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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Erin Lawless 2017

Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © Alex Allden 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Erin Lawless asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008181789

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008181772

Version 2017-06-29

Praise for Erin Lawless

‘Funny and Addictive… If this is Erin Lawless’ first book, I can’t wait to read her next one’

Fabulous Magazine (the Sun)

‘A lovely, warm read to snuggle up on the sofa with’

Novelicious

‘Devastatingly brilliant…an absolute triumph’

Books with Bunny

‘First there was Bridget and Mark; then there was Em and Dex and now there is Nadia and Alex…it is a rare thing to be able to make the love between two fictional characters become so real that you actually champion their love from your very roots’

Lisa Talks About…

‘Friendships, trust, lies, deceit, love and so much more – a real page-turner for me’

Cosmochicklitan

‘A superb debut about complicated ties, betrayal and lies, and one of my favourite books of the year’

ChickLit Club

‘Mind-blowingly good and everyone should read it’

ChickLitReviews

‘This book was so incredibly amazingly awesome that I want to shout it from the hilltops and make ALL my friends buy it this instant’

The Chiq Blog

For Jacqui, Joanne, Ksenia and Nicola – my beautiful, brilliant bridesmaids, and for all of my Lawless Hens:

I’ll never forget the amazing weekend when we all met The Juan.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Erin Lawless

Dedication

Author Note

Character List

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Also by Erin Lawless

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Author Note

As I arrived in my mid-twenties, something very strange started to happen – my friends started to get engaged. Seriously? – I thought, staring at the fat, glossy invitations appearing through the post – I swear it was only this time last year you were snogging strangers in clubs, and now I’m Saving the Date? And I should put how much aside for your Hen Do!?

Ever since then, my weekends – particularly in the summer – have been a veritable nuptial string of engagement parties in pubs, dress fittings in boutiques, hen dos in spas and clubs and, of course, the weddings themselves (I gave as good as I got, of course, when I got married myself in 2014). The narrative of being a wedding guest (or knowing a bridezilla) has been so woven into the lives of my friends and I for so many years (and for so many more years to come, no doubt) that I really wanted to capture some of that in a story.

So here we have: one bride, and four bridesmaids, from proposal to altar.

Interspersed through the books, I’ve collated some real life anecdotes about perfect proposals, disastrous dance floors, suspicious strippers, bad bridesmaids and gorgeous groomsmen. Get in touch on social media and share your stories!

Character List

Please Save the Date

for the wedding of

NORA EILEEN DERVAN

and

HENRY ROBERT CLARKE

New Year’s Eve

THE MAIDS

Beatrice Milton

Cleo Adkins

Daisy Frankel

Sarah Norris

THE MEN

Cole Norris

Archie Clarke

Elliott Hale

Barlow Osbourne

Chapter 1

I was surprised to be asked to be a bridesmaid for someone I would have considered more a friend-of-a-friend. I realised really quickly that it wasn’t the honour it had first seemed – she had twelve bridesmaids. Then the emails started. Until the wedding was over we were banned from dying or cutting our hair, getting any tattoos or piercings, putting on weight (losing it was apparently fine). The wedding at this time was two years away. We took it as just a bad joke … until one maid cut in a fringe and was promptly fired and replaced with someone from the “bridesmaid bench”.

Erika, Poole

Sarah was there first, as Nora had expected, armed with a half dozen glossy bridal magazines and good-natured excitement. Bea and Cleo arrived pretty much at the same time, each having to hug Nora five or six times before they could take their seats. Daisy completed the group, having stopped off at the bar en route to the table to order a bottle of something bubbly and expensive.

‘So, go on,’ Cleo urged, the second Daisy had taken her coat off. ‘Give us the story.’

Nora laughed, holding both hands to her face to feign shyness; the solitaire diamond ring they were all there to celebrate winked at them from her left hand. ‘I’ve already told you!’

‘Then tell us again,’ Daisy demanded. ‘Get the practice in, you’re going to be telling this story a lot.’

‘For the rest of your life,’ added Sarah, smiling. ‘Trust me – I’m still asked to tell my proposal story all the time.’

‘Okay, okay, fine!’ Nora made a show of agreeing, still laughing. ‘If you insist. So, you know, Harry was away with work for most of February, so we had a really belated Valentine’s Day dinner booked.’

‘Valentine’s Day,’ Bea repeated, rolling her eyes, but her smile was wide.

‘He’s such a cutie pie,’ agreed Daisy, moving slightly to the side to allow the arriving waitress to place the ice bucket in the middle of their table.

‘But, you know, there was a Tube strike. And it was going to be a complete pain in the arse to get across to London Bridge, where the restaurant was,’ Nora continued, still idly fiddling with her new accessory. ‘So I said, let’s leave it, too much hassle, love, let’s just get some takeaway curries and stay in and watch Netflix.’

The girls all started to giggle as they imagined Harry’s panic at that moment. He was a great one for a plan, was Harry, and now there he was – on arguably one of the most important nights of his life – scuppered, stressed, cursing the railworkers’ union for ruining his chance at eternal happiness.

‘And Harry was … shall we say, uncharacte‌ristically insistent,’ Nora carried on, giggling too. ‘He was banging on about how it was our first proper Valentine’s Day as a couple. Then he told me we simply had to go, because he’d put a huge deposit down on the table and he wouldn’t get his money back! And I was thinking, Christ, what kind of a restaurant is this?’

Nora paused to join the girls in a mini-cheer as the waitress deftly opened the champagne with a festive pop and began to fill the waiting flutes.

‘So, he said he’d order us an Uber, and – of course – everyone in London wants to get in a taxi right then because the Tube is so up the spout, so we have to wait for ages. And he’s pacing through the lounge, glaring at his phone, glaring out of the window, glaring at me – and I was wondering what was bloody wrong with the man!’

‘And you didn’t even have the slightest inkling what was coming?’ Sarah asked, breathlessly, an eternal romantic.

Nora shook her head. ‘Not a clue. I thought he’d just had a bad day at work, or something. So anyway, the car arrived and we got to the restaurant and, you know, it’s mostly empty. They haven’t given away our table or anything – I mean, come on, it’s like a Tuesday night! – and once we get sat down, Harry calms down a bit. And you know how normally I have to decide right off when I go to a restaurant if I’m going to have a starter or a pudding? Well, Harry tells me immediately that we’re going to have a pudding because they do this special called the ‘Lover’s Platter’ for dessert, and hey, it’s our fake Valentine’s Day after all, so I’m like, sure, okay, fine.’

‘How could you not have known what was coming?’ howled Daisy. ‘He was being so obvious!’

Nora shook her head again. ‘Anyway, so we ordered mains—’

‘What did you have?’ Bea demanded, determined to wring as many little details out of this story as possible.

‘Er, well, it was an Italian. I had this like, sweet chilli-prawn spaghetti thing. Harry had a calzone.’

‘No!’ groaned Bea. ‘That’s so unromantic!’

Nora raised an eyebrow. ‘You’d rather we’d eaten oysters and strawberries or something?’

‘Anything but pizza and pasta!’ Daisy agreed. ‘Too mundane for such an important anecdote, hun.’

‘Sorry to disappoint! We even had garlic bread on the side,’ Nora grinned, achieving a chorus of disapproving moans. ‘So anyway, everything’s pretty normal and we finish and they clear away the plates and then Harry orders this Lover’s Platter thing and they bring it out super-quick, like, too quick. And to be honest, I was still pretty full and I didn’t really fancy anything more. And it was this whole great big plate for two people, full of macaroons, and little truffles and pastries with cream and tiny brownies cut into heart shapes.’ Nora paused, a small smile playing on her face. ‘It was pretty sweet.’

‘Anyway, then I stood up – because I wanted to take a picture of it from above, you know? And Harry jumped up too and was all, what’s wrong, where are you going? I said, nowhere! I just want to take a shot of this for my Instagram, it’s so nice … and we sat back down and I was busy trying different filters on for size and not really paying attention. So I uploaded the picture and, you know, everything’s still pretty normal …’

‘Yes, and?’ Bea prompted, impatiently.

‘Go on!’ Sarah insisted.

‘Yeah, then what happened?’ urged the excited waitress, champagne bottle still in hand.

‘Well, Harry’s just staring at me, properly staring. And then he asks me why I’m not eating, so I tell him I need a break because I’m still pretty full from all that spaghetti I just nailed. And he starts telling me to eat one of the profiteroles at least – you love profiteroles, he keeps saying – so, basically, just to shut him up, I forked a profiterole.’

‘And?’ Daisy grinned. ‘And?’

‘And the fork goes – clink! And I look at what’s there, and it’s, well …’ Nora wiggled her left fingers and laughed. ‘Under the profiteroles. And I don’t even know when he did it, but I suddenly realise that Harry’s on the floor next to me, on one knee and everything, and he said – oh, a bunch of stuff! I can’t even remember, I was so shocked! But at the end of whatever he was saying he said – you know, the important bit – ‘So, will you marry me?’ – and I realised it was actually happening.’

‘And I, naturally, burst into horrendous ugly-crying. I couldn’t speak. I just got down on the floor next to him and hugged him and bawled. I got mascara all over his shirt collar! We’ve had to take it into the dry-cleaners, it’s a state. Anyway. I eventually managed to actually say the word ‘yes’ and all the waiting staff were cheering and clapping, and all the other people in the restaurant and randomers started sending over champagne. It was amazing.’

Nora admired her engagement ring again; she couldn’t help it. She was just so very, very, wonderfully happy. She was getting to marry one of her best friends, after all.

‘And so here we all are,’ finished Bea, holding her glass of champagne aloft. ‘So let’s toast.’

The others obediently lifted their flutes, the pale liquid shining and glittering in the light from the candles, and even the waitress motioned cheerfully with the rest of the bottle. Nora glanced around at the faces ringed around her at the table and pushed aside her slight misgivings; she didn’t want that weight on her heart, not tonight. They might not all get on between themselves, but she knew they all loved her like she loved them and she wouldn’t – couldn’t – be without a single one of them by her side for this. Her best friends. Her bridesmaids.

Bea blew Nora a kiss across the table. Cleo laughed and cheered. ‘To the Dervan-Clarke wedding!’

Chapter 2

Cleo jabbed the magic button the millisecond the mug was in place and ready and waiting to receive coffee; after three years at this place she’d perfected the timing.

Gray – Oakland Academy’s favourite history teacher – was also ready and waiting, holding out the plastic carton of communal milk, slipping his own mug in to replace Cleo’s on the machine’s drip-tray as soon as he could. It was pretty indecent the way they fled their classrooms at the break-bell – faster than some of the kids – but twenty minutes was a very short time to get sufficiently caffeinated of a mid-morning.

Caffeine was required even more fiercely than normal this morning: firstly, it was a Monday, and secondly, Cleo still felt vaguely hung over from going out on Saturday night. She hadn’t even been feeling it, but by merit of Cole being both a best friend and turning thirty, she hadn’t exactly been able to take a rain check. She needed to have a word with herself about automatically going for the house wine; it was always the sulphates in cheap plonk that got her like this (she also needed to have a word with herself about going out for a nice, grown-up dinner and ending up barefoot on a sticky dance floor come two o’ clock in the morning).

In companionable silence Gray and Cleo made their way over to their spot. It wasn’t much to speak of: two old chairs that had long ago been removed from a classroom for being unstable, and next to the equally ancient staff room printer, which gave off an alarming amount of both heat and noise. But in the grand scheme of things they were both relatively new to Oakland Academy and you had to put in at least a good decade there to get one of the chairs that still had padding.

‘Good weekend?’ Cleo asked without preamble, taking a determined gulp of too-hot coffee, using her free hand to check her Facebook on her phone as she spoke.

‘Can’t complain. Few pints. Domino’s takeaway. Liverpool won their game.’ Gray checked his phone for notifications too; they had the speedy break routine down to a fine art. ‘How was Saturday night?’

‘I don’t remember the last few hours of it,’ Cleo admitted ruefully. ‘Although there are some pictures on my friend’s phone of me joining in with what I can only assume was the Macarena right towards the end.’

‘A success, then,’ Gray grinned. ‘I wish I’d seen that. I love Drunk Cleo.’

