Always the Bridesmaid

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘Are you home yet? I’m just round the corner from you,’ Lauren replied. ‘I’ll come over. I’ve got some more stuff I want to go through.’

  Sarah began vehemently shaking her head and very, very nearly spilt her tea on my new rug. Not cool, Sarah.

  ‘OK, I’m home,’ I said, slapping Sarah away. ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ she said, cutting me off. ‘I can’t stay long, I have plans, so if you could have my planner ready, that would be great.’ And she hung up.

  What was that I was feeling? Oh, that’s it, overwhelming rage. There’s nothing like being treated as though you’re an employee by one of your alleged best friends. Especially when she’s not paying you a penny.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘She talks to you like that? When you’re doing her a favour?’ Sarah raised an eyebrow at me and for one small second I felt slightly less alone.

  Rather than answer Sarah, I slowly lowered my head until it was resting on the coffee table and banged it gently a few times. Then I turned my head and looked at Sarah. Time to take advantage of this détente.

  ‘You guys are going to have a talk. Now.’

  ‘Right, so I’ll see you later.’ Sarah chugged her tea and stood up. ‘Hopefully at work.’

  ‘You can sit right back down,’ I demanded. ‘If you can talk to me, you can talk to her.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me my husband left me because I’m a bitch,’ she replied. ‘Until she apologizes, I’m not talking to her.’

  I shook my head. ‘Well, that’s going to make the wedding very difficult, isn’t it? Sit your arse down. We’re sorting this out.’

  Sarah narrowed her eyes until they were just bright blue slits and grabbed the biscuits from the settee. By the time Lauren knocked on my door, she had eaten five caramel digestives and not spoken a word.

  ‘Hey, so Mom emailed me a long list of questions and I need to get back to her before my great-aunt Evelyn books her flight,’ she said, pushing past me up the stairs. ‘She’s gluten-intolerant, lactose-intolerant and she has a peanut allergy so—’

  She stopped dead in the doorway at the sight of Sarah stuffing her face in the living room.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, tossing her hair like a slightly put-out pony. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

  ‘Ta-da.’ Sarah waved her hands around in the air, biscuit crumbs going everywhere.

  ‘I’ll go and get the organizer,’ I said, shoving Lauren into the living room while she continued to flip her hair around like a tit. ‘You two play nicely.’

  I closed my bedroom door, pressing my ear to the wood. I don’t know what I was hoping to hear exactly; just not blood-curdling screams.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ Lauren said, her painfully polite upbringing getting the better of her and breaking the silence.

  ‘Thanks,’ Sarah replied. ‘Turns out you eat a lot less when you’re not cooking for someone else.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Come on, kids, I thought, crossing my fingers. You can do it.

  ‘I’ve been busy too. I kept meaning to call you but all this wedding stuff kept getting in the way.’

  ‘Like you being a knob?’

  Nice one, Sarah. I banged my forehead gently against the wall.

  ‘More like you being a knob,’ Lauren replied. ‘You, like, totally ruined my bachelorette.’

  ‘I, like, totally ruined it?’

  Silence. I hoped neither of them was stabbing the other. I really did like my rug.

  ‘I guess the whole thing was kind of a disaster,’ Lauren relented. ‘I said some pretty horrible things.’

  ‘Yeah, you did,’ Sarah agreed. There was a slightly too long pause and I nibbled at my thumbnail. ‘And so did I. I’m sorry.’

  Phew.

  ‘I maybe kind of overreacted about things,’ Lauren said slowly. ‘I’m sorry too.’

  ‘Are we all done now?’ I left the sanctuary of my bedroom, armed with Lauren’s wedding planner, and found the pair of them sitting side by side on the settee, happily eating the last two biscuits in the packet. ‘Are we playing nicely?’

  ‘I finished the biscuits,’ Sarah said, holding her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry.’

  She wasn’t really.

  A wedding is a beautiful occasion, not just the union of two people beginning a life together. It is a time to celebrate happiness and love, not only for the bride and groom, but for everyone – our friends, our family, those we have lost, those we will find.

