Читать книгу A Beautiful Day for a Wedding: This year’s Bridget Jones! - Charlotte Butterfield - Страница 13

‘Ask me what my table’s like,’ Eve said to Becca and Ayesha as they met by chance in the ladies’ loo in the lull before the speeches started and dessert was served.

‘What’s your table like?’

‘Funny you should ask. The boy one side of me has propped his phone up against the bread basket and is live-streaming a football match, the bloke opposite me, Kevin, I think, has eyebrows that are alive and trying to communicate with me, one woman keeps Instagramming her food, the overweight man the other side of me, Peter, has a nasal problem that if I wasn’t so goddamn hungry would be putting me off my food, and the other two women are only talking to each other. It’s just fun, fun, fun.’

Ayesha pouted in the mirror redoing her lipstick. ‘It’s really strange though Eve, I did the table plan with Tanya, and you were definitely on our table.’

‘Well, Tanya must have changed her mind and thought that I deserved punishing for the hen fiasco a little more.’

‘No, I even placed all the paintbrushes on the tables this morning. Yours is lilac, like ours.’ Tanya had come up with the idea of dispensing with the run of the mill paper name cards and in honour of the factory’s previous life, had instructed Ayesha to write everyone’s names on a hundred small paintbrushes, the ends of which were dipped in different colours denoting which table they would be seated at. Eve had noticed that hers had a purple end, while everyone else’s on the Table of Doom were ironically a sunshine yellow, but she hadn’t thought anything of it.

‘You were between Jack and Amit,’ Ayesha continued. ‘But when we all sat down to eat, Great-Aunty Violet was sat there instead.’

‘She’s a hoot,’ Becca added. ‘You’ll love her. She’s been reading all our palms; I’m going to have twins one day and Ayesha is going to move to Africa.’

‘That sounds a lot more fun than the Chelsea game or the sound of phlegm boy clearing his sinuses every few seconds.’

‘Move to ours now, when we go back in,’ Becca urged.

Eve opened her mouth to say that she couldn’t possibly, it would seem really rude, and then remembered her new vow of woman-ing up. Reentering the room, she headed straight for her table, grabbed the bouquet under her chair, tossed it to the sheep-breeder with a smile, gave the rest of the open-mouthed guests a wide grin and said, ‘It’s been really fun, enjoy the rest of your day,’ before heading off to the welcoming arms of the lilac table.

Amit and Great-Aunty Violet moved their chairs up so Eve could squeeze in between them. The old woman was dressed head to toe in hot pink, even her lipstick that was busy bleeding into the hundreds of fine lines around her lips was the same daring shade. How liberating it must be to be so old that people just waved away your tastes as eccentric, rather than strange, Eve thought. Violet gave Eve a big toothy smile as she sat down and immediately called a waiter over to get her an empty wine glass. There may have been nigh on sixty years between them, but Eve could tell they were kindred spirits.

Violet leaned in close to Eve, and said in a loud stage whisper: ‘Speeches soon. I hope Luke doesn’t rabbit on like he usually does.’

Eve tried to stifle a smile. Slagging off the groom was very poor form, especially on his wedding day, but she was inclined to agree. Luke had been in the same tutor group as Ben and often came round to their student house, their damp problem being marginally better than the one in his house. And they had cable TV, whereas he and his three rugby friends were playing roulette with no TV licence. The vans with aerials on them regularly drove around their neighbourhood trying to find and fine students playing the system. While they were all making ends meet by working in the student bars or local pizza joint, Luke was working in his uncle’s stockbroking firm, and spent an inordinate amount of time recounting yawn-inducing tales of corporate high jinks to them all. It couldn’t have been his chat that won Tanya over, so Eve had always assumed that either he had a large trust fund or was a demon in the bedroom department. Looking at him now at the top table, mouthing the words to his speech in a last-minute run-though, hands shaking, with his already-thinning hair brushed over an obvious bald spot, Eve gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of the latter reason.

