The Park Bench Test
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“Oh good. That gives us plenty of time then. That’s twelve, thirteen, fourteen … twenty one months,” she says, flicking through the months in her diary.
“No, September the eighteenth this year,” Katie says.
“SEPTEMBER THE EIGHTEENTH THIS YEAR?!” Catriona gasps. “But that’s nine months away!” she says, verging upon becoming hysterical.
“Yes?” Katie says, panic beginning to sound in her own voice, although she is not entirely sure why.
“Nine months?” Catriona repeats, this time as a question, presumably to check she has heard right.
“I’m not pregnant,” Katie says, defensively.
“I didn’t think for a moment that you were, dear. But nine months is really not very long at all to plan a wedding. A wedding is the best day of a girl’s life, after all.” She looks like she might actually be about to have a nervous breakdown. Anybody would think we’d just told her Katie was getting married tomorrow and needed a dress making from scratch.
“They want to get married on the anniversary of the day they met,” Emma explains, helpfully.
“So what about next year?” Catriona suggests, in a deadly serious tone. “I mean, for starters you won’t be able to have any of these dresses here, because we’d never get them in time,” she says, sweeping her arms dramatically across a rail of dresses. It’s no great pity, frankly – a good ninety per cent of them are hideous meringues and would therefore fall at Katie’s first test – ‘will they make me look remotely like Katie Price when she married Peter Andre?’
“Or here. Or here,” she continues, on a roll.
“What about these?” Emma asks, pointing out what appears to be the only rail that has not yet been waved at dramatically.
“Well, yes, those would be okay,” she says, almost begrudgingly. “But you’d have to order it pretty soon. We wouldn’t have much time to play with. Especially if you needed it altering at all. Which you probably will. What sort of thing are you looking for?” she asks Katie, who has already started rifling through the rail.
“I don’t want a meringue,” she says decisively. “I don’t like fussy things. No lace. No frills. No bows. No fuss. I want something white, but not too white. And I’d prefer it to be strapless.
“But I would happily try straps,” she adds hastily, registering the look on Catriona’s face, who appears to be mentally narrowing down the list of options by the second.
“I can spend whatever I need to,” Katie tells her, silently thanking her dad who is paying for the wedding, “but I’d rather not spend a fortune,” she continues, because she is not the sort to abuse her dad’s generosity.
At the mention of sort-of-unlimited cash Catriona’s mood perks up considerably and she takes over the rifling.
“You go in there and strip off while I get some dresses ready for you to try on,” she tells Katie, who obediently dumps her bag and coat on my lap and disappears behind a white linen curtain into a cubicle.
Moments later Catriona hangs three dresses on a rail outside the cubicle and pokes her head around the curtain.
“Take your bra off too, love,” she instructs Katie, inviting herself into the cubicle and pulling the curtain across behind her. I look at Emma and grin.
“How are you doing?” I call out several minutes later when they still haven’t reappeared.
It’s hard to tell but the loud guffaw from the other side of the curtain may well be a clue.
“Almost there,” Catriona shouts.
Emma and I flick through the magazines while we are waiting.
“Blimey! Guess how much this one is,” I say to Emma, holding up Bride Be Beautiful and pointing to the dress at the top of the page. I quickly cover the price with my finger.
“Dunno. Twenty pence,” she says, glancing up from White White Weddings.
“No, seriously, guess.”
“I want to say about eight hundred quid but judging by your reaction it’s probably more like five grand?”
“Twenty-five grand!” I tell her, bringing the magazine right up to my face. I must have misread it. “That’s ridiculous!” I say, having established there is nothing wrong with my eyesight and that, yes, this wedding dress really does cost almost as much as my annual salary.
“That’s a deposit on a house, for heaven’s sake.”
“If I ever get married, I’ll be doing it on a beach somewhere in my bikini,” Emma says. She would too.
“Why waste all that money on a dress that’s only going to be worn for a few hours – and on a day when all your new husband can think about is getting you out of it?”
