Always the Bridesmaid

  ‘You’re the best person I know at Scrabble,’ I said as quickly as possible. She stared at me, stony-faced. ‘And you look like you’ve lost weight.’

  ‘One of the benefits of not cooking at night is not eating,’ she replied. ‘Hand me more pizza.’

  ‘You’re a shit cook anyway,’ I reminded her. ‘Just make sure you can still fit into your bridesmaid dress.’

  ‘I never heard back about the job, you know,’ Sarah said in between thoughtful chews. ‘You did give my CV to HR?’

  The CV that had sat on my desk for a week? The CV with all the brilliant and relative experience that would almost certainly get her my job? Did she mean that one?

  ‘Of course,’ I said, barely missing a beat. ‘I heard there’s been a recruitment freeze. Don’t worry.’

  Lauren looked at me, confused. I flashed her a look and tried to force down the feeling that I might be sick in my mouth.

  ‘Ohhh,’ Lauren said, her eyes widening with realization. ‘You don’t want to work there. We don’t even want Maddie to work there, remember?’

  ‘She can leave and I can stay,’ Sarah shrugged. ‘Perfect solution.’

  ‘Not until she’s finished organizing my wedding,’ Lauren countered. ‘Don’t be so selfish, Sarah.’

  ‘Do I get a say in any of this?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ they replied in unison.

  I love my friends, I told myself. I love my friends, I love my friends.

  ‘I had no idea how stressful it was planning all this shit,’ Lauren said, considering the dough balls but reluctantly turning back to her salad. ‘It’s morning, noon and night.’

  I eyed her carefully, looking for a sign that she was putting on a brave face, but no, there was nothing. Maybe it had just been a wedding-dress wobble. Maybe everything was OK.

  ‘Thank God you don’t have to actually work for a living,’ Sarah said. It was a bit of a low blow but I wasn’t about to defend Lauren, given that she’d done bugger all and I was spending every spare second working my arse off for nothing. And given that I had no spare seconds, that was quite the accomplishment.

  ‘I so work,’ she squealed. ‘You know I work.’

  ‘You post Twitter updates for your dad,’ Sarah said. ‘That’s not working.’

  ‘I am the social media director for one of the south-east’s leading boutique estate agents,’ she replied. ‘It’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.’

  ‘No Pinterest?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not superwoman, Maddie,’ she replied. ‘I can’t do everything.’

  I bit my tongue. Hard.

  ‘Shall we talk about something else for five seconds?’ I suggested before someone got the slap they were so clearly asking for. ‘I mean, anything?’

  ‘What’s going on with Will?’ Sarah asked immediately.

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked, looking at Lauren. For the first time I didn’t want to talk about him.

  Her mouth full of uncooked kale, she shook her head and pointed at Sarah. ‘Spill,’ she demanded. ‘Is he coming to the wedding?’

  ‘I haven’t asked him,’ I replied, bothering my phone until I could see the screen glowing in the darkness out of the corner of my eye. ‘I think it’s too soon.’

  ‘You’re seeing a lot of each other, though,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s been, what, a month?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  A month and three days. If you were someone who kept track of that kind of thing.

  ‘So is he officially your boyfriend now?’

  ‘We’ve been through this,’ I reminded them. ‘We’re too old for this nonsense. We are two grown-ups who like spending time together and doing it. Loads. It’s a perfectly fine state of affairs without weighing everything down with labels.’

  Sarah tightened her topknot and raised an eyebrow and I forced myself not to slap her hands as hard as I could. I didn’t feel like adding that I hadn’t seen him in a week. We’d rescheduled that Friday dinner three times now, and although he’d managed to drop by for some on-the-hoof shagging a few times on his way home from the office, his work plans always meant that he had to leave the same night to make an early start in the morning. And since he’d cancelled dinner again last Friday and had been too busy to see me over the weekend, we hadn’t made new plans. He was still texting, but things were definitely slowing down and I didn’t know what to make of it.

