Always the Bridesmaid

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘Oh, definitely,’ Sarah replied. ‘A semi is such an insult.’

  ‘It’s so offensive,’ Lauren said with a sour face. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange to send someone a photo of your penis? Who is it working for? What girl is getting a photo of a penis from a guy and saying “he’s the man for me!”?’

  ‘I think some men just like showing off their penis,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I don’t think there’s any more to it than that.’

  ‘Women have the concept of “the one” shoved down their throats from birth, all that princess fairytale shit,’ Sarah theorized confidently. ‘And all men are looking for is “the one who will”.’

  For a bitter cynic with divorce paperwork in her handbag, she made a good point.

  ‘Men aren’t only looking to get laid, though,’ Lauren said. ‘Men do want to get married. Michael wants to marry me.’

  ‘And Seb wanted to marry not me,’ I added. ‘They’re not all evil shag machines.’

  ‘Yeah, they are,’ Sarah said, wrinkling her nose and biting her bottom lip. ‘They get bored of having to make so much effort after a bit and that’s when they decide to give marriage a whirl, but they’d all be out shagging everything that moves until they were drawing their pensions if they could get away with it.’

  In the interests of not giving up and killing ourselves there and then, Lauren and I maintained our doubtful expressions.

  ‘Two words,’ Sarah said, taking a deep breath and regaining her composure. ‘Hugh Hefner.’

  ‘Mmm. Have you been on any dates yet?’ Lauren asked. ‘Or are you just making out with teenagers in nightclubs.’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, pulling her robe around her. ‘I registered with a bunch of online dating sites, but I can’t do it − it’s still too weird.’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ I told her, trying to sound as though I meant it. ‘There’s no point starting something if you’re not ready.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Honestly, I thought it would be easier. No one I fancy has even messaged me anyway.’

  And then Lauren said the one thing that you’re absolutely, positively not supposed to say to a single woman over thirty.

  ‘It’s because you’re a single woman over thirty.’

  Sarah turned on our best friend so quickly I thought she was going to knock her out. And might I just add, she would have been completely within her rights to do so.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Lauren qualified, as though that would make it better. ‘But they’re filtering you out. No guy in his thirties using online dating looks for women over thirty. They assume you’re desperate.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ Sarah asked. ‘You think all women over thirty are desperate?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true,’ Lauren said with a shrug. ‘Men believe it. As soon as they hear that you’re over thirty, they assume you’re dying to get married and push out babies with the first man who says yes, so they don’t even get involved.’

  ‘That’s so depressing,’ I said, thanking my lucky stars for my boyfriend once again.

  ‘It’s true, though,’ Lauren pushed on. She threw out her painful truths with all the confidence of a woman wearing a Tiffany engagement ring and a half-cocked Claire’s Accessories tiara. ‘It was easier before online dating because they couldn’t write you off without meeting you. Now they don’t even need to see your picture. You turn thirty, you fall out of the algorithm, and you literally don’t exist. You, Sarah Hempel, do not exist.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Sarah replied, stung. ‘You do believe it. Is that why you’re trying to convince yourself you want to marry Mr Swiffer when you’re crying in the toilets and throwing up on yourself?’

  In the immortal words of Cher, if I could turn back time …

  ‘No wonder Steve left you,’ Lauren said, her eyes burning. ‘You are such a bitch, Sarah.’

  Because saying something like that was definitely going to help.

  ‘Now then.’ Apparently I thought the best thing to do at this moment was an accidental impression of my dad. ‘Come on, ladies.’

  ‘Better a bitch than a fantasist,’ Sarah snapped. ‘Oh my God, someone asked me to marry him! I’d better say yes before he realizes what a pathetic excuse for a waste-of-space daddy’s girl I am and changes his mind!’

  Lauren sat up straight. ‘Better a waste-of-space daddy’s girl who’s getting married at thirty-one than a fat, lonely bitch who’s getting a divorce.’

  ‘I am not fat!’ Sarah yelled.

