by Claire Frost
Well, that was short and sweet wasn’t it? Anyway, I do hope our wedding day will be filled with drinks, dancing and debauchery – and did I mention drinks?! I can’t wait to see you there.
Hannah x
Chapter 9 Jess
Jess chuckled to herself as she finished reading and formatting Hannah’s blog on Sunday night. It was obvious she and Toby were both nervous about writing to each other in such a public way, and Jess wondered what the outside world would make of them. Would they think the pair were crazy to have signed up for such a thing? Would they think Save The Date – and Jess by association – was completely irresponsible for encouraging them to do so? Or would they buy into the excitement of it all and realise that some people need to be brave and put themselves out there – occasionally in a slightly crazy way?
‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ Jess muttered to herself as her mouse pointer hovered over the Post Now button. She squeezed her eyes shut and clicked, then took a shaky breath in. However, she knew that the hard work had only just begun; unless she started shouting about the blog post, it would only ever get a few hundred views from people who were already subscribed to the app. Once she’d composed messages across all Save The Date’s social channels and set them to go live first thing the next morning, she began writing emails to local and national media again in the hope one of them might bite and run the story.
By eleven o’clock that evening, Jess was exhausted and fell into bed next to Tom, who was already snoring lightly. But just minutes later she heard a loud thump coming from the next room, followed by a moment’s silence, then the inevitable ‘Muuuuuuuuum!’
Sighing heavily, Jess shuffled her way across the landing to her daughter’s room, her work for the day seemingly still not done.
* * *
Jess was woken the next morning, not by the kids or Tom, but by her phone vibrating and lighting up across her bedside table. She grabbed it quickly, along with her favourite hoody that was lying in a heap near the bedroom door, and padded her way downstairs. She filled the kettle and unlocked her phone, which immediately lit up with social media notifications. She glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall, surprised it was already 7.30 a.m. and the rest of the house was still fast asleep. She turned her phone face down, thinking she’d deal with all of that later and braced herself to wake up cranky children and an equally cranky husband, none of whom could ever be called early risers.
An hour later, everyone was washed, dressed and fed, and she’d headed off at least two arguments between the twins before they’d become all-out war, so she was congratulating herself by making that cup of coffee she hadn’t quite managed to have earlier. Luckily, it was Tom’s day to do the school run, so she happily waved goodbye to her brood, although not before retrieving a discarded lunchbox from the side and shoving it into Sam’s bag as he tripped out the door with his head in a superhero comic.
Finally, she was able to pick up her emails and check her social media. She was shocked by what she saw.
She grabbed her cup of coffee and an extra piece of toast and decamped to the summerhouse, where she logged into the Save The Date website and saw the blog had already had five hundred views, and her Facebook post had been shared almost a thousand times. When she opened her email she even found a message from the Manchester Evening News asking to interview Hannah and Toby. Jess knew how amazing that kind of exposure would be, but it simply wouldn’t be possible without revealing their identities. She quickly tapped out a reply, saying Hannah and Toby weren’t able to do any press as yet, but she would love to set up an interview with Andy and Pippa, who could also talk about the #marriedatfirstswipe project.
A quick scroll through the replies to Save The Date’s posts revealed some very definitely negative responses to the idea of a blind-date wedding, with people saying it was just a PR stunt or all set up, but there were also messages of support and encouragement, urging Hannah and Toby to go for it and saying how brave they were.
Jess looked up from her computer and spotted Hannah walking along the garden path towards the office, looking flustered. Her excitement quickly turned to worry about whether her friend had seen any of the negative responses to the blog.
‘Sorry I’m late, Jess, I had to hang around for ages at the doctor’s this morning. Sometimes I wonder why I bother waiting nearly a month to get the coveted first appointment of the day, because they’re always running late even at that point. And to make matters worse, I forgot to charge my phone overnight, so the minute I tried to get online it bloody died. I couldn’t even stalk people on Insta while I was waiting! Anyway, sorry for going on, how are you?’ She’d finally looked up from plugging her phone into her laptop to make eye contact with Jess.
