Getting Over Mr. Right (31 page)

“But you seem to have the power,” said Morticia, “to make things turn out right.”

I was grateful for a familiar face that suddenly appeared in the crowd.

It was only when I stood up to greet my “friend” that I realized the friendly face I had fixed upon in fact belonged to Jack Green. Jack of the wet-T-shirt competition. Jack who had unleashed my inner cougar. By then it was too late. He returned my greeting with a wide smile.

“Hey, Ashleigh!”

“Look out,” said Lucas, noticing we’d seen each other. “It’s your toy boy.”

Jack was right in front of me now. He looked pretty cute in a soft gray-blue sweater and a pair of jeans that fitted him just so. His hair was a little longer than I remembered. Artfully ruffled. The color of his sweater highlighted his rather nice eyes. By anyone’s standards, Jack was a very cute-looking guy.

But he was so young. I put the fact that I had seen him naked right out of my mind. It would never happen again. I raised my Bacardi Breezer at him.

“Good to see you,” I said neutrally.

“And you. You look great,” he said. He hesitated before adding, “I really like your dress.”

“Thanks. I like your sweater,” I responded in kind.

“It’s new,” he said. “I got a permanent job at last. First pay packet this week. Thought I’d treat myself.”

“It was a good buy.”

“It’s pure cashmere, I think. Have a feel.”

He held out his sleeve to me. I rubbed the fabric between my thumb and forefinger. “Yes, I’d say that’s pure cashmere.”

“So,” he asked, “how have you been doing?”

“All right.” I nodded. I became aware that Lucas and the girl he was talking to were watching us. I couldn’t help but start to blush.

“I saw the ad you did with Lucas,” he said. “I thought it was really funny.”

“Thanks.”

Over by the fireplace, Lucas was making an obscene gesture for my benefit.

“Is everything okay?” Jack noticed my attention was wandering.

I was angry with Lucas for making fun of me, but I was suddenly equally angry with myself.
This is why I should never have a one-night stand
, I told myself. Jack and I had nothing to talk about. And yet he had seen me in my underwear.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Early start.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. There was something I needed to do the following day and I would need to get going on it before breakfast.

“I hoped I might see you here,” he said. “Have a chance to catch up.”

“Next year, perhaps?”

Jack looked a little disappointed, but even before I got to the door, I could see that he was surrounded by girls very eager for his attention. He was so good looking. If only he’d been born a decade earlier …

With just a week left until Christmas, I still had lots of shopping to do. Previously, in a tradition that had started when we were teenagers, Becky and I would always do our Christmas shopping together. Prior to the wedding and my spectacular fall from grace, it had been just about the only tradition from her single life that Becky had clung to. She’d told me that she would always need my friendship because Henry just didn’t
get
shopping for pleasure. It was simply impossible to get anything done with him in tow.

“He just clutters up the shops like an oversized Labrador in a Barbour jacket, and he has no opinion on anything!”

I could well imagine Henry’s terrified face when Becky asked his view on a dress broadly identical to five she already owned. There were some questions you just shouldn’t ask a man.

Becky and I always had such a good time together when we hit the stores. We’d make an event of it, having lunch somewhere really fabulous and finishing the day with a cocktail at the bar on the top floor of Harvey Nics. I was flooded with shame when I thought about those good times now.

Becky had been my best friend since childhood, and in truth she had never shirked that role. What I had taken to be insensitivity on her part after Michael dumped me was actually her way of trying to save me from myself with tough love. She’d tried to be kind, but nothing had worked. And I had repaid her
by icing a very nasty sentiment on her wedding cake. Her wedding cake!

I had behaved more despicably than the wicked fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening.

Since the Purple Phones ad had put my life back on track, I’d been thinking more and more frequently that it was time I did something to make amends with my most important friend and ally, but I had let our estrangement go on for so long. A simple email or phone call would not do after all this time. I suspected that even a handwritten letter might remain unopened. I would need to deliver this apology in person. And with a very special gift.

