Back at the table everyone is making small talk. I try to join in, but I can’t get Tom off my mind. Tom, my one who got away (or should that be ran away?), who is now not only single again, but living in my hometown. And he wants to meet up. If this had happened years ago, I might’ve been interested … but when you’ve been hurt before, it makes it harder to trust people – especially the people who hurt you in the past. Back when we were at uni, with our whole lives ahead of us, things were so easy. Getting together would’ve been easy, starting a life together would’ve been easy. But now Tom comes with so much baggage. A horrible ex, a child with said horrible ex, and then there’s the fact that he says he doesn’t want anything to do with them. What kind of man admits that, let alone thinks it? Unless he’s just telling me what he thinks I want to hear, but in some ways that’s even worse. He’s let me down before, and now he’s going to let Cleo down, and what’s to say he won’t let me down again in the future? I don’t care how charming he is, how helpful he is, how gorgeous he is … the delicate pieces of my heart are too fragile to go another round in the ring with Tom. And then there’s Pete who, granted I have only just met, but he seems like such a wonderful person – and yet I’m wasting my time and my energy on Tom, when really I shouldn’t be thinking twice about him, I should be getting to know Pete instead.
‘Are you OK Luca?’ Ed asks, snapping me from my thoughts.
‘Yes,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m just so hungry.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Clarky says.
Two stuffed peppers are placed in front of our vegan friends, before the lid is lifted from the large silver pot in the centre of our table.
‘What have you guys got then?’ Clarky asks the vegans.
‘Stuffed peppers,’ the girl replies. ‘You get served a lot of stuffed peppers when you’re a vegan.’
‘That must get so boring,’ Fi replies.
‘It does,’ the girl says. ‘But it’s for a greater cause.’
‘Never trust a person who doesn’t eat meat,’ Clarky says to me under his breath, although I’m pretty sure everyone at the table heard him.
‘So, what are we having?’ I ask, quickly changing the subject. Our vegan friends might not kill animals, but I don’t think they’d think twice about murdering Clarky. Then again, I’d probably give them an alibi.
A server comes over and ladles dollops of something onto our plates. It looks like meat and a variety of vegetables, absolutely swimming in gravy.
‘It’s stew,’ Clarky tells us. ‘I had a peep earlier. It looked and smelled pretty bland but, don’t worry, I took care of it.’
Zach’s fork drops, clattering against his plate.
‘Mate, what have you done?’
‘I just gave it the little kick it needs,’ he replies proudly.
‘How have you done that?’ Zach persists.
No one dares to taste what’s on our plates until we find out exactly what he’s done – not even the vegans, who are weirdly invested in what’s going on.
‘I added a little chilli,’ he says. ‘It needed a kick.’
‘Where did you get chilli?’ I ask him.
Clarky takes out his wallet to reveal a little plastic tube.
‘Oh, mate, come on,’ Zach moans. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘It needed a kick,’ Clarky insists again.
‘You need a bloody kick,’ I tell him.
Ed is the first person brave enough to taste his stew. He stabs a piece of meat and it has barely touched his lips before he’s coughing and spluttering, grabbing his pint of beer and chugging it to try and get some relief.
‘How much did you put in?’ he asks in a voice that is not his own. He sounds like a demon – a demon whose weakness is an inordinate amount of chilli.
‘I was trying to do it to our table’s pot on the sly,’ Clarky says under his breath. ‘My hand slipped, but I’m sure it’s fine. You’ve always been a girl.’
I roll my eyes. Because being a girl is such a negative thing to be, right?
Clarky takes a confident mouthful and instantly regrets it. You can tell by the reddening of his cheeks and his bulging, watery eyes. He spits into his napkin before downing his drink too.
‘Yeah, it’s ruined,’ he eventually admits.
‘Everyone is far too close to being drunk to be downing their drinks this early in the day,’ Fiona says with a sigh.
‘It’s my day off,’ Ed insists. ‘And it was medicinal. My teeth were dissolving.’