‘I’m really well, thanks, Han! The blog posts have gone up and are getting a great reaction. I’m just about to check subscription numbers now, in fact.’
‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I forgot they were going live this morning. I’m dying to see what Toby’s written!’
Jess laughed. ‘Okay, well, you look at the blog while I make us a drink.’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t send it to me before it went live, J!’ Hannah said, furiously clicking through to the website on her laptop. ‘I know Toby won’t have seen mine till this morning, but there have got to be some perks to me being your best mate and all that. Right, here we go. God, he sounds even more nervous than me, doesn’t he? Oh, I like the work-in-progress as a description. Mr Darcy, fine, but Donkey from Shrek? Okaaaay. But he likes the outdoors and beer and is a bit rubbish at pub quizzes, which I’m on board with. And it sounds like he has friends, which is also good.’ Hannah took a breath. ‘Well, that’s not a lot to go on, but he sounds nice? I hope he doesn’t think I’ve waffled on too much, especially that bit at the end about drink and debauchery at the wedding – Jess, you totally should have cut that out!’
‘I’m not here to edit you, Han,’ her friend said gently. ‘You want Toby to get to know the real you, don’t you?’
‘Maybe! Although I still can’t believe I used the word “debauchery” in my first communication with the man I’m going to marry. Have you heard anything from him this morning?’
‘No, not yet, but I’ll send him a message in a minute to make sure he knows the blog is live. I have just checked the system, though, and we’ve had fifty people sign up to the app today already and it’s only half past ten!’
‘That’s amazing, Jess,’ Hannah said, looking up from her screen.
‘I know, it’s brilliant. The click-throughs from the Facebook post are especially high.’
‘Oh shit.’
‘What? What’s wrong, Han?’
‘Facebook. My mum’s on Facebook.’
‘I know, I’m friends with her on there. So?’
‘But my mum can’t find out I’m getting married through Facebook.’
‘What do you mean? You must have chatted to your parents about it last week? I’ve been meaning to ask you what they said, but things have been so busy… Han, you have told your parents you’re marrying Toby, haven’t you?’
‘No.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ve told G-ma, obviously, and I was going to get her to talk to Mum but she said I needed to do it, and there just hasn’t been a good time.’
‘Hannah!’
‘But you know what my mum’s like. Dad will likely be fine about the whole thing if he thinks it will make me happy, but I just wanted to put off the conversation with Mum for as long as I could. And to be fair, I didn’t know you were going to shout about the whole thing from the rooftops quite so much!’
‘But, you did! I talked to you about the blogs and how we’d share them publicly to help increase our subscriptions and build interest for the big reveal when you’re back from honeymoon,’ Jess said, completely bewildered. She was annoyed at herself for not checking that Hannah had told her family before Save The Date shared the news, but she couldn’t understand how Hannah hadn’t predicted this whole
situation. Seeing the fear and worry on her best friend’s face, she softened and added gently. ‘Look, Han, why don’t you text your mum now and say you’re coming over for an early lunch and tell her then? Joan probably hasn’t looked at Facebook this morning and your dad isn’t even on social media, is he? So he won’t know anything about it, and you can tell him after you’ve been to your mum’s.’
‘Don’t you need me here if it’s all kicking off?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll manage. Go and see your parents. Maybe take your mum some flowers or something to butter her up a bit?’
‘Okay, but I don’t think this is going to go well,’ Hannah sighed, gathering her coat and bag. ‘After I’ve texted them, I’ll turn off my phone. I still hardly have any battery. I’ll let you know how it goes later.’
‘It will be fine, I’m sure,’ Jess said with a conviction she didn’t feel as she hugged her friend. ‘I know they might be unconvinced to start with, but they’ll come round eventually, I promise.’
