* * *
—
Lola and I carried our bags upstairs and walked along the winding corridors until we reached a twin room with our names written on a sign in swirly glitter glue.
“He’s still online,” Lola said, throwing her bag on the bed and staring at her phone screen. “I mean—what woman has the time to sit on WhatsApp all day talking to him endlessly? It’s an uneconomic use of time. They should just meet up and shag.”
“What man does, Lola? Don’t blame the woman.”
“True. Also, I think he might be spreading it out. I think there might be a handful on rotation, so they each get a few hours of his time per day on a schedule.”
“Wow, what a treat for them,” I said, scraping my hair back off my face into a topknot. “I’m so gutted to be a straight woman. It’s all just so gutting.”
“LADIEEEEES!” we heard Franny wail from downstairs. “Time for some fizz!”
“Fizz,” I said. “That word is only ever used in a room of women who all secretly hate each other.”
“Oh, Nina, cheer up.”
“If today is terrible can we leave early tomorrow? Can I make up a reason for us and we can leave?”
“Yes, but try to be nice. Remember you’re doing this for Joe.”
* * *
—
Downstairs, the other twenty-three women were all milling around the kitchen. Franny was fussily pouring supermarket prosecco into everyone’s glasses and Lucy was sitting on a dining chair with a gold crown on her head and a huge badge on her chest that said the hen.
“Nina!” she said, standing as she saw me. “And Lola! Aw, so glad you’re here, lovely girls.” She pulled us both in for a three-way hug. “This is a new hairdo,” she said, pointing at my topknot. “Love it, very practical.”
“Happy hen do!” I said. “Are you having a lovely time?”
“Yes! Have you met my very bestie, Franny?” She beckoned Franny over, who brought two glasses for us.
“Yes, she’s been such a superstar organizing everything,” Lola said.
“She’s the greatest,” Lucy said, putting her arm around her. “So organized. Führer Franny we used to call her at school!”
Franny was beaming, standing with extraordinary posture, her back overly arched in a balletic way.
“How do you all know each other?” Franny asked.
“So, Lola and Nina are university friends of Joe’s,” Lucy said. “Nina is actually going to be an usher at the wedding!”
“How funny!” Franny said. “A girl usher. Why weren’t you a bridesmaid instead?”
“Oh, because she’s Joe’s best friend,” Lucy said breezily. “Besides, Nina’s not very into dresses and things, are you?”
“Right, I think it’s time for our next activity, Lulu,” Franny said, clapping her hands together.
I took a big gulp of prosecco and held my breath, but it made no difference—when would I be allowed to stop drinking this thin, sour, fruity venom of terrible parties and terrible conversation?
“EVERYBODY!” she shouted suddenly, pulling up a chair and standing on it in an entirely unnecessary gesture of a town crier. “QUIET, EVERYONE! If you could each take a chair and arrange them in a semi-circle. We’re going to ask our hen to sit in the middle of us and we’re all going to make a collage of her! We’ve got lots of different materials and pencils and chalks for you to play with here, so just have some fun with it and we’ll see what we come up with!”
“Are we all doing one big collage?” one woman asked.
“No, no,” Franny said with slight panic, as if the whole plan was already coming apart. “No, ONE COLLAGE EACH. EVERYONE, LISTEN. ONE COLLAGE EACH. There’s plenty of paper for everyone.”
“What’s Lucy going to do with twenty-four collages of herself?” I asked Lola under my breath.
“Wallpaper her downstairs loo?” she replied.
I laughed and swallowed some prosecco the wrong way, which made me splutter.
“Oh dear, you all right, Nina?” Franny said from on high.
“Yes, fine, sorry.”
We dutifully assembled in a semi-circle around Lucy, who showed not a shred of self-consciousness at being stared at by twenty-four women as their subject. I have yet to encounter a more widely acceptable exercise of extreme narcissism than that of being the protagonist of a hen do.