That was why I had to be up early after Lucas’s party. I dug out the recipe I had used to make Becky’s wedding cake and first thing in the morning I found myself in the queue at Waitrose with all the ingredients I would need to make another, slightly smaller version. I started cooking the moment I got home. I could hardly wait for the thing to bake. I paced the kitchen anxiously, willing it to be perfect. While I waited for the cake to cool enough to start icing, I made a pair of tiny people out of marzipan. New models of Becky and Henry.

Decorating the cake went without a hitch. The icing was wonderfully flat. The little people had come out beautifully. But delivering the cake was a different proposition. How and when was I going to do that? I knew it had to be in person.

I called ahead to make sure that they were in, but I dialed 141 before calling to make sure my number didn’t appear on the phone screen and I didn’t say anything when Henry picked up the phone. I imagined him complaining to Becky that it was another nuisance call from British Gas, but I had what I wanted: the knowledge they were at home.

I parked my car at the end of the street. I assembled the cake in the boot and almost lost the top two layers as I tried to lift it
out by myself. I had to ask a passing hoodie to help me in the end.

When Henry opened the door, he looked somewhat shocked—as well he might be—to see his wife’s estranged friend, a wedding cake, and a hoodie on his front step at eight in the evening.

“Is Becky in?” I called from behind the cake.

“Is that Ashleigh?”

“It is,” I said. “And this is …”

“Clyde,” the hoodie said, making his own introductions.

“I’ll get her,” said Henry.

I gave Clyde an apologetic smile. I had rather hoped that Henry would let us straight in so that we could put the cake down and Clyde could go back to doing whatever it was he had expected to be doing that evening. I imagined that helping me to deliver a wedding cake was rather cramping his style, but he said he didn’t mind.

Becky came to the door. She had her hair wrapped in a towel turban and was wearing a dressing gown.

“Have I come at a bad time?” I asked.

“I don’t think there will ever be a good time,” she told me. “Not after what you did.”

“I’ve come to make amends for that. With this cake.”

“Nice touch.” She raised her eyebrows.

“Can I come in?” I asked. “Only Clyde here is supposed to be on his way to meet his girlfriend.”

Becky frowned but gave in. Clyde dutifully wiped his feet as we shuffled into the hallway with the cake.

“Put it there,” said Becky, pointing at the table where Henry threw his bobble hat on his way in from work.

“Thanks, Clyde.” I went to find him a quid or something but he said it was Christmas and it was his pleasure and skipped away.

Becky still looked angry. When she wanted to, she could find an expression that would silence forty teenagers at once. No wonder Clyde didn’t want to hang around.

“What is this supposed to be?”

Becky looked at the cake as though it were made out of dog mess and dusted with chalk.

“It’s a new wedding cake,” I told her.

“I can see that.”

“I made it … I made it because I was wrong. And I’m glad about that. Take a proper look.”

Becky leaned in close. “I dread to think what surprise you have in store for me this time.”

She need not have worried. Where I had iced
I GIVE IT SIX MONTHS
on the cake that I made for her wedding, I had written something that I hoped might go some way toward making up for it.

HERE’S TO THE NEXT SIX MONTHS
, I had iced.
AND THE NEXT AND THE NEXT AND THE NEXT
.

“It refers to the fact that I was wrong about you not lasting six months.”

“I know what it refers to.”

I sensed no thaw but still I persisted. “And to the fact that it’s your six-month anniversary today.”

“Is it?” Becky looked surprised.

“Yes. Twelfth of December.”

“Oh, my God,” said Becky. “So it is. Twelfth of June. Twelfth of December! Henry!” she yelled back toward the kitchen. “Do you realize that we’ve been married for six months today? What on earth are we doing staying in and having a Chinese takeaway? I can’t believe you didn’t remember!”

“You forgot, too,” said Henry.

“Well, what do you expect!” said Becky. “Some of us have been very busy at work this week.”

