‘Tell me about it, it’s like going back to the bloody Middle Ages. Instead of exchanging rings, they might as well just get a branding iron with the groom’s family name on it and tell the bride to drop her knickers and bend over.’
‘I know, right?’ He smiled. ‘Heh. You notice what just happened?’
‘What?’
‘We agreed on something.’
Bridie couldn’t help smiling too. ‘I suppose we did. I wouldn’t get used to it though.’
‘Perhaps that’s the secret. We can only get along when we’re agreeing what a sucker everyone else is for sticking their necks in the noose.’
‘And here’s the ultimate irony: we’ve just been appointed best man and maid of honour at our nearest and dearest’s upcoming nuptials. Architects of our own misery, right?’
‘Well, as long as it keeps them happy. Cal’s promised me he’s only doing this once.’
‘Hattie said the same. Fingers crossed they’re one of the two in three that make it, eh?’
‘If anyone’s going to, it’s those two.’
‘Yeah, I know. Sickening, aren’t they?’
‘Excruciatingly.’ Ben sipped his champagne. ‘Cal was always going to be the marrying type though; he used to arrange ceremonies for his Action Men. Hattie’ll be good for him. Plus she isn’t Joanna Fitzroy, which is a definite plus.’
‘At the risk of inflating your already blimp-sized ego by agreeing with you twice in as many minutes, you’re right there.’ Bridie squinted at him. ‘Why did you always dislike Joanna so much?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t like phonies. I don’t think I ever heard a sincere word come out of that woman’s mouth. She was like the anti-Bridie or something.’
‘Thanks. I think.’
‘I mean, insofar as you never let a little thing like good manners get in the way of saying exactly what you’re thinking.’ He topped up their glasses. ‘You didn’t like her either. Did you?’
‘No. I’m not sure why, she was pleasant enough. It just felt like she could never quite conceal the fact she was bored in your company.’
‘No surprise she made a career out of showing people how to hide their true faces,’ Ben said, his lip curling. ‘She was always an expert at that.’
‘See, this is what I don’t get,’ Bridie said. ‘Yeah, I never took to her, but you really didn’t like her. Why do you feel so strongly about it?’
‘Because it was my brother, wasn’t it? Cal’s the best lad I know – I mean, obviously don’t tell him I said that. He deserved better than someone like her.’
She smiled. ‘You know, Ben, for all your many faults, you’re a pretty good big brother.’
He lifted one eyebrow. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I heard that correctly. Was that… did you just pay me a compliment?’
‘No. I was just… giving credit where it was due, that’s all. On Cal’s behalf, not mine.’
‘Waiter!’ he called, waving to Pete behind the bar. ‘Can you send over a dozen oysters, some monkey glands and a dash of powdered rhino horn please? This date’s definitely taken a turn.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment and this isn’t a date,’ Bridie hissed. She grabbed his arm and pushed it down again. ‘Stop that. There might be people I know in here.’
‘Can you say it again for me? I want to commit it to memory, so I can moon over it in private forever.’ He sighed dreamily. ‘The day Bridie Morgan paid me a compliment. I’m marking it down in my diary.’
‘God, I hate you.’
He grinned. ‘You love to hate me. Admit it.’
‘No, I actually do just hate you. Sadly though, I also need you right now.’
He nodded. ‘We all have needs. You want a bit of that powdered rhino horn to go before we head off to my place?’
‘Stop, can you? I’ve got better things to do with my Saturday night than sit here listening to your crap fake flirting.’
‘Really?’ He sipped his drink. ‘Then what did you turn up for?’
Bridie smothered a smile. ‘Enough, Ben.’ She leaned down to get a notepad and biro from her bag. ‘So come on, what ideas have you got?’
He opened the notes app on his phone. ‘All right. Go-karting.’
‘That’s a no.’
‘Paintballing.’
‘Another no.’
‘Zipwiring.’
‘Absolutely not. Hattie’s scared of heights.’
‘Weekend in Magaluf?’
‘I bloody knew it,’ she muttered. ‘No, again.’
‘So this planning meeting-slash-date is actually just going to be you vetoing all my ideas, is it?’ Ben asked.