Catriona pokes her head outside the curtain – to check we are still here probably – there’s a fabulous cake shop around the corner which I’m sure must be an incredible temptation when you are on the tenth or eleventh dress and the bride still hasn’t found one she likes.
“She’s ready girls,” she announces, before sweeping back the curtain and waiting for Katie to emerge.
“So. What do you think?”
“I don’t like it,” Emma says, screwing her nose up.
“You don’t get a say,” Katie tells her.
“What have you made me come for then?”
“Consider it your punishment.”
Emma says nothing – just rolls her eyes at me.
“What do you think Becky?” Katie asks me, not before giving Emma one more moody glance for good measure.
“Well, it’s okay … But there’s probably something out there that is more you,” I confirm, before she promptly disappears back behind the curtain.
“I am NEVER going to find a dress,” Katie says, despondently shoving a prawn cracker in her mouth.
We’ve come to China Palace for dinner before I head home. And we’ve ordered enough to feed an army, after Katie complained she had ‘not eaten a thing all day’. I did point out that this wasn’t strictly true – that she had in fact wolfed down an extra large helping of chocolate fudge cake as well as an entire king size bag of giant chocolate buttons between 2:12pm and 2:18pm. Single-handedly. The chocolate fudge cake she conceded, but the chocolate buttons didn’t count, apparently, since ‘chocolate buttons are an addiction, not a source of sustenance’.
Life is not fair. Katie can eat chocolate all day every day and never put on an ounce, whereas I only have to sniff the empty packet and I put on five pounds. And it’s not even as if I can just say ‘to hell with it’ and sod the five pounds. I have a bridesmaid dress to squeeze into. Or will do, anyway, if we ever get Katie sorted out first.
“You’ve tried on five dresses,” Emma laughs. “I don’t think you need to panic just yet, hun.”
“Yes, but I hated them all. Hated,” she repeats, slopping a spoon of sweet and sour chicken onto her plate. “And so did you two. God I hope it’s easier finding you a bridesmaid dress Becks. Unless you just want to get a wedding dress and have a double wedding?” she asks hopefully, eager for someone to share her frustration.
I shake my head as I help myself to some chicken with cashew nuts.
“Sorry hun, you’re on your own. But don’t worry. You’ve got plenty of time, despite what any of these wedding shop witches tell you. They’re bound to tell you to hurry – they want you to buy one of their dresses. They don’t want you to take your time and look elsewhere.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. So, anyway, enough wedding talk. Tell us how it’s going with Jim, Emma.”
Jim is Emma’s current man. She met him at the chip shop after a drunken night out in Brighton and offered to let him dip his chips in her curry sauce. She’s a classy chick, our Em. And despite her inexcusable opening line, it appears to be going well. I think it’s been about two months now, which is something of a record for her.
“It’s going really well, actually,” she grins.
I think she really likes this one because she goes all mushy whenever you mention his name – a bit like a lovesick teenager.
“We’re going away in a few weeks - to this posh hotel in Hampshire. Jim won this spa weekend at his work’s Christmas do. Two nights’ bed and breakfast with spa treatments for two. Let’s just say I think we might be missing out on the breakfast – and the spa treatments!” She licks her lips and smiles sweetly – like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, when in actual fact she’s planning the dirty weekend to end all dirty weekends.
“So when are we going to meet him?” I ask. “You don’t want to let it go too far. You might have to dump him if Katie and I don’t approve.”
“Oh you’ll approve,” she assures us. “He’s gorgeous. And totally fabulous in bed!”
“Excellent,” Katie says, helping herself to more egg-fried rice. She’s got hollow legs, I’m sure.
“So?” I ask.
“So what?”
“So when are we going to meet him? It’s not often you go this gooey over someone. It’s time we met the guy.”
“I’ll sort something out soon, I promise. But you’ll definitely love him.
“You know what…” she says, biting into a prawn cracker – a pause for thought. “He might just be Mr Right.”
“You don’t believe in Mr Right,” I remind her.
“I know I don’t. But someone this good in bed has to be as close as I’m gonna get to him, damn it!”
CHAPTER TWO
A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys that fit our locks.
