‘You go first,’ she manages to say.
Twenty minutes later I’m washed and dressed and packed and ready to go and Emma… is still looking dead to the world, buried beneath sheets and pillows.
‘Obviously I don’t want to be rude,’ I tell her, ‘but also I do think you should consider getting up sooner rather than later.’
‘Nooooo,’ she moans.
I remember this. When we were together I had extensive experience of Emma in the mornings, and she was not good at getting out of bed. She did, though, love her breakfasts.
‘I think breakfast finishes at nine,’ I lie.
‘Really?’ she asks through the pillow.
‘Yup.’
‘Fuckssake.’ She sticks one foot out from under the sheets, which from memory is a very good sign.
‘Are you skipping breakfast?’ I ask, faux-innocent. I’m not ashamed to use a successful blackmail tool when I find one.
‘No.’ She stretches the foot. Then she flings an arm above the covers.
And that action is so familiar and was once so loved by me as being so very Emma, that all at once something inside me kindof breaks, and I have to swallow hard before I’m able to speak normally again.
‘So I guess you should…’ I prompt.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she grumbles.
And then all of a sudden she rolls over and sits up and looks at me. The intimacy of looking at her sleep-creased face and mussed hair and seeing the sleepy half-smile she directs at me nearly kills me.
‘Why don’t I wait outside while you get up?’ I check my watch. ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes?’
‘Twenty.’
I laugh. ‘Deal.’
Unless the past twelve years have changed her, Emma is not going to be ready in twenty minutes’ time.
Twenty-one minutes later I’m back at the room after a short stroll outside (the clear sky and daylight allowed me to see that we’re in a stunningly beautiful location) and Emma is… ready. And tapping her watch when I walk into the room.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘You didn’t think I’d be ready, did you?’
‘Nope,’ I admit.
‘Yeah, like you, I’m not exactly the same as I was when I was young.’
I don’t need to think about what sounded like an edge of bitterness to her words, because it probably isn’t surprising if she feels that way towards me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. We won’t be seeing each other after this, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
Emma greets those of our fellow guests who are currently at the breakfast table as though they’re long-lost best friends. There’s a lot of hugging, accompanied by Emma’s hair narrowly missing yoghurt pots and glasses of orange juice. This is what Emma does, I remember. Half the time if I asked her how she knew a very good friend, she’d have told me she met them on a train or in the road or at a gig. I’m pretty sure she met her friend Samira sitting on adjacent tables in a pizza place and they bonded over their mutual love of parmesan rice balls.
I’m having my hand shaken hard by several of the men, and it seems like I have several new best friends too.
I’m pretty sure that the second we leave, Emma’s going to want to text everyone from here and explain about the marriage lie because shewillend up staying in touch with one or two of them long term and she willnotwant to do that under false pretences.
It’s busy and there’s only one table laid for breakfast, so we end up squished on a bench at the end of it. (I walked to the other end with my plate but lovely Laura wouldn’t hear of newly-marrieds spending one meal seated so far from each other.)
I’m getting more used to being physically around Emma now, so I’m managing to be pretty grown-up about our thighs being pressed up against each other and the fact that I almost elbowed her in the boob when I was buttering some bread.
