The Guest List(70)

I wonder if I imagined the emphasis on the last word, spoken as though it were a proper noun. I remember the game they told us about, at dinner last night. That was called Survival, wasn’t it?

‘And let me tell you,’ Johnno goes on. ‘We have got into our fair share of shit over the years. I’m talking about the Trevellyan’s days in particular. There were some dark times. There were some mental times. Sometimes it felt like it was us versus the rest of the world.’ He looks over at Will. ‘Didn’t it?’

Will nods, smiles.

There’s something a bit strange about Johnno’s tone. There’s a dangerous edge, a sense that he could do or say anything and take it all completely off the rails. I look around the other tables, I wonder if the other guests are sensing it too. The room has certainly gone a little quiet, as though everyone is holding their breath.

‘That’s the thing about a best mate, isn’t it?’ Johnno says. ‘They’ve always got your back.’

I feel like I’m watching a glass teeter on the edge of a table, unable to do anything about it, waiting for it to shatter. I glance over at Jules and wince. Her mouth is set in a grim line. She looks as though she’s waiting for this to all be over.

‘And look at this.’ Johnno gestures to himself. ‘I’m a fat fucking slob in a too-tight suit. Oh,’ he turns to Will, ‘you know how I said I’d forgotten my suit? Yeah, there’s a little story behind that one.’ He swivels round to face us, the audience.

‘So. Here’s the truth – the honest truth. There was never any suit. Or … there was a suit, then there wasn’t. See, at the beginning, I thought Will might get it for me. I don’t know much about these things, but I’m pretty sure that happens with bridesmaids’ dresses, doesn’t it?’

He looks enquiringly at us all. No one answers. There’s a hush in the marquee now – even Peter Ramsay next to me has stopped jiggling his leg up and down.

‘Doesn’t the bride buy them?’ Johnno asks us. ‘It’s the rule, isn’t it? You’re making someone wear the fucking thing. It’s not like it’s their choice. And old Will here especially wanted me to have a suit from Paul Smith, nothing less would do.’

He’s getting into the swing of things now. He’s striding back and forth in front of us like a comedian at an open mic night.

‘Anyway … so we’re standing in the shop and I see the label and I think to myself – bloody hell, he’s being generous. Eight hundred quid. It’s the sort of suit that gets you laid, right? But for eight hundred quid? Better to pay to get laid. Like, what use do I have in my life for an eight hundred quid suit? It’s not exactly like I’ve got some fancy do to attend every couple of weeks. Still, I thought. If that’s what he wants me to wear, who am I to argue?’

I glance towards Will. He’s smiling, but there’s a strained look to it.

‘But then,’ Johnno says, ‘there’s this awkward moment by the till, when he sort of stands aside and lets me get on with it. I spend the whole time praying it goes through on my credit card. Total fucking miracle it did, to be perfectly honest. And he stands there, smiling the whole time. Like he’d really bought it for me. Like I should turn round and thank him.’

‘Shit’s just got real,’ Peter Ramsay whispers.

‘So, the next day, I returned the suit. Obviously I wasn’t going to tell Will all this. So you see I concocted this whole plan, way before I got here, that I’d pretend I’d left it at home. They couldn’t make me go all the way back to Blighty to get it, could they? And thank Christ I live in the middle of nowhere so that none of you lot could “kindly offer” to go and get it for me – as that would have landed me in hot water, ha ha!’

‘Is this meant to be funny?’ a woman across from me asks.

‘Eight hundred quid for a suit,’ Johnno says. ‘Eight hundred. Because it’s got some random bloke’s name stitched inside the jacket? I’d have had to sell a fucking kidney. I’d have had to sell this shit,’ he runs his hands down his body, lasciviously, to a few half-hearted catcalls, ‘on the street. And you know there’s only limited interest in fat hairy slobs in their mid-thirties.’ He gives a big, wild roar of a laugh.

Following suit – like they’ve been given their cue – some of the audience laugh with him. They’re laughs of relief, like the laughs of people who have been holding their breath.

‘I mean,’ Johnno says, not done. ‘He could have bought me the suit, couldn’t he? It’s not like he’s not loaded, is it? Mainly thanks to you, Jules love. But he’s a stingy bastard. I say that, of course, with all my love.’ He pretends to flutter his eyelashes at Will in a weird, camp parody.

Will’s not smiling any more. I can’t even bring myself to look at Jules’s expression. I feel like I shouldn’t watch; this is not all that different to that horrible, dark compulsion you have to look at the scene of a car crash.

‘Anyway,’ Johnno says. ‘Whatever. He lent me his spare, no questions asked. That’s stand-up bloke behaviour, isn’t it? Though I have to warn you, mate’ – he stretches, and the jacket strains against the button holding it closed – ‘it may never be the same again.’ He turns to face all of us again. ‘But that’s the thing about a best mate, isn’t it? They’ve always got your back. He might be a tightwad. But I know he’s always been there for me.’