“Please can we get wine?” Clara said, pulling open the door to the restaurant. “It feels like one of those days. Or maybe I’ve just covered so much Britney news, she’s seeped into my veins.”
A glass of wine alone cost five pounds, but Daisy didn’t want to let on how much she and Zack were struggling financially. A couple of times she had suggested asking their family for some support with the wedding and Zack had dismissed the idea. In fact he’d more than dismissed it; he’d been horrified.
“I’m not having ourfamilythink that I can’t afford to pay for our wedding,” he said. “Or anyone else, for that matter.” He’d taken her hand. “I know this is your first relationship, but thiskind of stuff is what couples keep between themselves. It’s what brings us closer together, solving this, just the two of us.”
“Sure!” Daisy said to Clara, forcing a smile. “Wine it is.”
They walked to their usual autumn table, next to the radiator, and summoned the waiter immediately.
“Small or large?” the waiter asked when Clara ordered two glasses of the house white.
“Large,” Clara said loudly over Daisy’s “small.” She swallowed. A large was eight pounds and that was on top of the ten-pound fish-and-chips. It was okay. It wasn’t like she did it every day. Daisy tapped her card on the machine, closing her eyes as the number came up.
The waiter returned with their wine and Clara leaned back in her seat. “Talk to me about wedding plans.”
A fist always materialized around Daisy’s heart at the mention of the wedding, squeezing tightly. When Zack had got down on one knee in their garden on the first sunny day of spring last year, her mouth had saidyeswhile her brain had saidno. In fact, her brain had been even more polite than that. It said, “No, thank you,” which she’d remembered ever since because it was so unexpected. It had nothing to do with Zack; it was the thought of the day itself. The dress and makeup. The aisle. Everyone turning to stare at her like she was someone worth looking at. The loud saying of vows. Being told to kiss for a photograph. And another one. The first dance, where people formed a circle around you and watched as you tried to express how much you loved someone by swaying slowly to “2 Become 1” by the Spice Girls. The thought of it made her want to crawl out of her skin. She didn’t know how to say any of that to Zack, so instead she just said yes and hoped it would go away, or that she’d get used to it, or that an asteroid would wipe out the world and she wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.
“Wedding plans are... going,” Daisy said carefully. “Obviouslythe venue is sorted because we’re just using Zack’s hotel, so we get a discount. Dress is ordered. Um...” She thought about what else to say. “We looked at flowers the other day.”
Clara screwed her nose up. “I don’t even know what that means. How do youlookat flowers?” She reached into the center of the table, spinning the salt with both hands.
“Well I don’t know how other people do it, but we just googledwedding flowersand went through photos until we found one we liked, then Zack took a screenshot and ordered a second round of popadams to celebrate. So now I need to hunt down a florist that can match the photo.”
There was the slightest flash of a grimace on Clara’s face as Daisy said the wordpopadams.
“What kind of flowers did you both agree on? Wait, surely you have to go huge on the flowers? That’s how you met, right? When he visited that flower shop you worked in?”
Daisy swallowed and looked down at her phone, grateful for the distraction. She hadn’t told anyone, not even her best friend, the truth about how she and Zack met. One day soon after Clara started at Entertainment Now! Daisy had told her a story about Zack coming into Perfect Bunchand Clara had misunderstood it as the moment she and Zack met. Daisy never corrected her. Scanning through the WhatsApp chat with Zack, she scrolled up past thewouldn’t use the bathroom for half an hour if I were youand thecup of tea coming up babe xto the photo he’d sent her. A bouquet of purple flowers, with sprays of white, tied in a pale purple ribbon. She showed it to Clara, who nodded.
“Yup, that looks like flowers to me.” Clara grinned across at Daisy. “Kidding. I love them. Very... purple? Sorry. I honestly don’t know what to say about flowers. Show me Zack’s suit and I’ll be all over it.”
“He’s keeping it a secret. Wants it to be a surprise.”
Clara frowned. “I thought the bride did that, not the groom. Anyway that’s... the only update, is it? Flowers.”
Daisy shrugged.
“Look,” Clara added, pulling at her curls and tying them into a bun at record speed. “I’m just going to presume that I’m a bridesmaid and you’re going to ask me at some point because the wedding is, what, three months away?”
Daisy swallowed. “Of course you’re a bridesmaid, I just haven’t even thought about that part.”
“What do you mean ‘thatpart’? You mean theweddingpart? Theentire daypart? Whatpartare you thinking about?”
Daisy put her head in her hands. The closer the date got, the harder she was finding it to hold everything in. “None of it,” she muttered through her hands. “Every time I think about it, I just...” She put her hand to her chest, struggling for breath, just as the waiter arrived with their fish-and-chips.
“Hey... hey,” Clara said, getting out of her seat opposite to sit beside Daisy, putting an arm around her. “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it right now, just breathe.” She lifted her head, doing an exaggerated breath in through her nose which Daisy copied, blowing it out of her mouth. She lifted her finger and started outlining the shape of a square. “Breathe in two, three, four, five. Hold two, three, four, five. Breathe out two, three, four, five. Hold two, three, four, five,” she said, one for each side of the square.
“Isn’t that the breathing you do with your niece and nephew?” Daisy asked, and Clara laughed.
“Doesn’t matter what age you are, so long as it works.” She glanced down at Daisy’s plate and then across to her own.
“Go. Eat,” Daisy said. “I’m okay.”
Clara jumped up and moved to sit opposite her again, immediately starting on her fish-and-chips.
“So, how are things going with Leisha?” Daisy asked, keeping the same tone to her voice that Clara used when asking about Zack. Clara was pretty logical for everything in her life except for one thing: love. Daisy was trying. She really was. She had genuinely never seen Clara as happy as she’d been since she met Leisha, except Daisy couldn’t exactly use the wordmet. Because they hadn’t actually met. So far the whole of theirtwo-yearrelationship had existed entirely online.
Clara’s face lit up as she pushed some fish and mushy peas onto her fork. “Really good. She’s out near Antarctica at the moment, so her reception’s a bit dodgy.”
