The Two of Us (28 page)

‘That’s Topsy,’ says Ivy.

‘Topsy?’

‘Yeah, the one on the bottom’s called Turvy. Here . . .’ She takes my hand, holds it against her bump and something ripples beneath my palm. My baby – no more than two
centimetres away – pressing against my hand.

‘Are you a Danny?’ I say to the bump and, boy or girl, it moves again.

Not that I’ve been to more than five or six, but I have never yet failed to enjoy a wedding. I’m a sucker for the romance, the vows, the ceremony, the dress, the
tears, the free-flowing booze, the flowers, the silly dancing, the cake and the uncoupled bridesmaids. But this is the first time I’ve been on the staff, and it’s a different story when
you have a speech to deliver, taxis to coordinate and a dipsomaniacal photographer to marshal.

‘Brilliant speech,’ says Joe, patting me on the back. Although he’s had a good deal to drink, and it comes out more like
Brilyanspeesh.

My speech was fine, I remembered my lines, got everyone’s name right and the guests laughed in most of the right places (Bob popping a hernia in a strip club, for example). But it’s
never going viral on YouTube. I’ve been carrying a small deck of index cards in my back pocket all day, a constant reminder that at some fast-approaching moment I would have to stand up in
front of two hundred guests – half of them boozed-up advertising wankers – and deliver five hundred words on love, life, hurried sex and the effects of depilatory cream on the male
nipple. The prospect was terrifying enough, but made all the more ominous by the fact that I have one current and two former girlfriends at this wedding (although the term ‘girlfriend’
is a woefully inadequate one for the mother of my babies, and a spectacularly glorified one in regard to my former squeezes: Pippa and I slept together half a dozen times over the course of a few
weeks; Fiona and I screwed once, over the course of her sofa).

I had neither the time nor the nerve for a drink until I finished my speech, but Joe has been knocking them back since eleven this morning. It’s now something past eight and he is running
his words together and having difficulty walking in a straight line. Three times during the first dance (The Carpenters’ ‘Top of the World’), Joe came close to falling and
dragging his new bride to the ground, and every time he did, the guests brayed and clapped and stamped their feet. You might be tempted to describe the whole day as ‘Bacchanalian’, but
I’m not sure the Romans had access to as much cocaine and Ecstasy.

At a guess, there are one hundred and ninety-six people dancing to ‘Agadoo’ on and around the dance floor. Jen’s centenarian grandmother is slumped – dead or asleep
– at a table in the corner, Bob (propping up the bar) is off dancing duty under medical advice, and Joe and I are taking a breather at a table on the periphery of the action. Periodically,
someone (friend, colleague, mother of the groom) attempts to drag us into the fracas, only to be told to ‘fuck the fuck off ’ by Joe. Jen or Joe thought it would be cute to give the
guests jars of old-fashioned penny sweets as wedding favours and – among my many other chores – I had to place two hundred of them on the tables this morning. Joe is holding one now,
rummaging around inside until he finds a sherbet lemon. He holds it towards me. I decline and Joe pops it into his own mouth.

‘Did I tell you, you’re my best fucking mate?’ he says.

‘About ten times, and twice, using those exact words, during the speech.’

‘Good, ’cos you are. Best. Fucking. Mate.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, as Joe kisses me wetly on the ear.

‘Here,’ he says, sliding his closed fist across the table-top.

‘What’s that?’

‘Take it.’

‘What is it?’

‘Fuck’s sake, Fisher, just take it.’

Joe places something into my hand. I assume it’s some sort of sweet, but when I look at my palm I’m holding a blue, diamond-shaped pill.

‘Viagra,’ says Joe, loud enough to wake Jen’s granny from whichever variety of slumber is dragging her head inexorably towards the table top.

‘What the hell is this for?’

‘Stupid question,’ says Joe.

‘I don’t want it!’ And I slide the pill across the table to Joe. ‘And what the hell are you doing with Viagra?’

Joe shrugs. ‘Wedding night, innit. Didn’t want to take any chances. Take it.’ He pushes the pill back to me.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Oh, I suppose
you
don’t need it.’ Suddenly Joe looks mortally offended.

‘No. I mean . . . well, as it happens, I almost certainly don’t need it. You’ve seen Ivy, right?’

‘Course I have; she looks amazing.’

‘I know she does. Thank you.’

‘I’d do it in a heartbeat,’ says Joe.

And before I have a chance to be offended, Ivy drops into the seat next to Joe.

‘Do what?’ she says.

‘Beg pardon,’ says Joe, visibly flustered.

The Viagra tablet is sitting on the table, hidden from Ivy’s view behind my wineglass. Very slowly, I place my hand on top of it.

