My Fake Wedding(45)

I wouldn’t have minded but he seemed pretty intent on staying the night. And did he have the decency to creep out while I was asleep like some shitty bastard? Not likely! Oh no, Colin was very much all there when I woke up. And Alfred was raring to go again. Fortunately, as I mentally prepared myself for another Wiener Invasion, the phone shrilled. It was Poppy, in a tremendous panic. She and her mother had had one almighty row over whether or not I should be wrapping bacon round the green beans. They really needed my opinion. So I was able to make my excuses and climb off.

I could’ve hugged Poppy. I’ve never been so pleased to hear from a duty friend in my life.

Now, sitting at Janice’s kitchen table, gritting my teeth as the pair of them giggle at my woeful tale one more time, I run through a mental checklist. I can’t help fussing, even though I know we’ve been through the wedding breakfast menu a dozen times. Everything is ready to go. Rosy slabs of salmon and oysters, glistening with seawater and heaped in crates, were flown in fresh from Dublin this morning. Sam, bless his billabong surf socks, has painstakingly packed them into his dad’s refrigerator van, which he’s driving down in later. But the fact that everything seems to be under control doesn’t stop me from having bouts of nervous diarrhoea every five minutes.

I need something to take my mind off it.

‘Hey, Janice, where’s your bridesmaid’s dress?’ I wipe a blob of cappuccino froth off my nose and look round the kitchen. Janice turns moochy whenever her outfit is mentioned. Which is weird. Normally, she loves dressing up and being the centre of attention. Why isn’t she dying to show me her finery?

‘Upstairs.’

‘Well, come on then. What are we waiting for?’ I put down my cup and stand up. ‘Show and tell.’

Wordlessly, Janice gets up and leads the way upstairs to her bedroom. She’s actually still a bit pissy with me. I expect it’s because I’ve been avoiding all Colin’s postcoital telephone calls, thus depriving her of the cosy foursomes we might have shared. But the thought that she actually expects me to date a man with a baked bean for a penis for her sake is so gobsmackingly astounding that I completely forget to defend myself. There just doesn’t seem to be anything to say.

The moment I enter her bedroom, it becomes obvious to any fool that my failure to appreciate Colin for his ‘finer point’, as it were, isn’t the only reason for her puckered-up dog’s bottom face. Janice’s bridesmaid’s dress is hanging on the back of the door, wrapped like a birthday present under layers of pink tissue and crinkly plastic. ‘Look,’ she says miserably.

‘Ohhh,’ George and I can’t help exclaiming.

‘Exactly.’ Janice looks furious. ‘About as sophisticated as a bottle of flipping Babycham.’

And once she’s peeled off the layers of tissue paper, I have to admit I see her point. I can make ‘It’s a lovely colour, I’m sure it’ll come in useful for something else’ noises until the cows come home, but there’s no disguising the fact that, whichever way you look at it, Janice is going to look like a misguided teenager on Prom night circa 1985.

‘I can’t wear it,’ she whispers. ‘I’m going to look putrid.’

I hate to say it, but putrid’s not the word. A huge, squashy velvet number in deep crimson, the billowing bridesmaid’s frock is as conspicuous among the elegant pale limewashed floorboards, the freshly starched linen sheets and the cool creams, earthy browns and mossy greens of Janice’s calm bedroom as a gaudily decorated Christmas tree in a temple of Jehovah. It has bulbous, puffed out sleeves, a great beachball of a skirt with a hoop the size of the London Eye and a blimming great helicopter propeller of a bow on the bum. In fact, the whole ensemble is so enormous that I doubt very much whether she’ll be able to actually wear it down the aisle tomorrow. She’ll have to bloody well drive the thing. And there simply isn’t time to get her HGV licence.

Now if Janice was still bonking one of her Driver Eating Yorkie types, she could have got them to swipe her a Wide Load sign from the depot. As it is though, she’s going to have to hope that the aisle’ll be relatively traffic-free.

‘What the hell am I going to do?’ she spits. ‘When Jasper sees me in that he’ll be off like shit through a goose. There’ll be no wedding then. Not for me, at any rate.’

Her bottom lip trembles as she sees her gingerbread mansion of the future come crashing to the ground, no more than a few hastily held together crumbs after all.

The three of us gawp at the scarlet monstrosity in stunned silence.