‘Too much more of who?’ Becca said, dumping her bag down at the empty seat at the end of the table and giving the returning newlyweds big hugs. To Eve’s relief Becca looked very surprised that Ben was at the table too, proving that she wasn’t privy to his invitation to join the party. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘I was just saying how we fell out with Tanya at the weekend.’
Ben’s use of the term ‘we’ pleased Eve, it united them, and showed that maybe he didn’t think she was an imbecile.
‘It was bound to happen though, I don’t know why we persisted in being friends with her for so long. She’s like a viper,’ Becca said, opening out the menu.
‘You should hear some of the things she said to me at the wedding,’ Ayesha said, pulling a face. ‘She basically made fun of everything.’
Becca suddenly took a sharp intake of breath. ‘You don’t think it’s her, do you Eve?’
Eve had no idea what she was talking about. ‘Is what her?’
‘The writer! Of the wedding column! Oh my God, it totally makes sense now.’
‘Unlike you,’ Ayesha said. ‘What are you on about?’
‘Eve said that I shouldn’t mention it to you, but the day after your wedding this column came out on the website Venus, and it was basically a really sarcastic article all about the zany things brides do at weddings, and the similarities to your wedding were too much for it to be a coincidence.’
‘It was entirely a coincidence, take no notice of Becca,’ Eve gushed quickly. ‘I read it, and it bears no resemblance to your wedding at all.’
‘It does! Look,’ Becca got out her phone and tapped in the URL. Eve’s column filled the screen. Becca read out loud:
Is there an unspoken contest going on that I don’t know about, one where brides compete to outdo each other in the ludicrous stakes? This weekend’s nuptials were held in a country hotel. So far, so normal, I hear you cry, but what came next was anything but. The bride entered to a Disney song, the aisle was made of mirrors that made it look like everyone was walking on water (not very practical for the short-skirted), and plastic life-size swans on the lawn denoted which table everyone was sat at – they scared the bejeezus out of the little people (children, not dwarves).
‘See?’ Becca shrieked. The rest of the table stared at her. ‘It must be Tanya, she must have written this. She was so scathing about everything, and it sounds just like the poisonous claptrap she spouts.’
Poisonous claptrap? It was fiction, Eve thought, completely fabricated, made-up, untrue. Her eyes darted around to her friends to gauge their responses. Without exception, their foreheads were furrowed, as if deep in thought.
Eve started counting off her points on her fingers. ‘You came in to a Pixar song, not Disney, you had the yellow brick road as an aisle, not a river, and you had flamingoes, not swans. It’s entirely different, I did try and tell Becca this.’
‘I’ll send you the link so you can read all of it,’ Becca said. ‘But I’m convinced this is the work of Tanya. And if it is, she’s even more spiteful and vindictive than we thought.’
‘What a bitch,’ Ben said. ‘I really hope you’re not right Becca, but it sounds too similar to just be a freaky coincidence. Particularly the timing of it. I mean, we all love your quirkiness Ayesha, but there can’t be too many brides to have the same wedding date with your level of uniqueness.’
Eve remained silent. She couldn’t really protest any more without anyone asking why she was defending Tanya, but equally, she didn’t want Ayesha’s feelings to be hurt that her wedding had been the inspiration for so much ridicule. That wasn’t her intention at all in writing it. Ben was right, Ayesha’s brand of quirky was the reason they all adored her, and the idea that nothing but spite and malice was behind this column was completely wrong. In wanting to entertain people she had never met, was Eve losing sight of her allegiance to the people that were important to her?
Ayesha topped up everyone’s wine glasses while saying, ‘I think Eve’s right, it’s similar, but doesn’t mention any exact details that are the same. Thank you for being so insulted on behalf of me guys, but it’s actually made me like my wedding more, that it wasn’t cookie-cutter and showed off our personalities. Even if it was based on our wedding, then I take that as a compliment that it was so different it was worthy of someone writing about it.’
‘Even if that person was Tanya?’ Becca asked.
