by Kirsty Eyre
Sleeping in my own bed is like a Star Wars prequel: pretty underwhelming. Despite the opportunity of a lie-in, my body clock won’t allow it and I’m up at six.
From: Lorna Parsons
B, I’ve been called out to perform an emergency caesarean on a Hereford. Really sorry but I’ll be late to the wedding xxx
To: Lorna Parsons
Good luck with the C-section. Don’t worry, I’ll have matron-of-honour duties at the beginning anyway. Come when you can xx
I get out of bed and pluck a shrivelled Post-it note off my foot.
New Year’s Resolutions:
Get PhD Scholarship
The whole PhD thing fills me with dread. The thought of having to go through the process all over again. Ingratiating myself to professors. Filling out page after page of application forms. I stick the Post-it note on the inside of the wardrobe door and shut it.
By ten o’clock, I’ve been for a run, and am showered, dressed and wrestling with eyeliner when Maria appears along with the smell of hairspray and Stella (the perfume, not the lager). She looks great in her dress, like the heroine of a Jackie Collins paperback romance. Freshly curled tendrils are piled on top of her head, with carefully selected ringlets cascading down each side.
‘Just nipping to the corner shop for tissues and confetti,’ she says, touching up her mascara, and whisks out in a puff of perfume, the front door slamming behind her.
A minute later, the doorbell rings.
‘Didn’t you take your key?’ I holler without moving, mid-tricky-eyeliner application.
The doorbell rings again.
‘Give me a sec!’ I pad through the living room and make out the silhouette of someone taller than Maria through the frosted glass. I open the door.
‘Bonjour, ma petite Anglaise!’
Honeysuckle pervades the air; my blood goes hot and the world stands still.
‘Pour toi.’ Joely smoulders in a figure-hugging black dress, handing me a bouquet of red roses as her eyes take me in from top to toe.
‘What are you doing here?’ I finally find my voice.
‘You look beautiful.’ Her chocolate eyes devour me. ‘Can I come in?’
My innards go all pulpy. The smell of her perfume triggers a flashback of nudity between Egyptian cotton sheets. I look over her shoulder and open the door. ‘Very quickly.’
She follows me to the lounge, her eyes skimming the walls to assess what has changed since her last visit.
‘I knew you’d be back for the wedding,’ she says.
I scratch the back of my neck, making eye contact with the floor as she lowers herself onto the arm of the sofa and removes leather gloves with her teeth.
‘What do you want, Joely?’
‘I think about you all of the time.’ Her hand reaches for my arm, which almost ignites at her touch. ‘I’m so sorry for everything.’
‘You—’
‘I was denying our relationship to myself because I couldn’t tell my family. I didn’t see how it could ever work and then …’ Her skin glows with an effervescence you can’t bottle. ‘I found the courage.’ Her hair is silky soft. ‘I knew you’d be here for the wedding and I had to take a chance.’ She runs her fingers down my arm to clasp my hand.
I stare at the carpet, her touch doing peculiar things to my ovaries. ‘Joely, I barely heard from you. You ended it. Things have changed. I’ve changed.’ The words to tell her about Lorna stick in my throat, and I can’t swallow. What’s wrong with me?
‘That’s the problem, ma petite Anglaise.’ She waits until I look up, at which point I’m forced to remember how crazy beautiful she is. ‘I can’t forget you.’
‘I …’
‘Let me show you something.’ She taps at her phone. ‘It will take only one minute, I promise.’
I have an out-of-body experience as Joely plays a video clip of a couple in their sixties, sitting on a cream chaise longue, waving at the camera. The man, tanned and refined, has a pastel-blue pullover slung around his shoulders and holds an unlit, filterless cigarette; the kind of perfect white stick with two mint-green bands that a villain would smoke in a Bond film. The woman next to him wears a cream rollneck. Her auburn hair is scooped into a chignon, accentuating her chiselled jaw and high cheekbones; an ex-ballet dancer perhaps.
EX-BALLET DANCER
Hello, Billie!
BOND VILLAIN
Bonjour, Billie! We are the parents of Joelle. I am Jean-Luc and my wife, Claudine.