‘We’ll see,’ Hannah replied, unplugging her phone. ‘Speak to you later.’
Jess guilt-ate three biscuits in quick succession once Hannah had gone. She wished she’d offered to go round to Joan’s with her. As much as Hannah was ‘fun, adventurous and up for breaking the rules’, she was less good at the emotional side of things, especially when it came to her mum. Their relationship had always been a bit complicated, and Jess just had to hope that Joan would be able to put her own views aside and simply be there for her daughter.
Jess was super busy all afternoon, but she kept half an eye on her phone, waiting for Hannah to call. Then Toby sent her a WhatsApp message and her stomach lurched a little.
Hi Jess, hope you’re not too busy today – I saw there was a pretty big response to our letters. I know it’s really unlikely anyone will know it’s me, but I’m a bit worried about someone at work finding out. While I’ve of course told my friends and family what’s going on, I haven’t spoken to anyone in the office about it and I don’t want to alert them to it until further down the line. Anyway, if you have a spare minute today, let me know if there’s anything else you think I should be doing to protect my identity. Cheers
She could hear the worry in his message so she gave him a call, which he answered within one ring. Thankfully, she managed to reassure him that he wouldn’t be identified by anybody until they were ready, and she placed her phone back down on her desk with a sigh, before it immediately lit up and vibrated again, displaying ‘Hannah’ on the screen.
‘Han! How are you? How did it go?’
There was silence for a few seconds before she heard a strangled sob and Hannah gasped out, ‘I can’t believe you’ve made this happen – you’re supposed to be my best friend. There’s no way I can get married to a stranger!’
Chapter 10 Hannah
Hannah lay on her bed, wiped her hand across her stinging eyes and took a gulp of wine from the large glass of Pinot next to her. She’d deliberately left her phone face down on her desk by the window so she wasn’t tempted to text either her family or Jess, as she knew they – and she – had said quite enough already. She hated arguing with anyone, let alone people she cared about, and she would generally try to walk away from conflict. But sometimes she had to speak up – and this was definitely one of those times. It was one thing to argue with her mother – god knows how many times they’d disagreed when she was growing up, as well as when she was an actual grown-up – but it was another thing entirely for her to fall out with Jess.
Hannah struggled to think of any other time they’d argued over the years. Sure, they’d had some honest conversations with each other – often when Jess tried to lure Hannah home from whatever mad adventure she was on, when all she really wanted to hear was that it was fine for her to bum around in the sunshine a bit longer – but they’d always stopped short of saying anything either of them would regret.
She suddenly remembered a moment when they were in Year 8 at school. They had been best friends for over a year, and had seen all the girls in their form fall out over something as trivial as homework or fancying the same boy. Not to feel left out, she and Jess decided they would have an argument too, so that they could say they’d fallen out, before quickly becoming best friends again. But neither of them could bring themselves to say anything even remotely mean to the other. Even Jess, who would work herself into a proper bad mood if a teacher so much as told her off, couldn’t make herself angry enough to shout at Hannah. Instead, the pair started giggling uncontrollably in their history lesson and found themselves being sent outside to calm down by Mrs McGee.
But twenty-two years later, it seemed they’d managed their goal. And it was mostly Hannah’s mum’s fault, she mused. She had known her parents wouldn’t be ecstatic at the news she was marrying a stranger, but she’d hoped they’d support her. Apparently that was too much to ask of her mother.
Joan had greeted her and the supermarket flowers she’d proffered with a suspicious frown.
‘Hannah, you shouldn’t have. Really, I mean it. You’d better come in now that you’re here – though aren’t you supposed to be at work? You haven’t done something to make dear Jess fire you, I hope?’
‘No, Mum, I just… I just have the afternoon off so thought I’d pop round to see the ’rents – well, one of them – like a good daughter!’
‘Hannah, please don’t use that term, it makes my role sound so transitory, like you can change me if you get bored.’
