The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend

by Lucy-Anne Holmes

  ‘Jay! Mate! Calm down. Tell me slowly . . . How many? How many? . . . Jay, mate, chill. No, no, no . . . Don’t have a joint! . . . Uh huh.’ It was Simon. ‘Show me the money!’ He whooped. It made me smile. ‘So what happened? Did you put an ad in somewhere? . . . The national what? Oh, National Enquirer! What, my Sarah? Like a scarecrow . . . ah . . . Bless her, eh, Sarah Sargeant.’ I waited for him to follow my name with a ‘what a nutter’, but it didn’t come. He left it at that. He said my name warmly. He just said my name warmly and it meant so much.

  More gravel crunching as he walked away. I started to negotiate my way down the hill and back to the path. But I had to freeze again.

  ‘Mate!’ Simon shouted. ‘Mate!’ More gravel crunching. I think he was running.

  ‘Hey.’ It was only Leo Clement.

  ‘You don’t know where I’d find a newsagent’s around here?’

  ‘Oh, no. But you could ask at reception, they might tell you.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘The whatsit? The National Enquirer.’

  ‘Come with me,’ Leo laughed. ‘I’ve got a pile.’

  I leant forward to see their backs walking down the path.

  ‘Do you do weights?’ I heard Simon ask.

  ‘No. I surf,’ he answered before they were out of earshot.

  I remembered Leo Clement in the half-pulled-up wetsuit and the way he held my face with his rough hands before he kissed me. And I realized something. Leo Clement! If he wasn’t really a ladies’ man, then what was all that about with me? Could it have been true? Could he have really liked me? I would see him later at the wedding. My stomach started to feel as though it was hosting an episode of Strictly Come Dancing.

  eighty-five

  Rachel and I got ready together in our room. After the makeup and hair ladies had gone we stood together in front of the full-length mirror.

  ‘Oh, Sarah, did you give the lady the CD of the song we’re walking in to?’

  ‘What, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”?’

  ‘Sarah!’

  ‘Oh, what, you mean “Road To Hell”?’

  ‘Sarah! I’m serious, have you . . .’

  ‘What? “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover”?

  ‘I’m not listening. I know you’ve got it.’

  ‘Yeah, I took “Love Is a Battlefield” down this morning and gave it to the lady.’

  ‘I have to ignore this because I feel it’ll go on. Have you seen Eamonn?’

  ‘Yes, and he looks dashing.’

  ‘This is it,’ she said, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

  ‘I’m getting married.’

  Rachel was wearing a long cream dress. Nothing like the toilet-roll lady though. It had a sleeveless bodice top and flowed down gently to the floor. The bodice was covered in vintage lace, which also framed the hem of the skirt. She looked elegant and understated. Her hair was down and slightly curled and there was a tiara-like crown of fresh flowers on her head.

  ‘You look absolutely stunning.’

  ‘We both do,’ Rachel said, smiling at me in the mirror.

  Tooled up with the knowledge that Leo wasn’t a wanker as previously believed, I had made a special effort getting ready. I was wearing the blue dress that I wore the night we smooched for hours. It felt like it was Leo’s dress. Rachel and I had looked for something different but nothing else came close. So we had it dry-cleaned and repaired a small tear that I had made in Leo Clement’s hedge that day. Rachel insisted I had my make-up done by her make-up artist. So I had smoky eyes, although I knew it would be down my cheek in half an hour.

  ‘Do you think once you’ve called a bloke a cockhead in an international publication you’re still in with a chance?’

  ‘Not entirely sure. Although if you look like you do today, I’d say that you could call his mum a bitch and you’d be fine.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll get Erin’s dad to hold a special vigil.’

  There was a knock on our door.

  ‘Is my little girl ready?’ It was Rachel’s dad to escort her downstairs for the ceremony.

  ‘Oh shit. I’m really doing it,’ she gasped.

  ‘Hmmm. Marrying an amazing man in a beautiful place. Cool, eh?’

  ‘Do you think it’s a good idea? You know, at the moment?’ she whispered.

