The Wedding Date. Zara Stoneley

one and is as potty as she is. For her sixtieth birthday, she (the aunt, not Sarah) celebrated by going parasailing in Crete and taking the thirty-five year old instructor to bed. My mother celebrated hers with afternoon tea in a posh hotel. I fear that I am more like my mum than Sarah’s aunt.

      Sarah isn’t fooled by my radiant smile.

      ‘Here. Just what the doctor ordered.’ She pushes a coffee towards me, and holds out a sticky pastry. I’m not sure any doctor would order anybody to eat this. ‘There were only three left, so I couldn’t leave one on its own could I?’

      ‘Jess is getting married.’

      ‘Fab. So the problem with that is?’ Sarah only knows what I have told her. She moved into the area when she left college and her aunt offered her the type of job that would let her go backpacking and get a discount. ‘You look like you’ve swallowed a lemon.’

      ‘Thanks.’ I take a bite of sugary pastry to combat the sour look. ‘She wants me to be maid of honour.’

      ‘Oh hells bells.’ Sarah tends to say some odd things. ‘You don’t have to dress up like an extra from Frozen do you?’

      ‘I don’t think so.’ I take another bite of pastry, and a gulp of coffee and plonk myself down in my swivel chair. And swivel. ‘Liam is best man.’ I try and say it casually, but I rotate a bit too vigorously and nearly end up in the potted plant behind me.

      ‘Ahh.’ We chew in unison, once I’ve stopped spinning. ‘But you don’t still care about Liam, do you? He’s a shit.’ She gives me the beady eye. ‘A total shit.’

      ‘Oh no, no of course I don’t care.’ Well maybe a teeny bit. ‘I’ve not seen him since…’ Sarah nods encouragingly. She knows seeing him again might be an issue. I mean you never know how you will actually feel, do you?

      In my head I am so completely over him. He is a complete twat who I never really loved, but in real life what if he makes me feel wobbly? Or sick? ‘It’s not Liam, it’s just everybody will be looking, and knowing.’ Sarah nods, breaks the last pastry into two and passes half to me. ‘And I haven’t got round to that diet yet.’

      ‘Well, I don’t think you need to lose weight.’ This is easy for Sarah to say as she is stick thin. I know I have got a bit over-rounded.

      ‘Photos put pounds on you, I can’t look like this.’ I have let myself go since the split, I know I have. In fact I let myself go before the split. I got boring and fat. Both Liam and I had, but neither of us had really noticed. ‘I never used to look like this.’ Being lazily happy has been bad for me. Being heartbroken has been very bad for me. I seem to have totally lost the real me in all of this, and it is time I found myself again. Preferably before my current state is immortalised in wedding snaps.

      ‘Well, you did say last week that you wanted to get fit again.’ That is true, good intentions have been surfacing, popping their heads up like baby seals, then disappearing again. ‘So maybe this is the incentive. A countdown!’ Sarah spins round, kicking her legs in a very unprofessional way. ‘We could go jogging?’

      I pick a flake of pastry off my boobs and eat it. The idea of me and Sarah jogging is hilarious, unbelievable. But it’s nice of her to offer. She’d probably turn up in Doc Martens and pink tights. I swallow the last bit of my calorie-laden breakfast. ‘Maybe.’ I am not good at saying no, which is part of the problem. ‘There is another tiny problem.’ If I call it tiny it might become tiny. They call it visualisation, don’t they? ‘I told Jess I had a new man.’

      Sarah grins. ‘Well, that’ll be a piece of piss to sort.’

      ‘Will it?’

      ‘Hire a guy!’ She has completely lost it. More off the wall than ever. ‘Oh my God, this has to be fate, you won’t believe what I’ve just been reading. Look, look.’ She starts to delve through the paperwork on her desk, pamphlets flying in all directions, then holds a holiday brochure up triumphantly. ‘Voila!’ She likes to throw in the odd foreign word when she speaks to clients, to create the right atmosphere and sense of anticipation.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Look!’ The brochure is shoved into my hand and I am spun round at speed. Through the blur I can make out that it is actually a magazine. She clutches the arms of my seat so that I stop so abruptly the g-force hits, then pokes at the page. Studs for Sale – how the modern woman solves the dating problem. There’s a photo of a famous movie star, with a hot to trot man gazing at her adoringly. ‘She paid for him, can you believe it? Her! She hired him just for the night. Everybody is doing it. You just need an escort. Oh God, this is so frigging cool.’ Her bracelets jangle alarmingly. ‘It’s karma!’

      ‘It is?’

      ‘It’s meant to be, me having this mag and you desperately needing a man. Fate!’

      ‘I wouldn’t say desperately.’ No woman in this century should ever admit to desperately needing a man, should they?

      ‘Whatever. Shit, Sam, this is perfect.’

      ‘I’m not sure everybody is doing it.’ Escort sounds seedy. ‘Especially not in the Surrey suburbs.’

      ‘If they can do it in Hollywood, then why can’t we?’

      ‘Well, for one I can’t afford it.’

      ‘How do you know?’ She’s got a point, I haven’t got a clue how much you have to shell out for a fake date.

      ‘And somebody looking like that won’t be remotely interested in a small town church wedding followed by a nosh up and boogie.’ Okay, I’m being a bit unfair here, dragging Jess down to my level. It’s because I’m panicking. It will be a lovely wedding, in one of the posh hotels. There will be nothing small town about it. But there will also be nothing Hollywood about it.

      ‘Oh rubbish, I’m sure we could find somebody who’d do it. We should investigate, let’s get…’

      Luckily an elderly couple open the door and head straight for my desk. That tends to happen; I handle upmarket cruises and quiet retreats, Sarah gets booze cruises and 18-30 raves.

      ‘Well?’ She waves the magazine in the air in one hand, her other poised over the keyboard and mouths ‘Google’ at me. ‘Sounds great to me – you’d never have to see him again!’

      ‘And that could be a godsend,’ chips in the lady, who has sat down and is rummaging in her handbag. She produces her glasses, puts them on and peers at me. ‘I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I’d never had to see my Albert again.’ She pats his knee in apology, and he smiles. ‘Daft bugger has got flat batteries in his hearing aids so I can say what I want. Now, dear, Albert wants to go to Brighton, and I want to go to Lake Garda. What do you suggest?’

      I look at the couple, but my mind just isn’t on the perfect holiday that combines the attractions of the south coast of Britain, and the Italian Lakes.

      Studs for sale. Huh. Honestly, does she really think I’m so desperate I’d hire a date?

       Chapter 3

      I don’t really believe in all that fate and bad luck stuff. Well, I do think the number seven is quite lucky, and I don’t walk under ladders, and thirteen is a bit of a weird thing, and I don’t step on cracks. Oh, and I do pick a penny up if I see it. And I have been known to follow the odd black cat, and trample over my friends in a bid to catch a bridal bouquet. But in general it’s all a load of guff isn’t it? I wouldn’t say I believe, or let it rule my life in any way whatsoever.

      But now I do believe bad luck comes in threes.

      I have just got out of bed and picked number three up off my doormat. A thick, cream, embossed, exceedingly posh envelope. I reluctantly slide the thick,