Ben, on the other hand, was annoyingly displaying none of the signs his friends were of being a decade older; there was no visible paunch, his hair was still dark and thick, and if anything, his late twenties had ironed out the aesthetic flaws or judgments of error of his student days. Gone was the straggly excuse for a goatee that had once been long enough to plait, which bizarrely Eve used to find quite attractive. He’d always been confident, but watching him work the room now, if you’d looked up the word charming in the dictionary it would have a smouldering picture of Ben Hepworth next to it. He was currently hovering by the top table making innocuous small talk with Tanya’s sister. Eve could tell by the way Cathy was curling her hair around her finger that his chat was teetering on just the right side of flirty. He looked up then and their glances met. Embarrassed, Eve quickly looked away. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Ben straighten up and start walking towards her table. She quickly turned towards Violet and said, ‘I love your outfit.’

‘Thank you dear, I’m going to be buried in it.’

Eve had just taken a big gulp of wine at exactly that moment, and found herself choking on it. Someone started whacking her back with a force that wasn’t entirely necessary, and when she’d regained the ability to breathe again, she realised angrily it was Ben.

‘Easy now, Red.’

‘Jesus, Ben, you didn’t need to hit me so hard.’ Eve was aware that her face was an unattractive shade of purple and tried to hide behind her hair.

Ben held his hands up. ‘I saved your life.’

‘You did not. It just went down the wrong way.’

‘You moved. Didn’t you like your old table?’ Ben said, his eyes taking on a familiar twinkle. ‘I met Peter at Luke’s stag do. Top guy. Shame about his sniffing. The curtains look lovely, don’t they? It must have taken you hours.’

The penny suddenly dropped. Eve swivelled angrily round to face him. ‘You? You swapped the names?’

Ben put one hand on his heart. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about. Oh good, speech time.’

The tinkling of silverware against glass made everyone hurry back to their seats. Eve watched Ben merrily meander back to his own seat with an untamed rage building inside her. The last time she’d spoken to him they were arranging where exactly in Gatwick airport they were going to meet before their flight to New York. She’d said the departure lounge, he’d said check-in. It didn’t matter in the end as he never turned up.

It was meant to be the adventure that marked the start of Eve and Ben the couple, and not Eve and Ben the best friends. She still didn’t know if he knew that she’d been in love with him the whole way through their degrees, and for four years after that, or whether he assumed that the night they finally got together was because of a sudden change of heart, an opportunistic coupling because both of them were single and a little bit drunk. But for Eve, that night after a bad comedy club where he’d finally slept over in her bed and not on her sofa was the night everything finally slotted into place. The misty filter had been lifted off her life and everything had more colour, more vibrancy – it all just made more sense. They were going to split the rent on a studio flat in Manhattan, and travel to work on the subway together every morning and eat slices of pizza from a neighbourhood Italian restaurant in the evenings.

When he didn’t turn up at the airport, leaving her a two-line note in her passport by way of an explanation, Eve had stood there alone in the bustling departures hall, a new shiny suitcase at her feet, clutching his letter that promised her an explanation soon. Should she go to New York alone, and live the adventure that was designed to be shared, or should she stash it in the great filing cabinet of life under ‘missed opportunities’? Holding back tears for every minute of the plane journey, she arrived at JFK alone, unsure and utterly heartbroken.

Without his share of the rent paid, she had to cancel the let on the studio, and live in whatever she could afford, which turned out to be a hall cupboard advertised as a ‘compact bedroom’. She navigated the subway alone everyday, clutching her bag to her chest, eyes wide at the pace of life and magnitude of people, all rushing past with somewhere to go, someone to go to. Her first few dinners in her new city were eaten with just her thoughts for company. Ben hovered near the surface of everything she did, every new experience she had was tinged with sadness and then anger that he had let her down so badly. She’d managed to, if not forget about him, certainly pack up all thoughts of him into a little box in the recesses of her brain, somewhere she rarely allowed herself access to. But now this. How dare he just dance back into her perfectly ordered life, and start playing silly buggers with it.