  I was going to say, ‘Don’t be such a knobhead,’ but I didn’t. I stopped myself.

  ‘Yes,’ I said instead, and she smiled.

  eighty-six

  I love a wedding! It’s an orgy of love. A feast for the soul. A riot of goodwill. If I had my way I would go to a wedding every Saturday when The X Factor wasn’t on.

  Eamonn and Rachel’s wedding ceremony was so wonderful, however, that I would have happily given up X Factor forever just to have been present at it. Erin’s dad was the perfect man to wed them. Although he did shock Rachel when he said, ‘I met Rachel some years ago when she visited my church in New York.’

  The crowd murmured ‘ahs’ and Rachel’s gran said loudly, ‘She went to a convent, she’s very religious.’ Rachel turned round to me and made an ‘eek’ face while I sucked in my cheeks. Then I looked at Erin. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened and I saw the exact moment when she realized where she’d met Rachel before.

  ‘I was struck by her spirit and lust . . . for life. I had the pleasure of meeting Eamonn more recently when he cast my daughter in his latest film. I cannot explain how happy I am to be here in this beautiful place in England to join these two in matrimony. Life has shown them both some challenges but in their love they are united to face these together, and it is this we celebrate today. Please stand and sing our first song. One of my personal favourites. “All You Need Is Love”.’

  It wasn’t the normal embarrassed mumbling of a high hymn that no one had heard of. Everyone belted out the words. I turned behind me to look at the gathered guests. But the only person I saw was Leo Clement. He was wearing the waistcoat, white shoes outfit he’d worn before. He was standing next to Brian, who waved. Leo looked up from his hymnbook and smiled and seemed to be singing to me. ‘All You Need Is Love’. But it made me think about Simon suddenly. Was love all you needed? Probably not. Simon and I had loved each other, and it had still gone tits up.

  ‘Now, I have been married for twenty-seven years and I counsel married couples in New York. And the problem is always the same between them. They stop talking. So I want to remind Eamonn and Rachel, even though you may think that Rachel needs no reminding on this score. Keep talking. If she looks great, tell her, if you feel full of love, tell him, if he’s being a dork, you should mention that too. Keep telling each other how you feel. It can be harder than you think. Now, I think we should have our next song. “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”.’

  And we all belted out that power ballad as though soft rock depended on it.

  After the ceremony there were champagne and photographs on the lawn outside. I had cried on and off throughout the entire ceremony so decided to slip away to apply cosmetic first-aid to my smoky eyes. I was nearly at the door of the main house when a hand reached out and touched my arm.

  ‘Sarah Sargeant!’

  ‘Yes . . .’ I said to a large man who looked familiar. He was a big man in an expensive but crumpled suit. He had a bushy brown beard.

  ‘Peter Jackson,’ he said. I knew his name from the table plan. But I couldn’t remember where or if I’d met him before. Then the sun rose in my mind.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said before I could stop myself. ‘Like the Peter Jackson, as in Lord of the Rings?’

  ‘Yes. Now, Eamonn and I go back a long way. He happened to show me some rushes. I have to say, great work.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘Great, great work. We’ll be seeing a lot more of you, Sarah, I feel. Are you English?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘From Croydon.’ Why I added that, I will never know.

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Really?�
� I squeaked.

  ‘Really,’ he nodded.

  Oh, don’t cry, Sarah, I said to myself, please, please, for once in your life don’t cry when nice things happen.

  ‘Oh, thank you, ah, ah, ah. Excuse me, emotional day,’ I mouthed and had to walk away towards the ladies. It didn’t seem real. Peter Jackson thought I was good in the film. He’d sought me out to tell me.

  ‘Sarah,’ I heard my name again. Oh, please be Woody Allen, I thought. But actually it was better. It was Leo.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey,’ I repeated back. Our eyes were locked.

  My hand involuntarily travelled to my hair and started fiddling with it.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry! Leo, I am ridiculously sorry. I called you a cockhead!’

  ‘Oh, I thought the stars stood for shithead.’

  ‘I love the term “shithead”,’ I sighed, because I do.