EX-BALLET DANCER
We look forward to meeting you. Joelle talks very much about you. I know she is very sorry to be so late to explain but we hope it’s not too late.
BOND VILLAIN
It’s never too late. Come and have a drink with us in France!
EX-BALLET DANCER
We hope to meet you soon, Billie. Bisous!
Joely looks at me, her eyes deep pools of melted chocolate. ‘I’m ready to do this.’
‘You came out to your parents?’
‘Yes.’ She brushes my hair out of my face. ‘I’m free now.’
The door rattles. ‘Bilbo?’
‘One sec!’ I shout.
‘I want to be with you, Billie,’ Joely says.
My stomach does that elastic yoyo thing and my legs feel like jelly as I walk to the front door to let Maria in.
‘I forgot my keys. What’s up?’ Maria says, clocking my raised eyebrow, her eyes travelling to the lounge, to the sofa and then to Joely. ‘Holy fuck.’
‘Billie?’ Joely gets up and wanders into the hall. ‘I know I have been an insupportable species of shit.’
‘You said it, sister!’ Maria says, barging past her.
‘But I didn’t feel I could commit until I told my parents,’ she continues.
‘Come the fuck on, Bilbo!’ Maria shouts.
The ridges of Joely’s ribbed black jumper dress accentuate the contours of her body.
I grab my clutch bag. ‘We’ve got to go.’
Joely smiles. ‘You really do look beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’ I feel my cheeks go hot and my body turn to melting wax.
She saunters out of the living room, her heels tapping rhythmically on the laminate flooring of the hallway. When she reaches the door, she turns round. ‘Call me.’
I can barely move.
From: Lorna Parsons
I’m so sorry, Billie. I’ve got a life/death situation on my
hands with this cow and I’m not going to be able to make the wedding. I’m really, really, really sorry. I know this is totally shit and I’ll make it up to you when you get back xxx
Remembering Kat’s tiered wedding invitation list and her dozens of backup guests, I message Bev to let her know I won’t be using their ‘plus one’, in case they want to invite someone else last minute.
From: Bev
Bit late. You must know one person who would kill to come to the lesbian wedding of the century?
I consider this for a moment and realize I do perhaps know someone after all.
‘A lesbian wedding?’ Dave says, no doubt with an immediate hard-on.
‘I know it’s probably a no-go with last-minute childcare but—’
‘Hell, yes!’ He hangs up.
Dave lingers outside Islington’s Screen on the Green in a light brown suit and a white shirt with a small blue clover print – an improvement on his lab coat. Red and black canopy lettering spells out ‘Bev & Kat’s Big Day’ and passers-by rubberneck for a glimpse of the brides.
‘Good to see you, Dinosaur.’ I kiss him on the cheek.
‘You too, Shitbag.’
Bev’s sisters shimmy up the entrance steps in figure-hugging silk.
‘This is my idea of heaven,’ Dave says, his head twisted towards them.
Retro metal signs with 1960s slogans line the walls of the draughty foyer. A circular 7UP lamp cranks out just about enough light for us to make out three young flower girls handing out popcorn. In the dimly lit auditorium, gu
ests of all ages mingle in the aisles and huddle at the bar sipping champagne.
‘Psst!’ Kat’s head pokes out from a heavy ceiling-to-floor velvet curtain.
I nudge Dave. ‘Back in a sec.’
Maria follows me behind the curtain, where Kat shivers in a plunge-back ivory silk gown, her hair swept back with a single white rose. ‘Please tell me I don’t look a tit, Bill.’
‘You don’t look a tit.’
‘Maz?’ Kat twitches.
Maria takes Kat’s hand. ‘You don’t look a tit.’
‘Ballade pour Adeline’ plays in the background. How can an instrumental piece of music sound so beautifully French? I think of Joely, her skin, her smell, the taste of peppermint. The way she pronounces Anglaise like it’s a cream-smothered dessert.
‘Fuck, I’m nervous.’ Kat twists and turns in circles, clutching a bunch of pale pink roses.
I rub her back. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated for a short film by the bride and groom.’
‘Bride!’ Kat yells at the ceiling. ‘Bride and bride!’
