The Best Thing I Never Had (25 page)

Nicky reached the altar and slipped her hand into his. The music and the talking and the camera flashes all fell away and – as she’d hoped – for that important first minute it was only them.

The vows had been said; the rings exchanged; the official photographs snapped and all the hands in the wedding party line-up had been shaken. A deflated-feeling Harriet allowed herself to be taken up by the tide of people and drawn slowly into the reception hall itself. Harriet squinted to see past all the artfully placed gauze and ribbons and fairy lights; was this really the old undergrad dining hall she used to eat lukewarm baked beans in all those years ago?

At what point on the wedding day was the Maid of Honour officially ‘off the clock’? Was it at the end of the formal ceremony, or at the point where the bride and groom were safely on an airplane to their honeymoon destination? She didn’t know, and she felt strange and untethered as she loitered at the threshold of the dining hall, like the looseness and warmth in a muscle that had been overstretched.

The idea spooled out; would she really be missed if she ducked out now, dignity intact? – or at least, about as intact as it had been upon her arrival? She could return to her room and see out the rest of the afternoon and evening with the screw-top bottle of Jacob’s Creek she had brought in her luggage as emergency Dutch courage. Or maybe she could even head home, grab the fast train into the city.

‘Hey.’ Adam popped up as if from nowhere, startling her as he slipped a slim flute of champagne into her limp grasp; a pointless pair of raspberries bobbed against the bubbles. ‘You’re with me.’

A heat spread across her ribs; Harriet’s heart dipped erratically in time with the raspberries.

‘I am?’ she asked, in a stupid, breathy voice, not quite understanding what he meant, but liking the sentence all the same. Adam looked at her curiously, his own glass of fizz held paused by his jaw.

‘Yeah. Table one; we’re sitting next to one another. Don’t worry, Iona and Johnny are on your other side, so you’re safe.’ A pause before continuing thoughtfully: ‘Guess Miles and Nic had great faith that we’d be back on chatting terms again by the time the entrees are served; they must have finalised these seating plans a couple of weeks ago.’ He smiled, one of his big, disarming smiles.

Harriet felt irretrievably stupid. Of course he wouldn’t be
choosing
to sit with her; for all his smiles and his overtures of friendship and his general Adamness she was always going to be the girl who didn’t respect him enough to even say goodbye. On the other hand, he was always going to be the guy who slept with her best friend and lied to her about it, so hey ho.

An effervescently happy Johnny – complete with trophy Iona, sweet and traditional in a floral knee-length shift dress – appeared through the doorway and flung one arm around Adam’s shoulders, the other round Harriet’s.

‘Good show, eh? Good show.’

‘It was a beautiful ceremony,’ Iona piped up.

‘Beautiful ceremony,’ Johnny agreed sagely. ‘And now, we celebrate. I don’t know about you guys, but I plan on getting totally wankered. Wankered 2006 style. Do you think there’s any Jäger? Bomb o’clock?’

‘Johnny,’ said Adam, mock-stern. ‘This is a classy event. Nothing here will get mixed with an energy drink.’

Johnny pulled a face. ‘Straight Jäger it is then,’ he laughed. Iona rolled her eyes at him, but her expression was a fond one. Johnny switched his arm to her shoulders and led her away to review the table and seating plan, displayed on an A1 poster set up on an easel. With a look that somehow felt unfinished, Adam turned away from Harriet and moved further into the room.

Harriet realised that her hand was growing numb with the chill of the champagne she was holding. The berries bobbed away like nothing had happened. Don’t drink, Annie had told her, sternly. Don’t get drunk. Don’t interact with that Adam fella more than strictly necessary. Two golden rules and you should be fine.

Well, thought Harriet, I’m already breaking the Adam rule, I might as well enjoy this glass. She took a resolute sip, in the hopes that if she filled herself up with the glitter of bubbles, she might feel less hollow, a little more tethered, a lot more comfortable in the spotlight at table one. With regret, she put all thoughts of a solitary bottle of wine or a trundling dash to Waterloo out of her mind.

When Johnny returned with their drinks, Iona was sitting patiently at the otherwise empty circular table, fiddling nervously with the little place card that displayed her calligraphied name.

