by Unknown
‘It’s going to be an amazing wedding, just you wait and see. It will even knock your dad’s socks off.’
I make a mental note to remind myself in the week to sort out some catering options for her wedding as, at the moment, all we’ve got is a lot of hungry guests. The same wave of fear washes over my body that I had when I was planning my own wedding in a bit of a hurry, but then I take a deep breath. Mine all worked out just fine, didn’t it? There’s absolutely no reason Henri’s won’t as well. I’ve just got to keep all thoughts of her father out of my head; for some reason he’s morphed into an EastEnders baddie. I won’t let Henri’s dad get under my skin at all.
chapter ten
princess-on-a-shoestring cost cutter:
Saver Favours Part 1
Almost always the cheapest option for wedding favours is to make them yourself in the form of an edible treat. This option is not for the faint-hearted as you usually need to prepare them a day or two ahead of your wedding or entrust one of your nearest and dearest with the task. Great favourites for this are homemade fudge (just watch out as each batch needs a lot of stirring and is quite time-consuming!), gingerbread hearts or shortbread. Head online to find the cheapest packaging and ribbon. If you want to be extra savvy, you can tie name labels onto the favours and then you’ve got your place settings and favours in one.
Tags: favours, food, edible, cheapskate.
I glance nervously at my outfit and wonder if I should have put something other than my jeans and baggy jumper on. I definitely wouldn’t get stopped in the street today for one of those stylish-on-the-high-street photoshoots for a magazine. I don’t usually have such little self-confidence but I feel like I’ve been transported back to my teenage years as I walk through the gates of the local college.
My favourite little delinquent missed the group session last night. I didn’t want go through another week of us not speaking, so I made her agree to meet me today, hence why I’m walking into her college at lunchtime. It wouldn’t usually be my first choice of venue, but I figure that if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, then the mountain will come to him.
I uneasily navigate my way through the corridors, trying to avoid the students as much as I can. They don’t give me too many ‘she’s far too old to be here looks’ as I know the college does a huge range of courses, including ones for mature students. But still there’s enough of the young uns to make me feel dowdy, old and uncool.
I catch sight of Beth sitting on a bench near the reception and I smile with relief.
‘Hi, Beth,’ I say, giving her an embarrassing mum-type wave as I approach.
She looks up from her mobile and gives me a look of horror as if she might be worried that people might see that I’m with her.
‘Hey,’ she says without making eye contact.
‘Everything OK?’
‘I guess.’
More shrugging. Jeez, Josh had a walk in the park with me in comparison. I used to blurt out exactly what I was feeling.
‘So, do you want to grab some food? Have you eaten?’ I ask.
‘No, not yet. We can go to the refectory, if you like.’
I think back to the food when I was at college. I can almost taste the microwaved jacket potatoes, with chewy skins and lukewarm beans; it makes me shudder.
‘Are there any other options?’ I secretly hope colleges have gone up market since I was at mine and perhaps now they have a Costa buried in the middle of them.
‘There’s the fancy restaurant.’
There we go! That sounds perfect.
‘Great, shall we go there?’
‘It’s quite expensive.’
‘How expensive?’ I ask.
‘It’s eight pounds for three courses. The people on professional catering courses cook it.’
‘Three courses? Eight pounds?’ I repeat.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘That sounds like a bargain to me. How about I treat you?’
‘S’pose that would be OK.’
I can see a hint of a smile on Beth’s face, but it’s only a flicker before she goes back into sulky teenager mode.
Beth leads us upstairs, to what looks just how she described it: a fancy restaurant. After enquiring about a table, we’re taken to one in the corner.
‘Wow,’ I say, reading the menu in disbelief.
‘It’s supposed to be pretty good,’ says Beth. ‘I think the chefs go on to work in top restaurants.’
‘Amazing,’ I say, as I try and decide whether to go with the salmon with Thai chilli dressing or the pork in Calvados with apples.
‘So, have you given any more thought to what you’re going to do when you leave? Are you going to apply to university?’
‘I think that’s what my mum wants,’ says Beth.
I can’t believe it. She’s put her mobile away in her pocket and she’s actually looking up at me.
‘But is that what you want?’
Beth shrugs. ‘I guess so. I mean, it’s easier to get a job when you’ve got a degree.’
I try not to wince at this comment. After spending the last few weeks sorting out the graduate scheme, I’m not entirely sure that that statement rings true.
‘What course would you want to do?’ I ask, steering the conversation away from jobs.
‘I haven’t really given it much thought.’
Just when I think I’m getting somewhere, I feel like we’re back to pulling teeth. I wonder if this was what I was like as a teenager? No wonder my mother used to despair; I barely spoke to her between the ages of fifteen and eighteen.
‘What subjects are you doing now?’
‘English Lit, Media Studies, History, Psychology and Politics.’
‘Wow. Are you some type of super-genius?’
‘No, everyone takes five AS-Levels, I drop two subjects next year.’
‘What are you dropping?’
‘Politics and Psychology, they’re well hard.’
The thought of taking either sends shivers down my spine. I can’t quite blame Beth for dropping them.
