The Park Bench Test

She’s right. She does.

She has no trouble meeting men. And getting them, for that matter. Emma is stunning – with legs up to her armpits, and perky boobs. And the blonde hair. And the blue eyes. And she’s a lovely person too. Makes you sick, doesn’t it?

Men, for Emma, are a bit like buses. Buses which turn up in the most unexpected places. In the baggage claim area at Gatwick Airport following a teachers’ conference in Glasgow, for example. Or the frozen vegetable section of her local Tesco Express. Or the back row of a karate class (the one and only class she ever made it to, I hasten to add, being too busy, as she inevitably was, loved up with the guy from the back row).

Yes – Emma can get the men.

It’s just the keeping them that she tends to have a problem with. Before long, either they lose interest – or she does.

Either she’s about to add her toothbrush to the pot on their bathroom sink and a spare pair of knickers to their bottom drawer when they give her the elbow or she decides she doesn’t want them anymore, in which case they tend to hang around like a bad smell.

Emma’s last four boyfriends, in no particular order, were:

Greg – who told her he loved her on their third date. He sent her 12 bunches of flowers, 37 voicemail messages and 52 text messages in six days. On the seventh day she dumped him. Good decision, I think.

Dean – who couldn’t get it up. But she really liked him and was prepared to help him through it – and would have done, had she not discovered that he had told all his mates she couldn’t keep her hands off him, that they were at it like rabbits and that they had virtually cleared the local branch of Boots of their entire supply of Fetherlite Durex. She dumped him after six weeks and promptly told his mates exactly why they weren’t at it like rabbits.

Barry – who most certainly could get it up – and did so on a regular basis. Just not exclusively for Emma, as she discovered when she let herself into his apartment to surprise him on his birthday after fibbing that she was busy – only to discover he had already put on his birthday suit for someone else.

And Peter – who dumped her after she discovered he was growing marijuana in his bathtub and suggested he might like to take up a more law-abiding hobby – like draughts or ping-pong.

Emma doesn’t believe in Mr Right. She just wants to meet someone she likes – or loves – enough to want to stick around. When she was seven her dad left her mum for his secretary and moved to the South of France. Maybe that’s why. I don’t think she’s ever got over it.

“So have you made any other plans yet?” I ask Katie, blowing on my tea.

She nods and waves her hand to signal she intends to give details. But her mouth is still full of chocolate fudge cake.

“You don’t have to eat it all in one go,” I tell her. “We’ve got all day, you know. My train doesn’t leave until eight.”

I normally stay the night with Katie and Matt. It’s a long way to come from Leeds just for the day – but I have to go home tonight as Alex and I have a christening to go to tomorrow.

“Well, we’ve set the date, obviously.”

They’re getting married on the anniversary of the day they met – six years ago. September the eighteenth. Nine months from now. She’s assures us that’s coincidental. I’m assuming she’s telling the truth. I’m guessing she wouldn’t choose to give birth whilst walking up the aisle.

“And we’ve booked the venue - a lovely little church in Beaulieu in the New Forest followed by a reception at the Montagu Arms Hotel.”

Matt took Katie to Beaulieu for the weekend when they had been together for a year. Katie fell in love with the place and told him when they got married that was where she’d like them to do it. Even back then she knew she’d met the one.

“You’ll love it,” she says, draining her coffee cup as we get ready to leave. “It’s so beautiful. I couldn’t believe it when they said it was available on the date we wanted. They’d had a cancellation, I think. Obviously someone decided not to get hitched after all,” she grins, pleased that someone else’s misfortune has turned into her own good luck.

It’s also due to a cancellation that we are finally able to make it all the way into a wedding dress shop without being laughed straight back out again. Old New Borrowed Blue has had a cancellation.

“You’re a lucky girl,” the owner tells Katie in a very teachery voice, as if she’s telling her off for colouring outside the lines.

“We’ve just this minute had a cancellation. The bride is sick, apparently.” From the tone of her voice I’d say she doesn’t believe the bride for one minute. I’d say she hears this excuse all the time. I’d say she thinks the bride has actually been dumped but doesn’t want to admit it.

“Great,” Katie says, before realising how that sounds.

“What I mean is, great that you’ve had a cancellation, not great that the bride is sick, obviously … ”

She takes our coats and shows us upstairs to a waiting area next to numerous racks of dresses. There are big comfy sofas, wedding photographs all over the walls, and piles and piles of wedding magazines stacked up on a large glass coffee table.

“Catriona will be with you shortly,” she says. “Feel free to browse.”

We are about to start rifling through the magazines when Catriona arrives.

She introduces herself, before asking: “Which one’s the bride?”

I quickly push Katie forward, before she gets any ideas that it might be me.

“I am,” Katie says, at the same time as Emma says “not me”. You can tell by her tone that what she really means is “not bloody me!”

“Wonderful,” Catriona says.

I like her. She isn’t nasty and she hasn’t laughed at us. Yet. She’s in her mid forties, I’d say. She’s small, and smartly dressed in a navy trouser suit and white top. She looks like she knows what she’s doing. And she’s smiling too. For now.

“When’s the big day?”

“September eighteenth,” Katie volunteers.

“Oh good. That gives us plenty of time then. That’s twelve, thirteen, fourteen … twenty one months,” she says, flicking through the months in her diary.

“No, September the eighteenth this year,” Katie says.

“SEPTEMBER THE EIGHTEENTH THIS YEAR?!” Catriona gasps. “But that’s nine months away!” she says, verging upon becoming hysterical.

“Yes?” Katie says, panic beginning to sound in her own voice, although she is not entirely sure why.

“Nine months?” Catriona repeats, this time as a question, presumably to check she has heard right.

“I’m not pregnant,” Katie says, defensively.

“I didn’t think for a moment that you were, dear. But nine months is really not very long at all to plan a wedding. A wedding is the best day of a girl’s life, after all.” She looks like she might actually be about to have a nervous breakdown. Anybody would think we’d just told her Katie was getting married tomorrow and needed a dress making from scratch.

“They want to get married on the anniversary of the day they met,” Emma explains, helpfully.

“So what about next year?” Catriona suggests, in a deadly serious tone. “I mean, for starters you won’t be able to have any of these dresses here, because we’d never get them in time,” she says, sweeping her arms dramatically across a rail of dresses. It’s no great pity, frankly – a good ninety per cent of them are hideous meringues and would therefore fall at Katie’s first test – ‘will they make me look remotely like Katie Price when she married Peter Andre?’

“Or here. Or here,” she continues, on a roll.

“What about these?” Emma asks, pointing out what appears to be the only rail that has not yet been waved at dramatically.

“Well, yes, those would be okay,” she says, almost begrudgingly. “But you’d have to order it pretty soon. We wouldn’t have much time to play with. Especially if you needed it altering at all. Which you probably will. What sort of thing are you looking for?” she asks Katie, who has already started rifling through the rail.

“I don’t want a meringue,” she says decisively. “I don’t like fussy things. No lace. No frills. No bows. No fuss. I want something white, but not too white. And I’d prefer it to be strapless.

“But I would happily try straps,” she adds hastily, registering the look on Catriona’s face, who appears to be mentally narrowing down the list of options by the second.