My Fake Wedding(118)

Nevertheless, I take it as a bad omen.

The only places to eat are downmarket Chinese restaurants or sports bars, and everything comes with chips and mushy peas. By the end of the day we still haven’t seen a fresh vegetable or a Spanish person and I’m so hungry I’ve eaten a whole packet of Rennies.

The resort bar isn’t much better. Crowded with noisy families, you’d have been forgiven for thinking someone was staging a Westlife concert.

‘Let’s just try to have a nice time.’ Sam puts a protective hand on the small of my back and I try to ignore the delicious shiver which runs the length of my spine. God. I have to get a grip.

‘This is Katie’s hen weekend,’ he reminds everyone. ‘She deserves to have fun when you think about what she’s giving up for you, George.’

‘Okay,’ huffs George.

‘Thanks, Katie,’ David, rushes. ‘We do appreciate it, you know.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘And I’m fine with it. Really.’

And I am fine with it. Although, obviously, I’m also absolutely shitting myself.

Sam goes to the bar.

‘San Miguels all round, please,’ he says firmly. Even Janice has to have a quick drink to overcome her disappointment in finding herself in a shopping precinct instead of a tropical paradise.

‘All English beer ’ere,’ the barmaid informs us proudly. ‘Yous can ’ave ’Eineken, Stripe or Stella.’

‘Stella’s not…’ I begin, but George shushes me.

‘Forget it,’ he snipes. ‘Her idea of going Continental is changing her fags.’

We spend the evening drinking beer and playing cards until Janice rubs her back and says she’s tired. So we all troop back to the apartment together to see her safely back. After all, as George points out, this might be a holiday resort but it’s probably just as dangerous as any London ghetto.

Then we all get shitfaced.

Sam is strangely quiet as David and George produce bottles of melon liqueur and champagne and introduce drinking games into the equation. When we get up to our room, Sam produces two vodka miniatures, hands one to me and pats the bed beside him.

‘I owe you an apology, Simpson.’

‘What for?’

‘Pussy.’ He opens a tonic can.

‘What about Pussy?’

He sighs. ‘There isn’t going to be a wedding.’

A surge of hope fills my chest. I try to quash it, telling myself that of course this isn’t because of me. There’s another reason the wedding’s off.

‘Why?’ I stammer.

Sam draws a deep breath, hoofs back the vodka in one go and starts to tell me.

It turns out that, just before I arrived at his house to get the food ready for his party, Pussy dropped a bit of a bomb-shell. She told Sam she was having a baby. That she’d suspected for a while but that now it was confirmed. Her friend, a doctor, had done a test, and it was positive. And it was his.

‘What could I do?’ He shrugs, frowning. ‘I couldn’t abandon her, could I? It would be wrong. Although I didn’t exactly want a baby. Not with her.’

‘Oh?’

‘I knew it was never going to be serious between us, but I just thought, well, if I can’t have the woman I love, I’ll have the one who loves me.’

‘Oh.’

He looks so adorably confused that it’s all I can do not to ask, ‘So who is the woman you love?’ But I manage to stop myself. Because every nerve in my body is screaming ‘Let it be me’ and I know that’s not true. It’s probably Cindy Crawford. So I say nothing.

‘And then Dad and Mary announced they were getting married, which, yes, I did know about before you, and I’m sorry for not telling you but I thought you should hear it from them,’ he gabbles, ‘and then she came out with that announcement about us, well, I was more surprised than anyone.’ He frowns. ‘But I couldn’t humiliate her in public, could I? How could I say I didn’t have the first clue about it? Not with her having my baby and everything. I had to stand by her. So I just went along with it.’

I feel a huge surge of affection for him. He’s so reasonable.

‘So why change your mind?’ I say. ‘What happened?’

‘She made it all up,’ he says.

‘What? About wanting to marry you?’

‘No,’ he shakes his head, ‘about the baby. There was no baby. Never had been. She just wanted to get me up the aisle, so she said she was pregnant.’

‘No way.’

‘Way.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘I happened to mention the whole thing to the doctor friend a few days later. And she said that, although patient advice was confidential, she thought I ought to be aware that she’d never given any advice. She had no clue about any baby. She was as dumbstruck as I was. So I confronted Pussy. And she confessed.’