The Wedding Game

CHAPTER ONE LEXIE

CHAPTER ONE

Lexie

August 2022

‘Get off with the groom ?’ I squeak the words in shock as I read out the dare my best friend Scarlet has set me.

‘Sorry. No. That’s meant to say best man .’ She chuckles at her own mistake while we take our seats at the wedding breakfast. ‘Get off with the best man . Don’t get off with the groom, for God’s sake.’ She leans over, crosses out groom and replaces the word with best man.

I murmur ‘hello’ and nod a greeting to those already seated at our table, who are attempting polite conversation with those next to them. We’d been stuck at the back of the church because we’d arrived late, as per usual, so I have no idea what the best man actually looks like.

‘What if he has a girlfriend?’ I ask quietly as we sit.

‘Don’t do it then,’ Scarlet mutters. ‘Obviously.’

Obviously. My instruction to get off with the best man is less of a dare and more part of what Scarlet and I have dubbed wedding bingo – a game we’ve developed for a bit of fun to pass the time at the many weddings we’ve been invited to over the past two to three years. I compile a bingo grid for myself, Scarlet writes one for herself and then we give each other one ‘out there’ instruction that’s meant to scupper either of us from getting a full house.

It’s usually just a giggle, but as we sit here in the ornate Georgian country-house banqueting hall at our table full of eight other strangers tucking into their starters, I scan my wedding-bingo sheet to see what I can tick off so far. With the instruction to get off with the best man, I’m now a bit concerned we’re venturing out of my comfort zone. Although, in fairness, I’ve given Scarlet an almost equally disarming instruction to get a waiter’s telephone number. Now that I compare our bingo grids, I think she’s been unfair with my instruction. Or perhaps I’ve been too light with hers.

This is the last one: the final wedding of the summer and so we’ve upped the ante. There are prizes to be won.

This is Georgia’s wedding – Scarlet’s friend from university, who I’ve met once or twice over the years, although Scarlet’s not seen her in ages. Georgia’s wedding, with its big country-house setting and elegantly sober but soon-to-be-drunk early-thirty-somethings, carries all the hallmarks of almost every wedding that’s come before it, for us anyway.

Because weddings are all the same, aren’t they? And they really need not be. A cut-out-and-keep version of one wedding can so easily be transferred over to the next bride and then the next, and the next. I suppose that’s why, when the bouquet is caught, we all acknowledge that it heralds the turn of the next woman to go through the same motions as the girl who’s just thrown the flowers in her direction. That bouquet might as well be a relay baton.

But maybe this wedding will be different. Perhaps it heralds the start of something , either for Scarlet or for me. Or, even better, for both of us.

I sip my water, freshly poured by a silver-service waiter. It’s a hot summer’s day, but at least we’re indoors with the wide sash windows thrown open, allowing a much-needed breeze to travel through – rather than being stuck in a stifling marquee, as has often happened at other weddings this year.

When we plan our dream wedding (not to each other), Scarlet and I have agreed that marquees are merely glorified tents and, if we’re going to get married in a venue fresh out of a costume drama, then we’re dancing the night away in the location of our dreams rather than in a sweaty tent.

Scarlet looks round for the handful of her old university friends we’d spotted in the church earlier, but they’ve spread out around the room. I’ve met a few of them at various weddings over the past couple of years and they all fade into a series of lookalikes with whom to make small talk.

Scarlet and I met just after we’d both graduated and I answered an ad to flatshare with her in London. We’ve been flatmates ever since. Nearly a decade. Of the wedding invitations that have fallen through the letterbox over the last few years, this is our tenth together in eighteen months. Or maybe it’s the eleventh? I’ve lost track now. But it’s the final one to be ticked off the calendar before normal service resumes and my weekends stop being about country-house nuptials, heeled shoes that slice through damp churchyard soil and roast chicken for the sit-down dinner. Although saying that, Scarlet and I could easily get home tomorrow to find another wedding invite has landed on the mat in our absence.

