There were still whisperings of discord right up until the day I embarked on my mystery tour. I’d tried to ignore them, but the pettiness was beginning to get to me. ‘Your mum says I shouldn’t invite someone I want to invite,’ moaned Pippa. ‘I think your cousin Shelley should be coming, but Seb says Pippa doesn’t think you’d want her there,’ said Mum, sounding exasperated. By the time I went to bed the night before the 6 a.m. start, I was ruing the day I ever agreed to a bloody hen do.
‘Wakey, wakey, sleepy head,’ whispered Adam as he kissed me. ‘The day for us to make our last mistakes before we get married is here.’
I gave him a sleepy punch. ‘You’d better not,’ I threatened, before turning over and pulling the duvet up around my ears.
‘Come on.’ He laughed. ‘You’re being picked up in an hour.’
‘Can’t we just spend the next four days in bed?’ I asked.
‘You’ll be fine once you get going. I, for one, am actually looking forward to my last hurrah,’ he teased.
‘That’s because you’re flying to Las Vegas!’ I exclaimed. ‘I, no doubt, am headed to Bognor. But don’t you worry about me. You go have the time of your life, gambling, haggling and shagging your way around Nevada.’
‘Hey, less of the gambling and haggling,’ he called out from the bathroom. ‘I won’t be doing any of that there.’
We both laughed, but there was a part of me that felt unsettled, not just about Adam and what he might get up to, but at the thought of where I might be heading and with whom.
Fifty minutes later, after saying goodbye to Adam – who looked smartly casual as he walked across the road in his chinos and polo shirt, with a weathered, brown leather weekend bag in his hand – I found myself being propelled into the back of a car, blindfolded.
‘Is this really necessary, Seb?’ I laughed. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to handcuff me as well?’
‘That’s not really my thing,’ he said.
‘Is there anyone else here? Hello? Hello?’ I called.
‘We’re on our own, you bloody fool.’ He laughed. ‘Any idea where we might be going?’
‘I’m hoping for a hedonistic paradise in Ibiza, but knowing you lot, I’ll probably end up on a pottery course in the Shetland Islands.’
He untied the blindfold once we were on the M25 and, as soon as I worked out we were heading west, I knew that Gatwick airport was a possible destination. And by the time we veered left onto the M23 slip road, it was either that or Brighton.
I envisaged the inside of my suitcase, its contents looking like I was heading to a festival in an unpredictable British summer. Boots, sarong, a mac, and denim shorts were the last thing I threw in as I panic-packed, not knowing whether I was going skiing, sunbathing or somewhere in between.
‘What if I haven’t brought the right stuff?’ I implored Seb, turning to him.
‘Don’t worry, it’s all been taken care of,’ he said mysteriously. It had all been taken care of by whom? If it were left to Pippa, she’d have ferreted in the depths of my wardrobe and found the items that I vowed to get back into some day, those jeans from when I was nineteen, which I refused to believe had seen their last wear. The fact that they were two sizes too small and hideously old-fashioned, with their boot-cut bottoms and fly buttons, seemed lost on my ever-optimistic pride. If, God forbid, Mum had had a secret root through, she’d have picked the floral playsuit and the wrap-over cardigan, which had been bought in a fit of pique in the end-of-summer sales. Both had the tags still on, because both made me look like a twelve-year-old.
I groaned. ‘Please tell me you asked Adam for inspiration, at least. If anyone has any idea of what I like or what suits me, he’d be the first person to go to.’ I looked pleadingly at Seb, but he just smiled and turned to look out of the window as the distinctive orange flash of an EasyJet tailgate flew low over the field beside us.
I was blindfolded again as the car pulled into the drop-off area outside the south terminal. ‘I can’t imagine security is going to let you get away with this,’ I mused, as Seb pulled it tight. ‘This takes people smuggling to a whole other level.’
He laughed as he guided me through the entrance tunnel and into the departures concourse, my hearing heightened to the buzz of excited travellers all around me. We veered left, and then off to the right, before we came to a halt when it was suddenly deafeningly quiet.
‘One, two . . . three!’ shouted Seb, as he pulled the blindfold off. I stumbled as the cheers and catcalls propelled me backwards. My eyes couldn’t quite focus on all the faces that were milling in front of me, their wide grins looming, like caricatures of themselves.
The bundle of people was upon me, ruffling my hair and offering air kisses. I couldn’t begin to ascertain how many were there, let alone who they were.
‘Hey, here she is,’ called Pippa.
‘Oh bless, she looks like she’s going to cry,’ said Tess, my work colleague.
I spun round, disorientated, desperately trying to match all the faces to the voices, the thousands of pixels floating in front of my eyes slowly beginning to form real features.
‘Oh, darling, you look shell-shocked,’ said Mum, laughing. ‘Are you surprised?’
‘I can’t believe how many of you there are,’ I said.
‘There’s nine of us,’ said Pippa. ‘Well, there was, but now there’s ten.’
I raised my eyebrows questioningly.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she mouthed.
I looked around the bustle, my eyes settling on Pammie. It was no big deal. After talking to Mum, I’d resigned myself to her being there. There was no real way around it.
‘It’s okay,’ I whispered to Pippa, but she looked away, her face fraught with tension.
And then I saw her. Just standing there. Her blonde curls bouncing around her shoulders, a simpering, almost pitying smile playing across her full lips.
Charlotte.
My heart felt like it had come to a standstill. Like a hand had reached inside my chest and squeezed the last beat out of it.
Everything around me seemed to stop: the noise, the light, the air, all I could see was her, as she came slowly towards me with outstretched arms. She could only have been three or four steps away, but my brain was computing everything in slow motion and it seemed to take an eternity for her to reach me.
‘Hello, Em,’ she whispered in my ear as she embraced me, a waft of fresh citrus encircling us. Jo Malone’s Grapefruit was obviously still her signature scent.
‘It’s been such a long time. Too long. Thank you so much for including me in your celebrations.’
The last time I had seen Charlotte, she was naked and straddling my boyfriend, Tom. I’d never got that image out of my head, yet my mind had gone some way to protecting me, by only recalling the shock on their faces and the stereotypical covering up with a sheet. I’d eventually found it laughably ironic that I’d seen both of them naked more times than I’d had hot dinners, yet they’d deemed it necessary to mask their upper bodies rather than extricate their genitals from one another. Which, let’s be honest, were the two parts that were the deal-breaker. He was still inside her, no doubt not quite so firmly, when I walked out again.
I’d thought I was going to marry Tom. We were practically living together, yet that night, he’d called me from work to say he wasn’t feeling well and that he thought it better, and kinder, if he spent the night at his place.
‘Believe you me,’ he’d said, sniffing. ‘You don’t want to get this.’
I remember thinking how considerate he was being.
‘But it’s probably just a common cold,’ I’d implored, in the hope of changing his mind. ‘It may feel like full-blown man-flu to you, but if I, as a woman, was to get it, I’m sure it’d amount to no more than a little snuffle.’
‘Oh, piss off.’ He’d laughed. ‘Here’s me trying to be thoughtful, and all you can do is take the mickey.’
‘If you come over to mine, I’ll rub some Vicks on your chest.’
‘Tempting, but I really don’t think it’s fair on you. Honestly, I feel like shit,’ he’d said.