Chapter Thirty-Three

       I was the maid of honour at a wedding where the bride and groom had written their own vows, and my mate gave them to me to look after until they were needed. Needless to say, beautiful empire-line bridesmaids’ dresses do not have pockets, so I safely placed her beautifully written words of love into my cleavage whilst helping her with last minute touch-ups… Halfway through the ceremony it was time for the vows. My friend stared at me for a full minute before I remembered. So, right there at the front, next to a priest, I had to reach in-between my boobs, only to find the folded paper had slipped out of place and moved, making for an awkward, terribly silent few moments of me digging around.

      Becka, Bath

      Bea inspected the Order of Service she’d just folded together with a critical eye. She was the better part of a glass of wine down and she suspected her accuracy might be suffering the effects. She tried to mitigate the wonky spine by lining up the corners a little more neatly. It was passable; she duly added it to the nearby pile.

      Harry breezed through the front room, hairy shins and knees bravely bared to the December cold; Bea shivered in sympathy inside her cable corded knit and sipped gratefully at her glass of warming red.

      “I won’t be too long,” he promised Nora as he smoothed her hair back and kissed her jaw line. “I’ll just do the one set.”

      “Still, your willpower puts me to shame,” Nora pointed out ruefully, inclining her own glass of wine towards him. Most brides hike up the weight loss efforts in the last few weeks but Nora, particularly with Christmas indulgences sat squarely between herself and the altar, seemed content to slide off the wagon (glass of red in hand). Still, she had definitely slimmed down over the months since her engagement; even just sat cross-legged in front of the sofa in leggings, fluffy socks and an over-sized jumper she seemed sharper, more gamine. Bea was put in mind of the teenaged Nora, that window of time between the melting away of pre-puberty puppy fat and the poor diet of the student years, where Nora had been a bit like this, all cheekbone.

      “Well, can I pick up anything on the way back?” Harry offered, eyes twinkling. “Something for dinner? Another bottle?”

      Nora paused in her folding, clearly tempted. “I shouldn’t…”

      “Are you sure? I’m literally walking back straight past Happy Dragon…”

      “Oh, well then, it would be rude not to!” Bea laughed. “Make mine sweet and sour chicken balls, please!”

      Nora sighed dramatically. “Well, I suppose it will be you that has to deal with the melt-down if my dress doesn’t button up on the day.”

      Harry clapped his hands to his ears at the hint of bridal buttons and Nora laughed. He didn’t want to know even the tiniest detail about the wedding dress.

      “Okay then. How many calories can there even be in special fried rice? Don’t answer that! Let me just see what I’ve got in the way of cash.” Nora unfolded her legs and hopped up to search out her eternally errant handbag, Harry trailing after her as he made a note of what to order later using an app on his phone. Knowing there would soon be greasy takeaway to soak up the alcohol and hopefully improve the straightness of her folding, Bea took another drink. She inspected Nora’s own pile, which didn’t seem all that much better than her own, and felt a little better.

      Maybe she was just looking for the weight of tension, but would Harry normally go out to the gym when she was over? Had he met her eyes for a normal length of time when she’d asked for the chicken balls? For sure Cole had refused to speak to her since her return from France, had ignored every single phone call, every message left, pleading with him to let her explain.

      It’s not like I meant for this to happen, Bea had typed what felt like a hundred times over by now. This isn’t my fault. Maybe if she typed it another hundred times, she’d start to feel like it was true.

      At least her relationship with Nora didn’t seem, on the face of it, to be too shaken. In fact, Nora never mentioned it, even going so far as to awkwardly try and change the subject if Bea ever tentatively approached it. After being able to talk to Nora about anything and everything since, well, the moment Bea could talk, it felt slightly painful.

      She’d contacted Sarah too, of course. She’d jacked in her job and bolted to her mother’s house in Wales (she’d literally fled the country) and the horror and the guilt and the shame of it made Bea want to rip off her own skin with her fingernails. Bea remembered how she’d used to get so annoyed by how nicey nice Sarah was. Sarah was so nice, in fact, that she’d taken the time, somewhere in the midst of the demolition of her life and her marriage, to send Bea a short but polite message, saying that while it was Cole she blamed, not Bea, she’d appreciate it if Bea would stop calling, and leave her alone. And – after a brief paroxysm of indecision about whether or not agreeing to leave Sarah alone allowed for one more response confirming that she would indeed be doing that – Bea had decided to respect her erstwhile friend’s wishes.

      Bea had also heard very little from Daisy in the past few weeks. She wasn’t ignoring her, not as such, more avoiding her. Bea had been desperate for some of her American friend’s straight-talking sympathy, but after the third of fourth invitation somewhere for a bottle of something and a catch-up had been awkwardly swerved, Bea had gotten the message and stopped asking.

      Weirdly, it was Cleo who was being the most normal around Bea. Maybe she was just taking her cue from Nora and refusing to get involved, but where Bea had expected only snide comments and recriminations from her best frenemy, Cleo had been kinder to her than she ever had been in the decade or so Bea had known her. So maybe that was something…

      Harry called out his farewells from the flat door and Nora wandered back through to the front room, holding her handbag in one hand and her mobile phone in the other, idly checking her messages.

      “I wonder what’s so important,” she mused, her thumb working the touch screen. “It’s going to be a ballache finding somewhere for dinner short-notice in the city in December.”

      She was referring to Daisy’s enigmatic message of earlier that day, Bea realised. She’d messaged all four of them saying she had important news she needed to share.

      “I think she’s back with Darren,” Bea shrugged, folding another Order of Service as neatly as she could manage. “It’s that time of year, isn’t it? Everyone wants someone to snuggle on the sofa with and watch Christmas films. Everybody wants somebody to kiss at midnight…” Her voice tailed off, remembering that this year, of course, when Big Ben chimed in another January, it would be signalling the end of her best friend’s wedding day. Cole would be there, of course and so – as Nora had confirmed – would Sarah. Not having anyone to kiss at midnight would probably be the least of Bea’s concerns.

      Nora gracefully folded herself back down into her sitting position and grabbed up her glass of wine.

      “Oh dear,” she laughed, surveying the unimpressive piles of completed Orders of Service. “We’re not being all that productive this evening, are we?”

      “Oh, don’t worry, Mel,” Bea assured her, trying to keep her voice light, folding up another and adding it to the pile. “You’ve still got, oh, three weeks.”