The One with All the Bridesmaids: A hilarious, feel-good romantic comedy

‘Nora’s given me a pretty long list of things I need to check out.’ Cleo waved her phone. Nora had insisted that her bridesmaids all download a group scheduler app for just such a purpose. ‘So maybe let’s do the necessary inside, and then we can be a little bit more leisurely about our baked goods? After all, there’s no rush.’

Gray hesitated. (Oh. Oh.) And Cleo felt supremely stupid.

‘Except there is a rush,’ she corrected herself, smiling through the pressure of the awkwardness. ‘Sorry, that was … horrendously presumptive of me.’

‘Not a rush, as such, not at all,’ Gray rushed to assure her. ‘I can always see her later, or another night. I mean, it’s just a Tinder date. In fact, don’t even think about it. She’s not even the one I was most looking forward to going out with.’

Cleo goggled at him. ‘You’ve got another date lined up?’

‘God yeah! I’ve another one on Tuesday – just going to the cinema, casual, you know – and one on Wednesday – that’s the real stunner, I can show you her photo – and I might have another one going in for Friday night, I’ll see how I feel later in the week. Sometimes you just want a night in, you know?’

Cleo didn’t know. Most of her nights seemed to be nights in. She usually took the piss out of Daisy for being on Tinder and Badoo constantly, but maybe she was missing a trick here. She wondered if Daisy and Gray had ever ‘matched’ up on one of those things. It was a very disquieting image. Maybe she should be matching them up? Was she being a totally remiss friend here?

(Stop. That way madness lies.) ‘Okay, so, scones first?’ she managed, to Gray’s enthusiastic nods.

‘Mostly because I didn’t have breakfast,’ he admitted, falling into step with Cleo as she headed towards the swing doors into the café. ‘I›ll wolf it down, I promise.’ A bright-haired barely-teen with too much red lipstick greeted them at the threshold.

‘Welcome to Withysteeple Hall!’ She pressed glossy brochures into their hands faster than they could grasp them. ‘Fuel stop?’ She carried full-steam on before anyone had a chance to answer. ‘Unfortunately you’ve missed the first guided tour of the house, but there are ones on the hour, at one and at three. We have Marshall Pickworthy exhibiting in the main hall, of course; he’s the chap that choreographs an interpretive dance based on the story of your relationship. On the South Field you can see Everlasting Love Equestrians – they train ponies and small horses to be ring-bearers: only the thoroughbreds, of course, grade horses don’t really have the intelligence. And in the ballroom we have a selection of our recommended caterers exhibiting, so make sure you leave some room for the samplers!’ She leaned in conspiratorially. ‘The shots of chilled vichyssoise are the talk of the fair!’

Cleo blinked, clutching the shiny brochure to her chest.

‘You … you don’t say,’ Gray managed.

‘So, how long until the Big Day?’ the girl asked, managing somehow to imbue the words with requisite capitalisation.

Despite having said earlier in the car that he wouldn’t be fazed, Gray immediately blushed. ‘Oh, we’re not--’

‘We’re here for a friend,’ Cleo interrupted bluntly.

‘Yeah, we’re not dating,’ Gray clarified.

‘Which apparently puts me in the minority,’ Cleo couldn’t help but mutter to herself.

* * *

‘Okay, so …’ Bea flipped through the paperwork the bruise-lady had given her to read through, referring to the checklist on her phone in the other hand. ‘Nora needs to know about capacity, availability, corkage, catering, parking, accommodation, references from recent brides – Christ, really? – and what the chairs are like. Apparently.’ She blinked. ‘Wow. Oddly specific …’

‘What the chairs are like?’ Eli echoed, puzzled. ‘Well, they’re hardly going to be armchairs, are they?’

‘You’d hope.’

They were settled in a staging area – a billowy but surprisingly unromantic cream marquee – to the back of the main barn, awaiting the events coordinator. Eli paced the small distance, peering into all the stacked storage crates. Bea scanned through the papers again.

‘It’s a whole new world this,’ she muttered. ‘Who the fuck thought there’d ever be regulations concerning confetti?’

‘It’s a wedding venue!’ Eli agreed, nodding. ‘Why would they have any beef with confetti?’

‘Not the foggiest. Okay, so, are we carrying on with pretending this is for us?’ Bea asked; they’d agreed in the car that they were likely to get straighter answers if that was the case.

‘Yeah, but you’d better do most of the talking. I’ll give us away in a heartbeat. She’ll ask us where we met and I’ll panic and tell her we’re second cousins, or something.’

