Читать книгу The One with All the Bridesmaids: A hilarious, feel-good romantic comedy - Erin Lawless, Erin Lawless - Страница 15

Darren was getting very familiar very quickly. Earlier he’d wandered into the bathroom as Daisy had been exfoliating in there and let forth a tremendous splashing piss without so much as a ‘good morning’. Then he’d wandered out without washing his hands. And he’d left the toilet seat up. Horror piled on horror. Perhaps this was an English blokey thing? A quick text to Nora confirmed that, no, this was unacceptable behaviour either side of the Atlantic. Damn. Just when she’d started using the guy’s name.

Feeling a little smug, Daisy finished packing her gym bag. Last pay day she’d gone out and equipped herself – sports bras of varying colours, leggings of various lengths, baggy tee-shirts with block-type slogans that announced things like SHUT UP AND SQUAT! and SWEAT IS FAT CRYING. She’d never been a gym bunny, but she was damned if she was going to be the ‘fat bridesmaid’ at this wedding. So now she joined Sarah for pre-work yoga sessions twice a week, did Zumba on a Thursday night and paid a veiny personal trainer fourteen pounds an hour to scream at her on as many of the other evenings as she could spare. Damn right her fat was going to cry.

Sarah was already dressed for the class when Daisy met her in the gym lobby (she wasn’t quite ready to ride the Tube in the exercise leggings yet). Sarah was always quite quiet in the mornings, but was even more so than usual; she only raised the weakest of outrage at the uninvited-pissing story.

‘Is everything okay?’ Daisy questioned her as they queued outside the studio door. ‘You seem distracted lately.’

Sarah gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Funny, that choice of word. I’ve actually been in a bit of trouble at work for just that. Being distracted. Making stupid mistakes.’ She sighed.

‘Shit, hun, I’m sorry.’

‘No, no. You’re right. They’re right. I have been distracted. I’ve been … arguing with Cole a bit recently. And I’m not sleeping well.’

‘What are you guys arguing about?’ Daisy pressed.

Sarah’s gaze slid away. ‘Oh, you know. Just domestic stuff. Boring. Nothing worth talking about.’

‘Oh. Well, let me know if I can do anything, hun.’ Daisy was genuinely very fond of Sarah. They were both Johnny-come-latelies, in a way, and Sarah had a sweet, unassuming way about her. They’d all written her off, back when she started dating Cole – pegged her as one of the fangirl types he normally went for that would never see more than one of your birthdays, or more than one Christmas drinks. She’d surprised them all; Cole probably most of all.

‘Anyway,’ Daisy continued, as they made their way into the flood-lit studio and began unfurling their yoga mats. Their instructor waved at them from the corner, where she was plugging her iPod into the speaker system. Daisy clocked her gym tee – NAMASTE … IN BED! it proclaimed – love it! She had to get that one … ‘I’m sure you couldn’t have managed to do something terribly disruptive at work.’ Sarah’s job as an executive’s PA at a stiff, corporate FTSE company was infamously tedious.

A smile finally twitched at Sarah’s lips. ‘Well. No. But the straw that finally broke HR’s back was the other day when I accidentally ordered 200,000 jiffy bags from the stationery supplier instead of two hundred.’

Daisy cracked up laughing. ‘You monster.’

Sarah gave in and laughed too. ‘I think they might still decide to take it out of my pay.’

‘In which case I guess you’ll be setting up a side-business selling padded envelopes, then!’

‘It’s nice to have a Plan B,’ Sarah giggled, sliding into a warm-up stretch. ‘I can call it Sarah’s Stationery Staples.’

‘So long as the stationery staple you’re after is a jiffy bag.’

Sarah laughed again, before she dropped into Flowering Lotus. ‘That can be in the small print.’