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

It might be a bit of a cliché, but Nora Dervan and Beatrice Milton had been destined to be best friends. Their young, first-time mothers had met at the local antenatal class and had immediately hit it off. A few months later their two baby girls were born just seventy-two hours apart. When Bea’s mother returned to work after her maternity leave Nora’s mother, Eileen, had taken on the role of Bea’s childminder, and the two girls grew up as close as sisters – closer perhaps, as they’d never bickered, never fought. (Well, actually, there had been that one time . But they didn’t ever talk about that one time , so Bea was happy that it didn’t count, not really.)

And when the girls had gone to primary school there had been little Harry Clarke, who everyone in their class thought was super-cool because he knew all the best song lyrics and how to count to fourteen in Spanish (and ten in French). The two girls, Harry and his best friend Cole had made a blissful, uncomplicated foursome for the next two decades. Even when they were in their teens the notoriously strict Roman Catholic Eileen didn’t insist Nora kept her bedroom door open when ‘the boys’ were in there.

No, for Nora and Harry, love had waited until the most convenient moment, their hearts not catching on one another until they were heading out of their twenties: the fumbling inexperience and the dramas, the cheating exes and the hassle all done and behind them. It seemed unfairly effortless to a more-than-slightly jaded Bea. For her, love was all tossed and tangled with screaming arguments on rainy street corners; discovered flirty text messages; wilful misunderstandings; late nights spent Facebook-stalking exes with a bitterness in her throat that wine couldn’t mask; men that either loved her too much or never enough.

Nora had tried to explain it to Bea once, that first night. Bea had been so completely floored by the sudden and severe change in circumstances between her nearest and dearest that her first question to Nora (once she’d become able to form words) was to ask if they’d been drunk. That was easier to understand, somehow, that they’d got so plastered they’d forgotten who the other was, who they were themselves.

‘No. It was just like, one day, I saw Harry and I thought, oh, there you are,’ Nora had answered, simply. ‘Do you get it?’

Bea hadn’t been able to get it. So she’d got drunk instead and when Nora left the bar (to go and see Harry, no doubt) Bea stayed to see off the bottle of wine, staring at the pockmarked table top, feeling happy and sad and excited and scared, all at once. And here she was, five hundred days later, with another bottle of Pinot Grigio in front of her, telling a stranger all about how crazy in love her best friends were. Her shoes hurt. She suddenly felt ancient, and so tired.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Bea said finally, grabbing her handbag. ‘I just need to check my phone, it’s going mental.’

‘Yeah, I thought I could hear it,’ her date smiled graciously. ‘No problem. Do you want another drink? Or to share some bar snacks, maybe?’

Bea hesitated. She did want another drink. She did want bar snacks. She wanted to sit here with this nice man for the rest of the evening and find out some of his secrets. She wanted to take him home and take him to bed and wake up with the sunshine, in his arms on Sunday mornings. She was beginning to think, however, that Nice Guy Rob was far too nice a guy for the likes of her. But, hell, surely the universe wouldn’t begrudge her the one last drink.

‘I could have another glass, if you could?’

‘Coming right up,’ he smiled, leaving her with her multiple new messages and heading over to take his place in the queue at the busy bar.

Bea had invitations to join no fewer than nine new WhatsApp group conversations. One was all the bridesmaids with Nora. One was all the bridesmaids without Nora. One was the entire wedding party. One was specifically for discussing the hen do, yet another was for the engagement party Nora and Harry were planning for next month. Bea couldn’t even be bothered to work out what the other ones were for. They were already crammed full of overly emotive messages, pictures and links. Bea did a double-take; she’d assumed they were from Nora, but the invitations were from Sarah. Ugh. Attack of the bridesmaidzilla. This was going to get old, and fast.

Eli had messaged her too, an hour or so ago; Bea clutched at the normality that was a stupid meme image forwarded by an old friend. She was still scouring the Google Image search results for the perfect response to him when her smiling date returned from the bar with her glass of wine.

We were on holiday in Thailand and, as you do, decided to go for a walk on the moonlit beach. Another couple were there releasing a lantern, and it really was the most romantic of settings. My boyfriend dropped to one knee and did the deed – not that I can remember a word of what he said – and of course, I said yes. Romanticism was cut short however – the crashing waves combined with all the beers I’d necked that evening meant I needed to get back to the hotel and use the facilities, sharpish. Of course then we had to call our parents and all our friends and tell them the good news, so by the time we were ready to go out and celebrate all the bars were closed (except for an Irish bar, which was blasting out ‘Cotton Eye Joe’). Instead we went back to our room and shared a lukewarm can of lager from the minibar. The next day, I woke up with food poisoning.

Katy, Chesterfield

‘Okay so, here’s the thing.’ Nora’s face was far too concerned considering the subject matter. ‘So, Harry prefers documentary-style photography. You know, lifestyle approach. But I think I’m leaning more classic. And I really love the sort of depth that shooting on film gets, right? But Harry thinks digital is much more crisp. I honestly don’t know what to do. Help!’

All four bridesmaids eyed each other in the hope that someone else would speak first.

Daisy bit. ‘Okay, back up here a sec. What the eff is documentary-style photography? What, are they gonna serialise your wedding and stick it up on Netflix?’

‘Do you have some examples?’ Cleo agreed.

‘Did you not see the stuff I pinned onto the Photography Board?’ Nora asked impatiently, grabbing her iPad and navigating to the Pinterest app.

‘I did,’ Sarah assured her. ‘It’s the sort of reportage style, right? Candid rather than posed? It’s nice. Really modern.’

Nora bit her lip. ‘Is modern what I’m going for?’

Sarah laughed. ‘You tell us, sweetie!’

Bea rolled her eyes. ‘How can you go for modern? I mean, when the very concept of marriage is completely—’

‘Traditional,’ Cleo butted in (she wasn’t sure where Bea had been going there, but her word choice was probably less tactful than ‘traditional’). ‘Bea’s right, though, surely you need to think about whether or not you’re going to have a traditional or modern venue, set-up, not to mention the dress …’

‘All the wedding blogs and magazines say that the best photographers are booked up years in advance ,’ Nora argued. ‘You need to get your deposit with one as soon as possible. So the whole wedding planning is literally at a standstill .’ She shoved the iPad at Bea. ‘So what do you think?’

Biting back the response that she thought Nora was veering into bridezilla territory, Bea cast her eye over the selection of wedding photos that Nora had pinned for reference. She couldn’t see masses of difference: woman in white, man in suit, bright flowers in bouquets, bright teeth in smiles. She passed the iPad across to Sarah.