The Guestbook (13 page)

Imogen and Dan Edwards

Imogen Brooke

Thanks for the champagne Annie; I shall enjoy drinking that on my own later.

Dan The Bastard Edwards didn’t bother to show for our wedding. What was worse was he didn’t even have the decency to let me know. I was standing there, my bridesmaids, my flower girls, the groomsmen, his best man, his parents, my parents, hell my entire family, my work colleagues, everyone was there waiting for him to turn up. And he never did. We waited, we waited some more. I phoned him, Simon his best man phoned him, we all phoned him. Eventually his brother got hold of him, he said three words before he hung up; ‘I’m not coming’. ‘I’m not coming!?’ No why or how, just ‘I’m not coming’.

Amy Bradley, an old friend of Dan’s and someone I’ve never liked but tried to welcome into my social group, had the audacity to say ‘I told you so.’ So I punched her in the face and left.

I can’t bear to see all those sympathetic faces, ‘Poor Imogen, jilted at the altar’, ‘Such a lovely girl, so sweet, so nice, how could anyone do this to her?’

Well fuck being nice, fuck you all. I’m going to enjoy this honeymoon without Dan The Bastard and on Saturday I’ll fly to Venice on my own.

Imogen

Sunday:

I’m so sorry to hear this. Though sympathy is not what you want right now, I get that.

Annie Butterworth

How would you have any fucking idea what I want right now, with your beautiful cute cottage with roses growing up the fucking door, your beautiful perfect garden and your beautiful perfect fucking husband who probably fucks you every night in your great big fucking four poster bed. You have no idea what I am going through right now. Dan was supposed to be my happy ever after.

You’re right I have no idea what it’s like to be jilted at the altar. But I do have some idea what it’s like to be on the receiving end of those sympathetic looks and how desperately you want to get away from them. I do have some idea what that heart breaking feeling is like when you’re completely in love with someone and you lose that person forever or to not have those feelings returned in the first place.

Your husband fucked you over as well did he?

My husband died, which pissed me off no end. The day after we had put him in the ground I went down to the graveyard and shouted at his gravestone for a full hour. Then I smashed a vase of flowers on his grave and told him he didn’t deserve to have fucking flowers because he shouldn’t have left me.

He used to love walking and someone bought him a hiking stick which he used once. I told him he looked like an idiot walking around with it and after that he’d carry it on every walk we went on, just to annoy me. Well that was propped up against the gravestone and I grabbed that and started beating the gravestone with it. The stick got ruined, the flowers got squashed, the police got called and I didn’t give a shit. Until a few days later when the grief finally caught up with me and I didn’t stop crying for months. I’ve had nothing but sympathetic looks for the last two years. So I do have some idea what you are going through right now. Some.

I couldn’t help giggling at the idea of you standing over a gravestone beating it to death with a hiking stick. Sorry.

Yes, looking back I must have looked like a madwoman. The elderly vicar who tried to stop me desecrating Nick’s grave has never looked at me the same way since. I think he thought I was possessed by the devil when I growled at him to fuck off or I’d rip his fucking head off. He ran back inside the church so quickly and then came out a few minutes later and threw holy water all over me. You can imagine how well that went down, I started chasing him round the graveyard with the hiking stick. He was screaming for help, screaming that I was going to kill him. I might have done as well if I had caught him but he was quite sprightly for someone so old and managed to get away.

Sorry, I know I shouldn’t laugh but you do paint quite a picture.

It’s fine. Grief and anger will do strange things to you. It’s ok to grieve over what has happened, just don’t do anything stupid you’ll regret later. And if you need to talk or get drunk with someone, I’m only next door.

Thanks

Monday:

Feeling a bit better today. Still upset, still angry but less likely to rip someone’s head off or chase them round a graveyard with a hiking stick. If Dan had showed up on Saturday night or even yesterday I think it highly likely I would have killed him. And not metaphorically or figuratively but literally. I feel a bit calmer now. The beach does seem to have that effect on me. My apologies Annie if anything I said or wrote upset you.

My phone has been ringing none stop since I ran out of my wedding Saturday. No one knows where I am and I guess the last place they would look would be our honeymoon cottage. I’ve texted my Mum to say I’m fine but just need some time to think. Word must have filtered through to my friends as the phone calls have stopped and I’m now just getting supportive texts instead. Nothing from Dan The Bastard.

I don’t think I’d kill him now, if I saw him, though I’m still seriously considering cutting off his balls and forcing him to eat them.

Just dropping off a lasagne in case you don’t feel like cooking. You probably don’t feel like eating either.

Thanks Annie.

Tuesday:

Going out for another walk on the beach. I feel even calmer today.

Hi Immy, Annie let me in, reluctantly.

I’m so very sorry for what happened on Saturday. I panicked. I love you so much. There has never been any woman before you that I’ve loved half as much as I love you and there never will be.

I don’t want to put the blame on anyone else; I know I have to take full responsibility myself. However, the boys have been winding me up ever since I proposed about what I would be giving up, how I wouldn’t be allowed out with them anymore, how I’d have to stay in with you every night. On the stag do, I just started to think how much I would miss them, miss the antics we get up to.

Amy kept saying that tying myself to one woman would be a mistake, that I would get bored and start to resent you. I didn’t want to resent you. She started saying that after the wedding, children would come next, they’d be sleepless nights and dirty nappies and screaming kids and I’d definitely wouldn’t be allowed out to play then and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for all that.

