The One with the Engagement Party

And when the girls had gone to primary school there had been little Harry Clarke, who everyone in their class thought was super-cool because he knew all the best song lyrics and how to count to fourteen in Spanish (and ten in French). The two girls, Harry and his best friend Cole had made a blissful, uncomplicated foursome for the next two decades. Even when they were in their teens the notoriously strict Roman Catholic Eileen didn’t insist Nora kept her bedroom door open when ‘the boys’ were in there.

No, for Nora and Harry, love had waited until the most convenient moment, their hearts not catching on one another until they were heading out of their twenties: the fumbling inexperience and the dramas, the cheating exes and the hassle all done and behind them. It seemed unfairly effortless to a more-than-slightly jaded Bea. For her, love was all tossed and tangled with screaming arguments on rainy street corners; discovered flirty text messages; wilful misunderstandings; late nights spent Facebook-stalking exes with a bitterness in her throat that wine couldn’t mask; men that either loved her too much or never enough.

Nora had tried to explain it to Bea once, that first night. Bea had been so completely floored by the sudden and severe change in circumstances between her nearest and dearest that her first question to Nora (once she’d become able to form words) was to ask if they’d been drunk. That was easier to understand, somehow, that they’d got so plastered they’d forgotten who the other was, who they were themselves.

‘No. It was just like, one day, I saw Harry and I thought, oh, there you are,’ Nora had answered, simply. ‘Do you get it?’

Bea hadn’t been able to get it. So she’d got drunk instead and when Nora left the bar (to go and see Harry, no doubt) Bea stayed to see off the bottle of wine, staring at the pockmarked table top, feeling happy and sad and excited and scared, all at once. And here she was, five hundred days later, with another bottle of Pinot Grigio in front of her, telling a stranger all about how crazy in love her best friends were. Her shoes hurt. She suddenly felt ancient, and so tired.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Bea said finally, grabbing her handbag. ‘I just need to check my phone, it’s going mental.’

‘Yeah, I thought I could hear it,’ her date smiled graciously. ‘No problem. Do you want another drink? Or to share some bar snacks, maybe?’

Bea hesitated. She did want another drink. She did want bar snacks. She wanted to sit here with this nice man for the rest of the evening and find out some of his secrets. She wanted to take him home and take him to bed and wake up with the sunshine, in his arms on Sunday mornings. She was beginning to think, however, that Nice Guy Rob was far too nice a guy for the likes of her. But, hell, surely the universe wouldn’t begrudge her the one last drink.

‘I could have another glass, if you could?’

‘Coming right up,’ he smiled, leaving her with her multiple new messages and heading over to take his place in the queue at the busy bar.

Bea had invitations to join no fewer than nine new WhatsApp group conversations. One was all the bridesmaids with Nora. One was all the bridesmaids without Nora. One was the entire wedding party. One was specifically for discussing the hen do, yet another was for the engagement party Nora and Harry were planning for next month. Bea couldn’t even be bothered to work out what the other ones were for. They were already crammed full of overly emotive messages, pictures and links. Bea did a double-take; she’d assumed they were from Nora, but the invitations were from Sarah. Ugh. Attack of the bridesmaidzilla. This was going to get old, and fast.

Eli had messaged her too, an hour or so ago; Bea clutched at the normality that was a stupid meme image forwarded by an old friend. She was still scouring the Google Image search results for the perfect response to him when her smiling date returned from the bar with her glass of wine.

Chapter Three

We were on holiday in Thailand and, as you do, decided to go for a walk on the moonlit beach. Another couple were there releasing a lantern, and it really was the most romantic of settings. My boyfriend dropped to one knee and did the deed – not that I can remember a word of what he said – and of course, I said yes. Romanticism was cut short however – the crashing waves combined with all the beers I’d necked that evening meant I needed to get back to the hotel and use the facilities, sharpish. Of course then we had to call our parents and all our friends and tell them the good news, so by the time we were ready to go out and celebrate all the bars were closed (except for an Irish bar, which was blasting out ‘Cotton Eye Joe’). Instead we went back to our room and shared a lukewarm can of lager from the minibar. The next day, I woke up with food poisoning.

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