Getting Over Mr. Right (20 page)

“Why won’t you return my calls?” she snapped. “You’re so selfish! I have been going out of my mind!”

“And I have been getting the sack.”

“What? What the hell did you do to get the sack?”

Becky had clearly forgotten that the correct reaction in such circumstances was to be sympathetic.

“I cocked up a presentation, all right? Quite literally, if you must know.”

“I must know,” said Becky. “Let me buy you a drink.”

I dumped my laptop just inside the front door and let her take me to the pub, where I had a big glass of Sauvignon Blanc and told her the tale.

“Ashleigh,” she said, “that’s not actually funny. What are you going to do for work?”

“Make wedding cakes?” I suggested.

Becky cast her eyes down to the table. “Talking of which … It’s really late in the day for me to order another cake. Even if you don’t want to be my bridesmaid … if you’re willing to finish it, I’ll pay you. It would get you started in your new career.” She smiled a little nervously.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, “that cake is my wedding present to you.”

“But you’re not coming to—”

“Of course I’m coming to your wedding.”

“Oh, thank God.” Becky heaved a sigh of relief.

“I’ve got nothing else to do.”

At last Becky’s big day arrived. Feeling all traditional, she had decided to go back to her parents’ house for the night before the wedding and insisted that I should go with her. When asking me to be her chief bridesmaid, she had given me a little book outlining my duties in the run-up to the wedding and on the day itself. From the moment she woke up at six in the morning (the wedding wasn’t until three in the afternoon), she made the most of her exalted position as bride. She started by ordering me downstairs for a cup of tea before I’d even opened my eyes.

“Make you tea?” I moaned.

“It’s my perfect day,” she reminded me.

When I returned with Becky’s Earl Grey and a bottle of champagne, I found her with her mother. They were going through Becky’s wedding folder like a pair of generals preparing to take a small country. Or a large country, for that matter.

“The little bridesmaids will be here at nine. The hairdresser arrives at nine thirty,” said Becky’s mum. “And the cake is in place?” she said to me, looking over the top of her glasses.

“Of course it is,” I said. “I delivered it to the hotel kitchen last night.”

“Good. Ashleigh, I’m so glad you came to your senses and agreed to be here today. You know that if you hadn’t come, you would have regretted it for the rest of your life, don’t you?”

I nodded and helped myself to another glass of champagne. Becky’s mother pulled a mildly disapproving face but quickly reset to “smile” when she realized that I had noticed.

“Just so long as you don’t step on my train on the way down the aisle!” Becky said.

The morning passed in a flurry of hairdressing and makeup appointments. It was largely without event, except that one of the younger bridesmaids ate too many of the fairy cakes Becky’s mother had provided for elevenses and was sick down the front of her dress. Fortunately, the worst of the damage sponged off easily. Then it was time to get Becky into her dress: a proper fairy-tale number with lacing all the way up the back. I was surprised she could breathe by the time all the lacing was done, but she could still breathe
and
give instructions.

“Before I forget,” she said to me, “I need you to give this CD to the DJ for our first dance.”

The first dance had been such a big secret, but when I saw the CD, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised. If I’d gone into Ladbrokes and asked for odds on this particular song
not
being the first dance, I would have gotten an incredible deal.

James Blunt.

“It’s track—”

“Number five,” I said. “ ‘You’re Beautiful.’ ”

“How did you guess?” Becky asked.

Full marks for bloody originality. I wondered, yet again, why no one ever seemed to notice that “You’re Beautiful” isn’t an uplifting love song. It’s tragic. The last line says, “I’ll never be with you.” In fact, the only person I knew who ever got that was Michael, who sang the song to me as we walked back to his place from the Tube one night. I was charmed at the time, but looking back, I understood at last what he had been getting at. The emphasis was definitely on “I’ll never be with you” as far as he was concerned. The memory made the champagne in my mouth seem suddenly flat.

“Ashleigh. Ashleigh!” Becky clicked her fingers in front of my face. “You were zoning out. Remember what you promised? Today is a happy day, so I don’t want to see you without
a smile on your face for one second. We can go back to
moaning about Michael
when I get back from my honeymoon.”

The way she said it, “Moaning about Michael,” with her comedy sad face, made me feel very stupid and small.

“You’re right,” I told her. “It’s your day and you’re my best friend. Here’s my happy face just for you.” I poked my fingers into my cheeks to lift up the sides of my mouth into a smile.

“Be careful of your makeup,” she said, inspecting me for damage.

“The cars are here!” one of the younger bridesmaids called up the stairs.

We bridesmaids would be traveling to the church in a limo. Becky and her dad would follow in a Bentley a little later.

“I’ll see you at the church,” I told her. “Keep smiling. Remember, it’s a happy day!”

“It’s
my
happy day,” Becky agreed.