  ‘So, I’m a cockhead.’ He smiled. It didn’t sound right when said in an American accent.

  ‘I didn’t mean it. I mean I did at the time. But only cos of what you said in your column.’

  ‘I didn’t even know I had a column.’

  Oh, I did, Leo, I did.

  ‘You must have hated me!’

  ‘No!’

  I’d started rubbing my lip with my finger.

  ‘Well, a little bit, yes.’ Now I was circling the rim of my glass with my finger! Giovanni wasn’t behaving at all! ‘That was why I ignored your calls and . . .’

  A bell was rung from somewhere and a well-spoken English man shouted, ‘Would you all gather on the steps for a group photograph?’

  This was just as well, as my finger was nearly in my mouth.

  ‘I just need to pop in here for a sec, Leo, I’ll see you later.’

  He leant down and kissed me on the cheek. He lingered with his mouth against my skin. I closed my eyes. It was so intimate.

  ‘Are we friends again?’ he whispered in my ear.

  How did Michael Flatley get inside my tummy?

  ‘Hmmm,’ I whimpered back. And I knew we were going to kiss properly again later, in a National Trust house in Devon by the sea, and I couldn’t wait.

  eighty-seven

  By the end of the dinner I still hadn’t seen Ruth or Simon. Such was the singular achievement of passing excellence that was my table planning. If truth be told, my table planning had been pretty stupefying all round, especially as I wrote Peter Jackson twice and completely forgot to seat Marcus, Eamonn’s son. But no one got upset because it was a wedding and everyone was wankered on free champagne. Heaven.

  The dinner was delicious. The speeches were brilliant, although watching the entire output of The Sopranos might have been shorter. Everyone seemed to be standing up and having a word. Marcus as the best man was very funny and very moving and by the end of his speech my smoky eyes made me look like the Joker from Batman. Then Eamonn stood up and did a speech where he said that Rachel completed him. Jerry Maguire is one of my all-time favourite films. I was Batman then.

  ‘Excuse me.’ It was Rachel tapping her cheese knife on a glass. ‘I know that the bride doesn’t normally make a speech, but there is just one special “thank you” I wanted to make.’

  The crowd hushed and Rachel stood up.

  ‘Um, where do I start? I suppose a little back-story. I must tell you that I’ve never had a close girlfriend before. I feel I’ve gone through life meeting wonderful women and letting their friendships lapse because I was too busy to maintain them. Now I find myself staring death in the face. Please, I’m not being morbid when I say that. I want you to know that I am staring it in the face with the look of Lara Croft and an Uzi and I won’t let it stand a chance. But still, I am aware of its presence now more than ever.

  ‘So, I just want to say a few words about my wonderful friend Sarah here. Sarah is one of those people who looks for the positive. It used to do my head in. She would say, “I’m overweight but on a positive note I make those thinner than me feel good.” She would say, “My boyfriend’s left me for another woman. I’m devastated, but somehow at some point some good will come out of all this.” Sorry, Simon, wherever you are; at least we can all laugh about it now.

  ‘When I was diagnosed I told Sarah that I didn’t want sympathy. I didn’t want to get wet and wallow, a fact which I sometimes regretted when Sarah was exercising her repertoire of truly dreadful jokes.’

  Everyone laughed a bit too knowingly if you ask me.

  ‘Well, now, I’m going to look on the positive and in the process probably get a bit wet. Because here I am, the day of my wedding, and I have a husband.’ She stops and smiles after she says the word ‘husband’. ‘Not just any husband, but the best man in the world. A man that I love in a way I could never have imagined loving anyone. He wants to marry me two days before I have a breast removed; he loves me unconditionally and is willing to stand by me through this ordeal. But I also have a great girlfriend. And she is Sarah here. So I stand here today, in front of all of you wonderful people, and although there’s an illness attacking my body, which makes me tired and angry and cry out in pain, I actually feel richer than I ever have before.

