Page 20 of Always the Bridesmaid

Green swathes of space surround us and trees line the seemingly endless road. There are hardly any other cars around. No buildings. Two horses in a field to our left and four goats in a field to our right.

‘What are we doing?’ I ask.

He kills the engine and I see smoke coming from the front of the car. I’m no mechanic but this can’t be a good thing.

‘I thought it was fixed,’ Charlie says, unclipping his belt and getting out.

I follow him onto the side of the road. ‘You’re joking, right? As if today wasn’t already bad enough.’

‘Sorry, princess, I can’t predict when my car will break down.’

I take a breath – in for four, out for four. He’s right. I’m hungover and crabby as hell, but the only thing he has done wrong is drive a shitty car.

‘Sorry, that was uncalled for. Do you have some kind of pick up or breakdown cover or something? Can we, like, get an Uber or something?’

‘To drive us around London all day?’ he asks. ‘I need the car. I’ll call the AA.’

‘Ha. Ha. Back to this. Look, I hardly ever drink. Or not to excess, at least. I was tired and wired and—’

‘Hi, is that AA breakdown recovery service?’ Charlie speaks into his phone, clearly saying the full name for my benefit.

Ohhhhhhh. Not Alcoholics’ Anonymous, then.

‘I’ve broken down… somewhere near Chessington. No, the country roads, there was an accident on the carriageway.’

It takes nearly two hours for roadside assistance to arrive and the heat of the day is bringing me out in devastatingly unattractive alcohol sweats.

When the recovery guy arrives, he offers both Charlie and me a cold bottle of water from a cooler in his truck. I sit on the grass verge and hold the bottle to my forehead. This is so unlike me. I hate being hungover – and don’t particularly enjoy the feeling of being drunk either.

But it had come easily. And sitting alone with my thoughts now, I know it wasn’t just because I had been tired from a long day of travel and being sociable. It wasn’t just that I had been helping Becky out with her wine tastings.

No, there was a deeper reason lingering and in the melancholy of my hangover, staring at the pebbles in the road, I know it’s because all of my friends are moving on with their lives. Izzy and Brooks are settled, with Izzy and Cady functioning well as a step-family. Drew and Becky are engaged and now pregnant. Jake is the baby of the group and even he is growing up.

Everyone is making huge life gallops and my life is stagnant. Indefinitely so.

I have been married. Danny and I wanted a family one day and that day will never come. I used to thrive in my job, always wanting more and pushing for it, but now there’s nowhere else to climb, or I just don’t have the energy to climb anymore.

My vision blurs as I wonder how much of that I am still clinging on to.

‘All sorted,’ Charlie says, standing over me and, thankfully, dragging me from my reverie.

‘Finally.’ Stop. Being. So. Shitty. ‘What was wrong with it?’

‘Do you understand mechanic speak?’

‘I resent that stereotyping,’ I say, not really feeling affronted at all. ‘But no, I don’t. I’m a blue car, red car kind of person.’

‘Good, because it would be like me trying to translate Mandarin to German to tell you.’

‘Do you speak Mandarin?’

‘Nope. Nor German.’ He swigs from his water bottle and I notice sweat patches turning his Marvel T-shirt a darker shade of blue under his armpits. ‘I’ve zero idea what was wrong with it but for a ridiculous sum of money, it’s now roadworthy again.’

It’s the first joke he has cracked that I genuinely want to laugh at but the murderous look on his face makes me refrain.

‘So,’ I say. ‘Elvis.’

He sighs. ‘Fucking Elvis.’

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