Page 49 of Always, in December

When she reached the table, Erin’s full, sexy lips quirked into a smile when she saw Josie, though she only looked mildly surprised to see her here – or else she was better at hiding it than Josie. ‘Hi all,’ she said as she took her seat, right next to Josie. ‘I’m Erin.’ Unlike Graeme’s, Erin’s accent was all lilting and musical, and a quick glance at Jess and Tom told Josie that they were having the exact same thoughts that Josie had first had when she’d met Erin in New York – literally no one would be able to look at this woman and not think she was sexy. Graeme was staring at her, his glass of champagne halfway to his mouth, and Josie swore she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d licked his lips. She cringed internally, trying not to let it show on her face.

‘My plus one’s running a little late,’ Erin said, indicating the empty seat. She shot a small smile at Josie, tilted her head. How could even that action just exude class? ‘Nice to see you again.’

Josie forced out the words, ‘You too,’ at the same time as Tom grumbled, ‘See, she’s allowed a plus one.’

Graeme immediately engaged Erin in conversation, which Josie was thankful for, because it meant all she had to do was ‘mmm’ in agreement occasionally, whilst trying both not to study Erin and not to look around the room, waiting for her plus one’s imminent arrival. Her body felt twitchy, unable to concentrate on anything, and she didn’t realise she’d drunk a full glass of champagne until the waiter came round to top her up. The starters – asparagus and poached egg for the vegetarians, asparagus wrapped in Parma ham for the omnivores – were coming out and they were all talking about how they knew the bride and groom – Erin was one of John’s best friends from school, apparently – by the time Erin’s plus one arrived.

And there he was.

Max.

Max, of all bloody people, was here, at her friend’s wedding. Here with his drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend, while she was so completely and obviously single, sat next to John’s fat uncle. She wanted to slam her head down on the table. She wanted to get up and leave, so she didn’t have to face him, so she didn’t have to smile and pretend that she was totally over him, that she had literally not given him a moment’s thought since she’d bumped into him in New York, that of course he’d had nothing to do with why she’d come home again.

But she couldn’t do either of those things. So instead all she could do was watch as he crossed the room towards them, looking uncharacteristically flustered, auburn hair a little messed up, the cuffs of his dark grey shirt not done up properly, his tie on a little wonky. He was thinner than when she’d last seen him, she thought, and his face was a little pale, like he could do with a good night’s sleep, but other than that he looked just as handsome as ever, still moving with the long stride that she remembered so well.

‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t we?’ Erin hissed as he sat down.

Max mumbled his apologies, straightened his tie – waving away Erin’s help – then looked over across the table, directly at Josie. Their eyes held, and she felt her heart jolt, even as she refused to look away, refused to let on that she was thrown by it. The rest of the table could have been utterly silent or in full conversational flow, for all she knew in that moment.

Max gave her a small nod, then cleared his throat. ‘Hi,’ he said simply. He didn’t look surprised enough to see her here, she thought bitterly. He was sitting straight, perhaps a little tense, but his gaze was measured on hers. Maybe he’d known she would be here, she thought, given whose wedding it was, whereas she could have had no idea. He’d met Laura and John, hadn’t he? He would have known that she must be coming to Laura’s wedding.

Josie nodded back. ‘Hey.’ Ok, good, her voice sounded even, casual. She took another sip of her champagne, trying to come to terms with the slight stumble of her heart, the automatic flare of her pulse against her wrist. Nearly five months since she’d left him in that Brooklyn gallery and she’d neither seen nor heard from him since – nor, to be fair, had she tried to get in touch herself. Why would she? They’d both been in relationships and even if hers had crashed and burned, his, apparently, had not.

Josie turned to Graeme, angling herself away from Erin and Max. Jess, legend that she was, had clearly picked up some sort of vibe, because she joined in the conversation with Graeme, taking over and merrily chatting away about what her job at Peacock’s entailed, ignoring Graeme’s interjections and allowing Josie to just ‘hmm’ occasionally, whilst trying not to glance over her shoulder, not to listen in to what Tom, Max and Erin were talking about. God, why the hell couldn’t Bia have been here tonight? Josie felt her head throb and set her champagne aside, picking up her sparkling water instead.

As the starters were cleared away, Laura got to her feet in the middle of the long bench table, and everything went quiet. She smiled serenely around the room. ‘Thanks, everyone. As you all know, the main speeches are tomorrow, but it’s my turn this evening. I won’t be saying a word tomorrow, because my only job then is to look beautiful.’ A soft hum of laughter rippled across the room. ‘I just want to thank you all for being here, and for my half of you, thanks for trekking all the way to Scotland.’ She carried on with the thanks, made a few jokes, told of how she’d first met John at an event he was writing up for an online culture site. Her voice was smooth and confident, her posture relaxed – she’d always been good at public speaking, Josie remembered. If she’d ever been nervous about it, she’d never let on.

John was staring at her adoringly, and Josie tried to ignore the little wrench in her stomach at the sight of them. She didn’t think Oliver had ever looked at her quite like that. She also tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed the way Max kept glancing at her, rather than his girlfriend, and the way it was making heat travel along her skin, as Laura raised a toast to the love of her life.

They all clinked glasses, smiling, and clapped as Laura sat down. Josie wondered if Laura had known that Max would be here – whether she even remembered Max from the Christmas party. It wasn’t like she could ask anyway – Laura had far more important things to focus on right now.