Apart from Luke’s cringeworthy opening of ‘That’s not the first time today I’ve risen from a warm seat with a piece of paper in my hand’, which was met with a horrified gasp from his new wife and a smattering of compatriot sniggers, the rest of the groom’s speech was a roll call of thanks and protocol. Before he told everyone to ‘Glaze your arses, I mean, raise your glasses,’ he ended with the customary thanks to the ‘stunning bridesmaids, who have all been incredibly supportive to Tanya in the run up, particularly Ayesha, with the beautiful table plan and decorations.’ Cue a round of applause for Ayesha, who looked at once embarrassed and a little confused at being singled out for praise. Nothing surprised Eve about this wedding any more. The sooner she could wriggle out of the patchwork boa constrictor masquerading as her dress, climb into her own bed and put Tanya’s wedding in the annals of history, the happier she’d be. But that utopia was at least six hours away.

‘I’m getting some messages for you from the other side,’ Violet whispered during the best man’s speech.

Despite a vast amount of media training, Eve had no ready response for that. ‘Um. That’s nice,’ she mouthed back.

‘They’re saying dog poo.’

‘Dog poo?’ Eve whispered back.

‘Yes. Does that mean anything to you?’ Violet’s eyes were filled with expectation, perhaps that Eve would respond with, ‘yes, that’s my surname, Eve Dogpoo,’ or ‘that’s my address, Number 5 Dogpoo Avenue.’ She hated to disappoint her though.

‘Um, we once had a golden retriever and I used to pick his business up?’

‘That’ll be it then.’ Violet adjusted her large two-handled fuchsia handbag that was resting in her lap and settled back in her seat, smiling.

The waiters chivvied everyone outside after the meal for the band to set up and a dance floor to be laid. Eve spent most of the time in the toilet with Becca to avoid bumping into Ben again, and away from Tanya’s eagle eyes fixating on her patchwork gown. Re-entering the warehouse they were stopped by the officious master of ceremonies. ‘Have you got your bracelets?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Eve said. ‘Bracelets?’

‘For the evening reception,’ he said, pointing to a trestle table where guests were queuing up to have colour-coded bracelets fastened around their wrists. ‘Join the back of the queue, ladies.’

‘What the hell’s this?’ hissed Becca as they shuffled their way to the front.

It transpired that despite Tanya and Luke’s not inconsiderable wedding budget, their generosity did not extend to watering their guests in the evening. A little sign propped up on the table announced that Gold Bracelets were £40, Silver £25 and Bronze £15.

‘I don’t believe it, she hasn’t!’

A rather embarrassed looking student masquerading as a server for the evening was patiently explaining to each guest that should they want to keep drinking the champagne then they needed to purchase the gold package, spirits were silver, and the house wine and beer were bronze.

‘I think she has,’ laughed Becca. ‘Wow.’

‘Wow indeed.’

‘Bronze please,’ Becca told the student, while Eve huffed next to her. ‘You’re not seriously doing this, are you?’

‘What choice do we have?’ Becca replied. ‘We’re her bridesmaids.’

‘Exactly! She’s making us pay for the privilege of being here. Sod that, I’m going home.’

‘Eve, you can’t, we have to stay. Look, just go for the bronze one, we’ll get absolutely plastered on plonk, and then laugh about it tomorrow. Can you lend me some cash?’

They queued up at the bar to flash their bracelets to the barman before being handed a couple of glasses of acidic white wine. Violet was next to them holding her golden bracelet up to the light admiring its shine. ‘I would imagine this is what it’s like being at a music festival,’ she said. ‘So exciting. Now I will never need to go to Glastonbury.’

The friends moved away from the bar to let similarly disgruntled guests take their places.

‘I see you’ve gone for the cheap option,’ Ben said, joining the two of them. ‘You can take the girls out of the student union, but you can’t take the student union out of the girls.’

‘Look at you, flashing the cash with your fancy silver one,’ Becca teased, while Eve stayed silent next to her, looking at the floor.