Cleo buried her blushing face in her mug. This was Gray’s first year teaching at Oakland and she’d managed to keep her cool for precisely one term before getting plastered, arguing loudly with her head of department about politics and up-chucking amuse-bouches all over the new guy ‘Graham’s’ novelty Christmas jumper. It wasn’t all bad, though – since then they’d been best work buddies. Everyone needed one.

‘Well the birthday boy had a good time, so definitely a success.’ She held out her phone to Gray, her gallery open, so he could scroll through some of the pictures she’d taken Saturday night.

‘Nice dress.’ Gray gave easy compliments; Cleo almost didn’t notice them any more. ‘Any tension with the Queen Bea?’ he asked. Cleo winced; she sometimes wished she didn’t tell him quite so much about her life. (At least not so much that he had nicknames for her friends.)

‘The Queen was on her best behaviour,’ Cleo retorted primly. ‘She hasn’t made a scene in years,’ she admitted, grudgingly.

‘Hmmm,’ was all Gray offered, carefully non-committal (she obviously bitched about Bea a little too often).

Cleo sighed. Her coffee – much like her break – was half gone. ‘What have you got now?’

‘Cuban Missile Crisis with the Year Elevens,’ Gray answered. ‘I’m sure they’re all already queuing at the door in fevered anticipation. You?’

‘Factorising expressions with the Nines.’

Gray gulped down the remnants of his drink and grinned. ‘I wonder which of our lessons these kids will actually need most in real life.’ It was his usual tease. ‘Cos, you know, most phones have a calculator on them now, love.’

‘Yeah, and the Wikipedia app too,’ Cleo shot back, downing her own coffee. ‘Your turn to do the washing up, love.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Gray gathered up the mugs. ‘Nag, nag, nag.’

‘See you at lunch?’ Cleo asked, as she swung her satchel up onto her shoulder and Gray moved across to the wonky kitchenette to swill their mugs out in the sink.

‘I’ll be here.’ Gray grinned at her over his shoulder.

* * *

Any working week that started with you pissing on your own hand and then coming in to a hundred and eighty-five ‘‘urgent’ unread emails should really be considered a write-off from the get-go, thought Sarah. She sat blankly at her desk, clicking about Outlook at random and assigning emails with varying flag colours in case anyone was watching her, but taking nothing in.

She’d been a lot better this year. She didn’t test willy nilly any more. She’d been pretty sure this time. She’d had an inkling. When her period hadn’t made its appearance on Friday, as expected, she’d remained quite placid – her cycle sometimes varied a few days each way – but still she’d made an extra special point of not having anything to drink on Saturday night when they’d all gone out, hadn’t ordered pâté as a starter even though it was her favourite; better to be safe than sorry. She’d waited patiently throughout all of (a still period-free) Sunday, fancying she was already experiencing the mythical centred serenity of pregnancy. She’d waited until Monday morning, in fact – she’d read countless articles about how you’ve got more of the pregnancy hormone there in your urine in the mornings – before taking that little plastic stick into the bathroom with her.

So then. Another singular line of failure. No tiny little life to avoid wine and pâté for after all. Another inkling turned out to be so much delusion. And still no period. Maybe they’d just packed in altogether. After all, what was the point of an unfertile woman menstruating at all? Sarah was only glad she hadn’t shared her stupid inkling with Cole this time, but – maybe – it was time to talk to her husband about the elephant that wasn’t in the room.

Raina, the PA to the other CEO, sat opposite, impossibly hefty at the best of times, but currently seven cruel months’ pregnant, moaning about something – probably her back, or her swollen feet, or the fact she’d been up six times in the night to have a wee. This was going to be Raina’s third child under the age of five; she’d basically spent the entire time Sarah had known her either on maternity leave or largely pregnant. Sarah found it difficult to be solicitous to her at the best of times; today it was near-impossible. So she just sat and clicked and flagged.

A new calendar request slid into the corner of her screen and Sarah clicked to open it on reflex: Kim the office manager was kindly reminding one and all about Raina’s baby-shower lunch on Friday via the use of a picture of cartoon baby sat atop a pyramid of building blocks spelling out MUMMY. How precious.

Instead of responding Sarah, clicked onto Google and determinedly searched for ‘fertility enhancing superfoods’.

* * *

It turned out putting her phone on vibrate wasn’t good enough: Bea was slowly being driven insane by the irregular buzzing from her handbag. Something was going on, but what? She tortured herself with images of Nora waiting in the rain outside of Bea’s empty flat, bedraggled and crying – the wedding off – sending text after text to her unresponsive best friend, wondering where she was … Okay, so that was all fairly unlikely, but still. If her date didn’t need to go to the bathroom soon, Bea might just have to suck it up, apologise for the poor date-etiquette and check her damn messages.

‘Oh, we’re at that age, aren’t we?’ the man opposite was saying, rolling his eyes with good humour. ‘For the past few years my entire summers have just been stags and weddings!’

‘Totally,’ Bea agreed. ‘But at least this is two best friends in one swoop for me, so at least it’s a more efficient use of my time.’

‘Isn’t it a bit weird for you?’ her date asked. ‘That your two best mates randomly shacked up?’ Bea considered the question over a mouthful of wine (ignoring the new buzzing from the depths of her handbag).

‘I guess it was weird at first,’ she put it lightly. ‘Me, them and our other friend have been joined at the hips since we were so tiny.’ She dropped her voice conspiratorially. ‘To be honest with you, it was a bit like being told my brother and sister were shagging,’ Bea laughed. ‘But it obviously wasn’t so weird for them,’ she conceded with a smile. It had been sixteen months, one pregnancy scare, two very temporary break-ups and a huge engagement ring since the night Nora had told her she was in love with Harry, and Bea and Cole had agreed that while it would never not be a bit weird it was lovely to see them so happy.

It might be a bit of a cliché, but Nora Dervan and Beatrice Milton had been destined to be best friends. Their young, first-time mothers had met at the local antenatal class and had immediately hit it off. A few months later their two baby girls were born just seventy-two hours apart. When Bea’s mother returned to work after her maternity leave Nora’s mother, Eileen, had taken on the role of Bea’s childminder, and the two girls grew up as close as sisters – closer perhaps, as they’d never bickered, never fought. (Well, actually, there had been that one time. But they didn’t ever talk about that one time, so Bea was happy that it didn’t count, not really.)

And when the girls had gone to primary school there had been little Harry Clarke, who everyone in their class thought was super-cool because he knew all the best song lyrics and how to count to fourteen in Spanish (and ten in French). The two girls, Harry and his best friend Cole had made a blissful, uncomplicated foursome for the next two decades. Even when they were in their teens the notoriously strict Roman Catholic Eileen didn’t insist Nora kept her bedroom door open when ‘the boys’ were in there.

No, for Nora and Harry, love had waited until the most convenient moment, their hearts not catching on one another until they were heading out of their twenties: the fumbling inexperience and the dramas, the cheating exes and the hassle all done and behind them. It seemed unfairly effortless to a more-than-slightly jaded Bea. For her, love was all tossed and tangled with screaming arguments on rainy street corners; discovered flirty text messages; wilful misunderstandings; late nights spent Facebook-stalking exes with a bitterness in her throat that wine couldn’t mask; men that either loved her too much or never enough.

Nora had tried to explain it to Bea once, that first night. Bea had been so completely floored by the sudden and severe change in circumstances between her nearest and dearest that her first question to Nora (once she’d become able to form words) was to ask if they’d been drunk. That was easier to understand, somehow, that they’d got so plastered they’d forgotten who the other was, who they were themselves.

‘No. It was just like, one day, I saw Harry and I thought, oh, there you are,’ Nora had answered, simply. ‘Do you get it?’

Bea hadn’t been able to get it. So she’d got drunk instead and when Nora left the bar (to go and see Harry, no doubt) Bea stayed to see off the bottle of wine, staring at the pockmarked table top, feeling happy and sad and excited and scared, all at once. And here she was, five hundred days later, with another bottle of Pinot Grigio in front of her, telling a stranger all about how crazy in love her best friends were. Her shoes hurt. She suddenly felt ancient, and so tired.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Bea said finally, grabbing her handbag. ‘I just need to check my phone, it’s going mental.’

‘Yeah, I thought I could hear it,’ her date smiled graciously. ‘No problem. Do you want another drink? Or to share some bar snacks, maybe?’

Bea hesitated. She did want another drink. She did want bar snacks. She wanted to sit here with this nice man for the rest of the evening and find out some of his secrets. She wanted to take him home and take him to bed and wake up with the sunshine, in his arms on Sunday mornings. She was beginning to think, however, that Nice Guy Rob was far too nice a guy for the likes of her. But, hell, surely the universe wouldn’t begrudge her the one last drink.

‘I could have another glass, if you could?’

‘Coming right up,’ he smiled, leaving her with her multiple new messages and heading over to take his place in the queue at the busy bar.

Bea had invitations to join no fewer than nine new WhatsApp group conversations. One was all the bridesmaids with Nora. One was all the bridesmaids without Nora. One was the entire wedding party. One was specifically for discussing the hen do, yet another was for the engagement party Nora and Harry were planning for next month. Bea couldn’t even be bothered to work out what the other ones were for. They were already crammed full of overly emotive messages, pictures and links. Bea did a double-take; she’d assumed they were from Nora, but the invitations were from Sarah. Ugh. Attack of the bridesmaidzilla. This was going to get old, and fast.

Eli had messaged her too, an hour or so ago; Bea clutched at the normality that was a stupid meme image forwarded by an old friend. She was still scouring the Google Image search results for the perfect response to him when her smiling date returned from the bar with her glass of wine.

Chapter 3

We were on holiday in Thailand and, as you do, decided to go for a walk on the moonlit beach. Another couple were there releasing a lantern, and it really was the most romantic of settings. My boyfriend dropped to one knee and did the deed – not that I can remember a word of what he said – and of course, I said yes. Romanticism was cut short however – the crashing waves combined with all the beers I’d necked that evening meant I needed to get back to the hotel and use the facilities, sharpish. Of course then we had to call our parents and all our friends and tell them the good news, so by the time we were ready to go out and celebrate all the bars were closed (except for an Irish bar, which was blasting out ‘Cotton Eye Joe’). Instead we went back to our room and shared a lukewarm can of lager from the minibar. The next day, I woke up with food poisoning.

Katy, Chesterfield

‘Okay so, here’s the thing.’ Nora’s face was far too concerned considering the subject matter. ‘So, Harry prefers documentary-style photography. You know, lifestyle approach. But I think I’m leaning more classic. And I really love the sort of depth that shooting on film gets, right? But Harry thinks digital is much more crisp. I honestly don’t know what to do. Help!’

All four bridesmaids eyed each other in the hope that someone else would speak first.

Daisy bit. ‘Okay, back up here a sec. What the eff is documentary-style photography? What, are they gonna serialise your wedding and stick it up on Netflix?’

‘Do you have some examples?’ Cleo agreed.

‘Did you not see the stuff I pinned onto the Photography Board?’ Nora asked impatiently, grabbing her iPad and navigating to the Pinterest app.

‘I did,’ Sarah assured her. ‘It’s the sort of reportage style, right? Candid rather than posed? It’s nice. Really modern.’

Nora bit her lip. ‘Is modern what I’m going for?’

Sarah laughed. ‘You tell us, sweetie!’

Bea rolled her eyes. ‘How can you go for modern? I mean, when the very concept of marriage is completely—’

‘Traditional,’ Cleo butted in (she wasn’t sure where Bea had been going there, but her word choice was probably less tactful than ‘traditional’). ‘Bea’s right, though, surely you need to think about whether or not you’re going to have a traditional or modern venue, set-up, not to mention the dress …’

‘All the wedding blogs and magazines say that the best photographers are booked up years in advance,’ Nora argued. ‘You need to get your deposit with one as soon as possible. So the whole wedding planning is literally at a standstill.’ She shoved the iPad at Bea. ‘So what do you think?’

Biting back the response that she thought Nora was veering into bridezilla territory, Bea cast her eye over the selection of wedding photos that Nora had pinned for reference. She couldn’t see masses of difference: woman in white, man in suit, bright flowers in bouquets, bright teeth in smiles. She passed the iPad across to Sarah.

