‘Sounds perfect,’ she says. ‘Apart from one big thing.’
‘What?’ I say, suddenly worried that she has found a clue in something I’ve said that reveals he is not single. ‘Polly?’
‘It’s obvious what the problem is, isn’t it?’ she says, waving her wine glass in the air.
‘No,’ I say. ‘What’s obvious?’
‘The name, Suze, the name.’
I breathe a sigh of relief.
‘It’s up there with Tarquin on the list of worst men’s names ever.’
‘It’s nowhere near Tarquin,’ I say. ‘It’s a totally fine name.’
‘Jeffrey?’ she says. ‘How many sexy Jeffs or Jeffreys are there? There’s plenty of unsexy Jeffreys. Geoffrey from Rainbow. Geoff Capes, Jeffrey Dahmer. Yep, serial killer name,’ she says, shuddering. ‘Or a man in a golfing jumper. A golf-playing serial killer.’
‘Jeff Bridges. He’s a sexy Jeff. My God, have you ever seen a photo of him when he was young?’
She raises an eyebrow suspiciously.
‘And Jeff Goldblum, kind of,’ I say. ‘Anyway, I’m in no position to be fussy about names at this stage of the game. If Nimrod Mcfartwhistle asked me out, I’d be hard-pressed to say no.’
‘Does he have a beard?’ she says.
‘Jeff? Why do you ask?’
‘It’s a beardy name.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No beard. A little bit of stubble, but good stubble. And very very blue eyes. Just like Daniel Craig but with a less craggy nose. And he’s bald.’
‘So nothing like Daniel Craig.’
‘Same eyes,’ I say.
‘Thank goodness he’s not called Craig,’ she says.
‘What’s wrong with Craig?’
‘Who calls a baby Craig?’ she says.
‘Who calls a baby Spencer?!’
She laughs. ‘Fair point.’
‘So more importantly, tell me what’s the latest on the wedding!’ I say. ‘I’m so excited, I can’t wait!’
Her face lights up. ‘The dress is sorted – Nanette’s done the most amazing job ever – and I’ve found the perfect shoes, and they were a total bargain, forty quid in a shop in a village down the road from us.’
‘Colour?’
‘Silver,’ she says.
‘Comfortable?’
‘Hell no! And the head-dress! Unbelievable. I found a woman on eBay who’d inherited her aunt’s – Edwardian lace, totally beautiful, a hundred and ten years old this thing, worn once, and she only wanted sixty-five quid for it! And Dave and I have finally made our minds up about the food …’
‘Are you going to tell me anything or are you keeping it a surprise?’
‘Definitely a surprise. Although I think you’ll like the cake.’
‘Tell me about the cake at least?’
‘No way!’ she says, ‘the cake’s the best bit. Just be warned, the whole thing’s not going to be as posh as first time round – the venue’s just a little restaurant in Farringdon near the registry office. But all the money’s going into food and booze this time!’
‘Poll, I don’t care if you guys get married in Nando’s, I’m just so excited for you. You deserve this more than anyone.’
She squeezes my hand. ‘I swear, Suze, it’ll happen to you when you least expect it.’
‘Oh Polly. I’ve been least expecting it for a very long time now,’ I say, smiling.
She takes another sip of her wine and pours the rest of the bottle into her glass. ‘Oh. And you’ll never guess who’s RSVPd and is coming without a certain evil other half …’ she says, looking at me with a mischievous grin.
I put down my glass.
‘Daniel McKendall’s coming?’ I say.
‘Daniel McKendall’s coming, and he asked if you were coming too.’
Daniel McKendall: best mate of Polly’s brother.
I’ve known Daniel McKendall since I was twelve. We were born on the same day, in the same year. And from the age of thirteen through to fifteen, he was my best male friend and my sort-of boyfriend.
‘I’m going to open another bottle,’ I say, getting off the sofa and heading to the kitchen. I fetch myself a glass of water and drink it slowly, trying to figure out why even now, after all this time, just the sound of his name still has an effect on me.
‘Bring me some booze immediately!’ she shouts from the sofa. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any cider in the fridge, have you?’
Polly and I spent far too many of our teenage years drinking cider, wearing DMs and listening to The Cure. She was a proper bona fide Goth, hair dyed Naples Black, scary eyeliner, the works. I was just copying her because I was in awe of her, and because the DMs offended my mother in a way that I found hugely gratifying. Although there was no way I’d have got away with dyed hair living under my parents’ roof. They’d have put me up for fostering.
