Always the Bridesmaid Read online

  ‘Jesus, Maddie, no!’ Lauren rolled her eyes and pouted. ‘I’m hoping he asked because he loves me. It happens. Remember when Sarah did it? Big white dress, church, party, bridesmaids?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Sarah said again, this time in a whisper. Her face was ashen and she refused to make eye contact with either of us, even when I gave her a swift kick under the table.

  ‘And that’s why I asked you to come meet me tonight,’ Lauren went on, in a Keep Calm and Carry On voice. American born maybe, but that girl had the stiff upper lip of a Brit when it was needed. She could pretend something wasn’t happening like an absolute pro. ‘To ask if you would be my bridesmaids.’

  ‘Of course!’ I shouted. Bridesmaids! Lauren’s bridesmaids! Lauren was getting married! Argh! I mean, hurrah! ‘That’s amazing, Lauren − come here.’

  Hugging seemed like the socially correct gesture, but in half a heartbeat I went from being ecstatically happy to realizing it would make me the spinster of the group. But still, I gave her a hug instead of stabbing her through the heart with my butter knife. I was raised properly.

  ‘Sarah, isn’t this amazing?’ I asked, widening my eyes at our other friend across the table while Lauren showed off her ring to the waiter, who politely pretended to care.

  But Sarah didn’t reply. We should have been screeching and making neighbouring tables offer awkward congratulations, but instead of leaping to her feet and joining the hug, Sarah was staring at her knees with tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Sarah?’

  She held up a hand and tried to choke down the tears so that she could speak. Good old emotionally constipated Sarah had finally exploded. She was too overcome with happiness to leave her seat. It was impressive, really − Sarah never cries. When we went to her grandmother’s funeral, she was the one who elbowed me in the ribs and told me to keep it together. But our dear friend’s unexpected betrothal to a slightly dull man who thought cleaning products were an appropriate expression of love was finally the thing that got to her.

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she croaked.

  It wasn’t the response either of us had been expecting.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Are you OK?’

  She looked up, mascara running down her face, lips pursed tightly together, and shook her head, rubbing her hands together like a Topshop-clad Lady Macbeth.

  ‘These are bridesmaid journals,’ Lauren said, determinedly upbeat, taking her seat again and tossing the two pink packages across the table, ‘so you can write down all the happy memories, like the time I asked you to be my bridesmaids and showed you my engagement ring and Sarah said she wanted to throw up?’

  And that was when I noticed Sarah’s left hand was entirely without diamond adornment. No engagement ring, no wedding ring.

  Fuckityfuckfuckcockbollocks.

  ‘Come on, you two, I’m getting married!’ Lauren said before I could react. She waved her newly accessorized hand in the air, too busy looking at her own ring to notice the lack of someone else’s. ‘What’s wrong? Be happy!’

  ‘Sorry, don’t meant to be rude,’ Sarah said, raising her champagne glass in a solo toast and then draining every last drop. ‘Steve asked me for a divorce at the weekend, but, you know, here’s to you. Cheers.’

  And so, dear diary, on the upside, tonight I was given this lovely journal, but on the downside, I had to endure one of the most uncomfortable evenings of my entire life. On reflection, probably not worth it.

  All About You

  Being a bridesmaid isn’t just a day to wear a pretty dress and have your photo taken!

  As well as getting to know your bride even better than you do today, it’s a time to learn a lot about yourself. Fill in the answers below and you might be surprised to learn what an accomplished and powerful and wonderful young woman you already are.

  Remember, there’s a reason your bride chose you!

  My hair is: light brown

  My eyes are: green

  My favourite physical attribute is: boobs

  I don’t love my: thighs arse bank balance but they’re mine!