‘You said you’d “do it in a heartbeat”,’ pushes Ivy.

‘Did I?’

Ivy nods. Today is the first time I have seen her in a dress, and despite the beach ball shoved up the front of it, Joe is right – she does look amazing. Her hair is coiffed onto the top
of her head, and – another first for me – she is wearing full make-up. The funny thing is, though, she doesn’t look like Ivy. I prefer the version with no make-up, no hairspray
and a man’s shirt. But it seems impolite, foolish even, to say so.

‘Can’t remember,’ says Joe with a shrug. ‘Right, I need a drink, see you two later.’ And he gets up and leaves me hanging.

Ivy slides across into Joe’s chair and places her hand on top of mine on top of the little blue pill.

‘I just had a very interesting conversation with someone called Fiona,’ she says.

‘That’s nice.’

Ivy looks me in the eye. ‘She was very interested in me and you – when we met, how long we’ve been together, how far pregnant I am.’

‘Some people,’ I say, shaking my head.

‘One of your conquests, I take it?’

‘Wh . . . me? I . . .’

Ivy raises one eyebrow, purses her lips. I shrug.

‘God help that poor bloke she’s with,’ Ivy says, smiling.

‘You look beautiful,’ I tell her.

‘You scrub up okay, too. Want to dance?’

‘You bet.’

‘And you’d better bring that Viagra,’ Ivy says. ‘There are unattended children running around.’

Ivy is a terrible dancer, but, as with so much in our life together, I have no idea whether this is a product of her pregnancy or a fundamental truth. Shuffling about the dance floor, though,
stepping on each other’s feet and rebounding off the other careening guests, with our arms around one another and our two babies between us, I can’t remember feeling happier in my
life.

For whatever reason – oversight, most likely – the throwing of the wedding bouquet doesn’t happen until early evening. And as such, the jockeying women waiting to receive the
hurled flowers, are drunk, excited and utterly without shame as they elbow, bump and jostle each other for position. They are so frantic, in fact, that I’m genuinely concerned for Ivy and the
twins’ safety. From the centre of the mêlée Ivy glances over her shoulder and grins at me with an expression that’s hard to read. I flash her a pair of crossed fingers and
goofy smile that could be ironic or encouraging depending on what you’re looking for.

‘Scary, isn’t it,’ says a man beside me.

‘Yours in there?’ I ask.

The man points at Fiona, at the front of the pack. She rolls her shoulders and shakes out her fingers, loosening up. Pippa, standing beside Fiona, bounces nervously on the balls of her feet.

‘Nice girl,’ I say.

The man glances at me sideways and smiles. ‘You’re old friends, I believe.’

‘Something like that.’

Eight stilettoed strides from the scrum, Jen braces herself to launch the fateful flowers. Ivy takes a deep breath, bellows her cheeks outward then exhales. Fiona removes her high-heels and
tosses them aside.

‘Good luck,’ I say to Fiona’s fella.

‘Something tells me I’m going to need it,’ he says, not taking his eyes off his girlfriend. ‘I’m Hugh, by the way.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Hugh.’

Hugh is drinking beer from a small brown bottle. He’s holding it in his left hand, dangling at his side between us, and I wonder if it would be possible to drop the Viagra into the neck of
his bottle undetected.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I say.

And it’s a lightning-fast, alcohol-assisted decision, involving none of my brain’s higher departments. And as the pill drops silently into Hugh’s beer, I feel exhilaration at
my audacious panache, followed immediately by guilt and panic and,
what the fuck are you thinking, Fisher!

‘Let me get you a fresh beer,’ I say, reaching for his bottle.

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘Here,’ I say, grabbing the bottle.

Hugh pulls against me. ‘I’m
fine.
’

I’m still holding the bottle, but then Hugh yanks it from my grasp, looking at me like I’m some kind of moron.

Fair enough.

And Jen swings the flowers between her legs and up and over her head. From where I’m standing, their trajectory looks to be carrying them directly to Ivy. Pippa jumps first. Fiona waits
until her adversary is airborne before initiating her own leap and driving her shoulder into Pippa’s midriff. As Pippa is knocked violently off course, Fiona rises like a prop forward, takes
the bouquet with both hands and immediately draws it to her chest before landing neatly on her feet. The crowd goes wild.

‘Cheers,’ I say to Hugh, raising both my eyebrows and my gin and tonic.

Hugh smiles at me graciously. ‘Cheers,’ he says, tapping the neck of his bottle against the rim of my glass.

And what the hell.

A hand drops onto my shoulder and I turn to see Pippa’s boyfriend, Gaz.