‘Would you not want to do one of your other subjects at uni?’
Beth shrugs again. ‘I like English.’
‘There you go!’ I say a little too enthusiastically. ‘I think that would be lovely. A nice, solid degree.’
‘Ha, you sound like my mum.’
‘I guess that’s what happens when you’re as old as me.’
Beth stifles a laugh and before I continue with my comic genius, the waiter comes up and takes our order. I settle on an onion and goats cheese tart to start, followed by the pork and then we’ll decide on the dessert later. Not a bad lunch for a dreary Wednesday lunchtime. It beats the salad sandwich that I probably would have had in the canteen at work.
‘Have you been looking at any courses yet? You know, seeing what grades you’re going to need for them, what facilities they’ve got there?’
Beth’s fidgeting more than Mark’s four-year-old niece.
‘A little. I’ve got a meeting with our careers advisor before the end of term, so I’m sure they’ll help.’
‘Great.’ I think that Beth is probably seeing right through my plan, and she clearly doesn’t want to tell me about her plans. I mean, if I think back to my murky youth, I picked my university based on how new the student union was, and the ratio of men to women. I wanted good odds of being able to have a drunken snog on a night out.
I decide to change the subject to what we’re really here for.
‘So, are you having any luck with trying to stop the gambling?’
I figure there’s no point in beating around the bush. She’s fidgeting in a way that suggests she’s just as uncomfortable with this line of questioning as she was when we were talking about the future.
‘Yes.’
I’m not sure I believe her. She’s exhibiting all the trademark signs of lying. She’s looking round the room and avoiding all eye contact.
‘So you’ve gone cold turkey? No mo
re Vegas games?’
I have to admit that, when Mary first told me that Beth was addicted to Vegas games, I had no idea what they were. The only Vegas games that sprung to my mind were the kind that Prince Harry played – strip billiards. But it turned out that it didn’t involve any removal of clothing, and instead it was playing casino games on your computer or mobile. It seems that Beth had a particular weakness for both slot machines and roulette.
That’s why everyone was so worried when Beth had visited an actual casino, as there was that fear that she could go somewhere and pay in cash without there being paper trails. I know I can’t talk as I played online bingo, which is as synthetic and contrived as you can probably get, but I can’t imagine what buzz you’d get from playing a virtual slot machine.
‘Really?’ I say. ‘No gambling at all? Not in any way? I’m not just talking about on your phone. No playing on the fruit machines when you’re out? No playing pub quiz games?’
‘Pub quiz games? You mean like The Colour of Money? They’re not gambling, are they? Everyone plays them.’
Before the steam comes out of my ears, the starters have arrived. I start to salivate as the waiter puts down the plates. They look like they could have come out of a gourmet restaurant, not from a local college.
‘This looks amazing,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ says Beth.
At least we have food in common, that’s something.
‘Going back to the quiz machines, do you play them?’ I ask as I take my first delicious forkful of food.
‘Yeah, when I’m in the pub. I never thought they were gambling.’
‘Well, anything that involves inserting money in order to play with the possibility that you’ll get more or less money back than you started with, is gambling.’
‘I hadn’t really thought about it like that,’ she says, through a mouthful of pâté on toast. I would have had major food envy if my goat’s cheese tart wasn’t so delicious.
‘OK, so let’s put that aside because you didn’t realise they were gambling. What about fruit machines, have you been playing those?’
‘Only with my mates, not on my own.’
‘Have you had any more visits to the casino?’ I think a week of prepping for the graduate interviews has left me in interrogation mode; I’m taking no prisoners now.
‘No,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Mum’s given me a curfew and my friends go to the casino after I’m in.’
‘Do your friends know about your problem?’
‘I don’t have a problem. They all do it too. I’m just the only one that got caught.’
‘Really? All your friends do it? All your friends rack up £5,000 on their mum’s credit card?’
‘Well, no, but maybe they don’t lose as much as I do.’
‘No one’s that lucky, Beth. I’m guessing they perhaps dabble, but they don’t play as much as you. I mean, how many hours a day would you spend playing?’
Beth shrugged. ‘Depends, really.’
‘On a normal day. Let’s just say that in my hey-day of bingo, I’d play an hour a night at least every night. Sometimes two hours.’
‘OK. I’d play usually between lessons. If I had ten minutes to spare, maybe in my break times.’
‘What about hanging out with your friends?’ I’m slightly aware that post-nineties teenagers don’t ‘hang out’, but I’m not up to speed with the new lingo.
‘Not all my friends have breaks at the same time.’
‘So you do it when you’re lonely?’
Beth shrugs again. I bite my tongue not to shout at her in frustration, but I instead take the shrug as a yes.
Our waiter appears and removes our plates, and I wait for him to leave before continuing.
‘Why don’t we talk about why you started to gamble in the first place? When was your first time?’
I feel like a cross between an agony aunt and a slightly embarrassing mum so I try to remind myself that we’re talking about gambling rather than boys.
‘I dunno.’
‘Come on,’ I say with a hint of frustration. ‘You must remember the first buzz.’
