My Big Fat Low-Fat Wedding (26 page)

My thoughts are abruptly halted as I round the street corner and run smack into Thomas. “I knew it!” I scream in his face. The lad gets a look of terror on his features, turns, and attempts to bolt.

“What is wrong with you?” I shout at him. Before I even know what’s happening next, the sock-bag of weights I’m holding has somehow flown out of my hand. Did I throw that? I’m not sure but however the long thing became airborne, it’s doing a great job of sailing through the air like a fat-headed sock-snake.

Splat!

The sock-bag makes contact with Thomas’ blonde head of hair. He goes down screaming and plants it face first into the hard pavement.

“Oh my god!” A woman shouts.

“Oh shit.” I mumble and move forward. “Thomas? Are you all right?”

The boy sits up and I notice there’s blood on his lower lip. “I’m fine!” He yells and jumps to his feet. “Will you go out on a date with me for lunch now?”

“What? No!” Bloody hell. This kid is insane.

“Are you sure you’re all right, lad?” This from the woman who’d shouted earlier. She seems to be checking Thomas over like a worried grandmother. “I saw what she did to you.” The woman looks up at me.

“All that she’s done to me is to steal my heart.”

Splatting my face into my palm I decide I’ve had enough of this. I bend and pick up my sock-bag full of weights. “This is the last time I’m going to tell you this, Thomas. If I see you again it’s going to be a bat to the head instead.”

The worried woman gasps at my threat. Thomas smiles as though I’ve just said something nice, which I haven’t, but in his mind god only knows what he’s capable of twisting my words into mentally.

As I turn on my heel and stomp off angrily up the street I’m even cursing the blank electric box as I walk on by. Why couldn’t Rolland the Wizard be sitting up there watching out for pavement traffic right now? Maybe he could have stopped the crazy lady that is me from chucking a sock full of weights at an innocent boy’s head.

Why is it that no matter how positive my days begin lately, they nearly always end in tears?

Chapter 17

Today’s cloudy weather doesn’t really do anything to improve my spirits on this hazy morning. Although, the news Brenda has brought with her might just be the cheering I need.

“I think it will do the both of you some good. You deserve a break from all this wedding planning anyway.”

“Yes but, Mum.” Callum sort of whines across the breakfast countertop. “Isn’t couples orienteering for people who have problem relationships?”

Brenda isn’t very quick to answer her son and I’m wondering if her lingering tactics are a way of making me think that she thinks we are having relationship problems. Of course this is absolutely ludicrous. Callum and I are about to be married for chrisake. We couldn’t be fucking happier, thank you very much.

I don’t know why I let my thoughts run away with me so easily lately. When I look at Brenda again I’m pretty sure she wasn’t just thinking all of that in the slightest.

“Not at all, son. It’s an aggressive course that will give the both of you some much needed exercise.”

“But it rained last night. It will be so muddy at Eastnor.” Callum seems quite whingey even to me now.

“Come on, honey,” I boast. “It will be fun. And what’s a little mud anyway? We both have wellies.”

“I don’t think you know just how muddy it is in the back woods out there. Don’t you remember how muddy Vince’s four-by-four gets after those annual off-roading events he does?”

Vince is my fiancé’s mate. He’s not just any mate though, they’ve been friends since nursery when one of the two pushed the other down a miniscule foot long baby slide. Neither Callum or Vince can remember the incident properly and they constantly bicker over who pushed whom, to this very day. Vince is going to be Callum’s best man at our wedding. When Vince had suggested hiring a stripper for my fiancé’s stag do, I’d said no. I still haven’t told Callum about the fact that “my stripper” had turned out to be my cousin’s boyfriend, because I haven’t even told him about the incident at all. It was a surprise from Lara, the stripper thing, so I’m not to be held responsible for any body parts that may or may not have been shaken into my face.

As for any titty shaking being done in my fiancé’s face. No way is that happening. Vince had even suggested hiring a midget stripper, which might make me a little less jealous, in which I had even more stringently denied him of even thinking about booking.

In the end, Vince and I had agreed that a barge overnighter with the lads would be the best sort of stag-do for my Callum. I was being honest. My fiancé likes hanging out with his mates and he’s always wanted to do that boat thing ever since going on a similar break with his mates while at college, all those years ago.

“That’s Vince though, honey.” I whinge back at my fiancé now. “We’re not going to be grinding wheels into any mud, now are we?”

“Exactly!” Brenda smiles hugely. “Emily is on board. You’ll love it, son.”

“Aw mum, you’re right. Of course I’ll love it.” Callum gives his mum a kiss on the cheek. It figures she’s been able to convince him so easily. All it ever takes is a bit of persistence on Brenda’s part and my fiancé readily agrees, as per.

Oh well. It’s not like I’m complaining. I really want to do this couples orienteering thing. It sounds like great fun and it will enable me to keep up my strict exercise regime of late. I was feeling a bit down after yesterday’s bridal fitting disaster, but with this mountain hiking opportunity I get to pick myself right back up again.

“Thanks, Brenda.” I too give Callum’s mum a peck on the cheek. “This is exactly what we need.”

My fiancé smiles at me and so does his mum who’s face has gone a bright shade of red. “Well, if I had known I’d get this much love I would have signed you two up for orienteering ages ago!”

After my soon-to-be-mother-in-law has gone, Callum and I get ready for our day outdoors together.

