The Invitation_The perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

by Keris Stainton

  ‘Tube was fucked,’ Holly said.

  She unwound a blue scarf from her neck and then shrugged her coat off her shoulders, letting it drop down onto the chair behind her.

  ‘It’s not warm enough to sit outside,’ she said. ‘We should go in once we’ve ordered.’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ Piper said. ‘It’s nice.’ And Holly had just taken her scarf and coat off, so she couldn’t be that cold.

  ‘You’re never cold,’ Holly said, shrugging. She yanked the menu out of the wooden box it was tucked into, along with cutlery and napkins. ‘Have you been here before?’

  Piper shook her head and then realised her sister wasn’t looking. ‘No. I’ve heard good things though.’

  ‘From who?’ Holly said, and glanced up at Piper. Her face was almost a sneer and Piper actually jerked back in her seat a little.

  ‘Loads of people,’ Piper said. ‘Matt.’

  ‘Ugh, Matt,’ Holly said, as she always did.

  Piper smirked to herself. She didn’t usually have to mention Matt quite so early in her meetings with Holly. But today she seemed to be in a particularly snotty mood. Holly loved Matt. Holly loved Matt in a way Piper had never seen Holly love anyone, even her husband. Holly turned into an entirely different person around Matt and Piper couldn’t get enough of it. Matt said Piper was cruel. That of course Holly went to pieces around him because he was so gorgeous and amazing. And if he flirted with Holly a little, it was because Holly was hot, not because he wanted to make Piper laugh.

  ‘What did he recommend?’ Holly said, glancing up again. ‘Matt.’

  ‘Oh!’ Piper said. ‘I can’t remember if he did… I think he mentioned the pulled pork thing, but that might have been somewhere else.’

  Holly pulled a face. ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Duck and sweet potato hash. It comes with kale but I can leave that. And a Bloody Mary.’

  ‘It’s eleven a.m.,’ Holly said.

  ‘Perfectly acceptable brunch drink.’ Piper took out her phone, saw she had no notifications, and put it back.

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Holly said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Keep your phone in your bra.’

  ‘I don’t keep it there. I’ve just put it in there for now.’

  ‘James told me he read a thing that said it can cause breast cancer.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Piper said. That sounded unlikely. It sounded like the video someone once sent her of someone frying eggs with a phone. She wanted to take her phone back out and google it, but she forced herself to resist.

  ‘I’m going to have the smashed avocado,’ Holly said, putting the menu down on the table. ‘And a skinny latte.’

  Piper’s stomach rumbled and she craned her neck to look inside the cafe, to see if a waiter was coming outside.

  ‘That’s the other problem with sitting outside,’ Holly started to say, but a waitress appeared at the end of the table and smiled at them both.

  ‘Could I have the duck and sweet potato hash?’ Piper said. ‘And a Bloody Mary. And a glass of tap water.’

  ‘I’ll have the same,’ Holly said.

  Once the waitress had gone, Piper stared at her sister.

  ‘What?’ Holly said.

  ‘What happened to smashed avocado and a skinny latte?’

  Holly closed her eyes briefly, reaching back behind herself to grab her coat.

  ‘I just… that’s what I always have. When we go to brunch.’ She meant her and her husband, not her and Piper. She and Piper hadn’t been to brunch for months. ‘And I just suddenly thought… fuck it.’

  ‘Wow,’ Piper said. Although she was already low-key worried that Holly wouldn’t like the hash and/or the cocktail and Piper would get the blame.

  ‘So,’ Piper said. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Oh you know. The usual. I think you’ve probably got more to tell me than I have you.’

  She somehow managed to make that sound like Piper had been indulging in levels of debauchery Holly would barely recognise.

  ‘Aunty Connie says hello,’ Piper said.

  ‘How was she?’

  Piper frowned. ‘Older. And she repeats stuff a lot more. The flat wasn’t really clean. I don’t know… she was okay. Insisted she was fine and that Jim had totally overreacted. But… I don’t know.’

  ‘Shit,’ Holly said.

