Cleo replied, tonelessly, her mind slow to decide how she wanted to react to this news. She’d been part mortified, part thrilled when Claire had informed them all that she’d invited Gray along to her 30th birthday dinner.
‘Well, why not?’ Claire had demanded, when the news had been met with an awkward silence. ‘He got along really well with people at the engagement party, and at your birthday Cleo.’
‘He got on really well with you, you mean,’ Nora had teased gamely, but she’d still shot a worried glance over at Cleo. Nora was still utterly persuaded that Cleo and Gray were meant to be. (She’d even developed a celebrity-style nickname for their rhetorical relationship, which – unfortunately – was the rather unromantic ‘Clay’.) The more Cleo railed against it, the more adamant Nora became.
‘Well, if you’ve got something else on, I’m sure Claire will understand.’ It felt like Gray was waiting for her to ask what his other plans were, but Cleo refused. (Because she didn’t care. Honest.) ‘But, you know, maybe you can just come for the dinner part, or meet us for drinks later in the night?’ Cleo found herself saying. Gray regarded her, his expression smudgy, unreadable.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ he allowed, finally, with a half-smile. ‘I’ll drop you a text, yeah?’
‘Yeah, sure. Or, you know, Claire.’
‘Sure.’ Gray unfolded slowly to his feet, gathering up the packet of cookies and folding over the packaging to keep them fresh for the next break. ‘Guess I’m on washing up duty. Considering your wrist injury and all.’ And with that he collected up their mugs and headed to the grotty old staff room sink, leaving Cleo with a full five minutes left of their morning break and her discipline bruised, but mercifully intact.
I went away for my cousin’s hen weekend – I didn’t know anyone but the bride, and as the other hens were quite cliquey and serious it was a fair bit awkward when we arrived to do our life drawing class. It was even more awkward when the male model got a huge boner half an hour in…
Lucy, Peterborough
‘So I wanted to show you first,’ Claire chirped. ‘Just to check, you know; get the ‘bridesmaid seal of approval and all that’. Claire was getting used to the idea of not being a bridesmaid, Bea thought, but there was still just the barest nip of real bitterness in her tone.‘But I think Nora’s really gonna love these!’
To Bea, an invitation to Nora’s hen do was probably going to be in the form of an email and/or text, once Nora had provided the finalised list of lucky gals. When she’d mentioned this to Claire last week however the girl had almost choked on her gin-and-slim and begged to take over the sourcing of “proper” invitations. Already a little overwhelmed at the thought of marshalling twelve women into booking travel, accommodation and activities, Bea had readily handed over the invitation reins.
Now she was sincerely regretting it.
After a full minute’s silence, she realised she’d better say something.
‘Wow,’ she just about managed.
‘Great, aren’t they?’ beamed Claire. ‘Do you want me to explain a little?’
Phew. ‘Yes please!’
The invitations were much more of a… “pamphlet”… than Bea had anticipated. The front cover was largely taken up by a close-up selfie of Nora, snagged from her Facebook page no doubt. Her mouth had been partially obscured by a bright pink lipstick print. Letters in a matching pink floating above her head proclaimed Nora to be KISSING THE SINGLE LIFE GOODBYE!!!
‘That’s actually my lip print!’ Claire trilled.‘I did it on the back of the receipt at the copy place and got them to digitise it; it’s amazing what they can do with computers these days, isn’t it?’
‘No kidding?’ Bea flipped over to the inserts with a slight frisson of trepidation. Claire’s skill at Facebook stalking was no longer in any doubt – each of the twelve hens were represented by a square-framed photograph snagged from their social media and washed over with a liberally applied pink filter. Nora was first and most prominent, as was natural, followed by Bea, Cleo, Claire, Daisy and Sarah (Bea decided not to comment on the fact that Claire had interjected herself in the centre of the row of bridesmaids). Then came Alannah and Aoife, Nora’s twin younger sisters (or maybe it was Aoife then Alannah..?) and four other friends made up the chosen dozen. ONE LAST FLING BEFORE THE RING!!! shouted the bright pink letters on this page. (Bea hated that. What, was Nora supposed to stop having fun once she became Mrs Clarke? Grr.)
At least Claire hadn’t been able to do much damage with the main page; Bea had been very clear with her instructions that the information was just to be copied and pasted, and not embellished upon in any way, shape or form. Claire had still managed to jazz it up though, by using a silhouette shot of what appeared to be a gigantic woman pole-dancing up against the Eiffel Tower as the page’s background and entitling the page OOH LA LA!!! (Did this woman ever use less than three exclamation marks for anything? Bea couldn’t be sure.)
Bea and Daisy’s carefully drafted information was intact, however offensively-fonted, so Bea guessed she had to be grateful for small mercies. The hens were duly instructed to assemble at St Pancras International for a weekend in gay Paris, where Bea had booked them accommodation on a pair of twin houseboats on the Seine, as close to the Eiffel Tower as possible. The Saturday night’s requisite fancy dress was 90s-themed (naturally), and the four bridesmaids ‘Backstreet Bea’, ‘Cleo-patra, Coming Atcha’, ‘Princess Daisy from Super Mario’ and ‘Clueless Cher-ah Horowitz’ hoped that everyone would join them in heartily embracing it. At least Claire hadn’t added herself to the bridesmaid sign-off…
The final page had a breakdown of upfront costs, with Bea’s banking details provided in a pink cloud shape for ease of reference and instructions to send RSVPs or questions to [email protected].
‘Oh, the password for that email account is nora1986,’ Claire added, off-hand, before returning to chattering on about the many artistic decisions that had been taken in the invitations’ journey. Bea flipped through the little booklet again. Okay, so it was totally not Nora and generally pretty cringe, but they definitely had their own certain charm, and Nora would probably be amused rather than horrified, which was the main thing.
‘So, am I good to post them out?’ Claire queried.
‘Yeah sure, not long to go now and I need some money in ASAP as I’ve already paid off all the deposits,’ Bea confirmed, wincing a little at the thought of her deflated bank balance.
‘Great!’ Claire fished under the table and pulled out a canvas tote shopper bag emblazoned with the logo of the estate agency where she worked; it was already stuffed with stamped and neatly-addressed envelopes. ‘I’ll post these now then!’
London was full of babies. Miniature chaps in chino shorts, pint-size princesses in sundresses: their fat little legs poking out, kicking merrily. Pregnant women in maxi dresses glided past her on the pavements, red-faced but serene, the globes of their fruitful bellies proudly leading the way. Every direction Sarah looked in, there they were.
The summer had burst like an over-ripe fruit and the days were starting to cool as they headed toward autumn; ironically, it was harvest time. Two more women had announced their pregnancies in the office, moaning light-heartedly about their ‘bad luck’ in having ‘inconvenient’ due dates around the Christmas holidays. Cole’s younger sister and her boyfriend of only six months’ standing had