Don't Tell the Groom (19 page)

‘I think I'm going to be sick,' she says, running off towards the bathroom.

‘Pass me her bucket,' says Mark. ‘That was pretty rank.'

‘What, the wine or Lou practically throwing up in the living room?' I ask snidely.

‘The wine,' says Mark.

‘Yeah, I have to admit it was a strong taste to have without food. Have we all done our scores?'

Mark and Russell look at each other and nod. Time for the big reveal.

‘That was a South African chenin blanc,' I say, peeling off the label.

‘Great. Are they all going to taste as awful as that?' asks Mark.

‘I hope not.'

Oh, God! What if they are? What if I have the worst skills in wine-picking ever? I usually just go for the prettiest label and be done with it. Only this time I actually read the backs of the bottles to see what they went with.

‘That's better,' says Lou, as she comes back into the room.

She doesn't look better; she looks as pale as Casper the friendly ghost.

‘Shall we go into the dining room and eat?' asks Mark, as if he's sensing the uneasiness of the evening returning.

Mark and I have really excelled ourselves in our tapas cooking. Or at least Mark has – I just printed all the recipes off the internet for him. Every dish tastes delicious. It's a pity we have no idea how to cater for eighty people or else we could roll this out as our wedding food, it's that good. And think how cheap that would be!

‘This wine is definitely my favourite,' says Russell.

Not that I wouldn't have noticed – he's drunk practically the entire bottle of it. We've stopped going methodically through the bottles and in the end we've assigned Russell to be the white drinker and Mark and I were trying reds.

‘Can I have a quick sip?' I ask. I think it's best I get in on the act before there is an empty bottle. I reach over and grab Russell's glass. ‘You're right, that is lovely. OK, we have our white winner.'

I peel off my stuck-on label and see that it's the French Chablis. I carefully circle it on my wine list and make a note:
This is the one
. Just in case I have too many more wines and then don't remember tomorrow morning.

I couldn't face going through another painful evening like this. It's like the worst dinner party ever, except with maybe the best food. Lou and Russell are barely speaking to each other and Mark and I are having to hold court.

‘So, Lou, you're the only one who knows about the wedding venue. Am I going to like it?' asks Mark.

‘You're going to love it,' Lou says, smiling.

So she can smile after all; I was beginning to think she'd said something nasty and the wind had changed.

‘It's going to be a beautiful wedding,' she adds.

‘Ah, thanks, Lou, and I'm sure you'll make a beautiful bridesmaid too. Except not too beautiful as you're not allowed to upstage me.'

‘No chance of that,' she says.

Did that sound sarcastic to anyone else in the room? Or have I had too much wine?

I'm just going to glide right over it. ‘Now that I've got my dress we'll have to go and get your dress sometime. Maybe next week?'

‘I can't, I'm busy,' she says.

‘OK then, what about the weekend after?'

‘No,' she says, wrinkling her nose up. ‘I think I'm busy then too. I'll tell you what, when I get home I'll check my diary and tell you what date I'm free.'

WTF? Is this my best friend I spent months and months traipsing round every dress shop in the south-east with, looking for a bridesmaid dress that was the
exact
shade of pink she wanted? And now she won't even commit to a date to go and look at dresses?

I'm too gobsmacked to even respond. Lou is the only person I've let into any aspect of this secret wedding planning and
yet she keeps running a million miles the other way when I try to involve her. Is she trying to distance herself deliberately?

She really has got secret friends. It is the only explanation.

‘How about we have dessert?' says Mark.

‘I'll get it,' I say, standing up. I manage to collect up our dirty plates and walk into the kitchen before I let a tear roll down my face. I don't want to go all bridezilla on everyone but I just feel that Lou, of all people, should be taking an interest in this wedding.

I'm practically on autopilot taking the chocolate cake out of the fridge. Maybe this ‘don't tell the groom' is harder on me than I realise. Maybe I'm being too harsh on Lou. Maybe I'm just disappointed that Mark isn't able to take an interest in the wedding details and I thought Lou would pick up the slack. Perhaps that's the real reason I'm feeling upset.

I'll give Lou an extra big portion of chocolate cake and perhaps that will be my peace offering to her. I even add an extra scoop of vanilla ice cream as I know that is her favourite.

‘There you go,' I say, as I walk back into the dining room.

‘Actually, I think we're going to skip dessert,' says Lou. ‘I'm really tired and I still feel really sick.'

Who is this impostor and where is Lou? This is Lou's favourite dessert. I've seen her eat this after an Olympic breakfast at
the Little Chef. Nothing stands between Lou and a chocolate fudge cake.

‘Thanks, Mark and Pen, for such a lovely evening,' says Lou, standing up.

Lovely evening? Have we been at the same table all night?

‘We'll have to have you round to our house sometime soon,' says Russell.

Lou just shot Russell the filthiest look at the mere suggestion that we'd be going round to their house. Come to think of it, we haven't been round to their house for weeks. Months even. Are they phasing us out and we're just not bright enough to cotton on?

Before I've registered that they're leaving Lou is out of the door. I don't even get a kiss goodbye; she just waves as she walks towards her Ford Focus.

‘We didn't open the cheese,' I call.

‘You two have it,' says Russell. ‘Enjoy!'

I close the door and rest my back up against it for a minute, trying to digest what just happened. It's only a momentary lapse as I soon remember that I've left chocolate cake and ice cream in the dining room.

‘Don't you think that was weird?' I say to Mark.

