Tales From a Hen Weekend (26 page)

‘I’m not! I never have been! But something’s
wrong.
’

We talked ourselves round in circles. It got us nowhere. All the air had finally come out of the balloon and I felt as flat as a bloody pancake. So maybe we did fall in love too quickly, too passionately. And maybe the ending was going to be as sudden as the beginning, after all.

Last Saturday, when he was leaving for Prague, I came home from Mum’s and found him sitting in the flat in silence, a cold cup of coffee beside him, his holdall zipped up and his passport lying neatly on top of it.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked automatically.

He held out his arms for me.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said again, going to sit down next to him but ignoring his outstretched arms.

He dropped them to his sides. He looked defeated, as if he’d spent the whole day searching for something and had finally given it up for lost.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he said, without looking at me.

‘What?’ A hot lump of panic was forming in my throat.

‘The trip to Prague. It’s not exactly a stag.’

This didn’t make any sense. I shook my head and frowned.

‘We’ve cancelled the stag. It’s just me and Sean now. None of the others are coming.’

‘Why?’ I shook his arm, trying to make him look up at me, but when he did, I regretted it, because the look in his eyes frightened me. ‘What’s
wrong
?’

‘I just want to get away – on our own – me and Sean. I want a chance to think. To think things over, Kate. Quietly.’

‘To think
what
over?’

There was a long, long pause. I didn’t need him to answer, obviously. I could fill in the blanks myself. I found myself wondering whether any other men went away with their best friends for ten days before the wedding to talk over their doubts. It seemed quite bizarre. How many doubts must a person have, to talk about them for ten days? I could sum mine up in less than ten minutes.

‘I’ve got doubts too!’ I said aloud, my voice wobbling with the shock of what I was saying.

It had only just struck me. Of course I had doubts. Why had I taken so long to admit it?

‘You have?’ said Matt, the surprise in his voice mixed with something else that took me a moment to recognise. Relief.

‘Yes. I thought it was just nerves. Pre-wedding nerves.’ I laughed – an inappropriate, unnatural laugh that sounded even to my own ears dangerously like hysteria.

‘And it’s not?’ he asked, cautiously.

‘I’ve kept telling you something was wrong. I couldn’t work out what it was. Maybe…’ I looked up at him, suddenly feeling a bright spark of hope in my heart. ‘Maybe it’s just that we’re not ready for this, Matt. If we’ve both got doubts about the wedding…’

‘We ought to talk about it?’ he said, sounding about as enthusiastic as if he’d suggested hopping barefoot over a bed of hot coals.

‘No. I mean yes, of course we should have talked about it. But we got caught up in it all, didn’t we. And now there isn’t time. You’re going off tonight with Sean. And I’m going off on Thursday with the girls. It’ll be too late when we get back.’

I looked at him expectantly, almost excitedly. He was frowning, not understanding me, and who could blame him? Maybe I’d flipped.

‘Too late for what? We can still talk when we get back, Kate.’

‘Not too late for talking. Too late for cancelling the wedding. It’s probably too late already – we’ll lose our deposits on things but that’s too bad. Don’t worry. I’ll sort it all out while you’re away. I won’t tell Mum, though. Let’s not tell anyone. I think that’s best. I don’t want to upset them all yet. Wait till we both get back, then we’ll have to…’

I was babbling. The sense of relief that had washed over me as soon as I’d diagnosed that the problem wasn’t
us
– it wasn’t me, it wasn’t Matt, it wasn’t an affair and it wasn’t even Prague – it was the
wedding –
was so exhilarating that all I wanted to do was wipe the slate clean of the wedding completely, as soon as possible, have a good time on the non-hen weekend and the non-stag holiday and get back to being girlfriend-and-boyfriend-in-love with the least possible fuss.

Except that Matt probably thought I was on the verge of a complete breakdown.

‘You don’t mean it,’ he said, his face pale with shock.

‘Why not? You’ve got doubts, I’ve got doubts, we shouldn’t be getting married. Easy. Cancel the fucking thing.’