‘What was the style you and Cole had for your wedding pics?’ she asked her. ‘I guess I liked that sort of effect.’

Sarah was visibly delighted with the praise; Bea-compliments were few and far between, even for the people she really liked, and Sarah was pretty certain, most of the time, that she was not of that number. ‘Well we had quite a contemporary photographer. Unusual angles, strong light. But then we had an urban wedding. It probably wouldn’t work as well for those sorts of rustic, burlap-and-lace-type weddings you pinned, Nor.’ She passed the iPad to Daisy, who held it out so Cleo could see too. ‘And I really wouldn’t worry, you know. Cole and I put our entire wedding together in just a couple of months, after all. You have bags of time.’

‘Yeah, but I think you need to think venue first, hun, I really do.’ Daisy passed the iPad back to Nora. ‘All things will flow from there.’

‘Okay.’ Nora deftly switched Pinterest board to the ‘Venues’ one. ‘Well, here’s the shortlist.’

Daisy arched an eyebrow as she saw the number of thumbnails pinned. ‘More like a longlist. So, for starters, I think you need to strike some of these off.’

‘Okay, so here’s the thing …’ And Nora gave her most winning smile, the one that all of the girls recognised as the precursor for asking some outrageous favour.

* * *

‘So should we, like, hold hands or something?’ Eli might be massively out of his comfort zone, but it wasn’t in his nature to do a half-arsed job.

Bea laughed. ‘It’s not like they’re going to be watching out and will take us to one side if they think we’re not touchy-feely enough with one another. There aren’t going to be any Fake Fiancé Bouncers. Relax.’

‘You know, when we made plans to do something together this weekend, this really wasn’t what I had in mind.’

‘Hey, I’d hardly been dreaming that when I visited my first wedding fair it would be with you, you know,’ Bea shot back, slamming the car door for emphasis.

Eli grinned his disarming grin. ‘Really? Don’t you remember our beautiful wedding day?’ He clutched dramatically at his supposedly broken heart.

Bea rolled her eyes but decided not to fight the smile. It was the day Elliott Hale had been formally inducted into their little group of friends. Nora had been to a family wedding the weekend before and was full of utter Catholic pomp about it, promising she’d show Bea how it was done by officiating a marriage between her and a willing boy on the playground that lunchtime.

When neither Harry nor Cole proved willing … ‘You, then,’ seven-year-old Nora had decreed, waving impatiently at a nearby classmate. Young Eli was stretched and gangly (oddly, for someone who would grow up to be of an average height) and had knees that seemed way too large for the rest of his legs. He’d looked up from his Pogs in alarm.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you.’ Already an older sister several times over by then, Nora had little-to-no patience with slow uptake. ‘Come over here and be the groom.’

Reasonably obedient by nature – back then and now – Eli had obliged, gathering up his snackbox and his Pogs and moving across to stand with the four of them; he’d never managed to completely extricate himself again.

‘Of course I remember, snookums,’ Bea teased, moving closer to fling a companionable arm around her friend’s shoulders as they made their way down the crunching gravel walkway that lead from the car park to the venue. ‘Shame that didn’t work out. At least we’ll always have the playground.’

‘Welcome to Hucclecote Barn,’ a smiling woman in a matching skirt-suit the colour of a new bruise greeted them, handing them each a goodie bag. ‘When’s the big day?’

Bea curled her ringless finger away behind the plastic handles of the bag. ‘We haven’t booked anything yet,’ she lied smoothly. ‘It’s early days. In fact, we’re not just here to see the suppliers at the fair, we’re here to look at the Barn as a possible venue.’

‘Oh, super-duper!’ the lady beamed. ‘Well, why don’t you two have a good look around and later I can connect you with our events coordinator?’

‘That would be … super,’ Eli concurred, thankfully avoiding eye contact with Bea, who was quite sure she had never heard the term ‘super-duper’ used non-sarcastically before in her life.

‘Super!’ agreed the goodie-bag lady, waving them on. ‘Enjoy!’

Bea and Eli chuckled quietly to themselves as they moved away. In front of them was the Barn-with-a-capital-B in question, liberally draped with charming cream and baby-blue bunting flags. They thought they’d be getting there early, but the fair was already in full swing, suppliers hawking out their services and wares from display tables erected in a wonky semi-circle around the main doors. Couples, arm in arm, twirled leisurely around the outside.

‘I don’t think this place suits us or our wedding plans, Bea my darling,’ Eli decided, faux-regretful. He gestured at a stall selling bedazzled bridal wellington boots. ‘It’s a bit twee.’

Bea thwapped his chest with one of the glossy wedding magazines she’d found in her goodie bag. ‘Oh, is that because you’re more a castle-with-a-cream-tea sort of guy, dearest?’

Eli laughed. ‘I do actually wonder what these allocations say about Harry and Nora’s opinion of our personalities. Like, why do we get the hay bales and horseshit and Baz and Cleo get the stately home, huh?’

‘Barlow begged off this morning, actually,’ Bea told him, looking down at the messages about just that in the WhatsApp bridesmaids’ group. Barlow was one of the other groomsmen, although with a busy pub to run Bea wasn’t quite sure how much help he was going to get to be in the run-up to this wedding. ‘He’d arranged for the assistant manager to come in and cover him but she called in sick. Cleo’s had to call up this guy she knows from work and get him to drive her out there.’

Eli immediately looked interested. ‘What guy from work? Is it Mr Fifty Shades?’

Bea sighed; Eli was always pretty interested in what Cleo was up to, naturally. ‘Seriously, Eli. We’ve talked about this. This is how you start rumours.’

‘I’m just saying! Who calls themselves Gray? He’s just asking for the comparison.’

‘Well, until he’s asking you for planning permission help to build a red room of pain, it’s probably an unfair comparison.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind. Because we architects get that all the time, by the way. Gotta be constantly on the lookout for all the sex perverts. Speaking of which, where’ve they sent Daisy?’

‘Nowhere. Unsurprisingly, Daisy felt like it probably wasn’t a wonderful idea for her to tell the guy she’s been on five dates with and only shagged for the first time last week that they were going wedding venue window-shopping,’ Bea pointed out.

Eli’s fair eyebrows disappeared into his fringe. ‘Fair enough!’ Even though that year he was knocking on the door of thirty, Eli persisted on modelling his look on boybands-of-the-day; he’d had frosted spikes as a kid, greasy curtains as a teenager and now had some sort of floppy, asymmetrical ‘do that meant it took him twenty minutes to style it so it looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. He tended to date equally irritatingly coiffured women; the last one had a severe undercut dyed in an elaborate leopard-spot pattern. Daisy had got so shit-faced once she’d tried to stroke her. ‘Cole and Sarah?’ he queried.

‘Apparently Sarah has a doctor’s appointment today, or something. Jesus. Look at this,’ Bea tutted from the depths of the so-called goodie bag. ‘Mixed messages much? I’ve got a box of gourmet truffles in here, and a leaflet that gives me my first month free at Slimming World.’ She looked up. ‘What have you got?’

Eli rummaged through his (helpfully colour-coded blue) bag. ‘Ooh, truffles too; nice. Er, discount vouchers for wine at Majestic; very nice. Austin Reed catalogue. Erm.’

‘So no subtle signals that you are a fat, hideous creature and that you should starve yourself until your wedding day, then?’

‘Nope.’ Eli grinned and popped one of the truffles into his mouth. ‘Now come on, you fat, hideous creature, let’s get on with it.’ Bea allowed him to push a truffle through her lips, managing to stay atop of the urge to nip at his fingertips. Just. ‘Have you got the checklist open?’

Chapter 4

‘I’m just saying, I think it’s better that we go sooner rather than later.’

‘I appreciate that, love, I do. It just seems a little bit drastic. We’ve only been trying for a couple of months, after all.’

Sarah stared at her handsome, stupid husband. ‘I came off the pill when we got engaged, Cole. It’s been seventeen months. Seventeen cycles.’

Cole winced away. ‘Jeez, do you have to say ‘cycles’? It’s so clinical. What the hell happened to let’s just have fun, have sex; let’s just see what happens. You promised me you wouldn’t turn into one of these nut-job women charting their temperatures and testing the consistency of their cervical mucus.’ He pulled a face of utter disgust. Sarah, who had been doing exactly those things secretly by way of an app on her phone for almost a year now, struggled to regroup her thoughts.

‘Cycles, months, whatever. Whatever wording you want me to use, I think it’s obvious that we have a fertility problem. And we need to see a doctor about it.’

‘How can we have a fertility problem?’ Cole blustered. ‘You only went for that test you have to do this year, and you said it all came back fine?’

‘Cole, a smear test is nothing to do with fertility,’ Sarah snapped. ‘And besides, why do you automatically assume any problem has to be with me?’

The set of her husband’s jaw was mutinous. ‘Hey, don’t pile this on me. I’m doing my bit.’

‘Your bit?’ Sarah repeated, incredulous.

‘You know what I mean,’ Cole snapped, refusing to take the apology bait. ‘Don’t be like this. God, I don’t remember you being half so over-the-top when we met.’ He grabbed up the navy Superdry hoodie he’d thrown over the back of their armchair. ‘And as you’ve taken it upon yourself to tell my friends that we’re too busy to help them with their wedding planning, I’m going to give Harry a call and see if I can do anything. I’ll see you later.’

And that was that. Cole pulled the front door closed a little harder than was strictly necessary. Sarah sank into the armchair, pulling her feet up underneath herself like a child. She’d known that he was going to be on the defensive like this – she’d practically scheduled in this fight after all, clearing their weekend for it – but the row still echoed through her all the same, for all it was the same old story: Cole could do no wrong; ‘their’ friends became ‘his’ friends; she was taken to task for not being the same person she’d been when they met, like he was thinking of going to Trading Standards and demanding a refund because his carefree, twenty-something girlfriend had become his thirty-something wife: a dress size or two larger, a hell of a lot more stressed and always ever-so-slightly behind with her waxing.

And perhaps with redundant ovaries to boot.

Sighing, Sarah reached for her phone. Although she didn’t know who she was planning to call. Her mum and the rest of her family were all the way over in Wales and her old school and uni friends were now just people on Facebook with new surnames and fat-faced babies as their profile pictures. She could call Nora, or one of the other girls, she supposed, but – as Cole had been very quick to remind her – they were all foremost his and never just for her.

So instead she spoke to Siri.

‘What’s the ideal weight a woman should be to help with conception?’ she asked, ruefully.

Chapter 5

Gray gave a low whistle as he got out of the car. ‘You sure now how to treat a guy, Miss Adkins.’

Cleo couldn’t help but stare too, sliding her sunglasses down from where they were perched atop her pinned-back fringe; she had to – it felt like the crenelated turret of Withysteeple Hall was touching the sun. ‘Christ. Nora would love this for sure. Ooh la la. Very Downton Abbey.’

‘Completely,’ Gray agreed. ‘Why hasn’t she come out to see it?’

Cleo made a face. ‘She’s had to go see a venue with her family. Don’t ask. Long story. Involves God and her overbearing Irish-Catholic mother, who I believe has more power than the former. She said she’d come out here to meet with the wedding coordinator if I reported back it was worth the meeting.’

‘Well, if she’s looking to get married in the splendid manner of a Jane Austen heroine, then I already think, yeah, it’s worth the meeting,’ Gray laughed. ‘This place couldn’t be more stunning!’

Cleo hadn’t had Gray pegged for a regency-romantic – she smiled, filing that piece of information away – but she couldn’t help but agree with him. The manor house sat atop a gentle, natural mound – like it needed to look more impressive, Cleo thought, amused – beatifically crowning a thick carpet of surrounding meadow: fat columbines and forget-me-nots and creamy cow parsley, so dense you couldn’t see the grass.

Okay, so it wouldn’t be so gorgeous come the winter – perhaps it might even be a little gothic for some tastes – but Cleo could already imagine the tall windows of the house lit up with firelight from within, the swollen-globe lights that strung the path from the car park at the gates to the front door glowing comfortingly, perhaps even a few shining flakes of snow swirling gently down from a starry sky. The four bridesmaids, each with fat fur stoles across their shoulders. Nora, all in white, glowing in the half-light of a winter afternoon. Amazing. She hadn’t even seen the inside yet and she was pretty sold.

