‘Could be worse. At least it isn’t his ring finger.’
‘Oh, okay.’ Lily rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll tell Tess that and she’ll be fine about it.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. Chances are she will not be fine about it. Sorry you have to be the messenger. I have a photo of the finger that I can send to you, which you can show her if she wants to see it.’
‘Good idea. Shit, I’ve just seen the time. I’d better go now. I don’t want to be late for the nail appointment.’
Matt nodded. ‘Yeah, probably better not upset Tess any more than she’s going to be. I’ll send the photo to you in a minute.’
Lily was already hurrying back towards the hotel. She shot a smile at him over her shoulder, that got him somewhere deep inside – not right, surely – and said, ‘Bye.’
Within thirty seconds of sending the photo he got anOMG that’s HUGEtext from Lily, followed by a string of astonished, sad, horrified, shocked, hand and finger emojis, which made him smile, even though he probably shouldn’t. Lily had always loved an emoji.
Matt was finishing a post-massive-hangover suitably restrained lunch with Tom – who was not a natural at managing an out-of-action finger and was using his cutlery quite awkwardly – and a few of the other men, when he found that he had a missed call from Lily and a message saying that Tess would like to meet up with himnowin the café next to the hairdresser’s.
He looked at the coffee refill he’d just poured himself and sighed. He was going to have to go, clearly.
He chugged a couple of mouthfuls, stood up and told the others that he’d catch them later.
Lily, Aaliyah and Meg were all with Tess when he got there. Tess looked like she was spitting nails and the other three looked respectively concerned, irritable and resigned.
‘Morning,’ he said to all of them. ‘Congratulations on your hairdressing skills, Aaliyah.’
‘Thank you,’ Aaliyah preened. ‘I’m a genius with the scissors as it turns out.’
‘Yep, an amazing transformation,’ Matt said.
‘Aaliyah’s a miracle worker,’ Lily said. ‘I’msograteful.’
‘I’m actually tempted to let her loose on my hair.’ Meg patted her own intimidatingly sleek hairdo.
‘Great,’ said Tess, really loudly, ‘that Lily’s hair looks good for the photos, butwhat about Tom? How’s his finger? What happened exactly? Whose fault was it?’
‘Nobody’s fault,’ Matt said, alarmed. ‘Just one of those things. We’d probably all had a little bit too much to drink and he just over-gesticulated and hit his hand over-forcefully on the table. Just really bad luck.’
‘Can he use his hand properly? Is it going to affect anything?’ Tess’s eyes were over-bright and opened far too widely under raised eyebrows. It was a good interrogation technique; Matt was feeling guilty even though heknewthat none of this was remotely his fault and that Tess was his normally-very-fond, younger cousin.
‘No, it’ll be fine,’ he said.
‘I’d rather find outnowthan in the middle of the ceremony if he can’t use his hand properly,’ Tess said, her voice shrill.
‘Come here,’ Lily said, folding Tess into a hug. ‘It’s one finger. He probably won’t be able to use his hand exactly as normal but he’ll totally be able to use it. Of course he will. People break fingers all the time and they carry on with their everyday lives.’
‘They don’t normally break them straight before their weddings,’ Tess said.
‘Tess—’ Aaliyah was looking at her watch ‘—it’s going to be fine. We’ve still got quite a lot to do today. We should get going and stop worrying about the finger. Tom’s about to be your husband and he adores you and you adore him and the wedding’s going to be perfect and you’ll just laugh about his finger in years to come. It’ll just make the memories even more special.’ That was maybe a stretch.
‘Memories,’ said Tess on a wail and burst into tears. Yep, definitely a stretch. ‘Everything’s going to be a disaster. And that’s what we’ll remember.’
‘Tess—’ Aaliyah sounded like she was talking to a stroppy four-year-old ‘—stop crying. You’ll give yourself a headache.’
Tess just carried on weeping, her head on Lily’s shoulder.
‘And you’ll get red eyes,’ Lily said. ‘Think of the photos.’
Which was genius, because like magic Tess did an enormous sniff and stopped crying.
‘Matt probably doesn’t have too much to add?’ Lily said. ‘Like, I think we know all there is to know. So we could let him get on with his day now?’
