Jenny Colgan - Do You Remember the First Time?

‘I am calling you crazy,’ said Tashy. ‘There are hardly any princes left in Europe, and we don’t want Albert, thanks.’

‘Hmm,’ I grumped.

‘Flo, we did everything right, you know. Everything we were told. We looked after ourselves. And this is our reward. Good lives. Fun.’

‘If I was sixteen again …’ I said wistfully.

‘What?’

‘I’d shag Clelland to within an inch of his life.’

‘I wish you had,’ said Tashy. ‘Then you could have found out he was a weedy little indy freak, as nervous and teenage and odd-smelling as the rest of us, and then you could have stopped going on about him every time you got drunk for the next decade and a half.’

‘I do not!’ I protested. ‘And anyway, you do not have a romantic soul,’ I said, pointing at her.

‘Yeah? Well, what’s that, BABY?’

And she pointed to the dress hanging on the back of the door.

‘You seem distracted,’ Olly said as I slowly ironed my Karen Millen trouser suit. I’d loved it when I bought it, but did it now seem a bit … matronly? Old? Not exactly the kind of thing I wanted my first love to see me in?

‘Not at all,’ I said, in a completely distracted kind of a way, staring straight out of the window.

‘Are you pissed off your best friend’s getting married?’

‘You know, I’ve heard of people who got married and survived,’ I said. ‘Not many, though.’

‘Well, don’t worry,’ he said, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye, and suddenly I got a really strong feeling that he was planning something. In fact I knew he was. And I wasn’t sure how that made me feel. It might have made me nervous, if I wasn’t already incredibly nervous at the thought of coming face to face with Clelland again. Ridiculous, I know; so immature. It was just, I’d never run into him whenever I’d gone back home for Christmas or anything and … well, it was just interesting, that was all. He wasn’t on his Friends Reunited page either. Not that I checked a lot. I checked all the time, mentally giving points to people I thought were doing worse or better than me.

‘For God’s sake! Those bloody dry-cleaners have shrunk my trousers. Useless bloody bastards. I’m going to sue them.’ Olly sucked his stomach in.

‘Yes, dear,’ I said, suddenly realising, as I stood there with an iron in my hand, how much I was starting to sound like my mother.

It was a lovely day for a wedding, if you like that sort of thing. This was about the eighteenth I’d been to this year, but it was still very nice. I suppose it was a bit different, being Tashy’s. I was very glad Tashy hadn’t pushed me about being the bridesmaid. When we were sixteen it was all we talked about, but brides over thirty have enough problems looking young and innocent as it is, without an Ancient Mariner hanging grimly by her side, trying to make light conversation with the ushers and ignore the whispers (‘Such a shame she’s not gone yet …’; ‘They do leave it so late, the lassies these days …’) and Tashy’s young niece, Kathleen, would do a perfect job of looking fresh and sixteen and completely overexcited, though trying to be too cool to show it – not entirely unlike we had been, it had to be said.

The church was cool and pretty as we slipped into seats near the front row, nodding and waving to everyone. No sign of him , and my parents weren’t coming till later. There is something incredibly evocative about a traditional English wedding ceremony, and this one was done beautifully; so much so that when they started up the Wedding March, I choked back a tear. Olly gave me a meaningful look.

Tashy looked wondrous, of course. She has excellent taste, and that eat-nothing-that-doesn’t-taste-of-poo diet had certainly worked. Her ivory sheath was incredibly tasteful, with gorgeous embroidered shoes just peeping out the bottom, matching the long lilies she held. I wondered briefly if she was going to burst out of her dress later after going into a crazed frenzy at the vol-au-vents table, then remembered that the point of a wedding is that you watch everyone else consume vast screeds of booze and nosh you’ve paid for but can’t partake in, in case you do something rash, like enjoy yourself. But here, in the peace and stillness of the old church, I couldn’t be cynical.

The vows were very traditional, and Max looked all right too, gruffly uming and erring over the responses – not that anyone was looking at him, of course. Even when we were kids, grooms always had something of an interchangeable quality to them. It was Barbie who was important. Ken was neither here nor there.

My eyes had kept scanning the pews for Clelland, just in case, but I couldn’t see him. Maybe he was that bald geezer over there … or that enormously fat chap wearing the colourful waistcoat …

‘God, how long is this going to go on for?’ whispered Oliver with a wink, although he had just been singing ‘Jerusalem’ loudly and off key, and was clearly having a sensational time. I swallowed, guiltily.

‘I hope there aren’t too many prawns,’ Olly was saying as we walked into the large marquee, which was bedecked with flowers and ruffled decorations. The sun was glinting off lots of very clean silverware and shiny glasses, waiting to be replenished on into the night. One billion photographs later and I still hadn’t seen Clelland.

‘Or anything with nuts. Or salad cream.’

‘I’m sure the Blythes are far too posh for salad cream,’ I said, and squeezed his hand chummily.

Olly was the pickiest eater I’d ever met in my life. I thought they thrashed that out of you thoroughly at boarding school, but I was obviously wrong, because he refused to eat most things that weren’t cheese or fish fingers, on various spurious grounds.

‘Well, you know viscous things upset my stomach.’

‘All fluids upset your stomach.’

‘Glooky ones most of all.’

I took a quick look at the hors-d’oeuvres coming over. Excellent – sausages on sticks, with a slightly pretentious veneer of sesame seeds over the top. He’d be able to cope with those, once he’d picked off the seeds. And I guessed I’d better make my way over to the bride as well, once I got half a—

My heart stopped in my throat. There he was, about ten feet away from me. Clelland. Looking exactly the same. In fact, if anything, he looked even younger. Then he turned his head away and disappeared into the crowd.

‘Oh my God!’ I said.

‘I know. Sesame seeds,’ said Oliver unhappily.

‘No, no. It’s just, I’ve seen an old friend. I have to go and say hello to … them.’

‘OK. I’m off to pat Max hard on the back as a kind of non-gay way of saying well done,’ said Oliver.

I walked over to where Clelland had been. But even as I got there, I felt something was wrong. Was my mind playing tricks on me? How could that be such an exact replica of someone I hadn’t seen for sixteen years? I mean, people change in sixteen years, don’t they? It would be completely impossible for it to be otherwise. I mean, of course, I’d hardly changed, thanks to the miracles of modern cosmetics … well, maybe I had a bit. Suddenly I gulped and smoothed down my hair. Did he have a picture rotting away in his attic?

I spotted his dark jacket again. He was talking to one of the waitresses with his back to me. I took a deep breath and walked up to him.

‘Erm … hey there!’

The man turned round. And at once I realised my mistake. The likeness, though, was absolutely extraordinary. The figure stared at me. This wasn’t a man at all, hardly more than a boy.

‘Sorry, but … oh, you look familiar.’

‘I’m Flora Scurrison,’ I said warily.

His face was furrowed in concentration for another minute, then he broke into an enormous smile. ‘Oh my God! Don’t you remember me?’