I had sisters to stand with me and support me, so I didn’t need many friends.
Annie was coming, although she’d be travelling alone as Greg had a work thing in Baltimore. So, with the sisters and brothers-in-love, my parents and nieces and nephew, plus the groom, his only real friend, and my only real friend and her husband, there would be seventeen of us.
I dithered about whether to book a venue somewhere, but I was worried about how Dad would cope with a whole day out. He’d had a tough week, including six days without leaving the house, and three crashed in bed. Certain that I wouldn’t be able to get through the day without him (and Mum definitely wouldn’t), and even more determined to give him the gift of being able to walk me down the (very short) aisle, I decided to bring the wedding to him.
With some sisterly support, I could empty out the back barn. It needed sorting out for the pop-up tea room in a month’s time anyway. And once I’d draped sheets around the walls, filled it with flowers and fairy lights, I wouldn’t be ashamed to show my future kids the wedding photos. Nita would cater, Sofia would perform the ceremony, and while we couldn’t legally get married without a venue licence, Moses would whizz us over to New Life church to complete the paperwork.
All I needed was something to wear and I had organised myself a wedding.
If only I was half this good at being married, things might actually turn out okay…
* * *
A few days later, I woke up with a jolt, my heart pounding, skin slick with sweat. At some point during a night of anxiety dreams and fitful twisting myself up in my duvet, a thought that had been hiding somewhere in the depths of my subconscious had floated to the surface.
After running to work, I spent a fretful couple of hours baking a batch of cookies, trying to ignore how, instead of dissipating with my dreams, my panic had only grown sharper. By ten-thirty I was done. I cleared up, ditched my apron and hastily filled my travel mug with chamomile tea in the vain hope that swigging it while scurrying the one and a half miles through the rain to Sofia’s church might help calm me down. I barrelled through the doors, even more dishevelled than I had been when I woke up that morning, somewhat startled to find the hall jam-packed with babies and the various people responsible for them. They were all sitting on blankets in a giant semicircle, holding balloons and listening in entranced silence to my sister, her hand encased in a giant sock puppet.
‘Wet lady!’ A toddler pointed, laughing. ‘Funny hair!’
‘Where wet lady funny hair?’ a few more chorused in response, craning their necks to ogle, while their assorted adults all followed suit. Three children got up and tottered over, coming to stand about six inches in front of my squelching boots.
A little girl cried out, ‘Scary lady, I don’t like her! She looks like a monster!’ and squeezed her balloon so tightly that it popped with a bang, causing several babies to start wailing. Most of the older children immediately starting squealing in response, getting up and running off in about thirty different directions, tripping over toys, adult’s legs, discarded balloons and each other as they went.
The parents and carers scrambled after them, their calls to come and sit down adding to the staggeringly loud ruckus.
I backed a few steps away towards the door, my retreat hampered due to one child having decided to wrap their arms around my soggy jeans.
Giving up, I took in the carnage and wondered why anyone would choose to work with pre-school children in such large quantities. Sofia then expertly dodged through the marauding toddlers like a soldier under fire, racing to the sound desk at the back of the room. Suddenly, the opening notes of S Club’s ‘Reach for the Stars’ started booming through the speakers. Every child froze. Even the babies were startled into silence. The parents who hadn’t yet managed to catch their errant offspring (which was all of them except for two) stopped mid-stride and visibly sagged with relief. When the S Club lead singer began reassuring us how we can count on her, nearly every single child in the room who was able to walk independently, and some of them who were still at the crawling stage, started calmly picking up toys and depositing them into the stack of toy boxes in one corner.
By the time that rainbow was shining over us for the last time, the entire room had been cleared of toys. The music stopped, and Sofia called out, ‘Story time part two!’ while doing a funny half-jig, half-walk over to where the sock puppet sat quietly waiting. As if she were a mummy duck and they her brood, the children obediently followed behind, finding a place on the blankets once they’d reached their destination, the adults meekly joining them.
‘Are you going to sit on the blanket with everybody else?’ I said quietly to the limpet on my leg.
‘You come too,’ she mumbled into my knee.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Stay here, then.’
So we did, as Sofia redonned the puppet and finished her story about a lost sheep, everyone behaving as if nothing had ever happened.
Once story time was over, followed by several songs about animals, everyone started getting ready to go home. A man whose bedraggled T-shirt bore more than a few face-smears came over, carrying a baby. ‘Come on, Macey, let the lady go now.’
Macey wound her arms around me tighter, burying her face into the wet leg of my jeans.
‘I’m really sorry.’ The man winced. ‘She’s been like this with women ever since Kez left. Think she’s trying to find a new mum. I’ve not adapted that well, to be honest, so I can’t blame her. I’d be clinging to women’s legs too if it didn’t get me arrested.’ He paused then, and looked more carefully at me, hiking the baby a little higher on his hip. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’re single? You could maybe come round sometime, meet the other kids. I make a mean fish finger sandwich.’
I answered automatically, without thinking about it. ‘Um, no, sorry. I’m already seeing someone.’
And then, when I realised a split second later that this was true, only the person I was seeing I hadn’t actually evenseen– as if I hadn’t caused enough of a scene already, I promptly burst into tears.
The man looked stricken. ‘Wow, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘Macey, it’s home time.’ Sofia came over and bent down to stroke the little girl’s head. ‘I heard Daddy say he’s got fish fingers for lunch. That’s your favourite, isn’t it?’
Macey twisted her head round to peep one eye at my sister.
‘With yummy soft bread. And ketchup. And maybe some carrot sticks? What do you think? Does that sound like a nice lunch?’