‘No, only the shit ones,’ Bridie said, shrugging. ‘It’s not my fault they’re all shit ones.’
‘Well, what’ve you got then?’
‘OK.’ She flicked to another page in her notepad. ‘Creating our own tea sets at that pottery-painting café in town.’
‘Christ.’
‘Punting weekend in Cambridge.’
‘Ugh.’
‘Spa holiday at a stately home?’
‘I think I just spontaneously sprouted a pair of ovaries.’
‘We could do a murder mystery weekend in fancy dress.’
‘Yeah, OK. Or we could just scream “KILL ME NOW” in unison into the void of our own despair for forty-eight solid hours.’
‘Jesus, this is hard work.’ Bridie looked up from her notepad. ‘There must be something we all like.’
He shrugged. ‘Strippers?’
‘We do not all like strippers, Ben. Or not the same-shaped ones anyway.’
‘All right, how about clay pigeon shooting or something like that?’
She lifted an eyebrow. ‘You really think the two of us ought to be in the same vicinity as a fuckload of guns?’
He reached over to pat her hand. ‘I’d never shoot you, Bride. There’s far too much entertainment value in you.’
‘Mmm. You say the sweetest things.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I can’t see Hat going for that. What else do we all enjoy?’
‘We all like a good night out. Why don’t we just do a bar crawl somewhere? We could go down to Blackpool for the weekend, hit a few bars, a club, maybe a casino. It’s the Vegas of the North, you know.’
Bridie’s pencil hovered thoughtfully over her notepad. ‘I suppose that’s not a terrible idea. Plenty to do in Blackpool, whatever your tastes.’
‘It’s a great idea. Lots of fun for boys and girls. Plus, if we’re going in October that means the illuminations will be on.’
‘Right, so they will. They’d make a pretty impressive backdrop for our bad behaviour.’
Ben grinned. ‘Go on, admit it. I had the best idea.’
‘It’s not a competition, Ben.’
‘Right. But I won though, didn’t I?’
‘I feel like I’m on a date with a twelve-year-old,’ Bridie muttered.
‘Aha!’ Ben jabbed a finger at her across the table. ‘You just called it a date.’
‘That was… a slip of the tongue.’
He folded his arms with an air that told her there’d be no living with him now. ‘Nope. You said we were on a date. You, Bridie Morgan, are on a date with me, Ben Kemp. That is a competition, and I definitely won it.’
‘And now it’s over.’ She finished her drink, stood up and threw her handbag over her shoulder.
He looked up at her. ‘Is that it? Are we done?’
‘Yep. Apparently we’re going to Blackpool. Because you won.’
‘Well all right, but I was kind of hoping we might…’ He nodded to the bottle of champagne. ‘I mean, aren’t you going to help me finish this?’
‘I’m sure you can recruit some other female company to drink my share. You usually do.’
‘Yes, but… what about the rest of the planning? We’ll need to make a guest list, hire a coach, get T-shirts made, all that kind of thing. Not to mention booking the strippers.’
‘We are not having stripp
ers.’
‘Hey, we’ll be fair and equitable about it. One for the ladies, one for the gents. That’s what you call feminism in action, right?’
‘Yeah, if you get your definition of feminism from the articles in Playboy.’
‘Playboy has articles?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Bye, Benjamin.’
‘Come on, Bride, don’t go. There’s still a lot to sort out here.’ He shot her what he probably thought was a winning smile. ‘Sit down and have another drink with me. I’ll behave, I promise.’
‘We can talk through the details another time, when I’ve replenished my cringe faculty a bit. Right now, I’m going home to put my pyjamas on and watch Strictly on iPlayer.’
‘You really won’t stay?’
‘Nope. I’ll see you soon, Ben. Unfortunately,’ she muttered to herself as she walked away.
Eleven
Cal was waiting for Ben outside Messington Climbing Barn some weeks later when his phone rang. His brother always took ages to get changed after their regular Thursday climbing session, with his mysterious and elaborate grooming rituals. Apparently it took a lot of time to look as fashionably scruffy as Ben.