‘Polly, I haven’t touched cider since I disgraced myself at your eighteenth. If you really want a blast from the past I can offer you Malibu, or I still have some Galliano left over from New Year’s Eve 2004. It looks like fluorescent urine but it tastes far worse …’
‘Malibu,’ she says. ‘And have you got any bad shit in the cupboard? I’ve chucked all the sweets out at home and I need something full of fat and sugar.’
‘Chocolate raisins, jumbo Chocolate Buttons, peanut M&Ms, take your pick,’ I say.
‘Bloody hell, you’re better than the Texaco. Buttons!’
I take the booze and the chocolates back through to her.
‘Did I tell you Brooke’s been living in New York for the last four months?’ she says, taking a glass from me. ‘Without Daniel …’
I take a sip of neat Malibu, wince at the sweetness, and pretend I haven’t heard her.
‘She said she can’t bear to live in England any more because of the weather,’ she says, with a raised eyebrow. ‘Says the rain gives her headaches. More like it makes her hair go curly. God, she’s such a spoiled princess,’ she says, ripping open the packet of Buttons.
‘It never rains in New York, does it,’ I say, finding two Buttons that are stuck together. Almost as good as the mythical Kit Kat finger that’s all-chocolate, no biscuit.
‘Anyway, her family are so bloody rich they can probably blow the clouds away like the Chinese did at the Olympics …’ says Polly.
‘What do they do again? Finance?’
‘Property, they’re minted.’
‘So she’s moved back there and Daniel’s still out in Kent?’
‘It’s only fifteen minutes on the train from Waterloo, Suze. That’s less than an hour from here, door to door.’
‘Have they actually separated though?’ I say, trying not to sound a tiny bit hopeful.
I last saw Daniel five years ago, in the pub on Christmas Eve. Even then there’d been problems in his marriage. He’d flirted with me just enough to make me feel human, but not to the point where I felt like he’d meant anything by it. More just for old times’ sake. Still, I remember when the clock had struck midnight, and we were all drunkenly hugging and kissing and singing carols, he’d given me a look filled with so much sadness and affection, I’d had to look away. Because I’d felt something.
‘They’re not separated yet,’ she says. ‘But it can’t be long now. They’re basically living separate lives. Apparently even before she moved back to the States she’d had him sleeping in the spare room for over a year.’
‘A year?’
‘That’s what my brother said.’
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘They’ve got a little boy, haven’t they?’
‘He’s nearly ten now. He’s in New York with Brooke, the two of them rattling around in some Upper East Side penthouse …’ she says, looking slightly less triumphant.
‘But how does that work?’ I say.
‘How indeed,’ she says, with raised eyebrows. ‘Daniel’s been flying over there every other weekend, but that can’t make sense longer term.’
‘He must be knackered. Why doesn’t he just move to New York? I’d love to live in New York,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that pretty selfish of him?’
‘No! It’s selfish of her! He’s trying to get his business off the ground, he’s been plugging away at it for years and he’s finally doing OK. And you know his dad’s not well, he’s been in a home since last summer. Plus his brother’s struggling through a hideous divorce. Daniel’s got all that on his plate and then Brooke drags their son out of school a year before he’s due to finish primary, so that she can swan around Barneys and get her nails done every day.’
‘Bad timing. That must be hard for him,’ I say, filing him back in the folder labelled ‘unavailable’.
‘Yeah, it’s shit, by the sounds of it,’ she says, shaking out the last of the chocolate. ‘I think he’s pretty messed up about the whole thing but you know what men are like, he says everything’s fine. Maybe you can offer him a shoulder to cry on at the wedding. I’m putting you next to him at dinner.’
‘Don’t do that, Poll,’ I say. ‘He’s married. And I mean, what’s the point?’
‘The point is, that marriage is as good as over. And it would be helpful for him to have an old friend talk some sense into him,’ she says.
‘
I’m
supposed to give him marriage guidance? I’m hardly a role model for successful living. No, stick me next to someone single.’
‘I’ll check with Dave to see if any of his mates are, but I don’t think there are any single men coming,’ she says. ‘Apart from my brother, and he only seems to date women in their twenties nowadays. He’s such a City Boy.’
‘I remember he always used to steal the five-hundred-pound notes in Monopoly,’ I say, laughing. ‘Don’t you have any single men on the list at all? Anyone – waiters, ushers, someone in the band?’