At this wedding I am the plus-one, the wingman to Scarlet, who is the real invitee. She’s been my plus-one, I’ve been hers. Back and forth.

Until one of us dies of old age.

I’m sure one of us will find a romantic partner to go with eventually but, until then, we’ve stayed strong and accompanied each other. Casual five-dates-in guys have not been permitted to attend any weddings as plus-ones, because it is traumatic for everyone involved when it comes to an end and you have to hastily ring a bride and beg her to scratch a name off a table plan that’s already been printed. We don’t bother any more. Regulars at these events have started assuming Scarlet and I are a couple. Scarlet and Lexie. Lexie and Scarlet. We are the last two left, the final bastions of singlehood.

Practically everyone we each went to university or college with decided that this was the summer to tie the knot. Almost every other weekend from May to September has involved a wedding. And those who haven’t done it this year are doing it next year. I’m exhausted.

‘Why is it always chicken?’ Scarlet whispers as she glances from the bingo sheet I’ve handed her to the elegant calligraphy-written menu placed in front of us.

‘It’s chicken,’ I tell Scarlet, ‘because it’s always chicken. Because chicken is safe. Easy. And because no one really cares what they eat as long as they get fed.’ We both tick a ‘chicken’ square on our wedding bingo cards.

Prior to the reception, I’d also ticked off a reading from Jane Eyre during the ceremony. Scarlet reluctantly sanctioned my double points because it was ‘I have now been married ten years’ and I was very specific about which reading from Jane Eyre it would be. I often score a full house long before Scarlet. She refuses to believe people can be so predictable time after time.

‘So do I actually have to snog the best man?’ I ask.

‘Yes or you can’t win. And you remember what happens if you win?’ Scarlet asks.

I straighten my back, sitting up excitedly. ‘I do. I get a spa day, including treatments and dinner, with you – all paid for. By you,’ I remind her.

‘This is correct,’ she says. ‘And if I win,’ she reminds me, ‘you have to buy me a pair of Christian Louboutins, because I am sick to death of wearing shit shoes to these weddings.’

‘I cannot believe a pair of Louboutins is the same price as a spa day, treatments for two of us and dinner.’

When we set the outlandish financial cap on what each of us might win, I’m not sure I chose too wisely. At least Scarlet gets to enjoy some of my winnings by accompanying me to the spa. I don’t get to enjoy wearing her shoes. We’re different sizes. Although for Louboutins, which I don’t think I will ever be able to afford, I would willingly squeeze my feet in and endure the agony.

‘You chose badly,’ she decides.

‘Mmm, maybe,’ I agree.

She eyes her instruction from me and then scans the room hungrily for a suitable waiter from whom she can extract a mobile number. I watch her laser-beam onto a blond waiter channelling his inner Kurt Cobain, all jawline and a bit too much stubble for this silver-service location – blue, tired eyes pale against his tanned face.

‘Oh, this is almost too easy,’ she says, salivating. ‘I’ve basically already won.’

I scout around for anyone who might be the best man. How soon is too soon to snog someone? I didn’t really get a good look at him, given that Scarlet and I were at the back of the church and are now sitting at the ‘randoms’ table, placed at the rear of the room with a view of the kitchen door swinging open and closed as waiters pass in and out. She looks at the tight-fitting trousers of the waiter she’s got her eye on as he walks into the kitchen. The guests at our table pay no attention to us nattering away. They’re deep in various conversations, enthusing wildly about the venue and the food.

‘On my bingo card I’ve got “sitting at the back of the room for the sit-down dinner”,’ Scarlet reminds me after the waiter disappears.

‘I know,’ I bristle. ‘I saw.’

‘This is how we know we’re fillers, invited to the day because they’ve booked a one-hundred-guest package and didn’t quite have enough real friends to fill the space.’

Ouch. ‘Bitchy but true,’ I agree. I wish I’d included this on my grid. I thought this time we might be in the middle of the room at least.

She ticks that particular bingo square with glee. I’m starting to twitch about losing my spa day.

