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It’s been three months since Leo proposed, which means it’s been three months since I made the decision to get back to my LA diet and exercise regime, and I’ve snapped right back into shape. I’m happy to admit that LA Mia was maybe a bit too skinny, but thanks to all my hard work I’ve lost that stubborn stone everyone warned me I’d put on when I got a boyfriend – although I think the weight gain was more to do with the fact that I was eating too much junk while I was working. I’m really happy with the way I look again – I’ve even been taking these vitamins and using special conditioning treatments to try and encourage my hair to grow back again, because now I’ve got my body back, I want my hair back too.
It’s Saturday night and the street outside is abuzz with students. Leo is at work and I’m here alone, trying to work, but I’m getting so easily distracted.
I walk over to the living-room window to see what’s going on outside. There’s what I’d guess is a nineteen-year-old man, holding a traffic cone to his crotch as he chases near-naked young girls across the street, prodding them in the butt with his plastic appendage. Our house sits in the middle of a long road that leads from the university right into the centre of town, which is why there are so many students around. Our house is also situated right in the middle of the Merry Mile, a famous pub crawl that runs from the uni into the centre, in which participants dress up and have a drink in each pub along the way. I study the students, trying to work out who they’re all supposed to be. There’s one guy dressed up as a Minion and another one dressed as a sanitary towel (you’d be surprised how popular that one is among men, and my inner feminist isn’t sure whether it’s empowering or just insulting), and the girls are all just random things (a cavewoman, a cat, a nurse) that don’t involve much clothing, which is unfathomable to me because it’s freezing out there. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m 14 years older than these kids and I feel like an old lady, spending my Saturday night in my pyjamas.
When I think about my life back in LA, it feels like something that happened in a dream a long time ago. I might have got myself back into a shape I’m happy with, but Mia from four years ago wouldn’t have been caught dead in a onesie – least of all a tea-stained one – spending a Saturday night at home while everyone else was out having fun. I would’ve been out having cocktails, bumping into Margot Robbie, begging her to introduce to me Leonardo DiCaprio so I could be his latest blonde squeeze, not here, putting off doing my work by watching a Minion with a traffic cone for a dick.
I head into the still-unfinished kitchen and put the kettle on. We haven’t got much done with the house over the past three months. Leo has been working a lot and I’ve been working on my book. Leo has been taking all the overtime he can get because it turned out the house had some major electrical problems that needed fixing before we could get on with anything. Now that’s done and finally all of the rooms are painted white, ready for us to make each one our own. I am hoping and praying we start with the kitchen because it’s really hard to keep up the healthy eating when it’s almost impossible to cook in there. I’m sure it will feel easier to eat healthier when this book is done too, because it’s too easy to just keep writing and eat an entire tube of Pringles for dinner, rather than cooking, only pausing momentarily to wonder if Pringles tubes are getting smaller or your hands are getting bigger. Well, that’s what I’d have been doing this time last year, anyway. These days I have to waste time I don’t really have making healthy snacks I don’t really want.
Armed with my cup of tea I sit back down on the sofa, grab my laptop and try to get back on with my work. The sooner I get this book done, the sooner I can send it off and get to work on the next one. It’s hard to function as an adult when you write books for a living because you have no real guaranteed income. By the time your publishers and your agent take their cut you are left with what you’re left with, and you have to survive from quarter to quarter without a top-up. You never really know how much you’re going to be paid from one quarter to the next, so it’s hard to make plans. Were I not lucky enough to live with Leo, and were it not for the fact he has a good job, I’m not sure I’d feel financially comfortable doing this for a living.
I am just about to start typing when I hear a loud bang on the door. It’s a bit late for knock-on-the-door, just-stopping-by visitors, but not so late I’m scared to see who it is.
‘Hello, boys,’ I say, seeing my friends Rory and Iwan on the doorstep.
‘Mamma Mia,’ Rory bellows after swigging from a bottle of bourbon, passing it to Iwan before giving me a hug.
‘Hi,’ I laugh. ‘You boys seem like you’ve had a good night.’
‘We’re just heading into town now,’ Iwan slurs, his thick Welsh accent sounding even stronger thanks to all the alcohol. ‘We thought we’d see if you and Leo fancied it?’
