They were all here, her mates: the air was stuffed with giggles and perfume, all shapes and sizes squashed together, buttocks and bosoms wobbling and heaving, and as the evening wore on, thick with alcohol vapour and heady woozes. She loved them all, and they knew it, and they all hugged and sprawled and the jokes were blue and purple and all about men, of course.
The limo stretched for ever, and in her hazy dreams she wondered how it got round the corners, but mostly she revelled in its delicious whiteness, splashed with pink, a girly dream.
She'd always had this dream: and in primary school, when asked to design a car, she'd had the longest one, made out of cardboard and plastic wheels, lots of cutting and pasting and her barbie doll sitting at the wheel, but she knew she would have a chauffeur, really, when she got married.
A hen party: loads of chicks, fat thighs, floral skirts, too much leg showing, but what the hell... you were only young once, got married like this, just once. Some of her friends were on their third marriage already, but the first one was when you went mad, really went to town, literally, on the bingey booze, mad about town.
They lurched back from the last club into the waiting white heaven, tumbling in, fumbling with bags and keys and lippies and powder puffs, and heading back towards the hotel, out on the clifftop.
Faster, she urged the driver, and they all joined in, faster, faster, faster the chant went up, tll they were screaming with wild intent, Furies with leering faces, ugly hags with red lips and hard eyes, and the driver trembled and put his foot down, trying to escape the female frenzy.
Faster, faster, the white limo ate up the miles and the girls sensed their triumph, one would be lost to a man tomorrow, but this driver was entirely at their beck and call, he was their slave.
Faster, faster, the night was dark and menacing, the lasses cackled and revelled in the speed, as the wheels burnt rubber and their last mile was recorded on the road, black tracks.
Faster, until the last bend, when the car slid off the road, hurtled over the field, over, the cliff, and dropped like a stone into the sea.
Where the waves washed it clean again, clean of powder, and blood, and lippie.
The white limo, white again.
her dress, still white, unworn, except in her coffin.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.