Tales From A Hen Weekend

by Olivia Ryan

  ‘Yeah – and attracted a lot more attention!’ I laugh.

  ‘Oh! Oh, God – I almost forgot!’ shrieks Emily, diving into her handbag. ‘I brought these for us to wear again tonight!’

  The photo badges. Great.

  ‘Do I really need everyone in here to see what I looked like as a baby?’ I groan as they all start pinning on their badges.

  ‘Yeah – come on, love, let’s see!’ laughs a guy at the next table. ‘Your hen party, is it?’

  Well done.

  ‘Ha! Brings back memories!’ says the girl sitting next to him, who looks too young but is evidently his wife. ‘Had a brilliant time on mine last year. Went to Prague. Great, it was!’

  I freeze at the mention of Prague. Bugger. Just when everything was going so well.

  ‘We went for a week – it was so cheap! Everything! The hotel was cheap, the drink was cheap … much cheaper than Dublin! Dublin’s the most expensive place in the world, I reckon. We’ve been saving up ever since the wedding to come here for our first anniversary.’

  This is really, really not what I want to hear.

  ‘Yeah, it’s very expensive, is Dublin’, chimes in her husband. ‘And as for London! I went to London just for three days for my Stag, and it cost more than her week in Prague! Unbelievable!’

  ‘Never mind, love. You enjoy yourself while you can! Plenty of time for economy after the wedding, eh!’ giggles Mrs Happy First Anniversary.

  I feel sick. I don’t want to talk to these people about their hen party and their stag party. I walk away from them, push my way through the crowd to the Ladies.

  I don’t really need to go to the loo; I just need to be on my own for a minute. I lean against the sinks and close my eyes. When I open them, Emily’s standing next to me.

  ‘You all right, little hen?’ she says, frowning at me through the mists of her own drunkenness.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whassup?’

  ‘Prague. Anniversary Annie out there went to bloody Prague for her hen party – her hen week – and it was cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Cheaper than a weekend in Dublin’.

  ‘OK, Katie,’ she says, grasping my point straight away, despite the alcohol. ‘So the stag’s cheap. So what? That’s not really the point.’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s the whole point! I made all that fuss, and I was wrong about it.’

  ‘No. No, you weren’t wrong.’ She’s got hold of my arm now and talking right close to my face. ‘Matt was wrong, Katie. He was wrong because it mattered to you, and he didn’t care how much it mattered. That’s the bottom line. That’s what I told him. . .’

  ‘You what?’ I stare at her, totally lost. ‘When? When did you tell him?’

  She’s realised what she’s said, the minute the words are out of her mouth. She’s covered her mouth with her hand as if to stop herself saying anything else.

  ‘When?’ I repeat, staring at her. Staring at the flush rising in her cheeks, the shifty look in her eyes, the slight shake of her hand as she takes it from her mouth and scratches her head with it. ‘When were you talking to him? Why were you discussing this with him behind my back?’

  ‘Not now, Katie. Not tonight.’

  ‘Yes now, Emily! For Christ’s sake! What’s going on? You never told me you talked to him.’

  ‘I was trying to help.’

  ‘So why didn’t I get to hear about this? You try to help, but you can’t tell me?’

  She shakes her head, miserably.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’

  ‘Well, I do.’

  We’re both leaning on the sinks now, looking into each other’s eyes, almost holding our breath. I’m thinking I suppose I could back down. Tell her not to worry. It probably doesn’t matter. We’ll discuss it another time.

  But before I open my mouth to say so, she takes a great, long sigh and starts to talk. And although I’m wishing she hadn’t started, it’s too late now. We’ve crossed that line. I have to hear it.

  EMILY’S STORY

  There’s no way I’m going to be able to tell Katie the whole of this story. She’ll get an edited version. I’ve got to live with the rest of it. What else can I do?