‘Even then. Although I don’t think it was, because I don’t think she’s that eloquent. I think it was probably a proper journalist or writer that did this.’
If Eve could sink any lower in her seat she would have done. She’d been thoroughly put in her place, without anyone even realising it. Like a gift from the gods their food arrived at exactly that moment, amid much bustling and shuffling of condiments and space-making on the crowded table.
A few mouthfuls in, Becca suddenly said, ‘So Eve, are you going to tell us how your date with Dr McDreamy went?’
‘What’s this?’ Ben asked.
‘Amit set Eve up with a doctor friend of his to say sorry for the way his two friends tried to have a threesome with Eve.’
‘Tried?’ Ben asked.
‘Yes Ben, tried. I slammed the door in their faces then drank their champagne with Becca and Ayesha. Although to be honest, part of me regrets not inviting them in now.’ That wasn’t true, but Eve really wanted to see Ben’s reaction. He remained poker-faced, not taking her bait. God, he was annoying.
‘So?’ Becca asked. ‘How’d it go?’
‘Not great.’
‘Let me guess,’ Amit said. ‘Bryn took you to a museum or an art gallery to show you how cultured he is, asked you what your BMI was, and gave you a bottle of multivitamins to take home?’
Eve laughed. ‘That’s amazingly spot on, I thought you were in Kerala, not following me around spying on me?’
‘Let’s just say, he’s got form,’ Amit said smiling. ‘But it was worth a go.’
‘And his name began with B,’ Ayesha added.
Eve flashed a look at Ayesha that told her to be quiet. Ben knew nothing about the premonition, and annoyingly it was his initial too.
Ben helped himself to a big chunk of bread from the basket in the middle of the table. ‘What does B have to do with anything?’
‘Eve’s only dating men with names beginning with B.’
‘You’re only what?’ Ben said, jumping in, cupping his ear for added effect.
Eve ignored him. Explaining Violet’s prediction out loud would make it seem as ludicrous as Eve was starting to realise it was. She had recently lost all sense, common or otherwise and she didn’t really know why. She wasn’t unhappy being single, so why had she been swept along by her friends’ desire to see her coupled up?
‘It wasn’t an entirely wasted night, I got to see where Millicent Garrett Fawcett had lived, so culturally it was a good date, even if it ranked as disastrous romantically.’
Becca ruffled Eve’s hair. ‘Cheer up love, could be worse, I could have invited him to my wedding.’
Eve sat up in horror. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
‘Of course not! I don’t even know the bloke. Although that has never stopped me before.’
Becca then started yawning, and excused herself before their desserts had even arrived. Eve noted that she didn’t leave any money for her share of the food and wine, but she knew that it was less to do with being stingy and more to do with being absolutely broke.
‘So, now that she’s gone, we can talk about her hen do,’ Ayesha said, leaning in across the table and nearly setting her hair alight on the candle. ‘We’ve had the date in the diary for months, but what are we going to do?’
Eve had gone back and forth about this very issue ever since Becca asked her to be her maid of honour. Becca was gregarious, loved parties, enjoyed having a good time with her seemingly endless roll call of friends, but then on the other hand, she also thrived on one-on-one times, and in-depth chats and in
timate settings. A hen do like Tanya’s or Ayesha’s wouldn’t suit her. But she’d never be able to whittle the numbers down for fear of offending anyone, hence why her wedding had grown to the numbers of a small country. Becca once referred to her approach to friendship as being like a fried egg, having Eve and Ayesha in the yolk with her, and a cast of hundreds around them as the white.
‘I wanted to chat to you about that actually. Depending on your cash flow, I was thinking of organising a weekend away just the three of us. She’s got the mother of all parties planned for her wedding, and I thought it would be really great if you, me and her went away for the weekend, and just hung out together like we used to.’
‘When the three of you used to hang out together, I was always there too, so do I get an invite?’ Ben said cheekily. Thankfully Eve could tell that he was joking. A weekend away with Ben when she seemed to keep putting her foot in it with him was not going to be a sensible prospect.
