It was all so new and shiny. I felt out of touch driving my van, even though I was proud of my van and what it meant to me, but it seemed old fashioned somehow. I was tempted to scream out the window at everyone zipping by on their skateboards or rollerskates, ‘It’s a hybrid. I can plug it in, you know. A van that I can actually plug in. It’s AH-MAZING!’ But I suspected that even a plug-in van would raise an unimpressed sneer.
Before I had even parked, I spotted Cat bounding down the steps of a building that I knew from previous visits was the conference centre. She was staring down at her phone, scrolling as she ran towards me, but waved her arm gracefully in the air like a swan’s neck. She was dressed in tight jeans, flats and a red T-shirt with KAPOW written on it. She fitted in here. As she got closer, I noticed that there were shadows under her eyes and her skin had erupted a bit on her chin; her make-up was perfect but I could see she had made a real effort with the concealer.
She hopped into the front seat and threw an arm around me and I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
‘Let’s go. Drive it like it’s stolen. We only have an hour.’ She jumped up and down in her seat.
‘Fifty minutes, really.’
‘Loads of time, two dresses easily.’
‘You busy?’ She looked so tired I knew the answer was yes.
‘The Waist Watch launch is just mental busy, you know, there’s so much to do.’
‘Exciting, though.’ Every time BBest launched a new product, people went insane. I’m talking my-first-born-for-a-glimpse insane, heart palpitations and wobbly knees. Cat worked on the launch team.
Cat surveyed my outfit. ‘Love those jeans, Freya, are they the new ones?’
‘They’re way too tight, I can hardly breathe.’ BBest always recommended that I wear tight jeans to suit my body shape. And my God, these were tight. The blood supply to my toes could get cut off. I’d had to lie on the bed to shoehorn myself into them with a lot of groans and grunts.
I slammed on the brakes as some bearded man with his head in his phone walked out right in front of me. I hit my hands on the steering wheel in annoyance. ‘Seriously!’
But he didn’t even notice that he was nearly in an accident, he just kept shuffling along, reading his screen.
‘You should have knocked him down,’ Cat said.
‘He completely deserved it.’
‘He’s just going to walk into a wall over there anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it. Karma’s a bitch.’ Cat laughed and we sped off.
Twenty minutes later I was sipping on a glass of champagne and standing in my underwear in the fitting room of a tiny bridal shop.
‘I can’t believe I wore a black bra and huge knickers. I just wasn’t thinking.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Cat shouted from outside where she was picking out some dresses. ‘No one is going to be looking at your bra.’
I could hear the shop assistant piping up with suggestions: ‘Maybe something with a sweetheart neckline? Lace is very big at the moment.’
And Cat cutting her off dead: ‘I got this.’
She flung open the fitting-room curtain and bundled in a white cloud of satin and netting that left just enough room for me, if I held my breath and squeezed into the corner.
‘Just to get us started,’ she whispered.
I laughed, knowing I was about to be turned into a perfect meringue.
‘So when is the wedding?’ the assistant asked cheerily.
‘Soon, it will be soon,’ I heard Cat answering for me. ‘They just got engaged, but no point in a long engagement, straight to it. Isn’t that right, Freya?’
‘Sounds good,’ I said, twirling around, looking for an armhole and feeling like I had fallen into a fairy floss machine. It was everywhere – this dress was everywhere.
‘I might need a hand with the zip,’ I shouted to anyone who was listening.
The meek shop assistant appeared in a buttoned cardigan. ‘I’ll get that for you, some of our princess ballgowns can be a little tricky.’ She pushed her palm onto the flat of my back and yanked the zip up firmly. ‘That’s it, come on out to the big mirror, there isn’t much room here to see yourself.’
I wedged myself out of the fitting room, and spotted Cat’s giddy expression. She clapped her hands in delight and led me to the mirror.
‘A princess for a princess,’ she said.
I looked like what happened when the dog got hold of the toilet roll and just went wild: ruffled satin, puffed sleeves and a billowing skirt that would need at least fifteen bridesmaids to maintain. It was gloriously hideous.
I giggled. ‘Behold! A meringue.’
