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

Cleo goggled at him. ‘You’ve got another date lined up?’

‘God yeah! I’ve another one on Tuesday – just going to the cinema, casual, you know – and one on Wednesday – that’s the real stunner, I can show you her photo – and I might have another one going in for Friday night, I’ll see how I feel later in the week. Sometimes you just want a night in, you know?’

Cleo didn’t know. Most of her nights seemed to be nights in. She usually took the piss out of Daisy for being on Tinder and Badoo constantly, but maybe she was missing a trick here. She wondered if Daisy and Gray had ever ‘matched’ up on one of those things. It was a very disquieting image. Maybe she should be matching them up? Was she being a totally remiss friend here?

(Stop. That way madness lies.) ‘Okay, so, scones first?’ she managed, to Gray’s enthusiastic nods.

‘Mostly because I didn’t have breakfast,’ he admitted, falling into step with Cleo as she headed towards the swing doors into the café. ‘I›ll wolf it down, I promise.’ A bright-haired barely-teen with too much red lipstick greeted them at the threshold.

‘Welcome to Withysteeple Hall!’ She pressed glossy brochures into their hands faster than they could grasp them. ‘Fuel stop?’ She carried full-steam on before anyone had a chance to answer. ‘Unfortunately you’ve missed the first guided tour of the house, but there are ones on the hour, at one and at three. We have Marshall Pickworthy exhibiting in the main hall, of course; he’s the chap that choreographs an interpretive dance based on the story of your relationship. On the South Field you can see Everlasting Love Equestrians – they train ponies and small horses to be ring-bearers: only the thoroughbreds, of course, grade horses don’t really have the intelligence. And in the ballroom we have a selection of our recommended caterers exhibiting, so make sure you leave some room for the samplers!’ She leaned in conspiratorially. ‘The shots of chilled vichyssoise are the talk of the fair!’

Cleo blinked, clutching the shiny brochure to her chest.

‘You … you don’t say,’ Gray managed.

‘So, how long until the Big Day?’ the girl asked, managing somehow to imbue the words with requisite capitalisation.

Despite having said earlier in the car that he wouldn’t be fazed, Gray immediately blushed. ‘Oh, we’re not--’

‘We’re here for a friend,’ Cleo interrupted bluntly.

‘Yeah, we’re not dating,’ Gray clarified.

‘Which apparently puts me in the minority,’ Cleo couldn’t help but mutter to herself.

* * *

‘Okay, so …’ Bea flipped through the paperwork the bruise-lady had given her to read through, referring to the checklist on her phone in the other hand. ‘Nora needs to know about capacity, availability, corkage, catering, parking, accommodation, references from recent brides – Christ, really? – and what the chairs are like. Apparently.’ She blinked. ‘Wow. Oddly specific …’

‘What the chairs are like?’ Eli echoed, puzzled. ‘Well, they’re hardly going to be armchairs, are they?’

‘You’d hope.’

They were settled in a staging area – a billowy but surprisingly unromantic cream marquee – to the back of the main barn, awaiting the events coordinator. Eli paced the small distance, peering into all the stacked storage crates. Bea scanned through the papers again.

‘It’s a whole new world this,’ she muttered. ‘Who the fuck thought there’d ever be regulations concerning confetti?’

‘It’s a wedding venue!’ Eli agreed, nodding. ‘Why would they have any beef with confetti?’

‘Not the foggiest. Okay, so, are we carrying on with pretending this is for us?’ Bea asked; they’d agreed in the car that they were likely to get straighter answers if that was the case.

‘Yeah, but you’d better do most of the talking. I’ll give us away in a heartbeat. She’ll ask us where we met and I’ll panic and tell her we’re second cousins, or something.’

Bea burst out laughing. ‘No, don’t you remember? We met at an AA meeting,’ she suggested.

‘On a nudist beach,’ Eli countered, grinning.

‘At the GUM clinic. We swapped tips on how best to manage our flare-ups of genital warts.’

‘Wait …’ Eli pretended to look thoughtful, ‘wasn’t it actually on the online message forum for that fetish club that we met?’

‘Yeah. Because you’ve got that thing where you dress up like a sexy My Little Pony,’ Bea shot back.

‘Hey, whatever gets you off, babe,’ Eli countered without missing a beat.

‘Okay, okay!’ Bea held her palms up in defeat. ‘Point taken. I’ll do all the talking. Do you think she’ll actually bother asking us how we met? Look at her job! She must have stupid engaged couples and their stupid stories coming out of her ears.’

Eli shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s acceptable small talk, isn’t it? Maybe we can distract her by going straight in with the whole chair controversy?’

‘Good plan. If she does ask, though, I’ll just stay safe with ‘we met online’.’

‘No, wait.’ Eli looked at her, his eyes soft. ‘We met at school. And we were best friends for years until one day, when the time was right, we fell in love. And here we are.’

Bea tried to smile at the romanticism, but the taste of it caught at the back of her throat and she had to look away. He’s not done it on purpose, she knows that, but moments from him and from that night began flashing all the same: how the taste of sweat on his skin was sharp; how he’d complained that her toenails were too long and had scratched him as she wrapped her legs up and around his hips; the horrendous trip to the pharmacy for the morning-after pill the next day, ignoring calls from Nora on her phone, sick with shame and the worst hangover of her life.

‘Bea?’ Eli prompted; she’d obviously hesitated too long. ‘You know, like Harry and Nora? We might as well adopt their story in this instance, don’t you think?’

Bea rallied herself and swallowed back the past. ‘Okay. Whatever. She’s really not going to need any intimate detail, though, surely?’

‘Am I interrupting?’ The promised events coordinator beamed at them, so entirely perky that she even put the Goodie Bag Lady of Super-Duper fame to shame.

‘Elliott,’ Eli thrust his hand out and returned the jaunty shake with enthusiasm. Bea got to her feet a little slowly – this day was starting to really take it out of her.

‘Bea,’ she introduced herself in turn, catching Eli’s eye as she did so, wrinkling her nose at him. ‘We met at school.’

About a week before the wedding day, the bridezilla decided that all of the bridesmaids couldn’t wear the shoes we’d purchased for the wedding and instead needed to wear shoes specifically dyed to match the dresses. Obviously the dye didn’t have enough time to set … our feet were the colour of Ribena for weeks afterwards!

Charlie, Oxford

‘Oh, my God,’ Nora sighed over the selfie Cleo and Gray had taken in front of Withysteeple Hall. ‘You guys are just the cutest . Why haven’t you jumped those bones yet, lady? Daise, take a look.’ She tossed Cleo’s phone across the table; Daisy – mouth full of burrito – made appreciative noises.

‘He is cute,’ Sarah agreed, peering at the photo over Daisy’s shoulder. At that, Queen Bea deigned to take a glance at the screen.

‘Yeah, he’s cute,’ Cleo conceded. (There was no point denying it. She had eyes .) ‘But he’s my colleague—’

‘You’re so funny about that, aren’t you,’ Bea frowned. ‘I’ve slept with loads of people I’ve worked with.’