A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe. Debbie Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ sense of being carefree is unusual for most of us, and adds to the sense of elation inside the café. Nobody is working. Nobody is looking after anybody. Nobody has responsibility for anybody but themselves. Wowzers.

      That, plus the fact that we’re half cut, makes us an easy audience for Becca’s speech. She swoops the laminated sheet around for a while, like it’s a magic wand, before putting her glasses on to read it.

      They’re not actually glasses with lenses. She’s only in her thirties, and doesn’t usually use specs. These glasses are plastic fancy dress ones complete with a honking great Groucho nose, moustache and eyebrows.

      Again, we all find this unutterably hilarious, especially Edie, who laughs so hard that Katie and I share concerned glances in case she has a heart attack or chokes on her own merriment.

      Edie is in her nineties, and suffered a nasty bout of pneumonia last year. I’m a pharmacist and Katie’s a nurse, and I think we’re the only ones who realised quite how close we were to losing our much-loved village elder.

      She recovers, patting her tummy as she gulps in the air she lost due to Becca’s hilarity, and I give Katie a little thumbs-up sign as the speech continues.

      ‘This,’ announces Becca once the furore has died down, gazing at us from behind her plastic frames, ‘comes to you directly from the mind of ten-year-old Laura. It starts with these priceless words: My Dream Wedding.’

      Laura groans out loud, and we all laugh at her embarrassment. We’re nice like that. Cherie, who is in her seventies but looks like an Amazonian Pocahontas with a fat silver and grey plait hanging over her solid shoulders, nudges her and grins.

      ‘When I am older, my dream wedding will be all pink,’ Becca reads, glancing at her sister over the Groucho specs to check that she’s suitably mortified. ‘I will have a pink carriage drawn by pink horses and all the guests will wear pink, even the men. My cake will be pink sponge with at least ten layers, and my dress will be pink silk. I will even have a pink dog, and pink ear-rings once Mum lets me get my ears pierced, and pink high heel shoes so big they make me look tall.

      ‘I don’t know how I’ll get a pink dog or pink horses, but I will. Maybe some pink kittens as well. And I will wear pink lipstick and have pink rose petals thrown on the floor. It will be the pinkest day ever.’

      The pinkness of Laura’s Dream Wedding is making me feel a bit sick, and from the looks of it, her too.

      I glance across to the other side of the table, and see modern-day Laura. Modern-day Laura is almost forty, and the only thing pink about her is her cheeks. She’s almost seven months pregnant with twins, and the size of a sumo wrestler. Her swollen ankles are propped up on a chair, and her arms are rested over the vast expanse of her baby-carrying belly. She still looks gorgeous – but not in a fantasy wedding kind of way. More of an earth-goddess-needing-a-nap kind of way.

      ‘Okay, okay – so I liked pink!’ she exclaims, grinning. ‘Someone had to – Becca was already fantasising about her Satanic wedding!’

      Becca nods at this, and the Groucho glasses bobble up and down.

      ‘True that,’ she confirms, in a mock ghetto accent. ‘I was indeed a daughter of darkness. My fantasy wedding involved a vampire groom and cake with worms and goblets of blood. Now, I will pass along the sacred glasses of My Dream Wedding, and we will each share our own story, our hopes, our fantasies, our personal choices of veil and party food …’

      I feel a slight twinge of panic at that particular announcement. Obviously, Becca intends this to be a round-robin of fun – but in my case, it accidentally touches a raw nerve, and makes my nostrils flare.

      I love all the ladies here present, but discussing My Dream Wedding feels perilously close to facing up to something long hidden. It’s a bit like I’m an archaeological site, and Becca is about to attack me with a trowel to unearth my secrets.

      Looking around, and seeing how happy everyone else seems to be doing this, I wonder if perhaps my secrets are even worth keeping any more.

      With great ceremony, Becca removes the plastic Grouchos, and walks to place them on Cherie’s face. They’re not big enough, and the arms stretch around Cherie’s wide cheekbones. Cherie stands up, and bows, majestic in a sequinned kaftan straight from the seventies, and begins.

      ‘My dream wedding, when I was young, probably involved hallucinogenic mushrooms and Marc Bolan. My first wedding did involve hallucinogenic mushrooms, but not Marc Bolan. But my dream wedding … well, that was the one I had right here, a couple of Christmases ago, to my hero Frank.’

      We all let out a communal ‘aaaah’ at that. I wasn’t here for that wedding – I was busy perfecting my role as the black sheep of our family, travelling around and screwing up – but I’ve seen the photos.

      Cherie and Frank – known universally as Farmer Frank due to his magnificent acreage – married late in life after being widowed. The ceremony was held here at the Comfort Food Café, same as Laura’s will be – but unlike Laura and Matt’s, which will hopefully be sun-drenched and balmy, theirs was a winter wonderland.

      Cherie passes the now slightly bent-out-of-shape Groucho specs to Katie, who looks borderline horrified at being thrust into the spotlight. Katie is in her late twenties, petite and blonde and pretty, and manages to combine both being one of the most blunt and honest people I know with being extremely shy. She also has rotten taste in men, clearly, or she wouldn’t be hanging around with my brother. Uggh. Sick in mouth again.

      ‘Ummm … okay …’ she says quietly, standing up and still barely matching Cherie while she’s sitting down. ‘I’ve never had a wedding. But I suppose when I was little, it maybe involved white dresses and Justin Timberlake. These days, I’d be happy with anything that involved a lie-in.’

      She sits down very quickly, and Cherie pats her knee. I get where she’s coming from. Saul is a whirlwind of a child with endless energy and endless questions. I’m pretty high energy myself, but on the few nights he’s had a sleepover at our cottage, I’ve spent the rest of the day staggering around like a zombie. Last time, he jumped into bed with me at half five in the morning quizzing me about my favourite crustacean.

      Katie passes the glasses along to Zoe, who inserts them into her masses of ginger curls, and stands up to her five foot nothing height. Us Longvilles are all tall and lean; we are giants amongst midgets.

      ‘I have never had a dream wedding,’ Zoe announces firmly. ‘As a child I dreamt only of running off with gypsies to travel the world in a brightly painted caravan, cursing unkind villagers and making friends with freaks. I found you lot eventually, so I suppose some of that came true. I still have no dream wedding, and don’t intend on conjuring one up. Thank you very much.’

      I realise, as the glasses are passed on to my sister Willow, that it will be my turn next. I feel a churn in my stomach at the prospect – not because I’m shy, or because of the many espresso martinis I’ve consumed, but because this is not a subject I want to discuss. I plan to make a sharp and timely exit to the ladies as soon as Willow nears the end of her talk, or possibly to pretend that I’ve fallen asleep, and sit snoring and drooling in my seat while the glasses of doom pass me by.

      Or maybe I won’t. Maybe this is the time. Maybe I should come clean. When I first moved back here, to help Willow with Lynnie, I had no idea how long I’d stay. It could have been days, or weeks, and now it looks like possibly forever. Things are different now – I have a small business, СКАЧАТЬ