At that point, the events manager opened the main door. ‘So, you must be the blushing brides? Congratulations!’ she trilled, bouncing on her toes. ‘You make a stunning couple!’
‘Actually, we’re sisters. I’m the maid of honour. Bridget is the bride.’
‘Oh. Oh!’ She ended up being the one blushing. ‘I didn’t mean to assume, it’s just, well, isn’t there a groom – or another bride – here?’
‘He’s working,’ Mum boomed. ‘No point taking time off to look at a venue when he’d happily marry Bridget in a pub car park. Leave it to the experts.’
‘Oh, right. Well, we can offer you something considerably more attractive than a car park for the most special day of your life.’ The woman started ushering us inside the ornate entrance hall.
‘And Emma here is most definitely an expert,’ Mum continued. ‘She makes wedding cakes – perhaps you have heard of her?’
‘Does she? How lovely. This way, please, ladies.’
‘She has organised weddings for her three younger sisters. Plus, there was her own, of course. Although that one ended with a broken heart. Her childhood sweetheart ran off three weeks before the wedding with that Helen Richards – do you know her? Fuzzy red hair, like a squirrel, skinny arms and legs? No? Anyway, he was the love of her life and she has never brought another man home in eight whole years. And now, on top of this tragedy, her fourth and final baby sister is getting married. It is so hard for the eldest one to be the last one left. People can be so tactless, so who knows what the looks and the comments will be, everyone feeling sorry for poor Emma, all alone? Still, she can take care of me and her father in our old age, at least this is some consolation. Her father has ME. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? I sell raffle tickets to fund research, if you’re interested. I have a whole book in my bag, here.’
To her credit, the woman’s rictus smile never faltered. ‘Anyway… this is the Forest Suite. You’ll see we’ve set up a couple of table options for you. I’ll wait in the office, give you ladies some time to have a good look around.’
‘That’s wonderful, thanks,’ Bridget replied, before Mum could say anything else. ‘Look, Mamma. What do you think of these chair covers?’
I loitered by the entrance while they strolled around the hall, admiring the moulded ceiling and the beautiful oak panelling. I knew that most of what my mum said was utter rubbish, and I had grown partially immune to her gross insensitivity over the past thirty-three years, as well as understanding that in some warped way it was simply her expressing her sorrow on my behalf. But, for some reason, I felt more bothered now than I had in a long time.
Not about Jake. I was glad to have escaped a mistake of a marriage. But maybe it was more that, as I had grown up as a Donovan daughter, my future had always been presented as including a husband and children at some point. Preferably, the earlier the better (although perhaps not quite as early as Orla managed it). Imagining a life without those things felt like boarding a spaceship to another planet. Although nothing in my immediate future had changed, I felt lost, and afraid, and at times verging on panicked about continuing on down this path of singleness indefinitely. I was not someone who enjoyed uncertainty or relished the unknown.
Why couldn’t it have been Sofia or Annie who ended up the single one?I threw out as a muttered prayer. Even Bridget would have taken it on the chin and embraced the adventure.
‘What do you think, Emma?’ Bridget asked, coming over to link her arm in mine. ‘Can you see the sisters doing it for themselves on this dance floor?’
‘I think it’s all lovely, but, more importantly, what do you think?’
Bridget scanned the room. ‘Yeah, it’s fine. Got everything we need. Enough space, some comfy chairs.’
‘Fine?’ I frowned. ‘I’m not sure that’s the reaction Mum was hoping for. It’s a lot of money to spend on fine. If you’re not that bothered, maybe we should go with Paolo’s pub-car-park idea.’
She laughed. ‘I’m pretty sure Paolo would rather be inside the pub.’
‘Which pub?’ Mum had come to join us. ‘You want a reception in a pub, let’s go and look at a pub. Why did you drag me all the way out here to this fancy place if you want a pub?’
‘I seem to remember you were the one who made the appointment,’ Bridget said teasingly. She was always so much more patient with Mum than I could ever be. ‘But how about you give me and Paolo some time to chat about it, and when we’ve decided what we want, we’ll let you know.’
‘You cannot pick a date until you have a venue sorted, Bridget.’ Mum shook her head, baffled. ‘These places get booked up years in advance.’
We began walking back outside towards the car. I was sure usually the events manager would have been chasing after potential customers to try to close a deal, rather than pretending she hadn’t noticed us leaving.
‘Then we’ll wait. Or we’ll use the back barn at home. I’ve been waiting eighteen years, Mamma. A couple more won’t hurt.’
Mum harrumphed as she slid into Bridget’s passenger seat. ‘I do not understand you, Bridget. This is supposed to be the most wonderful, exciting time and you’re treating it like deciding what to have for lunch.’
‘I’ve had a long day, Mamma. I’m very happy and excited to be getting married, I just want to do things my way, in my own time. Unlike Orla, Sofia and Annie, I’ve got no reason to rush. Stop panicking and enjoy it.’
Cooper
When Patrick Charles Cooper completed the personal statement section of his university application form, he was supposed to explain why he wanted to study a neuroscience degree. This presented something of a moral dilemma, given he had to tick a box and sign to confirm all the information was true and accurate. Being truthful in this instance would be the equivalent of writing, ‘Please reject me, I’ve decided I’d rather forget my four A stars and keep working on a zero-hours contract at a filthy warehouse with men who scare the crap out of me, instead.’ Because the truth was, he’d been fully intending to study economics until he went to the Nottingham University open day and ended up queuing for a panini behind the loveliest girl he’d ever seen. It might look even worse if he went on to say that he had trailed her, and another girl who was clearly her sister, all the way into a neuroscience taster lecture. Her sister sat scrolling through the Top Shop website on her phone (yes, he was sitting directly behind them), but the girl scribbled notes furiously throughout, and from what he could decipher over her shoulder they seemed to be directly related to what the mumbling lecturer at the front was saying. Cooper’s life flipped one hundred and eighty degrees in one hour. If this girl – thisangel– found neuroscience so fascinating, he wanted to know everything about it.
And being still mostly rational and sane, Cooper knew that his was not a rational or sane reason to abandon the career you’d been working towards for eight years. He didn’t even know what neuroscience was. Neurones, whatever they were?
He also knew it came across as slightly sinister. No one wanted a fledgling stalker around campus. But for the record, he’d never done anything like this before. At twenty-two, Cooper had never had a serious girlfriend, never been in love – or, perhaps more relevantly, been infatuated or followed anyone anywhere. For a long time, he’d been too intent on survival, on hoping people might stop hating him rather than daring to hope anyone might actually like him. He’d done this by learning to slip through life for the most part undetected. Keeping his head down, working hard but not so hard he’d become a threat, keeping himself to himself through school, college and then four years of working low-paid, come-and-go jobs, before he’d summoned up the courage and paltry amount of savings to dare to consider applying to university.
And now this.
