Looking for Andrew McCarthy
Page 27
However, Loxy’s aunties had insisted on bringing their gospel choir, which was doing a lot to dispel the secular atmosphere, even if it was being accompanied by a rather unpleasantly wailing saxophone.
Outside it was a glorious June day, and inside there was a lot of bride-waiting-around and fanning with programmes going on. Loxy was hopping from one foot to the other and looked like he was doing a very slow tap dance. Colin, however, his rather unexpected choice of best man – ‘You mean flower girl, surely,’ had been Julia’s outraged reaction – was standing very seriously, staring straight ahead and mouthing his speech to himself.
Upstairs in the bridal suite, a pretty, large, slightly frilly room with two beautiful sash windows overlooking the grounds, Julia, in understated ivory silk, was pacing back and forward furiously. She was waiting to go downstairs for what was a pretty bloody important day in her life, but she couldn’t go and retouch her lip gloss for the last time because the door to her powder room was locked and she strongly suspected there were people rutting in it.
‘Christ! Big Bastard!’ She hammered the door heavily. ‘I really do not want this to be my last view as a single woman.’
‘Eh – how about I’m only having a shit?’ came the yell, punctuated by Siobhan’s muffled giggling.
‘This really is my special day, isn’t it?’ sighed Julia. ‘Get the fuck – oh, I don’t want to swear in this dress. Get the FUDGE out of there. Loxy’s waiting.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to do you just once for luck? It’s your last chance ever.’
‘Yeah, because after he did you I’d chew off his entire reproductive apparatus,’ growled Siobhan.
‘Get OUT the both of you. Or I’m taking the brown sauce away from the buffet.’
A couple of seconds later they emerged, smirking and looking red in the face. She shooed them out of the suite, then took one last look around. Suddenly everything was quiet. Her father was waiting downstairs, she knew, and she could picture every detail of Loxy’s shaky face from here. Arthur too, right behind him, ready to read the poem they’d chosen, which he would do beautifully, naturally. He’d already offered to be an honorary uncle to the first baby, given how much practice he’d had. She twirled quickly in the three-way mirror, but scarcely needed to glance to know that she looked as lovely as she could. She looked as beautiful as a garden.
No Hedgehog of course. They hadn’t seen her since the funeral, and she’d been quiet enough then. Julia shivered when she remembered the long cold trip home, the horrible fussing and sorting, and custard creams and dry, curled-up catered sandwiches. Ellie’s mother hadn’t bothered to show up, unsurprisingly. A subdued Christmas with Julia’s family had followed, then, out of the blue on the 2nd of January, Ellie had picked up her battered old rucksack and disappeared, leaving a rather confused note that said something about going to look for the New Jersey Turnpoke.
Since then, correspondence had been sporadic to say the least. In one 5am phone call, they’d finally got her to discover e-mail, but at the moment it tended to be the last line of what had clearly been very long letters, followed by strings of swear words and abrupt cuttings off. Julia picked up the picture she’d brought along to use as a stand-in – she’d discovered it in Ellie’s camera about a month before, when she’d decided to develop the film and see what was there.
What had been there was: two blurry shots of the carpet of the Ritz hotel; one of her looking pallid and Ellie looking scarlet against the first little Toyota with the Hollywood sign just visible in the background haze; a giant cockroach next to a bottle of tequila; Julia sitting exhaustedly on a kerb in the sunshine in the middle of God knows where; Andrew II and Hatsie, Andrew clearly laughing his head off at something Hatsie had just said; a big silver Thunderbird; someone who might have been the back of Arthur’s head emerging from Arrivals; an underexposed very large pig in the dark; Julia standing next to a sign that said ‘Julia 25 miles’; some blurry trees through a car window; Ellie very late at night reflected in a motel bathroom mirror; New York from a distance, Arthur’s knees; New York a bit closer up. The last one she couldn’t even remember being taken. It was a little blurry, shot inside a coffee shop on a very grey day, but once you’d looked at it closely, it definitely appeared to show Ellie kissing someone who looked spookily like Andrew McCarthy.
Julia shook her head and propped the last photograph up on the mantelpiece. Then she began to make her way across the room to pick up her bouquet, making very, very sure that her train didn’t get caught on any of the spikes of the five-foot-tall cactus plant which had arrived that morning with an enormous bow around it, and which was now absurdly dwarfing all the other gifts spread around the room. The return address was simply the poste restante in some tiny little town in Arizona. The message said, ‘With all my love, the Hedgehog. A sends love too.’
Julia wondered who ‘A’ was. It couldn’t be, could it? No, surely not. Surely. She smiled and shrugged to herself.
The morning sun was picking up the motes of dust through the windows. Downstairs, the choir started up a spiritual version of ‘Together in Electric Dreams’, which was Julia’s cue. She picked up the bouquet, and, on a whim, carefully plucked out a couple of cactus spikes. Sprinkling them on the top of the flowers for luck, she pushed on forwards through the open door.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ali ‘the super’ Gunn, Rachel Hore and Fiona McIntosh – all as supportive and fantastic as ever; Jennifer Parr, Yvette Cowles, Venetia Butterfield, Esther Taylor, Nick Sayers, Adrian Bourne, Martin Palmer, Jane Harris, Stephen Page, Julia Cass, the reps and all at HarperCollins; and Nick Marston, Doug Kean, Carol Jackson and everyone at Curtis Brown.
Also: Mum, Dad, Rob and Dom; Sandra, Shappi and Susan; Lisa Jewell and Andrew Mueller for their help in Kansas City; Henry Donne; Wesley Moody, who knows what the best thing to have is; the real Andrew McCarthy (incidentally v. difficult to track down, so not recommended), and Bliggers and Bedlamites everywhere.
HOSS Rocks!
About the Author
LOOKING FOR ANDREW McCARTHY
Jenny Colgan was born in 1972 in Ayrshire. After Edinburgh University, she worked for six years in the health service, moonlighting as a cartoonist and a stand-up comic. Her first two novels, Amanda’s Wedding and Talking to Addison were bestsellers, and film and TV rights in all three of her novels have been sold. Jenny now lives in London and is working on her fourth novel and a TV series.
For more information about Jenny Colgan, visit her website at www.jennycolgan.co.uk.
Praise
From the reviews of Looking for Andrew McCarthy
‘Colgan is on top form with this, her latest outrageous romp.’
Cosmopolitan
‘Jenny Colgan is one of the leaders of the pack … and this, her third novel, will delight her legion of admirers. Fast-paced, funny, poignant and well-observed it reads as a pastiche of the movies she loved … If a time capsule were buried to capture the world at the turn of the 21st century, this would be a candidate for inclusion: her sense of time and place are that authentic.’
Daily Mail
‘Looking for Andrew McCarthy will strike a chord with anyone who did their growing up in the 80s. Wonderful, warm and resonant for anyone who ever wondered what happened to teenage dreams.’
Hello
‘That’s Life meets This Life, with Once in a Lifetime thrown in, all talking heads, witty one-liners and angst-ridden relationships … Did I like this book? Well, d’uh! Do hedgehogs have quills? A pure belter of a novel’
Glasgow Herald
‘Colgan’s enjoyable new bestseller investigates the notion that having it all can sometimes mean having precisely nothing at all’
Marie Claire
‘Colgan’s Looking for Andrew McCarthy is sharp, well-observed and hilarious’
New Statesman
Also by the Author
Amanda’s Wedding
Talking to Addison
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination, other than the names of actors or actresses who make cameo appearances in the book. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2001
Copyright © Jenny Colgan 2001
Jenny Colgan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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EBook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN 9780007390366
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