The Wedding Date. Jennifer Joyce
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close to the back of the room as possible yet) when a girl stopped by my desk. She was quite short and skinny with her ginger hair plaited into pigtails at the side of her head.
‘Scary, isn’t it?’
I was bloody terrified but I gave my own hair (blonde and loose around my shoulders) a flick. ‘I’m fine. Not scared at all.’ I caught this new girl’s eye and gave a wobbly smile, my show of courage completely failing before it had properly begun. ‘I’m lying. I’m so scared. Do you think we’ll get bog-washed?’ I’d heard so many horror stories about high school that I didn’t expect to last the day without serious injury and/or humiliation.
‘I hope not.’ The girl bit her lip and her big green eyes started to get a bit swimmy. ‘Can I sit here?’ She pointed at the empty seat beside me and I nodded, grateful that I wouldn’t have to sit on my own (I did already know that sitting on your own was a bit sad). ‘Thanks. I’m Lauren, by the way.’
‘Delilah.’ I moved my pencil case over, to make room for Lauren’s.
‘Like the Tom Jones song?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Yeah.’ I heard that a lot. I heard the song a lot as people thought it was hilarious to sing it to me on a regular basis. They still do that now, but it’s mostly the older generation or my friends when they want to wind me up. For a while, I had a burst of ‘Hey There Delilah’ by Plain White T’s but that’s mostly fizzled out now.
‘Do you know anybody here?’
I looked around the room and shrugged my shoulders. ‘Sort of. Some of them went to my primary school but they’re not really my friends.’
Lauren twisted a ginger plaited pigtail around her finger. ‘I don’t know anybody. We just moved here over the holidays.’
‘That sucks.’
Lauren nodded, her twisting becoming more and more erratic. ‘I haven’t got any friends at all.’
‘You’ve got me,’ I said and that was that. Delilah and Lauren, BFFs.
Lauren is waiting for me in The Farthing, our pub of choice for most occasions. Partly because it’s close and partly because the barman is so damn cute. I’ve called an emergency meeting of the BFFs to discuss my dilemma with Francesca, her approaching wedding and my big, fat, lying gob. I order a round of drinks, having a little flirt with Dan the Barman while I’m there (it would be rude not to) before joining her at our usual table.
‘Ryan not here yet?’
Lauren shakes her head and takes a sip of her red wine. ‘He isn’t bringing that awful Kelsey with him again, is he? Where does he find these women?’
‘His mother.’ Lauren and I share a look, both knowing what an utter pain in the bum Ryan’s mum is. Ryan’s choice in women is never good enough for Eleanor Ford so she’s taken to setting him up with ones she deems suitable. ‘Kelsey wasn’t that bad. Ryan’s dated worse women.’ At least this one didn’t mistake Lauren and me for the hired help.
‘She made us lose the quiz last night.’
‘Lauren.’ I place a hand on her arm. ‘We always lose the quiz.’
‘But she thought Vientiane was the capital of Legos!’
I try – and fail – to hide a smirk. ‘But who is thicker? Kelsey for thinking Legos is a country or us for believing her and writing it down?’
Lauren doesn’t have an answer – or at least one she is willing to admit to – so she takes a couple of long sips of her wine instead. ‘What’s so urgent anyway? It’s supposed to be a gym day.’ I’m alarmed when I realise Lauren is wearing her gym gear – she doesn’t think we’re actually going to the gym after this, does she?
‘I can’t go to the gym. My knee.’ I lift the hem of my pencil skirt to show off the plaster Adam applied this afternoon. My bloody, ripped tights are bundled in the bin back at Brinkley’s. I’d managed quite well once it had stopped stinging after Adam applied some nasty-smelling ointment, but I can feel my limp returning. It has nothing to do with the prospect of the treadmill and cross-trainer, of course.
‘What happened?’ Lauren asks.
‘I fell over running for the bus this morning.’ I could have told Lauren the mugger-lie but her porky-pies detector is pretty sharp. ‘The pavement was all wonky. Hey!’ I sit up straighter, only remembering at the very last second to wince. ‘Do you think I could make a claim?’
Lauren is a solicitor. She focuses on divorce, but I’m sure she could give me some advice.
‘Probably. People claim for tripping up over their own shoes laces these days.’ Lauren peers at my plastered knee. ‘So how bad is it?’
I wince and groan. ‘So bad, Lauren. Adam was ready to take me to A&E for stitches. You should have seen all the blood. You could practically see my kneecap once all the blood was cleaned up.’
Lauren cocks an eyebrow. ‘Delilah…’
Uh-oh. I’ve laid it on a bit too thick. ‘But it isn’t as bad as it looks. No stitches required.’ I cover the plaster with my skirt in case Lauren decides to whip it off and examine my knee herself. ‘But I don’t think I’m up to the gym. It hurts.’
‘Why don’t you just do something gentle?’
Gentle? At the gym? ‘Like what?’
Lauren thinks for a moment. I can practically see the cogs turning in her brain, but we both know it’s useless. If there was a gentle option at the gym, we’d have used it every time.
‘Fine, we’ll miss the gym this once.’ Lauren takes another sip of her drink. She doesn’t look too put out about missing her workout, but then why should she? Lauren and I go to the gym twice a week but our main motivation isn’t to be fit and healthy (that isn’t even a minor motivation, in fact). We only go so Lauren can ogle Courtney, the gorgeous fitness instructor. She’s had a massive crush on him for ages and has roped me into her perviness.
‘So what’s this meeting about then?’ Lauren asks me but I’m not ready to divulge my stupidity just yet. I don’t want to have to confess all twice.
‘Wait until Ryan gets here and I’ll tell you.’
As though on cue, Ryan Ford, Best Friend Number Two (but not in a toilet-y way), wanders into the pub. Alone. Good. The less witnesses the better.
I’ve known Ryan for as long as I can remember, as he and his family moved into the house next door when I was two. According to Mum, the Ford family – Ryan and his parents, Eleanor and Phil – moved in one sunny Saturday in June. She remembers that it was sunny because she says she was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a bikini top (I can’t imagine Mum wearing a bikini. She won’t even strip down to a one-piece on holiday any more) and it was around a month before my birthday. She and Dad were discussing plans for my third birthday and Mum suggested, because it was so warm already, that we could have a pool party.
‘But we don’t have a pool,’ Dad had pointed out.
‘We’ll buy one of those inflatable paddling pools and dangle our feet in.’ Which we did. Thankfully I can’t remember it. ‘Ooh, hello there! Are you our new neighbours?’
Eleanor and Philip had appeared beyond the back garden fence and Mum pounced to introduce herself. The house had once belonged to an elderly couple who banged on the wall if you dared to sneeze, so Mum was pleased that a young family was moving in. Ryan was already in their back garden, kicking a football around. She pictured the seven of us (Ryan and his family, plus Mum, Dad, me and my older sister, Clara) getting together for barbeques and dinner parties.
It didn’t happen. Eleanor is a snob and she took one look at Mum’s cut-off shorts and bare midriff, stuck her nose in the air and scarpered into the house. She declined Mum’s offer of a casserole that evening (no thank you, we’re