by Mina Ford
Can he?
I don’t bother to say anything else to Pussy. Can’t even hide how upset I am. I leave, with tears in my eyes, a lump the size of Jupiter in my throat and my dignity in tatters. Then I leg it back to Janice’s without even stopping at the Dog Shop for chocolate and fags.
One look at my face sends Janice waddling to the Dog Shop for chocolate and fags.
‘Bastard,’ she says when I tell all.
‘Bloody bastard,’ I agree.
‘Bloody, fucking bastard.’ She wipes my face with a hanky. ‘I really didn’t think he was like that.’
‘Of course he’s like that.’ I slurp at my teary top lip and have a good blow. ‘He’s a bloody bastard bloke.’
‘True enough.’
On the morning of my wedding to David, Janice and I watch videos to calm my nerves, a glass of Bolly each in one hand and a handful of caramel popcorn in the other. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, on the other hand, is slapping lurid zebra-striped wall-paper all over the oak-beamed walls of an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Shropshire.
‘Not wishing it was a case of Changing Grooms, are you?’ Janice squeezes my hand.
‘Changing Wombs, more like,’ I blurt. ‘I’ve got period pain like you wouldn’t bloody believe. I must be the only bride in living history to be jamming on her wedding night.’
‘Just as well the groom will be spending it shagging someone else, isn’t it?’ She giggles. ‘You can swap wombs with me if you like. Mine’s getting a bit full.’
‘Still, I’d rather be marrying David than that chintz-loving, frock-coated twit any day.’ I nod in the direction of the telly and take a huge gulp of champagne as if to quash any doubts I might still be having.
‘So would I,’ Janice admits. ‘No regrets then?’
‘No regrets,’ I say. ‘I’ve never kept a New Year’s resolution in my life, so I don’t see why I should start now. And I’m not really getting married, you know. Not in the true “strap a mattress to my back and tie me to the kitchen sink with a wooden spoon in my hand” sense of the word. In theory, I’ll still be Young, Free and Single.’
‘Old, Feckless and Stupid, more like.’ Janice smiles, taking a big swig of her own champers (‘one glass only, mind’) and turning her attention back to the screen, where Linda Barker is rough-plastering the kitchen walls of a tenth-floor council flat in Ilford with a fetching terracotta colour to make it look like the interior of a Tuscan villa.
‘But I wasn’t talking about you getting married.’ Janice puts an arm round my shoulders. ‘You know what I mean. I’m not talking about breaking your daft resolutions. I’m asking if you’re wishing you’d held out a bit longer for Mr Diet Coke Break?’
‘You mean Sam?’
‘Exactly. Or someone like him.’
‘Not really,’ I tell her. ‘At least I found out what he was like. I can’t believe he just went straight back to that stupid little cat. Anyway, I’m doing my bit for true love, keeping David in the country so that he and George can be together. David’s the first person George has loved you know, apart from himself. And his mum. It would be so unfair if he was thousands of miles away cracking open cold tinnies on a beach on his own.’
‘Instead of making himself useful mixing daiquiris for George, you mean,’ says Janice and we both burst out giggling like we haven’t done for the last week.
And laughing feels good.
I don’t mention that without George and David giving me a room and an office and a place to stay, I’d never have got Neat Eats off the ground. They’ve given me a career to be proud of. I can’t throw it back in their faces, now can I?
OK, so I conveniently forget it was Sam’s idea in the first place. I can’t think about that now. I’ve got enough to worry about what with the very strong likelihood of my forgetting my vows. And the possibility of the Home Office getting wind of the fact that I’m marrying a gay foreigner and paying a visit to our wedding.
And not just to throw confetti.
It’s nice to see George and David so happy. And I’m relieved to know that Janice is going to be OK. She took this week off work to help me as I baked an enormous pink wedding cake and decorated it with love hearts, silver balls and pink Jelly Tots. Together, we made tiny prawn toasts with sesame seeds sprinkled all over them, miniature crispy duck pancakes and cooked up huge vats of hot and sour soup, chicken with cashew nuts and squid in black bean sauce.