Erin started up a conversation around the whole table as waiters came round, offering them red or white wine, talking about the castle and its architectural history. Graeme was stating that all of them knew nothing, that given he had a good twenty years on each and every one of them – Josie thought a little more – he had the authority on the history of the place, like being older automatically meant you became more knowledgeable on everything. Max and Erin were bantering, arguing over one of the structures in the castle in an easy, friendly way, laughing at each other over having done the same research. So, she was an architect. Of course she bloody was. Smart and sexy, the jackpot. Josie took a sip of water, erring on the side of safety for this first evening – she didn’t want to get drunk and say something stupid. She wasn’t bitter. She wasn’t. She also wasn’t concentrating on the conversation, so that when Erin asked, ‘What about you, Josie?’ in an overly polite way, all she could say was, ‘Huh?’

Max’s attention had shot to her, almost like Erin addressing her had given him permission to look at her, and she couldn’t help the quick glance back, even as she flexed her fingers on her glass. ‘What do you think?’ Erin asked, with a small head tilt. ‘Edinburgh or London in terms of best buildings?’

She thought of Max admiring the architecture of Battersea Arts Centre and forced the memory quickly aside, looking very deliberately at Erin and not at him. ‘Edinburgh,’ she said, more confidently than she really should, given her relative lack of knowledge of what made a ‘good’ building. ‘Pretty’ was more what she was going for here. ‘I mean, not that I’ve seen enough of Edinburgh to be sure of that,’ she added, partly because she’d seen Erin’s red lips open, and wanted to cut her off in case she was thinking of arguing. ‘And London is incredible, obviously, and you’ve got all the iconic buildings there. But, well, I love the cobbled streets here, the way the city feels like it’s its own little world – and the buildings are partly what makes that, right?’

She felt Max’s gaze burning the side of her face as she spoke. He shouldn’t do that. It wasn’t fair for him to look at her like that with his girlfriend sat right next to him.

Tom raised his eyebrows; Graeme grunted, like what she’d said had no value, while Jess was busy trying to get the waiter’s attention for more wine. Erin paused, then shrugged. ‘Well,’ she said, glancing at Max from under long, full lashes. ‘Just because one person agrees with you, doesn’t mean you’re right.’

Because of how they were sitting, Josie managed to avoid speaking to Max directly throughout the whole dinner, forcing herself to engage Graeme in more conversation than she would have liked, just so that there weren’t any silences that had to be filled. She couldn’t help comparing her and Max’s situations – he chatting happily with Erin while she was stuck talking to Graeme – even as she told herself not to, that there was no point to it. She excused herself as soon as she feasibly could, right after the Eton Mess dessert. She timed it deliberately while Max was in the toilet so she didn’t have to actively say goodbye, and ignored Jess’s and Tom’s pleas to stay up for ‘just a few’ shots.

‘I want to be on form for tomorrow,’ she insisted. ‘And you two should think about that too,’ she said, with a semi-scolding look at them both. ‘Laura will notice if anyone’s hungover.’

They descended into grumbles, but she could see from the look they gave each other that her comment had hit home. Erin gave her a distant little smile, nodded in a kind of regal way when she said goodbye. Josie made herself smile back, determined to be on her best behaviour. It wasn’t Erin’s fault, after all, that her boyfriend had had a brief fling with Josie nine months ago now. Wasn’t Erin’s fault that seeing him had made Josie realise that she still couldn’t quite get over him, get over the way he’d ended it. But what she could do, she told herself firmly, was accept how things were now. She could and would accept that he’d well and truly moved on, that he was with someone else now. She had to.

Chapter Eighteen

Laura and John stood facing each other, holding hands against the backdrop of the castle wall, the tops of trees just visible above it, their leaves a mix of green and golden-red, with a turret to their left. The soft sound of water running through the stone fountain, three tiers with four white horses at the bottom, whispered in the background. Josie could almost feel the history of the place, lives gone past colliding with the present in this stone courtyard. Her hands were clasped together, a lump in her throat as she watched the two of them, so complete in that moment, unconcerned about the two hundred people watching them.

Laura looked incredible – a dress of cascading white, tucked in all the right places, her hair pinned up at the back in curls, blue and white flowers in amongst the gold. She was like a real-life princess, getting ready to rule her castle. She’d clearly known what she’d wanted for this moment, and had gone for it. John was in a kilt, a smart black jacket on top, looking like something out of Outlander. And the weather, as promised, was holding, the sun warm enough that they didn’t need jackets to sit outside. The photos of this moment were going to be incredible, Josie thought.

Bia was sitting on her left, her hair cut into a short, straight bob – she’d had to have it professionally straightened to achieve that – and now a dark purply-brown colour, and Jess and Tom were on Josie’s right. Max was there, somewhere, with his perfect girlfriend, but she hadn’t seen either of them, had deliberately not looked. At the end of the ceremony, when John and Laura kissed, Josie could do nothing to stop the tears from escaping, cutting twin paths through her carefully applied makeup. She let out a laughing sob when she saw Bia was crying too, her eyeliner – purple to match her hair – slightly smudged, and Bia grinned back sort of guiltily. Josie supposed it was impossible, unless you had a heart to match the stone wall, not to get emotional in this kind of atmosphere.

When the ceremony was finished, Laura and John, along with the rest of the wedding party, were taken away by the photographer, presumably to do some epic shots around the castle grounds, and the spectators were ushered to the front of the castle for the drinks reception on the lawn.

‘Oh my God!’ Bia beamed around when they got to the lawn, both her and Josie’s heels – Bia’s a good two inches higher than Josie’s – sinking into soft ground. ‘There are stands, Jose!’ Well, she was right, Josie thought, you had to give her that. There were indeed various stands along the gravel in front of the castle, with different options for drinks – gin, whisky, something elderflower, from what Josie could tell. Bia and Josie split up from Tom and Jess to get theirs – Tom braving the whisky, Jess opting for Pimm’s (‘Though it doesn’t feel very Scottish, does it?’) and Josie and Bia going for a gin.