  ‘What’s his place like?’ Sarah asked, placing a cushion from the settee under her head. But, once again, not getting onto the settee. ‘Is it a super-fancy bachelor pad or a boy version of this shit-hole?’

  ‘I imagine it’s nice,’ I said, preparing myself for what was definitely coming. ‘I haven’t been there yet.’

  ‘You haven’t been there?’ Lauren didn’t even try to keep the judgement out of her voice ‘At all?’

  Sarah wasn’t nearly so careful. ‘What’s that all about? What’s he hiding?’

  ‘It’s not a big conspiracy,’ I said, staring up at the ceiling. ‘He’s renting out his spare room to one of his friends while he looks for his own place. I don’t have a flatmate, so … so that’s all there is to it. And my flat is closer to both our jobs.’

  ‘Well, that’s convenient,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Exactly,’ I replied.

  Sarah gave me the look. ‘Not the kind of convenient I meant, and you know it.’

  They looked at each other for a moment before coming to a silent agreement.

  ‘Aren’t we supposed to be choosing our bridesmaid dresses?’ I asked before one of them could start on me again, pushing the catalogue at them and watching as it magically fell open on the lilac strapless number I’d already chosen. ‘Can we get on with that, please?’

  ‘I want to meet him,’ Lauren said, pushing away the catalogue. ‘I can’t wait, Maddie.’

  ‘You’re going to love him,’ I said.

  Sarah sat bolt upright. ‘Oh my God, do you love him?’

  ‘That’s not what I said,’ I wailed, covering my face with a cushion. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know anything. I’ve had the weirdest day.’

  ‘What has Shona done now?’ Lauren asked. ‘Or was it the lovely Sharaline?’

  ‘Neither of them,’ I said from underneath my cushion. ‘If I tell you, you’re not allowed to make a big deal out of it.’

  ‘We promise we will not make a big deal out of it,’ they sang together.

  ‘You remember Will’s friend, the usher who I met at the wedding?’

  ‘The one who fancies you?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘He doesn’t fancy me,’ I said without nearly as much certainty as I’d used before. ‘I’m planning a party for his mum, and this afternoon, when we were checking out the venue I want to use, he made me dance.’

  ‘The pervert,’ Sarah gasped.

  ‘Are you being, like, super euphemistic?’ Lauren asked.

  ‘No!’ I pulled the cushion away from my face but kept it handy in case I needed to smack someone with it. ‘We were testing the speakers, and while the music was playing, he made me dance. We danced.’

  ‘Like, dance, monkey, dance?’ Sarah just wasn’t getting it. ‘Should we call the police?’

  ‘We waltzed,’ I said, cringing as I spoke. ‘I danced a waltz, like a lady.’

  They stared at me, Sarah’s mouth a tight, hard line, Lauren’s hanging wide open.

  ‘And then what?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘And then I left,’ I said, leaving out the part where I walked into the kitchen and a cleaning cupboard before I found the exit. ‘That’s it.’

  Apart from the email that had come in about fifteen minutes ago.

  ‘That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,’ Lauren said with a sigh. ‘I love a man who can dance. My dad dances.’

  ‘I bet he’s an amazing dancer,’ Sarah sighed. ‘What a man.’

  ‘Don’t even!’ Lauren threw a cushion across the room and caught her square in the boob. ‘Do not start talking about my dad.’
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  ‘Fine.’ She wiped the dreamy look off her face and tuned back to me. ‘Seriously, Mads, what’s wrong with this weirdo? Do we need to call the police?’

  ‘If we’re being entirely honest …’ I put my pizza down and cradled my can of Diet Coke, my shoulders creeping up around my ears … ‘it was quite nice.’

  ‘Wait, you’re planning a party for his mom?’ Lauren asked. ‘Like, for work?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wondering if either of them ever listened to a word. ‘I do that, you know. It’s not that strange.’

  ‘At the risk of sounding like Sarah, it’s one hundred per cent strange,’ Lauren corrected. ‘You met him at the wedding, right? The same night you met Will?’

  I nodded confirmation.