‘Hiya, Hat,’ he said when he answered the call. ‘What’s up?’
‘I just wanted to check you were ready for tonight,’ Hattie said. ‘Does Pete know what he’s got to do?’
‘Yes, we’ve synchronised watches.’
‘All right, talk me through the plan. Just so I know you’ve got it down.’
‘OK, so Ben and me arrive at the Garter at approximately 7pm,’ Cal said. ‘At 7.33 precisely, Pete’s going to come over and ask if I can help him shift a barrel down in the cellar in exchange for a free pint. Ben’s going to offer to do it in my place because he’s so obsessively macho, I’m going to talk him out of it. I’ll go with Pete, leaving my phone on the table. At 7.39, you’re going to text and tell me I need to ring you urgently. Ben will see it and come find me to let me know. Pete will have locked the door from the bar to the cellar, forcing Ben to go round to the delivery doors outside. Let’s estimate the whole thing from your text to delivery doors will take him about five minutes. So at around 7.44, that’s when me and Pete start loudly discussing Bridie’s secret feelings for him. We’ll just have to trust to the fact he’s too vain to walk away when he hears people talking about him.’
‘I think when it comes to your brother, we can count on that,’ Hattie said. ‘OK, it sounds like you’ve planned it all out with military precision. Well done, sweetie. And don’t worry, I won’t forget my part.’
‘When will you and the girls work the same trick on Bride?’
‘We’re going to do it on the D of E trip next month. There ought to be ample opportunities there. Did you find out if it is Ben they’re sending from Grand Adventures?’
‘Yeah, it’s him,’ Cal said. ‘Lady Luck seems to be smiling on our devious plans. I don’t think it’s occurred to Ben that Bridie might be one of the supervising teachers, her not being an outdoorsy sort.’
‘It hadn’t occurred to her either until that bastard Duxbury press-ganged us all into it.’ Hattie paused. ‘She is a bit outdoorsy though, isn’t she? She told me she was a D of E alumnus.’
‘Only because she fancied Ben. She never had any interest in going outside until she heard he’d signed up for the scheme.’
Hattie laughed. ‘Ah, I see. I was wondering how someone as incurably lazy as Bride ended up trekking over miles of countryside. Well, let’s just hope we can reunite the childhood sweethearts on their next expedition together.’
‘The lengths we go to for love, eh?’ Cal said, smiling. ‘A right couple of Cupids we are.’
‘It’s only fair to pay it forward. God, Cal, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see those two as happy as we are?’
Cal laughed. ‘If they don’t end up throttling each other first.’
‘I feel sort of bad lying to them though, don’t you?’
‘It’s a half-lie really. They do have feelings for each other; that’s pretty plain. The only part we’re making up is claiming we’ve heard them confess it.’ He glanced towards the climbing barn. ‘I’d better go, love – he’ll be out any minute. I’ll come over later and tell you how it went.’
As Cal ended the call, a message popped up in Facebook Messenger. He blinked at it.
Long time no see, babes!!! Fancy a catch-up? It’s been far too long x
Joanna. OK, that was kind of unexpected. The date on the message before this one was over three years ago: her to him again, just a generic celebration GIF in honour of his twenty-fifth birthday. What was with the interest in catching up all of a sudden?
Relations between Cal and his ex had always been amicable enough. They often liked each other’s Facebook posts, and occasionally commented on them. Not friends exactly, but cordial online acquaintances. Cal had wished Jo well on her recent wedding to the actor chap, Conrad, and she’d congratulated him on his engagement. It was all very grown up. But private messages were a rarity now they’d both moved on with their lives.
Cal had noticed Jo liking his posts more often after she’d shared that old photo of the two of them. Was that behind the sudden desire for a catch-up? His recent posts had mainly been about the big, and very adult, changes coming up in his life – the wedding in four months, and Hattie moving into his place in six weeks’ time. Perhaps that and her own recent wedding had got Jo nostalgic for the days when they were just two young people with their whole lives ahead of them. Cal had been feeling a bit like that himself, if he was being brutally honest: excited about his future with Hattie, naturally, but wistful, in some ways, for his youth. Anyway, he was flattered that amidst the wealth, celebrity and glamour of her current lifestyle, Joanna still occasionally found the time to think of him.