  My three best qualities are: loyalty, sense of humour, perseverance (as evidenced by this journal)

  I make a great friend because: I’m a good listener, I remember everything and I always have gin

  Three things I will practise from this day on for a happier, healthier life:

  – Delete all the shopping apps off my phone before I bankrupt myself

  – Stop looking at my ex-boyfriend’s Facebook page

  – Only look at my ex-boyfriend’s Facebook page once a week

  – Read all the big literary books Sarah has given me instead of looking at the Wikipedia entries for the ones that win prizes and telling everyone I’ve read them

  – Get fantastic boyfriend and post so many pictures of the two of us that people I don’t know that well unfriend/unfollow me

  – Spend time meditating and getting to know myself so I can truly be happy

  – Throw out dry shampoo and bloody well wash hair more often

  2

  Friday May 15th

  Today I feel: Like eating All Of The Things.

  Today I am thankful for: The fact I’m too lazy to go out and buy all of the things.

  Knowing I had to work all day Saturday for the McCallan wedding, I had planned to spend the entirety of Friday night on my arse watching some terrible television and working my way through the millions of emails Lauren had already sent about her wedding and hastily arranged engagement party, set for Sunday afternoon. I know, two days’ notice. FUN.

  So far she’d sent me fifteen different wedding dresses, six venues and enquired whether or not we could get Beyoncé to play the reception – and, officially speaking, we hadn’t even started planning properly yet.

  Why did I get the feeling this wasn’t going to be an easy one?

  I was tapping out the politest version of ‘No, we cannot get one of the most successful musicians in the world to play the reception, you lovely moron’ when the texts from Sarah started. It was her first Friday night as a single woman in ten years, and she wasn’t doing well, despite the seventeen ‘I’m fine’ text messages she’d sent me earlier in the day.

  An hour later, she was at my door, Oddbins bag in hand.

  ‘Sorry it’s such a shit-hole,’ I said, shoving half a pile of magazines off the coffee table onto the floor as she gingerly placed her handbag in their place.

  ‘It’s always a shit-hole,’ she pointed out, her voice tired and defeated as she handed me a bottle of gin and looked round at the clutter spread all across my flat. Open plan had seemed like such a good idea when I found the place but all I’d really done was double the amount of space I had available to fill with shit. At least she’d had the presence of mind to bring tonic. I never had anything helpful in my cupboards unless you considered an unopened packet of Ryvita and a not quite empty box of Frosties useful. ‘I’m used to it − your shit-hole is reassuring. Drinks. Now.’

  It’s easy to let your flat become a takeaway-box-littered shantytown when no one else is there, but it’s hard to defend your appalling housekeeping skills face to face. Ever since Seb had moved out, I’d lacked the motivation to keep the place in order. It was amazing how quickly you could get over dust allergies if you tried.

  ‘I was going to clean this evening,’ I lied, ‘but I thought essential bonding time with my best friend in the entire world was more important. Do correct me if I’m wrong.’

  ‘You might actually be.’ Sarah slapped both of her hands down on the kitchen counter and gave me a grim smile. ‘This place is a human rights violation.’

  ‘Shut up and drink your gin,’ I said, poking my way to the back of a cupboard to find clean glasses. ‘Shona was a real bitch today.’

  I’m not proud of myself, but I was putting off talking about the divorce until I had at least one drink in me. I had no idea how to talk about the divorce. If I’d had advance warning, I
might have bought in a lot of ice cream and dug up my Pretty Woman DVD, because that’s what we did when Dave Stevenson stood her up for the lower sixth Halloween disco. I didn’t know the protocol for this one.

  ‘I know we give you shit about it, but you need to find a new job,’ Sarah said, moving a pile of creased sweatshirts from the settee to the armchair and sitting herself down. ‘I can’t believe you got a mammogram for her. Your boss shouldn’t really get a say in your tits unless you’re sleeping with them for a promotion.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not?’

  ‘Because of that time Lauren kissed you at the uni ball to impress Stephan Jones and you threw up immediately afterwards.’

  ‘That was as much to do with Aftershock shots as my aversion to lipstick lesbianism,’ I replied. ‘I could be a lesbian.’

  ‘You couldn’t even get through an entire series of Orange Is the New Black.’

  ‘Yes, but that was because I live in mortal fear of going to prison and ending up as someone’s bitch,’ I pointed out. ‘Not because I’m scared of a loving, respectful, consensual partnership with a lady.’

