My Fake Wedding(131)

But he doesn’t. And in the event the ceremony is so quick, that I hardly realise when it’s all over. No hymns. No readings.

Within minutes, I’m a married woman.

Buggery bollocks.

Time for a stiff drink.

George’s boss has lent us his boat on the Thames for our wedding reception. It’s strung with dozens of Chinese paper lanterns in every shade of pink imaginable. Bubblegum pink, Barbie pink, salmon pink, candy pink, peony pink, all fluttering in the breeze, along with the pink gerbera flowers George has hung upside down at intervals from a wire suspended around the deck.

Three waiters in penguin suits with pink bow ties are serving pink cocktails in tall glasses and several guests already look a few sheets to the wind.

‘Come on,’ says Janice, sensing my unhappiness at not finding Sam among them. ‘Let’s get hammered. Well, you can,’ she adds, laughing. ‘I’d better not. Jasper junior might not like it.’

‘You’re not calling it after him?’ I say, shocked.

‘You never know.’ She smiles. ‘I’m joking,’ she adds hurriedly, seeing I might be about to suggest she put the poor little beggar up for adoption after all. ‘I’m not even going to call it anything beginning with J. So Jerome, Jemima and Jessica are all out too. And Josh. You’d better get thinking.’

‘Why me?’

‘I want you to be godmother.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh, Janice,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

And then I burst into tears.

‘Mum’s excited, you know,’ she tells me. ‘She’s knitting already. She can’t wait until it’s born.’

‘And you?’

‘Shitting myself. You will come to the hospital, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will.’ I accept a sea breeze and plonk myself at a table on the edge of the deck, forgetting for a moment that I’m wearing a dress and displaying my gusset to all and sundry. ‘I’ll be waiting outside with fat cigars and champagne.’

‘Oh, not cigars, please.’ She laughs gently. ‘I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime. And I rather hoped you’d be there to hold my hand.’

I look at my best friend. She seems a tiny bit scared. And so I give her a huge, reassuring hug.

‘Of course I will,’ I say. ‘You know, I fucking love you to bits.’

‘I love you too.’ She smiles back gratefully.



It’s definitely a party to remember. And, much later, as the sun is setting over the river and all the drag queens, ice queens and acid queens that are George and David’s friends are making for home, David takes me to one side.

‘Thank you.’ He gives me a huge hug. ‘More than anything. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Not many people would have done what you did today. It was very unselfish.’

Too fucking right it was, I thought. You don’t know how unselfish.

But he does.

‘I know about Sam,’ he says. ‘Janice told us. I know how you gave that up for me and George. And I’ll never be able to make it up to you. I love you.’

‘Love you too.’ I hug him. ‘And you’re very welcome.’

It’s ironic, really. There I was at the start of this year, so determined to stay single, so determined to shag around as much as I wanted that I didn’t realise I was falling in love by accident.

I fell in love with Sam by default.

Still, where has that got me? He certainly doesn’t want me now, does he?

I honestly thought he might turn up this afternoon, if not to the service, to the party at least. And it has been fun, this party.

‘I wouldn’t have done it,’ George agrees.

‘I know you wouldn’t, you selfish bastard.’

He smiles. ‘Life’s almost perfect.’

‘It’s not so bad, is it?’ I say.

And it isn’t, I realise. It really isn’t. I may have lost Sam, but I have three friends who love me dearly.

And I’m going to be a godmother.

How lovely.

‘Almost perfect?’ David asks. ‘What more do you need?’

‘A baby?’ George suggests. ‘Katie darling, are you sure Janice won’t sell?’

I laugh. ‘I’m sure.’

He’ll never change.

‘And what about you? Is the answer still no?’

‘Put it this way, I’m not exactly hanging out the Womb To Let signs yet.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ says a familiar voice.

My heart lurches.

David and George instinctively melt into the background, and I’m left alone.

‘You did it then?’ Sam asks me.

I nod, slowly. ‘Yes, I did it.’