Excerpt from ‘The Bridge Across Forever’, Richard Bach
I’ve thought more than once since that little ‘chat’ with my dad that I might have found Mr Right.
When I was nine I thought it might be Jonathan Jamieson because he gave me a bit of his Sherbet Dib Dab after I fell over in the school playground and grazed my knee.
When I was thirteen I thought it might be Andrew Bradley. We ‘went out’ for two whole weeks, which basically means we held hands on the school bus and passed love letters to each other during maths classes when we were supposed to be working out simultaneous equations.
And when I was sixteen I thought it might be Stephen Clarkson – my first proper boyfriend. But that didn’t mean anything because at sixteen I was also convinced that Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp could all be Mr Right.
I’m not sure I’ve ever thought Alex is Mr Right.
Alex is there to meet me when I arrive back in Leeds station on Sunday night. I have been instructed to warn him that weekends in London are the norm from now on. “We have a wedding to prepare for,” I keep being told. I’m not sure who this ‘we’ is she’s talking about. I was under the impression it was Matt she was marrying.
He takes it well, and rather than moaning about how we’ll hardly see each other, points out that it will mean more time for football and nights out with the lads without having to feel guilty. There’s nothing quite like feeling appreciated, is there? But Alex’s easy-going nature is one of the things I love about him – that and his lovely bum.
“I thought we’d pick up a bottle of wine and a DVD on the way home,” he says.
“Lovely,” I say, squeezing his thigh appreciatively as he changes gear.
All you really need to know about Alex is this – he’s lovely.
But to elaborate – he’s gorgeous, he’s funny, he’s incredibly generous, he can cook – and bake – which is a definite bonus since I can do neither. He makes the best banoffee pie I’ve ever tasted, which just happens to be my all-time favourite dessert. And he has the best bum in the world. No, really, he does. It’s perfect. Dead pert, but soft as a baby’s bum. I can’t keep my hands off it. Well, I didn’t use to be able to anyway. Alex used to joke that if we ever split up I’d want custody of his bum. He’s right, I would.
So why haven’t I ever thought Alex is Mr Right – especially after all those lovely things I’ve told you about him (did I mention his lovely bum)?
I wish I could tell you. I really do.
But I don’t know.
I love him, of course I do. I love him a lot. But if he was Mr Right I wouldn’t question it, would I? Just like you wouldn’t question whether a banana was a banana, or whether a bowl of cornflakes was a bowl of cornflakes. You know it’s a bowl of cornflakes, so you don’t need to ask.
So if Alex was Mr Right, I wouldn’t need to ask myself the question, right?
But I do need to ask.
I am asking.
I met Alex in my final year at university, at the Student Union Christmas ball. He was stood next to me at the bar, but despite looking particularly scrummy in his tuxedo and bow tie, he couldn’t get himself noticed by the male bar staff who were more interested in serving all the gorgeous girls in their skimpy dresses. I like to include myself among their number but I suspect my being served was more down to the fact that I was leaning so far over the bar I was practically poking one of the barmen in the eye with my reindeer antlers.
Out of pity I offered to get Alex’s drink for him and, well, to cut a short story even shorter, we basically spent the rest of the evening snogging in a corner. Admittedly, pity no longer played any role. I can only blame my actions on a combination of seven gin and tonics and Alex’s gorgeousness, which – by sheer luck rather than good judgement I’m sure – still existed the following night when I left my beer goggles at home for the evening and met him for a post-snog drink.
Fast forward six years and here we are, both still in Leeds, nothing much changed except for the fact that it’s now our jobs that are paying for the drinks and not our overdrafts/student loans/parents. That, and the fact that we now live together – in a rented house for now, but we are saving for our own place. Well, strictly speaking, it’s Alex who is doing the bulk of the saving, earning, as he does, almost twice as much as I do and having considerably fewer pairs of shoes to buy each month.
And I love him.
I absolutely do.
But…
But what?
I don’t know.
But isn’t the very existence of a ‘but’ enough? And now I’m not talking about his lovely bum.
