The Vintage Teacup Club Read Free Page B

way that was both rough and tender, his stubble leaving patches that felt pleasantly raw – it was a bit like being mauled by a koala. Once I’d stopped laughing I held him close to calm him down again, and also because I loved taking in the smell of him, even in that old T-shirt – it said home to me in a way no other smell could. He was a little chunkier now than when we’d met, but it suited him. I kissed him on the mouth and pulled him close.
    Dan had made me smile every day since we first got together at uni. We’d both lived on campus back then and he and his friends used to play football on the grass in front of my flat in halls when I was writing essays. One July day, when the ball hit the window above my desk particularly hard, he’d come close to the glass, mouthed ‘sorry’, and smiled. As our eyes met my heart was thudding in my chest. I couldn’t focus at all on what I was writing for the rest of the afternoon. When his friends started getting their stuff togetherto go, he came back over to my window, gave me a wink, and stuck a piece of paper to the pane: ‘Dan’ it said, and then he’d written his phone number. After a few ciders at the union bar with my flatmate the following evening, I’d got up the courage to call him. And the rest? Well, the two of us have been hard to separate ever since.
    That night, as I got into bed beside him, placing the engagement ring we’d scoured Brighton’s South Lanes to find on the night table, I thought: men don’t always get it, do they? I mean yes, Dan wanted me to be his wife, but did he really get the importance of beautiful events, memories to treasure in forty years’ time? I wanted a perfect picture on my shelf to remember the perfect day. The details were part of creating that.
    I thought of the empty mantelpiece at Dad’s. As a little girl I used to pick flowers from the garden and put them in a little vase to fill the space where Mum and Dad’s wedding photo used to be. Dad said he wasn’t bitter about Mum leaving us, and my brother Chris had found his own way of coping. Me, I’d started putting the flowers there. I was six when she left, but over time my flower-loving heart hardened. It had toughened a little more each time I walked past other mothers waiting at the school gates; or when I’d had to summon up all my courage to buy tampons on my own that first time, my cheeks red hot. I had tried to understandMum’s reasons, but I never really managed – leaving just isn’t something mothers are meant to do.
    Anyway, I had my own life now, and mine and Dan’s wedding day was going to be just right. I’d make those photo-frame memories, even if I had to organise some of the things that mattered to me on my own.
    ‘Hey, dreamer,’ said Chloe, nudging me out of my thoughts and back to the reality of the office. ‘Enough in that kettle for one more?’
    ‘Hello!’ I said, giving her arm a squeeze. ‘For you, chief bridesmaid, anything,’ I laughed, getting another mug out of the cupboard.
    Seeing Chloe, even for an instant, was enough to light up the magazine office. When she’d come in on work experience two years ago, with a glint in her eye and brown ringlets springing in all directions, we’d become friends almost immediately. She’d been so enthusiastic about the work, taking on even mundane tasks with gusto. The long commute from her village to Charlesworth didn’t seem to bother her, even though she was getting paid nothing but expenses for the privilege. To look at her bright eyes after the MD finally offered her a paid role you’d have thought she was coming to work at
Vogue
. Perhaps inevitably, the scales had fallenfrom her eyes a little since then.
    ‘How’s your day going, Chlo?’ I asked as I filled her cup.
    Her wide, mascaraed eyes met mine – a flash of barely concealed irritation there. ‘Slow start today … Gary’s got me working out a spreadsheet of his expenses that is taking an age. He said he needs it,