The Wedding Diaries (17 page)

Me: [letting out a small scream]
Thom!
You’ve had precisely
nothing
to do with organising this wedding so far, and if you think you could do so much better you are
more
than welcome to arrange this whole bloody thing yourself. One minute you’re merrily writing a cheque for £4,000 and agreeing to £380 cakes, the next you’re saying we can’t afford clothes for you or a dress for me!

Thom: That’s not a dress, Kiki, that’s a mortgage payment.

Me: [picking up this book, becoming louder] Here are a few things you might want to consider: venue details, food, booze, a band for the wedding – and the actual wedding
bands
, your one job so far – the dress, the veil, cars, flowers, decorations, favours, the cake, tableware, photographer, guest books, confetti, disposable cameras, place names, bridesmaids dresses, accommodation for guests, my hair and makeup … gifts for the wedding party. Table plans. Orders of Service! The wedding list! [panting a bit]

Thom: [silence] Why do we even need a wedding list?

I screamed. The evening did not end well. I threw a plate at Thom. I’m so tired, and so frightened that this isn’t just how our wedding is going to be, but our marriage too. I’m lonely every time I see Thom and I can’t understand how to join us up again. When he fell asleep, before I came to write this, I took off my engagement ring and left it on Thom’s bedside table. I’ve realised what I need to do. I’ve packed a bag, ready for the morning. I want so much to talk to Susie about all of this, but she still hasn’t called me. What is wrong with her?

TO DO:

Try to work out what the hell it is I think I’m doing

April 2nd

I think we need a little break. I don’t want to lose Thom, but I feel like we’re both losing our minds slightly. I felt faintly ridiculous when I woke up without my engagement ring on this morning, removed in some dreadful soap opera statement. But I couldn’t take it back. I snuck out before Thom woke up, and I didn’t look at it or him as I closed the bedroom door. And Thom was right. I do love that ring. Almost as much as I love the person who chose it for me.

I met Alice for breakfast, where she saw my sad little weekend bag sitting like a kicked kitten under our table.

Alice: Ahhh, that’s nice. Are you going away with Thom this weekend?

Me: Nope.

Alice:
He’s
going away with
you
?

Me: No, Alice, I’m going to stay with my friends before Thom and I drop dead from stress over this wedding.

Alice: [aghast] You’re …
moving out
?

Me: Alice, we’re not divorcing. It’s just driving us absolutely up the wall at the moment. The planning. Our ‘ideas’. And I’m not sure I particularly like who I am right now. I’d rather stay away from Thom until we can be friends again, which I’m sure will be soon – as soon as he calls and we can sort all this out – but in the meantime I’m going to stay, for a few nights, with friends, who have beds I can lie in at night, and that’s all. It’s not even A Break, it’s just me staying out for a while, so we don’t break one another. It’s just got a bit …

Alice: Silly?

Me: Maybe.

Alice: But you’re not breaking up?

Me: I bloody hope not. What if I lost custody of you?

Alice: And the Hamilton millions?

Me: Exactly. Who would keep me in diamond shoes then?

Then Alice made a serious mistake.

Alice: Why don’t you just go and stay at your parents’?

I tucked my chair right next to hers, pushed her coffee away from her and listed for twelve minutes all the ways in which it would be neither sensible nor effective for me as a spiritual, growing person to allow my mother any idea of what was going on. She clearly couldn’t care less about this wedding, unable even to muster a Mum-ish criticism about the venues I’d mentioned to her. Or was it more that, going back through the years, every time –
every time
– I would be upset by a falling-out with a friend, a mean girl at school, a rumour that I’d been caught up in, she would ask me one question: Well, what did
you
do for this to happen? I’d learnt soon enough to avoid discussing anything of any importance with her, and the idea that I would go running to their house for comfort, even though I wanted so much to see Dad and have him tell me how ridiculous it was, the idea that I would walk right into the lions’ den of self-flagellation so she could tell me that I didn’t deserve him, that all this was my fault, that I needed to apologise immediately, and – worse – if all this didn’t get fixed, if somehow – GOD – somehow if I lost Thom, the thought that she had watched it all in slow motion, shaking her head at me and knowing better, was more than I could possibly bear.

Alice: Oh, right. I just thought they might have converted your room to an office or something.

I wiped my mouth and apologised. Alice patted my hand and said she knew I was going through a tough time.

Obviously I can’t stay with Suse right now, so I’ve come to stay with Jim, oldest and wisest (and most musical) of friends. He hasn’t even asked why, just let me in when I arrived, showed me my bedroom and told me the roast was in the oven. After the last few weeks of eggshells and rage, I wanted to cry at how lovely it was, but toughened up and gave him the Clifton Black books I’d swung by the office for. They’re his secret vice, and if there’s
one
thing I can do without harming anyone, it’s feed a secret book vice. We sat in companionable silence for the afternoon, watching terrible TV – occasionally one of us would get up for another pair of beers – before Jim put a pizza and an old Tom Hanks film on and we ate and laughed ourselves queasy and then watched an old zombie flick until I realised I was going to be too scared to sleep. As we were going our separate ways for the night, Jim softly nudged me with his foot and said, ‘Is this going to be like … that dark time?’

Thom and I had been together for two years when something went wrong. I don’t know what it was, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t care to think about that time at all. Maybe I should be plumbing those depths to save us from whatever is going on right now, but I can’t. At the time, it somehow seemed like a mutual decision for us to split up, but when my brain tiptoes around those memories, trying not to look but still catching glimpses out of the corner of its lobe, I think I must have gone completely mad. I did some very strange things then. Those flashes of recollection suggest that I literally lost my mind. I was a walking hollow, functioning, but with no reference to the person I had been before. I’m amazed I could tie my shoelaces during that time.

