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?
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 from the crack of dawn right through to the next day and not even your parents can complain about it. Weddings are the best.
But after hearing Sarah and Lauren’s news on Thursday, for the first time ever I was beginning to feel the onset of matrimonial fatigue. All of a sudden, everything that had once made me clap with delight had me rolling my eyes instead. Oh, you’re pretending to run away from a dinosaur in your pictures? How original. Choreographed first dance to the song from Dirty Dancing? You guys! It was horrible. Even the thought of stealing macarons from the dessert table didn’t help. I was over macarons. And when a woman declares herself over macarons, you know something is wrong. By the time the speeches had begun, it would be all I could do not to launch myself at the bride and groom and start screaming, ‘This is a sham! True love is an illusion! We’re all going to die alone!’
And for an assistant wedding planner, that was less than ideal.
And so the undeniable hotness of the best man made for a very welcome distraction on an incredibly shitty day.
‘I’ve known Em and Ian for donkeys,’ Will went on. Addressing the room, making eye contact, not using notes. All very impressive. ‘And between you and me, I couldn’t have been happier when he told me they were getting married. In fact, when he told me he was going to ask her, I cried. And then, when he sent me a text to say she said yes, I cried again.’
All the mums began to sniff and coo in unison, while all the single women pulled out lipsticks and powder compacts as they readied themselves to go to war.
Will was doing a good job.
‘You see, it’s hard to meet someone these days.’ He gave a little shrug and looked over at the happy couple. ‘These two met at a wedding, if you can believe it − my little sister’s wedding, actually − and I know it’s a cliché, but I knew they were going the distance as soon as they started going out. Actually, let me clarify that first bit again. It’s not hard to meet someone. It’s hard to meet someone special.’ He cleared his throat and let his voice crack a little, and I may or may not have let out a little squeak.
‘When Ian started seeing Emma, he changed, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Whenever we saw each other, he couldn’t stop saying her name. He brought her to the football and let her wear the scarf that his dad bought him when he was six, and then, when he changed his Facebook status and his profile photo, I knew it was only a matter of time.
‘I think, when you meet someone who you love so much that you’re happy to tell Mark Zuckerberg and the world that they’re yours, you ought to lock it down. There was never