‘A vision in soufflé,’ Cat joined in.
‘Excellent choice, Cat, you know my fashion preferences.’
The shop assistant appeared again and started puffing out the skirt some more. ‘A skirt like this needs maximum volume for effect,’ she said from down around my ankles.
‘I don’t really think it’s for me, this style is just so . . . big.’ I whimpered a bit, trying my best not to laugh outright.
‘I put another one in the changing room.’ Cat held up her phone. ‘Cheese for a quick snap.’
‘This is just between me and you, Cat,’ I said through a forced smile.
‘Absolutely, and whoever comes to your hen party.’ She pointed to the fitting room and bossily said, ‘Go, go.’
I fell out of the meringue and handed it over, making room for round two, which I expected to be similarly horrendous. I was surprised. It was gorgeous: plain, simple, white silk, shoe-string straps and a cowl neckline, with just a hint of a tail kicking out from the back. I slipped it on, and even with my black bra poking out, I could see that it was stunning. I looked beautiful. My dark hair contrasted exquisitely with the bright white, the scooped neckline gave my shoulders and collar bones sharp definition. My bum looked good and neat, even with the big old granny knickers on. I looked like a glowing bride. All I needed was the veil and I was ready to walk down the aisle and sync my life with Mason’s. ‘You ready?’ Cat shouted.
I pulled back the curtain. Cat stood up from the chair she was lounging on and placed her hand over her mouth. I felt a shiver race through me and I heard my breathing catch. Slowly, walking uncharacteristically carefully with a poker-straight back and not unlike a show pony, I stepped in front of the mirror. I was a vision.
I heard Cat exclaim behind me, ‘Freya, you are breathtaking!’
‘It’s incredible.’ I spun around slightly, admiring my silhouette. ‘I’m not too white on white, am I?’
‘No way, you’re like a porcelain doll,’ Cat whispered.
The assistant crept towards me and cleared her throat. ‘If I may . . .’ Dramatically flinging a mist of netting in the air, she expertly clipped a veil to my head and simultaneously fluffed my hair out. ‘The full monty, just for effect,’ she announced.
‘Mason is going to lose his shit!’ Cat screeched with glee.
‘Me too, this is incredible.’ I moved in closer to Cat so as not to be overheard. ‘I can’t just go with the first one, can I? I mean, I want to try on loads of dresses and drink loads of champagne and, you know, have the full bride-to-be experience.’
‘Of course, we have months of changing rooms ahead of us, but I think this is it.’
I twirled like a ballerina, amazed at how easy this was. ‘I’ll have to check with BBest, we could be wrong about this.’
‘Obviously.’ Her phone buzzed and she got distracted and briefly typed then swiped a few times. She held up her screen. ‘Have you ever?’ She rolled her eyes.
There was a photo of a guy we both knew, David Mahon. He was a friend of a friend of a friend. He wearing a T-shirt with ‘I’M YOUR 100%’ on it.
‘What an idiot!’ I exclaimed.
‘Just ridiculous,’ Cat sighed. ‘One hundred per cent is an impossibility on BBest. BBest only offers you the best option for your life, which definitely isn’t David Mahon.’
‘Maybe
he’s being ironic?’ I enlarged the photo, studying intently for an ironic smirk or a twinkle in his eye, but saw nothing.
‘I can’t believe I kissed him.’ Cat put her hand to her forehead, bit her lip and laughed.
‘I did not know that,’ I said, revelling in the gossip. ‘When? Where?’
‘About four years ago, at a festival.’ She spoke through clenched teeth, then laughed. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
I nodded. I too had fallen prey many times to men who seemed like a good idea at the time.
‘I think his tent was pitched near mine, or something, or maybe that was the year my tent got washed away at Electric Picnic. Oh, I can’t remember. Put it this way, it was unmemorable. I kissed a few others that weekend, so I wasn’t crying any tears when we didn’t go shopping for white goods weeks later.’
‘You slut.’
‘Total ho.’
‘Did you ever run your compatibility numbers?’
‘For the laugh, yeah. I think it was like twenty-two per cent.’ She giggled hard.
