I chewed my lip while I thought that over. Was it true? I had changed – at least, I told myself I had. I was far more confident, more self-sufficient. All through school I’d relied on my friends for self-esteem and support, wanting to be one of a pack, wanting to fit in. At last I had learned that wasn’t possible and I’d been happier – albeit more lonely – ever since.
But perhaps Nina was right. Perhaps it was simply that I’d learned to hide the awkward, desperate-to-fit-in child that I had been. Perhaps the me I’d become was just a thin veneer, ready to be peeled painfully back.
‘I don’t know,’ Nina said. ‘I just … Didn’t you think lunch was painful?’
Lunch had been painful. It had been exclusively wedding talk: where the reception was to be held, what Clare was wearing, what the bridesmaids were wearing, whether smoked salmon was overdone as a starter, and why the vegetarian option always contained goats’ cheese. It had been made worse by the realisation that I’d crossed an invisible line and gone past the point where I could have admitted I wasn’t invited. I should have said something straight away, fessed up, made a joke out of it on the first night. Now it had gone too far to look like anything other than deception, and I was trapped in a lie by omission. Clare’s sympathetic glances hadn’t helped.
‘I’m not going to say “bridezilla”,’ Nina continued, ‘because actually here I think it’s more like a bridesmaidzilla. But if I have to hear one more time about wedding favours, or leg waxes, or best-man speeches … Can you imagine James in the middle of all this?’
I had been purposely avoiding thinking about James and the wedding, like a sore bit of skin you can’t bear to have touched. But now, as I tried, I realised that I couldn’t. The James I remembered, with his head shaved at the back and a scraped-up top-knot, his ripped school tie, the James who’d got drunk on his dad’s whiskey and climbed on the school war memorial at midnight to shout Wilfred Owen poems to the night sky, the James who wrote Pink Floyd lyrics on the head teacher’s car in lipstick on the last day of the summer term … That James, I couldn’t imagine in a dinner jacket, kissing Clare’s mother and laughing dutifully at the best-man speech.
The whole thing had been painful to the point of nausea, made worse by covert sympathetic looks from Nina. If there’s one thing I dislike more than being hurt, it’s being seen to be hurt. I’ve always preferred to creep away and lick my wounds in private. But Nina was right. It wasn’t a case of bridezillitis. In fact Clare had been uncharacteristically quiet all through lunch. The conversation had been driven by Flo, egged on by Tom. At one point Clare had even suggested they change the subject. It was not likely that she had lost her love of the limelight since leaving school. More likely, she was thinking of me.
‘If I had more balls, I’d have said no,’ Nina said glumly. ‘To the wedding, I mean. But Jess would’ve killed me. She loves weddings. It’s like some obsessive-compulsive disorder with her. She’s already bought a new fascinator for this one. I ask you. A fucking fascinator.’
‘She’d have forgiven you,’ I said lightly. ‘Though you might have had to propose to make it up to her.’
‘It may yet come to that. Would you come?’
‘Of course.’ I gave her a punch on the arm. ‘I’d even come to your hen. If you had one.’
‘Sod that,’ Nina said. ‘If – and I repeat if – I ever get married, I’m having a night out clubbing and that’s that. None of this prancing about in cottages in the arse-end of beyond.’ She sighed and dragged herself upright. ‘Do you know what Flo’s got sorted for us tonight?’
‘What?’
‘Only a fucking ouija board. I’m telling you, if she’s got one with “sexy” answers on the board I’m pulling that gun down off the mantelpiece and shoving it up somewhere painful – blanks or no blanks.’
‘OK, this,’ Flo said, spreading out sheets of paper on the coffee table, ‘should be fun.’
‘Magic eight ball says don’t count on it,’ Nina muttered. Clare shot her a look, but either Flo hadn’t heard, or chose to ignore the dig. She carried on busily setting up the table, dotting candles among the half-empty wine bottles.
‘Anyone got a lighter?’
Nina dug in the pocket of her denim mini-skirt and produced a Zippo, and Flo lit the candles with an air of ceremonial reverence. As each candle on the table caught, a corresponding flame kindled in the reflected view in the window. Flo had turned off the outside security lights, and the forest was dark apart from a little light from the moon. The room was dimly lit so that we could see the massing shapes of the trees, the pale snow, and the silhouette of the forest canopy against the slightly luminous sky. Now, it looked as if little will-o’-the-wisps were dancing in the trees, fragile ghostly flames, twice reflected in the double glazing.