The Boy I Loved Before (2 page)

Authors: Jenny Colgan

BOOK: The Boy I Loved Before

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âYou want me to take the bags up then?' said Olly, standing grumpy in the chintzy hall, which was filled with copper kettles and random suits of armour.

âWell, do you mind?' I said guiltily.

âThen what am I supposed to do whilst you two go off and cackle like witches for three hours?'

I stared at him. I looked into his big likeable face. Why was everything he said tonight really irritating me?

âCan't you go and talk to Max?'

Olly dislikes Max in the way that you're always a little chippy about people in whom you recognise a bit of yourself. Plus, he loves Tash to bits and has always been overprotective, vetting anyone she goes out with.

âIs that Ol?' came Max's loud voice from the bar. âThought I recognised that clapped-out XR5.'

âI've got some work to catch up on,' said Ol. He yawned ostentatiously, winked and headed upstairs.

âDon't work too â¦' my voice petered out.

I heard the general sound of merriment through the big oak doors that led to the original ye olde trusty inne section, and sighed.

âCan we not go to the bar?'

âI think if there was ever a good minibar-emptying excuse it's tonight,' said Tash.

I rolled my eyes. âYes, because we usually require a parental consent form.'

âHow's the lovely Ol then?' she asked as we quietly crept upstairs to avoid the revellers. âGetting in a romantic mood?'

I think it's a bit insensitive to ask after someone else's love life when you have a big white dress hanging on the back of your door.

âIt's fine,' I said. âI think we must have one of those relationships where you bicker a lot to show you care.'

âIs that true?'

âYes. People who are too affectionate are overcompensating,' I said blithely. âApparently.'

âOK,' said Tash.

âI took a test in a magazine.'

âOK!'

I bounced on the bed in her honeymoon suite. âWell? Are you excited then?'

âDo I look excited?'

âNot as much as I'd expected, actually.'

She threw herself dramatically on the bedspread to join me, widening her eyes. âOh, Flo, I just can't believe it â¦ you know. It's the dreamiest thing that's ever happened! I'm the luckiest girl in the whole wide world.'

âOh, shut up. You know what I mean, though. You must be a bit nervous, or something.'

âI am. I really am. It's just, what's as exciting as it's cracked up to be? Nothing.'

âGetting into our first nightclub?'

âYeah, we were twelve.'

âIt was very exciting.'

She grinned. âStill. It is quite cool.'

âYou're actually doing it!'

âI know!'

âThat's better.'

I rolled over onto my stomach. âSo is it not going to be what we always thought it was going to be?'

Tashy stuck her lip out a little as we remembered the many hours we'd spent sprawled over her bed (I always liked going to hers; her slightly sluttish mother let us eat in front of the TV) in pretty much the same positions, discussing how it would be.

âWell, I suppose I've had sex already â¦'

âYou haven't! You filthy bitch!'

âSo that's out of the way. And, also, he's not royal and there aren't six million people lining The Mall with flags to cheer us on our way.'

We were quiet for a moment, and I jumped off the bed and ceremoniously declared the minibar open. It even had Baileys in it. Ooh, we used to love that. Sugary milk!

âHey â remember these?'

Tashy eyed one up balefully. âA feature of my first night of unmarried intercourse â¦ and, possibly, my last.'

I tore them open and we toasted each other.

âTo true love,' I said.

âAha-ha-ha.'

Actually, I'd meant it. I took a swig.

âJust think â you'll never have to make love to a man who slaps you on the rump and calls you a filly ever again!'

âNeiighhhh!!!!'

âOr date ANYBODY SHORT.'

Olly and Max were both very tall. These were our minimum requirements. We'd always reckoned that short men for girls were the equivalent of that horrible joke blokes tell â âWhat have fat girls and scooters got in common? They're both fun to ride, but you wouldn't want your mates seeing you with one.'

âOr snog anyone for a dare.'

âOr sympathy.'

âChrist, yeah. Remember Norm?'

âIt was charity work,' I replied indignantly. âHelping the less blessed in the world.'

Norm had been something of a mistake, something of a long time ago.

Norm had been a snuffling pig, outright winner in an ugly pig competition.

âAnyway, why are you starting, Bridezilla? What about Pinocchio?'

Pinocchio told a lot of lies and had a very long narrow woody.

âPour me some more Baileys immediately,' demanded Tashy.

âI don't want to give you a headache.'

âAre you joking? We've booked singers from the local choral society to sing the hymns. No one's getting out alive without a headache.' She rolled over.

âIt's turning out all right, though, isn't it?'

âWe thought that at sixteen.'

âOh yeah, when we hadn't gotten pregnant. God, we knew nothing.'

âI think we thought that was it, didn't we? That we'd cracked it.'

âAnd at any moment, the knight in shining armour was just outside putting money in the meter â¦'

âCan you believe both of our Prince Charmings are going bald?' said Tash meditatively.

âYours fastest,' I said defensively.

âIt's all the testosterone building up from me being too tired to shag him after planning this damn wedding.'

âDoes not shagging them make them bald? We could have saved Prince Edward after all.'

âNo we couldn't.'

