Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

‘Open the bloody door.’ A muffled voice wafted down the hallway.

I jumped up in my seat, fear racing through my body. I slipped the backs of my hands beneath my knees, bit on my lip and held my body tight with tension, hoping if I stayed like that for any length of time the annoying person ringing my bell would get the message and leave. Then I might think about breathing again. And decide what the hell I was going to do next.

‘Anna, I know you’re in there. Come on, open up. I need a coffee and a piss. Hurry up.’

Ben! After Ed and Sophie, he was possibly the last person in the world I wanted to see.

‘Ben!’ I wailed, putting on my most sickly, leave-me-alone, I-really-am- dying voice. ‘I’m on the sofa. Feeling rough. Really rough. Sickness, diarrhoea. Virulent and catching. Sorry! I can’t … I can’t … I’ll call you.’

‘Open the door, Anna.’

Aaargh, God. I prised myself off the sofa with a huge effort, my body suddenly taking on super-heavyweight proportions and lumbered towards the door.

‘You took your time.’ Ben breezed into the flat, looking like he just wandered in off a Boden menswear shoot. In fawn-coloured cargo shorts and hot-pink polo shirt, the collar popped, he cast his gaze over me, scratching his head distractedly. ‘Christ, you look rough. What’s up?’

‘Ill. Very ill.’ I braved a glance at his concerned expression and immediately wished I hadn’t. Ben represented everything that was familiar and reassuring in my life, only now he’d taken on an altogether different appearance. I’d known him for ever, or for what seemed like for ever, ever since we’d started senior school. It seemed only natural when we ended up at the same university too. We shared everything together, all those angst-ridden teenage traumas, all the highs and lows. I’d seen him through his break-ups with various highly unsuitable girls, and he’d seen me through all the boys I’d just been practising on before I met Ed. And then when I met Ed, everything fell into place and Ben seemed to like Ed, almost as much as I did. So much so that their bromance developed to such an extent that Ed asked Ben to be his best man. That had to be a good omen, didn’t it? But now, uncovering the secrets of that wretched diary, our merry little band was about to be blown into tiny smithereens.

‘You need to go,’ I said, clutching my stomach as though I might just die. ‘You might catch it.’

‘What? And leave you like this? No way. I’ll take my chances, thanks. Let me make you a cup of tea. It’s probably all the stress of the wedding finally catching up with you. Hey, I’d be throwing up all the time too if I knew I was getting married at the weekend. Back in a mo!’ he said, dashing off to the bathroom.

I jumped up, fired by an urgency to do something, anything, but most importantly to get Ben out of the flat. And me too, I decided, in that instant. I needed to get out of the claustrophobic confines of this God-awful place .

Just being here was suffocating me. I couldn’t be here when Sophie came back or if Ed turned up. Although that looked unlikely. They were probably holed up somewhere together, shagging each other senseless.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Ben was back, standing in the doorway, brandishing a mug of tea in his hand.

‘I’m just going to pack up a couple of bits, that’s all. I need to get away for a few days. Take a bit of a break.’

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ He put the mug down on the coffee table and dashed over to where I was rooting through my handbag. ‘What’s this all about?’

‘It’s nothing.’ My whole body prickled with suppressed emotion. When he took hold of my arms, gazing deep into my eyes, I knew I couldn’t hold it together a moment longer. Tears rushed down my cheeks, short, shuddering breaths escaping my mouth. Ben peered closer, but I pushed him away, grabbing my bag.

‘Leave it, Ben. Don’t worry. I have to go. Please don’t say anything to Ed, will you?’

‘What? No. I won’t. But I’m not letting you go anywhere. You’re ill.’ He tilted his head, peering into my eyes. ‘You are ill, aren’t you? Or is there something else that you’re not telling me about? Come on, Anna, what’s going on?’ The tenderness in his voice broke what was left of my heart into smithereens. He put an arm around my waist pulling me into his side, my breathing still ragged. He mopped away my tears with the back of his thumb, tidying away the stray strands of my newly highlighted blonde hair behind my ears.

‘As your husband-to-be’s best man, I would be failing in my duty if I didn’t make sure you were okay. I can’t let you just wander off days before the wedding without telling anyone where you’re going. Besides, I’m guessing it’s only natural to get cold feet. If that’s what this is all about? Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole occasion? I must admit, I’m feeling overwhelmed and I’m not the one getting married!’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘You’ve been rushing around like a maniac these last few weeks; it’s bound to catch up with you. Look at you,’ he said, doing a secondary mopping up on the tears, ‘you’re completely wrung out.’

‘Oh God, Ben, it’s awful, really awful.’ I dropped the bag to the floor, along with the last vestiges of energy, my shoulders slumping in defeat. ‘I don’t even know if there is going to be a wedding now.’

‘Shit, no.’ He took a step backwards, his gaze scanning my face. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Do I look as though I’m kidding?’ I sniffed, my whole body shuddering at the effort involved. ‘No, Ben. It looks as though Ed, my wonderful husband-to-be, has been screwing Sophie, my so-called best friend. There! Now do you think I’m kidding?’

His eyes closed as he exhaled a deep and heavy breath.

‘How do you know?’