It was fine in the end – ha! Look at us now! – and we got back together with a beautiful inevitability, and things were better afterwards than they ever had been before, but I know what Jim is frightened about. That … was not a good time.

Me: No, bud, it’s not going to be like that. If all else fails I’ll just settle for the shittiest wedding in the world. I’m not dragging anyone back there again.

TO DO:

Find out if it’s too late to marry Jim. Or maybe Alice. Or Tom Hanks?

April 3rd

I know it doesn’t seem like it, but, in normal circumstances, we hardly argue at all these days. (since Jim’s question last night I’ve been thinking about it a
lot
). When we first moved in together, it was truly terrible. Thom had no idea how to put things in the cupboards: the cup handles would be pointing in any direction, and the plates wouldn’t even begin to be sorted by colour. It was a bumpy ride, but he educated himself and things smoothed out. Then he suddenly realised that
I
was ridiculous, and forced me to learn how to hang my clothes up on mismatching hangers and put my shoes away in non-pairs. Then: we broke up. I can still remember so clearly packing up that flat, putting all my things in boxes, not able to move fast in case I shattered completely and scattered all over the floor, not able to look at him, putting away all those things I thought would be the bricks in building our future.

So we broke up, then after about six months, we got back in touch. It’s fine! we both said, We’re just friends! It’s not complicated! But it was complicated, thank God, and we moved in together – again – two and a half years after we’d originally met, so close to my parents that I wondered if it didn’t seem to Thom like I was hedging my bets. That time it was much harder. We didn’t argue – I think we were both frightened to – but we weren’t comfortable. I was embarrassed, somehow, about what had happened, having to tell both of our parents that we’d broken up, then that we’d got back together, and I was embarrassed that my faith in us had been shown up so clearly. To have believed so utterly in someone, and to be shown up as mistaken. I was so embarrassed for so long, until one day, as we had a lazy battle about buying some milk, I realised I wasn’t anymore, and I loved him, and we were going to be OK. But we didn’t really argue after that. So this feels … bad.

The
very
first argument we ever had was as ridiculous as first arguments ever are. What tips a happy new couple over into two bickering people? When you’re in that first flush of love, how bad does the argument have to be to realise this isn’t someone you want to be with? Ours was about
The Great Gatsby
. I loved the book; the style, the sweep, the romance of it, but Thom thought it was flat and silly. What started out as a flirtatious warm-up to the evening’s activity swiftly snowballed into something else.

Me: [laughing] You can’t really feel that way, can you? It’s a
classic
.

Thom: I can really feel that way, and I do. And I don’t think classic status protects it from anything. At its weakest, it’s just a list of clothing.

Me: Haha. Ha. [frowning at his stubbornness] No, really, even if you don’t like it, you can recognise the quality of the writing, can’t you?

Thom: Shall we talk about something else?

Me: [hackles up] I don’t want to talk about something else. Please can you not tell me when I’ve finished talking about something?

Thom: [half to himself] Well, this is fun.

Me: I
am
still here, you know.

Thom: Are you sure you want to be?

Me: Thank God you’re here to make my mind up for me. [picks up bag and coat]

Thom: Are you serious? Calm down, Kiki, don’t go home.

Me: Calm down? Do you want to just pat me on the head and be done with it?
Don’t
call me. [leaves]

Ironically,
The Great Gatsby
is now one of Thom’s favourite books. I find it unreadable.

April 4th

I read in the papers this morning that Jacki’s already working on her new album, of classic love songs ‘reworked for the twenty-first century’. Before Tony could start jumping around my desk sweating at me that our author was getting distracted from her important book project, I’d drawn up a document to show how we could cross-promote between the album and the book and with clever marketing this could double our sales without us having to do a thing. Tony read it and grunted. I was dismissed from his office. But my GOD, Jacki works hard. How does she do all this? I suppose working side by side all day with the man she loves must help. With ten days until her wedding, her emails don’t show a hint of nerves.

Speaking of which event, I’m still Jim’s number one fan. Could I stay here indefinitely? It’s so unbelievably nice to not have to talk about weddings, or think about weddings, or argue about weddings in my own time at least. Jim made us both lunch this morning, met me at the tube after work, cooked dinner and had me call a coin for whether we watched cruel Japanese gameshows or play Scrabble. Since we spent most of Sunday playing increasingly heated games of Scrabble with bottle after bottle of cider (last night I got polygyny, even after several gallons of that delicious appley poison. 38 points with a double word score. COME ON) watching cruel Japanese gameshows was a quiet, sober treat tonight.

Then I looked in my diary when I came to bed and saw that tonight was the night Thom had booked for us to go to the Planetarium.

April 5th

Thom called today. We talked for a while – I told him about Jacki’s new album. He started singing Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’.

Me: I miss you.

Thom: [in rough approximation of Roy Orbison’s Texan drawl] Come on home then. I’ve got a bed that’s sure feeling lonely for you.

Me: Ugh, you make that sound really creepy.

Thom: No, that didn’t really work, did it. But hurry up, Keeks. I could do with you being back. I can’t work the boiler properly. And I love you.

Me: I’m afraid you’re just going to have to put another jumper on. We need to make sure this isn’t a fissure that’ll lead to a canyon.

Thom: Kiki, it doesn’t need to be this way. If you listen to your mum–