She shakes her head. ‘Not that I can think of. Right, I’ve definitely had too much to drink, best call me a cab.’
I haven’t thought about Daniel McKendall for years. Well, a few years at least. We’re friends on Facebook, but the fact that I haven’t even casually stalked him shows how low on my radar he is.
I remember Daniel’s parents back in the day, must be over twenty years ago now … They were so much more exotic than mine. Daniel’s mum, Krista, was a crazy Danish hippy; his dad, Robert, was a Scottish guitar teacher. When we first met, his parents were still listening to Joan Baez and smoking a lot of weed. (My parents listened to Vivaldi and to this day have never smoked a joint. When my mum found out I’d been smoking Consulate round at the McKendalls’ house, she went ballistic. ‘It starts with cigarettes, then you get hooked on the harder stuff. You’ll be round the back of King’s Cross, turning tricks for heroin if you don’t cut that out right now!’ If there’d been a ‘rat on a rat’ anti-nicotine hotline in the eighties, my mum would have shopped Daniel and me, taken her ten-pound reward, and still had a smile on her face when she put dinner on the table.)
Going round to Daniel’s big, ramshackle house and twos-ing menthol cigarettes that we’d stolen from Krista McKendall’s crochet handbag was the most exciting, bohemian thing I had ever experienced. Daniel and I used to take a picnic blanket, sneak up onto the roof and spend hours lying on our backs, blowing smoke rings and staring up at the clouds. All that time, imagining what we would do with our lives.
Up on the roof we’d pretend things could stay the way they were forever. In our future it would still always be five in the afternoon on a perfect summer’s day, with the sky so blue it felt like a child’s drawing. Our parents would always stay young and strong and good looking and healthy and we would never have to think of them as actually being human. There would always be cold lingonberry lemonade so sharp it made your tongue curl waiting for us in Krista McKendall’s fridge, if only we could be bothered to go down to the kitchen. Homework could wait. Tidying our rooms could wait. For now and always we would stay lying, side by side on this green and blue tartan blanket, looking up to the sky. Best friends who just happened to also like kissing each other.
Daniel and I were always happiest when we were together, just the two of us. The best days of my teens were spent with him. We had so much in common, and because we were born on the same day he used to joke that we were twins, separated at birth. ‘The exact same day, that can’t be coincidence! Look at the facts: your grandfather was Scottish and so was mine. It is technically possible.’
‘He wasn’t my actual grandfather,’ I pointed out.
‘Yeah, but he was the only one you ever knew,’ he said. ‘And look at the other things that are identical: both crap at art. You eat Breakaways the exact same way that I do, that must be genetic!’
‘Clearly we’re not twins. Your mum’s Dutch. I wish I had her bone structure, she looks like Julie Christie.’
‘For ten points, what’s the capital of Denmark …?’
‘Oh. Copenhagen. Sorry, your mum’s Danish. I do know the difference, but you’ve got to admit they’re confusing, they are quite close to each other. Anyway, why would you even
want
me to be your sister? That’s messed up.’ If we were siblings that would mean that all the medium petting we were doing up on that roof was technically incest. I’d read
Flowers in the Attic
though – maybe it wasn’t so bad.
‘What?’ he said, looking confused.
‘Think about what you’re actually saying! Brothers and sisters don’t do this. Oh God, just think about my brother … Gross! What’s wrong with you? You’re a pervert!’ I said, pushing him away from me.
‘Jeez, you’re the one who’s sick! I wasn’t thinking about it like that! I just meant … If you were my twin you wouldn’t have to go home at night. You could stay here with us. You could live in our house! We’d go on holiday together. We’d have fun all the time. That’s what I meant.’
‘Ah, so you’re a romantic pervert at least. Well that’s OK then,’ I said, moving back towards him and kissing him on his beautiful mouth.
That’s the thing about Daniel – he had an innocence about him. He always seemed a little bit lost but underneath that he also had a quiet confidence. Daniel was the first boy I fell in love with. Not just because he was good looking and tall and could blow double smoke rings. But because of that combination of sweetness and strength. And because, from the very first moment I met him on a hot July day in Polly’s garden, I felt like I had always known him. He was the first boy I could truly be myself with, the first boy who made me laugh.
And then life got in the way, good and proper. Krista McKendall, that wild, crazy bohemian, ran off to Surrey with a balding accountant named Albert. And Daniel’s heartbroken, cuckolded father took his boys back up to Edinburgh to be near their grandparents. And that was the end of that.