The three of us peep through a side curtain to watch Bev and Kat on the big screen as they playfully contradict each other in a pre-wedding interview filmed in their kitchen. The audio is littered with bleeps as Kat fails to keep her language in check.
Good old Dave is sitting right next to some redhead in a low-cut red dress. It’s only when she turns to talk to the person next to her that I realize it’s Neve! Neve, who was in my life for three years. Neve, who I don’t think about any more. Neve throws her head of auburn curls back with carefree abandon, laughing in all the right places. How can today be such a hotbed of ex-girlfriends?
‘Neve’s here!’ I elbow Maria. ‘Does that mean Nic is too?’
‘No!’ Maria whispers. ‘They split up last month.’
I shouldn’t feel anything, but it stings. How can this nugget of information have possibly slipped the net? How can such monumentally significant news to one person be so ‘so what’ to another?
‘Nic wasn’t feeling it,’ Maria says. ‘Neve was ready to have a baby and it was all moving way too fast for Nic so …’ She shrugs. ‘Poor Neve.’
I can handle my friends still being friends with Neve. That in itself is OK, but when your ex (Neve) breaks your heart by running off with their mate (Nic), the only anecdotes you want to hear from mutual friends are ones of misery, regret and an undercurrent of ‘she’d have been so much better off with you’. Anecdotes are not meant to incite sympathy for the cheating heartbreaker, who wants babies with the newer, better version of you.
I start to sweat. I haven’t thought about Neve in months. I don’t even care about Neve, and now she is somehow all over everything. I’m quite happy with Joely, thank you very much. Lorna. I mean Lorna, for fuck’s sake!
‘Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the bride.’
Through a kink in the curtain, I make out Bev waiting on the stage. She’s dressed in a blue trouser suit and a white shirt dotted with small humming birds. She wears an enormous grin.
Maria looks to Kat. ‘Ready?’
‘I’ve been ready for ten years,’ Kat croaks.
Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ floats gently through the jam-packed auditorium. Another beautiful French classic. Why am I still so ridiculously attracted to her?
Maria and I peel back the heavy curtain. There’s no wedding-dress train to hold, so we simply walk either side of Kat, following the tiny floor lights marking the central aisle, not knowing what to do with our hands. Ladies whoop, gentlemen cheer and my heartbeat can’t seem to settle the fuck down. Turning up like that, with all those roses. Kat gathers her floor-length dress up on one side to negotiate the stairs up to the stage, where Bev adjusts her silver toucan cufflinks and runs her hands over her neatly trimmed Mohican.
The registrar, a squat woman in a green skirt suit, ushers Maria and me to one side while she completes the ceremony preamble. We climb down from the stage, tiptoe back to our seats, and watch as Bev and Kat take their vows. I sit and snivel, Maria providing a steady supply of paper tissues.
The audience claps, flinging popcorn in place of confetti as Mrs and Mrs Leason-Mellor walk back up the aisle, the room pumped with love. The auditorium lights go up and everyone is ushered out of the building for photos, Bev’s uncle juggling lens caps in the central reservation of Upper Street and trying to stage us all under the cinema canopy. We huddle in the drizzle, all goose bumps and frizzing hair, waiting for double-deckers to pass until he can get the perfect shot.
Dave crouches next to me. ‘I thought living in the countryside was supposed to chill you out,’ he says.
‘I had a weird start to the day,’ I say.
He smiles. ‘Me too. I was on my way to bootcamp and now I’m at my first gay wedding!’
The chime of a bell marks the arrival of a flower-adorned cycle rickshaw, which pulls up on the pavement. The chauffeur, a young man in top hat and tails, helps the happy couple over the metal spokes of the large wheels and onto the back seat.
‘See you at the pub!’ Kat yells, tossing her roses over her shoulder, which Dave catches with a ‘why the hell not?’ shrug.
The Angel smells of hops and burgers. Bev’s mothers hand out tall flutes of champagne to a steady flow of guests. The function room is surprisingly light and airy considering the low ceilings and overhead beams. Music mixes with raucous laughter and the hum of small talk. A crowd forms around two bride hedgehog cakes with chocolate button spikes and sugar paper veils. Joely Chevalier wants me back. I feel a bit light-headed, my vision becoming pixelated and everyone’s voices slipping away.