When we’ve run out of small talk with those around us and the dinner finally ends – both of us ticking off ‘bride cries during her father’s speech’ and ‘best man tells rude in-joke involving stag-do’ – Scarlet downs the rest of her wine, wishes me luck and makes a beeline for the Kurt Cobain waiter lookalike. The wedding party is invited to go through to the library and adjoining snug, for yet more complimentary champagne as we wait for the evening guests to arrive.

I wonder how I’m going to do this. I know vaguely what the best man looks like, now he’s made his speech, but I could hardly stand up from my poor position at the back of the room and stare right at him, so I’m not totally sure I could even identify him in a line-up. The odds are against me, and I wish I’d made Scarlet’s bingo instruction slightly less attainable now, although I do want her to meet someone eventually. But today … the stakes are too high financially for me to lose. I don’t have a job at the moment, I’m living off my tiny inheritance from my gran and I’m still knee-deep in student debt. I can’t afford Louboutins. I can barely afford to eat. I’m going to have to snog the best man.

I hope he’s good-looking.

And that he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

I haven’t seen Scarlet for about an hour and I assume she’s got lucky with Kurt Cobain. I’ve been making small talk with the bride’s gran for ages. She parked herself on a stool next to me at the bar and told the bartender she’d be here drinking sherry until the bitter end and that he was to ‘keep it coming’. What a woman! But her attention has been taken up by the return of her husband, and I need some fresh air. I might have drunk a bit too much over the past hour, so I slip off the bar stool and sidle past people talking and milling about, waiting for something to happen.

A group of classical musicians has taken up residency in the corner. I grope around in my bag for my bingo sheet, so I can tick off ‘string quartet’. Soon they’ll cut the cake and the dancing will begin, at which point I’ll have to start my search for Scarlet. We’re staying overnight and she took the key after we dumped our weekend bags in the room. I should check my friend’s not dead, but I’d also really like the key to the room at some point in the next few hours.

I stand on the terrace, leaning against the stone balustrade and looking out over the immaculate lawn while classical music emanates from the room behind me. The sunshine is blinding. I can’t remember if I have ‘fireworks on the lawn’ on my bingo card. I glance at it and see that I don’t. Given the space out here, there probably will be fireworks later.

‘Bugger,’ I say loudly.

‘Hello,’ a man’s voice says.

I scan further along the terrace. ‘Hello,’ I reply, looking into the obviously amused face of a rather good-looking man. From his facial expression, he’s definitely heard my loud swearing. ‘I thought I was the only one out here,’ I admit.

‘Clearly,’ he replies, smiling warmly. He looks about my age and is wearing a navy suit, the same as the other men in the bridal party.

‘Are you the best man?’ I ask hopefully, because he’s got the same dark-brown hair, which is the only part of the best man I could see from the back of the room. If this very handsome guest is the best man, and also single, then I owe Scarlet some serious thanks for setting such an outlandish bingo instruction.

‘No,’ he says, as if I really should know who the best man is by this point in the day. ‘I’m a lowly usher.’

‘Damn,’ I mutter and realise that’s an odd reply. ‘Sorry, I was sitting at the back during the speeches, I couldn’t see who was talking. I thought you might be the best man, given the suit.’

‘Nope. Not guilty. What did you do to get stuck at the back?’

I turn to face him fully, unsure quite how to respond to this very direct question.

He laughs at my expression. ‘I’m usually stuck on the back table at weddings too. Being single is my only crime,’ he deadpans.

‘Do you think that’s what it is?’ I ask. ‘My friend Scarlet and I double up at weddings, but we didn’t think we were at the back because we were single,’ I say, pondering this. ‘We thought it was because—’

‘Because?’ he prompts as I stop.

I realise what I’m about to say might be quite offensive and, given that he knows the bride and groom well enough to be an usher, I might need to stop talking here.

‘Go on,’ he prompts again. He’s walking towards me now, the sunlight filtering down on us through a wisp of cloud.

‘You can’t tell the bride or groom, because it might be a bit rude.’

‘I won’t,’ he says. ‘I’m curious now, though.’

‘We think we’re fill-in guests.’