How do you know? If someone is the one, I mean? How do any of us know? It was easy for Barbie – Emma and I decided for her that Ken was Mr Right. But who decides for the rest of us? We have to do that for ourselves, which hardly seems fair. It would be so much easier if we all came with a label saying who we belong to.
Maybe Alex is my Mr Right. Maybe I just haven’t found his label yet?
CHAPTER THREE
Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under my feet;
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
‘He wishes for the cloths of heaven', W.B. Yeats
Bollocks.
It’s Monday morning. Quite how it can be is beyond me. It only feels like five minutes since I switched off my computer and dumped my dirty mug in the office sink.
I contemplate phoning in sick. This is not a first. I contemplate phoning in sick every Monday morning. The possibilities are endless – I could put a peg on my nose and pretend I have the flu. I could tie a scarf tightly around my neck, cut the air supply to my vocal chords and pretend I have tonsillitis. I could come out with complete gibberish and pretend I’m hallucinating – though I tend to come out with complete gibberish a lot of the time, so this probably wouldn’t be terribly convincing.
I never actually do phone in sick. Not because my excuses are not entirely plausible, but because I like to think of myself as a conscientious employee, persevering with the rest of the rat race in the face of sheer boredom.
I used to be depressed when I woke up on a Sunday morning because I knew I was going back to work the next day. Now I’m depressed when I wake up on a Saturday morning, because I know that the next time I wake up I will be going back to work the next day. I spend Monday to Friday wishing my life away for the weekend, and Saturday and Sunday depressed that the weekend is almost over. Which, if you think about it, leaves only Friday available for not being miserable, when I’m too stressed out after a whole week in the office to really appreciate it.
I must get out more.
I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.
This is not a statement of fact, by the way, merely a mantra I am trying out.
I’m saying it to myself every morning as I make my way into Penand Inc’s head office in the misguided hope that it might eventually come true.
It’s not working.
I have a terribly glamorous job, you know.
I sell pencils. No, really, I do. I sell pencils. Okay, so I’m selling myself short. I also sell pens. And pencil sharpeners. And Post-It notes. In fact – take a look around your desk – anything you can see, the chances are I sell it. Or, at least, I work for the people who sell it.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. I never intended to sell pencils for a living. No, in actual fact, I was meant to be the next Carrie Bradshaw. Not necessarily being paid to write about sex, but being paid to write at least – being paid to do what I love. It doesn’t have to be Carrie, of course. I’d settle for Kate Hudson’s character in How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days.
How To Give Up Your Dream Job And Sell Pencils Instead.
How To Convince The Bride-To-Be That Peach Only Suits A Peach.
How To Tell Your Boyfriend You’re Not Sure He’s The One…
The plan was to move back home and look for a journalism job in London after my finals. But then Alex got a great job up here with a high profile law firm. And I wanted to be with him, so I stayed too. I got a temporary job. It was meant to be a short term thing. Just until I had paid off some of my (rather hefty) student debts. Just until I began pursuing my ‘real’ career by pestering unsuspecting editors of local newspapers to give me a job.
That was five years ago.
I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, I chant as I walk through the automatic doors, smile sweetly at Marie on reception and swipe my ID card to let me through the security door.
I often wonder why they make it so damned difficult to get into this building. We’re really not that keen on getting in, after all. It would make far more sense to make it harder for us to get out, if you ask me – getting out is much more popular.
I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, I continue up the stairs to the second floor. It was my New Year’s resolution never to take the lift, on account of the fact that I’m supposed to be on a diet. Because I’ve just been asked to be bridesmaid. And because I ate far more than my fair share of a Christmas kilogram tub of Cadbury’s Miniature Heroes.
Not that I’m a fatty or anything. But I could do with losing a pound or two, because I’m sure peach looks even less attractive when you’re wearing a spare tyre underneath it.
Anyway, it’s the second week in January and I haven’t succumbed yet. Apart from the day after the office Christmas party (held on January sixth for reasons I will never understand) when I was feeling particularly hungover. But that doesn’t count, because it was a Christmas party, and so technically still December. Okay, so I’m a cheat. I hold my hands up. But everyone knows that New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken.
