‘OK,’ he replies slowly, clearly picking up on something. I do seem to be insisting a little on the hard side, which must have him puzzled. ‘On that note, I’m going to the loo… If I’m allowed?’
‘I’ll get the drinks in,’ I reply, unimpressed by his attitude.
I order our drinks before leaning back against the bar to take in the room. Most of the chairs have jackets on them, which I suppose people have taken off before heading out onto the dance floor. It’s interesting how, as weddings go on, standards go down. Everything perfect at the start but by the end, as messy as the room may be, everyone is way more relaxed and having more fun than they were eating a sit-down dinner in their formal wear. My favourite part of weddings is when the ties come off, the heels are discarded, and everyone lets their hair down.
There are small pockets of people dancing to the music – a folk band covering popular songs. There is a gaggle of young women dancing together. There’s a man, who I’d guess is a groomsman from his outfit, doing the worm to impress the crowd gathered around him. My favourite, though, is the seven- or eight-year-old boy who has stolen one of the gold sashes from one of the tables, and is currently dancing with it, in the centre of the dance floor, all alone, dancing as if no one is watching. That’s a mood. We’d all do well to be more like that kid.
I glance over at the photo booth area. I’ve never really understood their presence at weddings. Well, why would you want to remember the happiest day of your life by looking at a snap of your drunk friends in feather boas and pirate hats? I watch as an elderly man discards the pair of fake glasses he just had his photo taken in. He’s wearing a fedora, which I think is actually his own, not a prop. He deposits it at his table before shuffling onto the dance floor with an energy that puts mine to shame. I don’t think it would hurt me to be more like this guy too.
Paul and Deborah are quite cool people so naturally their wedding is too. Flashes of shimmering gold aside, everything in the room is earthy and natural. In fact, I do believe the bacon sandwiches are made with vegan-friendly bacon, the wedding cake is vegan… I haven’t told Millsy because you never know who is going to be the type of person to have a meltdown because Greggs have started selling vegan sausage rolls.
The bride and groom catch my eye, chatting with Keith and Sarah at the side of the room, so I decide to pop over and say hi now, while they’re not too busy and Millsy isn’t with me. It will save me having to keep up his story about us being a couple. Ergh, why did he say that? I suppose now I’ll have to go to the trouble of fabricating a fake break-up so that people stop asking me about him. I’ll say I broke up with him, naturally. If the point of this whole thing was to make me look better, saying he dumped me isn’t exactly going to achieve that, is it?
It’s only as I get closer that I realise something is wrong. Deborah doesn’t look like a joyful bride on the happiest day of her life, she looks upset.
‘Erm… hi,’ I say, with no time to pull a U-turn and come back at a better time.
‘Oh, hi, Cara,’ Paul says. ‘Thanks so much for coming.’
‘You’re welcome. Con… congratulations.’
‘Sorry, I’m just a bit annoyed,’ Deborah says to me quietly as she leans forward to hug me.
Other than looking a little upset and a lot angry, Deborah looks absolutely gorgeous in her stunning, floor-length cream lace gown. Her hair has been plaited on both sides before being pinned to the top of her head, forming a gorgeous crown braid, full of flowers. She’s nailed the bohemian bride look.
‘Cara brought her boyfriend,’ Keith sings.
‘You have a boyfriend?’ Deborah squeaks. ‘And he’s here?’
‘Yes,’ I reply awkwardly. This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. ‘He’s around here somewhere.’
Deborah ushers me a few steps away from the others.
‘Quick, tell me all about him before he gets back,’ she demands excitedly.
‘OK, but are you OK?’ I ask, partially changing the subject, but also because I’m concerned. No one should be miserable on their wedding day. ‘You looked really upset when I walked over.’
‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she insists. ‘I’m just a bit annoyed because I just nipped to the loo, and on my way back I crossed paths with a man and… well, he hit on me.’
‘He hit on you?’
‘Yeah, can you believe that? At my own wedding.’
‘What kind of person would try to chat-up the bride at a wedding?’ I ask angrily, but the words have no sooner left my lips when the answer hits me.