‘Ooh, the café is open,’ Gray interrupted her reverie, having clocked the delightfully renovated stables selling cakes and concessions off to one side of the main building. ‘I could murder a scone.’

Cleo laughed. ‘I did basically insist you drive me out to the countryside with fifteen minutes’ notice on a Saturday morning – a scone would be the least I could do! But really, thank you,’ she insisted. ‘You saved my arse. I really need to learn how to drive.’

Gray cocked a smile. ‘But then how would I keep in scones?’

‘Well, there is that,’ Cleo nodded. ‘I can’t believe my luck that you had nothing better to do!’

‘What could be better than driving out to the home counties of a weekend to play fake-fiancé with my best friend from work?’

‘Plus getting to eat scones,’ Cleo reminded him.

‘Plus scones, of course,’ Gray agreed solemnly. ‘Shall we?’ He made a move towards the stables’ courtyard.

‘Nora’s given me a pretty long list of things I need to check out.’ Cleo waved her phone. Nora had insisted that her bridesmaids all download a group scheduler app for just such a purpose. ‘So maybe let’s do the necessary inside, and then we can be a little bit more leisurely about our baked goods? After all, there’s no rush.’

Gray hesitated. (Oh. Oh.) And Cleo felt supremely stupid.

‘Except there is a rush,’ she corrected herself, smiling through the pressure of the awkwardness. ‘Sorry, that was … horrendously presumptive of me.’

‘Not a rush, as such, not at all,’ Gray rushed to assure her. ‘I can always see her later, or another night. I mean, it’s just a Tinder date. In fact, don’t even think about it. She’s not even the one I was most looking forward to going out with.’

Cleo goggled at him. ‘You’ve got another date lined up?’

‘God yeah! I’ve another one on Tuesday – just going to the cinema, casual, you know – and one on Wednesday – that’s the real stunner, I can show you her photo – and I might have another one going in for Friday night, I’ll see how I feel later in the week. Sometimes you just want a night in, you know?’

Cleo didn’t know. Most of her nights seemed to be nights in. She usually took the piss out of Daisy for being on Tinder and Badoo constantly, but maybe she was missing a trick here. She wondered if Daisy and Gray had ever ‘matched’ up on one of those things. It was a very disquieting image. Maybe she should be matching them up? Was she being a totally remiss friend here?

(Stop. That way madness lies.) ‘Okay, so, scones first?’ she managed, to Gray’s enthusiastic nods.

‘Mostly because I didn’t have breakfast,’ he admitted, falling into step with Cleo as she headed towards the swing doors into the café. ‘I›ll wolf it down, I promise.’ A bright-haired barely-teen with too much red lipstick greeted them at the threshold.

‘Welcome to Withysteeple Hall!’ She pressed glossy brochures into their hands faster than they could grasp them. ‘Fuel stop?’ She carried full-steam on before anyone had a chance to answer. ‘Unfortunately you’ve missed the first guided tour of the house, but there are ones on the hour, at one and at three. We have Marshall Pickworthy exhibiting in the main hall, of course; he’s the chap that choreographs an interpretive dance based on the story of your relationship. On the South Field you can see Everlasting Love Equestrians – they train ponies and small horses to be ring-bearers: only the thoroughbreds, of course, grade horses don’t really have the intelligence. And in the ballroom we have a selection of our recommended caterers exhibiting, so make sure you leave some room for the samplers!’ She leaned in conspiratorially. ‘The shots of chilled vichyssoise are the talk of the fair!’

Cleo blinked, clutching the shiny brochure to her chest.

‘You … you don’t say,’ Gray managed.

‘So, how long until the Big Day?’ the girl asked, managing somehow to imbue the words with requisite capitalisation.

Despite having said earlier in the car that he wouldn’t be fazed, Gray immediately blushed. ‘Oh, we’re not--’

‘We’re here for a friend,’ Cleo interrupted bluntly.

‘Yeah, we’re not dating,’ Gray clarified.

‘Which apparently puts me in the minority,’ Cleo couldn’t help but mutter to herself.

* * *

‘Okay, so …’ Bea flipped through the paperwork the bruise-lady had given her to read through, referring to the checklist on her phone in the other hand. ‘Nora needs to know about capacity, availability, corkage, catering, parking, accommodation, references from recent brides – Christ, really? – and what the chairs are like. Apparently.’ She blinked. ‘Wow. Oddly specific …’

‘What the chairs are like?’ Eli echoed, puzzled. ‘Well, they’re hardly going to be armchairs, are they?’

‘You’d hope.’

They were settled in a staging area – a billowy but surprisingly unromantic cream marquee – to the back of the main barn, awaiting the events coordinator. Eli paced the small distance, peering into all the stacked storage crates. Bea scanned through the papers again.

‘It’s a whole new world this,’ she muttered. ‘Who the fuck thought there’d ever be regulations concerning confetti?’

‘It’s a wedding venue!’ Eli agreed, nodding. ‘Why would they have any beef with confetti?’

‘Not the foggiest. Okay, so, are we carrying on with pretending this is for us?’ Bea asked; they’d agreed in the car that they were likely to get straighter answers if that was the case.

‘Yeah, but you’d better do most of the talking. I’ll give us away in a heartbeat. She’ll ask us where we met and I’ll panic and tell her we’re second cousins, or something.’

Bea burst out laughing. ‘No, don’t you remember? We met at an AA meeting,’ she suggested.

‘On a nudist beach,’ Eli countered, grinning.

‘At the GUM clinic. We swapped tips on how best to manage our flare-ups of genital warts.’

‘Wait …’ Eli pretended to look thoughtful, ‘wasn’t it actually on the online message forum for that fetish club that we met?’

‘Yeah. Because you’ve got that thing where you dress up like a sexy My Little Pony,’ Bea shot back.

‘Hey, whatever gets you off, babe,’ Eli countered without missing a beat.

‘Okay, okay!’ Bea held her palms up in defeat. ‘Point taken. I’ll do all the talking. Do you think she’ll actually bother asking us how we met? Look at her job! She must have stupid engaged couples and their stupid stories coming out of her ears.’

Eli shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s acceptable small talk, isn’t it? Maybe we can distract her by going straight in with the whole chair controversy?’

‘Good plan. If she does ask, though, I’ll just stay safe with ‘we met online’.’

‘No, wait.’ Eli looked at her, his eyes soft. ‘We met at school. And we were best friends for years until one day, when the time was right, we fell in love. And here we are.’

Bea tried to smile at the romanticism, but the taste of it caught at the back of her throat and she had to look away. He’s not done it on purpose, she knows that, but moments from him and from that night began flashing all the same: how the taste of sweat on his skin was sharp; how he’d complained that her toenails were too long and had scratched him as she wrapped her legs up and around his hips; the horrendous trip to the pharmacy for the morning-after pill the next day, ignoring calls from Nora on her phone, sick with shame and the worst hangover of her life.

‘Bea?’ Eli prompted; she’d obviously hesitated too long. ‘You know, like Harry and Nora? We might as well adopt their story in this instance, don’t you think?’

Bea rallied herself and swallowed back the past. ‘Okay. Whatever. She’s really not going to need any intimate detail, though, surely?’

‘Am I interrupting?’ The promised events coordinator beamed at them, so entirely perky that she even put the Goodie Bag Lady of Super-Duper fame to shame.

‘Elliott,’ Eli thrust his hand out and returned the jaunty shake with enthusiasm. Bea got to her feet a little slowly – this day was starting to really take it out of her.

‘Bea,’ she introduced herself in turn, catching Eli’s eye as she did so, wrinkling her nose at him. ‘We met at school.’

Chapter 6

About a week before the wedding day, the bridezilla decided that all of the bridesmaids couldn’t wear the shoes we’d purchased for the wedding and instead needed to wear shoes specifically dyed to match the dresses. Obviously the dye didn’t have enough time to set … our feet were the colour of Ribena for weeks afterwards!

Charlie, Oxford

‘Oh, my God,’ Nora sighed over the selfie Cleo and Gray had taken in front of Withysteeple Hall. ‘You guys are just the cutest. Why haven’t you jumped those bones yet, lady? Daise, take a look.’ She tossed Cleo’s phone across the table; Daisy – mouth full of burrito – made appreciative noises.

‘He is cute,’ Sarah agreed, peering at the photo over Daisy’s shoulder. At that, Queen Bea deigned to take a glance at the screen.

‘Yeah, he’s cute,’ Cleo conceded. (There was no point denying it. She had eyes.) ‘But he’s my colleague—’

‘You’re so funny about that, aren’t you,’ Bea frowned. ‘I’ve slept with loads of people I’ve worked with.’

‘Yeah, but, Bea, remember you had to leave that one job when that IT guy got all stalky?’ Nora giggled. ‘So you’re not exactly being a role model for it there!’

‘They do say ‘Don’t shit where you eat’,’ Daisy added sagely.

‘They do say that, yes.’ Cleo rolled her eyes. ‘Beautifully put.’

‘Hey, as long as one person isn’t the other person’s manager or anything complicated like that,’ Bea shrugged. ‘I say play ball.’

Sarah took a very determined gulp from her Hibiscus Margarita; she’d been on a bit of a health kick lately and laying off the drink, but she seemed to be back on the cocktail horse with a vengeance this evening. Belatedly, Cleo remembered – of course – that Sarah’s dickhead ex-boyfriend had left her for his PA, and clumsily rushed to change the subject.

‘He also appears to be dating most of London,’ she revealed dramatically.

‘What? What do you mean?’ Nora demanded; she had been very pro the idea of Cleo getting together with Gray ever since Christmas. Cleo could probably tell her Gray was flamingly homosexual and it probably wouldn’t dampen her enthusiasm for the idea all that much; she was convinced that Gray was The One for Cleo (or, at least, A One).

‘Well, the half that’s on Tinder anyway,’ she clarified.

‘Oooh.’ In a flash Daisy’s phone was in her hand, the app in question already loading. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him, though. I definitely wouldn’t have swiped left for him!’ A parade of men appeared immediately at her fingertips. ‘So, if you’re not going to jump those bones, hun, would you mind if I took a ride?’ She waggled her eyebrows at Cleo mischievously.

Cleo glared back at her across the salt-dusted rim of her cocktail glass. ‘What about The Photographer?’ she asked. They didn’t really bother learning the names of Daisy’s gentlemen friends until Daisy herself bothered referring to them by name; the downside to being more or less happy to go on a date with anyone who asked her was that there were only so many men’s names in the world – and it got confusing.

‘Yes, what about him?’ Nora echoed, in alarm. ‘I was hoping for mates’ rates for the wedding if I needed to use him.’

‘Darren is great,’ Daisy informed them calmly.

‘Darren!’ squealed Nora, clearly noting the use of actual name and off already imagining what her friend’s future children would look like.

‘But it’s always good to have a strong bench waiting,’ Daisy laughed, ignoring Nora’s excitement. ‘And as he’s just your colleague, surely you don’t mind …?’

Refusing to rise to the tease, Cleo turned squarely to face Nora and changed the subject. ‘So, what did you think after you read my email with all the information about the Hall?’ she asked. ‘Is it looking like a contender?’

‘Oh, definitely,’ Nora assured her. ‘We’ll have to make time this weekend or next to go there ourselves. It’s not too expensive for what it is, and they’re not all that prohibitive with outside suppliers, like some places can be, and, I mean – just look at it – it’s the perfect princess fairy-tale wedding venue! The little girl in me is crying out for it!’

Of course (unlike Bea), Cleo had never known Little Girl Nora. She’d met Nora when they were both eighteen. Nora had had a fat, frizzy fringe back then, greasy dark roots and a helix cartilage piercing (long gone, now) and wore a lot of black pencil liner all around her eyes, like she felt she had to ring them or people wouldn’t know where to look for her. She was that little bit lost, in the way that most eighteen-year-old girls are, especially during those first few nebulous years of the noughties (Cleo always thought of them all as being Generation Y point five).

