My Fake Wedding(53)

‘You’re not wearing that.’ Sam, fastening silver cufflinks, comes along the landing as I emerge from my room.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It’s perfect. You’ll upstage the bride.’

‘Ha ha.’

‘I mean it. You look great.’

‘Do I?’

‘You do.’

‘I’m shitting myself.’

‘You’ll be fine.’ He hugs me and, for a flash of a second, I feel all funny inside again. But when I pull away he’s smiling at me. ‘Good luck, Simpson.’

‘Good luck yourself. You’re the waiter. Oh, and if you accidentally slop soup into the ladies’ laps, please try to restrain yourself from asking if you can lick it up. It’s not quite the thing in polite circles.’

Sam slaps my back playfully. People begin to filter into the barn from their walk from the church. Ladies in flowery hats, swathed in head-to-foot crimplene. Men in suits, pinned to their wives’ sides and looking as trapped as pockets of wind after dodgy vindaloos. Exhausted fathers. Elegant mothers. Eligible bachelors. And lots and lots of blondes. Busty blondes. Beaky blondes. Blondes in cream to outdo the bride and blondes with sunbed tans and hatfuls of dyed turquoise feathers, all filter in, greedily grabbing glasses of champagne and chattering like chaffinches. For the next hour, Sam, George and David, bristling with manic energy, flit from barn to kitchen and from kitchen to barn, pouring drinks, handing round oysters, sprinkling Tabasco, squeezing lemon wedges and doling out salmon sandwiches, while I panic and fret over the preparation of the starters.

‘Christ, will you look at that.’ George, coming back for more sandwiches, tuts loudly as a woman in her mid-thirties proudly hands round a fat, pink child of about six months for people to coo over. There are so many children around that the atmosphere is thick with the scent of follow-on milk, rather than the heady cocktail of pheromones I’ve been hoping for, but I can’t afford to think about that now. I’ve got a meal to serve.

‘Bloody breeders making a point,’ George goes on. ‘Yes, yes,’ he scoffs. ‘Isn’t it lovely? What a shame we can’t all have one. You know she really oughtn’t to flash it around like that. Someone’ll steal it if she’s not careful.’

‘It’s a baby,’ I point out, handing him another bottle of champagne and waving him in the direction of a crowd of rugger buggers with their drinking heads on. ‘Not a Lotus Elan.’

‘And the mother’s common as cheap chocolate,’ he snarls. ‘She’s got those horrible slag wellies on. Look.’

George has a thing about the wearers of knee-high boots. He can’t bear to look at them. Thinks it says something about their personal hygiene. Or lack of it. God knows why.

Back in the kitchen I get trays of plump crab cakes out of the warming oven and arrange them quickly on plates with peppery rocket, purple lollo rosso and dollops of zingy tomato and chilli jam. There’s just time to mop my sweaty top lip, then it’s the veggies’ turn. Goat’s cheese and sundried tomatoes in crisp, filo pastry for them. As the boys serve them, I check on the lamb medallions slow-roasting with sprigs of rosemary and whole garlic cloves in Poppy’s mum’s Aga. I chop fresh mint, baste roast potatoes and toss cubes of pancetta and blobs of butter into green beans. Drizzle fat yellow peppers, red onions, fennel bulbs and garlic with generous lashings of oil. Flinch as a recently arrived Jasper, unseen by Janice (beaming now that she’s shed her ladybird costume and is slinking around in a shimmering silvery-green party dress) flips me a wink, gives my arse a quick pinch and wishes me luck.

I stick thumbs up at Sam, George and David and smile as I catch snatches of conversation at tables. They’re all here. The usual wedding guest Rolodex. The ones who’ve forgotten they left school ten years ago and still find the need to ask everyone else whether they were at Wellington or Gordon-stoun, just to get the social measure of them. The ones who like to turn every conversation into a competition. Professional small talkers. Those who are under the mistaken impression that they are conducting a job interview and are asking everyone else at their table exactly where they see themselves in five years’ time. Then there are those like me. Single, alone, out of place, like a headmistress on a Club Med holiday. Turning their attention to more important things like the downing of gratis gin and tonics and furtively looking around, dying for a cigarette but not wanting to make the social gaffe of being the first to light up. All the single girls have been placed, according to wedding etiquette, within crotch-sniffing distance of the rugger buggers’ table.