‘I don’t know if you wanted champagne,’ he said, a little awkwardly. ‘I mean, I know you don’t like wine, but it’s not the same thing, and you had a little bit of it last night at dinner. So I brought you both.’ He placed a champagne flute and a high-ball tumbler of a juice-based cocktail in front of her. ‘Cocktail’s called Sea Breeze, apparently. I dunno what’s in it though. I can go back and ask?’

‘Johnny!’ Iona laughed, pulling against his elbow to make him sit down in the chair next to her. ‘Calm down! Anyone would think you
have
had some energy drink.’

Johnny fussed with his cummerbund as he fidgeted on the chair. ‘Sorry,’ he said, with narrowed eyes. ‘Bloody penguin suit. And too much sitting. And now more sitting!’

‘Yes, people do usually tend to sit whilst they eat a formal dinner,’ Iona smiled.

‘Although I’d be very much up for seeing you try to eat the patê starter whilst trying to do keepie-uppies,’ Harriet said, arriving at the table and pulling her beribboned chair out from underneath it with a dull scrape. Adam appeared, placing his glass of champagne down squarely in front of his own name card before reaching to finish pulling Harriet’s chair out for her. Harriet cast her eyes down and gave a mumbled thanks.

Sukie and her boyfriend wandered over and Adam immediately pulled out her chair for her too.

‘Not mine?’ Demi asked, with a flash of a grin. Adam immediately went into an exaggeratedly scraping bow before holding Demi’s chair out for him with a matching grin. The boys had decided they liked Demi. Roddy, well, he was a little much.

‘Nobody’s expecting you to like your ex’s new guy anyway,’ Miles had said earlier that morning, rolling his eyes. The sentence hung heavy in the room. The three men had looked away from one another, faintly embarrassed: who had Miles been talking to there, Johnny or Adam?

As if conjured up by the thought of him, Roddy appeared, his silk cravat looking a little limp and wrinkled already, a glass of champagne in each overlarge hand. Beaming around at everyone, he sat in his place to the left of Iona. Leigha followed, her fingers busy pressing hair grips more firmly into place at the back of her head, slipping into the one remaining place, between him and Demi. Johnny saw her glancing around, evaluating her placement and her proximity to everyone else.

She was directly opposite Adam and Harriet, which – at first – Johnny found a little distasteful, before he realised that – as it was a circular table – it would either have been Adam and Harriet in full view or Iona and himself. He gave Miles and Nicky a little retrospective kudos for at least attempting to navigate the minefield that this seating plan must have been. Iona would have to physically turn to be looking at Leigha, and vice-versa; obviously, the bride and groom thought that that was the most sensitive point – interesting.

Leigha took her glass back from Roddy and took a dainty sip of champagne. Her head was tilted slightly, as if she was listening politely to Roddy’s chatter, but Johnny knew his ex-girlfriend’s glazed over look when he saw it. He suddenly felt a hot stab of empathy towards the guy.

Despite her pessimistic moaning that the yellow bridesmaids’ dress would make her look sallow and ill, Leigha was even more peaches-and-cream than usual. She’d lost weight since the last time he’d seen her, too much, really – her arms were thin and defined like a teenage boy’s – leading Johnny to suspect that her healthy glow was a combination of fake tan and artfully applied makeup. She wore two necklaces, a layered effect, a heavy-looking silver key on a long chain, and one shorter, a white gold ‘L’ sitting neatly in the little hollow at the base of her throat.

She’d been given that ‘L’ necklace by her parents on her 18
^th
birthday, Johnny remembered. He’d taken it off for her on many occasions, whilst she held her heavy brown hair up and away from the clasp for him. Johnny dragged his attention away and picked up his champagne. The fiddly, slender stem felt like it might snap in his clumsy hold; he put it down again, hurriedly.

Iona, in conversation across his torso with Harriet, placed cool fingers over his fist. She didn’t look at him, or falter, just carried on chatting away. Johnny surveyed her profile. He wished he knew the difference between wanting to love someone – someone specific – and just wanting to be able to be in love full-stop.

He turned his attention to Sukie. Out of the three bridesmaids, she was faring the worst, her genetics for poker-straight hair already reclaiming the ringlets she’d obviously spent some time creating that morning. Demi was still talking to Adam; Sukie sat in silence, with her elbow on the table and her chin cupped in her palm, watching him with a softness Johnny could never have imagined on her. Just as the thought crossed his mind, Sukie reared back, ramrod straight and glowered at Adam for something he’d just said – only half in jest – typical Sukie. Some things really don’t ever change.

