the wedding and instead needed to wear shoes specifically dyed to match the dresses. Obviously the dye didn’t have enough time to set … our feet were the colour of Ribena for weeks afterwards!
Charlie, Oxford
‘Oh, my God,’ Nora sighed over the selfie Cleo and Gray had taken in front of Withysteeple Hall. ‘You guys are just the cutest. Why haven’t you jumped those bones yet, lady? Daise, take a look.’ She tossed Cleo’s phone across the table; Daisy – mouth full of burrito – made appreciative noises.
‘He is cute,’ Sarah agreed, peering at the photo over Daisy’s shoulder. At that, Queen Bea deigned to take a glance at the screen.
‘Yeah, he’s cute,’ Cleo conceded. (There was no point denying it. She had eyes.) ‘But he’s my colleague—’
‘You’re so funny about that, aren’t you,’ Bea frowned. ‘I’ve slept with loads of people I’ve worked with.’
‘Yeah, but, Bea, remember you had to leave that one job when that IT guy got all stalky?’ Nora giggled. ‘So you’re not exactly being a role model for it there!’
‘They do say ‘Don’t shit where you eat’,’ Daisy added sagely.
‘They do say that, yes.’ Cleo rolled her eyes. ‘Beautifully put.’
‘Hey, as long as one person isn’t the other person’s manager or anything complicated like that,’ Bea shrugged. ‘I say play ball.’
Sarah took a very determined gulp from her Hibiscus Margarita; she’d been on a bit of a health kick lately and laying off the drink, but she seemed to be back on the cocktail horse with a vengeance this evening. Belatedly, Cleo remembered – of course – that Sarah’s dickhead ex-boyfriend had left her for his PA, and clumsily rushed to change the subject.
‘He also appears to be dating most of London,’ she revealed dramatically.
‘What? What do you mean?’ Nora demanded; she had been very pro the idea of Cleo getting together with Gray ever since Christmas. Cleo could probably tell her Gray was flamingly homosexual and it probably wouldn’t dampen her enthusiasm for the idea all that much; she was convinced that Gray was The One for Cleo (or, at least, A One).
‘Well, the half that’s on Tinder anyway,’ she clarified.
‘Oooh.’ In a flash Daisy’s phone was in her hand, the app in question already loading. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him, though. I definitely wouldn’t have swiped left for him!’ A parade of men appeared immediately at her fingertips. ‘So, if you’re not going to jump those bones, hun, would you mind if I took a ride?’ She waggled her eyebrows at Cleo mischievously.
Cleo glared back at her across the salt-dusted rim of her cocktail glass. ‘What about The Photographer?’ she asked. They didn’t really bother learning the names of Daisy’s gentlemen friends until Daisy herself bothered referring to them by name; the downside to being more or less happy to go on a date with anyone who asked her was that there were only so many men’s names in the world – and it got confusing.
‘Yes, what about him?’ Nora echoed, in alarm. ‘I was hoping for mates’ rates for the wedding if I needed to use him.’
‘Darren is great,’ Daisy informed them calmly.
‘Darren!’ squealed Nora, clearly noting the use of actual name and off already imagining what her friend’s future children would look like.
‘But it’s always good to have a strong bench waiting,’ Daisy laughed, ignoring Nora’s excitement. ‘And as he’s just your colleague, surely you don’t mind …?’
Refusing to rise to the tease, Cleo turned squarely to face Nora and changed the subject. ‘So, what did you think after you read my email with all the information about the Hall?’ she asked. ‘Is it looking like a contender?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ Nora assured her. ‘We’ll have to make time this weekend or next to go there ourselves. It’s not too expensive for what it is, and they’re not all that prohibitive with outside suppliers, like some places can be, and, I mean – just look at it – it’s the perfect princess fairy-tale wedding venue! The little girl in me is crying out for it!’
Of course (unlike Bea), Cleo had never known Little Girl Nora. She’d met Nora when they were both eighteen. Nora had had a fat, frizzy fringe back then, greasy dark roots and a helix cartilage piercing (long gone, now) and wore a lot of black pencil liner all around her eyes, like she felt she had to ring them or people wouldn’t know where to look for her. She was that little bit lost, in the way that most eighteen-year-old girls are, especially during those first few nebulous years of the noughties (Cleo always thought of them all as being Generation Y point five).
They’d met in the strip-lit hallway of their shared student accommodation, mint-green paint badly faded and peeling away around the doorframes. Cleo, midway through unpacking, had been wearing a polka-dot-print headscarf – a little retro, but the hair she’d inherited from her father – his mother’s dominant Caribbean genes coming to the fore – was an absolute nightmare to get dust out of.
Nora’s heavily lined eyes had opened wide when she’d caught sight of her. ‘Oh, I love your hair! Hi! I’ve tried that so many times but I just can’t pull it off!’ She spoke then – as she did now – in a musical tumble, the saturation in the Irish brogue during her formative years lending the slightest of softness to an otherwise strong London accent. ‘I’m Nora.’ She’d gestured to the door opposite Cleo’s. ‘3C.’
At first she’d thought Nora was a little weird and needy (Cleo cringes to think of it now), but now of course she knows it was just that Nora was one of those girls who had always been used to being surrounded by a crowd of friends, a mob of siblings, and there at uni she was truly alone for the first time in her life. Her best friend from home had decided against going to university at all (although Cleo thinks now it might be that Bea never got the grades, more like) and Nora was all over the place with guilt, with nerves, with excitement. One day she was homesick, and the next she was having the time of her life, and everything in between.
She was the mummy of the corridor – making endless cups of tea and always studying with her door propped open just in case anybody fancied a chat. If you ever needed a painkiller, Nora’d be sure to have a foil of ibuprofen; if you broke up with your boyfriend, Nora’d sit quietly with you and watch Friends over a hot chocolate, or join you in a half spliff and dancing till dawn (whichever was your preference). Nora was the one that everyone wanted to live with when it came time to choose housemates for the next academic year, and Cleo had been first in line.
Not everyone was so lucky as to make a best friend for always within the first hour of their first day of university life. Cleo felt a huge swell of affection for Nora and Harry and everyone else – even Bea.
‘But do you really want something so cliché?’ Bea was saying, rolling those infamous eyes again. ‘I think you can probably find somewhere better, Nor. I thought you wanted to go more rustic, anyway?’
Okay, maybe not Bea.
Darren was getting very familiar very quickly. Earlier he’d wandered into the bathroom as Daisy had been exfoliating in there and let forth a tremendous splashing piss without so much as a ‘good morning’. Then he’d wandered out without washing his hands. And he’d left the toilet seat up. Horror piled on horror. Perhaps this was an English blokey thing? A quick text to Nora confirmed that, no, this was unacceptable behaviour either side of the Atlantic. Damn. Just when she’d started using the guy’s name.
Feeling a little smug, Daisy finished packing her gym bag. Last pay day she’d gone out and equipped herself – sports bras of varying colours, leggings