‘Better luck next time. He’s obviously still single.’ I took another look at the photo and passed the phone back to her, noticing that messages had been flying in.
‘And wearing shirts like that, he’s going to stay that way.’
‘I’ll just nip in there and get changed and then we can head back.’ I smiled at the assistant. ‘I don’t want to take it off . . . I’ll come back and visit it.’
Cat held her phone inches from her nose, reading something intently.
‘You’re so lucky to be out of the dating game, Freya,’ she shouted after me. ‘And Mason is just such a good guy, you caught a real winner. And a ninety-three per cent! It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.’
I turned back and smiled. ‘I know, I am so lucky.’
10
After I dropped Cat back, I met with Mason. His office was floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking a running track. It was bright and airy with sparse furniture and few personal artefacts. There were no photos of us or Australia, or dogs or his family. It was all very minimalist and clean, a bit like him.
I peeped my head around the door. ‘Hi!’
He was behind his desk, talking on the phone. He raised his eyebrows and smiled, made his apologies to his phone call, hung up and sprang out of his seat towards me. He planted a huge kiss on my mouth and squeezed me tightly around the waist.
‘Hi, beautiful.’
‘Well, hello, fiancé.’ I kissed him back.
‘Sorry this has to be a working lunch.’ He held my hand and led me to his desk and the seat opposite his.
There was an array of tiny perfect sushi pieces on the desk, little mounds of white rice wrapped in seaweed, and pale pink slices of pickled ginger delicately splayed to the side. I greedily pulled a tray towards me.
‘Yum, love this, Mase.’
‘Water?’ He passed a chilled bottle across. However Mason sat, he always managed to look structured: the shaved head, the cheekbones, the jaw, the muscles. He was so well packaged.
‘You busy?’
‘Hmm.’ He nodded. ‘It’s good, there’s lots on. It looks like I might have to work out of the London office for a few days, no big deal. You?’
‘I’m busy too. On your way to London, can you pick me up some make-up in duty free?’ I asked, excited at the prospect of new products.
‘Sure, if it’s something you need,’ he said. He looked apologetic. ‘Now, I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to get our financial plan together.’
‘Mmm, come on, baby, let’s talk finance, you’re going to get me all worked up, baby.’ I flopped back on my chair and started to pull at the neck of my T-shirt.
‘I know, I know, it’s not sexy.’ He laughed a little tersely. ‘But we have to do this.’
‘Oh, it is sexy.’ I made my best fake orgasm noises. ‘Sock it to me, big boy.’
Mason glanced at his watch and raised his eyebrows just enough that I felt reprimanded.
I straightened myself up and peered at him apologetically. ‘Sorry, I know, I’m just messing.’
‘I know.’ He smiled tightly. ‘We don’t have a lot of time, and we need to get this moving.’
‘Let’s go.’ I clenched my fist and punched the air. ‘I love finance.’ And then I searched for the soy sauce to sprinkle over my sushi.
‘So I’ve put a document together with current forecast, projections, growth, uncertainties like your new shop, and expenditures. I’ve included expected costs for the wedding.’
‘Yes, the wedding, that’s going to cost, isn’t it? A lot, I’d say.’ I pursed my lips, attempting to look like it was a grave matter indeed.
He passed a plastic folder over my sushi tray, bound and, worryingly, indexed. I opened the pages and felt a whoosh of breath leave me when I saw that there were numbers and columns everywhere, and some were colour coded. It was an assault on my eyes. I felt my eyelids automatically shut to half-mast. I could feel a deep slumber willing itself upon me. I flicked across the many, many pages of numbers in front of me. And I know it’s terrible, but I have a selective deafness with figures, it’s practically a disease; you can explain them to me again and again but it just won’t go in. It’s like I have a force field around me and numbers bounce off it.
‘Did you get that presentation I sent you from BBest Banks?’ I asked and then immediately regretted playing my ace card so soon.
He nodded.
‘It said I was very responsible with money, and only buy essential things, which really is very financially savvy of me. Maybe we can find that in this document and highlight it? My savviness?’
‘Well, for complete accuracy, I thought maybe you could fill in some columns? If you go to page seven . . .’