  Use this section to celebrate the love in your life!

  I am grateful for the people who have brought love into my life:

  Sarah

  Lauren

  Mum & Dad

  Dan & Eleanor

  Jon Hamm

  The blonde lady in Starbucks who always get my name right and remembers I want soy milk.

  Will?

  Three things that make me happy are:

  Sleeping in

  Using the spirit level app on my iPhone

  Watching Bake Off with my friends and saying we’re going to bake cakes for each other but then not doing it and ordering pizza instead

  What does love look like to you?

  Michael Fassbender

  Describe your dream partner (of if you’re already with them, stick in a photograph!):

  Tall, all his own hair, piercing eyes, strong arms, excellent at hugs, clever enough to read a newspaper every day but still watches telly. Makes me laugh, can cook, drives (and has nice car), knows when to take me to bed and make sweet, sweet love and when to bend me over settee and give me a good seeing-to. Loves animals and children. But not in a creepy way.

  19

  Thursday July 23rd

  Today I feel: Bleururuueuugh.

  Today I am thankful for: Bleururuueuugh.

  I really wish Lauren had never given me this journal, I really do. If you looked at my Facebook page from the last couple of months (which I like to think Seb still does from time to time), you would think I’ve been having the time of my life. Girls’ nights out with Sarah, wedding planning with Lauren, quick jaunt to the country, carefully alluded-to burgeoning romance, artfully shot cocktail after artfully shot cocktail, and yet, open these pages and HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, giant pile of wankery upon giant pile of wankery.

  And yet the best is still to come.

  Behold! The greatest pile of wankery ever to be committed to paper!

  ‘Sorry I’m late. Tube nightmare,’ I said, peeling off my jacket as I walked into the Plumtree to find Tom sitting in the same seat Sarah and I had occupied two months before.

  ‘Not a problem,’ he replied, handing me the drinks menu. ‘Glad you could do this late. Sorry it’s out of hours.’

  ‘All part of the job,’ I said. ‘Not many people can meet in person from nine to five.’

  That part was true. The tube being a nightmare was not. After our ‘chat’ Shona had decided to ‘take meetings out of the office’ for the rest of the week, leaving me and Sharaline up shit creek with no paddle. Which is a funny sentence until you realize it means you’re going to be up to your elbows in shit, trying to row to shore.

  By the end of the day today, Sharaline had cried twice and I’d had to go on an emergency doughnut run just to stop her from quitting. We were thirty-six hours away from the Dickenson baby-naming ceremony and everything that had come together was falling apart. The last thing I had time for was a drink with Tom, but, bugger me, here I was. Because I still didn’t know how to say no. It was a sad day when I had to accept that my big brother had given me good advice, even if I wasn’t following it.

  ‘At least we can have a drink.’ Tom stood up, leaving me at hip height. Awkward. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Oh, um, gin and tonic, please?’ I supposed I should have been buying the drinks − it was a meeting, after all, and I shouldn’t have been drinking at all − but after the day I’d had, a day that wasn’t even nearly ov
er, I didn’t think one drink could hurt. Because I would never learn. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He strode off to the bar, and yes, I looked at his bum, but no, it didn’t mean anything.

  ‘I’m so sorry about the text message the other week,’ I said when he returned from the bar with two stiff drinks and two bags of crisps. ‘Totally unprofessional of me. And thank you for the CD. And sorry for not thanking you for it sooner. Also unprofessional.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Tom said, attacking the cheese and onion and shaking his head. ‘All fine. Glad you got the CD.’

  I didn’t dare tell him I still hadn’t managed to find the disk drive so I could load it onto my computer, but still, he seemed fine with everything.

  ‘How are the plans going for your friend’s wedding?’ he asked. ‘It’s soon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Next week,’ I confirmed, ripping into the salt and vinegar. ‘We’ve got the bridal shower on Sunday, the rehearsal dinner the Friday after, and then it’s just the wedding and … done.’