‘Not a chance,’ Ayesha said. ‘Anyway, I need you to stay here and keep an eye on my new husband, I’ve read Eve’s trashy mags, I know what happens when wives are away.’ She turned back to Eve, ‘Great, a weekend away sounds perfect, but it can’t be too expensive, this wedding has wiped us out, and I know you and Becca probably haven’t got much at the moment either.’
‘No, not at all.’ Eve could hardly let on that thanks to her Venus columns her life wasn’t quite so hand-to-mouth anymore. ‘Right, I’ll form a plan in the next couple of days.’
‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have one last blowout: me, you and Becca going clubbing like we used to?’ Ayesha said.
‘Leave it with me, I’ll come up with a plan.’
As Amit and Ayesha walked ahead of them out of the restaurant, Eve tugged on Ben’s sleeve. ‘Can you stay back and walk home with me? Please?’
Eve blamed her bladder for needing to run back into the restaurant, and Ben gallantly offered to stay behind to walk her to the tube, insisting that the newlyweds should go home. As soon as Amit and Ayesha had rounded the corner out of sight Eve started, ‘I just wanted to apologise about earlier. I would never have made fun of you, or Kate, had I known she’d, you know, died.’
‘It’s ok, I know you didn’t know. I did a really bad job of wording things when we had the drink on Sunday. It wasn’t your fault that you took offence at what I was saying, you have every right to be angry when you don’t actually know what happened.’
They stopped on the pavement to wait for a gap in the traffic to cross the road, Ben took Eve’s elbow to guide her through the cars. ‘And once you do know what happened, you have every right to be angry then too. But I don’t want you to think that I ever dumped you for her, it wasn’t like that at all. Like I said, it was—’
‘Complicated,’ Eve finished.
‘Yes, have I said that before?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘The thing is, I got a letter from Kate’s parents—’
‘You said.’
With a lot more patience than many men would have shown in the circumstances Ben said, ‘Yes, like I said, but they weren’t asking me to come back because she wanted me back, she’d just found out that she had cancer, and she was asking for me to say goodbye. She meant a lot to me Eve, we’d known each other since we were born. I thought that I’d go back for a couple of weeks and that would be it. I wasn’t expecting for all these old feelings to resurface and to feel this need to be with her when she died.’ He paused. ‘And I owe you an apology too, about the usher-threesome-thing. I should have known you wouldn’t do that. But then again, what you do in your own time is really nothing to do with me.’
I wasn’t expecting for all these old feelings to resurface and to feel this need to be with her when she died. What you do is nothing to do with me. Well, thought Eve, if I didn’t know before how Ben felt about me, I’ve just been served it up on a platter with a massive flashing neon sign stuck in it.
***
A couple of days away from work, her Venus column, Tanya, her search for the elusive B and her constant misunderstandings with Ben was just what Eve desperately needed. She wanted some time out, and although she’d never plan Becca’s hen do purely on her own needs, the idea of spending the weekend with four hundred randoms in a raucous basement nightclub doing the Macarena was as far from therapeutic as it was possible to be, so a quiet weekend away with her best friends sounded perfect.
‘Wake up,’ George, her soon to be brother-in-law, teased. ‘We’re never going to get all these luggage tags labelled if you keep drifting off to goodness knows where every two minutes.’
Eve shook her head. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I’ve just got a lot on my plate.’
‘You should have said, Adam would have understood.’
‘Adam? My brother? Your beloved? He’d have understood that his sister has priorities that are not his forthcoming wedding that is set to rival a royal one?’
‘You’re right. My mistake. As you were.’
