“It’s a, nice day for a, white wedding,” Daisy growled into the hairbrush she was holding as she surveyed her reflection in the full-length mirror. She still had hair and makeup to do, and it wasn’t as if she’d been the most trim-and-toned of the bridesmaid contingent even before she’d gotten knocked up, but she was pretty pleased with what she saw. The soft silver fabric skimmed away and pulled in in all the right places.
“You look fab,” Nora called from where she was sat in the corner having her hair seen to by an enthusiastic professional. “Remind me to ask you to be bridesmaid at all my future weddings.”
“Plus in future it will be a buy-one-get-one-free deal,” Daisy teased, patting her stomach. “Bridesmaid plus matching flower girl or page boy.”
“At this rate your kid will be way too old to be a flower girl or page boy at my wedding,” Bea grumbled, as she vacated the makeup artist’s stool and tagged Daisy in for her cosmetic attentions, moving over to join Cleo near the fire. Cleo was tethered to the wall by her mobile phone’s charging cable, an overly tormented expression across her face. Bea had never been able to fathom why the girl always let her emotions show so clearly. She poured them both fresh glasses of Buck’s Fizz as she checked the time on the carriage clock standing on the mantelpiece. Less than an hour until show-time.
“Gray?” she asked, without preamble, handing Cleo the champagne flute. Cleo startled, guilt reddening her face under the already expertly-applied powder.
“Yeah. He was just asking me to wish Nora luck for today.” Cleo pointedly put her phone down.
“You’re going to have to explain it to me again. Why don’t you just go out with the guy?”
Cleo’s blush darkened, but to her credit she didn’t try and wiggle away. Instead, she just sighed, light and final. “He hasn’t asked me.”
Bea could barely contain her eye-roll. “You know it’s not the fifties, yeah? Why don’t you just ask him out?”
“I wouldn’t be able to stand him saying no. I’m not strong like you.”
Slightly disarmed by the unexpected compliment, Bea immediately back-tracked. “Why do you even think he’d say no? He’s so into you. And why wouldn’t he be? You’re smart, you’re gorgeous.”
Probably as painfully aware as Bea was that this was the nicest they’d ever been to one another in the long decade of their close acquaintance, Cleo met her eyes squarely. “Thanks.”
“So? Are you going to go for it?” Bea urged.
“Go for it?” Cleo echoed, with a laugh. “Go for what?”
“Grab life by the balls. Hell, grab him by the balls,” Bea added impatiently. “The next time you see him.”
Cleo sighed again. “The thing is, I think Gray and his Tinder-finger are a bit one-weekend-wonder. I don’t want to just be a fun few days to him. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly would be… fun…” Cleo grinned, a little wickedly. “But that’s not what I want.”
“What is it that you want then?”
“Oh, I want the fun. But I want it forever,” Cleo answered simply. “Nothing else seems worth it.”
And Bea remembered that lost moment in that pokey studio flat, Eli in the raglan tee, her pulse banging sharp and painful, her brave friend offering her his heart, her being too unsure of the sincerity – hers, his – to take it. She understood Cleo better than she knew.
“Next time you see him,” Bea repeated softly, “just remember. If you’re crazy in love with him anyway, your friendship is already screwed.”
“Okay, the registrar will be up in a minute. It’s dress time!” the hairdresser announced, punctuating the statement with an incredibly liberal mist of hairspray, having already used enough that morning across the bridal party to cause new concerns about the ozone. Nora leapt to her feet like she’d been unleashed.
“Oh! I’m getting in my wedding dress! I’m getting married!” she hollered, putting her hands up to her face to tug at her earlobes, a quirk of hers when she was nervous or excited; Bea saw both the makeup artist and the hairdresser wince a little.
Cleo moved across to her friend and firmly placed her hands on top of hers, bringing them down and holding them loosely between them. “Yes my love, you are!”
Bea hung back for a moment, watching the two, waiting to feel that ugly whirl of jealousy as usual, but she was pleased that when it came it was more a butterfly flapping than a tornado storming. You don’t get to pick your family, but at least you get to pick your friends; it was a maxim that Bea had often repeated. The trouble was, of course, you don’t get to pick your friend’s friends. So, actually, she guessed she was lucky that Cleo Adkins - that wholly irritating student lounging on Nora’s bed all those years ago - had turned out to be such a good egg after all. Daisy and Sarah crowded round Nora too, Sarah already carrying the bridal veil reverently, eagerly awaiting its application as the piece de resistance. They were pretty damn good eggs too.
Nora glanced across at where Bea still lingered by the fire. She freed one of her hands from Cleo’s hold and held it out in a wordless invite. Equally wordlessly, Bea went to her and joined the loose silver-clad circle, four bridesmaids ringing their lovely friend for those last few minutes.