For two steps. And then Nadia says, ‘Sorry, no, please put me down on my left footnow. Now.Now!’ We scramble to lower her as she continues, ‘Carole, I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you and you must know that it was in no way whatsoever your fault that I fell over –anyonecan splash a drink and it is not normal to dodge out of the way in quite such an overenthusiastic manner – it really was entirely my own fault – but James thinks I’ve broken my ankle and I agree that it feels as though I’ve done myself an actual injury and I don’t want to be dropped. And again I don’t want to upset you but being chair lifted isreallyunpleasant and I felt as though I was going to be dropped on your side, which is my bad foot side, and I just want to go inside and sit in a chair and enjoy the karaoke but not drink and not breathe a word to Bea and Ruth and then go home tonight and sort it. I’m sorry – I didn’t want to offend you.’ She turns away from an open-mouthed Carole and says to me, ‘Could you possibly just carry me to the room as fast as possible and get me onto a chair and then I’ll be fine? Thank you.’
Carole’s recovered. ‘So sorry, my love. Tom, what are you waiting for?’
‘Yep, sorry, on it.’
I hoick Nadia up into my arms and stride off, and, actually, with Carole trotting along next to us giving directions it’s all fine. Her presence stops me from feeling as though it’s any kind of intimate experience; it’s just like I’m carrying a regular friend who’s hurt her foot.
Shortly afterwards, Nadia’s on her chair in the dining room of the hotel, Carole’s finally stopped apologising for apologising, and I’ve discovered that I will not be leaving Nadia and Carole to it and going and propping up the bar with some nice new friends, because there’s a seating plan and, yay, I’m seated between the two of them.
* * *
It’s fine, though, I realise, once we’re all at the table and chatting. The others on our table are great, Carole and Nadia are both good company, and I can totally ignore the entirely inappropriate feelings of attraction for Nadia that I’m experiencing.
We eat fantastic food, we talk, we laugh; it’s a very nice way to spend a Tuesday.
The speeches are brilliant too. Warm, entertaining, and a little risqué but staying on the right line of appropriate, and after the toasting we all clap and cheer for a long time.
Eventually we’ve quietened down from House of Commons rabble levels to mere loud chatter and wolf whistling and Bea takes the mic and hollers, ‘Okay, everyone, karaoke time. Every table has to do at least one song, or you’re out on your ear before the cake cutting, which is happening later.’ She looks pretty serious and I can’t imagine anyone daring to not comply.
We’re the third table up.
‘I’m coming,’ Nadia tells Carole and me.
‘Let’s go for an arm round the waist each and basically drag her across the floor,’ Carole says.
‘Er, thank you?’ Nadia says, laughing.
She holds her injured foot up bent at the knee, flamingo-like, and off we go.
A flip-flop slide across a polished wood floor works a lot better than a flip-flop hop on grass, it turns out, and the hauling is very successful; I don’t even think we look particularly odd as we go.
Our song – appropriately – is Abba’s ‘Waterloo’.
None of our table are that drunk but we do not hold back. Nadia, in particular, goes for some truly spectacular soprano harmonising, ably backed up by Carole, at a more contralto pitch, with me belting the words out in my best bass.
While I am always happy to join in, I am not a natural singer. It’s only because my voice is low that I don’t make people cry with my singing. I love music but the notes just don’t come out the way I was expecting. Nadia, though, her voicesoarsin a truly wonderful way.
‘You could have been in Abba yourself,’ I tell her when the song ends.
‘Yeah, kind of gutted not to have been Swedish in the nineteen-seventies. Ilovethe flares and the platforms.’
‘You have to do a song by yourself,’ Carole commands. ‘We’ll be your backing group.’
We all bow to her natural CEO demeanour and form a line behind Nadia, who gets going on ‘Super Trouper’.
It’s amazing. Nadia’s voice isstunning. We all stop singing quite quickly so that we can just listen to her.
‘You could have a career in singing,’ Carole says when we’re finally off the stage and have slid Nadia on her flip-flop back to her chair. ‘Can I pull some strings for you?’
‘Ha.’ Nadia buries her face in her drink for a moment and then says, ‘Oh, I love this song,’ as the group on the stage start singing Miley Cyrus’s ‘Flowers’.
I haven’t seen such a blatant subject avoidance since my mum asked my nephew Rafe where the rest of the chocolate log had gone last Christmas.
‘Areyou a singer?’ I whisper while Carole’s looking the other way.
‘Shhh.’ Nadia looks all round like she’s imitating a Cold War spy and says, ‘For very obvious reasons I don’t like to mention this in certain situations, but on the side I am—’ she leans very close and lowers her voice even further ‘—a wedding singer.’
As she pulls back, I stare at her. ‘I did not know that.’
