I sink into a chair and pull out my phone.
I am an assistant designer at Lemons Designs. I’m supposed to be a designer. A designer. Yet I have spent the past seven months helping Bianca Lemon plan her big day. I mean, I don’t mind. Bianca must trust me if she’s allowing me to undertake all of these tasks. It’s her wedding, after all. But as a girl who has been single for two years, I know very little about weddings – and even less about organising them.
For example, you have to book the priest. I mean, what? I thought they were just already there.
I turn my dog-eared notebook between my fingers, my attention caught by a loose page that is flapping in the summer breeze. I’ve had my notebook – or diary, as I like to call it – for years. Although Amy buys me a new one every Christmas, I can’t seem to let this one go. I take it with me everywhere.
The girl chews on her lip and finally says, ‘Okay, we have three doves which are . . . white. We call them crystal white.’
I bite my tongue.
Ridiculous name for a white dove when crystals are clear. Crystal clear. Everyone knows that.
I take a deep breath and get to my feet.
Calm down, Georgie. It’s not this poor girl’s fault that you have spent all morning arranging the circus that is the opening ceremony of Bianca’s wedding, in shoes you can barely stand in. At least I managed to talk her out of arriving on an elephant.
‘Okay, great,’ I reply. ‘I need seven, please.’
The salesgirl sucks her pen. ‘Well, we have three.’
‘Where are the others?’
‘Others?’
‘Yes,’ I say impatiently, sticking my phone back into my pocket, ‘the other doves. Surely you have more than three doves.’
Who only stocks three doves?
‘Nope,’ the girl closes the catalogue, ‘we have three. You can book our three but you will have to hire the other four elsewhere and hope they get on.’
What?
‘Get on?’ I repeat.
‘Yeah,’ the girl grins, ‘some of the doves can be pretty feisty.’
Feisty?
Oh great. That’s all I need at the wedding – a cockfight between all of the crystal white pregnant doves.
I fish out some notes to make a down payment and then leave, hurriedly pulling out my phone.
Where am I going to wrangle four more doves? It was hard enough to find three!
Maybe I’ll just ransack some pigeons and get Bianca drunk before they’re released. If I dunk them in paint she’ll never know the difference.
*
I squint my sagging eyes at my computer screen.
Choose one of these destinations.
My eyes sweep over the four options and I click on a sandy beach layered on a brilliant, blue backdrop. The next question loads.
Choose a cake.
My stomach aches as my eyes fall on four pictures of staggering cakes.
I glance down at my limp sandwich, glumly.
It is so hard being an adult. Every day I find lunch a ginormous disappointment and I have nobody to blame but myself. It’s just not fair. Obviously in an ideal world I would buy my lunch from Pret – or that cute little deli round the corner, like Bianca does.
Her laugh swirls through the office door and I shrivel in annoyance.
Bianca always has the poshest lunches. Once she came in with a Quail’s Egg Salad with a Side of Promofranochichifitalatah.
Okay, that isn’t exactly what she said. Whatever it was, it forced me into hiding my ham and cheese sandwiches from her so she doesn’t fire me on the spot for being so dreadfully uncool and common.
I force myself to take a large bite and chew vigorously.
I also accidentally bought wholemeal, low fat bread. Mondays are difficult enough without realising you have to eat an entire loaf of low fat bread before returning to your usual delicious, spongy white. With great effort, I swallow the dry ball of congealed sandwich and wince as it parks itself in the back of my throat. I click on the gooiest chocolate cake on my computer screen.
Normally I wouldn’t spend my lunch hour sat completing BuzzFeed quizzes, but after Bianca sent me on four hours’ worth of errands in relation to her wedding, I feel like I deserve a break. A new question flits on to my screen.
Now choose a colour.
Automatically my finger snaps at the green image.
Normally I would be spending my lunch hour working on my own designs.
I take another bite of my sandwich.
Funnily enough, I didn’t apply to work at Lemons Designs to become a wedding planner. I applied because I wanted to be a designer – and I thought that was why I was initially hired.
