In Case You Missed It

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘But we are inside,’ Adrian protested, wiping a raindrop from his face.

  ‘Inside the house,’ I clarified, helping Lucy to her feet and shuffling a pair of flip-flops onto her feet. ‘Come on! We need to go before—’

  A huge chunk of my white plastic ceiling crashed to the floor, right beside Sumi’s head.

  ‘I’m up, I’m up!’ she shrieked, rolling off the settee and onto the floor. Draping Lucy’s arm over my shoulder, I propped up my pregnant friend, Adrian waiting with my cagoule held over his head as another piece of ceiling tile cracked loudly and fell onto the bed, the heavens opening onto my mattress.

  ‘Grab the phones!’ Adrian screamed as Sumi unplugged her own from the wall charger. ‘No man left behind!’

  ‘I’ve got them, I’ve got them,’ she yelled, holding four black phones aloft and hoisting her enormous tote bag onto her shoulder.

  We rushed across the garden as quickly as we could given the size of Lucy, the protection of the cagoule doing absolutely nothing for anyone. I half expected to see an ark sailing down the neighbour’s driveway at any minute.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I thought the shed was quite cute,’ Lucy said, looking back sadly as the rest of the roof gave up the ghost, and water rushed out the front door.

  ‘Was being the operative word in that sentence,’ Sumi replied, hammering down on the locked back door as loudly as she could. ‘Let us in!’

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I heard Dad trill as he strolled through the kitchen with a steaming mug in his hand. ‘What’s the emergency?’

  ‘The emergency is the death trap you built for me just collapsed,’ I said, falling through the door, more puddle than person. I scraped my soaking hair back from my face to see Mum peering at us from the hallway, the cordless phone up to her ear.

  ‘My beautiful shed,’ Dad gasped, fingertips pressing lightly against the kitchen window. ‘My poor, beautiful shed.’

  ‘Your poor, wet-through daughter and her nearly concussed sodden friends,’ I corrected. Sumi began filling the kettle while Adrian sat Lucy at the kitchen table. I pulled four mugs out of the cupboard and popped a teabag in each. A proper brew, the answer to all of life’s crises. ‘We could have died, Dad. The roof collapsed onto the bed.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have killed you,’ he said sadly, watching as my waterlogged copy of Starting Over sailed downstream towards his alpine rockery. ‘Wasn’t heavy enough. Worst-case scenario would have been a broken leg.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ I replied loudly, glaring at the back of his head as Mum walked into the kitchen, phone pressed to her chest, knuckles white around the handset. ‘I’m sure Lucy and her unborn child are relieved.’

  ‘Morning, Mrs Reynolds,’ Adrian said, pulling out a chair. She sank into it wordlessly. ‘We nearly died but everything’s fine now. You look radiant this morning …’

  ‘Nearly died,’ Dad scoffed under his breath before narrowing his eyes at my friend. ‘Adrian, did you fiddle with the roof?’

  ‘That was the tennis club on the phone,’ Mum said before Adrian could reply. Her face was ashen. ‘They’re completely flooded. They say there’s no way they can have it up and running again by this afternoon.’

  I bit my lip as the kettle whistled.

  ‘That was fast,’ Adrian commented as Sumi poured out the water.

  ‘It’s a fast-boil kettle,’ Mum said, breaking into heaving sobs. ‘Alan got it last month.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ I rushed to my mum’s side, hugging her into my damp pyjamas and looking to everyone else in the room for reassurance. ‘It’s going to be OK. We’ll fix it somehow.’

  ‘But the ceremony is supposed to start at one,’ she choked. ‘Your Aunt Annette and Uncle David are already checked in at the Premier Travel Lodge. They’ll be furious if they’ve had a wasted trip.’

  ‘And our Kevin has set off to get Mum from the home,’ Dad added darkly. ‘I’ll not convince him to do that again in a hurry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I insisted. ‘We’ll find somewhere else, you will have your ceremony. I will fix this, I promise.’

  Even if I didn’t exactly have a fantastic track record of fixing things of late, I thought to myself.

  ‘Sumi,’ I said, firing out ideas before I could second-guess myself. ‘What about the event planners you used for Lucy’s party? Do you think they have any last-minute venues?’

