Always the Bridesmaid - Lindsey Kelk

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I do know we’ll get through it. I don’t know what else to say that won’t sound like a load of annoying clichés.’

      ‘I’m only thirty-one,’ Sarah said, gripping the stem of her glass until her knuckles turned white. ‘I’m not the first person in the world to get divorced, am I? Better now than ten years down the line when we’d have two kids in the mix, isn’t it?’

      ‘Course.’ I wondered how many times she’d told herself that already this week. ‘You’re totally right.’

      ‘All I want is to not feel like this any more,’ she said wearily, putting down her glass and pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. ‘It’s like the worst hangover ever. I feel sick and empty, and every time I forget about it for a moment, it comes back and punches me in the face. And the only person who could make me feel better about it is the person who’s causing it. I hate him so much I can see it, but all I want is for him to come home and tell me he’s changed his mind.’

      That part I recognized. ‘Really? You’d take him back?’

      ‘I don’t even know,’ she laughed, sounding sour. ‘I don’t know what I’d do. How would I ever trust him? I’d always be waiting for him to do it again, wouldn’t I?’

      For want of a better response, I shrugged.

      ‘So what the fuck do I do now?’ Sarah asked, dropping her head against the back of my saggy settee. ‘Am I just supposed to sit here until it stops feeling like someone ripped my insides out with a fish hook?’

      ‘Would it help if I made you a kale smoothie?’ I offered.

      ‘It might,’ she said, pulling my hair. ‘But I think I’d rather have another gin.’

      ‘Good because I don’t have any kale.’ I grabbed the bottle off the coffee table and topped her up. ‘Let me get the tonic out of the fridge.’

      ‘Don’t bother,’ she said, taking a glug then holding up her glass. ‘To fresh starts, Maddie. Cheers.’

      ‘Cheers,’ I echoed, wondering whether or not there ever was such a thing as a fresh start, or whether you just picked up a new set of problems.

      I can’t believe Sarah is getting divorced. It’s bizarre: I’ve known her for two-thirds of my life, and for the first time ever, I have no idea what to say to her.

      Divorce. She’s getting a divorce. I don’t know anyone who got married and isn’t married any more other than Lauren’s parents, and I don’t really know them. It’s so weird. When you’re single you don’t think about that bit, even though in this day and age you’re fully aware of that bit. Getting the ring on your finger is the goal: the white dress, the John Lewis wedding-present list, worry about the rest of it afterwards. Getting married means you’ve won, and I hate thinking like that, I do, but let’s be honest, that’s just how it is. In our super progressive, equal rights, modern society, it’s the one thing no one wants to say but everyone is thinking, however messed-up it is.

      Until you’re married, you’re a loser, no matter how great you are at everything else. But what does that make someone who gets divorced?

      Divorce is something that happens to my parents’ generation, not my friends. Like in year nine, when everyone’s mum and dad suddenly split up and no one talked about it until Jane couldn’t come to your ice-skating birthday party because she ‘had to see her dad on Saturdays’.

      Shit, who will get their cat? They both love that cat. Won’t somebody think of the children?

       3

      Saturday May 16th

      Today I feel: Sore.

      Today I am thankful for: Shaving my legs this morning when I couldn’t really be bothered.

      I am so confused as to what happened today. All I do know is that it has ended with a strange man in my bed who I cannot ask to leave because it’s impolite, but who I really wish would leave because I’m starving and want to eat some biscuits, and if I don’t, I’m worried I might very well eat his arm in the night.

      It started out as a normal day. Well, normal apart from the wedding/divorce debacle of Thursday night and then the depressing divorce-and-gin fest of Friday night, obviously. I got up, I texted my friends, they didn’t reply, and I went to work. The only difference was that my text to Lauren was all about her wedding, rather than last night’s telly, and my text to Sarah just said ‘Are you OK?’ She’d left at ten o’clock last night, teary with mother’s ruin but refusing the offer to stay over with a curled lip at my shabby sofa and the mountains of washing covering the spare bed. Fair play, really.

      Ahhh, work. The McCallan wedding.

      One of the fun things about working for an events planner is you never know exactly what you’re going to be doing from one day to the next, other than working yourself into a blind, desperate pit of no return seven days a week, obviously. Thanks to ten years in the trade, I am now a passable florist, competent seamstress and an excellent mixologist. Nevertheless, I wasn’t too happy when I got to the reception venue to find out two of the waitresses couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed and come to work, meaning I had to save the day by putting on a pinny and serving a room full of drunk people an absurdly expensive chicken dinner.

      It’s amazing how terribly people treat wait staff sometimes. I ask you, how hard is it to say please and thank you? I’d say their mothers would be appalled but most of their mothers were there and quite frankly, in a lot of instances, the mothers were the worst. After spending a year planning every last moment of the McCallan’s big day, running around on the actual day of the wedding, fetching and carrying dirty dishes, while every single assembled guest refused to look me in the eye didn’t half test my moral fibre.

      And then I saw him.

      He was easy on the eyes, there was no getting around it. His eyes were brown, but a light brown − sort of gold, when you looked at them − and his black hair was shaved close to his head, giving him an air of an Action Man; but somehow, it worked. He had gorgeous full lips, and when he smiled at me I wanted to burn every pair of knickers I owned because I would never, ever be needing them again. He looked solid but smiley, like he’d always have a joke to tell you, and even while he was charming the pants off your parents he’d have his hand on your arse, and at the end of the night, when you’d had one too many, he’d feel you up a bit in the taxi.

      ‘Hello, everyone.’

      Action Man was actually the best man. When it was his turn to give a toast, he didn’t even need to clink his glass. As soon as he stood up, everyone turned around and sat up straight. Without even asking myself why, I tightened my ponytail and bit some colour into my lips. Be still my beating heart.

      ‘As most of you already know, I’m Will, the best man,’ he said. ‘Or at least I’m the best one that was free today and had his own suit.’

      I leaned against the wall, cupping my elbow in one hand, and pressed a fist against my mouth. He wasn’t so tall but he was tall enough, and his jacket hung perfectly from his shoulders, the result either of excellent tailoring or of excellent shoulders, it was hard to tell, but his easy stance and the way he looked around the room, totally comfortable in a situation that others found unbearable, gave me the biggest ladyboner.

      Here’s the thing. I’ve always loved weddings. When I was little, I would run around the house wrapped up in a bed sheet screaming ‘I do!’ at the next-door neighbour, and when I was seven and my aunt got married, I didn’t take my bridesmaid’s dress off for two weeks. And that was only because I had the measles and threw up on it. Since then, I’ve been a bridesmaid five times and I would do it five more times if someone asked. How is it not fun? The dress shopping, the hen night, the penis headbands, I love all of it. And then there’s the actual wedding: you get a new frock, you get a free feed, you get to drink

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