They’d met in the strip-lit hallway of their shared student accommodation, mint-green paint badly faded and peeling away around the doorframes. Cleo, midway through unpacking, had been wearing a polka-dot-print headscarf – a little retro, but the hair she’d inherited from her father – his mother’s dominant Caribbean genes coming to the fore – was an absolute nightmare to get dust out of.

Nora’s heavily lined eyes had opened wide when she’d caught sight of her. ‘Oh, I love your hair! Hi! I’ve tried that so many times but I just can’t pull it off!’ She spoke then – as she did now – in a musical tumble, the saturation in the Irish brogue during her formative years lending the slightest of softness to an otherwise strong London accent. ‘I’m Nora.’ She’d gestured to the door opposite Cleo’s. ‘3C.’

At first she’d thought Nora was a little weird and needy (Cleo cringes to think of it now), but now of course she knows it was just that Nora was one of those girls who had always been used to being surrounded by a crowd of friends, a mob of siblings, and there at uni she was truly alone for the first time in her life. Her best friend from home had decided against going to university at all (although Cleo thinks now it might be that Bea never got the grades, more like) and Nora was all over the place with guilt, with nerves, with excitement. One day she was homesick, and the next she was having the time of her life, and everything in between.

She was the mummy of the corridor – making endless cups of tea and always studying with her door propped open just in case anybody fancied a chat. If you ever needed a painkiller, Nora’d be sure to have a foil of ibuprofen; if you broke up with your boyfriend, Nora’d sit quietly with you and watch Friends over a hot chocolate, or join you in a half spliff and dancing till dawn (whichever was your preference). Nora was the one that everyone wanted to live with when it came time to choose housemates for the next academic year, and Cleo had been first in line.

Not everyone was so lucky as to make a best friend for always within the first hour of their first day of university life. Cleo felt a huge swell of affection for Nora and Harry and everyone else – even Bea.

‘But do you really want something so cliché?’ Bea was saying, rolling those infamous eyes again. ‘I think you can probably find somewhere better, Nor. I thought you wanted to go more rustic, anyway?’

Okay, maybe not Bea.

Chapter 7

Darren was getting very familiar very quickly. Earlier he’d wandered into the bathroom as Daisy had been exfoliating in there and let forth a tremendous splashing piss without so much as a ‘good morning’. Then he’d wandered out without washing his hands. And he’d left the toilet seat up. Horror piled on horror. Perhaps this was an English blokey thing? A quick text to Nora confirmed that, no, this was unacceptable behaviour either side of the Atlantic. Damn. Just when she’d started using the guy’s name.

Feeling a little smug, Daisy finished packing her gym bag. Last pay day she’d gone out and equipped herself – sports bras of varying colours, leggings of various lengths, baggy tee-shirts with block-type slogans that announced things like SHUT UP AND SQUAT! and SWEAT IS FAT CRYING. She’d never been a gym bunny, but she was damned if she was going to be the ‘fat bridesmaid’ at this wedding. So now she joined Sarah for pre-work yoga sessions twice a week, did Zumba on a Thursday night and paid a veiny personal trainer fourteen pounds an hour to scream at her on as many of the other evenings as she could spare. Damn right her fat was going to cry.

Sarah was already dressed for the class when Daisy met her in the gym lobby (she wasn’t quite ready to ride the Tube in the exercise leggings yet). Sarah was always quite quiet in the mornings, but was even more so than usual; she only raised the weakest of outrage at the uninvited-pissing story.

‘Is everything okay?’ Daisy questioned her as they queued outside the studio door. ‘You seem distracted lately.’

Sarah gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Funny, that choice of word. I’ve actually been in a bit of trouble at work for just that. Being distracted. Making stupid mistakes.’ She sighed.

‘Shit, hun, I’m sorry.’

‘No, no. You’re right. They’re right. I have been distracted. I’ve been … arguing with Cole a bit recently. And I’m not sleeping well.’

‘What are you guys arguing about?’ Daisy pressed.

Sarah’s gaze slid away. ‘Oh, you know. Just domestic stuff. Boring. Nothing worth talking about.’

‘Oh. Well, let me know if I can do anything, hun.’ Daisy was genuinely very fond of Sarah. They were both Johnny-come-latelies, in a way, and Sarah had a sweet, unassuming way about her. They’d all written her off, back when she started dating Cole – pegged her as one of the fangirl types he normally went for that would never see more than one of your birthdays, or more than one Christmas drinks. She’d surprised them all; Cole probably most of all.

‘Anyway,’ Daisy continued, as they made their way into the flood-lit studio and began unfurling their yoga mats. Their instructor waved at them from the corner, where she was plugging her iPod into the speaker system. Daisy clocked her gym tee – NAMASTE … IN BED! it proclaimed – love it! She had to get that one … ‘I’m sure you couldn’t have managed to do something terribly disruptive at work.’ Sarah’s job as an executive’s PA at a stiff, corporate FTSE company was infamously tedious.

A smile finally twitched at Sarah’s lips. ‘Well. No. But the straw that finally broke HR’s back was the other day when I accidentally ordered 200,000 jiffy bags from the stationery supplier instead of two hundred.’

Daisy cracked up laughing. ‘You monster.’

Sarah gave in and laughed too. ‘I think they might still decide to take it out of my pay.’

‘In which case I guess you’ll be setting up a side-business selling padded envelopes, then!’

‘It’s nice to have a Plan B,’ Sarah giggled, sliding into a warm-up stretch. ‘I can call it Sarah’s Stationery Staples.’

‘So long as the stationery staple you’re after is a jiffy bag.’

Sarah laughed again, before she dropped into Flowering Lotus. ‘That can be in the small print.’

Chapter 8

‘I think this is beyond the call of duty,’ Cleo hissed under her breath so the masses around them didn’t hear. ‘BENEDICT. STOP THAT. I mean, you got a nice day out and a cream tea. This is – AIMEE, BACK IN LINE – this is hardly proportionate. DAVID, GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THERE.’

‘Hey, you agreed, any favour,’ Gray countered. ‘BENEDICT. MISS ADKINS SAID TO STOP THAT. And if you’re good, I’ll see if I can find you a teacake.’

Cleo was near certain that teaching was going to put her off having kids of her own. Okay, fair enough, seventy hyped-up thirteen-year-olds three hours from home were not going to be the best example, but still. She was exhausted and the whole weekend event had barely started. She hated doing field trips. As a maths teacher they weren’t something she had had all that much to do with since her teacher training. But, she conceded grudgingly, she had told Gray ‘anything’ … (and she’d never been to the Black Country Museum before so, well, there was that.)

Gray momentarily dipped back to herd some wayward tweens back into their crocodile. The parent ‘helper’ who was meant to be watching the rear of the line was instead watching YouTube on her phone (earphones in and everything). The two older, cannier teachers seemed to have split the group just so that Gray and Cleo got the trouble-makers (the dicks).

‘What time do thirteen-year-olds go to bed these days?’ Cleo asked Gray as he returned to her side, looking as decidedly frazzled as she felt, his hair sticking up around his normally impeccable parting. ‘BENEDICT. SERIOUSLY. LESS HORSEPLAY, MORE WALKING.’ Cleo just about stopped herself from clapping her hands crossly (she’d sworn to herself she’d never be the sort of teacher that claps at children, but she hadn’t known then what she knows now).

He shot her a conciliatory smile. ‘Chin up. Only five hours of scintillating Industrial Revolution fun to get through before dinner.’ He just about managed to avoid tripping over Aimee, who had once again stepped out of line in order to take a selfie with some interesting graffiti.

Cleo bit back a laugh as she watched Aimee simper and smirk as Gray put out his hands to steady her. There had been a marked increase in girls wanting to take history as a GCSE next year since the dashing Mr Sommers had joined the staff at Oakland. He was the very cliché of hunky professor, tall and well put together, just enough stubble to be interesting, Harry Potter-style glasses that Cleo wasn’t entirely sure he actually needed to wear, and with an astounding array of V-necked sweater vests that he wore well, over crisp shirts with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow. Hell, thirteen-year-old Cleo would have completely bought into it (even twenty-nine-year-old Cleo wasn’t entirely unaffected).

Cleo did another head count as they reached the glass-fronted entrance to the museum, just to be sure. She watched Gray’s lips moving as he counted too, under his breath. Helpful Helper Mum of Helpfulness finally tugged her earphones out and wound them around her iPhone, looking about herself expectantly.

‘OKAY GUYS, HAVE YOUR PRINT OUTS READY TO SHOW AT THE COUNTER, AND REMEMBER TO STAY IN YOUR BUDDY PAIR AT ALL TIMES.’ Gray steered the first clutch of students through to the ticket area and nodded companionably at Cleo. ‘See you on the other side of 1850, Miss Adkins.’

* * *

Eight hours, one near-miss, where the class clown nearly had a face-to-face meeting with the canal and a train of heaped plates of vinegary fish and chips later Cleo finally got to sit down. She flicked off her pinching Primark pumps and pulled the toe of her tights straight. ‘That wasn’t too bad, actually,’ she allowed. ‘I loved that story about the chain-makers going on strike. Got me all riled up: ‘shoulder to shoulder into the fray’ and all that. Did you know that women still earn on average twenty per cent less than men in this country? In this day and age!’ Cleo shook her head in disgust. ‘Those women back then were so brave … You know, I should go to a protest or something. I couldn’t be bothered to march when they put up tuition fees because I’d already graduated, and I’ve always felt shit about it. What do you think?’

Gray sank his head into his hands. ‘Please, no. No. Turn your teacher switch off. Can we just have a drink and a chat rather than analyse the socio-political landscape? Please?’

Cleo laughed. ‘Okay.’ They were off the clock, after all, with the senior teachers charged with roaming the corridors and keeping teenaged peace; the night was their own.

The hotel was almost entirely booked out with the kids, so the lounge area was empty. It had been quite a mild day out in the fresh air but the building was old and heavy-walled so there was a fire lit in the grate; the old, cracked leather of the wingback chairs in front of it was pleasantly warm against Cleo’s skin. She closed her eyes and let the heat kiss her face (maybe field trips weren’t that bad after all).

After only a few moments Gray was back cradling two crystal tumblers of ice in one large hand and carrying the matching decanter by its neck in the other. Cleo recognised the smell as he pulled the stopper out and groaned.

‘Yup,’ Gray grinned. ‘Your favourite.’ Cleo had gone through a big amaretto-and-cranberry stage at the end of last year, and it was precisely that delightful mixture she’d vomited all over Gray at the staff Christmas party (he’d joked that he’d smelt like a Bakewell tart for the rest of the holidays). Gray poured them both healthy measures over crackling ice cubes and sat back down in the other armchair. The chairs were only slightly angled, so they both watched the fire in silence for a few moments, enjoying their first few sips of the almond liqueur and the feeling of peace settling over them after the manic day. Gray’s profile was painted orange; holding the delicate etched tumbler in his big hand, he looked like the lord of the manor. Cleo thought back to the cheesy selfie they’d snapped in front of the porch of Withysteeple Hall last month and sighed.

‘So, how is trying to complete Tinder going?’ she asked. ‘Any future Mrs Sommers there in the mix?’

Gray looked at her, curiously. ‘I’m not sure many people find their wives on Tinder,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s more for fun.’

‘Not everyone sees it that way,’ Cleo immediately argued, thinking of Daisy, who loves to be in love and all the hopeful swipe-rights her fingers have given.

‘I can guarantee you that most of the men do at least,’ Gray assured her. Cleo fell silent at the thought of all those missed connections: one person looking for a forever, the other just looking for a shag. She refilled her drink, feeling vindicated.

‘And that’s exactly why I don’t go on these things,’ she confided. ‘I’d feel like some sort of cheap impulse buy, left out at the tills.’

‘Yeah, I, er, noticed that you’d never come up on Tinder for me,’ Gray poked his finger into the button indent on the arm of the chair.

‘I have technically been on a Tinder date, though,’ Cleo said. ‘I went out with this guy for about two months after my friend Daisy decided they didn’t have any chemistry together, and she’d met him on Tinder initially; does that count?’

‘If you want it to,’ Gray laughed.