  ‘I’ll give them a call but I wouldn’t bet on it,’ she said, immediately grabbing her phone. ‘There’s last minute and there’s last minute.’

  ‘I know someone who could help.’ Adrian closed the fridge, a pint of milk in his hand. ‘What about John?’

  ‘What about John?’ I replied, skimming through the (cursed) contact list in my phone. Dry cleaners, no. Hairdressers, no. Wong’s Chinese, maybe.

  ‘Adrian, you’re so clever!’ Lucy brightened immediately. ‘We could use the upstairs room at Good Luck! It’s so beautiful, with the big windows and the chandeliers, oh and there’s the little stage at the front. It’d be perfect. Call him, Ros, I’m sure he’ll let us use it.’

  Tightening my grip on the back of my mum’s chair, I smiled brightly at my friend. ‘Why don’t one of you call him?’ I suggested. ‘You all know him better than I do.’

  ‘Technically, not true,’ Sumi said with a wink as she fished four teabags out of four mugs.

  ‘I wouldn’t be comfortable asking him,’ I said, enunciating each word with a knife-like degree of sharpness. ‘And I would appreciate it if you would call him for me.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll call him,’ Sumi said, cackling into her mug. ‘It’s a beautiful space, Mrs Reynolds, you’ll love it.’

  ‘You can’t just reorganize something like this on the day, all the food was at the club and now it’s all ruined,’ Mum said with a sniff. ‘Everything is ruined.’

  ‘Mum, we’ve got all morning, we can do this,’ I insisted. ‘Adrian can call the florist, Sumi and Jo can sort out the food and me and Lucy can call the guests and let them know the change of plan. The bar isn’t that far away, just in Borough Market. We can be there in half an hour. It’s probably just as close as the tennis club.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said tearfully. ‘Maybe we should just cancel it.’

  Everyone jumped as Dad slammed his coffee cup down on the kitchen counter.

  ‘We’ll do no such thing,’ he declared. ‘Sumi, call this John chap and tell him we need his help, money is no object. We’re getting this done.’

  We all stared at my father, shocked into silence by an unprecedented display of emotion.

  ‘I promised you the most special day of your life, Gwen Reynolds,’ Dad bellowed as he dropped to one knee before his wife, a triumphant finger in the air. ‘We are renewing our vows today, come hell or high water!’

  ‘Poor choice of words,’ Sumi whispered to me, phone pressed against her ear. ‘It’s fucking biblical out there.’

  As my mother collapsed into my father’s arms and my friends cheered, I turned my attention out the window and watched the shed, as it collapsed in on itself. All the clothes that hadn’t quite made it into my wash basket floated across the garden in a parade of slovenliness.

  ‘Could you help me up, Ros?’ Dad asked, stuck on the kitchen floor. I took hold of his hand and yanked him to his feet.

  ‘We’ll make it perfect, Dad,’ I promised, determined to see this right.

  ‘Not to throw a spanner in the works,’ Lucy said quietly, staring down between her knees. ‘But I think my waters just broke.’

  ‘That seems to me like something you need a definite answer on,’ Adrian asked from the seat beside her, leaping to his feet and climbing onto the chair as though expecting a second flood.

  ‘I was trying to be delicate,’ she replied, gripping the edge of the kitchen table and grimacing tightly. ‘But either my waters have broken or I’ve just wet myself.’

  ‘She hasn’t had a drink,’ Sumi commented, pushing her fingerti
ps into her temples with her eyes closed. ‘So, I’d say it’s almost certainly the waters breaking thing.’

  Mum wiped her face on the sleeve of her dressing gown and rushed over to Lucy’s side. ‘You’re all useless,’ she scolded lightly, throwing a tea towel onto the floor. ‘Let’s call Dave, he can come and pick you up.’

  Lucy’s delicate face seized up again.

  ‘Perhaps just text him and tell him to meet me at the hospital,’ she suggested. ‘I don’t know that this is going to take very long.’

  Everyone blanched at exactly the same time.

  ‘But you’re not due yet!’ I protested, forcing myself not to think of what would become of the new pyjama bottoms I’d lent her. ‘And people are usually in labour for hours, aren’t they? Days, even?’

  ‘Mum had me in two hours and my sister in three,’ Lucy replied. ‘And my sister had Lesley an hour after her waters broke. They both delivered early.’