This is so hard. I wish you were here and I could wrap my arms around you and tell you how I feel. Though after reading the previous comments you have written in this book, maybe for my safety, it’s best that you aren’t here.

I love you. I can’t live my life without you. I want to be with you and embrace all that that entails. If you take me back I promise never to hurt you ever again.

I will be in The Frog and Rhubarb across the green if you want to talk.

I hope you want to talk.

Dan The Bastard.

Oh!

I have asked Dan back here as I didn’t want to conduct our affairs in public but now I don’t know what to say. He keeps trying to hold me, to talk to me but I don’t want him anywhere near me. He’s apologised a thousand times but it’s not enough. I don’t know what I want from him anymore. How can we just go back to how we were?

We have spent the last two hours at opposite ends of the lounge, deliberately avoiding eye contact. The silence is unbearable.

I have asked Annie to make up the bed in the spare room. I can’t sleep next to him tonight as if everything was alright between us. To Annie’s credit she has done this without a single word. I thought she might wade in with her penny’s worth or glare at Dan or say something sympathetic to me, but she acted as if making the spare bedroom up for a couple was the most normal thing in the world.

Are we still a couple?

Do we have any future at all?

Going to bed now, I feel exhausted. Maybe things will look brighter tomorrow. Maybe

Wednesday:

Clearly you feel you can communicate easier through this book than with me at the moment. I don’t blame you; I wouldn’t want to talk to me either. But if this is the only way you will talk to me then fine.

Everything moved so quickly. I never wanted to get married that wasn’t on my radar at all. I was one of the lads, out almost every night of the week, getting drunk, getting laid. You know my past; I’ve been completely honest with you there. Then you came along and everything changed. There hasn’t been another woman since you, not on the stag do, never. I’ve not so much as kissed another woman. I never even wanted to. No one ever came close.

I wanted to spend every single second with you; I didn’t want to be with the lads anymore. Of course, every time I cancelled plans with the lads they took the piss. ‘Under the thumb’, they said, ‘Staying at home with the ball and chain’. At first I just laughed it off but then it started to get annoying.

Then one drunken New Year’s Eve, I looked into your eyes and knew I wanted to spend every single New Year’s Eve with you, that life wouldn’t be the same without you and I proposed. I never regretted it the next day, I walked around with a huge grin on my face, but then the jibes started.

Shortly after that my lovely, sweet, beautiful girlfriend disappeared and Bridezilla appeared instead. Everything, I mean everything was about the wedding. The perfect flowers, the perfect dress, the photographer, the videographer, the five tiered cake, the shoes, the arrival music, the walking down the aisle music, the signing the certificate music, the DJ versus a live band dilemma, the food, the canapés, the drinks, the hotel, the church, the cars, the best man, the grooms men, the nightmare that was the choice of bridesmaids, the flower girls, the page boys, what your Mum was going to wear, what my Mum was going to wear, the colour scheme, the favours, the invites, the confetti, the honeymoon, the guests and who to invite. I felt like I was drowning. I have had this huge sense of claustrophobia for the last six months. We have spent every single weekend at wedding fairs collating ideas, every single night talking about all of the above. It has been all consuming from the day after New Year’s Day; we haven’t talked about anything else since.

I lost sight of the reason why I wanted to marry you, all I could see was weddings, weddings, weddings and could no longer see our beautiful future together. You wanted us to write our own vows. I’m rubbish at all that, the fear of being the centre of attention anyway was scary, but coming up with a speech, to declare my love for you in my own words was terrifying. What if it sounded crap, what if it didn’t do my feelings justice? You wrote your vows so easily and night after night I stared at a sheet of blank paper willing the inspiration to come to me and it never did. Amy said if I couldn’t come up with the words to tell you I loved you, maybe I really didn’t, or maybe I didn’t love you enough. I know I shouldn’t have listened to her but with the stress of the wedding, with the never ending jibes from the lads, I couldn’t help letting it all get to me.

I realise now what an idiot I have been. That I love you so much and I want to be with you, forever. I know that I hurt you, but if you let me, I will spend every day for the rest of our lives trying to prove to you how much I love you.

I wanted it all to be perfect, because that was the first day of our perfect life together. You were going to be my Happy Ever After and I wanted the perfect day to celebrate that. I’m sorry that I got so caught up in it all but you should have talked to me, you should have told me how you felt.

And can’t you see what Amy was trying to do, from the word go she was trying to break us apart. Your so called friend and she was out to ruin everything.

I don’t think she was trying to break us up, I think she was just concerned that I was doing the wrong thing.

She clearly wanted you for herself.

We have never had that relationship. I don’t see her that way, she knows that.

Doesn’t stop her trying to split us up though.

Maybe. I’ll never see her again if that’s what you want. You’re the only one that matters now.

Have I ever tried to stop you seeing your mates, Amy included? Do you think I ever would? You shouldn’t have paid any attention to her, to any of them. If they were any kind of friends they would have understood that things change, they would have been happy for you.

I’ve spoken a lot to my friends over the last few days. Every single one of them, well except Amy, has told me what a fool I was, (the words they chose were much ruder than that) that you were the best thing that ever happened to me and I was an absolute shit for standing you up. They said that the jibes, the taking the piss, was just that, just jokes and I should never have taken it seriously.