Always the Bridesmaid

  ‘I’d better get you a taxi then,’ he said, pulling out the teabag and dropping it in the sink. ‘They usually beep when they’re here, they’re very quick. I’m sure you can let yourself out.’

  Without looking at me even once, he picked up his mug, walked straight out of the kitchen and back into the living room, and closed the door loudly behind him. It wasn’t quite a slam, but there was purpose behind it.

  Grabbing my bag, I hobbled out of the kitchen and down the hallway to fanny around with the eighteen different locks he had on the front door. I didn’t have time for damaged male egos − I had to get to the office and save my rabbits before Shona had them turned into a pink fur coat.

  ‘Oh, Maddie, what happened?’ Sharaline stared over the top of her computer monitor as I limped into the office half an hour later. ‘What’s wrong with your face?’

  ‘There was a thing,’ I muttered, dropping my bag on my desk and ignoring the stares from around the office. ‘I might possibly have completely destroyed any chance I ever had at happiness. But, you know, it’s nothing, I’ve got a lot to do.’

  ‘There have been some calls,’ she said, sloping round to my desk and handing over a handful of paper slips. ‘I can help, though. Shall I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Yeah, please,’ I said, setting the slips down, popping two Nurofen Plus and swallowing them with yesterday’s water. ‘And any make-up you can find. I need to get changed and then see where we’re at with everything, and—’

  ‘The venue cancelled,’ she blurted out. ‘For tomorrow.’

  I turned on her with one wild eye. The other was too swollen to be wild.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They called this morning,’ Sharaline said. ‘Something about permits not coming through in time.’

  ‘We’ve got all the permits. I got all the permits.’ I turned on my computer, barely breathing until I heard the annoying Mac chime and started searching my emails. ‘They’re all here. I did them myself. Exactly what did they say?’

  ‘Just that the permits weren’t received in time,’ she said. ‘And something about the insurance. Let me get you a coffee and we’ll sort it out.’

  It wasn’t possible. I’d double-checked everything we could possibly need and we were insured up the arse. I had alcohol permits, fireworks permits, large gathering permits, animal permits, and I’d cleared the DJ with the noise pollution people. We were insured for fire, flood, thunder, lightning, terrorist attack and any act of God the insurance company could think of. A ninja assassin could storm the party and chop off Andrew Dickenson’s head and I would still be covered. What could they possibly be complaining about?

  ‘I’m going to call them,’ I shouted across the office. ‘By the time you’re back with the coffee, it’ll all be fine. They can’t cancel.’

  Four minutes later, Sharaline placed a venti mocha latte on my desk.

  ‘They cancelled,’ I said. ‘The whole thing is buggered. I’m going to get sacked.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ she said with the kind of confidence that could only come from a twenty-two-year-old with blue hair. ‘We’re going to fix this. We’ll get a new venue, a new caterer and God, I can DJ.’

  I looked up, tears in my eyes. ‘We lost the caterer and the DJ?’

  Sharaline winced. ‘You didn’t read the other notes?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Also, we need to find new rabbits.’

  ‘What happened to my rabbits?’ I whispered.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ she replied, a distasteful look on her face. ‘But they’re gone.’

  My poor, poor rabbits.

  ‘The venue called the vendors and told them they’d cancelled and then they cancelled. I managed to convince the furniture hire people we were moving to another space and that we’d let them know this morning, but the caterers said they couldn’t switch venues last minute.’

  ‘I’ll call them,’ I muttered, trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all. ‘They can do as they’re bloody told.’

  ‘Drink your coffee, read your emails, and then we’ll get started. It’s not impossible, Maddie. You can pull it off.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know what’s given you that impression.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ she said as though I was an idiot for asking. ‘Look at all the stuff you’ve done before. How many times have you saved Shona’s arse?’

  ‘One time I caught her before she tripped and fell into a barbecue pit,’ I replied. ‘I literally saved her arse.’

  ‘You should have pushed her in,’ Sharaline said, sipping her own giant frappuccino. ‘You know, I bet she wouldn’t believe you could do this. Shona would love to see you mess this up.’