“So sorry, can I just ask one more question?” one of the women asked.
“Yes?” Franny said impatiently.
“Is the collage just of Lucy’s face and body or is it more us…capturing her personality?”
“It’s whatever you’d like it to be—it can be symbolic and abstract or it can just be a straight, observational piece,” Franny said while handing out pieces of dry penne and glue. “Here you go,” she said, passing me a handful of pasta and a few feathers. “For texture.” Lola’s cowboy boot pushed against the edge of my trainer to suppress a deadly bout of laughter.
If the activity itself wasn’t humiliating enough, we had to stand up and present our collages to the group and give an explanation of its artistry and meaning. While each woman stood up and spoke fawningly about Lucy’s kindness and beauty represented by cut-up bits of magazines and doilies, Lola and I descended steadily and surely into drunkenness, digging the edges of our shoes further into each other as we went.
“Right, so mine’s a map of Surrey,” I said, pointing at the tangle of wobbly crayon lines on a big piece of pink cardboard. “Because you’re from Surrey, and you’re getting married in Surrey.” Lucy smiled. “Which I copied from Google Maps. And I’ve written all the towns, you see,” I said, holding it close to everyone’s faces as I moved around the semi-circle. “And next to each town I’ve done a different type of shoe, because you really like shoes. So, look, there’s a mule next to Dorking and a stiletto next to Bagshot and a big boot next to Egham and a flip-flop next to Chertsey and a—”
“Aw, really lovely,” Franny said, before silently signalling at the heavily pregnant woman next to me that it was her turn to present her collage. I sat back down in my chair. She heaved herself up and stood in the centre with her large, heart-shaped collage.
“So, my name is Ruth, for anyone who doesn’t know me already, and this is a bit of an in-joke!” she said, turning it to Lucy who immediately covered her face with her hands in pretend horror. “I happen to know Joe and Lucy’s nicknames for each other are…”
“Badger and Horse!” Franny finished competitively.
“Yes!” Lucy said. Everyone fell about laughing.
“Why Badger and Horse?” one of the women asked.
“It’s so silly, it’s because for our one-monthaversary dinner I had got a bad highlights job that day and when I turned up he said I looked like a badger!”
“And why Horse?” Lola asked.
“Oh, because he eats like a horse,” Lucy said.
“What’s a monthaversary?” I asked. Everyone ignored me.
“So that’s why I’ve drawn a little badger and a little horse as a bride and groom,” Ruth said, showing everyone her drawing. There was a collective saccharine sound of approval and a round of applause.
Monthaversary dinner. In seven years of Joe and I going out, I don’t think he remembered our actual anniversary once. How did these women do it? What was their secret? What unexpected, mystical orifice on their body did they allow these men entry to that in turn made them do whatever unreasonable thing they wanted? Or was it that they simply told them what to do and when to do it, and the imposed restriction of choice made their boyfriends feel safely shepherded rather than ready for slaughter? Had I been treating men too much like adults and not enough like little directionless lambs?
We were instructed by Franny to stay in our seats for the next activity, which was one I was, regrettably, familiar wi
th. A ceremony of heteronormativity; a coronation of sovereign naffness; a whooping, winking ritual of humiliation lacking irony, decency and taste: the knicker game. “Think we’ll need some more fizz for this!” Franny said, disappearing into the larder where I had now realized no one else was granted access.
“There isn’t enough fizz in the world to get me through this,” I whispered to Lola.
“Right,” Franny bellowed. “I thought it would be fun if, while we were playing the knicker game, we all did a reading from”—she picked up a paperback and showed the cover to the group—“How to Please Your Husband!” It was a title all women of my generation were familiar with. A definitive 1970s manual on marriage that may have been on our mothers’ shelves in earnest but had since been claimed by us in satire. The group made groaning sounds of recognition while they sat back in their seats. “For anyone unfamiliar with the knicker game,” Franny said, while dispensing more dribbles of prosecco in our glasses, “Lucy opens this big box, filled with the knickers you’ve all bought her, and she has to guess who bought each pair.”