I took a step backward. It seemed like there might be a
domestic. But when Henry dared poke his head into the corridor, Becky threw her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly.

“Happy six-month anniversary, sweetheart.”

Domestic averted.

“And to you, my little honey bunny.”

They started getting soppy, indulging in the kind of behavior that might have prompted me to say
Get a room
were I not asking for forgiveness.

“I should go,” I said, when they still hadn’t stopped kissing after what seemed like a full five minutes.

“No, don’t.” Becky broke away from Henry at last. She put her hand on my arm, and I saw that the softness that had come over her face while she embraced her husband stayed in place for me. “Stay and have some Chinese with us. I’m sure Henry’s over-ordered like he always does.”

“I never over-order,” said Henry.

“You always do,” his wife replied. “But we’ll get through it together. And then we can have some of this. Henry, look, Ashleigh has made us a cake for our six-month anniversary.”

“I’ve got some marzipan holly leaves in the back of my car,” I added. “So you could change the decoration on the bottom tier and have it for Christmas, too.”

“Brilliant idea,” said Becky. “Because God knows I don’t have time to cook and somehow we’ve ended up with all of Henry’s family and mine coming here for Christmas lunch. They seem to think that it’s our turn! As if being married has somehow magically imbued me with the ability to cook a three-course meal for twelve … Will you tell me how to do a turkey?”

I assured her that it was really very easy.

Henry carried the cake into the kitchen and found another plate, while Becky poured me a glass of champagne from a bottle left over from the wedding that had been in the fridge ever since. Then the guy from the Chinese takeaway arrived,
carrying enough noodles to sink a junk. Becky was right. Henry had over-ordered, even now that there were three of us to get through it.

After we’d toasted Henry and Becky’s half anniversary and broken into the cake, Henry tactfully left Becky and me alone in the kitchen again, claiming that he needed to get back to his computer.

“I think he’s doing his Christmas shopping online,” Becky whispered. “It’ll never arrive in time.”

“He might be lucky,” I said.

“I’m just praying he found my wishlist at Net-a-Porter. He got me the most frightful bag-shaped dress you have ever seen from L.K. Bennett for my birthday. I told him that we’d have to have a family before I could start dressing like the mother of the bride.”

I laughed. Becky poured me some more champagne, and then she poured herself some more, too, which made me raise my eyebrows in surprise. After all, the last time I’d really spent any time with her—not including her hen night—she’d been on the wedding-dress diet, which precluded all alcohol. All fun, if she was honest. Which she was.

“I can let it all hang out now I’m married,” she said, as she clocked the amusement on my face.

“I have missed you,” I told her.

“I have missed you, too,” said Becky. “I have thought about calling you up a hundred times but … Well, if I’m honest I decided there was no point. It was clear you just hated me. Why else would you have done what you did?”

“I think I might have been out of my mind,” I said. “Looking back now, I really do think I wasn’t quite in control of myself back then. I honestly thought that what I did was justified. I thought that everyone was laughing at me. I had to walk down the aisle in front of all those snooty women from the hen
night. I’d just had a lecture from your mum. I didn’t think anyone was taking me seriously. They were all belittling my pain. Now I know how hard everyone tried to support me by telling me I had to let Michael go.”

Becky nodded. “You weren’t the only one who was a bit unhinged. It wasn’t until a month or so after the wedding that Henry pointed out to me just how crazed I’d been throughout all the preparations. A real Bridezilla. It was when we were lying in bed one Sunday morning, reading the papers like we used to when we first got together. Henry turned to me and said, ‘This is really wonderful. A Sunday all to ourselves again. No wedding fairs. No wedding planning. No bloody wedding diet. And at last I’ve got back the woman that I wanted to marry in the first place.’ Of course, I tore a few strips off him for implying that I’d been a nightmare, but I knew that he was right. I was so wrapped up in the whole thing I was even neglecting my fiancé.”