  ‘And then he came to your office that time to pick stuff up for his fiancée, and now you’re planning a birthday party for his mom and waltzing around some ballroom together? Is his mom the Queen? Are you living in The Princess Diaries?’

  ‘It’s her sixtieth,’ I explained. Of course it was going to sound dodgy when you put it like that. ‘He wants to do something special for her because his dad died when he was younger and they’re really close.’

  Sarah shuddered. ‘Bates Motel close?’

  ‘Shut up.’ Lauren gave her a swipe, taking the tally of Sarah-slaps to two for the evening. ‘I think it’s sweet. But I don’t understand why he needs to hire a professional events planner to do his mom’s birthday.’

  ‘He’s a barrister,’ I replied, batting my hands against the floor. ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘Another goddamn lawyer,’ Lauren muttered. ‘I’m staging an intervention.’

  ‘He’s a barrister and he’s trying to get into your knickers,’ Sarah countered. ‘Just out of interest, what were you wearing at this wedding where you pulled everyone in attendance?’

  ‘He’s engaged!’ I was too tired to shout but I definitely had enough energy to raise my voice over the EastEnders theme tune. ‘It’s nothing! He’s not trying to pull me! This is why I said you couldn’t make a big deal out of it.’

  ‘That means he’s potentially a twat,’ Sarah said. ‘But it doesn’t mean he isn’t into you. Have you told Will? What does he say?’

  I frowned. ‘Nothing much. He just says he’s an arsehole. They don’t get on.’

  ‘Do you think he’s an arsehole?’ Lauren asked.

  I breathed in and breathed out loudly. The sweaty reality of our Come Dancing two minutes had already been through at least twenty-five internal Instagram filters in my brain until it was this epic, intimate moment I would remember forever. The more I replayed it, the more the rough edges wore away, leaving a perfectly polished diamond of a memory.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s nice. He cares about his mum, he’s funny, he’s very thoughtful. He always asks me a lot of questions.’

  Lauren stroked my hair. ‘But—’

  ‘He’s engaged.’ I finished her sentence. ‘I know.’

  ‘I was going to say you’re going out with Will,’ she said, biting her lip, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I muttered, hitting myself in the face with the cushion.

  We all reached for the pizza at the same time.

  ‘Haven’t you got a wedding dress to get into?’ I said, fighting Lauren for the last piece of pepperoni.

  ‘Actually, we don’t have it yet, remember?’ she replied, slapping my hand. ‘And I’m good, I’m at my goal weight. I just need to tone up my arms a little. By lifting my arms to eat the pizza.’

  ‘We order it by Friday the 26th or we don’t order it at all,’ I replied. ‘Easy.’

  ‘My goal weight is four pounds less than this, and then whatever Chris Hemsworth would weigh lying on top of me,’ Sarah said, picking up the bridesmaid dress catalogue that had found its way underneath the pizza box. ‘Oi, Lauren, what about this lilac dress?’

  I picked up the last half-slice and smiled.

  Well, thank God for that.

  It was an evening well spent. After the pizza and the bridesmaid dress decision, we looked at pictures of otters that look like Benedict Cumberbatch and scoured the Internet for flattering swimming costumes to buy for a beach holiday we weren’t going on. By the time Newsnight began, Lauren was leaving in an Uber and Sarah was passed out on my spare bed for the second time this week. Curling up under my duvet, I plugged my phone into the charger and took a last minute turn around the Internet.

  There was an email from Tom.

  Dear Maddie,

  Formal, business-appropriate, weirdly hot.

  Thanks so much for the tour of the venue today. It seems perfect for the party and I would love to go ahead and book for Saturday September 13th.

  So far, so whatever.

  With regards to music, I would be very happy to use a pre-selected playlist. The audio set-up in the venue was quite satisfactory.

  Quite satisfactory? Oh, I am glad.

  I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

  Best,

  Tom Wheeler

  And that was it.

  Seriously, that was it. No ‘Oh, I’m sorry I went the full Strictly on you, wasn’t that terribly inappropriate’ or ‘Well, that was an uncomfortable two minutes of your life you can never get back. LOLZ’. Just a straightforward, slightly too formal email. At least I now know he doesn’t fancy me, I told myself. Just as well since he’s engaged, I’m going out with his friend and we have to work together. But it really did feel a bit, you know. You know.