“What happens to the knickers at the end?” Ruth asked.
“Landfill,” I said.
“No!” Franny said, with a sarcastically appeasing tone. “They go in her trousseau!”
“What’s a trousseau?” I asked.
“It’s what a bride takes away on her honeymoon,” Lola said.
“Twenty-four pairs of knickers?”
“Yes!” said Franny. “Well, you’ll probably be needing a lot!” Everyone cheered at this meaningless innuendo. Prudes love innuendo.
“What have I bought her?” I asked Lola from the side of my mouth.
“You bought her some purple lacy French knickers that were a two-for-one offer with the leopard-print ones I got.”
“Lovely,” I said. “Thank you.”
Lucy sat back in the middle of the semi-circle and adjusted her crown. She was presented with a large box.
“How to please your husband,” Franny warbled. “A checklist. Number one: make sure the house is clean and tidy when he gets home, that dinner is in the oven and you are in a gay and pleasant mood.”
“Gay and pleasant mood!” Lucy squawked. “Joe’s lucky if he gets a hello!” She plunged her hand into the box and pulled out a black satin thong. Everyone made the ooh-ing noises of a daytime chat-show audience. “Now, who could this be?” She scoured the room with narrowed detective eyes. “Someone a little bit naughty.”
“But classy!” Franny chipped in.
“Yes, definitely classy. I think it’s…” She caught the coy smile of a woman wearing a felt fedora hat indoors. “Eniola!”
“Yes!” Eniola exclaimed. “I chose them because I thought they captured your elegance, but also the fact you’ve got a bit of a dark side.” Everyone made perplexing sounds of agreement. Lucy with the dark side. Lucy who once offered me a mug with paris is always a good idea written on it when I was at her flat; Lucy who owned a Ragdoll cat named Sergeant Flopsy; Lucy who had all the dark side of the Milkybar Kid.
“Lovely,” Franny concluded, passing the book to Lola. “Your turn to read.”
“Number two,” Lola read in her best Speech and Drama voice. “Make sure you hide all your sanitary products (used and unused) and dirty undergarments out of the eyeline of your beloved.” This divided the room into two camps of horror—those appalled at this domestic anachronism and those appalled simply by the thought of used sanitary products. I remembered, suddenly, that afternoon in 2013 when I thought I had lost a tampon while wearing it and Joe had had to spread me open on our bed and shine his iPhone torch inside me. My muscle tissue twinged at the memory of this impossible intimacy.
“Who could these be from?” Lucy said, swinging a yellow gingham thong from her fingers. “Wholesome, bit naughty…Lola?”
“No!” Lola said.
“DRINK!” Franny shouted, showcasing her professional vibrato. Lucy took a delicate sip of her prosecco.
“Hmm, let me think.” She looked at the knickers, then up at the circle. “I think it might be Lilian.”
A woman grinned proudly. “Yes! How did you guess?”
“I don’t know!” Lucy said. “I suppose because they’re quite sunshiney and you’re quite a sunshiney person.” Lola passed the book to Lilian.
“How to please your husband, tip number three,” she read. “Don’t bother him with emotions. If something is upsetting you, speak to your girlfriends. Women are good for talking things through, whereas men are straightforward problem-solvers.”
“Well, I’ve certainly earned my stripes as your friend there!” Franny laughed. I saw, for a nanosecond, something in Lucy’s eyes that looked murderous, before she forced herself into a guffaw. She pulled out a pair of purple knickers and Lola nodded to let me know they were my offering.
“Oooh, purple,” Lucy said. “Lacy, very nice. French knickers which, as it happens, are my favourite type of knickers. So it must be someone who knows me very well. Is it…Franny?”
“No! Drink!” she yelped robotically, like one of those talking baby dolls that had only three phrases. “Remember, it might be the last person you expect!”