  ‘You’re not gay, Maddie,’ she said. ‘You’re just a wimp.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, chopping up a sad-looking lemon for our gin. ‘That’s one of the upsides of having a gay sister. You don’t run around going “I wish I was a lesbian, it’s so much easier”, because it isn’t.’

  Sarah nodded and held her hand out for a red wine glass full to the brim with gin and tonic. ‘Remember that girl she was going out with in her first year at Durham? What a cock.’

  ‘It’s not just the chaps,’ I agreed. ‘Women can be just as bad.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m pretty anti-man right now,’ she said, nursing the glass but not drinking.

  Here it was. The Talk. We were going to have the talk and I was going to be supportive and caring and she would leave here knowing that she was an incredible person who, in spite of all the pain she was going through, was utterly and completely loved. I was going to say just the right thing.

  ‘Yuh-huh.’

  I suck so hard.

  Thankfully, Sarah didn’t seem to mind my friend fail and took it upon herself to start talking anyway. I dropped a lemon in her drink, sat myself down and held my glass tightly. All I needed to do was listen.

  ‘Things had been shit for a while,’ Sarah said. ‘I suppose I got used to it. He was out a lot and I’ve been working so much … you don’t realize how quickly things can go wrong. It’s got to be three months since we even had sex. I just didn’t realize.’

  I nodded in silence. Three months. Was that a long time? I’d forgotten.

  ‘Then he comes home one day and out of nowhere he’s like, it isn’t working, I want a divorce. Just like that, he wants a divorce.’

  ‘So, what actually happened?’ I asked, treading as carefully as I knew how. ‘What exactly did he say?’

  These were the same two questions I’d been asking her about boys since we were eleven. The fact that we were thirty-one and still having the same conversations was impossibly depressing.

  Sarah took a deep breath and blew it out in one big huff.

  ‘It’s so ridiculous, saying it out loud,’ she said, her big blue eyes tearing up already. And as we’ve established, Sarah is not a crier. ‘It was Saturday, he’d been at the football with Michael and some of the others all day. I was a bit pissed off because, like I said, we hardly ever see each other and he was out so late, and he didn’t tell me what time he’d be home.’

  ‘So you were perfectly entitled to be annoyed,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ she nodded, swiping at a stray tear before it messed up her eyeliner. ‘So I was making dinner when he got in, and he got a beer out of the fridge and I said dinner was almost ready and could he open the wine, and he said he didn’t want wine and I said I wanted wine, and he said he wanted to go out and I said I’d made dinner, and he slammed down his beer on the kitchen top and it spilled everywhere, and then he said “This isn’t working”. And yeah, it went from there.’

  Sarah was still staring at her gin instead of drinking it, but I was halfway down mine.

  ‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ she said, tapping her bitten-down nail on the rim of her glass. ‘You think these things are going to be dead dramatic, and then they’re not. You’re doing something painfully normal and having a totally average chat, and then, there it is. He just says it, just like that. It’s not working. He wants a divorce. Dunzo.’

  ‘Did he actually say he wants to get divorced, though?’ I asked, looking for a silver lining in this epic pile of shit. ‘Maybe he means he wants a break. Or he wants to fix things? This might be his way of getting your attention.’

  ‘He’s got that,’ she replied in a voice so light it felt like her words might float away before I heard them. ‘He’s already moved out. He slept on the settee on Saturday and went to stay at his mum’s on Sunday. He’s not coming back, Maddie. He emailed me today to say he’s got a lawyer and I should do the same.’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell.’ I squeezed her ankle, the most easily accessibly appendage, while she chewed on her bottom lip in an attempt to stop the tears from coming. She’d been gnawing on that thing for so many years I was amazed she hadn’t chewed it right off. ‘Why didn’t you call me before? I could have done—’

  ‘Absolutely nothing?’

  I had never felt so useless in my entire life. I wanted to help but didn’t know how, and when your entire existence is based around being The One Who Helps, that is majorly distressing.

