Despite ten minutes of solid scrubbing, the wall still had a faint blue tinge to it where Leila had spluttered her cocktail all over it. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said sheepishly after the last of the party, Judy and Tasha, had been dispatched in a taxi, waving merrily and unsteadily, shouting ‘See you in church!’ noisily across the darkened cul de sac.
‘It’s fine,’ Lucy replied in a tone that suggested that it wasn’t. She turned on the main light and started sweeping the table’s detritus into a bin bag.
‘Here, let me, you go on up, you’re the one that needs her beauty sleep ready for the wedding.’
Lucy’s lips pursed into an unattractive pout. ‘Thanks very much!’
‘I didn’t mean like that! You’re getting married! It’s late, I’ll do the rest, honestly, it’s fine, go.’ Leila gave her soon to be sister-in-law a stiff hug and started the impossible task of picking the thousands of penis-shaped confetti out from between the floorboards.
Leila thought that she might as well wait until the dishwasher had finished to put another load in before she left, it’s not as though there was anyone awake at home waiting for her. There was a small bit of wine left in two of the bottles, so Leila splashed them both into a glass and gave it a swirl. Marcus would be horrified. When they were teenagers they used to work in their parents’ hotel in Dartmouth, and she and Tasha used to stow away the dregs from all the bottles they’d served to customers throughout the evening for them and their friends to share later. She’d decant all the whites into one bottle, all the reds into another, completely ignorant of blending grape varieties or vintages, and trudge to the sheltered safety of the local park to drink the stash and voice ill-conceived musings on the universe. She remembered with a smile that Marcus had been appalled that she had mixed a £200 bottle of 1982 Chateau Haut Brion Pessac-Lognan with a rough house Beaujolais, but she had just tipped her plastic cup at him in a mocking toast and downed the lot.
***
Jamie had saved a seat for her in church by putting his top hat on the pew next to him. At six foot five, wearing the top hat was never really an option, but Lucy had insisted on him at least carrying it.
‘Emergency averted?’ he asked as Leila hurriedly sat down and pinned the hat on her head. She hated hats.
‘Yes, the roses were the wrong shade of pink.’
‘Oh no, is your sister-in-law ok?’
‘She’ll live.’
They turned in time with the rest of the congregation as Lucy made her entrance to a loud fanfare of Handel’s Wedding March, a predictable choice that had the rest of the church beaming. Her tight corset flowed down to a sharp A-line, with delicate crystal beading catching the sunlight that danced through the stained glass. Her long strawberry blonde hair had been tightly pinned into elaborate swags under a flowing veil. The hysterics over the roses a few minutes earlier were forgotten.
Back at the hotel, Leila hurried past the easel holding the seating plan straight into the dining room. She didn’t need to look at it, she’d had three blasted attempts at making the damn thing, so knew its contents off by heart. The first two efforts didn’t entirely ‘encapsulate the theme’ was how Lucy phrased it. The theme in Leila’s mind now being ‘sticking needles in my eye’. She’d also just had an earful from Marcus about the fact that Jamie had bailed straight after the ceremony to step in to replace an injured teammate at the last minute for an away rugby match at Exeter.
‘His place at the wedding breakfast cost £65,’ Marcus had fumed at her, as though she had gaily waved him off after tucking in his shin pads and hadn’t been livid about it herself. Now she was dateless for a massive family wedding and incredulously £65 out of pocket as her brother accepted her offer to pay for Jamie’s food. And Leila knew their parents were footing the bill anyway but didn’t have the heart to have a screaming match with her brother on his wedding day.
Her table was already filled – now the only table with odd numbers in the whole room. ‘Hi, Leila, hello, Leila, hi there, Leila, hello, Leila, nice to meet you, Leila, hello, Leila.’ Introductions and obligatory reaching across the table handshakes done, Leila broke with the convention of waiting for the bride and groom to arrive and poured herself a massive glass of wine, broke a bread bun in half and slumped noisily sighing into her seat.
‘That bad?’
Leila looked to her right. ‘Worse.’
‘Nice dress.’
Leila looked down. The coral bridesmaid’s dress that dwarfed her tiny frame in a blanket of offensive, and probably highly flammable, chiffon could not in any way be described as a nice dress. In that instant every tiny atom of frustration that had been building up for the entire three-month engagement was ignited by the gently mocking tone of this stranger. She threw her head back and laughed a laugh so loud, so bordering on hysterical, that nearby tables turned to look. ‘You have no idea,’ she finally uttered. ‘You literally have no idea.’
‘Try me.’
Leila needed no encouragement. For the next ten minutes, even during the jubilant, albeit vastly rehearsed, entrance of Marcus and Lucy, she barely paused for breath. ‘And another thing,’ she added, ‘Lucy even wanted me to wear a blonde wig to cover my dark hair because I would ruin the photos, can you believe that? And another thing—’ Throughout this impassioned monologue the stranger had kept her glass topped up and was offering silent nods of sympathy. ‘These god-awful shoes weren’t available in my size so Ms Hitler ordered me ones a size and a half too small, so as well as looking like a festival tent, I now have four blisters and my blood has dyed the fabric a sort of putrid puce colour.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry, you must be Rob, you work with my dad, is that right?’ Leila remembered the name that she’d written on three table plans next to her own.
‘No, I’m Ms Hitler’s brother, Nick.’
Leila buried her face in her hands. ‘Bollocks. Bollocks. I’m sorry. For the tantrum, not that she’s your sister. I’m sure she’s delightful. Deep down. Shit. I’m sorry.’ She suddenly froze. ‘Why did you move places? Nobody’s supposed to move!’ Her voice was now loud and shrill. ‘This arrangement took away almost a week of my life that I will never get back, and I’ll never hear the end of it if Lucy finds out. You’re supposed to be on the other side of the table between Rob’s pregnant wife Laura and a woman called Olga, who quite frankly sounds like a Russian lap-dancer.’
‘Who is also my girlfriend. And is sitting to my right, but thankfully the hours she’s spent in noisy strip clubs has completely ruined her hearing, so I think you got away with it.’
‘Oh God.’ Leila took a big gulp of her wine. She had no idea how much she’d drunk, but her verbal diarrhoea was in full flow, so a sizeable amount she reckoned. ‘I’ll just stop talking shall I?’
Nick grinned. ‘Apparently some arsehole, my sister’s words, not mine, dropped out just before the meal and so she needed to shuffle things around, so here I am, being captivated by the eloquence of my new sister-in-law. Lucky me. And if it’s any consolation, I’m under strict instructions not to roll my sleeves up, regardless of how hot it gets because she doesn’t want your family to know I have tattoos, and until last week I had long hair as well, that I had to cut off or my invitation was going to be revoked. Which I’m realising now may not have been a bad thing.’
‘I had waist length hair until about four months ago, but then went for a bit of a drastic change. Which your sister says makes me look like a boy.’
‘Oh Jeez. I’m sorry. And for the record, you don’t.’
‘I’m really sorry too. About everything, My no-show date, Lucy, and Olga. Who I’m sure is really lovely, or you wouldn’t be marrying her.’
‘I wouldn’t be what now?’ As if on cue, the blonde woman with long poker-straight hair from the hen party swivelled round in her