Just off out, he replied. Later though?
I actually meant in person. Con and me will be over your way soon. I’ve got a speaking gig up in York. How about we grab a coffee: us two, you and Hattie? x
That sounded nice and civilised. He’d noticed Hattie always went a bit quiet whenever Joanna was mentioned, but Cal was sure they’d get on fine once the ice had been broken. He glanced at Ben, who was finally approaching from the climbing barn, and tapped a quick message back.
Sure, sounds good. Text when you’re in the area.
He stuffed his phone into his pocket before Ben asked who he was messaging. Cal knew his brother wouldn’t approve. He couldn’t stand Joanna, for reasons Cal had never been able to work out. OK, Jo was an acquired taste in some ways, but Ben’s dislike of her seemed stronger than her quirks really warranted.
‘You took your time,’ he said.
‘Hey, it takes a lot of effort to look this beautiful,’ Ben said, running a hand through his dark curls. ‘Where are we going for a drink then? We could try that new craft ale place.’
‘Let’s go to the Garter. Then if we decide to stay for another pint or two, you can leave the Audi in the car park till tomorrow and walk back to yours.’
‘Right, so we’re making it a session, are we?’
‘I need to make the most of these boys’ nights while I’m still a single man, don’t I?’ Cal said, shrugging.
Ben smiled. ‘Get it while you’re young, eh? Come on then.’
At the pub, they ordered a couple of pints and claimed a table. Cal took out his phone and put it down in front of him.
‘Expecting a call?’ Ben said.
‘Hmm?’ Cal glanced up. ‘Oh. No, just keeping an eye on the time.’
‘What for?’
‘Just… you know, so I know what time it is. So, how go the Sten plans?’
‘Ugh, that sounds so wrong,’ Ben said, grimacing. ‘It’s not even a real word. I can’t believe you’re not letting us have a proper stag.’
Cal grinned. ‘We can always have one when you get married, eh?’
‘Ha! What a comedian.’
‘It won’t be so bad having girls there, will i
t? You love girls.’
‘Well yes, in specific contexts.’ Ben took a glum sip of his pint. ‘I won’t even be able to enjoy the ones I do hit it off with, with Bridie glaring at me disapprovingly the whole time.’
‘Been seeing a lot of our maid of dishonour, have you?’
‘More than I can stomach. I wish she’d take that lemon-sucking look off her face whenever she’s with me and lighten up. I know it’s hard to believe, but Bridie can be a great laugh when once in a blue moon she actually lets herself go a bit.’
‘I know she can. Where are we going for this Sten do anyway?’
‘Can’t tell you that. Me and Bride decided it ought to be a surprise. You guys just have to pile into the coach and trust we’re taking you somewhere good.’
‘Ooh, is it a spa weekend?’ Cal said, brightening. ‘I’ve always wanted to try one of those hot rock massages.’
Ben shook his head. ‘Mate, you’ve been spending too much time with Hattie. I mean, do you actually have a vagina of your own now or what?’
‘You know you’d secretly enjoy it, hanging out in the hot tub drinking Grolsch,’ Cal said. ‘Aren’t you glad Bridie’s going? Hattie told me about your veranda smooching at her party.’
‘That was entirely fuelled by alcohol and her arse in that Catwoman costume. I can take no responsibility for my actions.’ Ben frowned. ‘You didn’t tell her that was me, did you?’
‘Course not. I’m famed for minding my own business, especially where your sex life is concerned.’ Cal took a sip of beer. ‘You ought to tell her though.’
Ben snorted. ‘Yeah, right. I’m actually quite attached to my testicles, thanks.’
‘Well, what did you do it for if you don’t want her to know it was you?’
‘Because…’ He hesitated. ‘Dunno, she was just being all nice to me. I mean, that hasn’t happened since before I started shaving. I got carried away by the novelty of it.’ He stared thoughtfully into his pint. ‘Did you know she was still upset about that night at school?’
‘I guessed she was, yeah. Didn’t you?’
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