‘Leigha is very pretty,’ Iona had said, nonchalantly, as they’d unpacked their weekend things the evening before. Johnny, whose thoughts were still half down in the reception lobby with said pretty Leigha, had had to get her to repeat herself.

‘I hope it’s not, you know, a big thing for you, her being here,’ Johnny had mumbled. ‘I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, sweetheart.’ Iona had just laughed as she’d stretched to hang her dress for the next day – enshrouded in a transparent dry cleaner garment bag – from the side of the wardrobe.

‘Me, uncomfortable?’ she’d scoffed. ‘You forget, I know all about the sordid, knotty history of this group of people, and you think
I’m
the one who’s going to be uncomfortable? Don’t be silly.’ She’d shot him a very direct, very un-Leigha like look. Still, in that instant, he remembered Leigha, Leigha of long-ago, scraping her hair back from her face with her fingers, resting her forehead on her wrists. The last time he saw her before this weekend.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she had implored him, her voice muffled by her own arms.

He picked up his champagne flute again in an effort to distract himself and this time managed to get around to drinking from it. He changed his focus to Harriet, still talking enthusiastically with Iona. He’d mentally taken a lot of stuff out on her, he admitted to himself, thinking that if she just hadn’t done what she’d done then Leigha would have been happier, been a little less empty, maybe more willing to make a go of things with him.

He ignored the sudden and very unwelcome reflection that if Leigha hadn’t been so unhappy and empty, reeling from such a big loss, she may not have gone out with him in the first place.

Things were more or less the same, he realised; Harriet was sweet; Sukie was sour; Leigha was unattainable.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ came a call from the corner, a rather animated looking chap in tails and a top hat. ‘Please be upstanding for the bride and groom.’

Nicky had clung to him from the minute she arrived next to him at the altar. As they walked into their reception venue to a well-meant but rather discordant rendition of ‘For They Are Jolly Good Fellows’ she was pressed closer than ever, a pleased pink flush across the bridge of her face. The way she constantly sought out his eye contact was a mirror of how he was feeling inside. He couldn’t quite believe she was his; he wanted nothing but to look at her.

Feeling quite majestic, Miles swept through the hall, nodding benignly at his wedding guests, piloting his bride up to the table-for-two placed on a dais at the top of the room and depositing her gently in her chair.

He didn’t sit straight away; the applause and cheers grew a little protracted and strained as he stood in his place and beamed out at the motley collection of friends, family and colleagues; they all fell silent as he cleared his throat.

‘Nicky and I would like to thank you all for coming.’ He paused to allow the renewed applause to swell and ebb away again. ‘Later, after we’ve had a few more drinks, you’re going to hear from my Best Man, but first – before the wedding breakfast comes out and things get underway – I want to make mine.’ He pulled a rather creased and folded wodge of paper from his suit pocket. He smiled out at the sea of expectant faces and reached for a glass of champagne, one of two that had been thoughtfully awaiting them at the head table.

‘I want to start with a toast to the newly-made ‘Mrs Nicola Healy’,’ Miles began, holding his drink aloft in salute. ‘A name change for her, and a lifestyle change for me. You see – as I’m sure you all know – Nicky is perfect, or as close to it as a person can get!’ Nicky made little mewling sounds of protest, dipping her head in embarrassment, that little pink flush of pleasure getting pinker by the second.

‘Along with the usual vows I made earlier, I’m making another one: that I am going to strive to be more and more perfect myself, every single day, so maybe – after decades and decades and decades of happy marriage – I’ll feel worthy of such a great wife.’

Miles had rehearsed and rehearsed this, his big moment, wanting to sound clear and confident, but already his throat was thickening up around his words, rendering him sounding stupid and over-emotional. Nicky’s eyes were wet, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she looked up at him appreciatively. He paused again to smile, this time a smile that was only for her.

‘I met Nicky at university – this very one, of course – in a campus pub just through the woods there. It was grotty then and I’m sure it’s grottier now, although maybe it’s had a refurb, who knows?’ Miles laughed. ‘Sadly it’s closed this weekend on account of it being Easter. If anyone gets drunk enough tonight to break into the Armstrong, please report back re: the status of the décor! Enquiring minds want to know!’ Miles smirked to himself as he noticed the banter between Johnny and Adam on table one, each daring the other to actually do it, most likely.