Bridesmaids (28 page)

Green’s Gym, Liverpool, Thursday, 28 June, 8.20 p.m.

We’re printing the story about Pete Gibson in tomorrow’s paper. In the event, the constable he was attempting to bribe was having none of it and turned out to be one of the good guys, after all. Which is fine by me, because, by itself, the fact that one of the saintliest pop stars in the UK is actually a cocaine dealer who regularly organizes celebrity orgies has got to constitute one of the scoops of the year.

The only thing is, I’m so nervous about it all, I’m now experiencing the sort of nausea I once had on a nine-hour ferry crossing in high winds. At work, they call it
the fear
, that horrible feeling journalists have just before a really big story breaks. It’s a peculiar mixture of blood-pumping adrenaline because you know something amazing is about to be printed, and total knicker-wetting terror in case you’ve written something that will land the Editor in court. Which is never very good for your career prospects.

I’ve covered all bases on this three times over–as have the paper’s lawyers–but at the end of the day, these are serious
allegations and there is no doubt that a large helping of the brown stuff is going to hit the fan tomorrow.

So, here I am at the gym with Charlotte, trying to take my mind off things. Only it’s the first time I’ve done any exercise in weeks and I’m starting to wish I’d brought a note from my mum to let me sit it out.

We start on the treadmills and I optimistically, and very foolishly, plump for a setting called ‘World Endurance’. I plan to start off slowly, but somewhere along the way, manage to find myself in the middle of a K2 climb, along with the sort of gradient that shouldn’t be attempted without crampons.

I frantically stride upwards in a movement reminiscent of Basil Fawlty’s impression of the Germans and, with a mixture of panic and near-exhaustion, begin hitting the buttons like a hyperactive seven-year-old let loose on a fruit machine.

‘Bloody hell!’ I squeal, before slamming my hand against the emergency Stop button. The machine grinds to a halt and I lean over to rest on the side of the treadmill, feeling like my lungs are about to explode.

Charlotte giggles and when I get my breath back, I giggle too. We’re both laughing now in a weird, hysterical kind of way. People are starting to look at us like we’ve been taking hallucinogenic drugs.

‘How are you feeling these days, Evie?’ she asks, when I finally manage to find a more sedate setting.

‘Apart from nearly killing myself on a treadmill, you mean?’ I grin.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, fine,’ I say. ‘Absolutely fine. Bit nervous about my story, but fine really.’

I know full well she’s not talking about the story. And if
the truth be told, my jitters over that–even when they’re making my stomach churn like the inside of a washing machine–still aren’t a patch on the feelings about Jack.

But her question takes me a bit by surprise because people have stopped asking me about Jack recently. I guess three weeks after we split, it’s becoming old news. Plus, it’s not like I’ve ever given anyone much of an insight. I’ve only ever said the same thing as I say to Charlotte now. I’m fine. Couldn’t be finer. I’m as fine as fine can be. Really, I’m very, very fine indeed.

‘Well, if that’s true then I’m glad to hear it,’ says Charlotte, but she looks unconvinced.

‘Why do you look like you don’t believe me?’ I ask.

She slows her treadmill down.

‘We all just knew how much you liked him, I suppose,’ she tells me.

‘You mean you think I’m a sad act.’

‘Course not,’ she says. ‘People just don’t know what it’s like to be in love with someone when it’s not reciprocated.’

‘God,’ I say, panting. ‘An outbreak of long words. What’s all that about?’

‘Well, they don’t, Evie,’ she repeats, and I suddenly realize that she looks really unhappy.

‘What’s up with you?’ I want to know. ‘I thought I had the monopoly in personal misery these days.’

‘Oh nothing,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I’m just premenstrual, that’s all. I get upset at the slightest thing these days.’

‘God, it must be bad if that includes me,’ I say. ‘Come on, shall we go for a drink?’

‘I’ll never say no to a Diet Coke,’ she says.

I forget sometimes just how amazing Charlotte’s trans
formation has been. But when she puts on a touch of make-up and pulls on a pair of jeans–which are now Skinny Fit as opposed to just Don’t Fit–it strikes me how far she’s come.

At the pub, we order two drinks and talk for the rest of the night, predominantly about my story. It feels good to get some of my nervous tension off my chest. Then, when last orders have been called, Charlotte brings up the thing I’ve been avoiding.

‘Were you in love with Jack?’ she asks, out of nowhere.

I take a deep breath.

‘If I admitted that to myself, I really would be a dead loss, wouldn’t I?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ I say, ‘that if the only man I had ever fallen in love with turned out to be someone who didn’t want me…well, that’d be bloody tragic.’