  ‘I started about a million texts, but I couldn’t work out how to say it,’ Sarah said. ‘Plus I had a yoga workshop.’

  I paused, mid-sip. ‘You went to a yoga workshop? The day after your husband told you he wanted a divorce?’

  ‘I’d already paid for it,’ she said, daring me to argue. ‘And what was I supposed to do − sit around and cry all weekend?’

  ‘I don’t know whether to be massively impressed or have you sectioned,’ I said. ‘So that’s it? It’s happening?’

  Sarah tilted back her glass and chugged it down in three big gulps.

  ‘When I try to think about it,’ she said, ‘it’s like my brain shuts down. I can’t even process it. Then I’ll be sat having a wee and I’ll look at my hand and think, do I have to take my wedding ring off? Has he already taken his off? I actually googled how long it would take for the groove to go away.’

  She held up her hand and stretched out her bare fingers. I felt my own face crumple a little bit as her tears started to come in earnest.

  ‘Turns out it takes longer than a week,’ she gasped, clenching her hand into a tight fist. ‘I can’t believe that he’s doing this and he’s happy about it. How can someone who said they loved you every day for a decade suddenly decide they don’t any more? I’m sitting at home every night, sleeping in the spare room because I can’t stand to be in our bed, and he’s happy.’

  ‘Do you think he’s cheating?’ I asked.

  She fidgeted with her top button for a moment and then shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said with certainty. ‘He said he isn’t.’

  ‘Right,’ I replied.

  ‘Why?’ Suddenly she wasn’t looking nearly as certain. ‘He wouldn’t. Would he? Do you think he is? Have you heard something?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied instantly, squeezing her foot to calm her down.

  Another white lie in the name of friendship.

  Of course I thought he was cheating. Why else would he suddenly decide he wanted to abandon his wife and marriage without giving it a second thought? They’d been together since uni, inseparable for a decade, and now he had randomly decided it wasn’t working out? I remembered when Seb left me, wonderful Shona reminding me that most men don’t leave until they’ve got the next thing lined up. I scoffed at the time but of course, it turned out she was right in my case. Not an insight I would share with Sarah at this stage, perhaps.
r />   ‘I don’t want to get divorced,’ Sarah said, her watery blue eyes meeting my red-rimmed green ones. ‘I don’t want to have to tell people I’m divorced and sit there while they wonder what’s wrong with me or do exactly what you just did and assume he was cheating on me. What’s going to happen to me now?’

  I stared blankly at the TV that I’d muted when I heard the doorbell but not turned off. A cartoon played silently in the background, a happy dysfunctional family, husband, wife, three kids.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, not wanting to lie any more than I had to. ‘But I do know we’ll get through it. I don’t know what else to say that won’t sound like a load of annoying clichés.’

  ‘I’m only thirty-one,’ Sarah said, gripping the stem of her glass until her knuckles turned white. ‘I’m not the first person in the world to get divorced, am I? Better now than ten years down the line when we’d have two kids in the mix, isn’t it?’

  ‘Course.’ I wondered how many times she’d told herself that already this week. ‘You’re totally right.’

  ‘All I want is to not feel like this any more,’ she said wearily, putting down her glass and pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. ‘It’s like the worst hangover ever. I feel sick and empty, and every time I forget about it for a moment, it comes back and punches me in the face. And the only person who could make me feel better about it is the person who’s causing it. I hate him so much I can see it, but all I want is for him to come home and tell me he’s changed his mind.’

  That part I recognized. ‘Really? You’d take him back?’

  ‘I don’t even know,’ she laughed, sounding sour. ‘I don’t know what I’d do. How would I ever trust him? I’d always be waiting for him to do it again, wouldn’t I?’

  For want of a better response, I shrugged.

  ‘So what the fuck do I do now?’ Sarah asked, dropping her head against the back of my saggy settee. ‘Am I just supposed to sit here until it stops feeling like someone ripped my insides out with a fish hook?’

  ‘Would it help if I made you a kale smoothie?’ I offered.