So, I walked down the aisle behind my best friend, to the tune of “Sheep May Safely Graze” (so much classier than “The Wedding March,” Becky told me), feeling like a loser in my bright pink dress and trying desperately hard to convince myself that the congregation were too busy admiring Becky in her “cost-of-a-small-car” wedding dress to be looking at me. Nevertheless I was sure that I saw a couple of the hen-night harridans nudge each other as I passed by.
Always the sodding bridesmaid
. And they weren’t in the least bit surprised …

Up at the altar, Henry was waiting, looking slightly constipated in his morning dress. Though he wore a suit and tie five days a week and I don’t think I had ever seen him wear a shirt without a collar, even he looked uncomfortable in a waistcoat and cravat. Perhaps it was the color of his cravat and cummerbund that made him look so ill. Though Becky had been shrugging off the vestiges of our distinctly lower-middle-class upbringing since meeting her distinctly upper-class man, she hadn’t been able to resist insisting that Henry match his accessories to her flowers. Which were pink. I could only imagine what Henry’s mother had to say about that.

Standing next to Henry was his best man, Julian. As Becky and her father did the handing-over palaver, Julian looked at me in a way that was positively ravenous. I looked straight ahead. I may have been at my lowest point ever, but I was not
so low that Julian, with his hamster cheeks covered in ruddy gin blossoms, should think he had a chance.

I took Becky’s bouquet and stepped back into my place in the front pew.

“Dearly beloved …,” the vicar began.

It was an emotional wedding. Becky was crying from the off. Henry cried. Julian caught my eye and seemed to be crying, too, though that may have been down to his hangover. I felt the tears spring to my eyes for a variety of reasons. The romance in Becky’s life and the corresponding lack of it in mine. The thought that I might never find myself standing at an altar with a man whom I loved. And the fact that my Jimmy Choos were too tight.

Becky and Henry exited the church to the triumphant pealing of bells. The rain held off for the photographs: an endless series of group tableaux in the graveyard to be followed by yet more shots at the reception venue. A double-decker bus had been hired to take the guests between the church and the reception, which was being held at a country house hotel, but first I had to get Becky safely into the Bentley and make sure that her skirt didn’t get stuck in the door. It sounds easier than it was.

On arrival at the reception, I knocked back two glasses of champagne in quick succession before I continued my chief bridesmaid’s duties, marshaling the smaller bridesmaids for photos and making a pretty arrangement of our bouquets on a table in the dining room once the photographs were done.

For the wedding dinner, I sat at the head table, between Henry’s father and his fourth wife. I soon gave up trying to make conversation with Henry’s father because his hearing aid was on the blink. The fourth wife was friendly enough, but she had only recently arrived in the UK from Ukraine and her English
was limited to the names of all the designer concessions in Harvey Nichols. When I showed her the Jimmy Choos that had been killing me, she frowned. “Last season’s collection.”

After the meal came the speeches. Becky’s father embarrassed both his daughter and me with tales from our Croydon childhood. Henry gave a speech that was moving in its incompetence. It was so obvious that he loved his wife. Julian gave a surprisingly PG-rated best man’s speech. Actually, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised, since Becky had vetoed any strip-club shenanigans for Henry’s stag party. Instead, he and his closest male friends had spent a day on a golf course and were home by 7
PM
.

“Thank God that’s over,” said Julian when his speech was done and he could at last risk having a glass or six of champers.

“You did very well,” I assured him. My moment in the spotlight was still to come.

“It’s time for the cake,” said Becky’s mother, grabbing my arm with her heavily be-ringed fingers. “We’re all very excited to see it.”

I felt a little sick. I had worked so hard to make Becky’s wedding cake perfect. I had made the fruitcake a month before. The flowers, all made of icing, were also entirely fashioned by me. The previous evening I had watched nervously as two staff members from the hotel kitchen helped me stack the three layers on top of one another. Objectively, I knew that the cake was a triumph. Becky couldn’t have gotten better if she’d paid a professional the best part of a grand. But part of me still worried that it wasn’t good enough for my friend or that something terrible might happen between the moment I added the last pink sugar flower and the moment it was wheeled into the ballroom. I had been into the kitchen to check on that cake at least five times during dinner. Now the moment of truth had come.

“You know,” Becky’s mother continued, “I was so worried that you were going to ruin Becky’s special day. Naturally, she’s kept me up to date with all the developments in your love life and the way that you’ve been dealing with them. We all felt very sorry for you, but at one point I actually asked Becky whether it was really such a good idea, having you in the wedding party at all. You would probably be much better off sitting at the back of the church, I told her. So you didn’t feel as though you were on display when you were finding things so difficult.
Though of course nobody looks at anyone except the bride really. But Becky insisted. She said that your friendship was more important to her than that, and even if you did stomp up the aisle with a face like thunder, she would find it in her heart to forgive you.”