‘I know, right?’ she replies. ‘And the worst thing of all is that, I think he’s a wedding guest, not staff or someone just staying in the hotel. Someone actually brought someone like that to my wedding.’
‘Are you sure he’s a guest?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, well, this is a private area and he was dressed like a guest. He was wearing a blue blazer. I told Paul all about it. He’s keeping an eye out for him. He’s going to ask him to leave, and God help whoever brought him.’
I feel as if I’m frozen on the spot.
‘Anyway, enough of that, where’s this fella of yours? I can’t wait to chat with him,’ she persists.
Somehow I doubt that’s going to be the case.
‘Erm, yeah, he’s around here somewhere… Actually, I’ll go find him. Back in a bit.’
‘OK,’ she says with a smile. ‘No rush. I had no idea getting married meant talking to so many people.’
I laugh politely, walking away calmly, only picking up the pace once I’m out of her eyeline.
Shit! Shit, shit, shit. What are the chances that it wasn’t Millsy who just tried to chat-up the bride at a wedding? He’s only been out of my sight for a matter of minutes!
I hover outside the men’s toilets for a few seconds before marching straight in – my gaze firmly fixed on the floor, of course. I know the men’s room doesn’t have the same level of privacy as the ladies’ loo does.
‘Millsy?’ I call out.
‘Yes?’ he replies casually. He sounds as if he’s only a matter of inches away from me. ‘Did you miss me so much you thought you’d come in here to find me?’
Now isn’t the time for laughing at his jokes.
‘Just… come out here,’ I insist.
You know how public toilets often have two doors, with a small, pointless corridor between them? Well we’re standing in that, so I’m still technically in the men’s loos, but not actually in them.
‘I can’t believe I’m about to ask you this,’ I start in hushed tones, ‘but… you didn’t try to hit on the bride, did you?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he says. ‘What kind of man do you take me for?’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s just I was talking with the bride, and she said someone in a blue jacket tried to chat her up by the toilets.’
‘Well, it must be some other dude in a blue jacket,’ he assures me.
‘Oh, that’s such a relief,’ I reply, leaning back against the wall. ‘It’s just, well, she’s my boss, and she’s really upset so… it would have made me look bad, you know?’
‘I totally get that, but no, not guilty. I did try and chat one woman up, just a bit, but she wasn’t the bride. She wasn’t wearing a white dress.’
‘Well, that’s… Wait, she wasn’t wearing a white dress? Was she wearing a cream dress?’
‘Yeah… Why, do you know her?’
‘Millsy, that’s the bride,’ I whisper angrily.
‘How am I supposed to know that, if she’s not wearing a white dress?’
‘Was she wearing a wedding ring?’
Millsy runs a hand through his brown hair that is neatly slicked back for the occasion.
‘I’ve never really paid much attention to whether or not people are wearing wedding rings,’ he says by way of an explanation.
‘Why not?’
‘In my experience… it’s never posed much of a problem. Oh, I did notice something though – she had flower
s on her head.’
‘Oh my God, I’m going to lose my job,’ I say to myself.
I quickly step out of the way as a man opens the door on his way to the toilets. He gives us both a look of acknowledgement but doesn’t seem to be overly concerned with my presence here.
‘Well, I can just sneak out and leave,’ he suggests. ‘That way, they won’t even see me.’
‘Except Deborah is waiting to meet you. It’s going to make me look bad, if you disappear from her wedding… admittedly not as bad as you trying to shag her on her wedding day, but still…’
I puff air from my cheeks as I wrack my brains for a solution. My job is all about problem-solving. I come up with problems with step-by-step solutions for people to figure out the answer to, so if I could just flip that process on its head… I’ve successfully made it out of every escape room I’ve ever tried. I should be able to problem-solve my way out of this one too.
So, if this were an escape room, I would be looking for objects to help facilitate my escape. And now this has occurred to me, I’ve cracked it.
‘How long did you talk to her for?’ I ask.