‘Hmm,’ she says.

‘Besides, I’m having a nice time with Seb,’ I say.

‘
Nice
?’ she echoes, and I realize I sound about as convincing as Jack the Ripper’s defence lawyer.

‘I guess I’ve discovered one thing,’ I say, ‘that sometimes, no matter how much you want someone, no matter how much you love them, no matter how desperate you are for them…sometimes you just can’t have them. It hurts like hell. But sometimes you just can’t have them.’

I look up at Charlotte and she’s wiping her eye. Then I remember something–what she said at my mum’s wedding, about having kissed someone. I still haven’t got to the bottom of that.

I’m just about to bring this up when the landlord comes over.

‘Haven’t you two got homes to go to?’ he grumbles.

With the exception of a German Shepherd polishing off a packet of cheese and onion crisps at the other end of the bar, I look round and see that we’re the last ones in the whole pub.

Daily Echo
newsroom, Friday, 29 June

The Editor’s PA asks me to go and see him just after the first edition of the paper has come up from the press hall at 11 a.m. the next day. When I knock on the door, Frank is on the phone, but beckons me in.

‘I don’t give a toss about how much work your fella’s done for charity, Diamond,’ he bellows. ‘He should have thought of that before he let his crotch do his thinking for him.’

The Diamond he’s talking to is Dale Diamond, celebrity agent and staunch advocate of the What They Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Them school of public relations. By the sound of the protestations I can hear coming from the telephone receiver, Mr Diamond doesn’t appear to be very happy with today’s splash.

‘You’ll go to the Press Complaints Commission?’ booms Frank again. ‘Ha! On what grounds exactly? Causing undue distress to a dirty old drug dealer? Don’t make me laugh. Anyway, I’ve had enough of this conversation, Diamond. I’ll speak to you when you’ve managed to grow a brain. Goodbye.’

He slams the phone down and stands up to walk over to
his conference table, where today’s paper–printed only a few minutes ago–is sitting.

‘Evie,’ he says, jabbing the main picture of Pete Gibson being arrested outside his multi-million pound mansion, ‘this is fucking brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant.’

Frank Carlisle has many fine qualities as an Editor, but being able to get through a sentence without using at least one expletive is not one of them.

‘Thanks, Boss,’ I say, wondering if I should remain standing here like a schoolgirl in the Headmaster’s office, or just sit down.

‘Take a seat,’ he says, as if reading my mind, and I pull out a chair from around his huge conference table.

‘I’ve been impressed with your stuff lately, Evie,’ he tells me. ‘Bloody impressed, actually. You’ve got balls, and I like a reporter with balls.’

‘Er, that’s nice of you to say, Boss,’ I say.

‘Now, the thing is,’ he goes on, ‘you know we’re about to lose Sam to one of the nationals?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Sam Webb, the crime reporter, has landed a job working for
The Times
and is due to leave in less than two weeks.

‘Well, that leaves a gap,’ Frank continues.

‘Right,’ I say.

‘I only want someone in an “acting” capacity, of course,’ he warns me. ‘But we can review that in a couple of months’ time.’

‘I see,’ I say.

‘So, I’ve got two questions for you,’ he goes on.

‘Okay,’ I say.

‘Do you want the job?’ he says. ‘Or do you want the job?’

St Nicholas’s Church, Friday, 13 July

Valentina said that only a small core of the main protagonists would be here for her wedding rehearsal, which by my count today means about sixty of us. As well as seven bridesmaids, there is an entire army of people fussing over the music, the flowers, the choreography, the reading and just about anything and everything, in fact, to ensure that the Big Day tomorrow is stage-managed to perfection.

‘Did you hear how one of Valentina’s stylists took the Vicar to one side to request that he does his hair differently tomorrow?’ whispers Grace.

I shake my head in disbelief.

‘So now even the seventy-year-old curate has got to look like he’s just stepped out of
Vogue
?’ I say.

‘Don’t feel too sorry for him,’ chuckles Grace, digging me in the ribs. ‘He apparently asked them if they could put in some highlights for him.’

I laugh, but the truth is, neither I nor Grace–nor, for that matter, Charlotte–are in the mood for this today. Grace is putting a brave face on things, but she’s undoubtedly still
having trouble at home and Charlotte, well, Charlotte is just acting very strangely.