  Oh, clever girl.

  ‘Normally, reverse psychology will get you everywhere with me,’ I said. ‘But this is bad.’

  ‘We’ve got an entire day.’ She slammed down her huge, frothy drink and gave me a determined look. ‘And I really want to stick this up Shona’s arse. Tell me what you need me to do.’

  Looking across the desk at her eager young face, I felt like I was looking at myself ten years ago. If I’d been unbelievably pretty and had cool hair and a backbone.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, almost believing it. ‘We can fix it.’

  ‘Yeah, we can,’ she whooped, pumping her fist in the air, before catching the look on my face and lowering it slowly. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘We can fix it,’ I said, pulling out my phone and opening a new email at the same time. ‘But not on our own.’

  If there was one thing guaranteed to take your mind off having your heart ripped out of your chest and shredded into taco meat in front of you, it was a career emergency. Even when I was at my busiest I could still find five minutes to linger over Facebook, but today was a master class in time management. Even when I went for a wee, I was sending emails instead of checking Twitter.

  ‘This place looks great,’ I told Lauren as the furniture hire team pulled up outside the house. ‘You’re a life saver.’

  ‘It’s been on the market forever,’ she said, handing me the keys to the empty house. ‘I think Daddy is pricing it a bit too high. Who knows, maybe someone from the party will like it so much they’ll decide to buy it?’

  ‘Miracles apparently can happen,’ I said, looking round at the space. It was perfect. Maybe even better than the original venue. The downstairs was one huge open-plan space with huge French windows that opened out onto a beautifully landscaped English garden.

  ‘Sharaline is transferring all the insurance and stuff over to this address, so you’re totally covered,’ I said. ‘Not that anything else is going to go wrong.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Lauren said with a shrug. ‘Of course it’s going to be great. Now, other than find you a change of clothes, what else can I do?’

  ‘How are you at filling vol-au-vents?’ Sarah asked, staggering into the house underneath five huge bakery boxes. ‘The cavalry has arrived.’

  If my left eye hadn’t been completely swollen shut, I could have cried.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ I said, taking two of the boxes to reveal my other best friend’s sweaty face. ‘How did you get out of work?’

  ‘I cried and told them I had to see my lawyer,’ she said, dumping the other three boxes on a spare chair. ‘For the first time in ever, this divorce is working for us. Good God, Maddie, what happened to your face?’

  ‘It’s a long story which I will happily share as soon as I’ve spoken to the florist, the lighting design team and the man who is bringing the storks and I’ve finished dip-dyeing two dozen giant rabbits, because that’s all on me now.’

  ‘Stalks?’ Lauren asked, concern crossing her face. ‘Or storks?’

  ‘Let’s get this food into the kitchen, shall we?’ Sarah suggested, pushing her out of the room. ‘Maddie has a lot to do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I mouthed at her as Sharaline bounded through the door.

  ‘This plac
e is fantastic!’ she said, clapping her hands happily. ‘I said you could do it.’

  ‘Save the “I told you so”s for tomorrow,’ I warned. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I’ve called all the guests and couriered out new invitations, all the paperwork has been changed to this address, and the margarita fountain is being delivered at four,’ she said. ‘The florist has been reconfirmed and they’re bringing all the floral arrangements tomorrow morning. Oh, and I’ve got fifty loo rolls in the car. Do you think that’s enough?’

  ‘Unless we give everyone food poisoning, it should be,’ I said, waving the AV guy in.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Sharaline blanched. ‘Did you tell the baby daddies that the caterer cancelled?’

  ‘I did not,’ I replied, flashing back to our very tense phone conversation an hour earlier. ‘Out of everything going on, that’s the last thing they need to worry about, and between you and me, once the crusts are cut off, every single sandwich is the same. Sarah is buying up every M&S in the county. The food will be fine.’

  ‘And the waitresses?’

  ‘I’m pulling in some favours,’ I said. ‘Worst comes to the worst, we’ll put on our pinnies and do it ourselves. It’s only tray passing.’