‘Let there be cake!’ Kat squeals as Bev drives a breadknife through a hedgehog.
Dave wanders over with two slices. She can’t have thought it was over, not if she then came out to her parents. Bev makes a speech, reciting ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’ with a ‘find and replace all’ Owl with Bear slant. I snivel into my slice of hedgehog’s bottom, blowing my nose on a chocolate-crumbed napkin.
‘Seriously, what’s up with you today, Shitbag?’ Dave leans over the bar and takes another slice of cake. ‘I get that weddings are emotional, but you’re like Gwyneth fucking Paltrow accepting an Oscar.’
I sip my champagne. ‘Sorry, I’m just a bit all over the place at the moment.’
‘A bit?’ he says, handing me the double Disaronno that Bev’s mother has passed him for my consumption.
I take a gulp of the sweet almond liqueur from the tumbler in my other hand. ‘Joely turned up at the flat this morning.’
‘Hot, French, KSG Joely?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this is a problem?’ He practically spits his pint across the bar.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
I shrug. ‘Too little too late.’ I press my back against the cold wooden bar, staring into the crowd. ‘I met someone up north. Lorna. She’s a vet.’
Dave pops his steel-framed glasses onto his nose. ‘And where is Lorna-the-vet now?’
‘Performing a caesarean on a Hereford cow.’
‘Gotcha,’ he says, leering at a gaggle of girls comparing garters. ‘And where’s hot Frenchy right now?’
‘She left. I was practically on my way out of the door to come here.’
Neve wanders over with a plate of canapés, her red dress billowing above a floor vent. She has a playful look about her I haven’t seen since we first met. ‘Hi!’ Her steely-blue eyes seek me out. ‘Mini Yorkshire pudding?’
She looks annoyingly perky for someone recently dumped.
‘Thanks,’ Dave says, favouring roast beef and horseradish over quinoa and beetroot.
She places the tray down on the bar and beds in for conversation. ‘It’s good to see you again.’ She touches my elbow.
‘It’s been a while,’ I say, accidentally sending a piece of spittle flying. Why do things like that only happen when it matters? Why is it so
unfathomably essential to come across as a devastatingly beautiful, serene, intelligent, articulate, funny, easy-going and infinitely superior goddess when involuntarily thrown into conversation with your ex? And why, when all of this is so hugely important, do you never fail to regress to a spitting, snorting, gibbering wreck? I don’t even like her any more, for fuck’s sake. I’ve moved on, twice.
She leans in. ‘How’s your dad?’
‘It’s your round, Shitbag,’ Dave interrupts.
‘Neve, this is my friend Dave.’ I smile, trying to regain exterior splendour.
‘Nice to meet you.’ Dave kisses her hand.
I look to Neve. ‘My round apparently. Would you like a drink?’
‘A piña colada would be grand, thanks,’ she says.
I readjust my swimming costume and lean over the bar. ‘Three piña coladas, please.’ I hate piña coladas. Why am I ordering myself a piña colada? Why am I pretending to be someone I’m not? And who exactly am I pretending to be?
Neve chats to Dave while I wait. I can’t work out whether I’m still attracted to her or not, deciding whilst she’s generically attractive, she no longer exudes that je ne sais quoi. I can admire her beauty as I would an oil painting – once every couple of years and against my will.
I hand Neve and Dave their drinks and drift into a daydream as they compare the miles-per-gallon petrol consumption of their respective cars. Joely and I are on a beach. We sit in the sand dunes and stare out at the sea. Sun dances on our skin, our toes digging into the warm sand. Her head lies in my lap. We say nothing.
I try to imagine the same scene with Lorna, but can’t visualize being on the beach with her. I can’t remember what her toes look like, or whether I’ve even seen them. Does this mean our roots aren’t entwined? I panic, only calming once I can vividly picture Lorna and me sitting on my dad’s haystack, mud-spattered and happy. I pick up my phone to send Lorna a text but it’s dead, and I’m not far behind.