  Because maybe I do fancy him a little bit.

  Although I obviously don’t. It’s just because he made me dance with him, that’s all. Even though he is funny and quite handsome and has lovely hair and big hands and he danced with me and he’s very tall and clever and loves his mum and oh bollockingbollockingbastard.

  15

  Sunday June 21st

  Today I feel: Murderous.

  Today I am thankful for: Waterproof mascara.

  ‘All right.’ Will rushed me as soon as I opened the door, pushing me up against the wall and kissing me so hard I could taste blood when he pulled away. ‘You look good.’

  Usually I would be very welcoming of this kind of hello. It had been so long since I’d received this kind of welcome that I had been openly encouraging it by way of suggestive text message and one or two potentially regrettable-should-I-ever-choose-to-run-for-office photographs, but my evening with my friends and my Strictly Come Swooning dance-off with Tom had got me thinking. Never a good thing.

  The last month had been fun but I was ready for more than a sexytimes fling and I wanted that ‘more’ with Will. It was time to move our relationship out of the bedroom and into the outside world. And then back into the bedroom again with occasional, but optional, adventures outside.

  ‘Thanks,’ I squeaked as his hand travelled up my thigh and under my skirt. Probably should have put jeans on. My plan would definitely have been easier to execute in jeans. ‘How was work?’

  ‘Boring,’ he replied, rubbing his face in my hair. Jeans on and hair up. ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘You always say that,’ I said, contorting my body so that I was face to face with him. Those eyes … ‘I do want to hear about it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you after.’ He started kissing my neck, hands travelling. Dear God this was difficult. ‘You bum is brilliant. Has anyone ever told you how brilliant your bum is?

  Using all my strength and more willpower than I knew I had, I pushed him gently but firmly away. ‘It hasn’t come up, actually. Can we talk?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Will asked, adjusting his crotch area. ‘Are you pissed off at me or something?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I said, leading him into the living room. ‘I just want to talk. It’s like we never talk.’

  ‘You’re too distracting,’ he said with a sexy smile. ‘It’s your fault.’

  ‘That’s only a little bit threatening,’ I said, ducking under his arm and opening the fridge.
‘Do you want to go and get something to eat? I haven’t got anything in.’

  Will cocked his head to one side, loosened his tie. ‘Maddie, what’s going on?’

  Underneath my bright kitchen lights, I could see how knackered he really was. His stubble was three days deep and he looked exhausted. When I looked tired and had three days of stubble, I looked like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, only less convincing. He looked like a God. Thor, to be exact, without the blond hair. I wondered if I could get him to take off his shirt and swing a hammer around … no. NO.

  We were leaving this flat if it killed me.

  ‘I thought we could nip out to the pub round the corner.’ I picked up my handbag and slung it onto my shoulder with purpose. Immediately knocking a candle off the hall table and onto my foot.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I mumbled, picking it up and clutching it in front of me, all the while trying to look determined. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘We’ll order a takeaway,’ he suggested, taking off his tie. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘The thing is, you’re always tired,’ I said. Nothing like a little bit of boundary pushing on a Sunday evening when your new boyfriend had worked all weekend. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever actually left my flat together.’

  I didn’t think it. I knew it. And it was bothering me.

  ‘If you want me to leave, just say.’ Will rolled his tie up and stuck it in his pocket. ‘I’ve had a shit week, followed by a shit weekend. I’m sorry for wanting to spend time with you, not half the city and their dog.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said automatically, not sure that I was. Or why I was still holding the candle. ‘But don’t you think it’s funny that we don’t go out?’

  Even saying ‘we’ made me feel physically ill. Maybe I didn’t need a boyfriend, maybe I needed a therapist.

  ‘No,’ he said, sticking the tie in his pocket. ‘I can’t do half the things I want to do to you if we go out.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, wrapping my arms around myself. ‘We should be going out?’