I jab my mouse at a photo of a black Labrador.
Bianca hasn’t asked me to work on a single design project since she hired me, so I’ve decided to work on the designs by myself.
I move my eyes back to the BuzzFeed quiz as four images of different cocktails pop up and I furrow my brow.
It’s all leading up to this big pitch we’re having at Lemons, during the same week as Bianca’s wedding. I’ve got it all planned out. Bianca will be really stressed with all of her wedding prep and the big pitch, and will be flapping about the office like a mad parrot. (She loves to flap. Last week our photocopier jammed and she flapped so much I thought she might take flight and emigrate for the summer.) She will turn to me, desperate, and beg me to help, and I will swoop in. I will have planned her perfect wedding, and I will show her my designs for the pitch. She will call me revolutionary and promote me from Assistant Designer to Designer and offer to buy me lunch every day for the rest of my life as a thank you for being the best damn member of staff there ever was – including Sally, the office swot, who drives me crackers.
I click on a photo of a plump cottage and BuzzFeed spins into life.
You will get married in 2075, in a small barn in Swindon.
I drop my sandwich in horror.
What?
2075? I’ll be, like . . .
I scrunch up my face and try to work out the maths.
My mouth falls open.
I will be EIGHTY-THREE!
I can’t get married when I am eighty-three! I’ll practically be dead!
And in a small barn in Swindon? Where even is Swindon?
Why would it take me so long to get married? What’s wrong with me? Will I not be attractive until I am eighty-three? Will nobody want to marry me until I’m eighty-three?
I puff loudly as heat rises up my back.
Well, there obviously must be some sort of serious fault with this stupid quiz. I will have to write BuzzFeed a strongly worded letter:
Dear BuzzFeed,
Who the hell do you think you are? I am an attractive, strong, VERY MARRIABLE WOMAN who is twenty-six and worthy of a LARGE, GRAND MANOR HOUSE and a—
‘Georgie?’
I jolt out of my mad fantasy and spin round in my chair as Bianca strides into the office. I quickly shut my browser down and fix my eyes on her.
Bianca has legs like pipe cleaners and unusual, Titian hair that springs out of her scalp and tumbles down her back. Her long body is wrapped in a purple dress that coils down to her ankles and winds all the way up to her neck. She bats her large, green eyes at me and my spine unrolls.
‘Georgie,’ she repeats, dropping into Sally’s desk chair. ‘Sally on lunch?’
I nod, quickly sweeping my tongue over my mouth to check for any loose seeds lodged in my teeth.
Stupid seeds. Stupid low fat, horrible bread. Who puts seeds in bread? Who wants that? Nobody wants a tree sprouting out of their stomach.
Can that happen?
‘Right,’ she drawls, ‘how did you get on this morning? Everything sorted?’
I nod again. ‘Yes,’ I say, as my heart beats furiously against my ribcage.
Bianca always makes me feel like this. We could be talking about the weather and yet I still feel as if I could pass out with fright at any second.
She isn’t even a scary woman, she is perfectly friendly, but she also wears spiked heels and snaps her fingers at the receptionists whenever they aren’t working fast enough.
I dread the day she snaps her fingers at me. I will probably dissolve into an anxious puddle immediately, only to be yelled at for getting Bianca’s designer shoes wet. She once wished me a happy birthday when it wasn’t my birthday and I spent an hour convinced she was playing a twisted mind game with me, and let her sing happy birthday to me out of sheer fear. I have since learnt that she is extremely scatty, but she also thinks my birthday is in March, instead of December. I don’t think I will ever correct her.
Bianca nods. ‘Great,’ she says, ‘that is great. Thank you, Georgie. There’s someone I need you to call this afternoon, okay?’
I flick open my notepad, my pen poised.
Bianca leans into her seat. ‘I just feel, like, I want my wedding to be really special, you know? I mean, you only get one, right?’
‘Right,’ I say.
My eyes fix on my notepad.
