“I’m not firing you! But I mean, I can’t be a bridesmaid without a dress, can I?”
“But what else would you wear?”
“Well…” I twist my fingers awkwardly. “I do have this one little reserve dress in my wardrobe…”
I can’t tell him I’ve actually got three. And two on hold at Barneys.
“By whom?”
“Er… Donna Karan,” I say guiltily.
“Donna Karan?” His voice cracks with betrayal. “You prefer Donna Karan to me?”
“Of course not! But I mean, the seams are actually sewn…”
“Wear my dress.”
“Danny—”
“Wear my dress! Please!” He throws himself down on the floor and walks toward me on his knees. “It’ll be ready. I’ll work all day and all night.”
“We haven’t got all day and all night! We’ve got about… three hours!”
“Then I’ll work all three hours. I’ll do it!”
“You can really make a boned embroidered corset from scratch in three hours?” I say incredulously.
Danny looks abashed. “So… um… we may have to rethink the design very slightly…”
“In what way?”
He drums his fingers for a few moments, then looks up. “Do you have a plain white T-shirt?”
“A T-shirt?” I can’t hide my dismay.
“It’ll be great. I promise!” From outside comes the chugging sound of a van pulling up and Danny glances out of the window. “Hey, did you buy another antique?”
An hour later I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m wearing a full sweeping skirt made of gold silk — topped by my white T-shirt, which is now completely unrecognizable. Danny’s ripped off the sleeves, sewn on sequins, gathered hems, created lines where there were none — and basically turned it into the most fantastic top I’ve ever seen.
“I love it.” I beam at Danny. “I love it! I’ll be the coolest bridesmaid in the world!”
“It’s pretty good, isn’t it?” Danny gives a casual shrug, but I can see he’s pleased with himself.
I take another gulp of my cocktail, draining the glass. “Delicious. Shall we have another one?”
“What was in that?”
“Erm…” I squint vaguely at the bottles lined up in the cocktail cabinet. “I’m not sure.”
It took a while to get the cocktail cabinet up the stairs and into our apartment. To be honest, it’s a bit bigger than I remembered, and I’m not sure it’ll fit into that little alcove behind the sofa where I’d planned to put it. But still, it looks fantastic! It’s standing proudly in the middle of the room, and we’ve already put it to good use. As soon as it arrived, Danny went upstairs and raided his brother Randall’s drinks cupboard, and I got all the booze I could find in the kitchen. We’ve had a margarita each and a gimlet, and my invention called the Bloomwood, which consists of vodka, orange, and M&M’s, which you scoop out with a spoon.
“Give me the top again. I want to pull in that shoulder tighter.”
I peel off the top, hand it to him, and reach for my jumper, not bothering to be modest. I mean, this is Danny. He threads a needle and starts expertly gathering along the hem of the T-shirt. “So, these weird cousin-marrying friends of yours,” he says. “What’s that about?”
“They’re not weird!” I hesitate for a moment. “Well, OK, Tarquin is a tiny bit weird. But Suze isn’t weird at all. She’s my best friend! You’ve met her!”
Danny raises an eyebrow. “So — couldn’t they find anyone else to marry except their own family? Was it like, ‘OK, Mom’s taken… my sister, too fat… the dog… mmm, don’t like the hair.’ ”
“Stop it!” I can’t help giggling. “They just suddenly realized they were meant for each other.”
“Like Harry Met Sally.” He puts on a film-trailer voice. “They were friends. They came from the same gene pool.”
“Danny…”
“OK.” He relents, and snips off the thread. “So, what about you and Luke?”
“What about us?”
“D’you think you’ll get married?”
“I… I have no idea!” I say, feeling a slight color coming to my cheeks. “I can’t say it’s ever crossed my mind.”
Which is completely true.
Well, OK. It’s not completely true. Maybe it has crossed my mind on the very odd occasion. Maybe just occasionally I’ve doodled “Becky Brandon” on my notepad to see what it looked like. And I might possibly have flicked through Martha Stewart Weddings once or twice. Just out of idle curiosity.
Perhaps, also, it’s occurred to me that Suze is getting married and she’s been going out with Tarquin for less time than me and Luke.
But you know. It’s not a big deal. I’m really not into weddings. In fact, if Luke asked me, I’d probably say no.
Well… OK. I’d probably say yes.
But the point is, it’s not going to happen. Luke doesn’t want to get married “for a very long time, if at all.” He said that in an interview in the Telegraph three years ago, which I found in his file of clippings. (I wasn’t poking about. I was looking for an elastic band.) The piece was mainly about his business, but they asked him about personal stuff too — and then they captioned his picture Brandon: marriage at the bottom of agenda.