  ‘I don’t know what either of those things are,’ he said. His fiancée clearly wasn’t American. Or she was sane American without a crazed WASP mother entirely up in the air.

  ‘A rehearsal dinner is just that − everyone who’s taking part in your wedding shows up for a walk-through at the venue, and then you all have dinner the night before the ceremony. And the bridal shower − well, we’ve already had the hen night, but …’ I shuddered involuntarily at the flashbacks. ‘Shall we just say it didn’t go that great? So we’re having a bridal shower too. As far as I can tell, it’s afternoon tea with friends, with booze and with presents. I’m just happy it’s almost all over.’

  ‘I can imagine weddings aren’t easy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘So much to organize.’

  ‘Well, yeah − you must know,’ I replied, surreptitiously wiping my hands on my skirt underneath the table. This didn’t feel like a lick-them-clean kind of situation. ‘My mum always kicks off whenever I complain about it. She likes to give me the whole “in my day” speech. Apparently weddings have become horribly overcommercialized.’

  ‘She’s in the church service and a buffet in the village hall brigade?’ he asked. ‘Yeah, mine wasn’t that amused when there was talk of hiring an entire hotel for the weekend.’

  ‘Really not that rare these days. I tried to explain that those overcommercialized weddings keep me in a job, but she doesn’t get it,’ I said, tucking into another crisp. ‘Maybe your mum will be more positive about fancy parties after her lovely birthday.’

  ‘Only fancy parties that are for her,’ he said with an uncomfortable laugh. ‘But at least you won’t be a waitress at your friend’s wedding.’

  ‘No penguin or panda this time.’ I shook my head. ‘Posh frock and everything.’

  At least, I hoped so. Right now I wouldn’t put anything past Lauren.

  ‘You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?’ he asked, smiling.

  It was just a throwaway comment, but it struck me that ‘never’ didn’t mean what it should have, because we weren’t an ‘us’, he was my client. We weren’t even friends. He wasn’t even my boyfriend’s friend. Realistically, after his mother’s party, there was literally no reason for us ever to see each other again.

  Hmm.

  ‘Shall we catch up on where we are with everything?’ I asked, washing down my crisps with a far too large swig of gin and trying not to splutter all over my notebook. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to be here all night.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Was it my imagination or did he look a tiny bit deflated? ‘No exciting plans other than to pick up something for dinner that I can’t ruin in a microwave.’

  I laughed politely. His fiancée didn’t look like much of a cook in those Facebook photos from the wedding. You couldn’t possibly have such well-toned arms and be a good cook. Unless you were doing a lot of risotto. All that stirring.

  ‘Are you doing anything this evening?’ he asked, sipping his pint.

  I shook my head. ‘Quiet night in,’ I told him. He probably didn’t want to hear about my plans to send his not-a-friend a photo of my tits. And I probably didn’t want to tell him. ‘I’ve still got some work to do, so it’s going to be laptop, bubble bath and then bed.’

  ‘Sounds lovely,’ Tom replied. ‘I mean, not for me, obviously. Can you imagine me in a bubble bath?’

  I didn’t say anything because if I put my mind to it, I could. This was all Will’s fault − why hadn’t he been over all week? You can’t start giving a girl a regular seeing-to and then disappear on her for six whole days; it wasn’t fair. I was running around town with a dangerous level of hormones and it wasn’t safe.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I haven’t even asked,’ I said, turning the conversation back to a nice safe topic that made me want to do a sick. ‘When is your wedding?’

  Tom choked, spitting a mouthful of bitter back into his pint. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Your wedding?’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ he asked.

  ‘Hardly ever,’ I replied.

  ‘There is no wedding,’ he said, his face falling. ‘We broke up two months ago. At Ian’s wedding. When I met you.’

  Thank God I had a big glass of gin and a full bag of crisps in front of me.

  ‘You broke up with your fiancée when you met me?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean it like that,’ he corrected himself. I was still thankful for the gin. ‘I meant we broke up during the wedding at which we met.’