  Sharaline nodded, standing back as two large men came through the door with a settee on their shoulders.

  ‘It’s going to be the most beautiful, fantastical, spectacular baby-naming party in a pink and peach rose garden without any gluten or balloons ever,’ I said. ‘Even if it kills me.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Sharaline said. ‘If you die, I’ll be on my own with Shona.’

  ‘I’ll give it my best shot,’ I said. ‘I will try not to die.’

  But I was making no promises.

  ‘How long do you think it will take for this pink dye to wash off?’ I asked, staring at my stained cuticles. ‘It’s supposed to be temporary.’

  ‘Are you asking for you or the rabbits?’ Sarah said. ‘That is a vision that will stay with me for a long time.’

  ‘Well, if you will walk into a bathroom without knocking, you should expect to see a woman sitting in the bath in her knickers dyeing white rabbits,’ I replied curtly. ‘Welcome to my life.’

  ‘Have we got any more edible glitter?’ Lauren asked, blowing her hair out of her eyes. ‘I’m almost out.’

  ‘I think that was the last of it,’ Sarah said, combing through the boxes and packets and mixing bowls that covered the kitchen counter. ‘These last few will have to be glitterless. They’ll survive.’

  ‘I honestly don’t think there are enough words to thank you two,’ I said, yawning into my shoulder as I squeezed a perfect rosette of peach icing onto a pink cupcake and passed it down the production line to Lauren. ‘You’ve literally saved my life.’

  ‘We’ve literally saved your job,’ Sarah corrected. ‘And you don’t have to thank us. Just buy us presents instead.’

  ‘I will buy you both a pony,’ I promised. It was almost two a.m. and we’d been sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, icing five hundred gluten-free cupcakes, for the last three hours. Who knew making delicious treats could be so soul-destroying?

  ‘I never want to see a cupcake again,’ Lauren said, flicking a brand new blusher-brush-turned-cupcake-glittering-tool over my icing. ‘Are we having them at the wedding?’

  ‘We were,’ I replied. ‘But I’m swapping them for cookie platters.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Don’t punch me for asking −’ Sarah circled her arm back and forth for a moment, cupcake-decorating RSI setting in, before reaching for the final un-iced bun − ‘but have you heard from Will at all?’

  I shook my head, automatically reaching for my bruised face. ‘Nope,’ I replied. ‘Nothing. Not even a text.’

  ‘What a weasel,’ Lauren breathed. ‘I’m so glad we didn’t include him in the seating plan.’

  I offered a tight smile and carried on frosting.

  ‘You should go to the police,’ Sarah said. ‘Report his bitch girlfriend. It’s not as though you don’t have any evidence.’

  ‘I can’t see how that would help,’ I lied. It would help tremendously. ‘All I want is to forget it ever happened, the whole thing. I wish I’d never met him. His name is officially stricken from the record books.’

  ‘Thank God you didn’t add him on Facebook,’ Lauren said.

  We all nodded at once. Trust lovely Lauren to find a bright side.

  ‘And have you heard from Tom?’ she asked.

  Bloody Lauren, never knew when to keep her mouth shut.

  ‘I haven’t.’ I poked my bruise a little bit harder until it hurt. ‘He can do one as well.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sarah said. ‘How dare the good-looking, tall, lovely man take you back to his palatial mansion and take care of you?’

  ‘If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have got punched in the face in the first place,’ I pointed out. ‘And I wouldn’t have needed taking care of, would I?’

  ‘While I will admit his methods were questionable,’ she said, ‘I don’t think his motives were. I don’t think he’s a bad dude.’

  ‘You don’t think he was using Maddie to get his own back on Will?’ Lauren asked. ‘Because the dude clearly has a grudge against Will the Weasel.’

  ‘No,’ Sarah argued. ‘I think he didn’t want her to blame him. Everyone knows you shoot the messenger. And, you know, bro code. Blokes are weird. Even if they don’t like each other, they won’t throw each other under the bus.’

  ‘Not like women, you mean?’ Lauren commented.

