A Beautiful Day for a Wedding: This year’s Bridget Jones!

‘Shall we play some games?’ Eve said, insistent on injecting a smidgen of jolliness into the proceedings. She was met with a steely silence from Tanya’s work colleagues and wide-eyed horror from the bride to be.

‘I don’t think we have to do that, Eve. We’re all having fun, aren’t we?’ Tanya replied, filing her nails a little quicker.

‘Oh, yes, lots of fun! I just thought that not everyone knows each other yet, so it might be good to go round the group and say how everyone knows you, and maybe a funny story about you, or something?’

‘Yes! That sounds great!’ Ayesha said. ‘I’ll start. Well, I’m Ayesha, hi everyone! I first met Tanya at fresher’s week at university in Brighton, when we were standing in the same queue for the Silent Dancing Club.’ Eve knew this story; in fact, she’d dined out on this story many times – but looking at Tanya’s stony expression, it wasn’t one that she’d ever repeated to her colleagues, or indeed anyone that she’d met since that day.

‘I don’t think we need to—’ Tanya interrupted.

‘And the third years that ran the club gave us some headphones and told us to show them our moves. Bear in mind we were stone cold sober, it was the middle of the day, and me and Tanya had a running-man dance off in the crowded union.’

Becca and Eve started laughing with the memory of seeing this prim and proper Home Counties girl and a crazy short Indian girl with a black bob dance to MC Hammer in complete silence. The floor had cleared around them and people had cheered when they’d finished. Tanya had blushed almost as fiercely as she was doing now.

‘You’re a dark horse Tanya,’ said one of the other hens.

‘It was a long time ago,’ Tanya sniffed.

‘Oh come on, we should totally do it again for old times’ sake,’ Ayesha laughed. ‘I bet you’ve still got some moves.’

‘Luke and I have actually been taking dance lessons for our first dance.’ Tanya said.

This didn’t surprise Eve. Nothing in this wedding was being left to chance.

‘Is it going to be one of those dances that starts off really slow and romantic and then the music stops and turns into I like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie and Luke throws you in the air, you whip off the bottom half of your dress and it turns into a stage show?’ Eve asked, giggling as Ayesha and Becca roared with appreciative laughter next to her.

‘No.’

‘Ok then, shall I go next?’ Eve said, keen to keep the momentum of the game going, despite the blank stares she was receiving from the other hens.

‘Tanya and I were in next door rooms to each other in our halls of residence, and we’d never really spoken before, but at the end of the first term her boyfriend from home visited, and—’

‘And after that we became friends. Ok, then shall we get the lunch menu?’ Tanya said quickly, craning her neck around, making a show of looking for a member of staff.

Eve ignored Tanya’s deliberate attempt to shut her up and continued. ‘And we’d all gone out to the union for the Christmas party. There was a boyband there, who was it?’

‘5ive,’ Becca said, smiling as she knew how the story ended.

‘Oh yes, 5ive! Tanya’s boyfriend had gone on a bit before us back to halls and—’

‘Oh look, they have smoked salmon on seeded bagels. Yum,’ Tanya said, scanning the menu she’d just been given.

‘But he’d obviously gone back to the wrong room because when I opened my door he was lying on my bed naked with a Santa hat covering his willy!’ Eve guffawed. ‘Literally no clothes on at all! And then he had to run next door with nothing on!’

The punchline to the story elicited polite smiles from the group, but that was it. Man, thought Eve, this crowd was tough. ‘He never visited you again, did he Tanya?’

‘No.’

A few seconds of silence followed before Becca picked up the baton. Eve could have kissed her. ‘Well, I was on the same course as Eve here, and so when first year ended, we decided to live together in a dodgy house in the centre of town. You know, the kind of student house where you don’t need Blu Tack to keep your posters up, the damp does that for you? And Tanya and a Kiwi guy called Ben shared with us too.’

‘Speaking of Ben, has anyone heard from him lately? Is he still in New Zealand?’ Ayesha interrupted.

Hearing his name spoken out loud made the hairs on Eve’s arms prick up.

‘He’s an usher actually,’ Tanya said.

‘He’s an usher?’ Eve spluttered out her peppermint tea.

‘Yes, he came back from New Zealand a couple of months ago, and now lives in Wimbledon. Luke bumped into him a few weeks ago and they went for a few beers, and he asked him to be one of his ushers.’ Tanya paused, took a sip and airily added, ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘Oh my God, I have to tell Amit! They were so close at uni, and when Ben just dropped off the radar Amit was gutted. He’ll definitely want him to be in our wedding party too. Um, if that’s ok with you Eve?’ Ayesha added, a little apologetically. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think.’

‘It makes no odds to me,’ Eve lied.

