I haven’t seen a seating plan anywhere, but on the back of each wooden chair, tied to the top with string, is a little cardboard luggage tag place card. On one side is a silver heart motif, and on the other is written each guest’s name. I wonder whom Polly’s seated me next to in the end. Hopefully it’s not that girl on the coach or her boyfriend. And I could do without sitting next to great uncle Cecil …
Let’s have a look, where’s my tag then … no, no, not me … where am I? …
‘You’re next to me,’ says a familiar voice behind me that makes me jump so suddenly I nearly spill my drink down the top of my dress.
I turn.
It’s him.
It’s been five years and four months since the last time. Twenty-three years and nine months since the first time.
And still, still he’s as gorgeous as that very first day in Polly’s garden, lying back on the grass smoking a cigarette and looking like the coolest thing I’d ever seen. If anything he’s getting better with age, bastard. His dark brown hair is untouched by grey, and his pale blue eyes are still full of sparkle and mischief. He has the most beautiful mouth of any man I’ve ever known. Or maybe it’s not the mouth. No. It’s the space between his mouth and his chin: a perfect indent between his bottom lip and that straight, square jaw. Good old menthol-smoking Krista McKendall and her perfect Danish bone structure; well almost. Daniel’s beautiful, straight nose, that I used to love tracing my finger down, broken by a rugby ball when he was in the sixth form up in Edinburgh. And now that bump in his nose just makes him even more handsome.
He gives me a hug that lasts about half a minute, then puts his hands on my almost bare shoulders and looks at me. He breaks into a huge smile, and I automatically do the same, though for some reason I try to hide it, which must look peculiar.
‘I was looking forward to seeing you,’ he says, ‘you look so well!’
I stop myself saying ‘It’s the blusher and the blow-dry.’ Instead I say, ‘You look well too, old friend.’
‘Wow, Susie, I mean it, you haven’t changed at all really …’ he says, looking at me thoughtfully. He shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe how great you look.’
‘I found my first grey hair the other day! You’re not supposed to pull them out, are you?’ I say, as we take our seats at the table.
‘Seriously, you look exactly the same as I remember you, up on the roof all those years ago.’
‘Ha, the good old days on your roof! How’s your family?’ I say.
‘Dad’s OK, I was just with him earlier. Getting old, it’s no fun at all. And Joe’s on the mend …’
‘How’s Krista? She still with Albert?’
‘No, she kicked him out, wants to do her own thing. She’s gone to some massively expensive ashram to focus on her inner goddess or something,’ he says, laughing.
‘She was always that way inclined …’
‘So Polly tells me you’re doing really well in your job,’ he says. ‘Sounds very glamorous.’
‘Let’s not talk about work at a wedding! But more importantly, how are you? I hear you’ve got a lot going on?’
He shakes his head slightly. ‘Been a difficult year … let’s not talk about that either.’
Well if we don’t talk about work or family or relationships, what’s left to talk about? Plenty, as it turns out. We natter our way through mozzarella, figs and Parma ham, then roast lamb and dauphinoise potatoes and finally the amazing cake, without stopping for breath. Two hours pass and it feels like five minutes. He is on such good form, I’d forgotten how much we think alike, even though our lives have gone in such different directions. We should have made more of an effort to stay friends over the years. It’s such a shame that you often lose your male friends to their relationships. Mind you, I suppose we were always more than just friends.
I can’t quite get over how good he looks. I glance around the room – it’s full of couples. Daniel and I must look like a couple. A new couple though – still in that excited, discovery stage, though we also share the past. I catch a glimpse of Dave. He has this look on his face, like he can’t believe his luck, to have found this woman, to have found such joy. Sod being self-sufficient: I want a man to look at me that way again.
This is how I would have wanted my wedding to be. There is singing. There is laughing. There is toasting. There is an awful lot of drinking. And above all there is dancing. Polly and Dave have chosen Roxy Music’s ‘Let’s Stick Together’ as their first dance, and after that each song is better than the last, no duff choices at all. There’s The Cure, of course, but then The Eurythmics, Erasure, good early Madonna, The B52s (but ‘Rock Lobster’ not ‘Love Shack’), Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Guns N’ Roses. Daniel and I used to go down to Our Price on Saturday afternoons to buy this music; I bet I’ve still got half of these on cassingles in a shoebox somewhere at home.