My heart sinks when I see my desk. Plummets, in fact. I don’t know why I’m even vaguely surprised. What did I expect – that Mary Poppins would pop in over the weekend, click her fingers and magic everything into its correct folder, drawer and filing tray (not that I actually have any filing trays to speak of)?
I’m surprised I’m not forever being disciplined over the state of my desk. You could actually grow things in the mugs that have, on occasion, been found on my desk. They say mould produces penicillin, don’t they? If that’s right then I’m pretty sure that the contents of a mug that was (allegedly) found on my desk last week could probably have saved a small community from the bubonic plague.
I don’t know what happened really. I was such a tidy child. I would spend hours tidying my already immaculate bedroom. All my cassettes were neatly filed in alphabetical order in their wall-mounted plastic storage cases, my white pants were kept separate from my coloured ones, my socks separate from my tights, and all my games were stacked neatly on top of the wardrobe in size-order – Game of Life and Monopoly at the bottom, Yahtzee at the top. If I ever found a loose playing piece I’d painstakingly slide out the relevant game, open it up and put the piece away in its proper place before returning the game to its correct position.
Now I’d probably just lob the loose playing piece to the top of the wardrobe and hope it didn’t bounce back and hit me in the face; my bills are filed in the kitchen drawer, along with old freebie newspapers and menus for a dozen different takeaways; CDs are put away in whichever empty case happens to be close to hand – which is fine, until Alex goes to play his favourite Stereophonics album when he’s driving the lads to a footie match and my favourite Will Young CD blasts out of the car stereo instead; and the Sex & The City quiz cards are scooped up and put away back to front and out of order, giving the cheats among us the perfect opportunity for a sneaky glance at the answers while they are being sorted (I remain convinced this is how Katie beat both me and Emma hands down on their last visit).
I’m even worse at work. My desk is an embarrassment, to be honest. It is littered with coloured pens, enough Post-It notes to create my very own roll of Post-It-themed wallpaper and dozens of scraps of paper covered in illegible notes under the scribbled heading ‘to do’. Organised chaos, I call it. But there really is no excuse. I work for an office supplies company, after all, with unlimited pen pots, filing trays and notepads at my disposal.
I am one of eight account planners at Penand Inc who set up and manage new accounts after unsuspecting office managers have been hypnotised by our sweet-talking salesmen – and women – and their copies of our two-inch-thick glossy catalogue.
I’m really an admin assistant with a fancy title and a salary to match, which is probably why I have stayed for so long. You get used to earning decent money, don’t you? Especially after being a student when you are used to pooling your coppers for a loaf of bread to make cheese on toast after a night in the student union bar.
I work with the biggest bunch of knobs. Dickheads, all of them, except Felicity and Erin, who I share an office with. Between us we look after the big national companies. There were four of us but Hannah, the senior account planner, was sacked last month for stealing a bottle of Tippex. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the Tippex that got her the sack. If they were that petty then I’d have been out on my ear long ago – I could open up my own branch of WHSmiths with all the pens and Post-It notes that have made their way home in my handbag over the years. The Tippex was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back, shall we say, because Hannah didn’t just nick the odd pen or pencil, or pad of Post-Its, or bottle of Tippex. She nicked an entire office. Well, obviously not an office as such, but everything needed to equip one. Her boyfriend was starting up his own recruitment agency and Hannah thought it would save him a few quid if she got him a few bits from work. Like pens and pencils, and a ream of paper or two, for example. I’m sure she didn’t actually intend to put the flat-pack beech-effect corner desk with matching filing cabinet into the boot of her car. Or the traditional executive leather facing manager’s chair. Or the Canon C1492X printer scanner. Although, if she had stopped there then she may well have got away with it. But when she was spotted leaving the warehouse with a 12-pack of Tippex – there’s only so much Tippex a person can get through, even if your employers are paying for it – suspicions were aroused, and an investigation was launched. In other words, Hannah was summoned to personnel where she ‘fessed up and was promptly handed her P45.