‘Chilli can’t dissolve teeth,’ our resident dentist unhelpfully points out.
‘First of all, I was exaggerating,’ Ed says, attempting to snap into serious mode, but not quite pulling it off because he’s more than tipsy. ‘Second of all, the acid reflux I would get from eating this would be very metridental to my teeth.’
‘Detrimental,’ I say.
‘What did I say?’ he asks.
‘Metridental.’
Ed cracks up at his drunken babbling. He was always the first one in our house to get drunk back when we were at uni too.
‘I can’t think of anything more boring than a fight between a doctor and a dentist,’ Clarky whines.
‘A fight between you and Zach,’ Ed reminds him. ‘That was like watching a duck fighting a lion.’
‘But I won, didn’t I?’ he says proudly.
‘You absolutely didn’t,’ Zach says with a laugh.
‘Yeah, I did.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Zach snaps back, his light tone quickly disappearing.
I smile at poor Fiona, sitting between them as they bicker. She rubs her temples and exhales deeply.
‘Rematch,’ Clarky suggests. ‘Out there on the lawn.’
‘Can you just cause one problem at a time, please,’ I beg him. ‘We can’t eat this food, can we?’
‘No, even I can’t eat this,’ Clarky admits, seemingly forgetting that it was him who got us into this mess.
‘I can’t even look at it,’ Fiona says, lightly covering her mouth with the back of her hand.
I turn to look at the poor couple sharing the table with us. They’re staring at us, like they would the monkey enclosure at the zoo, watching with a grim curiosity as we all fling crap at each other.
‘Yes,’ I say, answering the question they didn’t actually ask. ‘We’re always like this. And, no, it’s not going to get better as they drink more.’
The couple smile politely. I definitely don’t envy Kat at her next dental check-up.
‘We have to get rid of it,’ Clarky says, straight-faced, with all the seriousness and fear that would be present if you’d suggest getting rid of a body.
‘Oh, yeah, Fi and I will just sneak it out in our clutch bags. It’ll only take twelve hours if we work nonstop. What do you think this is, the bloody Shawshank Redemption?’
‘I wish it was,’ he snaps back, although I have no idea what he means by it.
‘We just put it back in the pot,’ Zach suggests. ‘They’ll think it’s leftovers.’
‘This is idiotic,’ Fiona says with a sigh. ‘I’m going to the loo.’
It is, but I’m not sure what other choice we have. I suppose we could throw Clarky under the bus, but we’ve always had each other’s backs before. I suppose that’s one thing we’ve got going for our weird group – if one of us makes a mistake, the others will fix it.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I say. ‘The boys can clean up this mess.’
As we make our way across the marquee, through the bar and into the ladies’ room, I feel very self-conscious of my trainers. In any other circumstances, they’d look great, but at a wedding, with a dress, I just look silly. I look like a child who is refusing to dress up – I hope no one thinks this is some kind of feminist, single-girl protest.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask Fiona the second the door closes behind us.
‘I’m … I’m fine,’ she says eventually.
I want to say that she doesn’t seem herself, but do I really have the right to say that if I haven’t seen her in five years? Am I qualified to know what her being herself is anymore?
‘Is this giving you ideas for your wedding?’ I ask.
‘Yes, but not the ones you’d imagine.’
I laugh. ‘More what not to do?’
‘Something like that,’ she replies with a deep sigh, as she disappears into a cubicle.
I sit down on the toilet and stare down at my trainers. I shake my head. Why on earth would someone take my shoes, if not to hand them in? Knowing how expensive they were, I should never have taken them off and left them in the toilets, but I wasn’t thinking straight, I was trying to help Joan. The people that bang on about karma have a lot of explaining to do, because my good deeds get me nowhere. That’s not why I helped but, come on, Universe, cut me some bloody slack, just for today.
I flush the toilet and begin to straighten up my dress, ready to go back out and face the world.