  ‘I know. I think we need to go home more often.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Holly said, immediately. ‘Work is completely insane. And James’s is not much better.’

  ‘You could manage once a month, surely?’ Piper suggested.

  Her sister shook her head. ‘Once a quarter maybe?’

  Who even measured time in quarters outside of the financial industry?

  ‘I’m going again next weekend,’ Piper said. ‘I’m going to the school reunion.’

  ‘Wow,’ Holly said, her eyebrows somewhere up near her hairline.

  ‘What?’

  Before her sister could answer, the waitress reappeared with their drinks: two Bloody Marys and a jug of water with glasses. Piper swirled her drink with the celery stalk.

  ‘You’ve spent years avoiding home, avoiding your friends, and now you’re going back for the second time in a month?’ Holly asked.

  Piper blinked. ‘I know. I just… It’s hard, going back. But I have to go back to see Connie and I bumped into Robbie and—’

  ‘Ah,’ Holly said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s why you’re going. Because of Robbie.’

  ‘No. Not just because of him. He messaged me after—’

  ‘After you were on TV.’

  ‘Yes. He saw me on Hey, UK! And he messaged me and then I bumped into him when I was home and we had coffee and caught up and it was really great. And then he mentioned the reunion and I thought… why not?’

  ‘You are so naive,’ Holly said. ‘You’ve always been naive.’

  ‘What am I being naive about?’

  ‘He only contacted you because he saw you on TV. Obviously.’

  ‘But… why? I’m not famous. I can’t do anything for him. Why would you think—’

  Holly shook her head. ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to start rushing up there every month. We can sort someone out to check in on Connie and you should get back on Tinder again.’

  Piper pinched her own thigh through the fabric of the stripy dress she was wearing. She didn’t think she was dreaming, but Holly was being so weird that maybe it was just a particularly vivid one. But no. Ow.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Piper said, incredulous.

  Holly blew out a breath. ‘It doesn’t matter. Ignore me.’

  ‘No. Tell me. What’s the problem with me going home? Seeing Rob? He goes by Rob now, by the way, not Robbie.’

  ‘Of course he does.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it. You should do what you want.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Piper said. ‘I will.’

  They both took out their phones – Piper from her bra, Holly from her bag – and Piper spent the next ten minutes messaging Matt about Holly being even weirder than usual, while Matt responded with suggestions for things Piper could tell Holly about Matt to increase her weird crush, eventually sending a shirtless, duckface, mirror selfie that made Piper yelp with laughter.

  ‘What?’ Holly said. The first word she’d uttered for ten minutes. She’d mostly been focussed on huffing and furiously texting Piper didn’t even know who.

  ‘Matt sent me a selfie. Want to see?’ She was joking. Holly wasn’t keen on selfies either. Piper was surprised when she nodded, looking oddly nervous.

  ‘Seriously?’ She turned her phone round to show Holly. Holly’s face did something Piper wasn’t sure she’d ever seen it do before. She looked sort of slack, like she was about to faint clean away, then scared, and then an expression Piper couldn’t quite identify passed over, before she managed to wrestle it into a forced smile.

  �
�Loves himself, that one,’ she said.

  ‘Oh he absolutely does,’ Piper said. ‘It’s one of the things I love the most about him.’

  Holly shook her head almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Want me to forward it to you?’ Piper joked.

  When her sister didn’t answer, she looked up and saw that odd expression again. What was it?

  ‘Seriously?’ Piper said again.

  Holly frowned. ‘No. Of course I don’t. God’s sake.’

  The food, when it arrived, was unbelievably delicious. Piper had eaten almost a quarter when she thought to ask Holly what she thought.

  ‘It’s really good,’ Holly said. She had a smear of crème fraiche at the corner of her mouth. ‘The Bloody Mary is too. Can’t remember the last time I had a drink in the day.’

  ‘God,’ Piper said. ‘You need to loosen up.’

  ‘Understatement of the year, right there,’ Holly said.

