‘You couldn’t have married a toff,’ he said a few minutes later, through a mouthful of toast. His eyes remained on EastEnders.
‘Really?’
‘No. It may be the twenty-first century but the aristocracy is still insane. Bad genes, bad breath, terrible taste in clothes.’ He swallowed his toast and brushed crumbs off his chest on to the carpet. ‘This just confirms my belief that we should have had a revolution and lopped all their heads off.’
‘Maybe.’
‘No maybe about it, he wasn’t nearly good enough for you, Pols. I mean it.’
‘Thanks, love.’ I poured my soup into a bowl and sat on the sofa, balancing the bowl on my knees. ‘Anyway, catch me up with EastEnders, will you?’
Later that night I was lying in bed, scrolling through all of Lala’s Instagram pictures, when my phone buzzed with a WhatsApp from Bill.
I am about to send a carrier pigeon, as I can only assume my messages of concern aren’t getting through. You around for dinner this week?
I realized I still hadn’t replied to him.
SORRY, but yes. Thursday? And I’ll probably live. X
Bill’s reply popped up on the screen.
Perfect. Our usual. Will book a table for 7. Lots of wine. What a tosser. X
I put my phone on my bedside table and told myself to go to sleep. At least Bill hadn’t said ‘I told you so’. Although he was probably saving that for Thursday.
‘I’ve ordered a bottle of red,’ said Bill, when I arrived at the Italian later that week.
‘Good,’ I said, sitting down and reaching for a packet of breadsticks.
‘How you doing?’
‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like I’m a wounded animal,’ I said, crunching a breadstick. ‘I’m fine. I should have known. Everybody warned me and so on and so on.’
‘Did I say a thing?’
‘No, I could just tell. From your expression.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ said Bill, ‘I’m sorry for you but relieved. He wasn’t the one for you. I don’t care if the guy owned a hundred castles. You don’t want to live in a castle anyway. In Yorkshire. It’s very cold in Yorkshire.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s what Joe said. But I’m still a bit confused. How we went from full on, saying I love you, to him going away for a weekend with someone. But I guess…’ I trailed off.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘men are strange. People are pretty strange. But men are even stranger. Who knows why he did it. But don’t drive yourself mad by wondering. Although easier said than done, I know.’
‘When did you become such a relationship guru?’
‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I just know you. I know you’ll say you’re fine but you’ll go round and round in your head about it. But… fuck him.’
‘Cheers to that,’ I said, raising my glass to him. We clinked and a waiter came over to take our order. Bill had his usual (American Hot extra hot); I had mine (spaghetti carbonara).
‘How are you anyway?’ I said.
‘I am good,’ he said slowly.
‘What?’ I said, sensing something.
‘I’ve got some news actually.’
‘Which is… ?’
‘I’ve asked Willow to move in with me.’
‘Oh my God! Are you serious?’
‘Yes!’ He burst out laughing. ‘Why would I joke about that?’
‘I just… It’s just… you’ve only been going out for what… six months?’
He shook his head. ‘Eight or so. And I know. That’s still quick. But she’s been staying there anyway, and she makes me happy. And I just think why not? Especially at our age.’
I blinked at him. Firstly, ‘at our age’ indeed. Bill was thirty. He wasn’t ninety. And secondly, just, well, blimey.
‘She’s just not totally who I thought you’d end up with,’ I said, trying to sound cheery.
‘Me neither,’ he said, through another mouthful of breadstick. ‘But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. We’ve got Crumpet now. And I didn’t want to tell you so soon after, well, Jasper and everything,’ he continued. ‘But then I thought you’d see us at Lex’s wedding next weekend anyway, so…’
‘Dude, congratulations,’ I said, raising my glass again. But then I suddenly felt a wave of tears. Oh, Christ, not again, Polly. You cannot cry in a restaurant again, I told myself. Are you trying to clock up some sort of record for number of London restaurants you can cause a scene in? But it was too late. My eyes welled up and spilled over. Tears all down my cheeks again. Fucking hell.
