Page 24 of The Wedding Cake
“Yeah,” added Kyle, snapping Tim out of his daydream. “We’re worried.”
“But I thought we’d covered the best man thing? I can’t possibly choose between the three of you, and I can’t possibly ask all three of you. When I suggested tossing a coin for it, none of you were game. It’s too late now. Everything’s set in stone with the ceremony and seating. Of course I’d have asked my brother if things were different, but they’re not, so it’s on with the show.”
“No, Squirrel. This hasn’t got anything to do with best man duties.” Kyle took a swift slurp of his drink.
“Oh, mate, I know you’re a nervous flyer,” said Tim. It was true. Kyle had never contemplated long haul, and would travel like BA Baracus from the A-Team in the belly of the aircraft, given half the chance – and if it were safe to do so. “But it’s only a couple of hours on the plane and then you’ll be relaxing in some proper blissed-out surroundings, trust me.”
“We have been to Spain before. We do know what to expect.” Nath tutted, and Tim acknowledged that he totally deserved the dirty look, given that he and the lads had indeed holidayed in Benidorm, Magaluf and the Canary Islands together over the years. “And it’s not Kyle we’re concerned about, buddy.” Nath folded his arms and looked Tim in the eye. “Take this as a last minute pep talk from the three of us: Piper’s got you so firmly under the thumb that you’re in danger of losing what little is left of your freedom once you become man and wife.” Josh and Kyle, seated either side of Nath at the boys’ local pub on the outskirts of Manchester, nodded their heads in unison, grim expressions on their faces, mouths pressed into lines.
“What? Where’s all this come from?” Tim laughed nervously, hugging his pint closer to him. Okay, now he was terrified they would tie him to a lamppostandshave his eyebrows off – to prevent him from going through with the wedding. “Listen, I appreciate your concern, lads. But you’re so far off the mark,” Tim lied. They really weren’t. “Everything is sweet between me and Piper. I can’t wait to marry her and there’s no way she’s in charge of every aspect of my life. Can you imagine me letting that happen?”
“C’mon, pal. This is us you’re talking to… and yes, we flaming well can imagine it happening, because it already is. You just can’t see it.” Nath sighed. “You’ve always been this way with the ladies in your life. You’re too kind, that’s your trouble. You’re like this witheverybody, putting other people’s happiness first and caving in to make life easier for those around you. We’ve been friends since we were knee-high to grasshoppers, to borrow the phrase your mam always uses, and you haven’t changed a bit.”
“Or, to throw another idiom into the mix: we can read you like aSmash Hitsmagazine and it’s time to look out fornumber onea bit more,” Josh chipped in, looking proud of himself for his contribution, a reasonable pun if you were of a certain age and used to read said music magazine.
“Basically, you’re a peacemaker,” added Kyle. “You always have been. Ever since the day Kirstie Wilkins brought that giant bag of jelly babies into Miss Mitchell’s class on her birthday and civil war broke out. You went without your own share back then, as I recall – all to pacify Gary Wheat and to stop him from smacking Pete De Camps in the face for taking too many sweets.”
Tim felt like a spectator at a tennis match, watching the banter go back and forth like a ball. The memory rang a brief bell but Tim couldn’t believe it was so clear for his friends. Had they been taking notes on his behaviour all his life? Now he was feeling paranoid.
“All right, Josh and all right, Kyle! Did we or did we not agree thatI’d be the one doing the talkingso we could stick to the point?” Nath took command of the conversation once again and cleared his throat to continue.
Josh pretended to pull a zip across his mouth. Kyle went back to slurping at his drink.
“We might have stood by and watched you put your own life on hold in your twenties when Brittany and Andy scarpered, leaving you to care for your mam and help your dad out … but we’d never forgive ourselves if we didn’t speak up before you potentially make the biggest mistake of your life. It’s not too late to walk away from Piper. Nip things in the bud now before it gets harder to break it off and she changes you beyond recognition – or worse: before she completely destroys you. She’s not the one. You know it and we know it. And there… I’ve said it on behalf of all of us and you’ll probably never speak to me again. But that’s the risk I needed to take. That’s what friends do.”
Nath knocked back a third of his pint in one go and let out a resounding gasp.