The two of them were sat opposite each other at George and Adam’s eye-wateringly expensive transparent Perspex dining table using their neatest handwriting to label every guest’s name onto a luggage tag, which would be sent to them tomorrow. It was Stage Two in getting everyone excited about their destination wedding. Eve thought it was very disconcerting to be able to see her legs through the table, so kept moving the paper directly over where her bare skin was. It was one of the hottest days of the year so far, so she was wearing shorts, which were even shorter than she remembered them being last year. Maybe it was her old age making her more self-conscious, but she was quite glad that her catty brother wasn’t there to pass judgment. At his request she’d hooked him up with Juan for a few last-minute attempts to tone up pre-wedding, so he was at his first training session. ‘He’s a hot Argentinian, but he’s straight, I promise,’ Eve had said to a nonplussed George, who was so secure in his relationship with Adam that even if Juan turned out to be the founder of Grindr he’d have waved Adam off just as cheerily as he did that lunchtime.
‘So, anything you want to talk about?’ George said, studiously looping a name, then holding the card up and flapping it dry.
‘Not really, just stuff.’
‘Men stuff?’
‘Sort of. Do you remember Ben? The guy that dumped me just before we were meant to go to New York together?’
‘Yes, handsome fella.’
‘If you say so. Anyway, I didn’t realise how much of a grudge I held against Ben, until I saw him again a month or so ago at a wedding. And I’ve run into him a few times since that too and each time managed to come out of each meeting looking like a prize idiot.’
‘I’m sure you’re being hard on yourself.’
‘George. I saw him last night and said in a stupid baby voice something like, “ooo, did ickle Ben get his heart broken,” and he told me that he left me because he found out that his ex-girlfriend was dying from cancer.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, oh. So anyway, that’s making me feel pretty rubbish about myself, and then I’ve gone on a wild goose chase trying to find a B to marry.’
‘Oh yes, the Desperately Seeking B saga. How’s that going?’
‘It’s not. I met that one American army guy I told you about, then I tried to date a vegan pogo-stick marathon jumper, who turned me down, can you believe it?’
‘What an arse.’
‘I know. Then I almost had a threesome with a Bobby and his mate whose middle name was Bartholomew. And this week I’ve had a date with a bloke called Bryn,’
‘All very sexy names.’
‘I’m ignoring you. But anyway, turns out there’s no happy ever after with Bryn because he was incredibly dull.’
‘Arses, all of them.’
‘And I massively fell out with my friend Tanya last weekend.’
‘The one that was making you jumps through hoops of fire in the lead up to her wedding?’
‘The very same.’
> ‘Well she’s an arse too.’
‘I know. Arsey McArseface. And I’ve got some work stuff going on that’s making me question my integrity—’
‘Eve, you have the strongest moral principles of anyone I’ve ever met.’
‘I used to. Now, I’m not so sure. So basically, I’ve screwed up. Quite a lot.’
George pointed at her pen that was hovering in mid air. ‘Keep writing the labels while you talk, they’re not going to write themselves.’
‘Sir, yes sir. So anyway, I need a break from it all, so after I finish here I’m going to go on the internet for a few hours and book Becca’s hen weekend away somewhere, and it’s just going to be me, Ayesha and Becca, completely cut off from the ridiculousness that has become my life.’
‘Ooh, where are you going to go?’ George said, flapping a card in each hand.
‘Don’t know, I was thinking somewhere quiet, in the country, nothing flash – just a lovely hotel in a gorgeous town, lots of cheap wine and lovely food, but we’re all on a tight budget, so probably a little place close to home.’
‘O-M-G. I have just had the best idea.’ George had put down the cards, and now his hands were flapping with nothing in them. ‘You know the hilltop village in France we’re getting married in?’
‘The one with the address I’ve just written out thirty-five times on these luggage tags?’
‘Yes that one. Well, we had really wanted to visit there before the wedding to taste the wines at the vineyard and do a food run-through with the caterers, but work is crazy busy at the moment, and because I’m taking three weeks off for the wedding and the honeymoon I can’t take any more days off. So we were just going to blindly pick the food and drink, cross our fingers and hope for the best, but you could do the trip for us! It would be my shout as you’d be doing us a huge favour and it would be such a relief knowing that someone we trust has actually gone there and chosen it in person.’
A Beautiful Day for a Wedding Page 19