‘Pols?’ said Bill. ‘What’s up?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, my voice all thick. ‘I’m sorry. I’m happy for you, I promise. I’m just tired, I think. And emotional at the moment. And just… oh God, I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
A waiter appeared at our table and put our plates down.
‘Would you like some Parmesan?’ he said chirpily.
‘I think we’re good for the moment, thanks, mate,’ said Bill to the waiter, as a tear fell into my carbonara. He handed me his napkin then put his hand over mine on the table.
‘Maybe you need some time off work?’ he said. ‘Everything with Jasper. And your mum…’
‘I’ve just had some time off,’ I said, blowing my nose on a napkin. ‘I think I need a new job.’
‘Did you ever email my mate Luke? About that website?’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry, I totally forgot.’ I’d meant to and then I’d got distracted by Jasper. I welled up again. How was I ever going to get a new job if I was so useless?
‘Why don’t you do that tomorrow?’ said Bill. ‘I mentioned you to him and he was keen to meet. They need a ton of new writers apparently.’
I sniffed. Come on, Polly, get your shit together. ‘Yep, good plan. And thank you.’
‘’Course,’ he said. ‘I’d do anything for you. You know that. Or you should know that. How’s your mum by the way?’
‘Good,’ I said, blowing my nose again. ‘I think so, anyway. Last chemo done. Feeling better. So, we just need to keep an eye on her bloods now and make sure everything’s gone.’
‘Phew,’ he said. ‘I mean you’re my favourite Spencer but Susan comes in a pretty close second.’
I smiled at him through my puffy eyes. ‘Thanks.’
17
ON THE BUS HOME that evening after dinner with Bill I mulled everything over. Mum had been on her own for years. I was perfectly capable of doing the same thing. I didn’t need to be with anyone. I was going to concentrate on my career and Bill was going to introduce me to his news website mate. But I still felt a tiny slither of unease in my chest about Bill moving in with Willow. And I wasn’t sure whether that was because my friends were all growing up and several stages ahead of me in life. Or because it felt like I was losing Bill.
By Saturday morning, the day of Lex and Hamish’s wedding, I hadn’t resolved it. And I woke at Lex’s parents’ house in a funny mood. Funny as in contemplative, not as in ‘ha ha’. My best friend was getting married, I didn’t even have a plus one. But my best friend was getting married to the wrong person. At least to someone who I still worried was the wrong person, for all Lex’s assurances that she loved him. It was never like this in Sense and Sensibility. Eleanor and Marianne married their right men in the end, although Marianne was still a bit sad about Willoughby. But she’d definitely picked the right one in the end. Good old Colonel Brandon. Where was my Colonel Brandon? I wondered. Safe, dependable Colonel Brandon with a nice big house. There didn’t seem to be many of them lurking in the pubs of West London.
I got out of bed and looked through the window at the lawn. Or where the lawn would be if it wasn’t covered with a marquee the size of a circus tent. Lex’s parents, Pete and Karen, lived in a big, yellowstone house twenty minutes from the centre of Oxford. Pete had ‘done very well’ (the polite way of saying ‘made out like a bandit
’) in the City in the early 2000s and retired just before everything went wrong in 2008. These days he had the relaxed air of a man who had nothing more strenuous to worry about than his golf handicap. Lex was their only daughter, so they were going all out on this wedding.
I went next door to Lex’s room and pushed the door open. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.
‘Morning.’
She looked at me and sat up in bed. ‘Pols, it’s my wedding day,’ she said slowly.
‘I know. Good thing you remembered.’
‘I mean…’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘No, it’s just, it’s my wedding day. How weird is that?’
‘A bit weird, I guess. On the one hand, I’m still quite surprised that we’re old enough to be allowed to drive. I’m basically still about fifteen in my head.’ I paused. ‘On the other, we’ve been talking about your wedding for the past six months and there’s a bloody enormous marquee downstairs.’
She looked at her hands. ‘Yeah. I think… it’s probably normal, right? To wake up on your wedding day and feel weird?’
‘I’m not really the one to ask, but I’m sure it probably is. Come on, let’s go downstairs and have a coffee.’
