Bridesmaids - Zara Stoneley

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like come to a complete halt. Scared of doing right for doing wrong.

      Then I’d woken up to the realisation that although I might not have had control over him and my love life, I did have control over the rest my life. So, with a few snivels along the way I’d pulled my socks up and prepared to kick ass. Of the work kind.

      ‘I can’t stop worrying, Jane! I love you, you know that. But this is brill, you’re committing. I’m proud!’

      ‘Proud? Committing? Stop right there Rachel.’ I hold my hands up in a stop position, even though she can’t see. Committing is not a word I want to hear. Commitment is a pathway that leads to disappointment and humiliation.

      The kitten tilts its head on one side then makes a leap for me, misses and drops to the floor. ‘It’s just a kitten, oh, shit, it’s fallen off the table! Hell, hang on, hang on while I …’ I’m down on my hands and knees. ‘Do they break easily? I’m going to be drowning in the brown stuff if I send any back damaged. Lora will kill me.’ A second one follows it, lemming style and just misses my head.

      ‘Damaged? Send it back? Who is Lora?’

      ‘The girl up the road, you know at Number 20, the one with bright red hair and a nose ring? She fosters animals for that rescue place. She lent the kittens to me and I need some bloody good pics of them, or Coral will sack me. Christ, I can’t even catch the bloody thing now, it must be okay.’

      At this point, I need to establish something, I am not an animal batterer. I love them. I especially love cats with all their haughty indifference, independence, and demands to be fed and petted when they feel like it. On their terms. They are ace. I’d quite like to be reincarnated as one.

      You may pet me now, you may feed me tuna (well, not tuna; chocolate brownies, maybe), you may tickle me just here. Here! You may go away and leave me, or I will turn nasty.

      See, cats have got life sussed.

      Cats are totally within their rights to show their displeasure by yelling or swiping. There are times when swiping would work for me.

      I realise I am about to growl, as an unbidden image of Dickhead Andy sneaks into my brain. Maybe I’m not completely fine. Anyway, I definitely haven’t forgiven him. I would so like to swipe him, claws at full stretch until he is shredded into something resembling pulled pork.

      I know I need to rise above his fuckwittery and take the moral high ground. Karma will come and bite him on the arse one day, not a cat.

      Okay, so you’re wondering what Andy did? Did he take me out for a romantic meal, then break the news that it was over? Did he walk out, and leave a ‘Dear John’ on a sticky note stuck to the fridge? Did he get cold feet when we booked a wedding date, a venue?

      Oh, no. Andy did this properly.

      I mean, what kind of fiancé tells you IT IS OVER in the middle of your flaming hen party? There I was with my leg wound round a Chippendale look-alike (as in semi-naked man, not item of furniture) when I felt a funny sensation in my lower regions. It wasn’t the over exuberant entertainment, it was my phone buzzing in my new super-tight leopard-skin trousers (yes, it had seemed a good idea at the time, they were on-trend and freebies from a photoshoot I was doing for my fashion-diva boss Coral).

      I know I shouldn’t have looked. But I did. I thought he’d be sending me a funny text message. Not the cryptic ‘this isn’t working’.

      ‘It is for me! Ha-ha.’ texted back jovially, as the Chippendale gyrated, and cast off another layer of clothing.

      ‘We need to talk.’

      This is not something Andy ever said in real life. It’s on the scale of him declaring he’d given up beer or football.

      ‘What’s up?’ I’d typed with the thumb that was holding my phone, because my other hand was otherwise engaged catching cast off clothing. I was expecting him to tell me his stag night had been cancelled or he was missing me.

      I wasn’t expecting a ‘Dear John’.

      A very long one. It definitely wouldn’t have fit on a sticky note. Not even a whole pad of them.

      That should have set alarm bells off. I mean, who sends a text that is so long it doesn’t fit on the screen? This was saga length in shorthand. But I was on a high, having fun, excited that soon I would be walking down the aisle with my One.

      Or not.

      Apparently, my darling fiancé had realised we were totally incompatible. That I didn’t need him because I was far too busy with my job. That he knew I was building my career and wouldn’t want to be a stay at home mum, which, according to Andy, was the only way to bring up kids (I didn’t even know kids were on the table, let alone a clause in the mental pre-nup – or had he been planning an actual pre-nup?). That I had to be grown up and realise it wasn’t going to work (that bit made me want to be totally un-grown-up and yell like a toddler). That he also thought I needed to spend more time cooking (like his mum did) and ironing (like his mum did) and entertaining his bloody boss (you got it). I am paraphrasing a bit here, but all this came completely out of the blue. Domestic goddess I am not, but I didn’t think I needed to be. I am the ‘licking fingers and inviting people round’ side of Nigella, not the ‘slaving over a hot stove’ side.

      I slithered down my Chippendale onto the floor, all melting and pathetic, and had to be scooped up by Rachel and helped to a chair. My bones had become all bendy and non-supporting, my brain scrambled, and my chest felt like it was fit to burst with pain.

      When I got home I tore up all the scraps of paper I’d been practicing my new signature on, in a fury, then collapsed in a soggy mess on my bed and left lots of pleading messages on his voicemail.

      Next morning, I was ashamed of my pathetic-ness and sent a few abusive ones.

      Then I cut his head off all my photos. And a triangle out of the crotch area. And looked if Amazon Prime supplied Voodoo Dolls. They do, just in case you need to know for future reference.

      Two weeks, lots of cancelled wedding arrangements, and a few crates of wine later I’d moved my (very) few odds and ends out of his flat and shoehorned them into my bedroom at Mum’s, rejigged all Andy’s carefully constructed playlists, sent his boss an invite to dinner at his mum’s (FORMAL DRESS! PLEASE BRING CHAMPAGNE! CABS WILL BE ARRANGED FOR MIDNIGHT!) and left iron shaped holes (to match the ones in the photos) in his best shirts. I know, it was childish, but it made me feel better for a short time.

      ‘Jane, Jane, are you still there? What’s happened?’

      I shake my head, and blink, trying to regain my inner haughty cat composure and remember what Rachel was talking about.

      ‘Sure, sure. Just trying to catch the damned thing.’ I adore cats. I just love them less when I am trying to photograph them. Never work with animals or children? Yeah, yeah, yeah, whoever said that had a point. But some of us like a challenge. Or are slightly deranged.

      Or desperate to impress the boss and rescue their job.

      I wriggle on my stomach under the chair, my head on one side, cheek plastered to the floor so that I’m all squishy faced, making ‘Here, kitty-kitty’ noises. The wide-eyed kitten backs off in a kind of weird tarantula dance on its tip toes, until it has emerged on the other side. Its little back is arched and its tail all puffed up like a loo brush and it is jigging sideways, which makes me laugh. Mistake. The noise makes it spin round in alarm and it’s off.

      ‘Are you okay, Jane?’

      ‘I think,’ my cheek is still squashed so it comes out as ‘sink’, ‘I’m stuck. Not quite sure how I got under here.’ The trouble with this apartment is, it literally isn’t big enough to swing a cat in (not that I’d do such a thing, obviously).

      ‘How bijou!’ Mum had exclaimed – poking round into every nook and cranny the day I moved it.

      ‘You mean small. Bijou suggests small but tasteful.’ I’m not kidding myself.

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