  It was fair, she wasn’t, but I couldn’t help but feel as though that wasn’t the most offensive part of that statement.

  ‘Can we calm down?’ I asked in a quiet voice. ‘Please?’

  ‘Fuck this.’ Sarah stood up and stared at me. ‘I’m not pissing my day away on her. This is all pathetic. You’re both pathetic.’

  Apparently we could not.

  ‘Why am I pathetic?’ I yelped. ‘What did I do?’

  In her temper, Sarah threw her juice glass into the plush carpeting, where it landed with a soft plop, and stormed out of the lounge and back into the dressing room.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ I buried my face in my hands. ‘You do realize she’s our lift, don’t you? And, you know, our best friend?’

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t stand up for me,’ Lauren said, snapping. ‘I can’t believe you let her say those things about me.’

  ‘To be fair, you both said some fairly unpleasant things,’ I reminded her. ‘You know she’s sensitive right now.’

  ‘She’s never sensitive,’ she shouted. ‘She’s a robot. That’s why Steve left her in the first place. He told Michael. He’s sick of it.’

  And then, you know, I had to ask. Against every ounce of my better judgement, I had to. ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘That’s pretty much it.’ Lauren looked almost as disappointed as I felt. ‘He said he was bored and that she’s more invested in her job and her friends than him. He felt like he didn’t exist and he wants someone who’s going to put him first, stay home with the kids, be a real wife.’

  Oh, damn you, conflicting emotions. On the one hand, of course everyone wanted to feel valued by their partner, but on the other, it sounded ever so slightly awful. Like Stephen believed that Sarah shouldn’t be invested in her career and her friends. I hoped that Lauren was telling the story wrong and that Sarah hadn’t inadvertently married a sexist pig who belonged back in the fifties with a desperate housewife pumped full of Valium.

  ‘He told Michael they had this huge argument a while back, where he wanted her to quit work to have a baby and he said he would take care of them both,’ she went on. ‘But she refused to give up, and he said he thought mothers ought to make their kids a priority and not their jobs, and she went crazy, and that’s when he decided he’d had enough.’

  Oh, fuckityfucknuts.

  I remembered that argument. Sarah and I had drowned it in G&Ts the next night and I’d reassured her that he couldn’t possibly mean it and that it wasn’t the past and that he was just giving an extreme example. It was six months ago.

  Stephen had been planning to leave her for six months and she hadn’t known.

  ‘He’s totally right to be pissed with her,’ Lauren said confidently. ‘He wanted to take care of the family and she was just a big old bitch about it.’

  ‘No way,’ I screeched so loudly even I was shocked. ‘You can’t seriously think that Sarah should have to give up her job to have kids because that’s what her husband wants?’

  ‘She doesn’t like that job anyway,’ she rationalized. ‘And he makes enough money to pay for everything. Marriage is about compromise.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re saying this.’ I watched as she calmly crossed her legs and sipped her juice; it was as though the last five minutes had never happened, never mind the last fifty years. ‘Especially after yesterday.’

  ‘Like you said, it was
just cold feet,’ she replied. In that moment I realized she might be a daddy’s girl, but she could just as easily be her mother’s daughter. ‘Maybe if you had spent more time on your relationship instead of at work, Seb wouldn’t have left either.’

  ‘Excuse me, ladies.’ The locker-room attendant stuck her head through the door.

  ‘I would love another drink, thank you,’ Lauren said, the picture of suffering.

  ‘Actually, that’s not what I was going to say,’ the attendant said, the picture of awkwardness. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to keep your voices a little lower. You’re upsetting our other clients.’

  ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry,’ Lauren replied immediately. ‘I apologize.’

  The woman smiled sweetly and disappeared back into the locker room.

  I stared hard at my friend.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m in the mood for a massage now,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you back in the room.’

  ‘You can’t leave,’ Lauren called after me. ‘It’s my hen party.’

  ‘Bloody funny party if you ask me,’ I muttered under my breath.