Lex climbed wordlessly out of bed and picked her phone up from her bedside table. ‘Should I text him?’
‘Who?’
‘Hammy.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you know, just to see if he’s feeling… weird.’
‘Nope,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m sure that’s bad luck. Honestly, let’s go downstairs and have breakfast and get the day started. It’s the anticipation of it all probably.’ Was it? Who knows, but I wanted a coffee and I felt this sort of pre-wedding jitter was more Karen’s department than mine.
Downstairs, Karen and Pete’s brother, known to everyone as Uncle Nick, were both sitting at the kitchen table in their dressing gowns. Karen was eating a kiwi and there was an enormous plate of croissants in the middle of the table.
‘Darling!’ she said, jumping up as we walked through the door. ‘Come here and give your ancient mother a hug. My daughter’s wedding day. What a thing!’
I put the kettle on the Aga while Karen enveloped a silent Lex.
‘Did we all sleep well?’ said Uncle Nick, picking up a croissant. He was a banker who had no hair and a fantastically fat stomach. He’d never married, but was adored by everyone because he was the kindest man in Britain.
‘Kind of,’ said Lex. She looked at Karen. ‘Mum, I think I’m a bit nervous.’
‘’Course you are, my love, it’s your wedding day. I was terrified on mine.’
‘Really?’
‘Yesssss, darling. I ran along to my mother’s bedroom at 7 a.m. on the day itself and told her I couldn’t go through with it.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Lex. ‘And then what?’
‘My mother took one look at me and said, “Darling, the women in the village have been doing the flowers for three days.” And that was that.’
‘So you married Dad to avoid disappointing the women in the village and their marigolds?’
‘Roses actually, Alexa. But yes. Exactly. And look at us, thirty-five years on and I still love the daft prat.’
Pete chose that moment to make his entrance into the kitchen. He had a dog lead in his hand and a maroon JP Morgan baseball hat on his head.
‘I’m going to take Daisy for a walk,’ he said. ‘Does my only daughter want to come on a last walk with her father?’
‘I’m not dying, Dad,’ she said, but she was smiling, which I took as a positive sign given the look of terror she’d been sporting in bed minutes earlier. ‘’Course I will. Let me just go and put some clothes on.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, I think,’ said Uncle Nick from the kitchen table. ‘Very dangerous thing, walking.’ He reached for another croissant.
‘I need to do my nails,’ said Karen. ‘Polly, are you all right? Help yourself to breakfast, you know the score. I’ll be upstairs.’
‘’Course,’ I said.
‘And Her Majesty will appear in an hour or so, I imagine, demanding half a grapefruit, but she’ll have to look after herself.’
Karen meant her mother-in-law, Fiona, who had been a model in the Forties, photographed by Cecil Beaton, Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray. She’d married Pete’s father, a diplomat, aged twenty-one and gave up modelling to have children. But she still prepared for every act of her life since as if she might be called for a photo shoot at any minute. Karen was always exasperated by Fiona’s grandness but I liked her because she was prone to telling stories about the time she and Audrey Hepburn had gone to a party in Switzerland together. Or another time when a ‘little man in the movies’, who transpired to be Steve McQueen, had chatted her up at a dinner in LA.
‘I’ll be here, soldiering through these croissants. Don’t worry,’ said Uncle Nick, remaining at the kitchen table.
Minutes later, Lex reappeared in her gym kit. ‘Right, Dad, let’s go.’ They walked out, Karen disappeared upstairs and I sat at the kitchen table and sighed.
Uncle Nick raised his eyebrows at me.
‘What?’
‘That was a very heavy sigh.’
I smiled at him and reached for the coffee. ‘Wasn’t meant to be, promise.’
He pushed the plate of croissants towards me. ‘Not everyone has to get married at the same time, you know. It might feel like the world is merrily skipping down the aisle, but some people manage perfectly well without. Better, even, dare I say it.’ He winked at me. ‘But don’t tell anyone I told you that.’
I smiled at him and reached for the raspberry jam. ‘Thanks, Uncle Nick. You’re a dude. If only we could get married.’