Visiting Sam that one last time has taught me one thing.
I’ve definitely made the right decision.
I know who my friends are.
And I won’t be sleeping with any of them.
As I pull on my dress—a long, elegant sweep of sheer pinky gold (Didier has done me proud) and Janice puts the finishing touches to my hair and takes me outside to the waiting taxi, I squash any remaining doubts I might be having and decide to treat today as one big party.
My party.
And I’ll cry if I fucking well want to.
But then I might just as well laugh.
The way I’m feeling, who can tell?
‘Just one thing,’ Janice whispers as we climb into the black cab. ‘You may well be entering a sexless marriage but where there’s a will there’s a way.’
‘What?’
‘Remember when Rory Wilsher dumped me?’ she says, un-twisting one of the spaghetti straps of her Barbie-pink maid of honour’s outfit. ‘I used to spend a fortune on taxis. Even to work.’
‘Oh yes,’ I remember. ‘You did. I thought that was because you were too grief-stricken by your loss to manage to walk.’
‘Bollocks it was.’ She grins. ‘Now, sit there. Right in the middle.’
I obey, shifting along a bit, almost dropping my bouquet of pink rosebuds on the floor of the car.
‘There,’ she says. ‘Feel anything?’
‘Yes,’ I say, a grin spreading across my face. ‘I think I do.’
‘There you go. Better than a vibrator any bloody day.’
We’re still laughing when we reach Chelsea registry office. I’m still a bit pissed from all the champagne I’ve drunk that morning, but George—bless him—remembers to put a blanket over my head as we trot from the car to the building, so that in the likely event that my mother is doing a Peter Jones run this fine Saturday morning, she won’t spot me and have kittens all over the pavement.
‘People will think you’re a pop star,’ he says as we make our way up the steps.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ I grumble. ‘Hurry up, will you? I can’t see fuck. And I don’t want to attract attention to myself.’
David’s friend Straight Rigby gives me away in the end. I’ve never met him before but he seems very nice. And though it all seems very strange, being the only straight person (apart from Rigby and Janice) at my own wedding, I realise I don’t really mind one bit.
At least there’s no one from the Home Office here. The whole thing looks suspiciously gay.
I don’t think all the pink helps. And the glitter confetti’s a bit the wrong side of camp, too.
I sneak a quick look round the audience and notice that there are actually other straight people here. Poppy and Seb have turned up. Poppy, pregnant and blooming in a tube of dark purply-pink silk. Seb in a dark suit with a matching purply-pink tie. Bless them. This so isn’t their thing but I’m glad of their support. And—ohmigod—sitting in a seat at the front on the other side, twinkling away at me as if her life depended on it, is George’s mum. She blows me a kiss. I look at George, who is beaming.
‘I told her,’ he mouths.
My heart fills with pride. I knew he could do it. And it’s all obviously fine. His dear old mum has come to his boyfriend’s wedding.
I knew she was cool as fuck.
The only person that’s definitely missing is Sam.
I sigh. No matter how much I’ve been trying to pretend otherwise, I’ve been half hoping he might turn up and stop the wedding in its tracks. Bang on the floor, Four Weddi
ngs and a Funeral style, when it gets to the bit about ‘If there is anyone present who knows a reason why this marriage should not go ahead’.
But he doesn’t. And in the event the ceremony is so quick, that I hardly realise when it’s all over. No hymns. No readings.
Within minutes, I’m a married woman.
Buggery bollocks.
Time for a stiff drink.
George’s boss has lent us his boat on the Thames for our wedding reception. It’s strung with dozens of Chinese paper lanterns in every shade of pink imaginable. Bubblegum pink, Barbie pink, salmon pink, candy pink, peony pink, all fluttering in the breeze, along with the pink gerbera flowers George has hung upside down at intervals from a wire suspended around the deck.
