Mhairi McFarlane - Who’s That Girl? - A laugh-out-loud sparky romcom!

‘Hello, Edie.’

‘… Hello?’

‘What are you doing over here? There are toilets inside if you need to go.’

Edie nearly laughed and stopped herself.

‘Just taking a photo of the hotel. It looks so pretty, lit up.’

Jack glanced over his shoulder, as if checking the truth of what she said.

‘I came to say hi and couldn’t find you anywhere. I wondered if you’d disappeared off with someone.’

‘Who?’

‘I didn’t know. Instead you’re skulking around on your own, being weird.’

He smiled, in that way that always felt so adoring. Edie had thought ‘made you feel like the only person in the room’ was a figure of speech, until she met Jack.

‘I’m not being weird!’ Edie said, sharply. She felt her blood heat at this.

‘We need to discuss the elephant,’ Jack said, and Edie’s heart caught in her throat.

‘What …?’

‘The Pearl Harbor-sized atrocity that was committed back there.’

Edie relaxed from her spike of shock, and in relief, laughed despite herself. He had her.

‘You left before she got the bridesmaids jazz scatting. Oh God, it was the worst thing to ever happen in the whole world, Edie. And I once walked in on my dad with a copy of Knave .’

Edie gurgled some more. ‘What did Charlotte think of it?’

‘Amazingly, she’s more worried her Uncle Morris upset Lucie with the comments about her singing. Apparently he’s got “reduced inhibitions” due to early stage dementia. That didn’t make anything he said inaccurate, to be fair. Maybe he’s not the one with dementia.’

‘Oh no. Poor Uncle Morris. And poor Charlotte.’

‘Don’t waste too much sympathy on her. Uncle Morris is tolerated because he’s absolutely nosebleed rich and everyone’s hanging in there for a slice of the pie when he dies.’

Edie said, ‘Ah,’ and thought, not for the first time, that she was not among her people. She had thought there was at least one of ‘her people’ here, and yet apparently, he was one of their people. Forever, now.

‘It’s bizarre, this whole thing,’ Jack said, waving back at the hubbub from the yellow glow of the hotel. ‘ Married . Me.’

Edie felt irritated at being expected to join in with rueful, wistful reflection on this score. Jack had stopped copying her into his decision-making processes a long time ago. In fact, she was never in them.

‘That’s what you turned up for today, Jack. Were you expecting a hog roast? A cat’s birthday? Circumcision?’

‘Haha. You will never lose your ability to shock, E.T.’

This annoyed Edie, too. Unwed Jack never found her ‘shocking’. He found her interesting and funny. Now she was some filthy-mouthed unmarriageable outrageous oddball. Who nobody chose .

‘Anyway,’ Edie said, sweetly but briskly. ‘Time we went back inside. You can’t miss the most expensive party you’ll ever throw.’

‘Oh, Edie. C’mon.’

‘What?’

Edie was tense again, wondering why they were stood in the gloaming here together, wondering what this was about. She folded her arms.

‘I’m so glad you came, today. You don’t know how much. I’m happier to see you than pretty much anyone else.’

Apart from your bride? Edie thought, though she didn’t say it.

‘… Thank you.’

What else could she say?

‘Please don’t act as if we can’t be good mates now. Nothing’s changed.’

Edie had no idea what he meant. If they were always just good mates, then obviously marriage changed nothing. It struck her that she’d never understood Jack, and this was a problem.

While she hesitated over her response, Jack said: ‘I get it, you know. You think I’m a coward.’

‘What?

‘I go along with things that aren’t entirely me.’

‘… How do you mean?’

Edie knew this wasn’t the right thing to ask. This conversation was disloyal. Everything about this was grim. Jack had married someone else. He shouldn’t be saying treacherous things to a woman he worked with, by some shrubbery. There was nothing, and no one, here of value to be salvaged. She’d known for some time now he was a bad person, or at least a very weak one, and this behaviour only proved it.

But Jack was dangling the temptation of talking about things she’d wanted to talk about for so long.

‘Sometimes you don’t know what to do. You know?’ Jack shook his head and exhaled and scuffed the toe of a Paul Smith brogue on the grass.

‘Not really. Marrying is a pretty straightforward yes or no. They put it in the vows.’

‘I didn’t mean … that, exactly. Charlie’s great, obviously. I mean. All of this. Fuss. Oh, I don’t know.’

Edie sensed he was several degrees drunker than she’d first realised.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Edie said, with as little emotion as possible.

‘ Edie . Stop being like this. I’m trying to tell you that you matter to me. I don’t think you know that.’

Edie had no reply to this and in the space where her answer should be, Jack murmured, ‘Oh, God,’ stepped forward, leaned down, and kissed her.

She almost reeled with the surprise, feeling the soft brush of his freshly shaven jaw against hers and the pressure of his warm, beer-wet lips on hers. The ‘Jack kissing her’ information was so huge, it didn’t get through to her central cortex in one go. Full comprehension had to be delivered in stages.

1 1. Jack is kissing you. On his wedding day. This does not seem possible?! Yet early reports are it is DEFINITELY HAPPENING.

2 2. Is this going to last longer than a peck? Was it a mistake? Was he aiming for your cheek and missed?

3 3. OK no, this is definitely a KISS-kiss, what the hell? What the hell is he doing?

4 4. What the hell are YOU doing? You now appear to be responding. Is this definitely something you want to do? Please advise.

5 5. ADVISE. Urgent.

Seconds lasted an age. They’d kissed. Edie finally had a grasp of the magnitude of the situation, and her part in it, and pulled back.

There was movement to her right and she saw Charlotte behind them, her white dress glowing like exposed bone in the encroaching darkness. Jack turned, and saw her too. They made a bizarre tableau, for a split second, looking at each other. Like seeing the lightning crack and only hearing the thunder roll a second later.

‘Charlotte …’ Jack said. He was interrupted by screaming or, more accurately, a kind of low howling, emanating from the new Mrs Marshall. ‘Oh, Charlotte, we’re not …’

‘You fucking bastard! You utter fucking bastard!’ Charlotte screamed at Jack. ‘How could you do this to me? How could you fucking do this to me?! I hate you! You fuck—’ Charlotte sprang at him and began hitting and slapping him, while Jack tried to grab her wrists and stop her.