‘Nonsense, darling. I’m much too fat for you, it would be like marrying Henry VIII in his twilight years. Disgusting. Pass the butter.’
By 2.30 p.m., Orsino, one of the two small page boys I was in charge of, had been sick on one of his patent shoes. So I carefully slipped it off his foot and stood at the kitchen sink, trying to remove small globules of vomit from around the silver buckle with a piece of kitchen roll. I told 4-year-old Orsino and his 3-year-old accomplice, Wolf, to sit quietly on a sofa in the corner and watch Peppa Pig on my phone.
Orsino was Hamish’s godson, Wolf was his nephew. They were dressed like miniature eighteenth-century footmen. Beige knickerbockers, white tights, white shirts with frilly lace collars, long blue frock coats over that.
Outside, a Rolls-Royce had pulled up by the front door and the chauffeur was walking around it, polishing it with a cloth.
Pete appeared in the kitchen. ‘I think we should get going, don’t you, Pols?’
I looked at the kitchen clock. ‘Don’t panic, we’ve got twenty minutes or so. And the others haven’t even left yet.’
By others, I meant Karen, Fiona and Uncle Nick, the latter of whom was sitting on a bench outside the front door having his first cigar of the day. Karen was upstairs with Lex, who had recovered her spirits and was drinking champagne in her mother’s bedroom, having her veil pinned on.
‘You’re right,’ said Pete. ‘I’ll have a sandwich instead. And how are you two?’ he said, looking down at the small heads of Orsino and Wolf, who ignored him and continued staring at my mobile phone.
‘Righto,’ said Pete, to no one in particular. ‘Think I’ll just go and check Nick knows where he’s going.’
I squinted at the small patent shoe in my hand. Looked all right. Smelled terrible.
‘Here you go, Orsino,’ I said, ‘let’s get this back on so we’re ready.’ Orsino wordlessly lifted his left foot up for me to put the shoe back on.
‘No, other foot,’ I said. He lifted the other one, keeping his gaze on Peppa Pig.
I stood and caught a glimpse of myself in the kitchen mirror. My hair had started to go frizzy, my purple dress was too tight around the waist, which was creating an unfortunate tyre above it whenever I sat down, and I
suspected that Michelle, the make-up artist, had honed her talents in local pantomime. My cheeks were a luminous shade of pink, but when I’d tried to rub it off, I’d flushed even more. I looked like a Geisha girl, not a maid of honour.
Then I heard floorboards creak above me which meant the bridal party were on the move. Karen bowled into the kitchen first. In the end, she’d decided on a pale blue dress and jacket from Caroline Charles. ‘A bit of cleavage, but not so much that everyone goes on about what a slapper the mother of the bride is,’ she said, putting two empty champagne flutes in the sink. ‘Where’s Pete?’
‘Outside with Uncle Nick, checking he knows where he’s going.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! The church is only five minutes away. And I’m going to be in the bloody car with him anyway.’ She stuck her head through the kitchen window. ‘Pete, Nick, in the kitchen please immediately. Lex is on her way down.’
‘And where’s Fiona?’ she said, pulling the window closed and locking it.
‘Haven’t seen her.’
‘I’m going to fucking murder that fucking woman,’ said Karen, walking back towards the stairs.
It was the moment Pete saw Lex that got me. She came downstairs, her dress rustling against the banisters, then stopped at the bottom of them.
‘Well…’ said Pete, standing in the kitchen doorway, fiddling with his cufflinks. His eyes welled up and he couldn’t say anything else. Then my eyes welled up.
Her dress was from a bridal boutique in Wimbledon. White, with little capped sleeves and a fitted lace bodice which was gathered with a thin band at the waist, before it fell into a long silk skirt. Her veil, the same lace as her bodice, trailed out behind her. I thought back to the mornings when we’d both woken up at university, eyeliner smeared down our faces, knickers on inside out, hair as if we were auditioning for the Sex Pistols.
‘I can’t get make-up on your suit,’ said Lex, hugging Pete.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that, my darling. But we need to get going. Your mother will have hysterics if we’re not at the church in ten minutes.’
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