  ‘I just mean he probably wasn’t being malicious or manipulative,’ Sarah said. ‘Imagine that you knew something that would hurt someone you cared about. It’s difficult trying to find the right way to tell them.’

  I shrank into myself, watching Sarah finish icing a cupcake at two in the morning and inadvertently run herself out of a job I hadn’t told her I’d applied for.

  ‘I guess sometimes it’s better not to tell them,’ Lauren admitted, her own guilt all over her face. We’d agreed it was better she keep her Steve stories to herself. Sarah didn’t need to know the tales he’d been telling the boys; it couldn’t help anyone now. ‘I think he was right to stay quiet.’

  ‘While I am enjoying this debate,’ I said, dusting off my hands and staggering to my feet, ‘I think we could probably go home now.’

  ‘If I’d known suggesting you’d overreacted on the Tom front would have got me out of cupcake duties, I would have done it hours ago,’ Sarah said, rolling onto her back and yawning. ‘Because, you know, you did.’

  I kicked her lightly in the boob. ‘You’re not getting a pony.’

  I didn’t need reminding that I’d fucked up. Whatever Tom had done wrong, I shouldn’t have attacked him the way I did. And now it was done, there was no way to take it back. I’d let Will screw me over twice. Quite impressive.

  On the other hand, as I looked over the kitchen, I couldn’t help but be proud of myself, of us. All the food was laid out on trays, ready to be cooked or handed out at the party, the main room was decorated, and every toilet in the entire house was stocked with loo roll. Other than a boyfriend who wasn’t shagging an almost supermodel behind my back and a client whose crush had led me to getting punched in the face, what more could a girl ask for?

  21

  Seven hours after I’d left, I arrived back at the house showered, changed and wearing more make-up than all five Kardashian sisters combined. There was no way to completely cover the black eye, but at least the swelling had gone down and I could actually see.

  Sharaline had beat me to the venue and was already showing the floral designers into the back garden with their buckets of rose bushes. She gave me a wave, tapped at her headset to let me know she was online, and carried on. That girl was a star. I took back every bad thing I had ever said about her. Apart from the stuff about her name.

  As soon as the party was over today, and as long as I got through Lauren’s b
ridal shower alive tomorrow, I would call Tom, and then I would settle down to work out how I could ruin Will’s life.

  Like I said, priorities.

  ‘Hey.’ Sharaline materialized in front of me, iPad in hand. ‘Great job on the face.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Is it fleek?’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’ She looked away awkwardly for a second before pointing over at the kitchen. ‘Did you get everything sorted with the rabbits?’

  ‘They’re in a very spacious and luxurious holding pen in the shed with all the carrots they could ask for,’ I nodded, holding up my still tinted hands. ‘And they’re all pink.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Is it OK, you know, dyeing rabbits for a children’s party?’

  ‘I called PETA and they said that it sounded morally questionable, but as long as the animals weren’t being harmed there wasn’t anything they could do,’ I shrugged. ‘So, yes.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Right.’ I clapped my hot pink hands together, fuelled by the energy of four hours’ sleep and three shots of espresso. ‘I’ll go and check on the storks and the rabbits. Can you look after the margarita fountain?’

  She saluted and headed off into the garden. Watching her go, I really did feel as though I was watching myself, only ten years younger. And wearing clothes that would have made me look like a deranged bag lady. And with blue hair. So, not that much like me at all but still, it was nice to be the one giving directions and having someone follow instead of the other way around.

  By midday, everything looked amazing. The main room was all decked out in fairy lights and there were flowers everywhere, but nothing cheesy or garish or ridiculous. Outside, the gardens were an absolute wonderland, although not the Disney kind because nothing was cheesy or garish or tacky. The food all looked delicious, our cupcakes passable, the band I’d hired had, for an extra hundred quid, agreed to wear peach lounge suits with pink ties, which was slightly tacky and garish, but they looked amazing so I didn’t care. Comfy sofas and overstuffed armchairs were dotted between the pink and peach rose bushes and a pretty flower-entwined fence kept two dozen powder-puff-pink bunnies away from the five real-life storks that were patrolling the pond.