The Park Bench Test

Each choosing each through all the weary hours

And meeting strangely at one sudden goal.

‘Destiny’, Sir Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)

“Sorry, sorry,” I shout, running down Pretty Street where Emma and Katie are both waiting for me outside the shop.

I look at my watch. I’m 30 minutes late. Damn.

“Sorry,” I say again, trying to catch my breath. I really should work on my fitness.

I hug them both.

“The train was delayed leaving Leeds,” I explain. “And then we had to stop in Grantham to replenish the buffet car. I blame the fat git in coach D – every time I went past him to get to the loos he was scoffing another king size Mars Bar. And then I had to wait 20 minutes for a bloody tube. The underground was packed. Whose idea was it to go wedding dress shopping in London on the first day of the January sales?” I ask. “Oh yes – yours!” I say, grinning at Katie.

“Let’s have another look then. I’ve forgotten what it looks like already.”

She waves her left hand in my face and I throw my head back, pretending to be blinded by the sparkle.

“Gorgeous,” I say, and she beams – which is pretty much all she’s been doing for the last ten days, I suspect.

“Right then. Let’s get this show on the road,” I say, pushing open the door to Maid in Heaven.

“I’m sorry,” a lady with half-moon glasses perched on the end of her nose and a tape measure wrapped around her neck tells us when we explain we’ve come in search of a wedding dress for Katie – a little pointless really, given that we are stood in a shop full of the bloody things.

“We’re fully booked,” she says. “You really should have made an appointment.”

I don’t like the way she’s looking at us – like she would look at something sticky on the bottom of her shoe. Lips turned down, nose tilted slightly in the air. I’m tempted to pull that tape measure a little tighter…

“What about this afternoon?” Katie asks.

The woman shakes her head.

“Fully booked,” she repeats. “All day.”

She reaches for a big leather diary from a desk and flicks nonchalantly through the pages until she stops at the first one that isn’t completely obliterated with brides’ names, telephone numbers and dress sizes. She taps the page decisively.

“April the third,” she says, ever so slightly sarcastically. Anyone would think she’s trying to make a point. “I can fit you in on April the third.”

“APRIL THE THIRD?” Katie shrieks. “That’s…” – she counts on her fingers quickly – “…four months away. I want to get married on September the eighteenth. I can’t wait four months!”

“SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH?!” the woman shrieks, obviously now in competition with my friend as to who can inject the most alarm into three simple words. “September the eighteenth, this year? In that case you really should have made an appointment.”

Katie looks at Emma and me.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s going to cry.

But of course I do know better. I’ve known Katie for nearly ten years. Katie would never let a nasty woman like this make her cry.

“I’m sorry,” she tells her, instead, “I’m used to shopping in Marks and Spencer and Next, where you don’t have to make an appointment to use a cubicle.” And then she glances over to the rails of dresses on display at the back of the shop, and grimaces.

“In any case,” she says, “I really don’t think you have what it is I’m looking for.”

Emma and I grimace too – just for good measure. And then the three of us leave the shop and leg it back up the road laughing.

The woman at the next shop is not quite so nasty. But she does laugh at us. How rude.

“Have you any idea how many men propose over Christmas and New Year?” she asks.

Katie looks crestfallen. I think she thought it was just Matt – that it was just the best day of his and hers lives – not every Tom, Dick and Harry’s.

“We filled three months of the diary in one week,” she explains.

“Okay. Thanks anyway,” Katie says.

And so we leave shop number two.

Katie looks at her list.

Old New Borrowed Blue is next. But it’s a tube ride away. I’m not sure I can face the underground again just yet. I’ve only just got over the ordeal of being pressed up against Worzel Gummidge all the way from Kings Cross to Knightsbridge. I don’t think I’ve ever held my breath for so long. I almost held the Metro paper between us as a makeshift barrier until I discovered someone had already used it to scrape a bit of chewing gum off the bottom of their shoe.

“Let’s go grab a coffee,” I suggest. I’m a tea drinker actually, but nobody says that do they? – ‘Let’s go grab a cup of tea’ – unless they’re over sixty five and planning on ordering a fruit scone to go with it.

“Good idea,” Emma and Katie both agree.

“So, Emma. Have you changed your mind yet?” Katie asks, before shovelling a huge forkful of chocolate fudge cake into her mouth. She’s as skinny as a rake too. There’s no justice.

“I can’t, Katie,” she says, offering her a piece of double chocolate chip cookie with extra chocolate – presumably in the hope that it will help soften the blow.

Emma is refusing to be a bridesmaid – on account of the fact that it will jeopardise her own chances of ever walking down the aisle.

What can I say? My friends are a little odd.

“Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride,” she told Katie the moment she blinded us for the first time with her newly acquired diamond ring on Boxing Day, when we met at my parents house in Sussex for leftover turkey and recycled Christmas cracker hats.

“You were only five when your godmother got married!” Katie had argued. “And Alison and Paul are already divorced, so that doesn’t count either.”

“Age is irrelevant. And the only way to reverse the curse is to be a bridesmaid another four times. And even if Becky does get off her arse and marry Alex,” Emma had said, looking pointedly at me, “that still leaves me three times short, and I don’t know anybody who’s even remotely close to getting that ring on their finger. Sorry Katie, I can’t do it.”

Personally I think she’s just trying to avoid the humiliation of wearing a peach dress in front of all of Katie and Matt’s friends and family. Not that Katie is planning on dressing us in peach. At least I hope she’s not. It’s every bridesmaid’s worst fear, isn’t it – being made to look like a giant helping of peach cobbler? Or worse still, being forced into some floral number that looks like it has come straight from your Auntie Mabel’s living room curtain pole.

Anyway – a battle ensued, involving a minor strop on both parts and an in-depth discussion on every possible superstition from the importance of good manners when coming face to face with a lone magpie, to the day-long good fortune to be had from seeing a penny and picking it up (frankly I’d be much happier to see a £20 note and slip that into my pocket – but maybe that’s just me).

Katie relented, eventually, and agreed that Emma could do a reading instead – on the proviso that she comes on every shopping trip that involves the wedding in any way, shape or form. Starting today.

She’s not quite given up trying to persuade her yet though.

“I can’t afford to risk it,” Emma explains, for the umpteenth time. “I have such shit luck with men.”