‘Katie, you’re sounding very…
hyper
. I’m not sure…’

‘Well,
I’m
sure. We were happy before this whole wedding circus took over. Let’s turn the clock back to then.’

‘It’s not that easy. You can’t turn the clock back. Things change. Things happen.’

‘What do you mean? What things happen?’

He shook his head. He looked tired, exhausted even. I’d noticed he hadn’t been sleeping very well.

‘Have you had these doubts for a long time?’ I asked him quietly.

He shrugged.

‘And are they
just
about the wedding?’ I added, almost in a whisper. ‘Or what?’

No response. Not even a shrug this time.

‘Or about me?’ I managed to squeak like a frightened, wounded poor little mouse, just about to be squashed, just about to have all the life splattered out of it. I held my breath, closed my eyes and waited for the blow.

‘No,’ he said, after far too long a pause. ‘Not about you.’

We looked into each other’s eyes then. I found myself thinking that if this had been a romantic novel he would have kissed me. But he didn’t.

‘Just about the wedding,’ he said, nodding to himself as if to underline it. ‘You’re right. That’s it.’

‘Then it’s settled. The wedding’s off.’

Matt went off to Prague looking worried and uneasy, and I immediately went into a frenzy of cancellations. I made a list and ticked it. It was almost more exciting than arranging the thing in the first place. I made the phone calls, trying to sound upset about it. Church, hall, caterers, photographer, cars, florists. They all gasped with surprise and said how sorry they were. How awful for me, so close to the date. And unfortunately, did I realise that the deposit was non-returnable? A new thought struck me. Maybe I should have kept the bookings for the hall, the caterers, the cake and the flowers after all and just had a hell of a party. A non-wedding! I laughed out loud to myself at the idea and realised I was feeling happier than I had for a long time. Or perhaps I’d just completely lost my marbles. Who laughs while they’re cancelling their wedding? Only crazy women, surely.

I knew, of course, that all my friends and family were going to be shocked and upset, but I really didn’t want the weekend in Dublin turned into a wake. So I kept it a secret – from everyone except Jude. Well, I had to tell someone or I was going to collapse with the weight of it. Jude was the obvious choice, living in a different country from everyone else, and because we’d be sharing a room over the weekend away. Anyway I knew I could trust her to keep it quiet – she’s just not the blabbermouth type.

‘Sure and I’ll get to be your bridesmaid some other time, Katie. No need to worry at all about that on my account,’ she teased me gently, having pretended to recover from her initial shock.

‘Ah, shit – the Pledge! Jude, I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you some other way.’

‘Away with you and your nonsense, you know I’m only pulling your leg. That’s the last thing in the world you have to worry about; we were only children at the time and silly enough to believe in happy endings, were we not?’

‘Yes. And unfortunately, I’m still silly enough, Jude.’

By the time we left for the hen weekend, I’d done everything except for sending out the cancellation notices to all the guests. The
un
invitations, as I thought of them.
Katie and Matt regret to inform you that for personal reasons, their wedding on 21
^st
May has been cancelled.
Maybe I should say
postponed
. It sounded kinder. But then they’d be expecting a revised date.
Katie and Matt regret to say…
Maybe I shouldn’t use the word
regret
. No time for regrets.
Katie and Matt are pleased to announce that they’ve dumped the wedding idea and are carrying on living in sin.
Hmm. Might upset a few aunts and uncles. In the end I settled on:
Katie and Matt are sorry to tell you that we’ve called the wedding off. However we are still together and we hope to see you all soon.
There. Sorry about the disappointment, everyone. Sorry if you’ve bought new frocks and special hats and wasted your money on wedding presents. But at least you know we’re not crying over the champagne. I printed out the
un
invitations on the computer, addressed all the envelopes and stacked them up ready to send out when I got home. After I’d told Mum and Lisa. That was going to be the hardest part.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

As it turned out, the hardest part was keeping up the façade while we were away. Acting as the bride-to-be, going along with all the dressing-up and the silly games, getting drunk with my best friends and having to remember not to spill the beans and ruin the party. Being apart from Matt for the longest time ever, and beginning to wonder. Didn’t he hesitate just a little too long when I asked if his doubts were only about the wedding, not about me? Didn’t he look confused and anxious, instead of relieved and happy, when I said we’d call off the wedding and go back to how we were before? Why?
Was
there something else wrong?
What
was he spending ten days talking to Sean about?