  ‘And I just want to say thank you to Sarah, who has been with me every step of the way. At every doctor’s appointment, she was at my side and holding my hand. A day hasn’t gone by when she hasn’t called and said, “I’m coming round to make you tea and broccoli.” She even told Eamonn when I didn’t feel I could. She has helped me organize today. I used her strength when I didn’t have any of my own. And when I should feel that life has dealt me a rough card I actually feel very, very lucky. So I’d like you please all to stand and toast Sarah. To Sarah. She’s a goddess.’

  I couldn’t see because tears were sliding down my face.

  The tables were pulled back and the band started. Eamonn and Rachel did their first dance to ‘We Go Together’, the song from the end of Grease. Eamonn looked quite happy for a man with two left feet and sixty pairs of eyes upon him. I stood whooping between Dominic and Brian in his red suit. I might have a second career as a matchmaker because they were getting on very well.

  ‘Drink?’ said Dominic to Brian when the song ended.

  ‘Love one, thanks, Dom.’

  ‘Beanstalk?’

  ‘Yes, please, you bugger.’

  Dominic walked away.

  ‘Hallelujah!’ cried Brian, squeezing my waist. ‘Great guy. There’s a bit of Silas Anderson about him. Commanding and powerful.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘He thinks you’re a superstar!’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Said you were a bloody amazing actress.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Oh, darling, don’t cry. He did mention that you sing like you’re being strangled. Now then, introduce me to Banana Man while I can still stand.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him myself,’ I said, looking about me.

  ‘Is he the one with that cute baby? And the miserable-looking blonde?’

  ‘Shhhh. She’s all right.’

  ‘They were at the dinner. Maybe they’re putting the baby to bed.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘Ding dong, darling, look who’s coming over . . .’

  I knew who it was before I looked around. I knew he was talking about Leo Clement.

  ‘Sarah,’ Leo said when he got to me. ‘Do you want to dance?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ I said, wondering whether I was drunk enough. ‘Yeah, although I don’t really do what most people would call dancing.’

  He smiled and put his hand on my back and eased his fingers slightly inside the fabric of my dress. Brian nodded approval and then pretended to faint at Leo’s beauty. The singer was having a go at ‘Angels’. A nightmare to dance to. I stood nervously until Leo pulled me to him. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. So I rested them on his shoulders. I could feel the muscles under his shirt. Our faces were close. I didn’t want to
say a word to him. I just did some little shuffling steps and swayed my hips and smiled at him.

  ‘I’m a shithead,’ he said.

  ‘Cockhead,’ I corrected him.

  ‘Cockhead,’ he repeated, but he still didn’t have it right.

  ‘I’m also a fan of knobhead. Although, that would have been too lightweight under the circumstances.’

  ‘Will you teach me English slang, Sarah Sargeant?’

  ‘I certainly will, Leo Clement. You’ll be learning from a master.’

  ‘That guy, the boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, is that . . .?’

  ‘It’s cool now. He’s here with his lady and baby.’

  ‘Not that cutie?’

  ‘Yeah, little Anna. How cute is she?’

  I felt him tighten his grip on me and I melted into his chest.

  ‘What are your plans now?’

  ‘Oh, well, no idea, actually. Owing to that beautiful story in the National Enquirer I lost a commercial that would have meant I didn’t need to work for years. So I really don’t know. I want to be there for Rachel. But I think they might want some time together, just the two of them.’

  ‘Would you like to spend some time in Malibu?’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘Whenever you want . . .’

  ‘Yes, um, yes, I guess, yes.’

  He kissed my head.

  ‘I don’t have a spare room, though, I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Oh,’ I blushed.

  ‘I can teach you to surf.’

  I laughed at the thought of me on a surfboard. Then quickly stopped laughing at the thought of me in a wetsuit.

  ‘Maybe I’ll just sit on the beach and hold your towel.’

  ‘Sarah.’ It was Rachel tapping me on the shoulder. ‘Sorry, Leo. Sare, my lovely, will you give me a hand having a pee?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I gave a mock curtsey to thank Leo for his dance and linked arms with Rachel and headed to the loos. We walked straight into Simon, Ruth and Anna, who were in the hall. Rachel cooed her way to Anna, whom Ruth was holding. I hung back, aware of Simon and not knowing what to do or say.