‘How do I know? I’ve just read it in her diary, that’s how I know.’

He reeled backwards, his eyes now wide.

‘You read Sophie’s diary?’

‘That is not the point, Ben. That is so not the point. The point is that my fiancé and my best friend have been sleeping with each other behind my back and my whole world has collapsed like a failed soufflé.

‘I’m supposed to be getting married on Saturday, a day that has been planned with military precision to ensure that not a single piece of confetti will be out of place. I have two hundred and eight-two people turning up, hundreds of canapés being prepared probably as we speak, feathered butterflies and rose petals being drafted in by the lorry load and a whole bloody team of experts on stand-by to make sure my big day is as fabulously wonderful as one day can possibly be.

‘That is the point, Ben. That is the real point. And my mum!’ I screamed, as if I’d only just remembered I had one. Pain stabbed at my chest and I looked down just to check someone wasn’t stabbing knitting needles into my heart. I dropped my head into my hands, not knowing how I would ever face her again.

‘Oh no! She’ll be absolutely devastated. She’s been looking forward to this day ever since … well, ever since she put me into that first pink Babygro! And you’ll never know the lengths we’ve been to to find her bloody dress and hat. We’ve been in every boutique in the country looking for just the right shade of aquamarine. It’ll break her heart if she doesn’t get the chance to wear it. And all our family and friends! She’ll be mortified if she has to tell them the wedding is cancelled.’

‘Hey. You’re talking as if it’s all over. You don’t know that yet. You can’t make any decisions until you’ve talked to Ed. Have you spoken to him?’

‘No.’ I bit on my lip, my foot tapping away at the floor as though it didn’t actually belong to me. ‘I have no desire to speak to Ed. Ever again. Ever.’ Just in case Ben was in any doubt whatsoever. I pushed back my cuticles with a thumbnail, turning my gaze on him. ‘What did you mean how do I know?’

‘Sorry?’ I saw the flicker of panic in his eyes, the shift of his jaw.

‘When I told you about Ed and Sophie, you said, “How do you know?” Not, “Jesus, Anna, you’ve got that wrong. You must be mistaken. Ed would never do that to you.” You said, “How do you know?”, as though you knew all along. Did you?’

He dropped his gaze, literally squirming on the spot.

‘Did you know, Ben?’

‘Look, Anna—’

‘Fucking hell! You did know! The three people in the world who are my closest friends, who I thought would never do anything to hurt me, have all been lying to me, laughing at me behind my back. Have you any idea how that feels? I don’t understand, Ben. I just don’t understand it. You’re supposed to be my friend!’

‘It wasn’t like that, Anna.’ He grabbed hold of me by the shoulders and I pushed him away, both hands on his chest, feeling my face flaring. ‘I only just found out this week. I promise you. No one’s been laughing behind your back. Especially not me.’

I sniffed back the tears and ran upstairs, scooping up my toothbrush, knickers, jeans and T-shirts and came running back downstairs again, stuffing the contents of my arms into a holdall. Ben circled me, giving me a wide berth as though I was a highly dangerous animal, which at that moment I probably was. His hands twitched to reach out to me, but my body prickled with ‘don’t come anywhere near me’ vibes. I still couldn’t believe he’d been in on all of this.

‘Ed told me the other day. I think he was desperate to get it off his chest, to get all this cleared and out of the way before the wedding. Hell, I was as shocked as you are now. I can’t believe what an idiot he’s been. I told him he had to tell you or else I would. That’s why I came here today. To see if you knew. . You shouldn’t have found out this way.’

We both fell silent for a moment, eyeing each other warily.

‘But honestly, Anna, you need to speak to him, hear what he has to say. I’m not defending him, I promise, but I do know Ed loves you more than anything else in this world. He’s in a hell of state over all this. He got in way too deep and didn’t know how to get out of it. Marrying you, making you his wife, it’s absolutely the most important thing to him.’

‘Ha, well, he has a funny way of showing it,’ I said, picking up my keys from the coffee table, jingling them in my hands and looking around the flat where I’d shared so many happy times with Sophie. Things would never be the same between us again.

‘Wait, Anna! Where will you go?’

The question pulled me up short. I felt a pain deep in my chest and wondered briefly if I was having a heart attack. Then the pain took over and my body gave way beneath me as I fell onto the sofa, huge gulping sobs wracking my body.

‘I don’t know,’ I gulped through the tears. ‘There isn’t anywhere I can go.’ I thought of my parents sitting in their lovely home, looking forward excitedly to the wedding of their only daughter, completely oblivious to the fact that all their hard work and planning had just gone up in a puff of smoke. I imagined my mum’s crestfallen face when I told her what Ed had done. ‘I can’t tell Mum, not yet. It will kill her. No, I need to get my head straight,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘Work out what I’m going to do. Promise me you won’t tell anyone. Especially not Ed or Sophie. Please don’t tell them I know, not yet.’

‘Yeah, but …’ He scrunched up his face and lowered his voice, as if he hardly dared to utter the words hovering on his tongue. ‘I hate to say this, Anna, but you haven’t got a lot of time. You’re getting married in a few days’ time. You can’t just bury your head in the sand and pretend none of this has happened. I mean, do you even still want to marry Ed?’