  Piper had been telling her sister she needed to loosen up for as long as she could remember. She didn’t think she’d ever agreed with her before.

  ‘Hol,’ she said now, swirling a piece of duck through sriracha sauce. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘No,’ she said, still looking down at her plate. She’d also separated the duck from the sweet potato from the kale, Piper noticed. ‘But it will be. Just some work bullshit.’

  Piper had assumed Holly would want to go as soon as they’d finished their food, but she actually suggested getting lattes and Piper found that she wasn’t quite ready to go either. She and Holly had never been best friends, probably never would be, but she was clearly going through something and Piper wanted to try and help if she could.

  Chapter Twelve

  Piper spent Monday morning at work trying to come up with a name for the girl band. Another memo had been sent with a list of equally terrible names and a link to an audio file of the girl’s demo. Piper had listened to it with headphones and had been surprised by how much she liked it – it was catchy and fresh and they all had great voices that worked well together. She hated to think of them being saddled with a name like ‘Sugar or Spice’ for their entire career.

  She googled ‘girl band names’ and ended up falling down a girl band YouTube hole. She was interrupted by John tapping her on the shoulder. She pulled her ear buds out and smiled up at him.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Is this work?’

  ‘Sort of.’ She grinned. ‘I was trying to find a name, but I got a bit carried away.’

  ‘I did the same last night,’ John said. ‘Although I watched sixties girl group videos not…’ He gestured at Piper’s computer screen.

  ‘B*witched,’ she said.

  ‘What about something like… Curves?’ he said. ‘Or Figure Eight? Hourglass?’

  ‘God,’ Piper said, before she could stop herself. ‘I don’t know that—’

  ‘No,’ John said, pushing his glasses up on his head and immediately putting them back on again. ‘Maybe not. Keep trying, eh?’

  ‘Will do.’

  * * *

  ‘So shall we just go to The Chancellors?’ Piper said, as she and Lee left the building at the end of the day.

  He’d waited for her in reception, sitting on the sofa, flicking through the latest issue of Q on the coffee table. It was the same one Matt had been reading. At the thought of Matt, Piper wondered if he’d ended things with Becks yet or if he was going to let it drag on even longer. He didn’t have the best track record with ending relationships, preferring to let his partners get fed up of him rather than take any action himself.

  ‘Nah,’ Lee said. ‘I thought we could go to The Dove, have you been there?’

  Piper shook her head. ‘Haven’t even heard of it. Where is it?’

  ‘Just along the river. It’s about ten minutes’ walk.’

  ‘Cool,’ Piper said.

  It was a nice evening, sunny, but with a cool breeze off the river. Piper had spent the day stuck at her desk, working on the still-unnamed girl band’s contract without even a break for lunch, so she was glad to get outside.

  * * *

  ‘Do you live near here?’ Lee asked, as they started to walk.

  Piper shook her head. ‘Stoke Newington. Bit of a pain of a commute, but I love it there. How about you?’

  ‘Enfield,’ he said. ‘Used to live in Vauxhall, but I split up with my girlfriend and moved back with my parents for a bit to save some money.’

  ‘That sounds sensible,’ Piper said.

  ‘Are your parents in London?’ Lee asked.

  Piper looked out over the river, and bit the inside of her cheek. At least she was going to get it out of the way.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘Woah,’ Lee said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. That’s awful. Was it cancer or…?’

  Piper was always surprised when someone asked her outright how they’d died. People sometimes hinted around it, asking if they’d been ill or if it had been sudden, whether they’d died close together or how old she’d been when she’d lost them. But it was rare for someone to both ask and guess a cause.

  ‘No,’ she said, as they passed under the bridge. ‘They were in an accident. On holiday. Dad died instantly and Mum the following week in hospital.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Lee said. ‘That’s brutal!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Piper said. ‘It was.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  They were passing a row of houses that Piper loved and she was annoyed knowing that in future, whenever she walked along this strip of river, she’d remember this conversation. Until now, she’d always tried to work out who lived in such perfect homes in a perfect position, but not any more. Next time she knew she’d hear Lee saying ‘That’s brutal!’ She should probably leave. Make an excuse and go home. But she assumed they were almost there and she didn’t want to be rude, since they worked together. Plus now she wanted a drink.