Three waiters in penguin suits with pink bow ties are serving pink cocktails in tall glasses and several guests already look a few sheets to the wind.
‘Come on,’ says Janice, sensing my unhappiness at not finding Sam among them. ‘Let’s get hammered. Well, you can,’ she adds, laughing. ‘I’d better not. Jasper junior might not like it.’
‘You’re not calling it after him?’ I say, shocked.
‘You never know.’ She smiles. ‘I’m joking,’ she adds hurriedly, seeing I might be about to suggest she put the poor little beggar up for adoption after all. ‘I’m not even going to call it anything beginning with J. So Jerome, Jemima and Jessica are all out too. And Josh. You’d better get thinking.’
‘Why me?’
‘I want you to be godmother.’
‘You do?’
‘Of course.’
‘Oh, Janice,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
And then I burst into tears.
‘Mum’s excited, you know,’ she tells me. ‘She’s knitting already. She can’t wait until it’s born.’
‘And you?’
‘Shitting myself. You will come to the hospital, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will.’ I accept a sea breeze and plonk myself at a table on the edge of the deck, forgetting for a moment that I’m wearing a dress and displaying my gusset to all and sundry. ‘I’ll be waiting outside with fat cigars and champagne.’
‘Oh, not cigars, please.’ She laughs gently. ‘I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime. And I rather hoped you’d be there to hold my hand.’
I look at my best friend. She seems a tiny bit scared. And so I give her a huge, reassuring hug.
‘Of course I will,’ I say. ‘You know, I fucking love you to bits.’
‘I love you too.’ She smiles back gratefully.
It’s definitely a party to remember. And, much later, as the sun is setting over the river and all the drag queens, ice queens and acid queens that are George and David’s friends are making for home, David takes me to one side.
‘Thank you.’ He gives me a huge hug. ‘More than anything. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Not many people would have done what you did today. It was very unselfish.’
Too fucking right it was, I thought. You don’t know how unselfish.
But he does.
‘I know about Sam,’ he says. ‘Janice told us. I know how you gave that up for me and George. And I’ll never be able to make it up to you. I love you.’
‘Love you too.’ I hug him. ‘And you’re very welcome.’
It’s ironic, really. There I was at the start of this year, so determined to stay single, so determined to shag around as much as I wanted that I didn’t realise I was falling in love by accident.
I fell in love with Sam by default.
Still, where has that got me? He certainly doesn’t want me now, does he?
I honestly thought he might turn up this afternoon, if not to the service, to the party at least. And it has been fun, this party.
‘I wouldn’t have done it,’ George agrees.
‘I know you wouldn’t, you selfish bastard.’
He smiles. ‘Life’s almost perfect.’
‘It’s not so bad, is it?’ I say.
And it isn’t, I realise. It really isn’t. I may have lost Sam, but I have three friends who love me dearly.
And I’m going to be a godmother.
How lovely.
‘Almost perfect?’ David asks. ‘What more do you need?’
‘A baby?’ George suggests. ‘Katie darling, are you sure Janice won’t sell?’
I laugh. ‘I’m sure.’
He’ll never change.
‘And what about you? Is the answer still no?’
‘Put it this way, I’m not exactly hanging out the Womb To Let signs yet.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ says a familiar voice.
My heart lurches.
David and George instinctively melt into the background, and I’m left alone.
‘You did it then?’ Sam asks me.
I nod, slowly. ‘Yes, I did it.’
‘No regrets?’
‘None,’ I say truthfully. ‘I was helping a friend. Two friends I just wanted to make happy. They do love each other, you know.’
‘I know,’ Sam says. ‘I’m sorry things have turned out the way they have. Between us, I mean.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you think we can still be friends?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Would you like to?’
Slowly, from somewhere deep inside, I manage a small smile.
‘Yes,’ I answer truthfully. ‘We don’t exactly have any choice, do we? We’re going to be related. Remember?’
‘Oh yeah.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘You’ll be my sister.’