‘Oh, seconds, just in passing. I barely said a word to her before she stormed off…’
‘Hmm…’
And it is quite dimly lit in the area outside the toilets. Perhaps the only thing that caught her eye was the blue jacket… this might just work!
‘OK, you wait here, I’m going to nip out there and… we’re going to borrow a few things that will make her think you’re someone else. You’re an actor, right? Can you do a different accent?’
Millsy sounds very much like a Leeds lad and, with Deborah being from down south, I’m sure she’ll remember Millsy’s accent as well as his blue jacket.
Millsy, presumably not taking this all too seriously, launches into the ‘is this a dagger?’ monologue from Macbeth.
I cut him off.
‘Marvellous, but can you do something a bit more subtle?’
‘Received pronunciation,’ he says, toning it down. ‘I can speak without an accent.’
‘Fab,’ I say semi-sarcastically. ‘Wait there.’
I hurry from the doorway of the men’s toilets, back into the main room where the wedding is. First of all, I snatch up a jacket from the back of a chair. A black jacket – absolutely nothing resembling blue. My next port of call is the photo booth, where I swipe the black thick-rimmed fake glasses that are used as a prop for the photos. Finally, I borrow the old man’s fedora from the table he left it on. And I do mean borrow, I hasten to add. I am taking these things temporarily, to try and reverse Trojan horse Millsy out of this wedding, and by doing so I will be escaping with my job and my dignity still intact. Although I did just semi-steal a hat from an OAP…
I find Millsy exactly where I left him, sheepishly hanging out in the pointless void between the two toilet doors. ‘So, what’s all this?’
‘Put this jacket on, and these glasses, and this hat. I’ll leave your jacket on the back of a chair and, once you’ve said hello to Paul and Deborah, we’ll return this stuff, grab your jacket and bail. She’s waiting to meet you now but, once she has, there are a lot of guests here. She won’t notice if we leave.’
I sigh. It’s not great but it’s the best plan I have.
‘Sure,’ Millsy says with an awkward laugh. ‘I am sorry though, I just think… after you were so firm about me chatting other people up, it seemed like a good idea. Obviously I never would have done it if I’d realised she was the bride.’
‘One would hope,’ I say, helping him on with a black suit jacket that thankfully fits him well enough to pass off as his own. ‘So we go see her, you say hello, you channel every acting ability you have to just try and seem like anyone but yourself and then we run away, sound good?’
‘I’m uncomfortable with how good at this you are,’ he points out. ‘But yes, sounds good.’
I peep out of the toilet door, making sure there is no one around to see me sneaking out. I don’t feel out of the woods yet, even if this does work. If someone were to see me and Millsy slinking out of the loos, they would probably think we had just snuck in there to get up to no good, and that’s not a great look either, is it?
With the coast clear I hurry out with Millsy close behind me. The seemingly new and improved Millsy.
‘OK, let’s go order more drinks, because I kind of abandoned our others, and then find the happy couple,’ I say.
The drinks are more of a prop, really. Something to show that everything is normal and fine and we’re just having fun, nothing dodgy going on… Alcohol feels like a mistake though, so I grab us a couple of orange juices.
With everything in place I call action, before we walk over to the table where Paul and Deborah are currently sitting, chatting with guests. It just so happens to be the table where I swiped the jacket from, and a few of the men sitting at it are currently without jackets. I don’t know what the chances are of someone recognising a black jacket, in a sea of black jackets, but I don’t want to take any chances.
‘When we sit at the table, take the jacket off and just leave it on the back of the chair, OK?’ I whisper.
‘OK,’ Millsy replies dutifully.
‘Deborah, hi.’ I beam. ‘This is Joe.’
We take a seat opposite them at the table.
‘Oh, Joe, hello, I’ve heard a lot about you, so lovely to meet you,’ she says, greeting him with a big, warm smile.
‘It’s lovely to meet you too,’ he replies politely – and in the voice of a BBC newsreader. ‘Congratulations on your wedding. You both look amazing.’