  You need to understand where I'm coming from. I’ve known Katie since we were both eighteen and in our first term at Sheffield University. We were a long way from home. In fact I don’t think either of us had ever been that far north before in our lives. It was like a foreign country. Nearly all our new friends were from the north and we pretty soon gravitated towards each other because our accents were the same. We were the only two Essex girls in our halls. Karen and Suze both came from Birmingham and even they were looked upon as southerners.

  Before long, Katie and I were inseparable. We came home together for holidays – sometimes on the train, sometimes with one of our parents picking us both up. My family lived in a little village halfway between Colchester and the coast. There was nothing much to do there but Katie loved it. She used to borrow Lisa’s car and drive over during the long summer holidays, and we’d lie in the garden under the apple tree, studying and chatting. Then we’d drive back to Romford for the evening and stay over at Katie’s house.

  In all the time Katie and I have been friends, we must have had about a hundred boyfriends between us. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture. We went out with guys we met at Sheffield, and then came home and went out with different guys we met at pubs and clubs in Romford. I went out for a while with a boy I’d known all my life, who lived in my village – but it didn’t stop me going out with someone else when I went back to uni for the next term. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds; we weren’t pretending to anybody that we were serious about them. We were just having fun.

  It wasn’t until after we graduated, when I got my first job in London and moved to Romford to share a flat with Katie, that I sensed a change in her. She was getting fed up with it – the clubbing every Friday and Saturday night, the coupling-up with new guys and the inevitable swift dumping by either party with no particular regrets.

  Her first serious boyfriend was a guy called Stuart from the publishing company where she worked. I didn’t like him; he was too possessive, too controlling. Thank God, she finished with him after about six months. I still remember what she said, when she phoned me in tears to say it was over.

  ‘I wanted him to be The One.’

  ‘But he wasn’t,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t make him be.’

  After that, I think she spent the next five years hoping that every guy she went out with would be The One. Of course, she was disappointed every time. Why? Well, because she was looking for something that didn’t exist. Mr Right. Tall, dark, handsome, well dressed, beautifully mannered, intelligent, compassionate, understanding… you follow my drift? He doesn’t exist. I’ve known that since I was about sixteen. By this time, when we were in our mid-twenties, I was happy with a series of boyfriends who were Mr Not-Too-Bad. Average-looking, average income, fairly normal, quite kind. But it wasn’t enough for Katie. Every relationship she had started with the same great expectations. She always thought this man was going to be The One. And every relationship ended in tears when she found out he wasn’t perfect.

  Matt isn’t perfect either.

  How could I tell Katie that? You’ve already heard how they fell for each other. It was like a volcano erupting. Like a tornado. I hardly ever saw her any more because she couldn’t tear herself away from him. She cut herself off from everyone, and thought being in love made it acceptable. I met Sean soon afterwards, and eventually, Katie and Matt got a bit more settled and we started seeing each other as a foursome. I knew our friendship was never in danger. I’d just had to bide my time till she calmed down a bit.

  But she’s never wavered from her conviction that he’s her perfect soul mate. That’s why, I know, it’s affected her so badly now they’re having these arguments. Especially this big one about the stag party.

  He’s an arsehole, isn’t
he?

  I mean, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter who was being unreasonable, or whether they both were. It was his refusal to compromise, his insistence that he’d made his mind up and he was going to have his own way, that was the problem. It was unloving. That’s what bothered me. If you love someone, even if you disagree with them, you don’t go ahead and do something that’s going to upset them.

  And yes, I told him so.

  I was so annoyed, the evening Katie phoned me to come over – the evening we had to hide and whisper in her bedroom because Matt was watching football in the lounge and we mustn’t disturb him – I wanted to walk in there and tell him what a selfish pig he was being. Obviously that wasn’t going to help matters, so I did the next best thing I could: tried to cheer Katie up, talked about pre-wedding stress and told her not to take it all too seriously.

  The next day, I phoned him at work.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked sharply. ‘Is Kate all right?’

  ‘Not really. Haven’t you noticed?’

  He was silent for a minute. I could hear the voices of the other people in his office. Someone was whistling. Another phone was ringing. I waited.