Bea burst out laughing. ‘No, don’t you remember? We met at an AA meeting,’ she suggested.

‘On a nudist beach,’ Eli countered, grinning.

‘At the GUM clinic. We swapped tips on how best to manage our flare-ups of genital warts.’

‘Wait …’ Eli pretended to look thoughtful, ‘wasn’t it actually on the online message forum for that fetish club that we met?’

‘Yeah. Because you’ve got that thing where you dress up like a sexy My Little Pony,’ Bea shot back.

‘Hey, whatever gets you off, babe,’ Eli countered without missing a beat.

‘Okay, okay!’ Bea held her palms up in defeat. ‘Point taken. I’ll do all the talking. Do you think she’ll actually bother asking us how we met? Look at her job! She must have stupid engaged couples and their stupid stories coming out of her ears.’

Eli shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s acceptable small talk, isn’t it? Maybe we can distract her by going straight in with the whole chair controversy?’

‘Good plan. If she does ask, though, I’ll just stay safe with ‘we met online’.’

‘No, wait.’ Eli looked at her, his eyes soft. ‘We met at school. And we were best friends for years until one day, when the time was right, we fell in love. And here we are.’

Bea tried to smile at the romanticism, but the taste of it caught at the back of her throat and she had to look away. He’s not done it on purpose, she knows that, but moments from him and from that night began flashing all the same: how the taste of sweat on his skin was sharp; how he’d complained that her toenails were too long and had scratched him as she wrapped her legs up and around his hips; the horrendous trip to the pharmacy for the morning-after pill the next day, ignoring calls from Nora on her phone, sick with shame and the worst hangover of her life.

‘Bea?’ Eli prompted; she’d obviously hesitated too long. ‘You know, like Harry and Nora? We might as well adopt their story in this instance, don’t you think?’

Bea rallied herself and swallowed back the past. ‘Okay. Whatever. She’s really not going to need any intimate detail, though, surely?’

‘Am I interrupting?’ The promised events coordinator beamed at them, so entirely perky that she even put the Goodie Bag Lady of Super-Duper fame to shame.

‘Elliott,’ Eli thrust his hand out and returned the jaunty shake with enthusiasm. Bea got to her feet a little slowly – this day was starting to really take it out of her.

‘Bea,’ she introduced herself in turn, catching Eli’s eye as she did so, wrinkling her nose at him. ‘We met at school.’

Chapter 6

About a week before the wedding day, the bridezilla decided that all of the bridesmaids couldn’t wear the shoes we’d purchased for the wedding and instead needed to wear shoes specifically dyed to match the dresses. Obviously the dye didn’t have enough time to set … our feet were the colour of Ribena for weeks afterwards!

Charlie, Oxford

‘Oh, my God,’ Nora sighed over the selfie Cleo and Gray had taken in front of Withysteeple Hall. ‘You guys are just the cutest. Why haven’t you jumped those bones yet, lady? Daise, take a look.’ She tossed Cleo’s phone across the table; Daisy – mouth full of burrito – made appreciative noises.

‘He is cute,’ Sarah agreed, peering at the photo over Daisy’s shoulder. At that, Queen Bea deigned to take a glance at the screen.

‘Yeah, he’s cute,’ Cleo conceded. (There was no point denying it. She had eyes.) ‘But he’s my colleague—’

‘You’re so funny about that, aren’t you,’ Bea frowned. ‘I’ve slept with loads of people I’ve worked with.’

‘Yeah, but, Bea, remember you had to leave that one job when that IT guy got all stalky?’ Nora giggled. ‘So you’re not exactly being a role model for it there!’

‘They do say ‘Don’t shit where you eat’,’ Daisy added sagely.

‘They do say that, yes.’ Cleo rolled her eyes. ‘Beautifully put.’

‘Hey, as long as one person isn’t the other person’s manager or anything complicated like that,’ Bea shrugged. ‘I say play ball.’

Sarah took a very determined gulp from her Hibiscus Margarita; she’d been on a bit of a health kick lately and laying off the drink, but she seemed to be back on the cocktail horse with a vengeance this evening. Belatedly, Cleo remembered – of course – that Sarah’s dickhead ex-boyfriend had left her for his PA, and clumsily rushed to change the subject.

‘He also appears to be dating most of London,’ she revealed dramatically.

‘What? What do you mean?’ Nora demanded; she had been very pro the idea of Cleo getting together with Gray ever since Christmas. Cleo could probably tell her Gray was flamingly homosexual and it probably wouldn’t dampen her enthusiasm for the idea all that much; she was convinced that Gray was The One for Cleo (or, at least, A One).