‘So it’s probably just as well we didn’t, you know…’
‘I know.’ He gives me a hug. A brotherly one this time. And I feel a twinge of regret.
But only a very tiny one.
‘Bye for now,’ I say, trying to be brave. ‘Perhaps we can go for a drink when it’s all a bit…you know.’
‘I know.’
It’s weird, making my way home alone from my own wedding. I’m just about to climb into a cab at Kew Bridge when I hear running behind me.
Sam.
‘Can I keep you company?’ he asks. ‘This evening, I mean?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure…’
‘Please?’
‘OK.’
When we get home, I feel strangely flat. All I want is a hot bath and bed.
‘Will you feed Graham and Shish for me?’
‘Sure.’
I don’t particularly want the bath for the bath’s sake. I just feel the need to get away from Sam. I’m confused. Why is he here? And where’s Pussy?
God, this hurts too much.
OK, so we’re friends again. And I’m glad. Really glad. We’ve known each other for ever. I would have hated to lose him.
But how long is it going to take? Getting over him, I mean.
And how will I manage to be a good sister to someone I’m head over heels in love with?
Especially when I’m going to have to watch him and Pussy being so bloody happy together.
I lie back in a mound of patchouli-scented bubbles, glancing down at my white gold wedding ring with a wry smile. George insisted that I wasn’t to have gold, because it would look common.
I close my eyes, sinking underneath the surface to scrub away the rigours of the day.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere, I’m being pelted with stones.
‘What the fuck?’
I come spluttering and coughing to the surface.
‘What…’
Sam is climbing into the bath with all his clothes on.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘I’m taking the tap end. What does it look like?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you?’ he says gently, sitting down suddenly so that water slops all over the side of the bath and onto the floor.
‘And what’s this?’ I feel underneath my right buttock to see what’s digging into it. ‘It bloody hurts. Why are you
throwing stones into the bath?’
And then, with a tiny flutter inside, I realise that it isn’t a stone.
It’s a jelly bean.
A red jelly bean.
And there are packets of Brannigans crisps all over the floor of the bathroom.
‘I love you, Katie,’ says Sam, looking utterly ridiculous in his black Diesel jacket, sitting in a full bath, stinking of patchouli and surrounded by floating, brightly-coloured sweets. ‘You can make me take the tap end as often as you like and I’ll still love you.’
‘But you’re still marrying Pussy.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘I came to see you. And she was there. Moving all her stuff in.’
‘Dope.’ He flicks a mound of bubbles at my nose. ‘She was moving it out. I gave her my keys because I wanted her to remove the rest of her things from my property. She had loads of stuff just lying around.’
‘So she made it up?’ I ask, my heart suddenly lifting.
‘Of course she did,’ he says. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t twig. You know what she’s capable of.’
‘So why didn’t you come to the wedding?’
‘I didn’t want to stop you from doing whatever it was you wanted to do. And it doesn’t matter. You being married to David, I mean.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly. I thought it would but it doesn’t. All that matters is that I love you. Married or not. I mean, it’s not as though you’re married in the true sense of the word, is it?’
‘Well…’ I begin, then seeing his face I start laughing. ‘I’m joking.’
‘So will you? Can we?’
‘Oh, Sam.’ I laugh, finally feeling completely happy. ‘Go and cut me a bit of my wedding cake and I’ll think about it.’
Epilogue
Janice had the baby, a girl. She wanted to call her Katherine (after me) but I managed to convince her that was a boring name, which no one ever knew how to spell, so she chose Lucille. She’s beautiful. She looks a lot like Janice and nothing like Jasper—thankfully. Janice’s mum has come to live with them and looks after Lucille while Janice is at work. Janice’s mum loves not having to live in a horrible flat where the lifts never work any more. And Janice is seeing someone new. His name is Ethan and he has a little girl too. They take the kids to the park every weekend. I don’t know that they’re in love, exactly, but they do seem very happy. I’m glad.
