My brain was completely overloaded. Half of me had heard the words ‘marry Alex’ and already run off down the aisle, drowning out my worries with the ‘Wedding March’. The other half had caught the ‘for a visa’ part and was not happy. It just felt a bit grubby. In that slightly grubby, slightly exciting, but almost definitely it’s-a-bad-idea way. The idea of getting married to stay in the country hadn’t even occurred to me. And now it had been floated, it did not make me feel good about myself. In fact, it made me feel a bit sick. Not because I didn’t want to marry Alex – locking that boy down legally was absolutely on my to-do list; but not like this. A marriage of convenience was not a marriage I was interested in.
‘He would totally do it.’ Erin raised her eyebrows, a picture of innocence. ‘And that would solve all your problems, right? I mean, even if they want to investigate you guys, you get to stay here while they do it. And you’re a real couple – you’d pass.’
‘It’s not like you’re not already living together,’ Jenny added in a hurry. ‘And we’d all give testimonials. I can totally verify Alex’s sex noises.’
‘Thank you.’ I wished all the lucky stars I’d thanked earlier into an early supernova. ‘But seriously. Not happening.’
They looked at me with very different expressions on their faces. Jenny’s was somewhere between pride and optimism with just a dash of ‘what the fuck is she thinking’. Erin clearly thought I was insane.
‘Jenny –’ I decided to take a different tack – ‘how would you feel if Sigge asked you to marry him for a visa?’
‘I would have that shit on lockdown before you could sing “Here comes the bride”,’ she replied, her face completely straight. ‘Have you seen him? The dude is ridonkulous.’
‘You’re probably the wrong person to have this conversation with,’ I said, shaking off my coat. Too little, too late. ‘What I mean is, if he asked you to marry you just for a visa and you said yes, you’d never really know if he loved you, would you? Whether or not he would have asked you to marry him even if there wasn’t a visa involved. Even if you loved the arse off him, you’d never really know whether or not it would have happened out of love. It would always be hanging over you, the reason you got married. It’s like when people meet online, it’s always there. Even if they say it’s not, it is. A marriage of convenience is not a marriage.’
‘Oh, honey.’ Erin laid a perfectly manicured hand on my knee. ‘I keep forgetting this is your first. A marriage of convenience is the perfect starter marriage.’
America was a very strange place sometimes.
‘I know this is going to sound very old-fashioned,’ I said – I was going to give it one last try – ‘but I’m really hoping to just stick to one marriage. I know it’s against the odds, but I really am hoping.’
‘Angie, we’re all hoping.’ Erin held up The Letter. ‘But for real, if it’s the difference between staying in the country or not staying in the country, wouldn’t you rather marry a man you love than hightail it back to the UK?’
Hmm.
‘Back to your old life?’ Jenny added.
Gulp.
‘Back to your mom?’
Shit.
‘Fair point.’ I dropped my head backwards and stared at the ceiling. ‘I really can’t go back.’
‘Oh, Angie.’ Jenny leaned right across her desk, arms outstretched. ‘Please ask him. He’ll totally say yes – the dude still gives you puppy eyes every time you walk into a room. I’ll organize everything, all you’d have to do is show. It’s not really a visa wedding if you’re in love, if we do it properly. Please?’
‘Actually, it could be kind of awesome,’ Erin chipped in. ‘We could get you a venue super easy, dress shouldn’t be a problem, and we’d get an awesome deal on a caterer. How long do you think it would take to put together, operations director?’
I took a Twizzler from the candy dish on Jenny’s desk. Two hours ago I was fishing hair out of a plughole and looking forward to watching a repeat of Elf on the settee. Now I was organizing a quickie wedding to ensure I wouldn’t be dragged kicking and screaming from the country in four weeks’ time.
‘Like, two weeks?’ Jenny stuck out her bottom lip. ‘Ten days if we really pushed things. And if we could get her into a sample-size gown with no alterations, which we totally could if she puts that Twizzler down.’
She put the Twizzler down.
‘Brooklyn’s gonna be the easiest place to get a venue, but we could maybe pull some strings in Manhattan if we could do a Friday. We’d never get a weekend, though. How about the Bell House? Music venue, nice tie-in to the groom’s day job? Or I could pull some strings back at the Union?’
‘I could call the PR at the W,’ Erin mused. ‘Or the Hudson. That’s a little too midtown, though.’
I sat in silence, staring at The Letter, listening to my friends planning my wedding, imagining myself in some super swanky hotel, clad in a ridiculous designer dress, hobbling down the aisle in borrowed shoes. Despite the ridiculousness of the whole thing, the only real problem I had was simple. I couldn’t see Alex in any of it. This wasn’t us.
Just imagining asking him to do this for me made my eyes well up and my heart beat faster, and not in a good way. What if he did say yes? What if we did get married, then he freaked out about being stuck with me because of the visa? I didn’t want my marriage to be an obligation. Even worse, what if I asked and he said no? Maybe he wasn’t ready. He’d ask when he was ready. We’d had this conversation; I didn’t want to push him. He meant too much. He meant everything.
‘Flowers might be tricky.’ Jenny was still planning out loud. ‘We’d need to call in some favours.’
‘We’ve got favours to spare, doll,’ Erin commented. ‘I’m more worried about the lighting design.’
‘Um, ladies?’ My interrupting their creative process was not particularly well received. ‘What if we put all our creative brain-power into working out another way for me to stay in the country? I’m not being difficult, honestly – I just really, really don’t want to do this.’
They both deflated before my eyes. I felt quite bad. There was nothing Jenny loved more than threatening people to get what she wanted. I felt like I’d taken her best toy away.
‘Aside from the fact that I don’t want to bully my boyfriend down the aisle, I want to be here because I deserve to be here.’
Now this is where I was prepared to accept I was being naïve.
‘If I can’t get a visa without getting married, then what’s the point? That will just mean I haven’t achieved anything since I got here. I’ll be right back where I started. I might as well go home, get myself at least seven cats and start referring to myself in the third person while paying for the bus with exact change. And that’s not happening. So can we please apply our not inconsiderable talents to finding another way for me to stay?’
Jenny wiped away a fake tear. ‘My baby is all grown up.’
‘So you can’t get a job without a visa?’ Erin said, accepting defeat and chomping a Twizzler. How come she was allowed one and I wasn’t? I hated the naturally skinny.
‘And I can’t get a visa without a job,’ I confirmed. ‘Basically, I think I’ll need someone to sponsor me like Spencer Media did.’
‘Can we do it?’ She chewed, swallowed and stared at Jenny. ‘You might as well work here. Seems like I’ll take in any damn waif or stray.’
‘I’m the best damn employee you have,’