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First published 2001


21

Copyright © Adele Parks-Smith, 2001


All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subjectctext to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-192523-3

For my Significant Exes

1

‘What an inauspicious start to married life,’Josh comments.

‘Is there such a thing as an auspicious start?’ I ask. He grins at me and Issie scowls. She likes weddings. The rain is falling so hard it’s bouncing off the pavements and up my skirt. I’m bloody cold and wish the bride would stop hugging her mother and simply get in the car. I look closer. Maybe she isn’t so much hugging as clinging. Maybe the seriousness of what she’s done has hit her and she’s having second thoughts. Issie shakes the remnants of confetti from the blue box but misses the bride and groom. The confetti settles on the grubby road. The filthy street is a stark contrast to the finery of their clothes, the car, the flowers, the smiles that radiate.

‘Josh, what’s the proper name for a squashed cube?’ I ask, pointing to the little blue box of confetti. ‘They should redesign this packaging,’ I add.

‘No!’ Issie looks horrified, as if I’d suggested exposing my bikini line to the vicar. ‘Weddings are about tradition.’

‘Even if tradition means tacky and predictable?’ Two big sins in my book.

‘By definition,’ she defends. Then she leaps forward to jostle for a front position to catch the bouquet. She nervously hops from one foot to the other, her sleek, blonde, shoulder-length hair brushing her right shoulder, then her left, then her right again. Issie is a fidget. I am a still person. She continually rubs her hands together, taps her feet, jerks her knee. She once read that this constant nervous activity uses thirty calories an hour, more than a Mars bar a day, pounds in a year, a whole dress size in a lifetime. Her constant unfocused activity strikes me as a fairly accurate metaphor for how she lives her life.

I don’t try to catch the flowers. I don’t try for two reasons. One, Issie will lynch me if I catch them. She’s spent the entire reception spiking the drinks of single women, in the hope that this will diminish their coordination. And two, it’s bollocks.

No really, the whole marriage thing is bollocks. I mean I’m as happy as the next one to have an excuse to wear a hat and drink champagne. Generally, wedding receptions are a laugh, a big, fun party. But that’s as far as it goes for me. Beyond that, it’s bollocks. I’m not a man. And I’m not a lesbian. I’m not even a man hater – Josh is one of my best friends and he’s a man. I’m a single, successful, attractive, 33-year-old, heterosexual. I just don’t want to get married. Ever.

Clear?

Issie doesn’t catch the flowers and she looks as though the disappointment will break her.

‘A drink, Cas? Issie?’ asks Josh, in an effort to cheer her up. He doesn’t wait for a response but turns back to the hotel and heads directly for the bar. He knows that we’ll willingly join him for a drink Martini-style: any time, any place, anywhere. We elbow through the elegant crowds. This morning they sat demurely in church pews but they have now abandoned any semblance of civilization. The exit of the bride, the groom and the oldies leaves the rest of the guests free to indulge in what brought us to the wedding in the first place. The opportunity for some hedonistic, no strings attached, unashamed sex.

I selected my target in the church, before the ‘I dos’. I relocate him. He’s tall, dark and handsome. Admittedly, he doesn’t look that bright. Rather too in love with himself to allow room for anyone else. Perfect. Deep and meaningful is an over-rated phenomenon. Shallow and meaningless but well endowed gets such a hard press.

It’s important to pick out a target early on in the proceedings and it’s important to let him know he’s it. I smile. Directly at him. If at this point he looks around and tries to locate the recipient of my smile, I’ll instantly go off him. I like my men to be arrogant enough to know that I’m flirting with them.

He passes the test by grinning back at me. Only turning to catch his reflection in the mirror that hangs behind the bar. He grins again. This time at himself. The difference in appreciation is fractional. I don’t mind. Vanity is a safety net. I flick my hair and turn away. Job done.

Issie and Josh are still fighting their way to the bar. I call them back.

‘What? I was nearly at the front,’ Issie complains.

‘Don’t worry, drinks are on their way,’ I assure.

‘Oh.’ She relaxes into the chintz chair. Josh lights a fag, trusting me. We are all familiar with my routine. Josh and Issie know all about me.

Josh is like a brother to me. We met aged seven over our suburban fences. It is this meeting that makes me believe in fate. We met when our families’ stars were crossing. His in the ascendant. Mine spiralling downwards.

That summer we shared Rubik’s cubes, cream soda and an uneasy sense of impending change. Our childish sixth sense told us that we were both powerless in the face of adult whim. The five-bedroom detached, in Esher, Surrey, that my mother and I had thought was a dream home turned out to be a temporary residence. That summer my father announced that he was in love with another woman and couldn’t live without her. My mother showed rare wit and emotional honesty by asking whether he’d prefer cremation or burial. My father moved out immediately following his announcement. I was to see him three more times in my life. A week later when he came to collect his records and he brought me a Lundby doll’s house (presumably to replace the real home he was destroying). A month later when he took me to the zoo (I cried the entire afternoon, saying that the animals behind the bars upset me. In fact, they didn’t, but I was determined that both my father and I would have a terrible afternoon – after all, my mother and I were having plenty of them). And the following Christmas (when I refused to open his present or sit on his knee). After that, he just sent Christmas and birthday cards, which petered out before I was ten. Josh’s seventh summer wasn’t great either: he was told that he was to be wrenched from his comfortable local primary school and prepped at the hallowed ground of Stowe. Thinking about it, perhaps it wasn’t so much a sixth sense. The prep-school prospectuses and the endless rows were a giveaway. Although very nearly entirely submerged in our own terror, we settled into an uneasy mutual sympathy that passed as companionship. Sulkily learning to rollerskate and eating raw gooseberries has an enormous bonding effect. I still think he got the best deal. At that time we had lived in identical homes, distinguishable only by the colour of the Formica on the kitchen units. I was never to live in anything so spacious again. He, in anything so compact. As a child I identified the difference. His father kept quiet about his affairs.

I suspect that our childish friendship, although intense in a sharing gobsmacker type of way, would have petered out except that we met again, aged twelve, at a county tennis tournament. Josh recognized that knowing a girl, any girl, would improve his standing at Stowe. I was attracted by his rounded vowels, and even at that early age had recognized that competition was healthy, a challenge that the boys at Westford Comprehensive rose to. It turned out that we still liked each other. We liked each other so much that Josh insisted on disappointing his teachers and parents by joining me at Manchester University. They’d had their sights set on an establishment that was a little older and altogether less red-brick. I was determined to go to Manchester; for the trendy bands, the radical students union, the men in turned-up Levis and DMs, but mostly for the outstanding media studies course.

Josh is tall, six foot two, blond. If I look at it objectively, I have to admit he is the most attractive man I know that I haven’t slept with. Whenever I introduce him to my girl friends and colleagues, they unilaterally swoon, they go on and on about how fanciable he is. He is what’s described as ‘handsome’ or ‘dashing’. Invariably, because they lack imagination, they assume we are an item. I explain that I like him far too much to complicate things by having sex with him.