Page 68 of The Woman Who Said Yes

Flights to where? It’s got to be Bibi he’s on the phone to! So is it Thailand he’s talking about? Is he planning to go out and see her? Fine, if that’s what he wants, but he’s never shown the slightest jot of interest in doing this before. Couldn’t he have at least mentioned it? Wouldn’t that be… a reasonable thing to expect between father and son?

Another thought hits Sam. Theo has finally reached the end of his tether with the radio and Match of the Day and his dad trying to get on his good side with the butcher’s bacon, and he is moving to Thailand to be with his mum.

As he steps away, Theo’s door flies open. ‘Dad? What’re you doing?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Were you standing there listening outside my room?’

‘Of course not!’ He feigns outrage at the very suggestion.

Theo exhales forcefully and throws him a fierce glare. As he bangs his door shut again, Sam thinks, if his son was unsure about all of this – leaving college, his friends and his life here in London – then Sam has gone and made his mind up for him now.

38

WEDDING COUNTDOWN: 1 DAY

Andie

And then suddenly it’s like old times.

Okay, not quite like the times when I’d sleep over at Eva’s shared flat above a launderette in Dalston, the two of us chattering into the night and lying in late in the morning to drink coffee and scatter the bedcovers with toast crumbs.

This time, although she is clearly happy to see me, we have business to attend to. My presence has been requested, and not just so I’m with her on her wedding morning (‘I realised I’d freak out if I was alone,’ she admitted, ‘and obviously Dom can’t stay over’ – her sole nod to pre-wedding convention). I am also here to assist with ‘wardrobe’ as she has jokingly put it, because she still hasn’t decided what to wear.

Obviously, Eva is the fashion person here. She has built a forty-year career of putting outfits together, and she’ll run around all over London in search of a pair of red leather seventies boots for Hadley Morgan. But she also has a ‘throw-everything-at-it’ approach in that, in preparation for a shoot, she will amass ten times as many outfits as will be worn by the model. Her flat often serves as her storage depot and I’ve come round to find the place literally heaped with clothes. ‘You never quite know what’s going to work on the day,’ she’s told me, laughing.

And now, having laid out numerous outfit alternatives across her bed, she is facing a similar dilemma. ‘Maybe I should leave it to the morning and see what feels right?’ she suggests.

‘Eva, you can’t do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because no one chooses what they’re going to get married in on the actual day.’

‘Don’t they?’ She grins.

‘No, and you’ll be busy with hair and make-up,’ I remind her. I know Milla, one of her favourite make-up artists, is due here first thing. Hair will be a simple updo and Milla can attend to that too. So we go through Eva’s options, outfit by outfit, her ring glinting as she moves. Does it matter that it’s not real? After everything that’s happened – and honestly believing that our friendship might be over – it seems to me that the only thing that really matters is that she is happy. So I perch on her bed as she tries on one outfit after another: me, the woman who willingly bought a sweater with a zigzag-edged neckline, offering fashion advice.

There is a slithery column of the palest pink silk, a drapey purple number (are garments still called ‘numbers’?) and an elegant gown in a crushed red velvet. There are more dresses in yellow and coral and pale blue; nothing remotely bridal but all stunning on her. The tricky thing is, Eva looks incredible in everything. She was made for clothes.

While all of this is going on I am quietly panicking over my speech. I have gone over it a hundred times and really, what does it matter anyway? It’ll be over in a blink. Even more than that, the prospect of seeing Sam at the registry office tomorrow is also setting my nerves fizzling, although I don’t share any of this with Eva because she has enough on her mind. Finally, she decides on the yellow dress, which seems right as the sun is shining brightly – and is forecast to do likewise tomorrow – making me think that perhaps everything will turn out fine after all.

Of course she has the right shoes to go with it. Although she hasn’t bought new ones, there are dozens of pairs to choose from, heaped haphazardly at the bottom of her wardrobe. She delves into her giant, disordered jewellery box for the perfect twinkly gold necklace. ‘I can’t believe you’ve left all this to the last minute,’ I remark, meaning it as a compliment and not a criticism.

‘I told you it’d be fine.’ She grins, and her ring flashes and her gold bangle gleams. ‘That’s me all sorted, I think,’ she concludes. Her bouquet, made by a woman she knows who runs a flower stall, is being delivered first thing. I have brought my green dress to wear to the wedding but when I try it on to show Eva, my confidence shrivels instantly.

‘Look at your hair!’ she shrieks.

‘I know. It’s the static.’ I try in vain to pat it down.

‘What can we do? How can we make it go away?’

‘We can’t, Eves,’ I say helplessly.

She, too, is trying to tame the fly-away strands with her hands. ‘Why does it do this?’

‘It’s an imbalance of electrical charge,’ I tell her. ‘The transferring of electrons⁠—’