“Have you worn these recently, honey?” Turning away from the wardrobe in our bedroom, I glance at my fiancé who’s holding up his rather stretched out pair of old school socks.

“Errm.” I reply hesitantly. “I did, yes.”

Callum frowns. “Either you’ve got longer legs than I remember, or these things went up past your knees when you had them on.”

I’m simply not going to tell my fiancé the real reason for the new length his socks have become. He never believes me when I tell him I’m being stalked anyway. If I did confess to nearly breaking my wrist weights over a teenage boy’s head, by use of the very socks he’s now holding, he’d think he was engaged to an absolute lunatic.

“Well,” I say, opening my dressing gown. “Are you sure you know the length of my legs, lover?”

That’s done the trick of changing the subject. Callum has dropped his old school socks onto the floor. He closes the distance between us and runs his capable hand up my thigh. Just when I think he’s about to quip snarkily about his wrongness in my leg length, my fiancé surprises me by looking quite frowny faced in concentration.

“You really are losing weight, Em.”

“Thanks!”

“I didn’t mean that as a compliment.”

He didn’t? “Well, I take it as a compliment anyway.”

I’m starting to think I know why all the wedding dresses at Lara’s bridal shop hadn’t fit me right. They were mostly all too big. Although, a lot of them were also too small. I really need to have a word with Lara when I see her again. It doesn’t look like I’ll be going in for a dress fitting today though. It also doesn’t seem like I’m going to be getting any orienteering done if my randy fiancé has his way.

“Stop.” I playfully bat his groping hands away. “We have to get ready for couples orienteering.”

“I’ll orienteer you straight into bed!”

Despite the badness of my fiancé’s recent pun, I give in. So we’ll be a bit late for our outdoor experience. It’s not too important considering myself and my affianced have more important orienteering of our own to do right about now.

I blame Callum for my mind wandering towards bad punnery, but he blitzes silly thoughts from my mind as he whisks me back into bed for the second time in one morning.

***

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t let us keep our phones.” I grumble as Callum and I make our way in hiking boots over rugged, hilly terrain.

“Surely that would be defeating of the purpose, my darling.”

Rolling my eyes skywards yields the underside of the tree canopy. It’s practically dark in this thick forest. “Are you saying I’d cheat and use my maps app?”

“I’m saying that without question.”

I jab my untrusting fiancé in the ribs gently. “I wouldn’t!”

“Face it, honey. You would.”

“Just give me that map.” I yank the folded up pamphlet from my annoying fiancé’s grasp. We’d met up with the other couples who were orienteering, back at Eastnor Castle. If I’m being honest, I’m tempted to agree with what Callum had said about this activity thing. A lot of the other couples at the castle hadn’t seemed like they were in very happy relationships. Not that I’m an expert at reading body language, but anyone could have cottoned on to the way the other couples stood well away from each other. Unlike Callum and I who had been canoodling with each other for the entirety of the orienteering introductions.

“Didn’t you say one of your GCSEs was geography?”

Callum shakes his head at my question. “Nope, geology.”

“Geology? How is that even a school subject?” I unfold the map like I’m shaking out a towel with whip and a crack, before handing it to Callum. “How is knowledge about the rocks we’re walking on going to get us unlost?”

“We’re not lost.”

Why do men with maps always say that?

“Oh we’re not, are we? So the panic didn’t set in as soon as the four by four dropped us off way out here? Because it sure as shit scared me.”

“Aw.” Callum takes me into his arms, squashing the paper map between us. “Don’t worry, my love. I won’t let the foxes get you.”

Making this comment would have been funny if at that precise moment the shrubbery beside us wasn’t suddenly violently shaking about.

“I’m out of here.” I exclaim, running quickly away. Callum may have been joking about foxes lurking about, but neither of us is sticking around to find out what’s behind that hedge.

About five minutes later I throw my hands up in disgust. “This is preposterous! How can there be this much mud after only one night’s rain?” My wellies have been sticking deep into the ground with every step I take. It’s like trying to sludge my way through jelly, living jelly with a sucker mouth that keeps trying to hold tight to my rubber boots every time I try to lift them back out again.

“Are you ready to give up?”

“Never!” I point a determined finger into the air. “I’ll find my way out of here if it kills us.”

Callum harrumphs loudly. “Speak for yourself, babe.”

“I’m speaking for the both of us, mister. Because if I die out here in the long lost wilderness, you will too.”

“Nonsense.” My senseless fiancé grabs me around the waste, nearly causing me to lose my footing. “I’ll eat your remains if you die first, and then I’ll survive.”

“Charming.” I guess I had better find us a way out of the wilderness before I become my fiancé’s last meal, and not in a sexy way either. “Come on,” I pull away from Callum and the mud. “There’s a trail here and we’re going to cross that field.”

“But there are cows in that field.”

“Yes, and?” I point a finger at the low wooden fence. “There’s clearly a step ladder here, so this entire field is a public footpath. We’re supposed to walk across it, honey. Cows or no.”

“We’re supposed to walk across it?” Callum protests, but follows me over the stepping fence anyway. “I don’t think those cows would agree. Oh, ugh.” He lifts his wellied foot after just having stepped in a cow pat.”

“Be careful, honey. That’s going to smell once we get home.”

“You think?” Carefully, he wipes his poo covered boot on the grass.

“Cal?”

“Yes, dear. I know cow poop stinks. I’m trying to get it off best I can—”