no? I can get you something if you like?’
‘No, don’t bother. You come to these bloody interminable things and they fleece you like sheep. As if the gift list wasn’t brass neck enough. Four hundred pounds for some bloody ugly blue cake whisk, the silly clots. Oh hush, Deirdre, you know I’m right.’
Edie plopped down in her banqueting chair and tried not to laugh, because she thought the KitchenAid was a rinse, too.
She swigged the acidic white wine and thanked the Lord for the gift of alcohol to get through this. The top table passed the microphone down the line to the groom, Jack. He tapped his glass with a fork and coughed into a curled fist. His sleeve was tugged by his new mother-in-law. He put a palm up to indicate, ‘Sorry, in a second, folks.’
‘What’s this crackpot notion of wearing brown shoes with a blue suit and a pink tie, nowadays?’ said hearing aid man, of the groom’s attire. ‘Anyone would think this was a lavender liaison.’
Edie thought Jack’s tall, narrow frame in head-to-toe spring-summer Paul Smith looked pretty great but she wasn’t about to defend him.
‘What’s a lavender liaison?’ Louis said.
‘A marriage of convenience, to conceal one’s true nature. When one’s interests lie elsewhere.’
‘Oh, I see. We’re having one of those,’ he grinned, clasping Edie to him.
‘Forgive me if I don’t scrabble for my inhaler in shock,’ he said, looking at Louis’s quiffed hair. ‘I had you down as someone who likes to smell the flowers.’
Edie had heard more inventive euphemisms for ‘homosexual’ than she expected today.
‘Think you’ll ever bother with marriage?’ Louis said, under his breath.
‘I think it’s more whether marriage will ever bother with me,’ Edie said.
‘Babe. Loads of people would marry you. You’re so “wife”. I look at you and think “WIFE ME”.’
Edie laughed, hollowly. ‘Surprised they’re not making this known to me then.’
‘You’re an enigma, you know …’ Louis said, prodding the bottom of his glass with the plastic stirrer. Edie’s stomach tensed, because meandering, whimsical trains of thought with Louis were always headed to the station of I Can’t Believe You Said That.
‘Hah. Not really.’
‘I mean, you’re never short of fans. You’re the life and soul. But you’re always on your own.’
‘I think that’s because being a fan doesn’t necessarily equal wanting a relationship,’ Edie said neutrally, casting her eyes over the hubbub in the room and hoping they’d snag on something else they could talk about.
‘Do you think you’re the commitmentphobe? Or are they?’ Louis said, moving the stirrer to one side as he drank.
‘Oh, I repel them with a kind of centrifugal force, I think,’ Edie said. ‘Or is it centripetal?’
‘Seriously?’ Louis said. ‘I’m being serious here.’
Edie sighed. ‘I’ve liked people and people have liked me. I’ve never liked someone who’s liked me as much as I like them, at the same time. It’s that simple.’
‘Maybe they don’t know you’re interested? You’re quite hard to read.’
‘Maybe,’ Edie said, thinking agreeing would end this subject sooner.
‘So no one’s ever promised you a lifetime of happiness? You haven’t broken hearts?’
‘Hah. Nope.’
‘Then you’re a paradox, gorgeous Edie Thompson. The girl who everyone wanted … and nobody chose.’
Edie spluttered, and Louis had the reaction he’d been angling for.
‘“Nobody chose”! Bloody hell, Louis! Thanks.’
‘Babe, no! I’m no different, no wedding for loveless Louis any time soon. I’m thirty-four, that’s dead in gay years.’
This was nonsense, of course. Louis no more wanted a wedding than an invasive cancer. He spent all his time hunting for meaningless hook-ups on Grindr, the latest with a wealthy, hirsute man he called Chewbacca to his ‘Princess Louis’. It was just a way of claiming the latitude to take the mickey out of Edie.
‘I did say gorgeous, you diva,’ Louis pouted, as if Edie had been the aggressor. You had to admire the choreography of Louis’s cruelty – a series of carefully worked out, highly nimble steps, executed flawlessly.
‘Ladies and gentleman, sorry about the delay …’ said the groom into the microphone at last.
Jack’s slightly anaemic speech ticked off the things it was supposed to do, according to the internet cheat sheets. He said how beautiful the bridesmaids looked and thanked everyone for being there. He read out cards from absent relatives. He thanked the hotel for the hospitality and both sets of parents for their support.
When he finished with the pledge: ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Charlotte. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make sure you don’t regret your decision today,’ Edie almost knocked back the flute of toasting champagne in one go.
The best man Craig’s speech was amusing in as much as it was horribly misjudged, with gag after gag about the varying successes of Jack’s sexploits at university. He seemed to think these tales were suitable because ‘We were all at it!’ and they were, ‘A bloody good bunch of chaps.’ (Jack went to Durham.) At the mention of a rugby game called ‘Pig Gamble,’ Jack snapped, ‘Perhaps leave that one out, eh?’ and Craig cut straight to, ‘Jack and Charlotte, everyone!’
The bride had a nervous fixed grin and her mum had a face like an arse operation.
Charlotte’s chief bridesmaid, Lucie, was passed the microphone.
Edie had heard much of the legend of Lucie Maguire, from Charlotte’s awed anecdotes in the office. She was a ruthlessly successful estate agent (‘She could sell you an outdoor toilet!’), mother of challenging twins who were expelled from pre-school (‘they’re extremely spirited’) and a Quidditch champion. (‘A game from a kid’s book,’ Jack had said to Edie. ‘What next, pro Pooh Sticks?’)
She ‘spoke as she found’ (trans: rude); ‘didn’t suffer fools gladly’ (rude to peoples’ faces) and ‘didn’t stand for nonsense’ (very rude to people’s faces).
Edie thought Lucie was someone you wouldn’t choose as your best friend unless there’d been a global pandemic extinction event, and probably not even then.
‘Hello, everyone,’ she said, in her confident, cut-glass tones, one hand on her salmon silk draped hip: ‘I’m Lucie. I’m the chief bridesmaid and Charlotte’s best friend since our St Andrews days.’
Edie half expected