He's sitting there finishing off the last of the contents of his bowl. He looks completely unfazed by the tornado of an awful evening that he just witnessed.

‘What?' asks Mark.

I watch him lean over and take Lou's giant portion of cake. Well, I guess it would have been going to waste.

‘Lou's behaviour. Didn't you think it was strange? The whole hangover thing and not drinking. Them leaving before dessert. Before Lou's
favourite
dessert. Her non-committal attitude towards the bridesmaid dress shopping.

‘As far as I can tell there is only one logical explanation to all this: they have new best friends.'

Mark looks up from his half-eaten fudge cake and stares at me. I don't understand what he doesn't get. It is simple when you add up all the bits of information.

‘Really? All that happened tonight and that's your best explanation for it?'

I rack my brains to try to work out what I'm missing, only it isn't easy when you've consumed the best part of two bottles of wine.

‘Or maybe Russell and Lou are getting a divorce. Maybe they're living in separate houses and that is why we haven't been over to their house in ages. Maybe Lou needs to be sober so she can drop Russell off and drive to her new place,' I say.

I'm now offended that Lou hasn't shown me her new place.

‘I don't think that's it,' says Mark, smiling at me.

He looks so bloody smug. Well, I'm not going to let him tell me what he thinks. I'm going to try and guess. Even if
it does feel like I'm playing
Family Fortunes
and desperately trying to get the top answer.

‘Why don't you examine the facts?' says Mark.

There is definitely a smugness in his tone. That will be the red wine; he always thinks he's right when he drinks it.

‘She wasn't drinking, she didn't have her favourite dessert, she went home because she was tired,' says Mark.

I'm struggling here to connect the dots.

‘And she didn't eat the prawns,' adds Mark.

I'm still blank. I must remember not to drink too much of this wine at the wedding or else my guests are not going to have the most scintillating conversation with me.

‘She's pregnant,' says Mark, with a heavy sigh.

Suddenly it is right there in front of me. All the signs are there flashing in neon lights. She was even wearing a baggy top over her skinny jeans.

‘But she can't be. She would have told me. She hasn't even told me they're trying for a baby.'

Mark goes back to eating his chocolate fudge cake.

‘She can't be pregnant,' I say. But it is a far more logical explanation than anything I've thought of.

This wedding is going from bad to worse. Not only do I have a third of the wedding budget, but now my best friend isn't going to be my maid of honour. She's going to be all glowing and distracted by the little bundle of joy she is having. I really
shouldn't drink wine. It makes me think the worst of things. But it's just that I can't imagine a wedding day without Lou by my side.

I've hit rock bottom. I really have. I'm sitting in a coffee shop and looking at my hands as they're visibly shaking.

‘Are you OK?' asks Josh.

He sits down opposite me with his coffee and for a minute I just want to lean across and hug him. I'm sure it's the leather jacket that he always wears; it makes me think that he could wrap his arms around me and protect me from anything.

He said something, didn't he? I can't for the life of me remember what it was, because I'm too busy looking at his shoulders as he slips off his jacket. Focus, Penny, focus. He was just asking if I'm OK.

‘I've been better.'

‘So your text said that you gambled again,' says Josh.

I wince. There is something so awful about the
G
word
when it's said out loud. It makes me feel like I've done something truly, truly heinous.

‘I bought five scratch cards yesterday. I hadn't planned to do it, but I was getting some milk from the corner shop and I thought that I could just do with a little boost. I'd wanted to buy a lottery ticket but it was past seven thirty.'

Josh is nodding as if he understands. See, this is why I texted him.

‘I just felt so dirty. I mean, I bought a scratch card. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience as I watched myself hunched over the kitchen table and desperately scratching off the grey boxes. And then I got really paranoid that Mark would see one of the grey specks that I'd rubbed off and work everything out. I ended up hoovering the kitchen table just to get rid of any trace of them.'

‘Did you win?' asks Josh.

‘What?'

What does winning have to do with it? Surely the focus here should be on the fact that I gambled?

‘Did you win or did you lose?'

‘I don't know,' I say.

‘What, did you throw them away before you looked?'

‘No, I couldn't work out if I'd won.'

I reach into my pocket and dig out five slightly crinkled scratch cards and I pass them over to Josh.

‘You need a flipping degree to understand if you've won,' I say, to make myself feel better. I can't tell whether it was the scratch cards that were complicated or if I was flustered that Mark might come home and catch me, but I honestly couldn't work out if I'd won.

‘You haven't won,' says Josh.

‘Really? Not even a pound? What about the one with the diamonds?'

‘Nope, your stones don't match.'

I don't know why I am surprised that I've lost again. It wasn't like I'd had a whole lot of luck in the first place with gambling.

‘Well, there's another waste of five pounds. It just feels so much worse than the bingo,' I say.

‘How come?'

‘Because I could see the mess I'd made afterwards. I'd scratched like I was a fox savaging a carcass. I couldn't help it.'

‘In the grand scheme of things a few scratch cards are no worse than your online bingo. You do realise you lost ten thousand pounds doing that? I don't think you should rank forms of gambling as better or worse than each other. It's all gambling.'

I don't know why I bother talking to Josh sometimes. He makes me so cross. He knocks me down so that I'm even lower than I was before I spoke to him. This wasn't the kind
of thing I wanted to hear when I texted him. I wanted him to give me a little pep talk. Next he'll be calling me a thief again.

‘What made you do it?' he asks.

‘I was buying milk and I saw them.'

‘No, I mean what made you do it? Were you having a bad day? Why did you want the tickets?'