‘Well, the half that’s on Tinder anyway,’ she clarified.

‘Oooh.’ In a flash Daisy’s phone was in her hand, the app in question already loading. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him, though. I definitely wouldn’t have swiped left for him!’ A parade of men appeared immediately at her fingertips. ‘So, if you’re not going to jump those bones, hun, would you mind if I took a ride?’ She waggled her eyebrows at Cleo mischievously.

Cleo glared back at her across the salt-dusted rim of her cocktail glass. ‘What about The Photographer?’ she asked. They didn’t really bother learning the names of Daisy’s gentlemen friends until Daisy herself bothered referring to them by name; the downside to being more or less happy to go on a date with anyone who asked her was that there were only so many men’s names in the world – and it got confusing.

‘Yes, what about him?’ Nora echoed, in alarm. ‘I was hoping for mates’ rates for the wedding if I needed to use him.’

‘Darren is great,’ Daisy informed them calmly.

‘Darren!’ squealed Nora, clearly noting the use of actual name and off already imagining what her friend’s future children would look like.

‘But it’s always good to have a strong bench waiting,’ Daisy laughed, ignoring Nora’s excitement. ‘And as he’s just your colleague, surely you don’t mind …?’

Refusing to rise to the tease, Cleo turned squarely to face Nora and changed the subject. ‘So, what did you think after you read my email with all the information about the Hall?’ she asked. ‘Is it looking like a contender?’

‘Oh, definitely,’ Nora assured her. ‘We’ll have to make time this weekend or next to go there ourselves. It’s not too expensive for what it is, and they’re not all that prohibitive with outside suppliers, like some places can be, and, I mean – just look at it – it’s the perfect princess fairy-tale wedding venue! The little girl in me is crying out for it!’

Of course (unlike Bea), Cleo had never known Little Girl Nora. She’d met Nora when they were both eighteen. Nora had had a fat, frizzy fringe back then, greasy dark roots and a helix cartilage piercing (long gone, now) and wore a lot of black pencil liner all around her eyes, like she felt she had to ring them or people wouldn’t know where to look for her. She was that little bit lost, in the way that most eighteen-year-old girls are, especially during those first few nebulous years of the noughties (Cleo always thought of them all as being Generation Y point five).

They’d met in the strip-lit hallway of their shared student accommodation, mint-green paint badly faded and peeling away around the doorframes. Cleo, midway through unpacking, had been wearing a polka-dot-print headscarf – a little retro, but the hair she’d inherited from her father – his mother’s dominant Caribbean genes coming to the fore – was an absolute nightmare to get dust out of.

Nora’s heavily lined eyes had opened wide when she’d caught sight of her. ‘Oh, I love your hair! Hi! I’ve tried that so many times but I just can’t pull it off!’ She spoke then – as she did now – in a musical tumble, the saturation in the Irish brogue during her formative years lending the slightest of softness to an otherwise strong London accent. ‘I’m Nora.’ She’d gestured to the door opposite Cleo’s. ‘3C.’

At first she’d thought Nora was a little weird and needy (Cleo cringes to think of it now), but now of course she knows it was just that Nora was one of those girls who had always been used to being surrounded by a crowd of friends, a mob of siblings, and there at uni she was truly alone for the first time in her life. Her best friend from home had decided against going to university at all (although Cleo thinks now it might be that Bea never got the grades, more like) and Nora was all over the place with guilt, with nerves, with excitement. One day she was homesick, and the next she was having the time of her life, and everything in between.

She was the mummy of the corridor – making endless cups of tea and always studying with her door propped open just in case anybody fancied a chat. If you ever needed a painkiller, Nora’d be sure to have a foil of ibuprofen; if you broke up with your boyfriend, Nora’d sit quietly with you and watch Friends over a hot chocolate, or join you in a half spliff and dancing till dawn (whichever was your preference). Nora was the one that everyone wanted to live with when it came time to choose housemates for the next academic year, and Cleo had been first in line.

Not everyone was so lucky as to make a best friend for always within the first hour of their first day of university life. Cleo felt a huge swell of affection for Nora and Harry and everyone else – even Bea.

‘But do you really want something so cliché?’ Bea was saying, rolling those infamous eyes again. ‘I think you can probably find somewhere better, Nor. I thought you wanted to go more rustic, anyway?’

Okay, maybe not Bea.

