Jill Steeples - Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

‘You’re not going in to work today?’

I nodded. It was the last thing I wanted to do, especially after yesterday’s bombshell. I was supposed to have ticked off dozens of jobs on my to-do list, but I hadn’t managed any. Not that it mattered any more. My wedding to-do list was now clearly redundant. Now I didn’t know whether I should be ringing round and telling everybody the wedding was off. The thought that all my dreams and hard work could be undone in a couple of phone calls made me shudder.

I wondered if the universe had been testing me, putting me through some elaborate pre-wedding initiation task. One which I’d clearly failed. If I hadn’t read that diary then I would never have known about Sophie and Ed and our wedding would have gone ahead as planned. Perhaps it was only a last-minute fling on Ed’s part and their relationship would have fizzled out once we’d married and I would have been none the wiser. Blissfully ignorant and happy.

Only I wasn’t. Now I was very much in the know and miserable.

‘So have you decided what you’re going to do? Are you still set on going ahead with the wedding?’ He paused, his sandwich in mid-air.

‘I think so.’ I couldn’t meet Ben’s eye. Instead, I ran my tongue around the outside of the doorstop of a sandwich, mopping up the oozing ketchup. Did I even still want to marry Ed after what he’d done? The thought of cancelling the wedding was the worst thing I’d ever contemplated, but did I have any other choice? Maybe I needed to postpone it at least, to work out with Ed if we even had a relationship worth saving.

Aargh. Frustration surged around my body. One minute I wanted to rush round to Ed’s place and commit serious bodily harm upon him, the next minute I wanted to forget I’d even read that stupid diary and pretend none of this had happened.

I needed to buy myself some time. Get things straight in my own mind before I faced everyone else.

‘We’ve been together such a long time. We were so looking forward to being married. Well, I was,’ I said, wondering if Ed had ever felt the same. ‘I don’t see why I should throw my whole life away because of Sophie. If what you say is true, that it’s me Ed really loves, then maybe there is some way of coming back from this?’ I could hear the desperation in my own voice. ‘Maybe this was just a pre-wedding blip. Something he needed to get out of his system.’

Ben shrugged, taking a sip from his tea, and I felt so grateful that he was there, allowing me to talk rubbish, nodding in all the right places, without making me feel worse than I already did.

‘You might be right.’ He looked at me closely, his gaze on my face unnerving. ‘Listen, can’t you call in sick? If I’m being honest you’re looking pretty rough.’

I smiled wryly. Perhaps I could rely on Ben to give it to me straight after all. I smoothed my hair back off my face and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth in what I realised, too late, was a particularly feminine and endearing move. Ben had certainly seen me at my best these last couple of days. Something else I wish I could scrub out and pretend had never happened.

‘Thanks, Ben, but I ought to go. Hopefully it will take my mind off things.’

***

Fat chance there was of that! It seemed like the whole world, or rather the entire workforce of Purcells, was conspiring against me by wanting to talk weddings, and my wedding in particular. Head down, I’d raced up the stairs to the accounts department floor, past Helen in credit control, past Sue and Bev in purchase ledger, past the entire sale ledger, trying to avoid eye contact with any of them, but I swear each and every one of them called out as I passed, ‘not long to go now, Anna!’

And now that young lad Adam from the warehouse was standing in front of my desk with a soppy grin on his face.

‘So how’s the blooming bride?’

‘What?’ It came out much more tersely than I’d intended.

He shifted uneasily on the spot.

‘How are you?’ His grin lost some of its previous sparkle. ‘Not long to go now, eh?’

Why hadn’t I noticed before that everyone at work seemed to talk in trite little clichés?

‘What’s that then, Adam? Month end? Pay day? The end of the world?’ I knew which one was most apt for my new circumstances.

‘Er, no, I meant your wedding, it’s this Saturday, isn’t it?’

‘Ah right, yes, silly me. How could I have forgotten? Ha ha, well, that’s hardly likely, is it, with everyone around here reminding me of the fact.’ I looked up at Adam’s crestfallen face and felt a momentary pang of guilt. I’d clearly just gained another label across my forehead. ‘Office bitch’ as well as ‘office bride-to-be’.

Only I wasn’t the office bride-to-be now, I was the office laughing stock, even if the office weren’t yet aware of the fact. And if they weren’t aware of it now, they soon would be if I returned to work after the honeymoon without that magic ring on my finger, or even on Saturday for the lucky few who had been invited to witness the wedding crash of the year. Oh yes, I was definitely on the fast track to obtaining company notoriety. Maybe I should just climb up onto my desk right now and make the big announcement.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Sorry to interrupt your early-morning internet browsing disguised as working, but my wedding, which seems to be the hottest gossip on the office floor, is officially off! Cue stunned faces and hushed whispers. So maybe we could all stop dissecting the finer details of my non-big day and move on to discussing someone else’s life. Yes?

That customary prickle of shame ran across my skin again. I knew I’d never be able to return to work if the wedding didn’t go ahead, facing everyone’s sympathetic looks, hearing the furtive whispers. No, I just couldn’t do it. I’d have to run off and join the circus or something or find another job at least.

I looked up at Adam who’d turned a fetching pink colour.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered, grabbing the contents of my in-tray and straightening them in my hands, ‘it’s just that I’ve got lots to do here before I can even think about marrying the man of my dreams. Was there something in particular you wanted?’

‘Oh right, yes, of course. No, it was nothing. Nothing important. Just a chat. I’ll let you get on with … your, um, work then.’ He shuffled backwards in to the corridor looking like a man desperate for a means of escape.

Huh, the man of my dreams! Had Ed ever been the man of my dreams? If you’d asked me before yesterday morning then I would have said a categorical yes. Now, he’d morphed into the man of my nightmares and I felt as though I didn’t know diddly-squat about anything.

Mum thought Ed was God’s gift. In fact, I sometimes wondered if she didn’t get on better with Ed than I did! They chatted incessantly, bonded over obscure American TV thrillers and shared silly little jokes. Admittedly she’d put him through an extensive and arduous interview process for the position of ideal son-in-law, over several Sunday lunches, and he’d passed with flying colours. But what would she say when she found out that the golden boy was nothing more than a two-faced conman?

He’d appeared to be all the things a mother would want in a potential son-in-law: he was kind and friendly, clean-cut and polite, with impeccable manners and good prospects. In fact, he possessed all the things a woman would want in a potential husband, but all those good traits had now been wiped clean away by the discovery that he was just another low-life, lying little toerag.

I took a sip of my coffee, put down the wad of papers in my hand and clicked on my inbox. Ninety-six unread emails in one day. Yuk. I had no idea where to start, what my job was even or what I’d been doing when I’d left the office on Friday night, – full of hope, heading off for my last weekend as a single woman. Now it would be forever remembered as my last weekend as a happily engaged woman before the bolt of lightning struck, with the upcoming weekend looming like a toxic cloud over my head. Somehow I had to get through the next few days pretending everything was normal and that I was perfectly capable of carrying out my job, which at that moment seemed way beyond my reach.