‘I didn’t think it would, I mean, it’s been four years,’ Ayesha said. ‘I hope Amit doesn’t ask him to be his best man though, I dread to think what his speech would be like. He’s got ammunition on all of us, and he’s a right cheeky sod when he wants to be.’

The conversation then moved back to lunch options, but Eve’s mind was swimming. Becca caught her eye and gave her a silent ‘you ok?’ stare. Out of her three uni friends, Becca was the only one who really knew how this news must be affecting Eve.

‘At what point are we sacking off the herbal teas and moving onto the champagne?’ Eve said brightly, with a joviality she didn’t feel. ‘We are on a hen do, after all!’

Despite her initial misgivings about the fun factor of the other hens, everyone seemed to like this idea, and once corks were popped – much to the chagrin of the clean-living staff – the mood lifted a little and the rest of the afternoon was passably pleasant. Passably pleasant. If ever it became Eve’s turn to be the bride to be, passably pleasant was not a term she’d like associated with her last weekend of freedom. In fact, she wouldn’t trust herself not to headbutt whoever described it as that. Not that a hen do in her honour seemed likely any time soon. She was a self-confessed perfectionist when it came to men, and would much rather be listening to jazz on her balcony in her pyjamas than scrolling through Tinder or attending one of those God-awful, soul-withering speed dating nights. When it was the right time for her future husband to show up in her life, he would. There was no point at all in hurrying it. Except she was thirty and her whole family thought she might be a lesbian. But that was neither here nor there.

After a quick shower and change into their black dresses, which was the standard uniform for the night, Eve and Becca locked the room they were sharing and headed down to the bar. As expected, Tanya had firmly vetoed any type of outfit for the hens, even giving a vehement shake of the head to the suggestion of badges or sash-action. Whilst Eve knew that disobeying the bride’s wishes went against every type of wedding etiquette going, it hadn’t stopped her from surreptitiously handing out twelve rainbow-coloured unicorn horns to the other hens on her arrival at the spa. Now, it might have been the afternoon spent drinking that made the previously stone-faced women happy to go out in public wearing horns on their heads, but whatever it was, the sight of a dozen unicorns in the bar made her burst into spontaneous laughter.

Even Tanya, who’d managed so far to maintain a concrete-like dignity, was gathering up her friends around her to take a selfie. Sometimes, Eve thought, people don’t know what they want until you give it to them.

‘Eve! Get in!’ Tanya ordered. ‘And smile!’

The sight of a herd of unicorns marching down the high street on a Saturday night was quite the spectacle. Eve guessed correctly that the most fun this Oxfordshire town had seen previously was when the local twinning association got a bit excited on cheap French wine after a boules match on the common.

Eve had already phoned ahead to the landlord of the Fox and Hounds and warned them to expect twelve lairy women, and to put a few cases of white wine in the fridges. Word had obviously got around, as the pub was packed out with the town’s single male population who gave a raucous cheer as they all filed in. It didn’t take long before an impromptu darts match was underway, the music turned up, and chairs and tables pushed back. Eve was seeing a side to Tanya that she hadn’t glimpsed in years and certainly wasn’t expecting to see tonight.

‘Come on Ayesha!’ Tanya shouted across the bar as the familiar start to Can’t Touch This came on. ‘You and me. Right here. Right now.’ Tanya had kicked her heels off under a table and was already flexing her neck and arm muscles. Eve smiled. She’d never say so to Tanya, but this actually did beat a roller disco.

***

Eve knew that the sunlight was going to hurt her eyes before she opened them, so decided not to. She could hear Becca shift position in the seat next to her, so guessed that her friend was stirring too.

‘Ow,’ Eve whispered.

‘Ow,’ Becca replied.

They’d missed the curfew the spa manager had sternly imposed upon them as they left the previous evening, demanding that they all return before midnight as the doors would be locked then. It turned out she was true to her word. After the hens had weaved their way through the darkened town centre after a long lock-in at the pub, sometime around 3 a.m., they were faced with a dark, firmly closed hotel. Of course, all eyes fell on Eve, the chief party planner, for a solution, as though she was going to click her heels and transport them all into their cosy beds, or failing that, at least miraculously produce a master key. If Eve hadn’t have been suffering the effects of an endless stream of cheap white wine being poured into her mouth for hours, she may well have come up with a solution more palatable than all of them sleeping in their cars.

‘I don’t think my neck works any more,’ Becca moaned.

‘My vertebrae seem to have fused together,’ Eve added.

‘I think an animal died in my mouth,’ said Ayesha from the back seat. Both Becca and Eve had forgotten she was there, and they both yelped with shock at her voice, before giggling uncontrollably.