The One with All the Bridesmaids: A hilarious, feel-good romantic comedy. Erin Lawless

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СКАЧАТЬ notice them any more. ‘Any tension with the Queen Bea?’ he asked. Cleo winced; she sometimes wished she didn’t tell him quite so much about her life. (At least not so much that he had nicknames for her friends.)

      ‘The Queen was on her best behaviour,’ Cleo retorted primly. ‘She hasn’t made a scene in years,’ she admitted, grudgingly.

      ‘Hmmm,’ was all Gray offered, carefully non-committal (she obviously bitched about Bea a little too often).

      Cleo sighed. Her coffee – much like her break – was half gone. ‘What have you got now?’

      ‘Cuban Missile Crisis with the Year Elevens,’ Gray answered. ‘I’m sure they’re all already queuing at the door in fevered anticipation. You?’

      ‘Factorising expressions with the Nines.’

      Gray gulped down the remnants of his drink and grinned. ‘I wonder which of our lessons these kids will actually need most in real life.’ It was his usual tease. ‘Cos, you know, most phones have a calculator on them now, love.’

      ‘Yeah, and the Wikipedia app too,’ Cleo shot back, downing her own coffee. ‘Your turn to do the washing up, love.’

      ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Gray gathered up the mugs. ‘Nag, nag, nag.’

      ‘See you at lunch?’ Cleo asked, as she swung her satchel up onto her shoulder and Gray moved across to the wonky kitchenette to swill their mugs out in the sink.

      ‘I’ll be here.’ Gray grinned at her over his shoulder.

      * * *

      Any working week that started with you pissing on your own hand and then coming in to a hundred and eighty-five ‘‘urgent’ unread emails should really be considered a write-off from the get-go, thought Sarah. She sat blankly at her desk, clicking about Outlook at random and assigning emails with varying flag colours in case anyone was watching her, but taking nothing in.

      She’d been a lot better this year. She didn’t test willy nilly any more. She’d been pretty sure this time. She’d had an inkling. When her period hadn’t made its appearance on Friday, as expected, she’d remained quite placid – her cycle sometimes varied a few days each way – but still she’d made an extra special point of not having anything to drink on Saturday night when they’d all gone out, hadn’t ordered pâté as a starter even though it was her favourite; better to be safe than sorry. She’d waited patiently throughout all of (a still period-free) Sunday, fancying she was already experiencing the mythical centred serenity of pregnancy. She’d waited until Monday morning, in fact – she’d read countless articles about how you’ve got more of the pregnancy hormone there in your urine in the mornings – before taking that little plastic stick into the bathroom with her.

      So then. Another singular line of failure. No tiny little life to avoid wine and pâté for after all. Another inkling turned out to be so much delusion. And still no period. Maybe they’d just packed in altogether. After all, what was the point of an unfertile woman menstruating at all? Sarah was only glad she hadn’t shared her stupid inkling with Cole this time, but – maybe – it was time to talk to her husband about the elephant that wasn’t in the room.

      Raina, the PA to the other CEO, sat opposite, impossibly hefty at the best of times, but currently seven cruel months’ pregnant, moaning about something – probably her back, or her swollen feet, or the fact she’d been up six times in the night to have a wee. This was going to be Raina’s third child under the age of five; she’d basically spent the entire time Sarah had known her either on maternity leave or largely pregnant. Sarah found it difficult to be solicitous to her at the best of times; today it was near-impossible. So she just sat and clicked and flagged.

      A new calendar request slid into the corner of her screen and Sarah clicked to open it on reflex: Kim the office manager was kindly reminding one and all about Raina’s baby-shower lunch on Friday via the use of a picture of cartoon baby sat atop a pyramid of building blocks spelling out MUMMY. How precious.

      Instead of responding Sarah, clicked onto Google and determinedly searched for ‘fertility enhancing superfoods’.

      * * *

      It turned out putting her phone on vibrate wasn’t good enough: Bea was slowly being driven insane by the irregular buzzing from her handbag. Something was going on, but what? She tortured herself with images of Nora waiting in the rain outside of Bea’s empty flat, bedraggled and crying – the wedding off – sending text after text to her unresponsive best friend, wondering where she was … Okay, so that was all fairly unlikely, but still. If her date didn’t need to go to the bathroom soon, Bea might just have to suck it up, apologise for the poor date-etiquette and check her damn messages.

      ‘Oh, we’re at that age, aren’t we?’ the man opposite was saying, rolling his eyes with good humour. ‘For the past few years my entire summers have just been stags and weddings!’

      ‘Totally,’ Bea agreed. ‘But at least this is two best friends in one swoop for me, so at least it’s a more efficient use of my time.’

      ‘Isn’t it a bit weird for you?’ her date asked. ‘That your two best mates randomly shacked up?’ Bea considered the question over a mouthful of wine (ignoring the new buzzing from the depths of her handbag).

      ‘I guess it was weird at first,’ she put it lightly. ‘Me, them and our other friend have been joined at the hips since we were so tiny.’ She dropped her voice conspiratorially. ‘To be honest with you, it was a bit like being told my brother and sister were shagging,’ Bea laughed. ‘But it obviously wasn’t so weird for them,’ she conceded with a smile. It had been sixteen months, one pregnancy scare, two very temporary break-ups and a huge engagement ring since the night Nora had told her she was in love with Harry, and Bea and Cole had agreed that while it would never not be a bit weird it was lovely to see them so happy.

      It might be a bit of a cliché, but Nora Dervan and Beatrice Milton had been destined to be best friends. Their young, first-time mothers had met at the local antenatal class and had immediately hit it off. A few months later their two baby girls were born just seventy-two hours apart. When Bea’s mother returned to work after her maternity leave Nora’s mother, Eileen, had taken on the role of Bea’s childminder, and the two girls grew up as close as sisters – closer perhaps, as they’d never bickered, never fought. (Well, actually, there had been that one time. But they didn’t ever talk about that one time, so Bea was happy that it didn’t count, not really.)

      And when the girls had gone to primary school there had been little Harry Clarke, who everyone in their class thought was super-cool because he knew all the best song lyrics and how to count to fourteen in Spanish (and ten in French). The two girls, Harry and his best friend Cole had made a blissful, uncomplicated foursome for the next two decades. Even when they were in their teens the notoriously strict Roman Catholic Eileen didn’t insist Nora kept her bedroom door open when ‘the boys’ were in there.

      No, for Nora and Harry, love had waited until the most convenient moment, their hearts not catching on one another until they were heading out of their twenties: the fumbling inexperience and the dramas, the cheating exes and the hassle all done and behind them. It seemed unfairly effortless to a more-than-slightly jaded Bea. For her, love was all tossed and tangled with screaming arguments on rainy street corners; discovered flirty text messages; wilful misunderstandings; late nights spent Facebook-stalking exes with a bitterness in her throat that wine couldn’t mask; men that either loved her too much or never enough.

      Nora СКАЧАТЬ