‘So,’ she continues, ‘I need you to get someone on the phone, I don’t care who, because me and Jonathan have decided that we want this wedding to be really personal. Personal to us, you know?’
I write the word ‘personal’ in my notepad.
‘And we’ve started calling each other “bear”. Like, baby bear; love you, bear; you are my bear . . .’
My face burns with humiliation at Bianca sharing this incredibly personal information with me. That is the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I will never be able to look at Jonathan the same way again.
‘So I think, as a surprise, it would be so cute to have some bears there.’
I freeze.
What?
‘Pardon?’ I utter weakly.
‘You know,’ Bianca continues, twiddling a lock of her hair, ‘maybe at the ceremony, as we walk down the aisle. I don’t know, maybe they could sing or something.’
Sing?
What?
Does she know what a bear is? Does she think The Jungle Book is a documentary?
‘Um,’ I say quietly, ‘Bianca, I don’t know where I will find singing bears. Also, I’ve just ordered three doves. Won’t the bears eat the doves?’
Won’t the bears eat us is the more important question! Don’t bears eat humans? And bears can climb trees! I can barely climb a tree!
I open and close my mouth like a dense fish.
Bianca waves her arm in the air. ‘Well, they must come with a guard or something, I don’t know. Those are the logistics, Georgie.’
Bianca pulls herself to standing and I gape at her.
‘Bianca,’ I say again, ‘I’m not sure how—’
Bianca leans on the door frame of our office and raises her eyebrows. ‘Yes, I know it’s a challenge, but that is why I am asking you to do it, okay? I know it is hard, but all I’m saying is, if Beyoncé wanted it for her wedding then she would get it, right? So why can’t I? If Beyoncé can have it, then I can have it.’
I blink at her. That cannot be the way she rationalises everything.
I open my mouth to respond but Bianca gets there first.
‘Look,’ she sighs, ‘I am feeling super stressed, okay? You know the wedding is now only five months away.’ She goes to leave and then turns to face me. ‘Honestly,’ she says, ‘you have no idea how hard planning a wedding really is.’
*
Could I get away with killing Bianca?
I watch as boiling water splats into my mug from the kettle.
Probably not. But maybe it would be worth it so I didn’t have to spend one more second of my day choosing flower arrangements. As if my day couldn’t get bad enough, now I’ve been roped into turning Bianca’s flower ideas into a PowerPoint presentation that she can show Jonathan when he returns from his business trip.
I mean, what? What type of person shows their fiancé a PowerPoint presentation about flower arrangements?
I scoop a large portion of sugar and dump it into my tea.
I could just force her to emigrate. I could book her on a flight to Australia and tell her that she has been summoned to speak at a wedding fair, and then ‘forget’ to book her a flight home.
Although I quite want to go to Australia myself. It would be a better idea to accidentally book myself a flight and leave her here. But how would I—
‘Georgia?’
I duck out from behind the fridge door and spot Sally.
Standing at just under six foot, Sally looks like a highly strung stick insect. She has sleek, dark hair that tucks under her chin and large, bulging eyes that stick out of their sockets whenever she is stressed. Which is, pretty much, every second of every day.
I take a deep breath and force all of my acting skills to stand to attention.
‘Hi, Sally,’ I say, ‘how’s your day?’
Sally looks at me as if I’ve asked her how her menstrual cycle is going.
‘Fine,’ she barks. ‘Did you sort the parrots?’
I stifle a laugh. Parrots? Does she think Bianca is getting married on The Black Pearl?
Actually, if that means that Orlando Bloom might be on board then count me in.
‘Doves?’ I say sweetly. ‘Yes, I did.’
Sally always feels the need to double-check everything I do. I once thought it would be funny to lie and tell her that I accidentally ordered one hundred chocolate willies instead of one hundred chocolate soufflés, but Sally almost had an asthma attack – and I almost had a written warning – so I have since learnt my lesson.
The lesson being that Sally has a stick up her arse, and my entire office has the sense of humour of a damp tissue.