‘Seriously, though, what is the appeal? If you’re not actually looking for a girlfriend, I mean. If you just want someone to go to the cinema or to have a drink with, well, there’s always me.’ (Ack.) Cleo regretted it the moment she’d said it; not the sort of thing you say to your colleague, however flirty (or dishy) he was. Gray regarded her thoughtfully.

‘I don’t know. I guess it was because one day I realised that I was thirty-two and had wasted my entire twenties in a really toxic relationship. All my mates had done their wild-oat sowing back then and were starting to settle down, but it was like I was coming at life backwards. Making up for lost time.’ He smiled ruefully and topped up their glasses a little bit more. ‘Anyway. You don’t feel like sowing any oats, then?’

Cleo grimaced. ‘Well, you have to remember, of course, that I am the field in this lovely analogy.’

Gray burst out laughing. ‘You are so not the field. You are the sort of girl that makes men want to settle down.’

‘You make me sound like some sort of mousy housewife,’ Cleo complained (but secretly she was filing that away as a compliment).

‘I don’t mean to,’ Gray assured her, still looking thoughtful. Cleo pulled her skirt a little further down her thighs. The combination of the heat from the fire and the gravity caused by Gray’s attention was leaving her a little breathless. ‘So, then how do you meet your dates?’ he queried.

‘The old-fashioned way, I guess,’ Cleo shrugged. ‘Through friends. At bars. I don’t know. Once I met someone waiting for a bus. I don’t really go on all that many dates, to be honest.’

‘That’s such a waste,’ Gray shook his head regretfully and Cleo lost hold of her breath again.

Gray seemed to sense something in her silence and sat back in his chair; Cleo hadn’t even realised how much he’d been leaning in towards her. ‘Sorry.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m being unprofessional, aren’t I, Miss Adkins.’

Cleo took a drink to lubricate her senses. ‘Not at all, Mr Sommers, not at all,’ she managed to tease back, just about pulling back to an even keel.

Gray studied the remnants of his drink. ‘Good. Because – trust me – I could get quite unprofessional this evening, if I was allowed.’

The popping of the fire seemed over-loud, and over-important.

Would it be so terrible if she slept with him, tonight, just this once? Because, God, in that moment she really wanted to. Grownups did it all the time (as Bea was always quick to scathingly point out). It wasn’t like Cleo had never had a one-night stand before, or slept with someone a little too close to home (must smile graciously at Harry and Archie’s cousin if I see him at the wedding, Cleo reminded herself, to lessen embarrassment at having been up close and personal with his knob last year). And (if she was being honest), there had been many, many unguarded moments over the last few months where Cleo had caught herself wondering how Gray felt beneath her fingertips.

But then she thought of the staff-room chats that would never happen, and of how Bea had once felt forced to leave her job, and of the disappointed awkwardness that might fall between them when Gray realised she was just another field to him, after all. And life was too ugly a place to be without a friend that you could call up at 8.30am on a Saturday and ask for a two-hour lift. And so rather than top up her drink, Cleo pushed it aside.

‘I’m really wiped,’ she announced, and Gray smiled sadly at her like she’d said something else.

‘Okay. Sleep well.’

‘You too. I’m sorry,’ Cleo gestured to the still mostly full decanter.

‘Hey, you’ve got to save yourself for the big party next week, after all,’ Gray said mildly.

Invite him, the Nora that Cleo had long-since internalised howled in her head: invite him!

Cleo’s fingertips tingled. He was her friend. Where was the harm?

‘Actually, speaking of the engagement party. If you’re not busy …?’

Chapter 9

Cleo’s face really, really hurt.

It was a combination of all the smiling and, of course, the balloons. How she had ended up responsible for the balloons, she didn’t know.

Daisy was literally of no help, chatting away brightly. ‘Right?’ she asked Cleo, waving a limp balloon around expressively as she did so as opposed to blowing it up.

Across the function room Sarah was opening the French doors through to the beer garden, sending the balloons that Cleo had already managed to get inflated and tied off rolling around in every direction. Immediately Harry and Eli abandoned their efforts to get the folding tables up and started enthusiastically kicking the balloons into the corner. Cleo – mouth otherwise occupied – eyed them furiously over the swell of the balloon she was currently seeing to, to no avail.

Bea was – as usual – nowhere to be found, and Cleo could only assume that the three missing groomsmen were causing more trouble than those in the room. This was Day One, nuptial Ground Zero; if a generously large wedding party of eight couldn’t efficiently set up an engagement party in the local pub, how the hell were they meant to assist pulling off a spectacular wedding for a hundred and twenty guests in just under a year’s time? Nora was going to flap, definitely. Cleo sighed, redoubling her balloon-related efforts.

‘Hey,’ Bea groaned, finally making an appearance from the back room, balancing three Marks and Spencer sandwich platters somewhat precariously and realising she had no tables to place them down on. ‘A little help here, guys?’ she snapped. A sheepish Harry and Eli returned to their task.

‘Bea, is Cole in the kitchen?’ Sarah called across from where she was rummaging in one of the bags near the doors.

Bea just about managed to keep her eye-roll internal; she wasn’t above referring to Sarah as ‘Cole’s late-arriving Siamese twin,’ when she was feeling her cattiest. ‘Not a minute ago anyway,’ she answered before dumping the platters on the hastily erected tables and beginning to rip away the plastic coverings, batting away Harry’s hand as it snuck in for a hoisin duck mini-wrap.

‘Hey,’ Harry protested, swiping one anyway. ‘I paid for them.’

‘I thought Dad did,’ Harry’s younger brother corrected, characteristically appearing from nowhere the minute the food was revealed and grabbing the biggest sausage roll bite before Bea could react. Harry retaliated by snatching up his own sausage roll and following Archie out into the sunshine of the beer garden to argue the point. Eli approached the table hopefully.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Bea told him flatly, putting herself bodily between the man and the platter. ‘Go and be useful, help Sarah untangle those fairy lights or something,’ she instructed as she physically shooed him away.

Daisy paused in her recounting of general life, love and work since she saw Cleo last to check her phone for the time. ‘When is Nora getting here? It’s late.’

‘She’s had to go and pick up her mum,’ Cleo explained, slightly breathlessly between balloons. ‘Eileen didn’t trust herself driving with a cake in the passenger seat, apparently, so Nora’s got to go up to Kilburn to get them both. Her mum and the cake, that is.’

Daisy laughed, clicking onto Tinder while her phone was in her hand, so Cleo could only assume that poor Darren was indeed on his way out the door. ‘I wonder which one gets shotgun.’

Cole finally appeared, waving something above his head like it was the Holy Grail. ‘Blu-Tac,’ he announced, dramatically. ‘Can’t believe we forgot about Blu-Tac.’

Sarah abandoned Eli to the snarl of wires that purported to be fairy lights and swept to her husband’s side. ‘Have you not got the photo wall up yet?’ she asked, a bit redundantly, being as she could certainly see that the designated wall was still bare.

‘How could I without any Blu-Tac?’ Cole pointed out reasonably. ‘I’m on it now.’

‘It’s gone six,’ Sarah continued to fret, glancing at the pool of balloons filling the floor, also waiting for some Blu-Tac attention. ‘We’ve got to get a move on.’

‘Chill out, love, its fine.’ There was no getting around it; Sarah was all too aware that she was a bit of a political bridesmaid – the wife of the best man – and she was determined to overcome this by ensuring said bridesmaiding was completely beyond reproach, resulting in her being, quite possibly, more emotionally invested in this wedding-planning even than Nora.

Sarah had been surprised when Nora had asked her to be a bridesmaid. Nora was one of those girls who had always had friends coming out of her ears, and while she’d been lovely to Sarah since day one, Sarah had never felt like Nora would have considered her one of her best friends. Nora hadn’t even been one of Sarah’s bridesmaids – she and Cole had got married so quickly in the end, and kept it so small, she hadn’t had any.

‘Here, why don’t you help if you’re so worried?’ Cole continued, distracting Sarah from her chain of thought, handing her a ripped-off chunk of Blu-Tac. With a glance back over at Eli to check he was still working away at the bird’s nest of lights, Sarah grabbed up a handful of photographs, sticking precise little dots of the tack in each of the corners.

‘Oh, God, this holiday,’ her husband laughed after a minute, still holding the first picture he’d picked up. He passed it across to Sarah, who gave it a polite glance. The fresh faces of young Harry, Cole, Nora and Bea grinned out at her, eighteen or nineteen, something like that, but still with the rounded cheeks of their childhood, their complexions reddened by the sun, or perhaps by the cheap alcohol in the cocktail fishbowl they were drinking liberally from. ‘This was the one where Bea got that tattoo she had to have covered up last year. We started drinking when we came in off the beach for lunch, and …’

Sarah tuned out; she’d heard this story plenty of times before. She wondered if she would appear at all in this wall of memories she was oh so carefully sticking into place.

Daisy paused in her generous swiping-rights to reply to a message from Nora, now finally en route with her two precious passengers and wanting an update on how things were going from her bridesmaids’ group WhatsApp chat. Daisy glanced over to where Bea was ferrying rubbish back through to the staging area rooms, Sarah and Cole were industriously sticking photographs to the far wall, and in front of her, where Cleo was looking alarmingly red in the face. All dandy, she replied on behalf of the four of them, adding a smiley face and a be-veiled bride emoticon for good measure.

* * *

Nora and her mother swept in just as the last trio of balloons were being mercilessly Blu-Tac’d into a corner, the multiple strands of fairy lights were being switched on and Daisy finished syncing her phone to the Bluetooth speakers and started up the Spotify playlist she’d created especially for the event. Nora clapped her hands, her eyes shining, the hemline on her contextually appropriate lacy white dress flipping.

‘Oh, you guys! It looks great.’

Harry made an appearance, surreptitiously brushing sausage-roll flakes from his hands onto his chinos. ‘You look great,’ he corrected his fiancée, kissing her cheek. ‘Eileen, do you want me to take that?’

Nora’s mother was delicately clutching a large cake box like it was a new-born baby.

‘That’s okay, Henry,’ she assured him. ‘If you’ll just show me where the kitchen is.’ Harry dutifully led the way. Eileen was the only person who actually called Harry, Henry; even his own mother didn’t call him Henry.

Nora sidled up to Bea, sat at one of the round tables, exchanging her Toms for a party-perfect pair of pink stilettos. ‘How’s it going, Mel?’ she asked, leaning on the back of Bea’s chair.

Bea straightened and grinned up at her. ‘Going okay, Mel.’ They were always asked, but, no, they couldn’t remember when or why they’d started calling one another Mel. Like most things from their childhood, it was more than likely related to the Spice Girls. ‘Don’t you look pure?’

Nora winked. ‘As the driven snow. It’s virginal Catholic bride chic. I need to keep away from guests wielding red wine.’

‘And penises,’ Bea added solemnly.

‘Yes, those too.’ Nora agreed, laughing, giddy with celebratory spirit already, kissing her old friend’s head. ‘Come on, I’m getting a drink.’

Harry was permitted to carry the cake, now on its stand, out of the kitchen, to place it as the centrepiece of the food table, the diminutive Eileen hovering anxiously at his elbow.

‘You’ve outdone yourself, Eileen,’ Bea told the older woman, standing and moving across to take her by the elbow and kiss her on the cheek, deftly removing the possibility she might trip poor Harry and send both him and her confectionary masterpiece flying.

‘Beatrice, for the love of,’ Eileen flapped at her godchild good-naturedly. Ever fearful of blaspheming, Eileen Dervan never took the Lord’s name in vain, but that didn’t stop her saying the rest of the sentence. ‘Will you ever put some clothes on you? Sure, do you not feel the cold in here?’ Eileen bustled away to find something to pick at, wrapping her arms around herself against the apparent ‘cold’.

From the other side of the nearby table, Daisy raised an eyebrow at Bea. ‘To be sure, to be sure, will you ever put some clothes on, Be-a-trice?’ she whispered, in an exaggerated caricature of Eileen’s strong Cork accent.

Bea laughed, gesturing at her relatively modest black skinny jeans and beaded camisole top combination. ‘I can’t win, trust me Daise. She said it to me when I was wearing a Christmas jumper and jogging bottoms once, I swear.’

Fashionably late, carrying a small ale barrel under each arm, Barlow finally made an appearance, the final groomsman, completing the wedding party contingent.