‘It was a slots. I saw an advert as a pop-up on the computer and I clicked on it. I’ve always wanted to go to Vegas, and I guess I thought I’d see what it was all about.’
‘That’s it? There was nothing else special about that day?’
‘I was bored. I was waiting for my dad. He was, like, a few hours late to pick me up.’
Finally I feel like I’m learning something real about her. I can see how her disappointment at her father letting her down might lead her to gambling.
‘Do you gamble a lot when you’re bored?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Can’t you fill your time on Facebook instead?’
‘Yeah, I used to play games on Facebook, too. Bejewelled Blitz and that kind of stuff.’
‘And you just saw the Vegas games as an extension of that?’
‘I guess so.’
By the time our main courses arrive, we’re actually getting somewhere.
‘Beth, I know this is a bit blunt, but do you actually want to stop gambling? I mean, do you realise how big a problem it is?’
‘It pisses my mum off.’
‘Right, but what about with you? I mean, you could have landed yourself in real debt and that would have really impacted on your future. It could have made it difficult for you to get bank accounts, a mortgage when you’re older. It could even have made you more likely to get involved in crime.’
I may be overreacting slightly, but I’ve been doing research on teenage gambling, and they reckon that about six percent of teenagers have a gambling addiction, and those teens are far more likely to turn to crime to support their habit.
‘I haven’t hurt anyone,’ says Beth. ‘I’ve just been playing some games. I didn’t mean to upset my mum and I’m not going to be nicking stuff, if that’s what you’re saying.’
‘No, I just meant that it could lead there, if you don’t get it under control. We’ve got to get you to stop playing. Do you not find it helps to come along to the group and listen to other people’s stories?’
‘I guess, but everyone else has had these big problems, and I don’t think mine is the same.’
I feel like Beth and I are continuously taking one step forward and two steps back. She’s just about admitted that she’s got a problem, and yet she can’t really understand the ramifications of what she’s done.
It’s really frustrating for me as I’ve lived this. I know how easily these habits can spiral out of control and ruin everything. I came so close to losing Mark last year, but so many of the other gamblers in our group have lost a lot more. Some did lose partners, houses, or life-savings like Nick did. But Beth is so young, and she doesn’t really feel the consequences of her gambling. It was her mum’s money she lost, not hers.
‘Look, I’ll stop playing the games. I won’t play the fruities or the game machines in the pub. Yeah?’
‘That would be great,’ I say, knowing full well that it’s an empty promise. It’s exactly what I used to be like when I was a teenager, I would have said anything my mum wanted to hear just to have an easy life.
The problem with gambling is that it’s dead hard giving up even if you want to, and it’s a hundred times worse if you don’t. And it doesn’t go away when you stop either. Although it landed me in a whole lot of trouble, even now I’m sometimes tempted to escape to a bingo site and get lost in the games and the banter of the chat rooms.
‘I’ve got to go. Thanks for lunch, I’ve got English now.’
Beth gets up and grabs her bag.
‘I’ll see you on Tuesday?’ I say hopefully.
‘Yeah, I should be there.’
I watch Beth as she hurries out of the restaurant and the waiter swoops in to clear our plates.
‘That was absolutely delicious,’ I say.
‘That’s good to hear. I’ll let the chefs know.’
&
nbsp; ‘Yes, please do. Tell them I thought it was cooked by professionals. Do you do this every lunchtime?’
‘We do it three days a week and then Tuesday and Thursday nights.’
‘You do it at night?’
‘Yeah, only it’s twelve pounds a head.’
I smile at the students describing a three-course meal and thinking it’s expensive at twelve pounds. Maybe I’ll bring Mark here the next time it’s my turn to pay for dinner. What? That’s not being tight, that’s just me being a savvy-saver. Mark would probably be dead proud.
‘That’s great. So do you do other things with the catering? I mean, do you cater events?’
‘We do, occasionally. College events, balls and fundraising dinners.’
‘What about weddings?’
That food was seriously as good as the food I’ve had at any a reception.
‘I think so, but I don’t know too much about it.’
‘Is there someone I could talk to about it?’
‘I could get the tutor to come and talk to you if you like?’
‘Perfect,’ I say.
‘I’ll ask him to come and see you. Now, have you made up your mind about the dessert? If your friend isn’t coming back you get to have hers too …’
*
By the time I get back to the office, after my slightly longer than usual lunch break, I feel a bit sick, but in a full up with lovely food way. I had an Amaretto cheesecake and a chocolate mousse. I know I probably should have just had the one, but I am, after all, a self-confessed pig if food is in front of me.
‘Henri, it’s me. I might have found us a caterer.’
I pull the phone away from my ear as I hear a scream of delight.
‘Tell me more,’ she says.
‘Well, how about you pop round and see me tonight and I can talk you through it as I’m at work.’
‘Fabulous, I’ll see you at around seven? The suspense is going to kill me.’
‘All will be revealed,’ I say, giggling.
I hang up the phone just as I turn the corner into our office and I bump straight into Giles.
‘Ah, Penny. There you are, I was just looking for you.’