was slowing to a junction, and as he stopped he turned to me and took my face in his hands.
‘And what’s so wrong with right here?’
The lights of the country hotel were twinkling ahead. Inside were old friends and good company. Here at my side was a decent man. Nothing was wrong at all.
‘Flo! Ol!’
Tash had that massive, slightly manic grin people get when they’ve been welcoming people for hours. She looked splendid, as well she should, given the draconian diet she’d been on for the past six months ‘so my bingo wings don’t flap all through the service’.
I gave her a huge hug.
‘Elle Macpherson or Martine McCutcheon?’ she asked, turning round 360 degrees.
‘What, are you kidding? Kate Moss,’ I declared.
She beamed even wider. ‘Excellent.’
We’d been spending quite a lot of time, in the last few months, going through celebrity magazines and slagging off people getting married. We particularly liked those who go rather – ahem – over the top, like Posh Spice and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Max thought we were being incredibly childish. Oliver didn’t know about it, in case he thought I was trying to give him hints, which I wasn’t, in a way, although I was also getting to the point where I thought it might be a bit embarrassing if he didn’t ask, which I know isn’t very romantic.
Tashy is small, occasionally a bit chunky, but thanks to the no-fat, no-bread, no-booze, crying-oneself-to-sleep-with-hunger-pains regime she’s been on lately, there was not a pick on her. Her hair was currently extremely glossy and straight, though was, once upon a time, very wild and curly, and her sparkly green eyes betray her past when she went through a career a week and was constantly getting into scrapes. Now she’d settled into being a software designer, which sounded more glamorous than it was (and doesn’t sound very glamorous at all, really), and was marrying Max, who also worked in computers and who was tall, bald, and very, very dull, but a much better bet, on the whole, I suppose, than the good-looking unruly-haired rogues Tashy had spent most of her twenties waiting to call her, then get off with somebody else. And her boho look had gone too. Feather earrings and deep plum clothes had given way to a slightly more appropriate look for a nice middle-class North London girl. In fact, Good God, was she wearing Boden?
She grabbed me by the arm. ‘Come on! Come on! They can’t mix a Martini, but I’m getting married so we’re starting on the champagne we towed back from France.’
‘Yes, but you’re getting married tomorrow. Isn’t not having a full-on death hangover meant to be part of the whole big idea?’
‘Oh, sod that. One, I’m not going to get any sleep anyway, and two, someone’s coming in with that full body foundation spray thing Sarah Jessica Parker uses. Believe me, you won’t be able to tell if I’m alive or dead underneath it. You won’t believe the work that goes into making all us haggard over-thirties brides look like freshly awakened virginal teenagers.’
‘You want me to take the bags up then?’ said Olly, standing grumpy in the chintzy hall, which was filled with copper kettles and random suits of armour.
‘Well, do you mind?’ I said guiltily.
‘Then what am I supposed to do whilst you two go off and cackle like witches for three hours?’
I stared at him. I looked into his big likeable face. Why was everything he said tonight really irritating me?
‘Can’t you go and talk to Max?’
Olly dislikes Max in the way that you’re always a little chippy about people in whom you recognise a bit of yourself. Plus, he loves Tash to bits and has always been overprotective, vetting anyone she goes out with.
‘Is that Ol?’ came Max’s loud voice from the bar. ‘Thought I recognised that clapped-out XR5.’
‘I’ve got some work to catch up on,’ said Ol. He yawned ostentatiously, winked and headed upstairs.
‘Don’t work too …’ my voice petered out.
I heard the general sound of merriment through the big oak doors that led to the original ye olde trusty inne section, and sighed.
‘Can we not go to the bar?’
‘I think if there was ever a good minibar-emptying excuse it’s tonight,’ said Tash.
I rolled my eyes. ‘Yes, because we usually require a parental consent form.’
‘How’s the lovely Ol then?’ she asked as we quietly crept upstairs to avoid the revellers. ‘Getting in a romantic mood?’
I think it’s a bit insensitive to ask after someone else’s love life when you have a big white dress hanging on the back of your door.
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I think we must have one of those relationships where you bicker a lot to show you care.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes. People who are too affectionate are overcompensating,’ I said blithely. ‘Apparently.’
‘OK,’ said Tash.
‘I took a test in a magazine.’
‘OK!’
I bounced on the bed in her honeymoon suite. ‘Well? Are you excited then?’
‘Do I look excited?’
‘Not as much as I’d expected, actually.’
She threw herself dramatically on the bedspread to join me, widening her eyes. ‘Oh, Flo, I just can’t believe it … you know. It’s the dreamiest thing that’s ever happened! I’m the luckiest girl in the whole wide world.’
‘Oh, shut up. You know what I mean, though. You must be a bit nervous, or something.’
‘I am. I really am. It’s just, what’s as exciting as it’s cracked up to be? Nothing.’
‘Getting into our first nightclub?’
‘Yeah, we were twelve.’
‘It was very exciting.’
She grinned. ‘Still. It is quite cool.’
‘You’re actually doing it!’
‘I know!’
‘That’s better.’
I rolled over onto my stomach. ‘So is it not going to be what we always thought it was going to be?’
Tashy stuck her lip out a little as we remembered the many hours we’d spent sprawled over her bed (I always liked going to hers; her slightly sluttish mother let us eat in front of the TV) in pretty much the same positions, discussing how it would be.
‘Well, I suppose I’ve had sex already …’
‘You