The thing is, when your friends fall in love â seriously â it gets very difficult to discuss the boys with them any more. It's fine to completely and totally dissect someone you've seen twice because they look a bit like Pierce Brosnan and can get gig tickets, but once it creeps into the full time â watch telly with, wash socks of, etc. â it becomes impossible. It's like discussing somebody's naked dad.

Max was just so sensible, so safe. He just â¦ he just didn't get it. And he didn't seem to know the lovely Tashy I remembered, haring down the seafront at Brighton with her heels in her hands at four a.m., or marching us off through
Barcelona because she thought she knew the way and was buying the sangria, or dancing all night on top of a bar, or taking her stuffed rabbit on holiday until she was twenty-six â¦ I know people think this about all their friends, but Max â¦ he was all right, but I didn't really think he was good enough for my her. I wanted someone who could match her, dirty giggle for dirty giggle, not someone who could help her work out her SERPS contributions and had strong views on the education of children.

Of course I knew this was how it was going to work. We'd even devised the Buffy scale of life relationships: you start off wanting Xander, spend your twenties going out with Spike and settle down with Giles. Which seemed to mean Tashy had never had a chance at an Angel. And, I suppose, neither had I. I didn't believe in angels, anyway. I didn't believe in much.

We leafed through a celebrity wedding edition of
OK!
magazine for the last time together as single girls. For one of us at least (and me too, of course, I'm never having bloody gold-rimmed parasols), the chances of ever having an elephant attending our wedding, being carried in on the shoulders of gold-painted slaves, spending over $2,000,000 on flowers, marrying someone older than our dads because they were very, very rich indeed, insisting all the guests wore a certain colour and weren't allowed to talk to you, the press or the special bought-in soap celebrities, were about to vanish for ever.

We sighed as we flicked over to some other minor star, who had designed her own dress (which showed, in that it
looked exactly like the highly inflated numbers we used to draw in primary school, complete with more flounces than Elton John playing tennis), and had fifteen flower girls, including seven she barely knew but who happened to be in a similar television show â plus one girl who was so ugly she had to be close family, but had been zipped into skin-tight, bust-squeezing fuchsia anyway, next to the telly lollipop girls, looking like the unhappiest whale in captivity.

â“I haven't been able to sleep for months with the excitement,'” I read the bride said. âReally? Do you think? Months?'

Tashy glanced at the gushing copy. âThey've only been together for six months. It'll all be over by Christmas. She'll be able to give hundreds of interviews about her heartache. It'll make her feel really famous. No wonder she's excited.'

âHuh,' I said. âPlus, you know, celebrities: they have to fall in love ten times harder than the rest of us.'

âI know,' said Tashy. âIt must get really boring for Jen and Brad. They've been married for ever and people keep asking them if they're still as divinely in love as they were when they first met. Well, they aren't.
Nobody
is,' she said, addressing the magazine sternly.

âDo you remember when we were bridesmaids for Heather?' I asked suddenly. Heather is Tashy's big sister. She'd had to ask me too because we were so inseparable. We had had an absolutely great time. It was the eighties, so our dresses were enormous. We were allowed to wear a huge amount of blue makeup, white tights, and dance with all the boys wearing shiny Jonathan Ross suits. As Heather pointed out later, in a rare wistful moment after the divorce, we'd had much, much more fun than she had. At the time, we wouldn't have
believed that to be possible. We thought she was the most beautiful and enviable living thing we'd ever seen.

âOh, yeah. Don't. I asked her if she wanted to be my matron of honour, and she snorted and said, “Thanks, but if you want to get involved in all that garbage, please do it without me, Natasha,” and went back to doing yoga and eating muesli.'

âIt is a real shame he got the sense of humour in the divorce,' I said, and Tashy nodded glumly.

Then she popped her head up from the magazine. âUm.'

âWhat?'

She jumped up and got us another Baileys.

âWhat?' I said.

âWell, you know when you were talking about us being stupid at sixteen?'

âMm?'

âYou'll never guess who my mother ran into at the post office. Invited the whole family.'

I rather love Jean, âTashy's mother. She is giggly and dresses too young for her age and drinks too many gin and tonics â all the reasons she embarrasses the bits out of Tashy. It's amazing how, even though we're both in our thirties, we still turn into sulky teenagers when confronted with our mothers. It had been worse recently, with all the wedding arrangements for Tash, and there had been at least two occasions when Tashy had slammed out of the house shouting â and she was ashamed to relate this, even after a couple of glasses of wine â âStop trying to control my life!' She had also decided that since she and Tashy's dad (they were divorced, and got on a lot better than my parents) were paying for most of this enormous bash, they got final say in just
about all of it, which included the guest list, the napkins, and those tortuously crap little sugared almond things. (âWhy am I crying over sugared almonds?' Tashy had asked me. âI'm not going to talk to her for a week. Cow.') She is so different from my mother, who does indeed have nightmares after
Crimewatch.

But this wasn't solving the problem.

âWho?'

âWe're over it now, right?'

And I knew straight away.

âThis is why you stashed all this Baileys up here, isn't it? To soften me up?'

She nodded shamefacedly.

âYou invited Clelland.'

âHis whole family,' said Tashy, at least having the grace to look a bit embarrassed. âYou know our parents were friends first, before any of us lot even went to school. All those seventies kaftan parties. Probably all throwing their keys in bowls.'

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