I turned to page seven and promptly felt my stomach lurch. It was a whole spreadsheet entitled Freya’s Expenditures with blank boxes and the days of the week listed and headings like lunch, coffee, toiletries.
‘It’s very precise, isn’t it?’
‘Just keep track for a week and we’ll get a good idea.’
‘I suppose,’ I gulped nervously.
‘Take a look at the document, you might have some suggestions.’ Mason looked so enthusiastic I felt bad that my immediate thought was Maybe we could burn it? I really needed to cop on, Mason was just doing the sensible thing to set us up financially for our future. It was really very thoughtful of him.
‘Thank you for this, Mason.’ I wolfed down half a sushi roll.
‘Don’t thank me yet, wait until you see what I have here.’ His eyes glowed with delight.
‘A puppy?’ I joked. ‘You didn’t get tickets to see that comedian I love, David O’Doherty, did you? Oh Mase, that would be amazing. If we went to see him in Kilkenny we could book into this funny B&B I saw that’s haunted, hand on heart haunted – they run ghost tours. It’ll be great.’
Mason raised his hands in defeat. ‘No, no tickets I’m afraid, but I did do something else.’ He handed me a piece of white paper folded in half.
I held it between my fingertips. ‘Definitely not a puppy then.’ I smoothed it open. It was a bank statement from BBest Banks, for a Mr and Mrs Williams, and sitting pretty in it was €1,327. I looked over at him, a little confused.
He grinned broadly. ‘It’s for us, to get us started towards saving for a home.’
I started babbling nervously. ‘Ha! For a minute I thought it was something to do with your parents, but that’s us, we will be your parents, I suppose. For a home? Mason, that’s just lovely.’
‘And when we get a good idea of your numbers we’ll be able to agree on a sum that you can contribute.’ He was thrilled with himself. ‘We can build for our future.’
‘We can, we can. Our future. Me and you building our future.’ I felt a wave of goose bumps wash over me. ‘It’s all very grown up, isn’t it?’
This is what people do, I thought, they grow up. They open joint bank accounts and buy hous
es and have children and be together. This is what people do. Come on, Freya, you’re twenty-eight. If not now, then when? I looked at Mason, his olive skin, his T-shirt sleeves pulled tight against the muscles on his upper arms . . . biceps? Triceps? Probably both. He was literally investing in my future. He was my ninety-three per cent. We were destined for each other. I was very lucky.
I finished off my sushi and eyed his. ‘Are you going to eat that last one?’
‘Yes.’ His brow furrowed deeply. ‘I’m going to eat my last sushi roll. You’ve eaten all yours. That’s an adequately sized portion, Freya. Surely you need to keep an eye on things for the wedding?’
‘I know, I know, I was just wondering.’ I crossed my arms, and immediately started to plot where I could pick up some more sushi on my way back to the garage. Mason’s phone was buzzing and tweeting like a bird mating and I could see his mind drifting away from me and back to work.
‘I’m going to have to get on it. So, I’ll see you tonight, we’ll go for a drink with Maurice.’
‘O’Brien’s it is,’ I said cheerfully while leaning over the desk and delivering a quick peck to his cheek. I stood up and firmly clasped my financial future to my chest, which was not scary at all. I waved at Mason when I got to the door, but he was already engrossed in his computer.
I walked down the bright, airy corridor towards the lift and was pounced on by an attractive blonde woman, late forties, dressed impeccably, in a stripy sailor-style top and dark denim jeans, with block canvas wedges. She looked like she had just stepped out of the pages of a yachting catalogue.
‘Freya Flannigan?’ She thrust her hand forward with a firm, almost masculine, grip. ‘The florist?’
I nodded, wondering if she was going to pull out a pack of cards and a white rabbit to keep this magic show going.
‘I’m Anna Smith, a director here. We need a new florist. Interested?’
‘What? Yes . . . How did you . . . Yes.’
‘Thought you would be.’ She grinned excitedly at me like we were long-lost friends finally reunited on a reality TV show. ‘You’re effectively one of us. I know your profile.’ She spoke sharply.
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