‘… because you’re pregnant and you’re still slimmer than most of the people here.’
My ears prick up as I catch the tail end of woman’s sentence as she walks into the toilets.
‘Oh, stop,’ another woman replies, and I know instantly, by that faux modest, TOWIE tone that it’s Cleo.
‘You could have any man here.’
‘I know,’ she replies.
As the toilet flushes in the next cubicle I lean towards the door so I can still hear their conversation. They exchange hello with someone – I think it was Fiona leaving – before continuing their conversation. I wait, and carry on eavesdropping.
‘Just between us though,’ Cleo starts, lowering her voice. ‘Tom wants to get back together.’
‘Really?’ the other girl squeaks.
‘Really,’ she replies. ‘I knew us breaking up was just a little blip – you know what we’re like. But now there’s Sunny to think about, and it’s just the right thing to do. We both know that.’
As Cleo’s friend congratulates her, I let out a deep, involuntary sigh. I was appalled when I thought that Tom wasn’t going to stand by her or see his child but – and I hate to admit it, even to myself – I can’t help but feel disappointed.
‘I’ll just have a wee,’ Cleo tells her friend.
This is my chance, as soon as Cleo goes into a cubicle I’ll make a dash for it, before she comes back out.
‘Oh, someone must be in this one,’ she says as she tries the door of the cubicle I’m hiding in. ‘This is the only one with enough room to close the door properly, with my bump. The others are a tight squeeze. I’ll just have to wait.’
Crap.
‘Erm, I think they’ve been in there a while,’ her friend says. ‘I haven’t seen anyone come out while we’ve been in here.’
‘Is everything OK in there?’ Cleo calls out sweetly.
Double crap. I’m going to have to come out, or they’ll think there’s something wrong with me. They’re either going to realise I was listening to their conversation, or think I have some kind of stomach issue. I don’t know which is more embarrassing.
I quickly give my outfit the once over and check my shoes for rogue loo roll before reluctantly opening the door.
‘Hello Cleo,’ I say brightly.
‘Luca … is everything OK?’
‘Oh, fine,’ I say with a casual bat of my hand. ‘I was just looking for my shoes.’
Cleo looks down at my trainers and stifles a snigger.
‘I much preferred the Louboutins you were wearing earlier,’ she informs me.
‘Yes, well, I left them in here earlier and I guess someone has taken them.’
‘I’m not even going to ask why you took your shoes off in the toilets,’ she starts, before a huge grin spreads across her face ‘Luca Wade, you naughty girl. Have you been up to no good in the toilets?’
‘Erm …’
‘Well, I don’t blame you,’ she says. ‘We’ve all seen your boyfriend – Alan is quite the babe now. If I weren’t happy and expecting my first child, I’d be shagging in the toilets too, don’t worry. God, I’m jealous.’
I bite my tongue as I wash my hands. She doesn’t sound jealous, she sounds smug.
‘Al is my ex-boyfriend,’ I remind her. ‘And I actually took them off to help Kat’s gran.’
‘Such a shame,’ she continues. ‘And I can’t believe that someone would just take them. It must have been someone who knows their value.’
‘Hmm,’ I reply, but then it occurs to me – has Cleo taken my shoes? Not that I think that she’s stolen them to sell them or anything, but it’s no secret that she doesn’t like me, and she did say she noticed them earlier …
Cleo goes into the cubicle, so I head back to my table.
Today is just unbelievable. I am a grown woman. I have a mortgage, I have an apartment – and in that apartment, I have a drawer full of bags for life. If those things don’t make for a mature adult, then nothing does. Yet here I am, surrounded by the people from my past, being dragged into the depths of immaturity. Well, I’m not going to let that happen, things have changed – I have changed. I’m not going to sit around feeling sorry for myself while Tom chooses Cleo over me yet again. I just need to remember that this is only one day. Tomorrow I can go home, back to my life, and while it might be boring sometimes, it definitely beats all this childish drama.