Page 10 of One Moment in Time
Sighing, she pulled up her crucial, colour-coded checklist and began running down the items in both the ‘To-Do’ and ‘Done’ columns.
With ten days to go until the Vegas trip, the fact that everything wasn’t already in the DONE column was making her itch.
DONE:
Flight tickets bought.
Hotel booked.
(Planet Hollywood. Right on the strip).
Request sent for a room overlooking the Bellagio fountains across the street.
Tickets purchased for Celine Dion concert.
(Because that would make her mother’s life complete).
Renewal of vows in Elvis Loves Me Tender Chapel booked.
(The same chapel in which her normally conventional Mum and Dad got married – a fact that still surprised and amused Zara in equal measure).
ESTAs completed.
(She’d had to sneak in and take photos of Mum and Dad’s passports and apply for their ESTAs using her own email address, which was undoubtedly illegal and they could get arrested on arrival).
Limo booked from airport to hotel.
Cover arranged for shop.
Zara had recruited their lovely regular part time worker, Tilly, and her mum, Tina, who’d helped them out before, to work full-time that week. Chances were, with the events side of the business closed down for that period, they’d make absolutely no profit, but they shouldn’t make a loss either. Either way, it would be worth it. This was one of those life events that they would look back on until the end of time and that was worth more to her than a week’s worth of profit. Besides, she’d taken on more jobs than usual the following week, so hopefully that would go some way to making up for it.
Back to the lists…
STILL TO DO:
Buy white dress for Mum for ceremony (Dad can cobble together smart outfit when he gets there).
Find Gary bloody Gregg. And hope he knows where to find Eileen Smith.
She clicked on to another open page and then nudged Millie. ‘Here, look. What do you think of this dress?’ Her mum was a size 12–14, slightly smaller than Zara, but a size bigger than Millie, who’d inherited their dad’s metabolism and his infuriating resistance to gaining weight, no matter how many calories he ate. Or in Millie’s case, no matter how many calories she drank.
Millie took in the white, embellished frock on the Monsoon website. ‘Too… floaty. Mum prefers things simpler.’ Millie reached over and helped herself to the last slice of her sister’s toast. Zara didn’t have the energy to maintain her air fryer protest or start a new toast protest. Millie’s face lit up, conveying a flash of inspiration. ‘Do you know what would be perfect?’
‘Tell me,’ Zara said, already clicking through a plethora of other frocks hoping that something perfect would pop up, and only half listening, figuring nothing much sensible was going to come out of Millie’s mouth when her bloodstream was probably still at least 50 per cent porn star martinis.
‘The outfit Gran bought for the garden party at Holyrood,’ Millie said triumphantly. And rightly so.
Zara stopped clicking. ‘Oh my God, you are so right.’
Their late Granny Ada was a beloved force of nature who had retired, then spent the next twenty years running every association within twenty square miles of her home. The tenants’ association. The after-school clubs. The youth club. The lunch club for local senior citizens. The hospital free taxi service. The donation service for refugees. The Christmas boxes for kids who were living in poverty. If there was a great cause, Ada was all over it and it was recognised when she was honoured for her work in the community with an invite to meet the Queen at Holyrood. And oh, what a day she’d had. ‘I want a frock that makes me look like Joanna Lumley and a hat the size of a manhole cover,’ she’d told Zara, Millie, and Brenda as they’d set off on a tour of every high-end dress store in Glasgow. After a military-level search operation, they’d found what they were looking for in a beautiful little boutique in the Merchant City. A pale cream A-line shift dress embellished with a single strand of pearls around the neckline, and a matching satin crepe shawl, adorned with the same subtle pearls. It was so Audrey Hepburn and so perfect.
Now, Zara knew that, for once, Millie had pulled the fashion rabbit out of the manhole cover hat.
‘It would be perfect,’ she whispered, feeling a sudden overwhelming wave of emotion. God, she missed Granny Ada. When she’d passed away the year before, it had been devastating for them all, and it was only a small consolation that she’d gone in the way she would have wanted – at the bingo, a heart attack while cheering because her best pal, Rita, had just won a full house. She’d happily lived all her life in a council house, where she knew every single person on the street, so before her home was returned to the local authorities, the family had the heart-breaking job of clearing it out. Most of her possessions were given to good causes but a few things had such sentimental value that the girls couldn’t part with them. One of those precious items was her favourite old jewellery box. Most of the contents were costume pieces, given that Ada had no time for fancy trinkets, preferring to put her money to better use, but in between her eighties pom pom earrings and an onyx cocktail ring so big it could take an eye out with a right hook, they’d found an envelope addressed to them. In it was a letter spelling out Ada’s legacy for her grand-daughters.
Dear angels,
(She always called them that – said princesses were for losers because they were always waiting to be rescued.)