  I’d forgotten Lucy’s sister had called her baby Lesley. Baby Lesley. Honestly.

  ‘What do we do?’ I asked, looking straight to Mum and Dad.

  ‘I’ll drive you to the hospital,’ Adrian offered.

  ‘No!’ everyone shouted back at once.

  ‘Fine,’ he sniffed in response.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ Dad offered, grabbing his car keys from the kitchen counter. ‘Gwen, you’ve got your woman coming over to do your hair, I’ve only got to put my suit on. I’ll take her.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said, slamming my tea down on the table as Mum, unable to wait a second longer, reached for the mop.

  ‘No, you’ve got more than enough to do,’ Lucy insisted, rising carefully to her feet and we all rose with her. She smiled at Dad as he held out his arm. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘We shall,’ he confirmed with a gallant nod before turning to my mum. ‘I’ll be back in plenty of time and don’t worry about a thing. Rosalind has got this under control, haven’t you, Ros? She can do this.’

  I breathed in sharply, surprise spreading across my face in a smile.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I promised, my chest swelling with pride. ‘Like I said, we’ll make it perfect.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, pulling an umbrella from the stand by the back door. ‘Then everything’s all right. We’ll see you in a bit.’

  We followed Lucy out the door and helped her into the car, choruses of good luck ringing all around her until they had backed out the drive and disappeared down the street.

  ‘Now what?’ Sumi turned to me with her hands on her hips.

  ‘Now we plan a wedding,’ I replied with a gulp. ‘And we do it really, really quickly.’

  ‘OK, then,’ she clapped me on the shoulder and marched back into the kitchen with a determined stride. ‘Let’s do this!’

  I stood in a puddle outside the front door and looked up at the grey, overcast sky.

  ‘This has not been my week for good luck,’ I whispered to the heavens. ‘But if there was ever a time for that to change, it would be now.’

  The sun peeked out at me from behind a storm cloud, just for a moment, before disappearing again.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I said before following my friend back into the house.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Reorganizing a wedding in a little over three hours was actually far less stressful than it could have been. Everyone involved in event planning, it seemed, was prepared for the absolute worst. The florists had barely batted an eyelid when I explained we would need to collect the flowers early and take them to the new venue ourselves. The bakers simply shrugged, put the wedding cake in a box and sent us on our way.

  ‘Really decent of John to give your mum and dad the bar for nothing,’ Adrian said as he span his car around the corner before firing it down the alleyway behind Good Luck Bar.

  ‘Really decent,’ I agreed from underneath a sea of flowers in the backseat. Pink roses, white geraniums and dozens of blushed-peach dahlias, striking me straight through the heart.

  ‘Well, he’s not really doing it for her mum and dad, is he?’ Sumi said from the front passenger seat, carefully nursing the wedding cake on her knee.

  ‘Shut up, Sumi.’

  ‘He isn’t?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘He’s totally in love with Ros,’ she nodded.

  ‘He is?’ Adrian gasped, grinning.

  ‘Shut up, Sumi,’ I said again.

  She leaned across her seat to whisper in his ear.

  ‘They kissed at the baby shower,’ she told him.

  ‘Did they?’ Adrian wrenched up the handbrake and turned to me with his mouth wide open. ‘No wonder you’re not that heartbroken over Prick-trick Parker.’

  ‘I am heartbroken,’ I sniffed, realizing even as I said it that I wasn’t in pieces. Too stressed, too hungover, too unemployed, I reasoned. No doubt the moment Mum and Dad left for their second honeymoon, I’d fall apart. Probably. ‘I’m just too busy reorganizing a wedding and worrying about Lucy to show it.’

  ‘Not too heartbroken to get off with John,’ Sumi said in a stage whisper before raising her voice to me. ‘Lucy’s fine, Dave’s at the hospital with her now. And I’m not joking, Rosalind, if you fuck up our free drink situation, I will never forgive you.’

  ‘Oh, you shut up and get the cake out the car,’ I ordered, slithering along the backseat, heart pounding as I tried to work out just exactly what I was going to say to John.

  Since the rain had stopped, the sun had come out, brightening the sky to a bold blue but with none of the stickiness we’d been suffering all summer. It was a perfect day.