‘Leo is working,’ I tell them. ‘So am I, to be honest.’
‘Come on, come out with us,’ Rory whines. ‘Come on.’
I can’t help but laugh at his drunk tantrum.
Rory and Iwan share a flat in the house next door. While the houses are aimed at students, they’re also marketed to young professionals as a cheaper alternative to the swanky apartments in the more favourable parts of town. They both work together at a digital agency, Rory as a project manager and Iwan as a web developer. Iwan definitely looks as you’d expect him to, with his handsome good looks, his trendy beard and his geek-chic hipster clothing. Rory, on the other hand, seems to only take style inspiration from James Bay, with his long, messy hair always covered with a wide-brimmed hat and his stick-thin legs encased in the skinniest of skinny jeans. Leo and I have been friends with Rory and Iwan for years now. In fact, it was them who let us know about this house going up for sale.
‘I really need to get this book finished,’ I tell them, ‘but then we’ll go out to celebrate – next weekend maybe?’
‘Boo,’ Rory, clearly the drunker of the two, heckles me.
‘You want a drink before we go?’ Iwan asks.
‘Just made a cuppa,’ I tell him.
I close the door and plonk myself down on the sofa, sighing deeply. I would love to go out, but I need to be responsible. Just a few more chapters and then I can send this off, and finally start having some fun.
Chapter Six
Waking up, I feel Leo’s heavy arm draped across my body before I open my eyes and see him lying next to me. He was working most of last night, so he can’t have been asleep very long. I grab my phone from my bedside table and see that it’s 11:49 – just about midday, but it is a Sunday, after all, and I was working until pretty late. Not as late as Leo, so I climb out of bed, careful not to wake him, pulling on my dressing gown before heading downstairs to make a cup of tea.
As I try to navigate the unfinished kitchen, I grab a mug and the teabags, eyeballing the jar of instant coffee as I do so. I’ve never liked instant coffee, having always been too much of a coffee snob, but ever since I gave up drinking coffee, even my weird fantasy of eating a spoonful of granules straight from the jar feels like something I might enjoy. I don’t do it, though. I make my tea and sit on the sofa, opening my laptop once again in the hope of getting some work done.
My fingers are just about to hit the keys when there’s a knock at the door. Perhaps it’s Rory and Iwan again, on their way home from their wild night out.
‘Belle,’ I blurt, unable to hide my surprise when I open the door to see my sister standing there, hugging an armful of magazines.
‘Mia,’ she replies. ‘Can I come in? Don’t worry, I know it’s a mess.’
I physically bite my tongue to stop myself saying something in response to that.
‘Sure, come in,’ I reply. ‘Tea?’
‘Yes, please,’ Belle replies.
I leave my little sister in the living room while I go and make her a drink. As the kettle boils I riffle through one of the bags of clothes sitting on the kitchen floor, grabbing myself a bra and a sundress (this must be the bag with the summer clothes in), hurrying them on in the kitchen so my sister doesn’t get to make any remarks about my not being dressed.
‘So, I bumped into Leo last night,’ she calls from the living room.
‘You bumped into Leo last night?’ I repeat back to her. ‘Were you on fire?’
‘Har-har,’ she calls back, as I carry her tea through and place it down on the pile of boxes we’re using as a coffee table. ‘My God, look at you, you’ve lost so much weight.’
‘I haven’t really,’ I reply. ‘It’s mostly just that I’ve toned up the bits I’d let get a bit wobbly.’
‘Don’t let Gran see, she’ll go berserk,’ my sister warns.
Despite being younger than me, my sister dresses beyond her years – beyond my years too. When we were younger Belle was always one of the popular kids because she was thin, sporty and pretty. I, on the other hand, was a bit chubby and a bit weird. Belle is teetering on the edge of curvy and she looks great; she’s just a few too many steps ahead of herself, in full-blown mumsy mode with her style, and if she’d just take a little of my advice, she could look amazing.
‘Anyway…’ She gets back to the task at hand, passing me a stack of wedding magazines. ‘Leo mentioned that you hadn’t really started planning the wedding and asked if I had any old magazines I could bring you to get you started.’