  ‘That’s shit timing by anyone’s standards,’ I said, relieved, and, as the daughter of two English graduates, appreciative of his proper use of grammar. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s for the best.’ Tom looked down at the table and then back up at me with renewed certainty. ‘Especially since she’d been shagging someone else.’

  ‘I won’t ask whether or not you’re going to get back together, then.’ I bit my lip and curled in my shoulders. What do you say to a man when he’s been cheated on, dumped at his mate’s wedding and has cancelled his own? I couldn’t hug him and give him ice cream and tell him his ex was a bastard. Oh, wait, I could do that last bit.

  ‘She must be a right bastard.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew,’ he said, pushing a salt and vinegar crisp around the table. ‘What with Will … well, you know.’

  Oh. There was that awful sense of vomitty terror I hadn’t been missing ever.

  ‘He didn’t! Not with your fiancée?’

  ‘Oh God no,’ Tom’s eyes widened. ‘Well, not with her, anyway. He did shag my girlfriend at law school after I dropped out when my dad died, but those things happen.’

  I choked on my gin. Was that what Will was talking about? The chip on Tom’s shoulder? It was a perfectly understandable bigger than average chip, but he seemed fairly OK with it at this moment.

  ‘No, he didn’t do the deed with this one,’ he went on, ‘but he was the one who decided to tell me all about it,’ he said. ‘He thought I knew, apparently.’

  ‘But he didn’t really?’ I asked, recognizing the tone in his voice.

  ‘No,’ Tom replied. ‘No, he did not.’

  Eurgh. That was such a Shona thing to do. I didn’t like hearing that about my boyfriend, but Tom had no reason to lie. It wasn’t as though Will had shagged his missus, just chosen to be the bearer of bad news. He wasn’t a scumbag, just a bit of a shit. Although, from the sounds of it, he was a scumbag at uni.

  ‘She shagged Ian. The groom.’

  ‘What?’ I asked. I couldn’t have heard him right.

  ‘The groom,’ he repeated. ‘By all accounts, they’d had a drunken thing just before he got engaged when we were on a break, she thought it meant more than it did, she asked him to leave Emma and he said no, so she decided to stick with me. Until I found out.’

  This was not the kind of thing I wanted to hear a week before my uncertain friend’s wedding. Where were all the fairy-tale love st
ories? I thought back to Will’s best man speech, how he’d said Ian hadn’t even looked at another woman from the moment he’d met Emma and how I’d swooned. What a liar. And what a lie.

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ I folded my arms across my chest. ‘Your fiancée had been sleeping with the groom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you were his usher?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Will, the best man, knew all about it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘It was an age ago,’ he said, breathing in and then out, very hard. ‘I’m sure it all would have stayed buried if Will hadn’t decided to share it with me on the way out of the church.’

  ‘Christ almighty,’ I muttered. ‘And you would have been happy with that?’

  ‘I was happy before I knew,’ he shrugged. ‘No point wondering now, is there? I suppose in some twisted way, Will did me a favour.’

  ‘He’s all heart,’ I said weakly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault and it’s all sorted now. Me and Ian had it out, no harm done.’

  ‘I’ve got to say,’ I said, sitting back in my chair and resting my glass on my chest, ‘you seem to be dealing with this incredibly well.’

  ‘It’s been two months − I’ve had some time,’ he replied, rubbing his left eyebrow. ‘And I knew things were on a rocky road. I suppose I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I think I always knew we wouldn’t actually get married. I’m not sure why we ever got engaged.’

  I pushed my hair out of my face and sighed. Everyone’s story is different. Everyone’s story is the same. But something didn’t add up. Either Tom was an amazing actor, or he didn’t have nearly so much of a problem with Will’s past behaviour as Will seemed to think he did.

  ‘How come everyone else always knows something’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t know anything was wrong. Am I just incredibly stupid?’

  He winced and pushed the cheese and onion crisps towards me. ‘So you know about it, then? Christ, I’m sorry, Maddie.’

  ‘How it feels to have someone cheat on you?’ I clucked. ‘Yeah. Got that covered.’