Charlotte Butterfield - Crazy Little Thing Called Love

‘Ok, so table plans,’ Lucy said studiously, peering at the long list in front of her. ‘We have most of the RSVPs back now – Mum’s going to chase the rest – I can’t do that myself, it would be vulgar. And then we can start assigning table places. Leila, I’ve pinned some ideas onto Pinterest of what designs I want, so you can knock one up as you’re a designer.’

‘I design gardens Lucy, I’m not a graphic designer.’

Lucy looked at Leila blankly. ‘It’s all creative though, isn’t it? It’s literally just cutting out bits of card and mounting it on other bits of card, it’s not rocket science.’

If it’s not rocket science, Leila wanted to say, why aren’t you doing it yourself, now that you’ve given up your job purely to organise the wedding. She couldn’t believe it when Marcus told her that Lucy had resigned from her job as an event planner as she couldn’t manage the wedding and full-time work. ‘Poor lamb,’ he’d said, ‘the stress was really getting to her.’ But Leila knew that Judy was bearing the brunt of all the planning, ironic considering the nature of Lucy’s former career.

Judy had uncharacte‌ristically let slip on the phone to her a few nights before that she was finding Lucy ‘rather difficult’ to deal with, and that in all her years of working with brides, ‘Lucy has taken it to another level.’ She even persuaded Judy to change the curtains in the dining room as they didn’t match her flowers. Judy was incredulous when she told Leila this, yet still did it anyway, which Leila thought was the most incredulous thing. Since then, she had little sympathy for her mother’s tales of wedding woe. Yet here she was, nodding along like a mechanical dog, saying, ‘Table plans, ok. Anything else?’

‘Yes, I don’t know whether Marcus has mentioned this, but you need to bring a date. All the tables are for eight, and we can’t have one of seven, it would look unbalanced and just wrong.’

‘Um, ok, I’ll ask Shelley. She loves weddings, always up for a bit of usher action.’

‘No, no, it has to be a man, it’s boy girl boy girl seating, we can’t have two people of the same sex together, that would screw everything up.’

‘You’re sounding remarkably Republican there Lucy.’

The jibe was lost on her. Leila carried on, ‘But I don’t have any single male friends to bring, and you know I’m not dating anyone for another ten months.’

‘Sorry, but I’m not having your silly vow of celibacy ruin my special day.’

Again Leila found herself biting her lip. ‘Fine. I’ll find someone.’

‘No dreadlocks.’

‘Got it.’

‘He has to wear top hat and tails.’

‘Done.’

‘If he has tattoos he has to cover them up.’

‘This advert is sounding stranger by the minute.’

Lucy’s eyes widened, ‘You’re not really going to advertise to bring someone to my wedding?’

Leila considered carrying on the joke just for her own amusement, but GSOH didn’t seem to be one of Lucy’s qualities. ‘Of course not. I have just the chap. He’s a colleague, Jamie. Nice guy, been pestering me to go out for ages, I’ll ask him, but I’ll have to lay down some ground rules first.’

The conversation with Jamie the next day went exactly the way Leila anticipated. There had been a moment, a fleeting blink-and-you-miss-it-moment at last year’s staff party when their eyes locked onto each other’s and Leila was tempted to accept Jamie’s ever so eager advances, but as she stood there deliberating whether to or not a leggy intern grabbed Jamie to dance and the moment passed. She waited until the office had thinned out at lunchtime and followed him into the small pantry where he was meticulously measuring out his protein shake powder into milk. ‘Hey Jamie.’

‘Lovely Leila, how are you?’

‘Look, I have a favour to ask you. You can absolutely say no, although I hope you don’t.’

‘Intriguing. Go on.’ He leant back against the countertop. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, which made his biceps bulge a little. But then, he knew that. Leila was also heartened to see a tattoo-free forearm, which was another tick in a box.

‘My brother is getting married, which in itself is a miracle, and I have to take a date and—’

‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t finished my sentence.’

‘Yes I’ll come with you.’

‘But you need to know, I’m two months into a year of celibacy, and so we’ll be going to this as colleagues, friends even. But absolutely not as dates. It’s in Dartmouth, at my parents’ place, so I’ll book you a room, but a different one to mine. I’m just lowering your expectations now, so you’re not expecting a bit of wedding night fun and frolics.’

‘Message received and understood.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Would love to come. And you know, if the romance of the occasion, and the free-flowing champagne, means that your mind changes as the night wears on, then that’s fine with me too.’

‘It won’t.’

‘But if it does.’

‘It won’t.’

‘But if it does.’

‘It’s on the 1st July, I’ll email you the details. I’m getting there a couple of days before so you’ll have to make your own way down, but I’ll pay half your petrol. Is that ok?’

‘Sure thing.’

As Leila left the pantry she heard him shout, ‘But if it does!’ She smiled as the door slammed behind her.

That evening she checked her blog statistics, she’d got another two-hundred and fifty followers over the last week, which took her total number to just shy of fifteen-hundred. And some had even started commenting too. At first they were just one or two words, like ‘Yes!’, ‘Me too!’ ‘I feel the same’, but then women started writing longer posts about their own lives and loves. Leila created another page on the site for women to share their stories, and it was garnering more and more clicks every day. The beauty of the internet meant it wasn’t just local London women logging on; she’d had women from Scotland, Switzerland, all the way to Bermuda and California joining in the discussions. Leila couldn’t help feeling a little proud that she’d created this forum for a community of women to come together, united in their tales of embracing single life.

It was the story of one woman, Namisha, that inspired Leila to set up a closed Facebook group in addition to the blog. Namisha had had an arranged marriage planned. She hadn’t been too happy with the idea beforehand, but her family had told her that she could be pro-active in finding the groom, so she relented. After months of chaperoned meetings with different prospective men, she finally found someone she clicked with. The wedding date was set, over eight-hundred invitations were sent out, she sat still for four hours having her hands painstakingly decorated with henna at her Mehndi party, and had a red silk sari specially made in India and flown over. On the morning of the ceremony, just as the ballroom of one of Manchester’s top hotels filled with guests, Namisha learned that the groom had run off with an American girl he’d been secretly dating for five years.

Although she kept her story brief and free from an outpouring of emotion, unlike some of the other recently-scorned singletons, the subtlety of Namisha’s pain was imbedded in every word. Every one of Leila’s break-ups had been a private experience, one where she alone suffered the pain and humiliation. She couldn’t imagine what that poor woman went through in such a public way. Within a couple of hours, twenty different women had offered Namisha support, soothing words and a couple of women local to where Namisha lived even offered tea and cake to accompany their sympathy.

This website was becoming more than just Leila typing a few lines as she had her dinner each night. This was a virtual club that was making a difference.