So my sister just so happened to bump into my fiancé at work, who asked if she happened to have any old wedding magazines lying around from more than four years ago, and she did, so she’s just brought them over for me. I mean, if I were the cynical type, I’d think Leo messaged my sister and asked her to give me some wedding magazines in an effort to get me to start planning it, because I’m yet to start, but I’ve just been so busy with so many other things. Let’s say I buy into the idea that Belle just ran into Leo at the fire station, it still doesn’t explain why these magazines are in perfect condition and the dates show they’re the latest editions.
‘And,’ she starts, even more excitedly, ‘there’s a wedding fair in town next week.’
‘Thank you,’ I say brightly. ‘But let’s get Mike and Rosie’s wedding out of the way before we start planning another one.’
‘Get it out of the way?’ my sister shrieks. ‘Mia, you’re so unromantic. It still baffles me that you write romance for a living. It baffles me even more that you’re getting married when you clearly have no interest in weddings.’
‘I don’t have “no interest” in weddings,’ I clap back. ‘I’m getting married, aren’t I?’
‘Where?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘When?’ she continues.
‘Next summer – I don’t know yet.’
‘Who will be your bridesmaids?’ she persists.
Ah, now I understand what’s happening here. My sister is just trying to secure her role as chief bridesmaid.
‘Well, I thought about asking the cousins – Meg, Hannah and little Angel…’ I start, teasing my sister a little by not immediately asking her.
‘Well, let me stop you there,’ my sister says, shuffling to the edge of her seat. ‘Auntie June has already vetoed that idea.’
‘Erm, Meg is 17 and Hannah is not only 19 years old, but she’s got a three-year-old kid of her own, so I’m pretty sure they don’t need Auntie June’s permission.’
‘Look, don’t shoot the messenger, but that’s what Auntie June said and they respect their mum’s wishes.’
‘Dare I ask why?’ I start, pretty sure the answer will only make me angry.
‘She’s worried you’ll dress them… like you.’
‘You can tell me what she actually said,’ I insist.
‘Like tarts.’
Nice. Good old Auntie June.
‘Well, OK, so obviously I’m going to ask you,’ I continue, on a more positive note.
Belle winces.
‘Surely you’re not worried I’ll dress you like a tart?’ I ask in disbelief.
‘I just feel that, after everything that happened when you were a bridesmaid for me…’ she starts. ‘You were just such a bad bridesmaid. And I don’t want you thinking I’ll be trying to settle the score or any business like that.’
‘Belle, that never crossed my mind.’
It’s crossing my mind now.
‘Oh. Well, I just don’t think it would be appropriate,’ she says firmly. ‘I just don’t see why I should help you with your wedding when you did such an awful job with mine. I mean, I’d do a great job, for sure—’
‘Fine,’ I cut her off. I’m not going to beg.
‘Well, who else can you ask?’ she persists, suddenly so clearly desperate for the honour, but not until I plead with her.
‘Belle, I’ve told you, I’m too busy to start planning it right now,’ I snap. ‘I should be working right now, in fact.’
‘OK, fine,’ she replies. ‘I’ll get going then.’
‘I’ll see you at Mike and Rosie’s wedding next weekend,’ I tell her as I walk her to the door.
Once my sister is gone, I sit back down on the sofa and eyeball the pile of wedding magazines, with all the smug, happy, white-wearing brides on the cover, who probably know exactly what they want from their big day, and they’ve probably known since they were, like, eight years old. I’m not like most girls. I haven’t been planning my big day since I was a kid. While most girls were draping net curtains over their heads and playing with dolls I was outside playing football with my friends or inside watching wrestling on TV. Even now, as an adult, I have no idea what I want my wedding to be like, and now I have the added problem of not having anyone willing to be my bridesmaids, because I don’t have any female friends. I’ve always just got on better with boys. I like video games, violent movies, listening to music full of profanity – all hobbies that make my sister, and girls like my sister, look down their noses at me.
I’m just going to concentrate on finishing this book, get Mike and Rosie’s wedding out of the way and then I’ll see about planning my own. You never know, attending a wedding might be just the inspiration I need to get me going.
Chapter Seven
After a long and heavily religious church service (which I definitely don’t want), and a trip to a hotel outside town on an open-top bus (which was not nice in October), we finally arrived at the reception. We’re pretty much done with dinner now and I already have a long list of things I absolutely don’t want for my wedding.