‘I know, I know,’ he got in there before anyone else could point out his poor punctuality. ‘It’s mad up there. There’s a match on.’ He immediately busied himself plumbing in the barrels to the taps of the small bar area in the corner.

‘Meanwhile, we’ve been dying of thirst,’ Cole complained, impatiently moving across to claim the first of the clean pint glasses Cleo had already arrayed.

‘Hold on, big guy,’ Barlow said, as unruffled as usual. ‘This stuff is worth the wait. It’s from a brewery in South Wales, it’s the business.’

There were many benefits to having Barlow as a mate, not least of which were the free drinks and free function space. Harry’s best mate from university, he had dropped out a term into his final year, despite everyone thinking him an absolute idiot for doing so, and became assistant manager in the village pub where he’d spent his summers pot-washing since he was thirteen. Fast-forward ten years and he was the owner, proprietor and general manager of The Hand in Hand, one of the best gastro-pubs in Wimbledon.

Definitely one the busiest pubs in Wimbledon, Sarah thought to herself, still immensely grateful for The Hand in Hand and the impact it had had on her life. Five years ago a younger, stupider Sarah had followed a man following a job, all the way to London. That man had promptly started ‘following’ his blonde, size-zero PA (gah!) leaving Sarah heartbroken, with the entire rent on their ‘dream’ central-SW19 flat for good measure. Three months later, with her carefully arranged payment plan about to fall down around her ears, Sarah had ducked into the newly opened pub on her walk home from the office, ostensibly to get out of the rain, but she knew from the off that she was about to spend her carefully budgeted few quid for that night’s dinner on a large glass of something more emotionally substantial.

It had been relatively early and the place had been pretty quiet, so the nice guy behind the bar had chatted with her a bit, insisting that he didn’t want to leave a dribble in the already-open bottle, thus pouring her the largest glass of wine she’d ever seen. But it was more the offered ear that had got her talking – all her friends were back on the Welsh coast and she was embarrassingly lonely in those days – and way before the glass was even empty the poor guy had had to suffer through hearing in great detail all about the collapse of her relationship and the wince-worthy state of her finances.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah had sighed, as she drained the glass and fumbled awkwardly for her handbag. ‘I don’t mean to bang on and take up your entire night. You must be busy.’

The guy behind the bar had just grinned at her and scratched his chin through his beard – the neater side of hipster – and said the words that would change Sarah’s life.

‘It will start getting busy in here round about now, yeah. You know, I’ve been thinking. Sorry, what’s your name?’

‘Sarah.’

‘Sarah. I’m Barlow. Sarah, I don’t suppose you know how to pour a fair pint, do you?’

And that was that. Sarah started at The Hand in Hand straight away; she stayed to have her training that very evening: four nights a week after she had finished at the office, plus as many hours as she could physically hack each weekend. With the decent hourly wage, plus tips, she managed to clear the bulk of the rental arrears within a few months and Barlow even helped her source a flatmate. In the end she kept on the Saturday shift at The Hand in Hand just because she loved it, and because Barlow had become a friend. And then, one night, about eighteen months after she’d started working at the pub, Barlow had decided that the break in her heart had healed enough, and arranged that fateful double date.

Sarah studied her husband of about a year now. Cole was built like a swimmer – unfairly, as he did no swimming – cultivated a devil-may-care sort of artful stubble, and although his hairline had started to recede as he approached thirty, the dramatic widow’s peak actually quite worked for him. He’d been dark where her ex had been fair, generous where her ex had been stingy and so flirtatious Sarah worried the blush would be burned onto her face by the end of that first date. And like a woman who didn’t learn her lesson, Sarah had fallen in love, all at once and all too quickly.

‘Cole!’ The next party guest through the doors made an immediate beeline for him; Cole stooped to wrap the petite blonde in a bear hug. Sarah swallowed a sigh. Hers was a face in far too many of the pictures on the photo wall.

‘Hello, Clairey. You look gorgeous. What are you drinking?’ Cole gestured behind him to where the drinks were lined up waiting. It was a serve-yourself bottle bar – Barlow didn’t want to be stuck behind the taps all night at one of his best friend’s engagement party.

Claire dramatically nudged Cole with her shoulder and rolled her eyes. ‘White wine, obviously!’

‘Obviously,’ Cole grinned back, moving to open the first bottle of wine of the evening. ‘Sarah, come say hi to Claire,’ he called as he worked the corkscrew. Sarah smiled on cue, but even she felt how thin it was on her face. Claire didn’t even bother with that; her lips just pressed together like she was trying to stop herself from saying something she shouldn’t. Sarah wearily filled in the blanks herself: Randomer; Chav from the Valleys; Interloper. Blah, blah.

‘Of course,’ Sarah managed. ‘Hi, Claire, how have you been?’

Cleo read Claire from across the room and knew she should probably head over and rescue poor Sarah, but she was trapped – quite literally, cornered – by Eileen and one of the twins (even after over a decade of knowing the Dervan family, she still couldn’t quite tell the identical girls apart).

‘But she must have an idea,’ wailed the twin. ‘A shortlist?’

‘Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, but there are only a very few acceptable colours for a winter wedding,’ sniffed Eileen. ‘And she could never pick red. It would be ghastly. Just ghastly.’

‘Do you have the Pinterest app on your phone?’ The twin asked suddenly, setting a beady eye on Cleo’s clutch bag. ‘Can I just have a look at the sort of things she’s pinning?’

Cleo clutched said clutch bag a little tighter. ‘Sorry, it’s a secret board. You should ask your sister. She’s really not done much, er, pinning yet anyway. Honestly. We’ll all try on some bridesmaids’ dresses when we go into the shops for her wedding dress, apparently, and we’ll go from there.’

‘A nice sage green,’ Eileen continued, mostly to herself. ‘Or champagne. And definitely sleeves. Or those nice fringed pashminas, Alanna, you know the ones. They sell them down that market on the Kilburn High Road, I’ve seen them.’

Cleo, paling at the thought of wearing fringed-anything, desperately tried to change the subject. ‘Are your other children coming tonight?’

Eileen looked at her calmly, but a bit like she was simple. ‘Cillian will be along later, with that fancy piece he had at Christmas.’ Cleo could only make the assumption that Eileen was referring to her son’s new girlfriend, who she’d actually met and thought was thoroughly nice and acceptably un-fancy. ‘But no young child of mine will be setting foot in a public house. Finola has the babysitter in.’

Cleo supressed a sigh on behalf of the no-doubt frustrated fifteen-going-on-twenty-five-year-old Fin. It had been hard enough for the others, but Fin was Eileen’s baby – an identity she would probably never be able to shed.

‘Mrs Dervan,’ Barlow arrived to save the day. ‘Can I get you a drink? I’ve got that sherry in that you like.’

Eileen flushed prettily and even patted at her hairspray-armoured bob; she adored Barlow, mostly because he insisted on calling her Mrs Dervan, no matter how many times she insisted in turn that he call her Eileen. And because he always remembered to get that sherry in.

‘Oh, well, I think I will. It’s a celebration, isn’t it? But a small one, now, a small one,’ she smiled, knowing as well as Barlow did that this was their code that he should pour the sherries large and often until she went home. Cleo took the opportunity to slip away, feigning the need for an urgent conversation with Daisy.

Daisy, as usual, was being DJ. Although she was secretly horrified she was such a cliché – an American named after Gatsby’s Daisy Buchanan (well, either that or Daisy Duke, and she’d never had the thighs for hot pants) – she felt she might as well live up to the trope and always throw the best parties. She had a bewildering number of Spotify playlists, each one completely appropriate for its designated mood, venue or context. She’d been working on Nora’s engagement party playlist since approximately six seconds after being told Harry had popped the question – and it was a cheesy masterpiece. Currently Geri Halliwell was wailing about not being able to find her Chico Latino, and the designated dance area had already filled to capacity with gamely salsa-ing women of a certain age (a bit like a Zumba class in heels, Daisy thought, with great amusement).

Nora adored the sort of nineties and noughties crap that everyone secretly loves, but would never admit to and, for Daisy, it was all inextricably tied up with so many good memories, a sort of soundtrack to their friendship.

The group that Daisy had travelled out with that year after college had one by one gotten homesick or run out of money (not to mention the one who’d gotten pregnant – talk about your souvenir to take home) and so Daisy had been alone arriving in Croatia that spring. Embarking on the coach that was to be her home for the next ten hours as they travelled overnight from Zagreb to Dubrovnik, Daisy had made the snap decision that she’d rather sit next to the already-dozing brunette who looked around her age than the human sweat-patch that was sat next to the only other empty seat.

Ninety minutes into the journey, that brunette awoke with a start, ‘completely mortified’ that she’d been drooling on a stranger’s shoulder.

‘I’m completely mortified,’ the girl had apologised to Daisy.

‘Don’t worry about it!’ Daisy had laughed. ‘You gotta catch your Zs when you can, am I right?’ And that was all it had taken to strike up conversation. They covered the usual ground (‘You’re English, right?’/’Are you American or Canadian, or …?’) and as the night wore on and the coach fell hushed around them, Daisy’s new friend, Nora, had pulled out a battered iPod Classic and a pair of candy-pink earbuds and offered one to her. In the seven hours that remained, Daisy had had a whistle-stop tour through the delights of the cheesiest of Britpop: 5ive and the Sugababes and Busted and much, much more. And by the time the coach arrived at the coast Nora and Daisy were inseparable. They’d spent the next six months jaunting around Europe together, working for cash-in-hand pouring drinks in their bikinis or convincing fellow English-speaking tourists that they really want to go into this one particular nightclub in order to save up to pay their coach fares and their two-euros-a-night hostel bed bills.

Returning to real life had been a horrible wrench for Daisy, and part of that was having to say goodbye to Nora, who returned to London after a thoroughly gapped gap year to pack away her tiny bikinis and take up a graduate scheme position in finance, date a succession of tie-wearing, red-wine-drinking men and generally grow up.

When the opportunity had arrived three years later for Daisy to move across the pond to her own firm’s London branch, she had quite literally jumped at it (she blamed the fact that her great-grandparents on her father’s side were Scottish for the serious Europhile feelings she’d always had) and immediately sent Nora Dervan an excited Facebook message.

Nora had just broken up with one of the tie/wine city men and instantly invited Daisy to stay with her in her little flat in Hoxton while she got herself sorted. The ‘sorting’ had taken a long time. Daisy had actually ended up living with Nora for years, until Harry happened. And, whenever one of them had had a shit day at work, they’d come home and put on the playlist Daisy had lovingly entitled ‘Overnight to Dubrovnik’, whack up the volume and spin and scream along with Atomic Kitten, Blue or Steps. It had never failed them.

‘I just love the music,’ one of Harry’s colleagues called out to Daisy as she danced past, waving a glass of rosé wine around alarmingly in time with the pumping pop beats. ‘Sooooooo ironic.’

Daisy just laughed wryly. ‘If you like this, just wait for the wedding reception playlist.’

Darren, who had made his appearance about twenty minutes ago, grinned at her over the head of his cider and black. ‘It’s gonna be your magnum opus, babe.’

‘Hey.’ Cleo appeared, greeting Darren politely before turning to Daisy. ‘Where’s Nora? Everything okay?’

Daisy nodded over to where Nora and Bea were dancing in the centre of a small clutch of friends; Bea was already barefoot (Daisy didn’t even know why she bothered with the pretence of the heels when she went out). Nora had her tell-tale white-wine flush pinking her face and her collarbones. Daisy could hear her laughing even over the music.

‘All quiet on the Western Front, sir,’ she assured Cleo sarcastically. ‘Chill out. Have a drink. You’re really stressing me out.’

Cleo shook her head. ‘I need to stay on the ball in case I’m needed for something.’

‘Look, the only thing you’re going to be needed for is to do the Locomotion,’ Daisy informed her archly, lining the song up on the playlist as she said it.

Cleo groaned. ‘Maybe I will need that drink …’

‘It’s going to be a very long engagement if you and Sarah insist on being such bridesmaidzillas the entire time. Now fuck off and get yourself some wine. You’ve got about forty-five seconds.’