As for me, I’m trying not to mope these days, I really am. And in many ways I’ve got absolutely no reason to do so. Work is going brilliantly. I’ve landed a good job–no, a
great
job–which, as far as my career is concerned, means the world is my oyster. But there’s something about being here today, when I’d originally imagined I’d be here with Jack, that is preventing me from really getting into the swing of things. Thankfully, however, the bride-to-be is getting into the swing of things enough for everyone.

‘Now,’ says Valentina, who has somewhere along the way acquired a clipboard, ‘I’d like to practise the entrance again. I’m a bit concerned about the posture of some of the bridesmaids,
naming no names
…’ she says, looking at me.

‘Subtle as ever, isn’t she?’ I mutter to Grace.

‘Come on, girls, off we go to the back again,’ orders Valentina, and she’d almost make a convincing Headmistress, if she wasn’t wearing her
Von Dutch
baseball cap and a pair of four-inch mules.

‘Do try not to slouch, Evie,’ she says briskly. ‘I know you don’t exactly have a natural sense of grace, but if you
could
just make an effort, please?’

The church is a surprisingly modest one. I suspect Valentina would have preferred Westminster Cathedral, but apparently this is where generations of the Barnetts have married, and it was Edmund’s one and only request.

He got St Nicholas’s Church, she got four wedding coordinators, a contract with
High Life!
magazine and a dress costing more than the GDP of some small states. I think, on balance, she did quite well out of the deal.

When we’re at the back of the church, Valentina links arms with Federico, a former male stripper turned model and her mother’s thirty-one-year-old boyfriend. He’s the one who will be giving her away tomorrow.

Valentina has only met him once before and didn’t particularly like him then, but given the Barnetts’ fondness for tradition, she felt strongly that she needed someone–anyone, in fact–to walk her down the aisle. Well, anyone she’d never slept with, which obviously narrowed it down. A tiny bit. So Federico it was.

‘Can you take over here, Jasmine,’ Valentina says, foisting her clipboard on one of her planners. ‘I’m needed for the important bit.’

Jasmine gives a nod to the organist and the church is filled with the opening bars of Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’. Valentina flicks back her hair, grabs Federico by the arm and begins her walk down the aisle with a smile that says she couldn’t be more pleased with herself if she’d made it to a Wimbledon final.

‘Remember, not too fast,’ warns Jasmine, but Valentina has no intention of speeding this up.

Even with the pews only half-full with wedding organizers, she is obviously enjoying herself too much to do anything other than a slow, dramatic walk that allows everyone the opportunity to look at her for as long as they might wish.

Valentina’s mother, Mrs Allegra D’Souza, is in one of the adjacent pews and as they walk past, she lifts a glamorous hand and blows Federico a kiss through the most startlingly white set of dental veneers I’ve seen in my life. Federico winks back, prompting Valentina to tut and tug at his arm like a disobedient puppy.

It takes a good few minutes to get to the altar, before Valentina turns around and supervises her bridesmaids, shuffling into place at the front one by one.

‘Very good, Georgia, and you too, Grace,’ she says. ‘Evie,
really
, if you could just take a leaf out of Grace’s book, you’d be fine.’

I bite my lip and glance sympathetically over to Edmund as he stands at the front with Patrick–his best man–next to him.

We go through the vows four more times until, finally, Valentina is happy with everything.

‘Now everyone,’ she concludes, ‘I’ll see you all tomorrow, and don’t be late. That includes you, pumpkin,’ she adds, flashing a smile at Edmund. He leans over and kisses her on the nose, looking utterly besotted.

As people start to head for home, Valentina makes a beeline for Grace, Charlotte and me.

‘Can I just say that I don’t know what the matter is,’ she snaps, ‘but all three of you look like you’re rehearsing for a funeral, not a wedding. And, yes, that includes you, Charlotte.’

‘I’m just a bit tired,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a busy week at work.’

‘If you say so,’ Valentina replies huffily. ‘Although I hadn’t thought working at the Inland Thingumijig was particularly pressurized.’

Charlotte simply shrugs.

‘And, Evie,’ Valentina goes on, ‘
buck up
, will you? You’ve just been promoted, for goodness’ sake! I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that mean that it might not be long before you can go and work for a proper newspaper?’

I am considering whether or not to dignify this with an answer when Valentina turns to Grace.

‘Now, Grace,’ says Valentina, ‘what on earth have you got to be down in the dumps about? You managed to bag a lovely husband before any of the rest of us.’

‘I’m all right, Valentina,’ says Grace. ‘Honestly. I’m just tired, like Charlotte. I’ll be fine tomorrow. We all will be.’

Valentina frowns. ‘Well, I do hope so,’ she says, turning on her heels. ‘Because God knows what the
High Life!
team will think otherwise.’