Rosie looks beautiful, as always – she’s just got this kind of easy beauty about her, whereas I have to spend hours putting make-up on to look alive – but two things I absolutely don’t want for my big day include having my hair piled up on top of my head like a Mr Whippy, held in place with a tiara, and wearing a big, white dress, with loads of ruffles and shit hanging off it and bits connecting to other bits in places that will limit my movement. Yes, Rosie looks great, so long as she stands still. The second she starts moving she looks so terribly uncomfortable, I feel sorry for her. Apparently she’s got some kind of contraption under her dress that she can use to help her use the loo without assistance, but unless it’s a hoist, I’m not sure it’s going to help her all that much.
This wedding is exactly what you’d expect a wedding to be – and it’s exactly how I’d write it, if I were trying to include every wedding cliché I could think of.
All in all, I wouldn’t say it was a bad day, just not my taste. The speeches were relatively painless, if a little cringeworthy, and the food was OK – I pretty much just picked at my roast dinner. It was just way too much food given I’m wearing such a tight dress.
‘You really do look amazing,’ Leo tells me, holding my hand over the table. ‘Your hard work has paid off.’
‘Thank you,’ I reply. ‘Kind of makes all those times I had to spectate you eating pizza feel worth it.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention, please,’ the DJ booms over the PA. ‘The bride and groom are about to take to the floor for their first dance.’
I’m sitting at a table with my parents, my grandparents, Leo and Belle – Dan’s the best man, so he’s up at the top table. I think I’m doing a pretty good job of being chill, given my surroundings. As soon as my gran clapped eyes on me, she told me I was too thin, like I knew she would – my granddad told me I looked great, though, like I knew he would, the sweetheart.
My mum and Belle immediately turn their chairs to face the dance floor, excited for what’s about to come. It’s not that I lack confidence, but the thought of having everyone watching me as I ‘perform’ my first dance makes me cringe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a first dance that didn’t make me want to punch myself in the face until it stopped. As Mike and Rosie take to the floor, I allow myself to feel a little hope, that this time might be different, that this dance might impress me. But then a chimney sweep walks out onto the stage. He’s wearing a wireless mic, attached to his ear, which he adjusts into a favourable position just before the music starts.
‘Is that…?’ I start, but I don’t need to finish my question. It’s ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ from Mary Poppins.
‘Oh, what a beautiful waltz,’ my gran coos as she watches.
I look at Leo and pull a face. He looks just as confused as I am.
Mike and Rosie slow dance until the song is finished.
‘Step in time,’ the chimney sweep calls out. ‘Everyone, join the bride and groom on the dance floor.’
As people get up and make their way to the dance floor the chimney sweep bursts into a version of ‘Step in Time’ that he expects everyone to dance to. Many people oblige.
‘Oh, I so want to join in but Dan is dancing with his mum,’ Belle moans.
‘Shall I?’ Leo asks me quietly.
‘Go for it,’ I tell him with a laugh.
‘Come on, Belle, I’ll dance with you,’ he says, taking her by the hand and leading her onto the dance floor before linking arms with her, ready to step in time with everyone else.
I turn to face my granddad, who is sitting at the other side of me.
‘Whaaaat is happening?’ I ask him.
My granddad laughs.
‘It’s tradition to have a chimney sweep at your wedding – it’s for good luck,’ my granddad explains. ‘The groom shakes his hand and the bride gives him a kiss, and then they’ll be together for ever, supposedly.’
‘That’s pretty stupid,’ I say.
‘You’re not wrong, kid,’ my granddad replies.
I have so much love, adoration and respect for my granddad, Jack – he’s just so kind and funny. He knows exactly what the women in our family are like; in fact, he jokily refers to my mum, my gran and my Auntie June as the three witches. My granddad is absolutely hilarious, constantly cracking jokes, winding up my gran and playing little pranks on people. I like to think I’ve inherited my granddad’s warmth and his wicked sense of humour, which is why I haven’t turned out like the other women in the family.