You see, Emily?

You see now why I was so upset with you? Why I wanted to hit you?

You’ve confronted me with my own fears. You didn’t know I’d called off the wedding. But you knew my boyfriend was confused and upset about something. You knew it before I did. And you didn’t even tell me!

If I’d made an announcement that there was an unexploded bomb in the bar and it would go off as soon as the next person spoke, I couldn’t have brought about such a stunned and complete silence. Even the people on the next table are silent. They must have been listening.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, beginning to sound like a parody of myself. If I apologise much more I’ll probably cease to exist at all. Like I’m apologising for even breathing, for even living, certainly for even being here in Dublin celebrating my forthcoming non-existent nuptials with some of the closest people to me in the whole world, who didn’t think I was capable of such lies and deception. I hang my head.

‘You should have
told
us,’ says Emily, her voice shaking with shock.

‘You should have waited till we got back,’ says my mother, barely containing her anger. ‘It would have blown over. People have arguments. People
always
have doubts before the wedding, but…’

‘But what, Mum? They should still go ahead? Like you did?’

She flinches, and I immediately feel cruel and start to apologise again.

Lisa looks at me in surprise, and I remember she still doesn’t know Mum’s wedding story. I shake my head at her:
Take no notice of me. I’m upset.

‘But you still love each other!’ she says, frustration loading her voice. ‘You’re not splitting up! What’s the point?’

‘You could equally ask what was the point in deciding to get married in the first place,’ I tell her. ‘We were happy as we were.’

‘If you can’t even stand the stress and strain of a wedding,’ says Mum sniffily, ‘how do you expect to cope with
life
? What about if you have children? What about if one of you gets ill, or loses your job, and you have no money, and you have to
go without things
? Eh?
Those
are the things that cause stress, Katie.
That’s
when you’ll really start to have arguments. If you can’t hack it now, you might as well forget it.’

‘Yes. Life isn’t always a bowl of plums,’ says Lisa.

‘Cherries.’

‘Whatever. It isn’t always sweet. Things go wrong.’

‘I know. Things like sexual incompatibility.’

I watch her go red and start fiddling with her handbag. Well, I’m sorry, but all this self-righteous indignation is getting right up my nose. Neither Lisa nor Mum has exactly made a stunningly good example of their marriage. Not saying it’s their fault, but why should I sit here and listen to them telling me I should sacrifice myself on the altar of their own disappointments?

‘I think,’ says a voice from the other end of the table suddenly, ‘that it’s a very brave decision you’ve made, Katie. And as your friends and family, we should all stand behind you and support you.’

At this, there’s a different kind of silence; it’s thick with the scent of respect. It stings my eyes and makes me swallow several times before I can answer.

‘Thank you, Auntie Joyce. That means a lot to me.’

I push back my chair and get up to walk over to her, but she’s quicker than me and I’m being enveloped in her arms before I have time to move. I’m a little girl again and Joyce is comforting me after some childhood disaster that Mum didn’t quite have the time to listen to. I’m a teenager and she’s telling me not to cry about the first boyfriend who dumped me. I bury my head against her shoulder but I
don’t
cry. Not this time.

‘Joyce is absolutely right,’ says Helen loudly. ‘Well done, Katie. I think it’s a very mature choice.’

‘It must have taken a lot of guts,’ admits Karen. ‘Cancelling everything like that, on your own, without telling anyone.’

‘Shame about the reception, though,’ says Suze wistfully. ‘I was looking forward to a good boogie.’

I’m glad she’s made us all laugh. I catch her eye and she winks at me but her mouth is turned down with distress for me.

‘You need to get going,’ I tell them all, looking at my watch and knocking back the rest of my drink. ‘Your flight’s boarding.’

‘I don’t feel like we should leave you, now,’ says Lisa doubtfully. ‘I wish you were coming home with us.’