is riddled with memories of great love. Everyone who’s worn it has had a Great Love which has never failed. Made in some tiny village in the middle of nowhere where the ladies hand-made lace for decades, centuries even. She can just imagine this on Instagram.
The Great Love bit is what’s important.
An Italian great-grandmother dress could do, she thinks as she sits in the back of the taxi on its way from Corfu airport to Villa Artemis.
She loves Italian fashion and her closet wish list is Gucci, Prada, Versace – stuff she buys after much rummaging at vintage stores and car boot sales. Making a unique outfit out of vintage buys is her idea of absolute heaven.
Maybe Albania not Italy. An Albanian antique/vintage garment is just that bit more unique.
India’s a bit hazy on geography and honestly cannot point to Albania on a map, but she’ll ask one of her stepmother’s people to look into finding this fantasy gem. Georgie, her stepmother, has an amazing team. Georgie’s an interior designer and does houses for rich people, mainly Russian and Chinese billionaires, in London.
There is nothing Georgie’s people cannot source: Mesopotamian doors made of ancient wood with iron ornaments; Warhols that nobody’s ever seen before; museum-quality fragments of Napoleon’s uniform set inside an ebony box frame with a painting light to hang over the frame. Nothing is off limits.
Georgie sounded surprised that India’s heading to Corfu for a therapy retreat, but she never criticises.
‘You make your own choices, darling,’ is all she said.
It’s dark now in Corfu and, as the taxi winds its way along the coast to the Villa Artemis and her Brand New Adventure, India’s busy scrawling notes in her metallic-pink fake-crocodile-skin notebook with her initials in gold lettering on the front. She prints out pictures she likes on her portable baby printer. She sticks them on with stickers of daisies.
She’s found her third dress choice – Daphne’s dress inBridgerton.
If that isn’t the stuff of fairy tale, India doesn’t know what is.
India isn’t built like the petite Daphne: instead, she’s tall and has ultra-long legs like her mum, Sonja, who was a famous model. Sonja left India when she was a baby to run off with a successful guitarist who played with one of the world’s biggest bands.
Even though India basically grew up without her mother, she’s inherited her best features: her legs, general skinniness, snaky copper hair which falls to below her angular shoulder blades, and sky-blue eyes.
There’s only one teeny problem about her wedding plans: India and her last boyfriend, Chad, split up a month ago, which means it is handy she had booked the retreat.
A wedding dress is somewhat surplus to requirements.
But she’ll need one soon, she justknowsit. She knows she has a big heart, and there’s got to be someone out there who’ll love her the same way, surely?
‘Rose can fix me!’ she had said cheerfully to Georgie and her father.
‘You don’t need to be fixed, pumpkin,’ said her dad, reaching out and twirling a bit of her long coppery hair wistfully. ‘You’re perfect.’