Chapter 7

Darren was getting very familiar very quickly. Earlier he’d wandered into the bathroom as Daisy had been exfoliating in there and let forth a tremendous splashing piss without so much as a ‘good morning’. Then he’d wandered out without washing his hands. And he’d left the toilet seat up. Horror piled on horror. Perhaps this was an English blokey thing? A quick text to Nora confirmed that, no, this was unacceptable behaviour either side of the Atlantic. Damn. Just when she’d started using the guy’s name.

Feeling a little smug, Daisy finished packing her gym bag. Last pay day she’d gone out and equipped herself – sports bras of varying colours, leggings of various lengths, baggy tee-shirts with block-type slogans that announced things like SHUT UP AND SQUAT! and SWEAT IS FAT CRYING. She’d never been a gym bunny, but she was damned if she was going to be the ‘fat bridesmaid’ at this wedding. So now she joined Sarah for pre-work yoga sessions twice a week, did Zumba on a Thursday night and paid a veiny personal trainer fourteen pounds an hour to scream at her on as many of the other evenings as she could spare. Damn right her fat was going to cry.

Sarah was already dressed for the class when Daisy met her in the gym lobby (she wasn’t quite ready to ride the Tube in the exercise leggings yet). Sarah was always quite quiet in the mornings, but was even more so than usual; she only raised the weakest of outrage at the uninvited-pissing story.

‘Is everything okay?’ Daisy questioned her as they queued outside the studio door. ‘You seem distracted lately.’

Sarah gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Funny, that choice of word. I’ve actually been in a bit of trouble at work for just that. Being distracted. Making stupid mistakes.’ She sighed.

‘Shit, hun, I’m sorry.’

‘No, no. You’re right. They’re right. I have been distracted. I’ve been … arguing with Cole a bit recently. And I’m not sleeping well.’

‘What are you guys arguing about?’ Daisy pressed.

Sarah’s gaze slid away. ‘Oh, you know. Just domestic stuff. Boring. Nothing worth talking about.’

‘Oh. Well, let me know if I can do anything, hun.’ Daisy was genuinely very fond of Sarah. They were both Johnny-come-latelies, in a way, and Sarah had a sweet, unassuming way about her. They’d all written her off, back when she started dating Cole – pegged her as one of the fangirl types he normally went for that would never see more than one of your birthdays, or more than one Christmas drinks. She’d surprised them all; Cole probably most of all.

‘Anyway,’ Daisy continued, as they made their way into the flood-lit studio and began unfurling their yoga mats. Their instructor waved at them from the corner, where she was plugging her iPod into the speaker system. Daisy clocked her gym tee – NAMASTE … IN BED! it proclaimed – love it! She had to get that one … ‘I’m sure you couldn’t have managed to do something terribly disruptive at work.’ Sarah’s job as an executive’s PA at a stiff, corporate FTSE company was infamously tedious.

A smile finally twitched at Sarah’s lips. ‘Well. No. But the straw that finally broke HR’s back was the other day when I accidentally ordered 200,000 jiffy bags from the stationery supplier instead of two hundred.’

Daisy cracked up laughing. ‘You monster.’

Sarah gave in and laughed too. ‘I think they might still decide to take it out of my pay.’

‘In which case I guess you’ll be setting up a side-business selling padded envelopes, then!’

‘It’s nice to have a Plan B,’ Sarah giggled, sliding into a warm-up stretch. ‘I can call it Sarah’s Stationery Staples.’

‘So long as the stationery staple you’re after is a jiffy bag.’

Sarah laughed again, before she dropped into Flowering Lotus. ‘That can be in the small print.’

Chapter 8

‘I think this is beyond the call of duty,’ Cleo hissed under her breath so the masses around them didn’t hear. ‘BENEDICT. STOP THAT. I mean, you got a nice day out and a cream tea. This is – AIMEE, BACK IN LINE – this is hardly proportionate. DAVID, GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THERE.’

‘Hey, you agreed, any favour,’ Gray countered. ‘BENEDICT. MISS ADKINS SAID TO STOP THAT. And if you’re good, I’ll see if I can find you a teacake.’

Cleo was near certain that teaching was going to put her off having kids of her own. Okay, fair enough, seventy hyped-up thirteen-year-olds three hours from home were not going to be the best example, but still. She was exhausted and the whole weekend event had barely started. She hated doing field trips. As a maths teacher they weren’t something she had had all that much to do with since her teacher training. But, she conceded grudgingly, she had told Gray ‘anything’ … (and she’d never been to the Black Country Museum before so, well, there was that.)