  The wedding is getting closer! By now, all the major details are arranged and your bride needs your support to make sure she hasn’t missed anything. The checklist below will make sure you’re not missing anything – however big or small!

  Bridal gown []

  (Ordered with an additional ‘premium’ fee to make sure it’s ready on time that is so extortionate, it would more or less pay for your average wedding.)

  Bridesmaid dresses []

  (Ordered against Lauren’s wishes.)

  Transport for the bride and groom []

  (The last vintage Rolls Royce available in all of the British Isles.)

  Venue []

  (Private home bribed into letting us host there with the promise of a spread in a top bridal magazine.)

  Catering []

  (All done except for Lauren’s mother and sister who have decided they are gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free pescatarians, i.e. wankers.)

  Flowers []

  (As long as someone can find a thousand pink peonies in season in August, we’re laughing.)

  Photographer []

  (At last, having a photographer brother pays off.)

  Officiant []

  (At last, having a mental friend who had himself ordained on the Internet pays off.)

  Table and chair hire []

  (The only thing that was easy.)

  Entertainment []

  (Couldn’t get Beyoncé, daren’t tell Lauren.)

  Table plan []

  Subject to final approval. Again.

  Place cards []

  Favours []

  (Disgusting Hershey’s kisses as long as Lauren’s cousin remembers to bring them. Which she won’t.)

  Anything else you need to add?

  Flip-flops for dancing []

  Fireworks []

  Bubbles instead of confetti []

  Convince bride and bridesmaid to start speaking to each other again [ ]

  18

  Wednesday July 22nd

  Today I feel: Ask me again tomorrow.

  Today I am thankful for: British reserve.

  ‘So tell me, how are things going with the Dickenson party?’

  ‘It was a bit of a rough start,’ I said, quickly combing stray strands of hair behind my ears. ‘But it’s all under control now. It’s this Saturday.’

  It was almost two months since Matilda had pulled me into the bogs and insisted I apply for the promotion. I’d been so consumed with planning the Dickenson party, planning Lauren’s wedding, counselling Sarah and trying to remember how to be a girlfriend to Will, I’d forgotten I was technically still interviewing for the job.

  Being dragged into the meeting room for an impromptu catch-up with her and Mr Colton was not how I wanted to be reminded.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Matilda asked. ‘I’ve noticed you putting in a lot of late nights and early mornings.’

  ‘The Dickenson party is fine,’ I insisted. Since when was it a bad thing to work late? ‘It’s going to be great. They had some very elaborate ideas that I had to manage, but we’re all on the same page now.’

  Meaning they decided they didn’t need Michael Bublé to perform when I told them how much he charged per hour and Christopher said he’d want a blow-job for that money and Andrew started to cry and dear God that was a long afternoon.

  ‘Do you feel as though you could take on all the responsibilities of an event planner full time?’ Mr Colton asked. Matilda, sitting beside him, was giving me tiny little nods.

  ‘I do,’ I said, trying to look very confident and excited about the opportunity. ‘I’m very confident and excited about the opportunity.’

  ‘Very glad to hear it,’ Mr Colton said, a stern smile on his face as he stood up and headed for the door. ‘We’ll speak again after the event on Saturday. I look forward to hearing all about it. I’ll leave you with Matilda to go over the next steps.’

  ‘Next steps?’ I asked as he closed the glass door carefully behind him and went straight over to Shona’s office. Eurgh. ‘I don’t just get the job?’

  ‘We have to interview,’ Matilda said. ‘Because we advertised. And Mr Colton always likes to talk to outside candidates, even if we’re planning an internal hire. It’s good to get perspective.’

  ‘When are the interviews?’ I asked. I wanted to be on top of my game on the day my competitors were coming in and not caught out unawares like I had been today. I also wanted to be wearing a considerably more professional outfit than a crazy cat lady T-shirt your boyfriend has bought you as a joke and a tartan mini kilt.

  ‘They’re today,’ Matilda replied.