‘God, Daise, I hate it when you mince your words,’ Cleo stuck her tongue out even as she went to obey the order. ‘Why don’t you say what you really think?’

‘Thirty-seven seconds …’

Cleo made a swift exit (via the bar).

Chapter 10

My boyfriend sent me to have a mani and a spray tan and I thought I was being spoiled – then he told me to pack a bag, we were headed for the airport! He’d already arranged with my work that I could have annual leave and whisked me away to Prague, remembering that years ago I’d told him that I thought the Charles Bridge was the most romantic place in the world. Standing on the bridge in the snow, he proposed with a ring he’d had specially made to look like one from my favourite film, and below the bridge 500 swans took flight! He said he arranged the swans specially, but I’m not sure about that … I was thankful for the manicure though – he’d thoughtfully realised that I’d be taking a lot of photographs of my hand!

Amber, Gloucestershire

Bea really couldn’t be arsed to have this conversation. It was not the time, and it was definitely not the place and she was ever-so-slightly too inebriated to think fast enough to avoid accidental agreement (although, secretly she completely agreed with Claire, so it wouldn’t really be truly accidental agreement, merely accidental disclosure of that fact … or something like that … maybe she was drunk … ).

‘I mean, I mean, she’d have been one of mine,’ Claire wailed on; it was quite hard to be heard even at close range over Enrique Iglesias’ heartfelt crooning.

Nora had known this was coming and luckily had fed Bea the ‘party line’ response should Claire start bitching to her about it. Well, here we go: Claire had started bitching about it. Bea sighed and dived in, opening with: ‘she could only have four bridesmaids, Claire, it’s nothing personal, honest.’

‘I know, I know. It just seems SO WRONG that she HAS to have Sarah as a bridesmaid just because she’s married to Cole. Do you think Harry FORCED Nora to have her?’

Bea, biting back a laugh at the thought of Harry forcing Nora to do anything, shook her head. ‘You know how it is. Wedding politics.’

‘Yeah, but, Sarah would ALREADY have been involved just from being the wife of the best man!’ Claire was clearly not going to let this drop. ‘I just thought we’d ALL be bridesmaids, all together, you know?’ Melodramatic sniff. ‘And now the first one of us to actually get engaged, and I’m out in the COLD.’

‘Oh Claire, you are not!’ Bea wanted to tell Claire to stop being dramatic, but she knew from the experience of their long-standing friendship that Claire always reacted horrendously dramatically to being told she was being dramatic, so it was quicker not to go there. ‘Listen, Nora was actually saying the other day … she asked me, did I think you’d mind being in charge of the games at the hen do?’

Claire’s lower lip ceased to be quite so tremulous. ‘Really? She was saying that?’

Bea nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yeah. She said she couldn’t think of anyone better to get the fun started.’

‘Well, that’s so funny, because I actually just happened to read a load of articles about hen-party games the other day … you know, I was so bored at work …’

Yeah, I’ll just bet that was the reason … thought Bea. ‘Yeah, so she’ll probably ask you about it closer to the time.’

‘Oh, no, I’ll have to start thinking about it straight away!’ Claire tutted. ‘A truly great hen-do scavenger hunt can’t be put together in just a few weeks!’

I am instantly regretting this, thought Bea, making a mental note to warn Nora about her unexpected and overexcited new party planner.

Claire had taken on the orbit of their group not long after they’d moved up to secondary school. She’d probably fancied one of the boys initially – Bea can’t really remember now – but despite the fact that nothing had happened there she’d stayed around. She had been – and still was – hard work sometimes, but Bea still loved her to death. And she’d been an absolute godsend to her when Nora upped and left to go to university …

‘Come on, Nora wants a bride-and-bridesmaids picture before the speeches,’ Daisy summoned Bea, thoughtfully already having diverted around the far table to collect the latter’s discarded heels. Bea winced as she saw Claire’s face fall again. It was going to be a really long year. She could only hope that Claire’s friendship with Nora would survive it intact.

Nora, merry and bright, held out her hands for Bea’s as she neared, pulling her neatly into her appointed slot next to her; Bea on the right, Cleo on the left, as usual. Sarah chose to complete Cleo’s side – Bea couldn’t help but wonder if it could be on purpose? – and Daisy moved into place next to Bea. Assorted guests gathered around them in a loose circle began snapping away on their own phones but the girls angled their faces and focused their smiles at Eli, the official photographer of the evening.

‘Cleo,’ he called suddenly, gesturing awkwardly at his own forehead. ‘Your hair-thing’s gone a little bit …’ Cleo immediately turned to Nora for assistance, who pushed the thin jewelled headband back into place and smoothed her friend’s hair around it. ‘Perfect,’ Eli announced, as Cleo shot him a grateful smile. ‘1, 2, 3 …’

Bea barely managed to swallow down that particular throat-full of annoyance, just in the nick of time before it would have shown on her face: immortalised on Eli’s phone, immediately on Facebook. And – despite the firm agreement that she’d made with herself – she was back wondering: about Cleo, and about Nora, and about which of the two of them she was going to pick as her maid of honour.

‘Everybody say WEDDING!’ Eli cheered as he captured the moment.

‘WEDDING!’ the bridal quintet grinned, even though they knew it would put their mouths and their faces into a stupid shape.

‘WEDDING!’ Barlow echoed as he appeared from the back room, several fat green bottles of Cava held to his chest. ‘Speech, speech!’ Everyone howled their agreement. Bea accepted a healthy helping of the bubbles, even though she was probably already slightly too tipsy for good sense. Those who had initially based themselves in the beer garden had pressed into the room, driven as much by the chilly evening as the toast, and the room felt suddenly far smaller. Everyone pressed close, closer. Harry reached for Nora’s hand, pulled her fully to his side, held their joined fingers for a moment at his heart. They were framed by the loops of fairy lights Sarah and Eli had carefully pinned into place. The twins and Cillian crowded in, beaming at their sister and even Eileen’s famously iron expression was soft. Nora, already in white, face flushed; Harry, looking smart in crisp chinos and a slim-fit shirt, eyes shining. They were so perfect and so happy, Bea almost had to look away.

Cole threw a heavy arm over her shoulders. ‘Ah, Beebee.’ She hadn’t heard that old nickname for a while. ‘Look at them. Who would have thought it?’

‘I’d like to thank everyone for coming,’ Harry had started, unimaginative to the last. ‘It means a lot to me and to N—my future wife!’ Cue requisite cheering, whooping. ‘I don’t want to spoil the main event, of course, so I won’t go on for too long, (‘Good!’ some joker heckled from the crowd of guests). So, as you guys know, Nora and I met when we were four, in Miss Proctor’s reception class. Needless to say, it wasn’t love at first sight!’ Harry joined his audience with a laugh. ‘I thought she was the bossiest little madam going. Okay so, some things never change.’ Nora playfully slapped at her fiancé’s chest in protest. ‘But regardless, we became best mates. And we stayed close even when we went to secondary school, through that time when we were fourteen and I thought she was secretly in love with Cole!’ Nora threw Cole a kiss and he returned a wink. ‘And then she went away to university, and to be a gap-year wanker, and moved to the arsehole of East London – and still we were friends.

And I was nice to all her boyfriends. And I was always a go-to cinema date when she didn’t have one.’ Harry was speaking softer now, rubbing Nora’s fingers with his thumb. ‘And one day we were at the cinema – two for one, you know – The Amazing Spider-Man 2, of all bloody films!’ He laughed sheepishly. ‘I wish it had been something a little cooler, but how was I to know I’d ever be telling this story? Because it was just a normal Wednesday evening. And then, it suddenly wasn’t, because I realised I was in love with my best friend. Right there. In the Wimbledon Odeon. Over the salted popcorn and Andrew Garfield’s weird mug gurning at me on-screen.

And so here we are! Celebrating the fact that my best mate not only fell in love with me back, but that I haven’t put her off in the last year and a half, and she’s mental enough to want to marry me!’ Harry laughed, delighted, fizzing, brimming with joy, raising his glass of Cava. ‘Quick turnaround, I know, I know, but I couldn’t wait any longer to ask. I’d waited long enough to be with the love of my life, after all.

So, everyone. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Dance. Thanks Daisy for the tunes, and Barlow for the booze and Eileen for the cake, which we’ll be cutting now, so get in line. And thanks so much, again, for coming.’ Harry was laughing now, distracted, Nora hanging off of him like her very body was light with happiness. ‘And see you all at the wedding!’

Chapter 11

Her feet, bare as they were, couldn’t take the required bouncing for Kriss Kross’s Jump, so Bea made a swift exit, dance-floor right, claiming a seat at a table, empty but for general party detritus: paper plates with sandwich crusts and unwanted samosa triangles; discarded cardigans and handbags; the jagged skins of burst balloons. She tried to dust off the soles of her feet but they were smudged so grey she gave that up as a bad lot and sat back in the chair.

‘Are you alright there, child?’ A red-faced Eileen was there almost immediately, hovering at Bea’s elbow. She’d always mothered her far more than her real mum; Bea only pretended to mind. ‘Sure, you should go on home, if you’re tired. I’ll be off myself before too long now.’ The sherry must be finished, thought Bea with a smile.

‘I’m fine,’ Bea assured her godmother. ‘I’m just resting.’ She gestured at her well-danced-upon feet.

‘Ah, yes now, I’m the same. The dogs are barking.’ And with that Eileen lowered her stiff frame into the chair next to Bea’s and placed her cool hand over hers. ‘It’s a shame Hannah couldn’t make it tonight.’ Bea sighed in agreement. Her mother was currently living the ex-pat lifestyle in Portugal and seemed to have washed her hands of all motherly – and godmotherly – responsibilities as a result. Bea had only seen her twice in the last five years. With no dad ever in the picture, and no siblings, it had definitely left her a little adrift. And Eileen knew it. ‘Now, Nora tells me nothing these days, my girl. Has your special someone made an appearance, now? There’s nobody you thought to bring tonight?’

Bea’s mind flitted to Nice Guy Rob and to the three text messages he’d sent her before taking the hint. ‘Nobody special, no, not yet.’ Eileen had drummed the idea that there was one perfect someone in the world for each of the girls. Granted, it was to get them to consider no sex before marriage, but still, the concept had stuck.

‘Ah, he’ll be along. He’s a man, my girl, and they are all inconvenience, so it will be when you least expect it,’ Eileen informed her authoritatively, settling back in the chair. Bea braced herself for an indeterminable onslaught of unwarranted love-life advice from her widowed godmother.

‘Mammy, I’m going outside for a fag, do you want one?’ Nora’s brother Cillian called out as he made his way past the table, beautiful new girlfriend in tow. He winked at Bea; she shot him a grateful look.

‘Cillian, that’s a filthy habit,’ Eileen intoned mildly, as she got up to follow her son out into the darkened beer garden and indulge in said habit. Bea exhaled, left in peace as both her head and her feet pounded in time with the bass of the music.

‘Here.’ Eli thunked a dripping pint glass of tap water down on the table in front of her. Bea squeezed his forearm in thanks and drank deeply. Eli, holding his own glass, joined her at the little round table. ‘I don’t think Baz got enough drink in. Everyone’s been very much enjoying the open bar.’

‘That’s because an open bar is a thing of beauty,’ Bea pointed out.

‘It’s going to be one drunken wedding if the engagement party is anything to go by. It’s nice, isn’t it, how there’s no big bride/groom split, really? Harry and Nora have shared friends for so long, everybody knows everybody. It’s nice. It’s—’

‘Incestuous?’ Bea supplied, sullenly.

Eli just laughed, used to her occasional darkness. ‘Come on. I know you of old, Beatrice Milton, and you are no way near as prickly as you pretend to be.’ He glanced over wistfully to where Nora was chatting and dancing with Cleo, both holding over-full glasses of wine aloft, shining in the lights. ‘You wouldn’t like what they have? To fall in love with your best friend? You can’t tell me that Harry’s speech didn’t touch you deep in that hedgehog heart of yours.’

‘You’re drunk,’ Bea laughed.

‘Well, you’re a hedgehog,’ Eli repeated, matter-of-fact. ‘Let’s dance.’

* * *

There was a soft touch to the small of her back, a voice in her ear, pitched low to sound under the music. ‘There you are.’

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