  ‘We could go to the The Blue Anchor?’ Piper suggested, seeing the pub’s distinctive bright blue picnic benches up ahead. They went there with work quite often, for lunch sometimes, or drinks after.

  ‘Gets too busy,’ Lee said. ‘The Dove’s quieter. You’ll like it. There’s a terrace overlooking the river.’

  They were literally passing The Blue Anchor’s terrace overlooking the river and half the benches were empty, not too busy at all. But fine. They passed The Rutland Arms, which she’d also been to with work. And once with Matt for the Sunday roast when he’d insisted on a weekend walk along the river, but lost interest after about twenty minutes.

  They passed Furnival Gardens, where she and Matt had stood and watched a man standing on top of one of the canal boats (that were apparently moored but frequently simply looked wedged in the not particularly pleasant-smelling black mud), crafting folding chairs from piles of wood. He sawed and sanded and hammered and varnished, all while wearing cut-off jeans and a loose black vest, his long golden hair tied up in a messy bun. She and Matt had been transfixed and Matt still talked about him sometimes. The one that got away. Slowly. Sitting on a hand-made chair on top of a canal boat.

  ‘It’s just here,’ Lee said, pointing vaguely.

  It was no wonder Piper hadn’t been aware of it before. The pub was tucked away like a secret, down a narrow lane behind the gardens. Lee opened the door and Piper followed him inside. It was similar to The Chancellors – the pub she went to with Matt whenever he met her from work. Dark and cosy, not at all a gastro pub. An old man sat at the small table just behind the door, a pint on the table in front of him, a sad-looking dog on the floor at his feet.

  Three steps led to a second level just next to the bar and Lee headed up there, Piper following. The pub was a maze of small, interconnected rooms, almost all of them empty. Lee rejected one where a woman sat nervously in the corner, holding her handbag on her knee, and then eventually chose one with a partial view of the river and a fireplace in the opposite corner. The fire wasn’t lit. So much for the terr
ace.

  ‘Drink?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Gin and tonic please.’

  He headed to the bar, while Piper sat down, sliding a cardboard beer mat towards herself. This place actually reminded her of a pub at home she and her friends had all tumbled into one night. She couldn’t remember where they’d been, just that they were giddy and laughing, the boys shouting and shoving each other, the girls outwardly calmer, but clutching each other, bright-eyed and over-excited.

  There’d been three men in the pub who, faced with six teenagers clearly too young to drink, had all just stared at them blankly until they turned and left. They’d talked about it for ages, making it more and more dramatic in the retelling until it even included a needle scratching across a record, silencing the music that hadn’t, in reality, been playing (song choice had wavered for a while – they’d started with ‘something Elvis’ and finally settled on Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’, which Robbie claimed was suitably creepy in the setting and everyone else just thought was hilarious). Someone added a barman cleaning a pint glass with a tea towel who’d tried to communicate just with his eyes that if they’d stayed they’d be in danger, someone else a dog standing slowly, teeth bared, hackles raised. More often than not, they couldn’t get the words out for laughing.

  Lee came back with the drinks and sat down opposite Piper, smiling. He suddenly seemed nervous and while Piper hadn’t been nervous as they’d walked to the pub, butterflies now started to flutter in her belly. It wasn’t Lee. It was just the entire concept of a date. It had been a while.

  * * *

  An hour later and Piper wished she’d left it even longer. Lee was sort of… shifty. Whenever anyone came near the room, he flinched and moved his chair incrementally until he had his back to the doorway. Plus they really didn’t have anything in common. They talked about work, tried another topic that went nowhere, then went back to talking about work over and over. And he really didn’t have anything good to say about his job. His colleagues were useless, he claimed he never got the same opportunities that were handed to literally everyone else and he didn’t even know what Piper’s job was, asking her how things were in Accounts when she actually worked in Legal.