I smile to myself. It’s not often that men compliment other men on how they look, is it? It says a lot about Millsy, that he feels secure enough to do it.
They both thank him.
‘You’re not the only one who thinks my wife looks good,’ Paul points out.
‘Yes, I was just telling everyone how someone came on to me, near the toilets,’ Deborah adds.
‘What did he say?’ Millsy asks.
It takes me every facial muscle I have to stop my eyes widening. As if it’s not risky enough, hiding him in plain sight, but he’s flying really close to the sun now.
‘He says, “Hey, baby, can I buy you a drink?”’ Deborah says. You can see how embarrassed she feels, telling the story. I can feel my own embarrassment pumping through my veins.
‘That’s despicable,’ Millsy 2.0 says. ‘Did you get a good look at the guy?’
I literally bite my tongue, to stop me from saying anything that could make this worse (although what the hell could I even say?), and to try and keep myself from cringing so hard I bare my teeth.
‘Kind of,’ Deborah starts, her eyes narrowing as she looks over towards him. ‘He had longish hair, a blue jacket, he was built quite a lot like you, actually…’
I have to put a stop to it right now. Millsy is playing with fire. I don’t know if he’s trying to make sure she doesn’t suspect him, or if he’s just flexing, but inviting any kind of comparison is more than I can handle. With a seemingly careless dip of my wrist, my glass of orange juice tips to one side, the entire contents spilling out over Millsy’s white shirt and his trousers. He immediately jumps to his feet.
‘Oh my gosh, M… Joe,’ I say, perhaps a little too theatrically to be as sincere as I’d hoped, and I really do need to try harder to call him Joe in front of real people. I’m still messing it up every now and then. ‘So sorry, clumsy me. We’d better go sort you out. Sorry, guys, lovely to see you though.’
I grab Millsy by the hand and drag him outside, snatching up his infamous blue jacket from where I hid it on our way out.
‘I’m not sure that was completely necessary,’ he points out, sounding just a little bit annoyed with me.
‘I needed to shut you up somehow. She was basically describing you, to you.’
‘I was making sure she wasn’t on to me,’ he replies. ‘I was trying to help.’
‘Well, I th
ink we got away with it,’ I reply, finally relaxing a little. ‘Sorry for covering you in orange juice, I’ll have your suit cleaned for you.’
‘Ah, don’t worry about it,’ he replies.
I root around in my clutch bag until I find a packet of tissues. He smiles as I hand them to him. I know they’re not really going to make a difference, but now I’m thinking that I may have overreacted, just a little.
Millsy almost entirely unbuttons his shirt before using one of the tissues to dry his stomach. As he takes off his fedora it disturbs his hair. By the time he’s taken off the black-framed glasses too, and slicked his hair back into place, I get strong Superman vibes. I quickly glance away.
‘I’ll take these back inside,’ I say, before clearing my throat. ‘We should probably just go home.’
‘We’ll do better next time,’ Millsy reassures me.
‘Hmm,’ I reply.
‘You’re not going to bail on me, are you?’ he asks, suddenly sounding worried. ‘We’ve got my sister’s gender-reveal party coming up. You can’t expect me to go to something like that alone – it sounds horrendous.’
That’s exactly what I was planning on doing. I can’t help but feel as if this whole plus-one pact was a stupid idea. We tried it and it didn’t work – the obvious thing to do is sack it off. As Millsy stares at me with his dark, puppy-dog eyes, I reach for the words to tell him that we should call this whole thing off, but I can’t find them. Well, I suppose I do owe him one event, at least, just to even things out. But after that, that’s it. No more.
‘Of course, I’m still coming with you,’ I reply.
Millsy relaxes in an instant.
‘Phew,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen gender reveals on Facebook – they always look cringey as hell. But my sister is excited about it, so… you’ve just got to turn up, right?’
I think about my cousin’s wedding, that my life would be so much easier if I didn’t attend, but I know I have to.
‘You do,’ I agree.
‘At least I’ll have you with me,’ he reasons.
The Plus One Pact Page 9