‘Tea?’ Sally jerks her head towards my mug.
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Would you like one?’
‘No.’
‘Fine.’
This is how Sally always speaks. Like she’s a stuffy old army cadet who hasn’t had sex in ten years. She likes to use phrases like ‘roger that’ and ‘not on my watch’ and a lot of the time I just want to spike her triple-shot coffee with a bloody sleeping pill.
I steer my way out of the boxy kitchen, edging my way past Sally, who blinks her bulging eyes at me. I begin to make my way up the stairs when I spot Natalie.
‘Hey,’ I smile, ‘you okay?’
Natalie has caramel skin that is constantly contoured and braided hair that is normally twisted down her neck in a thick plait. Her mischievous eyes are framed by cool, square glasses and she’s always grinning at me. Always.
Natalie is part of the finance team, which makes it very easy for me to listen when she advises ordering a third bottle of wine, as a sensible investment. Although we haven’t done that for a while.
‘Yeah, fine,’ she grins, looking over my shoulder at Sally, who storms past like a premenstrual pheasant. ‘What are you doing tonight? Shall we go for drinks? I need something to numb the spreadsheets out of my brain.’
I cup my burning mug close to my chest. ‘I can’t tonight,’ I say, ‘I’ve got to make Amy dinner. Sorry,’ I add, ‘I don’t like leaving her.’
For a split second, I see Natalie’s face drop in disappointment. ‘No worries,’ she says. ‘Let me know when you get a night off.’
I smile and make my way up the stairs. ‘I will.’
CHAPTER THREE
27TH JUNE
To do list:
Remind Tina about gas bill (!!!!) (corner her when she is hungover so she cannot run)
Make Amy lasagna (impossible. How the hell do you make cheese sauce? Leave to Nigella)
Find seven doves (Bianca. Not important. Wedding is ages away)
Work on designs?
Do colour wash (running out of pants, urgent)
Call Dad
I squirt a generous amount of shampoo on to my open palm and feel my eyes stretch at the purple liquid that snakes out of the bottle.
Oh God, this looks really expensive. Who knew Tina had such expensive taste? I re
ally should find out what she does for a job. How does she afford any of this? Doesn’t our rent bankrupt her too?
The bottle lets out an almighty groan and my stomach shakes in panic.
Oh no, was that the end of the shampoo? I definitely didn’t mean to use it all. I only intended to use a tiny squirt to tide me over until payday.
I glance up at the walls of our dank, grey bathroom. I try to suppress a shudder as I eye the mould, furring up the corners, and the loose tiles that tremble slightly whenever the flat above switches on their tumble dryer.
I never thought I’d live anywhere like this. When I found the job at Lemons, I knew I had to move out. I couldn’t stay at home forever. But I’d be lying if I said that I was completely prepared for what my minimum wage salary could afford in London. Amy still lives with our parents, to save for a mortgage. She’s always been the sensible sister.
I found Tina online. She said that her last flatmate had packed up and left, so she was happy to snap me up straight away. I didn’t even have to sign a contract. Initially, I thought my matchbox room and permanently moist kitchen were charming. I didn’t mind the fact that our living-room sofa was lumpy and had questionable stains that I thought were part of the design. Then Tina told me she found the sofa on the street, and I couldn’t afford to get it dry cleaned. Then I found mould creeping under my mattress. Then I found the rat.
I massage the shampoo into my scalp and try to ignore the fiery ball of panic forming in the pit of my stomach. Obviously, I don’t usually steal shampoo off my housemate. But after my Elephant and Castle rent shoots out of my bank account, sometimes I’m not left with a great deal of choice.
Amy is the only one who has come to visit me. I won’t let Mum and Dad. I don’t want them to see it.
I step under the water and allow the shampoo to drizzle down my body.
Oh, this shampoo smells so nice.
I would definitely feel better about this if it smelt disgusting, but this smells of a delicious blend of roses and lavender and—
The List That Changed My Life Page 2