My granddad is 84 years old, and until recently he never really seemed it. His arthritis is getting quite bad now, which is making it harder for him to move around and do things like he used to. He still enjoys pottering around in his shed, though, and I still love to go and sit out there with him and help out with his tomato plants or whatever he has on the go. I think he uses his shed as an escape from my gran, but even though she nags him and thinks he’s a bit silly sometimes, I can still tell that they love each other. I absolutely adore the story of how my gran and granddad met, but I’m not allowed to talk about it because my gran gets cross – I’ve always said I’ll put it in a book one day, though. My gran was in her early twenties, working as a cashier in a bank. She was this glamorous, kind-of-snooty type, but she was model-gorgeous, so of course she was engaged. My granddad was a painter, working in the bank for a few weeks while the place had a makeover. He instantly took a shine to my gran, but she wouldn’t give him the time of day because she thought he was just some scruffy, dirty painter, whose hands were always covered in too much paint, and who was far too cheeky for his own good. But even though she was never anything but cold to him, my granddad saw something he liked and persisted in asking my gran out, until one day she gave in and said yes, just to shut him up, and in little more than a fortnight she left her fiancé for him. They actually got married for a really unromantic reason four months after they met – a tax rebate – but I guess they were just meant to be, because here they are, still married more than 50 years later.
‘You having this at your wedding, kid?’ he asks. ‘Or are you going for something a bit more modern like Frozen?’
‘My granddad knows what Frozen is,’ I laugh.
‘Oh, little Angel makes me watch it with her 20 times a day, so I know all the words,’ he laughs.
Angel is my cousin Hannah’s little girl. I was actually there when everyone found out Hannah was pregnant because it was at Belle’s wedding, and when my auntie found a pregnancy test in the bin, she assumed it must have been mine – an assumption based on nothing but my hemline, I’d imagine. So you can just imagine my Auntie June’s face when it turned out to be her fifteen-year-old daughter who was up the duff. Hannah is 19 now, and she’s taken to being a mum really well, I think. Angel seems like a sweet kid, but, like I said, I don’t really spend too much time with my extended family, unless we’re at family events.
‘Speak of the literal devil,’ I say as the Edwards family arrive for the evening do.
My granddad chuckles.
‘Hello,’ June says, puffing air from her cheeks. ‘Sorry we’re late. Someone was acting up.’
She turns and shoots her son, Josh, a filthy look. My fourteen-year-old cousin has no fucks to give, though.
‘Have you been a naughty boy?’ my gran asks him, but Josh doesn’t hear her voice. I can see his wireless, in-ear headphones poking out of his ears from under his long-ish, messy hair, but no one else has realised he’s listening to music yet.
‘If you’re not Fifa, he’s not interested,’ my Uncle Steve jokes, taking the seat next to me. ‘Looking good, Mia.’
‘Thanks, Uncle Steve,’ I reply.
‘Do you have an eating disorder?’ my auntie enquires as she sits down.
‘Only when it comes to your cooking,’ I joke. June isn’t impressed.
‘I’m off to the bar,’ Josh says, wandering off, staring at his phone every step of the way.
My Auntie June doesn’t like me. I know, that sounds like something a whiney teenager would say, but she doesn’t. My Uncle Steve does like me, and so do my cousins, which I think makes my auntie dislike me all the more. She thinks I’m a bad influence, because her kids think I’m cool.
‘I actually don’t know what I’m going to do with him,’ June says as she wrestles her cardigan off.
‘What’s he done now?’ my mum asks.
‘So…’ my auntie starts, lowering her voice a little, but not so much that she can’t be heard over the music, which has been consistently awful since the first dance finished. ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ by Rednex is currently playing. ‘He’s always got his phone in his hand, he’s never off it. So, the other night, he’s playing some shooty game online – oh, what’s it called, Stephen? Lots of swearing and violence. They were on a pier, by a big wheel…’
‘GTA Online,’ I tell her. ‘Man, that’s a sweet game. I play when I’m not working, or when I’m putting off working,’ I laugh.
‘Mia, you’re a woman in your thirties,’ my auntie reminds me.
‘Well, at least we know you’re not losing your memory,’ I tell her. She might not remember the name of the game, but she knows how old her niece is. I imagine that’s what she was trying to make clear by stating my age, and not implying that I’m too old/female for video games.
‘Anyway…’ she says, getting back to her story. ‘I took him some crumpets up to his room – he doesn’t even say thank you, he’s too busy calling someone a mother-effer through his earpiece – so I do what any responsible parent would do and take his phone downstairs to check.’