Gray momentarily dipped back to herd some wayward tweens back into their crocodile. The parent ‘helper’ who was meant to be watching the rear of the line was instead watching YouTube on her phone (earphones in and everything). The two older, cannier teachers seemed to have split the group just so that Gray and Cleo got the trouble-makers (the dicks).

‘What time do thirteen-year-olds go to bed these days?’ Cleo asked Gray as he returned to her side, looking as decidedly frazzled as she felt, his hair sticking up around his normally impeccable parting. ‘BENEDICT. SERIOUSLY. LESS HORSEPLAY, MORE WALKING.’ Cleo just about stopped herself from clapping her hands crossly (she’d sworn to herself she’d never be the sort of teacher that claps at children, but she hadn’t known then what she knows now).

He shot her a conciliatory smile. ‘Chin up. Only five hours of scintillating Industrial Revolution fun to get through before dinner.’ He just about managed to avoid tripping over Aimee, who had once again stepped out of line in order to take a selfie with some interesting graffiti.

Cleo bit back a laugh as she watched Aimee simper and smirk as Gray put out his hands to steady her. There had been a marked increase in girls wanting to take history as a GCSE next year since the dashing Mr Sommers had joined the staff at Oakland. He was the very cliché of hunky professor, tall and well put together, just enough stubble to be interesting, Harry Potter-style glasses that Cleo wasn’t entirely sure he actually needed to wear, and with an astounding array of V-necked sweater vests that he wore well, over crisp shirts with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow. Hell, thirteen-year-old Cleo would have completely bought into it (even twenty-nine-year-old Cleo wasn’t entirely unaffected).

Cleo did another head count as they reached the glass-fronted entrance to the museum, just to be sure. She watched Gray’s lips moving as he counted too, under his breath. Helpful Helper Mum of Helpfulness finally tugged her earphones out and wound them around her iPhone, looking about herself expectantly.

‘OKAY GUYS, HAVE YOUR PRINT OUTS READY TO SHOW AT THE COUNTER, AND REMEMBER TO STAY IN YOUR BUDDY PAIR AT ALL TIMES.’ Gray steered the first clutch of students through to the ticket area and nodded companionably at Cleo. ‘See you on the other side of 1850, Miss Adkins.’

* * *

Eight hours, one near-miss, where the class clown nearly had a face-to-face meeting with the canal and a train of heaped plates of vinegary fish and chips later Cleo finally got to sit down. She flicked off her pinching Primark pumps and pulled the toe of her tights straight. ‘That wasn’t too bad, actually,’ she allowed. ‘I loved that story about the chain-makers going on strike. Got me all riled up: ‘shoulder to shoulder into the fray’ and all that. Did you know that women still earn on average twenty per cent less than men in this country? In this day and age!’ Cleo shook her head in disgust. ‘Those women back then were so brave … You know, I should go to a protest or something. I couldn’t be bothered to march when they put up tuition fees because I’d already graduated, and I’ve always felt shit about it. What do you think?’

Gray sank his head into his hands. ‘Please, no. No. Turn your teacher switch off. Can we just have a drink and a chat rather than analyse the socio-political landscape? Please?’

Cleo laughed. ‘Okay.’ They were off the clock, after all, with the senior teachers charged with roaming the corridors and keeping teenaged peace; the night was their own.

The hotel was almost entirely booked out with the kids, so the lounge area was empty. It had been quite a mild day out in the fresh air but the building was old and heavy-walled so there was a fire lit in the grate; the old, cracked leather of the wingback chairs in front of it was pleasantly warm against Cleo’s skin. She closed her eyes and let the heat kiss her face (maybe field trips weren’t that bad after all).

After only a few moments Gray was back cradling two crystal tumblers of ice in one large hand and carrying the matching decanter by its neck in the other. Cleo recognised the smell as he pulled the stopper out and groaned.

‘Yup,’ Gray grinned. ‘Your favourite.’ Cleo had gone through a big amaretto-and-cranberry stage at the end of last year, and it was precisely that delightful mixture she’d vomited all over Gray at the staff Christmas party (he’d joked that he’d smelt like a Bakewell tart for the rest of the holidays). Gray poured them both healthy measures over crackling ice cubes and sat back down in the other armchair. The chairs were only slightly angled, so they both watched the fire in silence for a few moments, enjoying their first few sips of the almond liqueur and the feeling of peace settling over them after the manic day. Gray’s profile was painted orange; holding the delicate etched tumbler in his big hand, he looked like the lord of the manor. Cleo thought back to the cheesy selfie they’d snapped in front of the porch of Withysteeple Hall last month and sighed.