Daniel grabs my hand and drags me to the dance floor the minute ‘Sweet Dreams’ comes on, and for four hours we dance like maniacs, only stopping to rehydrate with wine, then gin and tonics and then brandies. We are the last ones on the dance floor.
At 1.30 a.m. the lights go up and the last record goes on – Roxy Music again, this time ‘Avalon’. My eye make-up has smudged, my hair looks a mess and my foundation has slid off. My feet are in tatters from these ridiculous shoes and I couldn’t care less. I feel high.
‘Shall we share a cab back north then?’ says Daniel, finally helping me on with my coat.
‘North?’
‘I was never going to make the last train from Waterloo …’
Is he inviting himself to stay at mine? Should I offer him my sofa?
‘Where are you going to stay?’ I say.
‘At Joe’s in Kilburn,’ he says. His brother. I’m relieved and disappointed in equal measure. ‘You’re still in your granny’s place in Swiss Cottage, right?’
‘You remember!’
‘Course! I loved your granny. She used to make that amazing custard pudding.’ I love the fact that he remembers this.
In the cab back to mine he puts his arm around me instinctively and I rest my head on his shoulder. I do this without thinking and it is only once my head has been resting there for a moment that I realise this might not be a good idea. I can’t bring myself to move though. It feels so natural, so comfortable being this close to him again, and I love listening to him talk. That voice that sounds like he’s just got out of bed: warm and deep with a smile in it always.
As we pass the petrol station about half a mile from my flat he asks the cabbie to pull over.
‘Fancy sharing a pack of Consulate for old times’ sake?’ he says.
‘I don’t smoke any more but you go ahead,’ I say.
‘I don’t either,’ he says. ‘Rarely, anyway. But I have a sudden craving.’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Shall I wait in the cab?’
‘How about we walk back to yours from here and I’ll pick up another cab when I’ve seen you safely home?’
My heart starts to beat a little faster. We are both drunk. I have never been in this situation and I don’t know how this works or what I should do.
‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘What if you can’t find another cab? It’s late …’
‘We’ll be fine.’ We. We. We not I.
We sit on the wall outside my block and we talk. We talk about all the things we wanted to do in life and all the things we can’t believe we actually did, and all the things we still plan to do but at this rate never will.
It is only when the sky has lightened to grey and we are looking at our morning-after faces in the light that he finally looks at his watch.
‘Shit. It’s nearly six! I’d better bust a move,’ he says. ‘I promised Joe I’d go to Ikea with him. It’s bad enough normally, let alone with no sleep and a hangover …’
‘Do you want me to call you a minicab?’ I say, a tiny twinge in my heart as I think how much I’d like him to stay by my side, just a little bit longer.
‘It’s fine, I’ll head over to Finchley Road and get a bus or a tube or something … Man, it was so good to see you, Susie. I can’t believe how good it was … you’re just … yeah … you look great … it was great … You’re such great company …’
He wraps me in a big hug, then holds me away briefly while he smiles and looks at me, and then kisses me on the mouth, for a moment, for quite a long moment. Before I have time to react he’s walking away and I watch his back, wishing for all the world that I could see the expression on his face right now.
I stumble into my flat, kick off my shoes, unzip my dress and let it fall to the floor, then climb into bed in my underwear. There is no one in the whole world who had more fun than me tonight, I think, as I finally rest my head on my pillow as the birds start to sing.
I feel like I have woken from a deep sleep.
I remember how it feels to be happy.
Status report:
Andy Ashford and I have been scrabbling around with a production company doing location and casting and budgets for the last three days. I have been working till midnight flat out and thank goodness for that. It’s meant I haven’t had too much of a chance to think about last weekend. Why did Daniel kiss me? Why did I let him? Why did I let him leave without giving him my number? Because he’s a married man, that’s why. Now get back to work.
Today Andy and I are finally on set, on day one of our three-day shoot for Fat Bird. We’re on location in a five-storey house in Notting Hill, in a vast room that’s designed to look like Celina Summer’s kitchen. The set looks gorgeous: white painted brick walls, a marble-topped kitchen island and six stunning over-sized hanging pendant lights with bright pink interiors that cost eleven hundred quid each. For a light!
