Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [44]
‘I guess he didn’t want to worry you at Christmas.’
‘But we’re meant to be married, Natalie. His worries, my worries, our worries. They’re supposed to be the same thing, aren’t they?’
Now Natalie shrugged. ‘You’re right. It does sound like he’s having a hard time getting his head round it. You’ve just got to give it some time, Lucy. It’ll be all right.’
‘I know it will. We’re fine. Honestly.’ She smiled. ‘Marriage. That’s all. What about you? Simon definitely off the scene?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine that he is, but I think that’s just because he’s been around for so long.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Habit!’
‘Suppose. But, that said, I haven’t heard from him since before Christmas. Which seems pretty final.’
‘You look fantastic.’
‘Heartbreak. I’ve lost half a stone since he left me.’
‘Not all bad, then?’
Natalie laughed. ‘I’m okay, you know. Okay.’
Lucy put an arm round her. ‘You’ll be fine.’ From her, it didn’t sound patronising but true and comforting. Natalie laid her head on her friend’s shoulder.
‘Now, quickly, before the boys get back… what gives with you and Tom?’
From the bar, Tom watched Natalie surreptitiously. She was talking to Lucy, their heads conspiratorially close together. Ed arrived, and Natalie lifted him on to her lap unselfconsciously. He started pulling at that daft concoction she’d pinned to her head, and she stopped talking to Lucy to blow raspberries into his neck so that he giggled. Cynthia came back and stood between the two women, and they all laughed about something.
She fit. Bit of an own goal for her, the letter F, he pondered.
Two hours later the food had all gone but the drink still flowed. Pinhead had removed his jacket and cravat, the bride had relaxed enough to smoke her own fags, and the toe-curling speeches had been made. Packs of children careered round the room, skidding dramatically on the dance-floor and being shouted at by their parents. The DJ, in his lurid Hawaiian shirt, was warming to his theme, and the volume was increasing, so that everyone over sixty was being driven to the back of the room, where decibel levels were almost tolerable.
When Jennifer Rush’s ‘The Power of Love’ started beating through the room, Natalie had to put the corner of her napkin into her mouth and bite down on it as the happy couple’s first married dance together was announced, and Pinhead and Mandy shuffled uncomfortably round the floor for a couple of minutes. When he stepped on her train, she slapped him. Mandy’s father stood nursing a pint, tears of pride and beer glistening in his eyes.
As the first dance segued into the second – no less mortifying – the DJ exhorted all ‘couples, in love, young and old, male, female, whatever’ to join the newlyweds. Cynthia dragged John to the middle of the floor, and Patrick and Lucy took up a less obvious station at the edge to watch Ed and Bella trying to dance with each other.
Mandy’s mother was doing the rounds of the tables, shooing people towards the centre of the room. ‘Come on, you two beautiful young people. Get up there!’
Natalie raised an eyebrow at Tom, who was trying to eat a chicken wing. He put it down reluctantly and wiped his fingers on a maroon napkin. ‘Come on, bird.’ He reached for her hand.
‘Since you ask so nicely.’
They’d known what they were doing in the old days, Natalie reckoned. Modern dancing – even that pelvic thrusting, grinding stuff they did in clubs – wasn’t half so sexy. A man’s hands round your waist, your thigh slipping between his, and the slide of chiffon up your leg… now, that felt nice. Even if it was Tom.
‘We haven’t done a lot of dancing, have we?’
Natalie thought about it. ‘No. School disco, college bop stuff. Did we dance at Bridget’s wedding?’
‘You were with Simon.’
That was a no, then. ‘Sorry.’ She grimaced up at him. ‘Who did you bring?’
‘Genevieve. Who proceeded to get off with one of Karl’s mates, as I remember. Another great wedding for me.’
‘This one’s been okay, hasn’t it?