Chapter 33
I thought I’d be safe, hiding in my parents’ guest room, keeping my head down before the wedding.
Turns out I was wrong, because I can hear a knocking on the door and Hannah calling out my name.
She’s not going to go away; she knows I’m in here, and if she thought I was sleeping, well, she wouldn’t still be knocking.
I pull myself to my feet and answer.
‘Heeeey!’ I say brightly. A little too brightly, maybe.
‘You made it,’ she replies.
‘Of course,’ I say, refusing to read anything into her choice of words, because I have enough problems.
‘I have something for you,’ she says.
She opens up a small box to reveal a yellow flower on a pin.
‘Everyone is wearing them,’ she tells me. ‘This is yours. It’s symbolic.’
‘Lovely,’ I reply. ‘What does it symbolise?’
‘Well, just, like, flowers, growth, new beginnings – I don’t know, the florist really convinced me though.’ She pauses to laugh at herself. ‘Also, I just really like yellow, so the more yellow the better, right?’
‘Right,’ I reply, although I can’t say I’ve ever had that thought.
I pick up the flower, twirling it between my fingers. I guess it is symbolic, in a way. It’s cheerful. Hopeful. Everything I’m not currently feeling.
‘Soooo,’ Hannah says, far too casually, plonking herself down on my bed. ‘What time’s your man getting here tomorrow?’
I pause. She’s watching me. I can tell. That slow, creeping curiosity, laced with a hint of suspicion.
‘Jordan?’ I say, aiming for breezy, as though she could be talking about one of my other men. ‘Oh. He’s… he’s not sure yet. He’s so busy with work stuff, in Leeds, he’s doing something new and it’s taking up a lot of his time.’
‘Hmm,’ she says, playing with the tassels on one of Mum’s decorative pillows. ‘You wouldn’t think he would be too busy for you though…’
‘He says he’s coming,’ I insist. ‘It’s just… if he gets held up… in his meeting.’
‘Right,’ she says, dragging out the word in a way that makes my back itch.
There’s a silence. Not long, but pointed. Then:
‘You know, we’ve all heard a lot about Jordan,’ she says. ‘Your mum has told my mum, who has told me…’
‘Oh, yeah?’ I say, carefully popping my flower back in its box, so that it’s safe.
‘Yeah,’ she says, smiling in a way that suggests she thinks he might be too good to be true.
It’s not that he’s too good to be true, I’m just too shit to hang on to him.
‘I can’t wait to meet him,’ she continues.
‘I can’t wait for you all to meet him,’ I reply. ‘He is real, you know.’
‘I never said he wasn’t real,’ she says, all innocent. ‘Just… you know, if you had made him up, that’s not unusual, I’ve seen it in romcoms.’
‘I didn’t make him up,’ I say quickly, too quickly, trying to awkwardly laugh it off. ‘He’s real. He’s… very busy. But he’ll try to come. If he can.’
‘All right, Lib, relax, I’m only messing,’ she says. ‘So… we still might see him tomorrow?’
I nod again, trying to smile.
I leave out the part where I know, with absolutely soul-crushing certainty, that we will not see him. Not a chance.
But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they believe he’s busy.
That Hannah believes it, and doesn’t think this is me acting up because it’s her wedding, trying to steal sympathy, or attention or whatever.
I want to show her that’s it’s all okay, so she can enjoy her day in peace, and I can go back to keeping my head down.
‘Well. If he shows, I look forward to meeting him,’ she says. ‘If not, I look forward to mocking you mercilessly until one of us dies.’
‘Thanks for the support,’ I reply, fairly sure she’s joking now.
She gives me a hug and heads for the door, stopping just before she opens it.
‘I can’t believe I’m getting married,’ she says.
‘It’s going to be great,’ I reassure her.
‘Yeah,’ she says, sighing, her shoulders relaxing.
I don’t know whether she came just to bring the flower, or to reassure herself I wasn’t going to be a problem, but clearly her work here is done.
Tomorrow’s going to be perfect and I’m going to be a contender for cousin of the year, because I’m going to smile, drink prosecco, make excuses for my fella who is so sad he couldn’t make it, and then I’ll go home, back to my parents’ place and then…
And then I don’t know. Shit. But I’ll worry about that once the wedding is over.