Page 27 of Mad About You

‘Sam?!’

He stopped, mouth slightly open.

‘Wait … don’t tell me! Harriet?’ he said, equally startled.

‘Yes!’ Harriet was touched the best man from the wedding-that-wasn’t remembered her. They both broke into broad smiles. She supposed although their encounter was brief, it had been a pretty memorable occasion.

Cal, behind them, said: ‘You two know each other?’

‘We met at a wedding. Sam was the best man,’ Harriet said, joyfully. She’d been so adrift in the world, moments ago, and here she was with an instant reference point. She’d really warmed to Sam. ‘It was quite an experience, that one.’

The anticipated curiosity from Cal was not forthcoming. Instead, the three of them stared at one another in turn, ina suddenly deathly silence. Sam studiously inspected his socks-with-pool-slides-clad feet. Cal looked at Harriet like he’d seen her drown a kitten in a tin of paint.

‘Er, Cal was there too,’ Sam said. ‘Fora bit…’

‘Oh, were you …?’ Harriet trailed off.

She met Cal’s heavy gaze, from under his brow. Oh. Fuck. No.What?WHAT?

Thiswas the bastard of myth and legend, made flesh? CAL was the runaway groom?!

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‘Why … were you there?’ Cal said, in a strangled way that suggested he’d been desperately trying to find the right formulation of words for what ought to be a banal inquiry.

‘I was the photographer.’

‘You’re a wedding photographer?’

‘Yes.’

‘You told me you were a photographer,’ Cal said.

‘I am. I do a lot of weddings.’

‘You didn’t know this was Harriet from your … from the wedding?’ Sam said, in wonder, and Cal looked at him like he was now suppressing a scream.

‘No. We’ve not met before,’ Cal said, with some effort. ‘We’ve only spoken on the phone, last week, about the spare room.’

There followed a conversational abyss, during which none of them could find a thing to say to make it less excruciating. A dog barked in the distance and an ice cream van chimed, on an otherwise normal summer’s day.

Coincidences were usually casually remarkable things, not cataclysmically awkward. Harriet and Cal were trying not tomeet each other’s eyes while they both internally wailed WHAT ARE THE FUCKING CHANCES?!

However, this mess was down to Cal, Harriet told herself, never mind ‘you said you were a photographer’. Harriet would have Cal’s forename on a sodding schedule somewhere on her laptop, but only Kristina’s had felt relevant. A bride who took up a lot of the acreage of a wedding could sometimes cast the groom in the shade. Once the job was cancelled, Harriet had no reason to revisit her notes. The precipitous nature of their arrangement, not to mention his precipitous departure from his own wedding day: one hundred per cent on Cal Clarke.

‘Well. This feels like something we shouldn’t discuss ever again!’ said Sam, eventually.

Harriet forced a pained smile, and Cal, scowling in explicit discomfort, was so preoccupied that he couldn’t even manage that.

As Cal, monosyllabic, showed her around the kitchen and garden, Harriet’s brain whirred. Her first instinct was what Jon would call ‘a field triage manoeuvre’ – say it was an unfortunate mistake, she’d not bother bringing her things through the door, such is life, regretful face-pulling all round. She knew if she were better at difficult conversations, someone like Lorna for example, that’s exactly what she’d do.

Harriet also didn’t much want to be a traitor to her sex by paying rent to the Gone Groom of folklore – if he could treat his bride like that, what chance did anyone else have? She was equally certain he didn’t want a reminder of that day cohabiting his property, judging him in her misandrist silence while they cooked their pasta and pesto of an evening.

Nevertheless, as she worded this merciful no contest, amicable divorce between them in her head, she realised that she wanted to die at the thought of pulling back up in Jon’s driveway, begging his pardon while she searched for a few more weeks. Jon would make a meal of it, and both Lorna and Roxy only had sofas to offer. Harriet was aged thirty-four, with a VW Golf brimful of her possessions. She couldn’t quite bring herself to doss like a student with a bivvy bag.

Unless Cal told her to leave at once – and though he appeared deeply afflicted by the turn of events, it didn’t feel as if he was going to go that far – the better approach was to move in and immediately start looking for an alternative. She had a feeling Cal would gladly waive the contract breach.

‘How about we give you a hand in with your stuff?’ Sam said as the tour ended, and Harriet felt she had to say a graceful thank you even though she cringed at how paltry her belongings were, and the fact they were presented as refuse.

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