Lucy’s face immediately turned to me. “Nina?” she asked tentatively.
“Yes,” I said. There was some inexplicable applause.
“See! I told you! The one you least expect!” Franny said, her face glowing in self-satisfaction. “It happens every time I play the knicker game.”
“Well, I bought these for you, Lucy, because I’ve always thought of you as being very…” I looked at Lola for help. “French, actually.”
“I love France,” Lucy said. “I’m a real Francophile.”
“Yes, I thought you might be. And also I thought you were quite…flammable.”
There was a pause while Lucy tried to make sense of me.
“Forever the writer, Nina!” she said with a laugh.
I excused myself from the room, saying I had to nip to the loo and instead went upstairs to my room.
* * *
—
“Where the fuck did you fuck off to?” Lola said, standing over my bed an hour later.
“Sorry, it was making me feel bleak. That book. I know it was meant to be funny, but I just couldn’t bear to hear any more. The way it described jollying your husband along into fancying you like forcing sulky children to eat their vegetables. I didn’t think anyone would notice. Did you only just finish that game?”
“Yeah,” she sighed and flopped on to the single bed next to me. She took her phone out of its charger and stared at the screen.
“Online?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said sadly. “Why isn’t he outside? This is the first winter sunshine we’ve had in ages, he should be enjoying it, not wanking on WhatsApp to all and sundry.”
There was a knock at the door. Franny peered her head into the room.
“Everything okay, Nina? We missed you for the end of the knicker game.”
“Yes, sorry, Franny, had a bit of a headache.”
“Maybe take a break from the fizz this evening,” she said, screwing up her face with false concern.
“Mmm,” I replied.
“So, we’re all going to have a little downtime then back downstairs for dinner in an hour.”
“Great!” Lola said with what seemed like genuine verve. “I can’t believe it’s six o’clock already!”
“I know,” Franny said. “Time passes so fast at the moment, doesn’t it? I don’t know about you but these days I feel like I wake up on Monday morning then I blink and it’s Friday.”
“I have the same!” Lola said. I watched this back-and-forth of empty phrases purpose-built for a female vocabulary to make everyone feel comfortable. Lola was so skilled at it—it never made her feel silly. When there was an awkward p
ause in conversation in the pub, she could state, “There’s nothing like a cold beer,” without irony. I once heard her say to my mother, “Photos are such a great way of capturing memories, aren’t they?” at a family party and Mum positively shone from the effort of this banality then glared at me, wondering why I had never been capable of the same. I didn’t know whether this was learnt behaviour as little girls, or whether it was in our DNA—passed from generation to generation of women who have entertained husbands’ colleagues and impressed boyfriends’ friends and arranged platter after platter of crudités and dips. The Nothing Like A Cold Beer gene.
“I think we’re the only single ones here,” Lola said after Franny left, turning over so she lay on her stomach.
“Where, this party? Surrey? Earth?”
“All of the above.”
“I like being single,” I said. “I’m not sad to be single. I’m sad to be without Max.”
“Try doing it for over a decade.”
“What do you think they talk about?”
“Who?”
“Lucy and Joe. I’m trying to remember what Joe and I talked about when we were together, and I can’t imagine him and Lucy having the same conversations.”
“I don’t know, I haven’t seen them talking together all that much.”
“I have, but when I do, it’s always about practical things. What time they’re leaving, where they parked the car. When they should set off in the morning to get to someone’s parents’ house. It’s like their bond is reliant on the organization of things.”
“Maybe that’s what they both want.”
“Joe and I never talked about the organization of things. Or if we did it was just me telling him off for being useless. He must have been so unhappy with me if this is what he wanted.”
“He probably didn’t know what he wanted until he was told it was what he wanted.” Both of our phones were letting off loud dings. It was the LUJOE HENS! group, sending photos from the afternoon’s activities and desperately trying to erect a castle of in-jokes and catchphrases from the paltry few bricks of this weekend’s experience.
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