Evie closed her eyes while the tiles of the loo cubicle spun round and round her and her stomach heaved. The tiles were cream, she knew that, but when they were spinning they got a lot darker. Weird.
‘You okay?’ Sasha rubbed her back and Evie’s stomach heaved again and she threw up some more. Sasha looked into the loo. ‘Bile. I think that’s good news. I think your stomach’s pretty much empty now. I think you might be okay to sip some water soon.’
Evie turned her head, slowly, because fast movement wasn’t good, and did her best to smile at Sasha. ‘Thank you so much for being with me here. This would be a lot worse without you. Sorry you aren’t out there with everyone else.’ Oh no. Sashashouldbe out there with everyone else. ‘You should go and dance again. I’m ruining your evening.’
‘You aren’t ruining my evening. This is nice.’
‘This is not nice.’ The underneath of the toilet bowl definitely hadn’t seen any form of cleaning product recently. ‘I want to get some Marigolds on and chuck some bleach around.’
Sasha sniggered. ‘I love you, Evie Green. I love all your tidiness and the way you like everything to be so perfect. Sorry about what I said about Euan and sorry for asking you about Dan. Obviously Euan’s great and obviously you don’t have a thing for Dan. And you’re bringing Euan to Lucie’s wedding and Dan’s bringing his latest girlfriend. Another new one. Ignore what I said. It was just the drink talking.’
Evie shook her head, slowly, waited for her stomach to settle, and said, ‘You were kind of right.’ It felt mean to be lying to Sasha, who really was an amazing friend. ‘Euan is a bit boring.’
‘Oh, Evie, I’m even more sorry now.’ Sasha took some loo paper and folded it round some of Evie’s hair and pulled gently. ‘Vomit in your hair. I wasn’t holding it properly. Sorry. Anyway. I don’t think we should talk about this now. But I would say that I don’t believe you need boring and I don’t believe you should settle for boring. Maybe you needsensible, orsteadyordependable, but you do not need boring. You’re under-selling yourself. Anyway. When you’re ready, let’s get a taxi and go home. You should maybe wash your hair before you go to bed. Or wash your pillowcase in the morning. Maybe both.’
* * *
Sitting in the Melting Bishop village church a fortnight later, Evie looked over her shoulder with everyone else to see Lucie as she walked sedately down the aisle on her father Robert’s arm, her bridesmaids Sasha, Tara and Nags behind her. Lucie looked stunning, and a completely different woman from the penis-accessory-holding, boobs-spilling-out-of-tiny-top, cackling hen she’d been two weeks ago. The bridesmaids also looked beautiful, particularly Sasha. Evie beamed at her best friend as they all glided past the end of her pew.
Euan reached for Evie’s hand with his own as the wedding party took up their position at the front of the church. Evie tried not to frown. Lucie had gone for a big wedding, with a lot of family and local friends present. There were a lot of people here that Evie knew very well and liked a lot. She loved the village. She loved the village church, beautifully decorated today with autumn foliage. And, if she was honest, she wanted to enjoy it all without being distracted by Euan’s presence. He was doing some – slightly annoying – finger rubbing. She was pretty sure that he thought it was erotic, because he usually finger-rubbed at the end of an evening when she was going back to his and it looked like sex was on the cards. Right now, it was a struggle not to slap his fingers away.
Euan whispered something in her ear that she didn’t catch. Simultaneously, the vicar started talking. Evie hadn’t been to that many weddings in recent years, since her mum had stopped getting married – she’d had three short-lived marriages when Evie was at school – and she wanted to hear what the vicar had to say. And this was a nice traditional one and a relative biggie: someone sheknew, who she’d known most of her life, her best friend’s older sister, was getting married, and hopefully she was going to stay married a lot longer than Evie’s mum used to.
She edged away from Euan so that she could hear the vicar better. He edged after her. She edged more. He followed. Evie gave up and stayed put and Euan spoke in her ear again.
‘I can imagine us at the altar maybe next year or the year after,’ he said.
Evie froze. What? It sounded almost like he wasproposing. They’d only been going out for just over a year. And no-one said things like this in the middle of someoneelse’swedding.
‘Will you marry me?’ he whispered. Good heavens.
Evie shot her head round to look at him and the top left of her forehead connected hard with his chin.
‘Ow,’ she said.
‘Umph,’ Euan said.
Both really loudly.
A lot of people turned to look at them.
Evie screwed her face up. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.
Oh, for God’s sake. Euan was mumbling something else now. Yes, it was lovely and very kind of him to have proposed, very flattering, yes, buthonestly. What was wrong with him? No-one proposed in the middle of a wedding service and the way he was carrying on everyone was going to be staring athimwhen their attention should be focused on the actual ceremony. Her head hurt too but she wasn’t mumbling.
‘What?’ she said out of the side of her mouth, staring straight ahead, and trying not to hissShut up.
‘Blood,’ he said, his consonants very dulled.
Evie turned with reluctance to look at him. Yep, quite a lot of blood actually, dripping out of his mouth and onto his pristine white shirt and pale-yellow silk with little foxes – not very nice actually; the foxes looked evil – tie.
‘Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,’ she said.
He opened his mouth and showed her more blood and his tongue, which looked almost bitten-through, and she nearly gagged.
She shouldn’t have gagged. It looked awful, so painful. Poor Euan.
She took tissues out of her handbag – she’d taken to carrying all sorts in there because with a two-year-old in the family you never knew what might happen and her mum usually forgot practical stuff – and passed them to him. He pressed them to his mouth and made a kind ofeechsound, very quietly but quite persistently. Not surprising; it must besosore. She put her hand on his knee and squeezed, hoping that that might feel comforting.