  ‘Morning, Cammy,’ Sumi sang as the bartender opened the back door to us.

  ‘Morning,’ she said, grabbing one of the buckets of flowers out of my arms and carrying it inside. ‘The cleaner’s already been in so it’s spotless for you and I’ll be working the bar.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t need you to do that,’ I said from behind a jungle of dahlias. ‘We’ve got a load of wine, we’ll just leave it out the side for everyone to help themselves, we don’t want to be any bother.’

  ‘No way,’ Camille said, shaking her head. ‘John says you’re VIP so you’re VIP. Chef’s making mini quiches as we speak.’

  Adrian batted his eyelashes at me and made a not-at-all-attractive kissy face.

  ‘You can’t, it’s too much,’ I insisted, following her up the stairs into the private room. It was even more beautiful than I remembered. ‘I’ve already sent my sister to Costco for a platter of sandwiches.’

  Very much against her will, I added silently.

  ‘Food’s all arranged,’ Camille argued, holding up her hands to let me know it wasn’t her doing. ‘Do you think your parents would prefer mini burgers, mini fish and chips or a mix of both?’

  ‘Both,’ Sumi and Adrian said together. I rolled my eyes and fumbled for my phone, shooting a message to Jo, telling her to stand down from sandwich duty.

  ‘Both it is,’ Camille confirmed. ‘Right, I’ll leave you to get the flowers where you want them. Sound system and speakers are all plugged in, you can connect your phone to the Bluetooth and we’ve got microphones over there if you need them. Didn’t know if you wanted chairs or not but they’re stacked in the corner. I’ll get rid of ’em if you don’t want ’em. If you need anything else, I’ll be in the kitchen.’

  ‘Is John here?’ I asked, attempting nonchalance but ending up somewhere in between ‘shrill’ and ‘hysterical dolphin’.

  Camille stopped halfway down the stairs and shook her head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘He’s not?’ I breathed out slowly. Was I relieved or disappointed? I couldn’t tell. ‘Good. I mean, oh. I mean—’

  ‘Why don’t you start getting ready?’ Sumi suggested. ‘Me and Ade will put the flowers out, we’ve got the cake, Jo’s with your mum. All you need to do is put your frock on and have a quiet minute.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling flustered all at once. ‘You’re amazing.’

  ‘We are, it’s tru
e,’ Adrian replied as he began unstacking chairs and placing them in rows, facing the front of the room. ‘Now get out the way before I push you down the stairs.’

  ‘Best friends ever,’ I whispered, doing exactly as I was told.

  At least I don’t have to use the gents this time, I thought, letting myself into the ladies with a pair of heels in one hand and a garment bag in the other. I sat down on the pink leatherette bench in front of a large, well-lit mirror and took in the woman who looked back at me.

  Once my hair was up in a twist that more or less looked as though I’d done it on purpose, I shuffled out of my mum’s leggings and Dad’s T-shirt (all my clean clothes having been lost to the great flood) and unzipped the front of the garment bag. I’d been worried about the bridesmaids’ dresses, given Mum’s recent sartorial adventures, but she had outdone herself. My dress was pale lavender, floor-length, sleeveless and truly beautiful. The material was soft, slipping between my fingers as I held it up against me before stepping into the gown and pulling it up around my waist. Checking my reflection, I picked up the two long sashes that fell from the waist and held them out like wings. What was I supposed to do with these? Letting them float back down to the floor, I turned my attention to my bra, unhooking it under my dress and slipping my arms out the straps.

  ‘Ros?’

  The door opened right as I whipped my bra out from inside my dress, the bodice and its wings flopping down around my waist.

  ‘Don’t come in!’ I yelped, crossing my arms over my chest.

  But it was too late. In the mirror, I saw John walk into the ladies as I lunged for the toilet stall, restraining my boobs with my hands.

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ he called. ‘I swear.’

  Pulling the dress back up over my chest, I leaned against the cool metal of the stall door.

  ‘Camille said you weren’t here,’ I said as the top part of my dress drooped back down around my waist. Why wouldn’t it stand up on its own? Was I really going to have to spend the entire day with my arms crossed to stop myself from flashing the entire family? What was my mother thinking?

  ‘I wasn’t, now I am. Can you come out please?’