  ‘Emily,’ he said eventually, with a long drawn-out sigh, ‘If you weren’t one of Kate’s closest friends I’d tell you to mind your own fucking business.’

  ‘If I wasn’t her friend,’ I replied tightly, ‘I wouldn’t be phoning.’

  ‘I can’t talk now. Look – what time are you finishing work tonight?’

  ‘About five.’

  His office was half a dozen Tube stations across London from mine.

  ‘I’ll meet you at five-thirty. Liverpool Street. In the bar. OK?’

  I got the impression I was an annoying extra chore he had to fit in, to clear up.

  ‘OK. I’ll be there.’

  I was at the station early, so I got a drink, found a seat in the corner of the bar and sat reading my paper. He arrived looking irritated and impatient, which put my back up straight away.

  ‘You could at least try to look as if you care,’ I snapped as he joined me at the table, ‘that I’m concerned enough to need to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I care about,’ he retorted. ‘The fact that you ring me up at work and start ranting…’

  ‘I did not rant!’ I gasped. ‘I just wanted to know if you understood how upset Katie is.’

  He looked at me with annoyance.

  ‘With all due respect, Emily, you don’t know everything that goes on between Kate and me. She’s upset? Well, I’m upset too!’

  ‘Well, then, sort it out, Matt. For God’s sake – you’re getting married soon! What’s more important, ten days with your mates or your lifetime with Katie?’

  ‘I suppose Kate’s been telling you that I’m being unreasonable and extravagant.’

  ‘Well – ten days, and taking time off without pay… ’

  ‘Emily…’ He ran his hands through his hair. I noticed, for the first time, that he looked exhausted. As if he hadn’t slept for a week. ‘Look, there’s more to it than that. It’s not just about the stag party.’

  ‘I realise that. I know you’ve been arguing. I understand that it gets tense just before a wedding, but . . .’

  ‘You understand fuck all!’ he spat back at me.

  It was so vicious, it took my breath away. I took a gulp of my drink.

  ‘Right. I think I’d better go.’

  I went to pick up my bag, but he rested his hand on mine.

  ‘I’m sorry, Emily,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t go. I want to talk.’

  ‘Talk away, then,’ I returned, still rattled. ‘If you can do it without swearing at me.’

  He spread his hands wide in a gesture of apology.

  ‘You’re a good friend to Kate. The best. You’re better for her than I am.’

  ‘Girl friends are always good to each other. We’re generally nicer than men,’ I said with feeling.

  ‘I can’t disagree with you there.’ He gave me a rueful half-smile, turning his glass round and round on the table without drinking from it. ‘But Katie and I… we had something special.’

  ‘Had?’

  I felt a shiver run down my spine. What’s with the past tense, here?

  ‘I’ve fucked it all up, Em.’

  He looked up at me, and I froze. He had tears in his eyes.

  ‘What is it, Matt? Come on – it can’t be that bad. Katie loves you! Can’t you just tell her you’re sorry – say you realise you could have been more considerate, about Prague, but you don’t want to cancel now. Compromise. Promise to make it up to her. She’s a forgiving person…’

  He gave a mirthless snort.

  ‘I keep telling you, this isn’t about Prague. I need to go to Prague, Emily. I need those ten days away from Kate. I have to put some distance between us before I go mad. She looks at me with those spaniel eyes, making me feel like shit…’

  ‘Because you’ve hurt her!’

  ‘And she doesn’t even know how much.’

  I swallowed the rest of my drink and closed my eyes. I had a really, really bad feeling about this. I was thinking I should just get up and walk away. I was wishing I’d never started it. But it was too late now; I needed to know.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, flatly, without looking at him.

  In the silence, I was thinking: It can’t be another woman. They’re hardly ever apart.

  ‘Her name’s Claire,’ he said, almost in a whisper.

  Another woman. I’d spoken aloud without realising it. My heart was throbbing like a wound. No, not this. It isn’t fair. Katie doesn’t deserve it.