‘Hey, Fish,’ he says. ‘Brilliant speech.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Well, no one threw anything.’

Gaz laughs.

‘Lucky escape,’ I say, nodding towards the huddle of disappointed women pretending to be happy for Fiona.

‘Yeah,’ says Gaz, but his smile isn’t very convincing.

It’s another couple of hours before Ivy and I finally get back to our room. In the intervening time, I’ve broken up a fight and seen three different women and one guy in various
degrees of tears. There are more drugs floating around the place than there are in an old lady’s bathroom cabinet, and I’m glad to be out of it. Or not, as the case may be. I must have
consumed close to my blood volume in beer, and it’s a toss-up between who’s unsteadier on their feet – me, or my heavily pregnant, high-heeled girlfriend.

And it’s that damned word again – ‘girlfriend’ – growing increasingly inadequate as the twins continue to grow inside Ivy’s belly. She is the mother of my
children, we live in the same flat, we are connected at the chromosomes, and ‘girlfriend’ seems a little insipid for the situation. ‘Partner’ is the word people default to,
but I hate it – too practical and pragmatic, too much like an arrangement.

While Ivy goes to the bathroom to remove her make-up, I sit on the bed and kick off my brogues. In one hand I’m holding the hipflask Joe gave me as a present for being best man, and in the
other I have a glass jar full of penny sweets. I take the lid off the jar and dig among the flying saucers, white mice and vampire’s teeth until I find a fizzy cola bottle.

After the flower throwing, I think I recognized the disappointment on Gaz’s face because I felt it too. Yes I’m drunk, yes I’m high on the fumes of today’s occasion, and
yes there’s nothing like the sight of a maniacal ex to enamour you of your current –
that word again
– girlfriend. But none of that changes the simple fact that Ivy is my
‘one’, and I intend to be with her until one of us (me, I hope) dies peacefully in our sleep. In amidst the pineapple chunks and jawbreakers and jelly babies is a single jelly ring. The
toilet flushes and Ivy’s ponderous footsteps thump along the corridor. I take the jelly ring from the jar and get down on one knee.

‘Oh my God,’ says Ivy as she rounds the corner. Her hands go to her face and she stops so abruptly she almost topples forward.

‘Ivy . . .’ I begin.

‘Fisher, wait, no, I . . .’

‘. . . will you marry me?’

Did she just say ‘no’?

Ivy is frozen.

I offer up the ring and wobble a little on my knee.

Ivy winces.

‘I know it’s only a sweetie,’ I say, ‘but I’m serious. We can go shopping for the real thing tomorrow. Selfridges, Harrods, anywhere you want.’

Ivy still hasn’t moved.

‘I love you, Ivy. Completely and utterly and . . . well, completely.’

Ivy’s hands drop from her face. She smiles . . . yes, apologetically. ‘Babe,’ she says, ‘I love you, too. Completely and utterly and completely. But . . .’ she
shakes her head.

‘But I thought . . . I don’t . . . why?’

Ivy sighs, looks at me with a combination smile and grimace. ‘Been there, done that,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’

I realize I’m still kneeling, still holding the stupid bloody jelly ring out towards Ivy. She sits on the bed and pats the space beside her.

It takes maybe half an hour for Ivy to get from the day she met a guy called Sebastian until the day her divorce came through. It shouldn’t take thirty minutes to tell, but I interrupt her
narrative every three minutes with indignant outbursts, elaborate compound insults and trips to the minibar. The salient details involve Sebastian and Ivy’s inability to conceive and
Ivy’s assumption that the problem lay within her. For his part, Sebastian appeared to be entirely untouched by the disappointment that left Ivy sleepless with tears and nausea and heartbreak.
More than this, though; not only did he – her fucking
husband
– fail to share Ivy’s sadness, he failed to care about it. When she asked him to go with her to see a
fertility specialist, Sebastian all but laughed. The marriage continued with sporadic sex and occasional highlights, but nothing changed except a gradual erosion of any affection. Before their
first wedding anniversary Ivy had cheated on Sebastian twice (one-night flings on two-day shoots), and was reasonably certain he had returned or pre-empted the favour at least as many times. They
spent a happy, romantic, perfectly civil week in Alicante to mark their first wedding anniversary and then, maybe three weeks later, sitting on the sofa with bowls of pasta on their knees,
Sebastian turned to Ivy and said, ‘This isn’t working.’ Ivy didn’t correct him; she washed the dishes, went to bed, and in the morning she phoned a friend who happened to be
a solicitor. Within a year Sebastian was living with another woman and their brand-new baby boy, further confirming Ivy’s fears that she was unable to have children. Ivy got the flat.