He narrows his eyes; they’re brown – like mine.

‘You know the drill,’ I say. ‘You’re a bride, you’ve bought a one-hundred-seater guest package, but you don’t quite know enough people …’

He laughs. ‘Oh,’ he replies slowly, ‘that is quite rude.’

‘But true?’

He laughs. ‘Yeah, probably.’ He sips his glass of champagne. I sip mine.

‘I’m Chris,’ he says and offers his hand to me. His eyes are warm, his skin tanned and his suit fits him very well.

‘Lexie,’ I offer in return and feel the softness of his skin as his hand grasps mine for a second before he lets go.

‘So, Lexie,’ he says, ‘what do you do when you’re not crashing weddings?’

‘I don’t do anything currently.’

‘Are you a Lottery winner?’ Chris asks with a mock-serious expression.

‘Sadly, no. I’m … between jobs.’

‘From what to what?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What job have you left and what job do you want next? And …’ he says, leaning in conspiratorially, ‘is this the most boring conversation you’ve had all day?’

I laugh loudly and he does the same.

‘Sorry,’ he goes on. ‘I’m not very good at small talk. That’s why I’ve escaped out here.’ In saying that, he’s endeared himself to me even more – and he’s already good-looking in that boy-next-door-grew-up-fit kind of way that men are prone to.

‘You’re doing fine so far,’ I confide. ‘As an usher, have you had to engage in lots of inane small talk today with people you’ll never ever see again?’

‘ So much small talk,’ Chris agrees.

‘So, let’s not do small talk then,’ I say. ‘Let’s do … Big Talk.’

‘Big Talk?’ he queries with an uncertain laugh, then plays along by starting first. ‘OK. Are you married, Lexie?’

‘We’re going straight in, are we?’

‘Yep. It’s quick-fire Big Talk,’ he declares. ‘Round one.’

‘You’re good at this,’ I tell him, then I fall into line. ‘No. I’m not married. We’ve just established I’m single, and parked at the back of the room for that very reason.’

‘Or because they don’t have enough real friends?’ Chris reminds me darkly, and I laugh.

‘Why aren’t you married?’ I fire back.

‘I’ve never met the right woman. But if I did, I’d probably propose to her within minutes. Lock her down, there and then.’

I love this. It’s so silly.

‘Within how many minutes of meeting someone would you propose?’ I ask.

He puts on a thoughtful expression. ‘Seventeen.’

‘What?’ I chuckle and then adopt my serious expression. ‘Seventeen? Why such a random number?’

‘Fifteen’s not enough time – you can’t establish whether someone’s a total psycho in fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes is too long. You’ve missed the boat at twenty minutes. They’ve married someone else at that point.’

‘Seventeen is the sweet spot, is it?’

‘Got to be.’

I laugh. ‘So you’re getting married at seventeen minutes. How soon after that are you having kids?’

‘Nine months, obviously,’ he’s quick to say. ‘You can’t do it any faster than that. It’s not medically possible.’

I really laugh at this. ‘OK, genius,’ I reply, ‘how many kids do you want?’

‘Two,’ he says without thinking. ‘Two hands to hold two kids. Don’t want a third one scurrying off in the wrong direction. Too much hassle. What about you?’

‘Two is a good number,’ I concur. ‘I hadn’t really given it much thought, but now you’ve mentioned the potential scurrying, I’m sold on two.’ I dive around in my conversational brain to find something to ask. ‘Have you ever been in a fight?’

‘A fight ?’ His eyebrows shoot up. ‘Like a real one?’

I nod.

‘No. But I broke up a fight at a wedding last year and I’m ready to step up again, should the need arise.’

‘You broke up a fight. At a wedding ?’

Chris nods sagely. ‘All good weddings end in a fight.’

‘All good weddings end in a fight? Oh my God,’ I laugh. ‘You have to be joking.’

‘You watch … You might be surprised yet. The bride’s mum hates the groom’s mum. Could be worth sticking around. OK, my turn. Round two: what’s your crazy quirk?’ he asks and, because I give him a confused expression, he elaborates. ‘Everyone has one. Mine is cleaning. I clean like I’ve got shares in Dettol.’