  ‘It’s not an affair,’ he said. ‘I’m not having an affair.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ I had to speak through my clamped teeth because I felt like I was going to be sick. ‘A one-night stand? Is that all? A fucking stupid, drunken shag with some slapper?’

  ‘No!’ His voice rose like a wail. ‘No, not that.’

  I stared back at him. I wasn’t going to help him out. I wanted him to suffer while he told me.

  ‘We’re just friends,’ he said. He leant his head on one hand. ‘We work together.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And we’ve fallen in love.’

  ‘Oh, please!’ I smacked the table with the palm of my hand, so hard that both our glasses jumped off the surface. ‘You’re not fourteen years old! You’re a grown man, in a relationship, about to be married…’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What the fuck has got into you? All this time, you and Katie have been like Siamese twins, like the original perfect happy couple, and now, suddenly, just because you’re having a few arguments, you decide you don’t love her any more, you love this… this Claire.’

  ‘It isn’t like that. It isn’t because of the arguments. The arguments are because of the state I’m in. I’m falling apart, Em!’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what state you’re in! You deserve to be in a state. You can’t do this, Matt! You can’t just switch from loving one person, to loving another.’

  ‘I haven’t. I still love Katie. I love them both!’

  ‘Of course you don’t, you stupid fucker. Who is this Claire? What’s her phone number? Where does she live?’ I was ready to go round there and beat the shit out of her. ‘How can she do this? The cow! How can she have it off with someone else’s bloke – just before the wedding!’

  ‘But I’ve told you: we’re not having an affair. We haven’t had sex. We haven’t even… Don’t shake your head at me like that, Emily. I’m telling you the truth. We haven’t even kissed.’

  ‘Well, maybe you should have done!’ I retorted, illogically. ‘Shag her, go on – get it out of your system. That’s what it’s all about, at the end of the day. That’s all it’s ever about with you bastards.’

  ‘No. It’s not like that. Claire feels the same way. She respects the fact that I’m with Katie. She’s waiting for me to make up my mind.’

 
‘Oh, spare me the bleeding hearts and fucking flowers!’

  ‘Emily, I didn’t ask for this situation. I didn’t want to fall in love with someone else!’

  ‘Well, you should have fought it harder. You should have moved offices! Changed jobs! Turned away from her! You idiot.’

  I searched my pockets for a tissue to blow my nose. I hadn’t realised I was crying. I’d run out of steam.

  ‘Why have you told me?’ I asked him tonelessly. ‘I hate you for telling me.’

  ‘You wanted to know.’

  ‘I wanted to know everything was going to be all right. Not this.’

  ‘I needed you to see why I have to go away. Away from both of them. I need time, and space, on my own…’

  ‘Yeah, right. With a crowd of drunken friends.’

  ‘No. It’s just me and Sean.’

  ‘Sean knows about this?’

  He hung his head.

  ‘I had to tell him. I had to get him to cancel the stag. I couldn’t face it. We’re going on our own.’

  My head was spinning. Sean knew, and didn’t tell me?

  ‘I’ll kill him. He should have talked to me.’

  ‘No. I told him to keep it to himself.’

  ‘Well, I hope he’s going to talk some sense into your thick, stupid, head.’

  ‘Yes. I hope he is, too. He’s just as mad at me as you are.’ He suddenly gripped my hands, across the table. ‘Emily, I’m trying not to hurt Katie!’

  ‘Well, you could have fooled me!’

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  I shook his hands off mine, looking at him coldly, furiously.

  ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you, Matt? You’re telling me you’re in love with two women, but you don’t understand the first thing about women – how we think, how we feel. Katie could have forgiven you a one-night stand. Maybe even an affair. Sex doesn’t mean anything – it’s just bodies, at the end of the day. But she’ll never forgive you for loving someone else. Not even if you never touch this other woman as long as you live. So take my advice. Go to Prague with Sean, if you must. Cry on his shoulder. Do your male bonding bit. And then come home, marry Katie, change jobs and don’t ever, ever tell her about Claire. If you do, she will never forgive you.’