Free White Wedding by Milly Johnson

Shaden. You haven’t seen her for ages, have you?’
    Richard didn’t appear to have heard the question. Instead he whispered in Bel’s ear, ‘So how many times do you think Martin will say the word “investment” tonight,
then?’
    ‘Oh at least forty-five,’ smiled Bel, enjoying the sensation of his arm round her, squeezing her into his side. It felt so nice she wanted to cry. Her bottom lip began to tremble.
She hadn’t figured tonight would be so hard.
    Vanoushka was first through the door, with her perfect bottle-blonde hair, Botox-frozen head and Goodyear-tyre lips. She made Jackie Stallone look like Shirley Temple. She kissed the air at
either side of her younger sister’s ear as she breezed in on a perfume cloud of something as heavy and spicy as a Moroccan market. They could probably smell it in Morocco, as well –
she’d put enough of it on for that to be possible.
    Behind her came the heavily jowled Martin, who’d also had a bit of work done recently. His eyebrows were virtually lodged in his crown. There was nothing frozen about his eyes, though, as
the little beady blue circles roved around the hallway, taking in everything, checking for things that were different from his last visit.
    His greasy lips spread into a smile as he air-kissed Faye too and shook Trevor’s hand. Bel prepared herself for ordeal by air-kissing, although ‘Uncle Martin’ didn’t
air-kiss her – he laid his big slobbery lips on her cheek and his hand was more on her bum than her back, as usual. Then he grabbed Richard’s hand, nearly breaking it off with the shake
he gave it.
    Then in came Shaden, looking more like a clone of Vanoushka every time Bel saw her, which was rarely these days. Gone was the mousy-haired, lumpy, quiet thing who had been like a little sister
to Bel as they were growing up. They’d found common ground in jumping on the trampoline in the garden, playing hide and seek among the many trees behind the Candys’ old house and a
desire to snog Simon le Bon. They’d been close, until Shaden’s twenty-first birthday, when she – totally out of the blue – announced that her mother was giving her a boob
job as a coming-of-age present. Bel had laughed, presuming she was joking. Shaden didn’t even wear foundation and skipped past the make-up pages in girls’ mags.
    Ten years after her pneumatic breast implants, Shaden was unrecognizable as the girl Bel knew. Waxed and preened, teeth straightened and whitened, lips inflated to pout-perfect standards, weekly
spray-tanned, hair bleached to Californian blonde – much to her mother’s delight, Shaden Bosomworth-Proud had become a miniature Barbie whose knockers arrived in a room five minutes
before she did. Only her nose remained the same: long with a small bump near the top. Bel didn’t doubt that her conk would be the next thing on the plastic-surgery list and probably would
have been done already if Martin hadn’t been struggling financially for a few years, although no one would believe that from the family face they showed to the world.
    Shaden had acquired a glam set of her own friends who swarmed around her as if she were a queen bee, and she no longer had use for the cousin who used to outshine her at every turn. In fact Bel
hadn’t seen her – or heard from her – since choosing the bridesmaid’s dress in Leeds.
    ‘Hi, coz,’ Shaden smiled at Bel, and whereas years ago she would have bounced over and thrown herself on Bel, now she teetered over on her huge spiked heels and kissed the air inches
away from her cheek. Bel watched as she greeted Richard the same way: brief, perfunctory, polite.
    ‘I can’t believe the wedding is only two days away,’ smiled Faye. She was getting some really heavy creases round her eyes when she laughed, thought Bel. She obviously
hadn’t had any of the work done that her two older sisters favoured.
    ‘Is everything arranged, then?’ Vanoushka asked her.
    ‘I . . . I . . . think so,’