‘Do you?’ I ask. ‘Really?’

‘Yep. Can’t help it. Love cleaning.’

‘Love it as in … really love it? Or you’re obsessed with cleaning?’

‘I just really like a clean apartment, then it’s done and I can relax.’

‘Apartment? That’s a very American phrase. Is your other crazy quirk that you watch too much American TV?’

‘No,’ he replies. ‘I do live in New York, though, and every now and again a US phrase falls out of my mouth.’

‘You live in New York ?’ I ask slowly.

‘Yep. For now. Where do you live? Careful, though, we’re bordering on small talk again.’ He sips his drink.

Why has this information made me pause? Why has learning that this man lives nowhere near me stopped me short? ‘London,’ I say.

‘Did you have to think about it? Did you forget where you live? Or are you making it up to throw me off the scent?’

I smile. He’s very quick. ‘No, I really live there. How long have you lived in New York?’

‘About three years.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do I live there or why have I lived there for three years?’

‘Both,’ I clarify.

‘We’re really in small-talk territory now,’ he says. ‘I got a job there.’

‘Doing what?’ I fire back.

‘Property.’

‘I need more information.’

‘I work for a boutique-hotel chain,’ he says.

‘Still more detail needed …’

A smile lifts the corners of his mouth. ‘We do up old properties and turn them into boutique hotels. I fit them out.’

I stare. ‘That’s my dream job.’

He frowns. ‘For real? That’s no one’s dream job.’

‘Interior design.’

‘Oh, that’s not what I do. I do the technical bit.’

‘Ohhh,’ I draw out the word. ‘You do the boring bit.’

‘Ha! If you like. So you’re into interior design?’ Chris asks.

‘I’m absolutely into interior design. I’m desperate to get an interior design job.’

‘Huh, well, I know people who could help,’ he says cryptically.

‘Interior-design people?’ I ask hopefully.

‘I know an interior designer. Does that count?’

‘Maybe,’ I muse. ‘Although it doesn’t matter, because I’m not actually an interior designer, so no one would hire me. You’re of zero use to me. It was nice to meet you, though. Bye.’

He laughs. ‘You want to be one, though?’

‘I do. When I become a proper adult.’

‘Ha! How old are you?’

‘Thirty-one. You?’

‘Thirty-five.’

‘Hmm, not married by thirty-five,’ I comment with a suspicious expression.

‘I wasn’t aware there was a time limit.’

‘Of course there’s a time limit. Dating seriously at twenty-five, married at thirty, babies by thirty-five. Divorced by forty.’

‘Jesus Christ! In that case, I’m massively behind.’ He looks out over the lawn and then glances back at me and his gaze holds mine for a second, two seconds. It’s magnetic. I can’t look away. I don’t want to.

‘Me too,’ I say softly.

He checks his watch and I feel my stomach lurch in disappointment that he might be leaving. ‘Have you got somewhere to be?’

‘I’m just seeing if it’s been seventeen minutes yet.’

I laugh at that. ‘Oh, that’s funny.’ I realise I like him. A pity he’s not the best man, though, because I should really be on the hunt. I can feel this spa day slipping away.

Chris drains his drink and I see my glass is empty too.

‘Would you like another champagne?’ I ask.

‘Sure, I can go and—’

‘I’ll do it,’ I say, not wanting to risk losing him inside to the crowd. ‘I’ll grab a couple of glasses and bring them out here? If you don’t feel our Big Talk has run its course, that is.’ I don’t want this to finish. I’d like to stay out here with Chris, talking and laughing and flirting.

‘Stay out here, chatting Big Talk with you and avoiding the small talk in there? Sounds perfect to me.’

‘I’ll be right back then,’ I tell him, taking his empty glass.

‘And I’ll be right here,’ he replies. He leans against the balustrade, folding his arms across his chest and watching me go. I turn at the door and give him one last look, smiling. He smiles back, then I go inside.