I can’t believe we’ve actually made it after all the pain of the last two months. We would never have made it to this point if Karly and Nick were still on the job because Karly would have said those lights were too cheap, and this house was too small, and actually now they’ve had a chance to really think about it, the only person who could possibly direct the script is Martin Scorsese and he’s not available until 2018.
Karly would have insisted on executive directing Celina’s wardrobe personally – escorting a stylist down to Selfridges and then picking out everything she wanted from next season’s look books – then walking off set with them at the end of the day. Luckily Andy Ashford’s not the type to combine a floral Erdem bomber jacket with a monochrome Louis Vuitton skirt and Prada geisha-style wooden heels, so I haven’t had to worry about the budget being blown on clothes.
Devron’s sitting over there in the director’s chair next to Mandy, reading the paper and eating his way through a bowl of Celebrations. I’ve been despatched twice already to the organic shop on Westbourne Grove to fetch Celina some vegan cheese, and then some supergreen juice. I have no idea why Celina agreed to advertise pizzas made with wheat and dairy if she’s truly allergic to them, though I suspect she’s faking it – I’m sure I saw a Twix in her handbag earlier. Actually I know exactly why she’s agreed to advertise these pizzas: all two hundred and fifty thousand reasons.
All Celina has to do today is talk directly to camera and say this: ‘The truth is, it’s tricky to stay in shape when there are so many temptations. The truth is, staying slim can be such hard work. But with these new Fat Bird pizzas from Fletchers, you get all the flavour, with only half the calories. Delicious – ain’t that the truth!’
(Devron forced the end line onto the script, but it’s not too bad, all things considered.)
The rest of the ad will be made up of ‘money shots’ of the various pizzas that we’ll shoot tomorrow and Saturday.
So: a script with fifty words. You’d think, if you were being paid five thousand pounds for each word you had to say, that you might perhaps have found the time to practise at home beforehand? Or even in the Mercedes that picked you up from Hampstead and drove you here this morning? But no, it seems Celina finds the whole talking and looking to camera thing super-challenging. And that is why we are still here at 10 p.m., on Take 86 of the final line …
My phone’s been on silent all day – you can’t have a phone ringing in the background when you’re filming, as Devron is finally beginning to comprehend …
And so it is not until we wrap for the day at midnight, and I am finally sitting in the back of a taxi on my way back to my flat, that I actually check my phone.
Four missed calls:
Dalia. (No doubt back from Miami and feeling guilty.)
My mum. (No doubt checking I haven’t forgotten I’m due for lunch on Sunday.)
Sam. (Probably checking I’m still sane and haven’t walked off set.)
And one from a number that I don’t recognise, but they’ve left a message.
I call voicemail and my heart leaps when I hear his voice. It’s Daniel. I feel a flutter of happiness which lasts for as long as I remember that he is not actually single. Perhaps two whole seconds.
He hopes I don’t mind but he got my number from Polly’s brother and he just wanted to check in and say hi and to call him back and that’s all really.
The whole of Friday morning has been spent filming The Cheese Pull.
The Cheese Pull is the money shot, the wonder lick, the ultimate in melted cheese in motion. The most important five seconds of this ad, without a doubt. If Devron could have continuous Cheese Pull for thirty seconds he would; in fact he’d have twenty-four-hour Cheese Pull TV. The Cheese Pull is the action from the moment a slice of pizza is lifted and separated from its neighbouring slice, to the moment where it disappears out of shot. According to Fletchers’ extensive research there’s a direct correlation between the length of Cheese Pull in an ad and their share price – it’s Pavlov’s dog in Dolby stereo.
As well as being incredibly important, it is also incredibly hard to film. The cheese snaps too soon, or is too stringy or is not stringy enough. The home economist has been working flat out with Jeff since 7.30 a.m. to try and get the viscosity of this cheese right; it’s not easy with regular cheese, let alone this scary low-calorie substitute. I watch them work together over in the corner and I witness Jeff in action with another woman and it is enlightening.