The Guest List(68)

He winks. The guests laugh.

‘First of all,’ he says, ‘it’s customary to tell the bridesmaids how beautiful they’re looking, isn’t it? We only have one, but I think you’ll agree she’s beautiful enough for seven. So a toast to Olivia! My new sister.’

The whole room turns towards me, raising their glasses. I can’t bear it. I look at the floor until the cheers die down and Will begins to speak again.

‘And next to my new wife. My beautiful, clever Jules …’ – the guests go wild again – ‘without you, life would be very dull indeed. Without you, there would be no joy, no love. You are my equal, my counterpart. So, please be upstanding to raise a toast to Jules!’

The guests all rise to their feet around me. ‘To Jules!’ they echo, grinning. They’re all smiling at Will, the women especially, their eyes not leaving his face. I know what they’re seeing. Will Slater: TV star. Husband, now, to my half-sister. Hero: look how he rescued me earlier, from the water. All-round good guy.

‘Do you know how Jules and I met?’ Will asks, when they’ve all sat down. ‘It was the work of Fate. She threw a party at the V&A museum, for The Download. I was just a plus-one: I had come along with a friend. Anyway, my friend had to leave the party and I was left behind. I was just deciding whether to leave myself. So it was a total spur-of-the-moment decision, to go back inside. So who knows what would have happened, if I hadn’t? Would we ever have met? So – even though Jules works so hard that I sometimes feel it’s the third person in our relationship, I’d also like to thank it for bringing us together. To The Download!’

The guests get to their feet. ‘To The Download!’ they parrot.

I didn’t meet Jules’s new fiancé until after they were engaged. She had been very hush-hush about him. It was like she hadn’t wanted to bring him home before she got the ring on her finger, in case we put him off. Maybe I sound like a bitch for saying that, but Jules has always been pretty ruthless about some things. I suppose I don’t blame her, exactly. Mum can be a bit much.

Jules being Jules, she’d stage-managed the whole thing. They were going to arrive at Mum’s for coffee, stay for half an hour, then we’d all head off to the River Café for lunch (their favourite place, Jules told us; she had booked). Her instructions to Mum and me were pretty clear: do not fuck this up for me.

I honestly didn’t mean to fuck it up, that first meeting with Jules’s fiancé. But when the two of them arrived, and they first walked in through the door, I had to run to the bathroom and throw up. Then I found I couldn’t move. I sank down next to the loo and sat on the floor for what felt like a very long time. I felt winded, like someone had punched me in the stomach.

I saw exactly how it had happened. He’d gone back into the V&A, after he put me in that taxi. There he’d met my sister, belle of the ball – so much better suited to him. Fate. And I remember what he’d said when we first met: ‘If you were ten years older, you’d be my ideal woman.’ I saw it all.

After a little while – because she had her important schedule, I suppose – Jules came upstairs. ‘Olivia,’ she said, ‘we need to go off for lunch now. Of course, I’d love you to join us, but if you’re not feeling well enough then, well, I suppose that’s fine.’ I could hear that it wasn’t fine, not at all, but that was the least of my worries.

Somehow I managed to find my voice. ‘I – I can’t come,’ I said, through the door. ‘I’m … ill.’ It seemed the easiest thing to do, right then, to go along with what she’d said. And anyway, I wasn’t feeling well – I was sick to my stomach, like I’d swallowed something poisonous.

I’ve thought about it since, though. What if right then I’d had the balls to open that door and tell her the truth, right then and there to her face? Rather than waiting and hiding, until it was way too late?

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Fine, then. I’m very sorry you can’t come.’ She didn’t sound in the least bit sorry. ‘I’m not going to make a big deal out of this now, Olivia. Maybe you really are ill. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But I’d really like your support in this. Mum told me you’ve had a tough time lately, and I’m sorry for that. But for once, I’d like you to try and be happy for me.’

I slumped down against the bathroom door and tried to keeping breathing.

He covered it so quickly, his own reaction. When he walked in through Mum’s door, that first time we ‘met’, there was maybe a split second of shock. One that maybe only I would have noticed. The flicker of an eyelid, a slight tightening of the jaw. Nothing more than that. He covered it up so well, he was so smooth.

So you see, I can’t think of him as Will. To me he’ll always be Steven. I hadn’t thought of that, when I renamed myself for the dating app. I hadn’t thought that he might have lied too.

At their engagement drinks, I decided I wouldn’t run away and hide like before. I’d spent the couple of months in between thinking of all the ways I could have reacted that would have been so much better, so much less pathetic, than scarpering and throwing up. I hadn’t done anything wrong, after all. This time I’d confront him. He was the one that had all the explaining to do, to me, to Jules. He was the one who should be feeling pretty fucking sick. I had let him win that first one. This time, I was going to show him.