Hannah had smiled as her mum filled her in on her friends’ lives, her friends’ grown-up children’s lives, and even the lives of their grandchildren who Hannah had never met, nor was ever likely to. She had been shaken out of a gentle daydream by her mum’s abrupt, ‘So, as nice as this is, I’m presuming this visit has a purpose? Please don’t tell me you want to flit back to Argentina or Aleppo or wherever.’
‘No, Mother dearest, I’m staying in Manchester, for the time being anyway. You haven’t spoken to G-ma, have you? No? Then I have some news.’ She’d taken a deep breath and had spilled out the whole plan in a slightly wavering voice, which, now that she thought about it, she was sure her mum had pounced on. Joan had immediately made her phone her dad, put him on speaker and tell him the news so he could talk some sense into her.
‘You seem to listen to him more than you do to me, though god knows why!’ she’d said.
In some ways, her dad’s soft response to the news had done more to shake Hannah’s belief she was doing the right thing than her mum’s eruption into tears that the family was going to be brought into disrepute. ‘Is this what you really want, Hannah?’ he’d merely asked
Hannah had tried to remain calm in front of her mum, but if she was honest, seeing her mum so upset had pushed a button somewhere inside her, sending her right back into teenage mode, and she’d shouted at her, ‘You’re never proud of anything I do. Is it because I’m not darling Scotty boy, who spent so many years smoking weed and cheating on women until he finally managed to grow up? I’ve always been second best and nothing I do is good enough for you, apparently. I’ll never match up to golden boy, but you can never just be happy and support me, can you!’
Thinking back to the argument, Hannah wasn’t proud of what she’d said, especially as she was well aware of how much both her parents had helped her out when she’d run out of money while backpacking in Bali, and how her mum had helped her find a flat when Jess had offered her the job at Save The Date.
But then again, Joan had hardly been the better person, and had instead shouted, ‘No, we can’t be happy for you marrying a complete stranger. Can’t you see what a ridiculous, embarrassing proposal that is? And now you’re telling me it’s going to be all over the internet? We’ll be a laughing stock!’
‘Why are you so obsessed with what people think?’ Hannah had screamed. ‘Anyway, we’re not being identified at the moment so no one will connect poor, sad little Hannah who can’t get a husband with Perfect Joan and her perfect life! I
’m getting married whether you like it or not, and you can’t stop me!’ she’d screeched, ever more teenage-like.
‘Well, don’t think I’m coming then!’ her mum had thundered.
‘Fine!’ Hannah had grabbed her coat and made for the door, before realising her dad was still on the other end of the phone in her hand and had heard every horrible thing she’d just said. She’d quickly turned the speaker off and brought the phone to her ear. ‘Dad? I’m guessing you heard that.’
‘Don’t worry, your mum will calm down, darling, she always does.’
But as she ended the call with a promise to speak to him properly the following day, his words had done little to reassure her. She’d slammed the door behind her and given in to the angry tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. Her anger had seemed to increase with every step she took towards the bus stop and then she had looked at her phone and had seen Jess had sent her three messages asking how it had gone.
That conversation had not gone well either.
Hannah knew she’d been pretty horrible to her friend. Deep down, she also knew that none of this was Jess’s fault, and it wasn’t like Hannah had been forced into the idea of a publicly arranged marriage. But she was hurt by the thought that maybe Jess was putting her business before their friendship. Anyway, the damage was done now, however much she wished she could undo it.
She took another gulp of her wine and ran her hand along G-ma’s knitted blanket beneath her.
* * *
The following morning she messaged Jess to ask if it was okay for her to work from home as she couldn’t really answer any calls unless she pretended her name wasn’t Hannah, which she was bound to forget to do. Jess agreed immediately, and followed her message up with a second, asking how she was and whether she was okay and whether they could have a glass of wine in the pub that night. Miserably, Hannah pushed her away and told her she just needed to be on her own for a bit.