  So much for that.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, gathering her notebook and coffee mug and standing up. ‘It really is just procedure. The candidates are interesting, but, without wanting to get myself into trouble, all you need is a glowing reference from this party on Saturday and you’re fine.’

  ‘As long as I don’t need a glowing reference from Shona.’ I looked over at her office and seized up when I saw Colton knocking on the door and letting himself in. ‘She’s been extra twatty lately.’

  ‘That’s because she’s a twat,’ Matilda replied. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘What am I going to do?’ I asked. ‘Go to HR?’

  With a reassuring pat on the shoulder, Matilda left me in the meeting room with a plate full of biscuits. So I did what any woman would do who had two days to pull off a party that would make or break her career. I settled in to eat those biscuits.

  In the three weeks since the hen from hell, things had gone from bad to worse with Lauren and Sarah. Lovely, funny, generous Lauren had become a fully-fledged Bridezilla, incapable of discussing anything unrelated to her wedding, and reserved, witty, dry Sarah had become incapable of discussing anything at all. It didn’t matter how many times I reminded her I had been on her side at the hen, that I was Team Sarah, she was still avoiding me, answering my texts with one-word responses and claiming to be too busy to see me when I suggested we hung out. And I’d spent the last three weeks doing some call-dodging of my own, as Lauren’s mother rang every day, sometimes several times a day (like mother, like daughter) and so I was constantly on red alert for unknown numbers. Imagine if I accidently answered it … The horror.

  I hadn’t realized how much time I spent talking to the two of them until all that talking went away. No texts, no tweets, no Facebook posts, Instagram tags, IMs, emails, phone calls, nothing. On one hand, it gave me enough time to stay on top of my job and catch up with the last season of Downton Abbey, but it also left a gaping friendship-shaped hole in my life that could not be filled by my sister’s occasional passive-aggressive texts and Sharaline’s attempts at daily conversation. Although, to be fair, I now knew a lot more about Snapchat and could use the phrase ‘on fleek’ in c
onversation

  Breaking my second chocolate Hobnob in half, I opened my inbox on my phone and scanned. Supplier, supplier, Lauren, Lauren, Lauren, Topshop, supplier, Tom Wheeler.

  Tom.

  I’d almost forgotten about him. Him and the most awful one a.m. conversation I had ever had with a client. Worryingly I’d had a few of those, but usually because they were freaking out and not because I was drunk and not paying proper attention to who I was texting.

  Without Sarah or Lauren to bring him up constantly, he really hadn’t crossed my mind. His event was two months away and I had a globophobic baby-naming ceremony and the wedding of a woman who – whisper it – I wasn’t convinced was entirely sure she wanted to get married to get out of way before then. Two months felt like a lifetime.

  Dear Maddie,

  Might as well eat the rest of that Hobnob, I reasoned as I read on.

  Just checking in on the sixtieth birthday party. I’ve had some ideas and I’d love to discuss them with you. Would a meeting tomorrow after work be possible?

  Best wishes, Tom Wheeler

  The last message Will had sent me was a photo of a pack of condoms and a smiley-face.

  I was still debating my response, my third Hobnob hanging out of my mouth, when I walked out of the meeting room and right into Matilda and the first interviewee.

  Sarah.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You’ve got chocolate on your, well, everywhere.’

  It’s hard to talk with a chocolate biscuit wedged in your mouth. I shoved my notebook between my knees to free up a hand and took it out.

  ‘Hello,’ I replied, wiping my face with the back of my hand. ‘You’re here?’

  ‘For the interview.’ She glanced over at a confused-looking Matilda. ‘For the event planner job.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, totally blindsided. ‘You didn’t tell me?’

  ‘Friends don’t tell each other everything,’ she said, turning her back on me. ‘I’ll let you get on. I’m sure you’re busy.’

  ‘Maddie, you’ve got a little something,’ Colton said, pointing at his face as he left Shona’s office and followed my best friend and the head of HR into his.