Silence fell on the table, nobody knowing quite where to look, until they let the giant TV screen and its current football match reel them back in.
“Cheers for the unsolicited lecture but I’ve made my bed and now I’m going to have to lie in it.” Tim then muttered, flipping one beer mat with another as if he was playing a game of tiddlywinks. “Even if I am sleeping with the enemy.”
“What the fuck?” said Nath, in such a loud voice that drinkers’ heads turned at other tables, wondering if a goal had been scored by the opposition and they’d somehow missed it. “Has she done the dirty on you or something?” he whispered, eyes wide with disbelief.
Little did they know – and little would they know. If Tim couldn’t tell a non-judgemental counsellor what had been going on, then he sure as hell couldn’t tell his opinionated friends.
“Tim?” said Kyle, leaning over the table to give him a much-needed shake.
“Nah, of course not. I’m pulling your leg!”
Tim let out a hearty chuckle, put on his best fake smile and berated himself for letting any of that not-so-little-lot slip out.What was the matter with him?He’d already psyched himself up mentally, deciding that the path of action was straight ahead, hoping that things would get better of their own accord once he and Piper had exchanged their vows. Everyone made the mistake of thinking married life would be a bed of roses. At least this way Tim was under no illusion about the thorns that lay in wait. Hopefully this was his and Piper’s one rough patch and they’d simply got it out of the way before they had rings on their fingers. He would not be tempted left, right or backwards (to thoughts of Freya).
Which was slightly contrary to the advice the counsellor gave him. But what did she know? Could she look into a crystal ball and tell Tim this wouldn’t happen again if he walked away and ended up in another relationship?Exactly.And that’s why the only walking Tim had done was to take himselfoutof his second counselling session once the seemingly ‘trending’ theme of people pleasing (oh, and Middle Child Syndrome) came up. He’d not set foot in that supposedly calming blue- and green-painted office since. Obviously he’d done the decent thing and waited until the very end of session two, not wanting to cause a scene as he sat opposite Jacqui on the comfy cream couch behind the shield of the fluffy cushions (well, there were too many on the seat and he could hardly throw them on the floor), patiently biding his time with nods and smiles of agreement as she did most of the talking.
Now his friends, too, were suggesting he was too easy-going for his own good! And what was with the random childhood references from the classroom? Tim didn’t like it one bit. Everyone was making him sound like a doormat, the kind of man who’d be knocked down by a gust of wind. It wasn’t true. He was realistic, that was all. Especially on the subject of romance. Prior to Piper, every relationship he’d had had felt untenable in the long-term. Mostly the women were too worldly-wise and intelligent for him. Tim might have cleared hurdles faster than all of them on an athletics track but he couldn’t keep up with the leaps they’d made in their professional lives – from Penny the hedge fund manager (whose name could not have been more apt), to Beata the digital marketer, and Kim the trainee lawyer. Whilst none of them had voiced their opinions on the slow development of his career path post-uni, he never felt he could hold his own with their lofty goals so he’d let the relationships fizzle out once the honeymoon period was over, and gracefully accepted when his girlfriends had, one by one, called it a day.
“Life’s not all fairytales,” his granddad had said to him as he lay in bed, dying of Parkinson’s, offering up pearls of wisdom to the then twelve-year-old Tim whilst everyone else was out of earshot. It was strange how those words had come to him in a flashback the day he’d started the therapy sessions. “You will never have everything perfect so don’t waste your time trying to force anything. Not in work, family or love. Ha, definitely not love.” Young Tim had looked on inquisitively at the time, unsure as to whether Grandad Nutkins was talking to him straight, or the morphine had led to delirium. “After your grandma’s affair I was tempted to leave her and find myself another woman, but what was the point? It’s better the devil you know than getting carried away with fanciful ideas. So long as you can keep up the facade of a happy marriage; there’s food on the table, a roof over your heads, clothes on your back, and a little left over to play the lottery and treat yourselves to fish and chips of a weekend, no bugger is ever any the wiser and you rub along okay. It’s a lot less hassle that way, son. Take it from me.”
Grandma Nutkins playing the field had been news to Tim! Why hadn’t his parents told him about this? And how old was she when the hanky panky happened? Maybe they didn’t even know because her affair had gone on after Tim’s dad had flown the nest? Subconsciously, Tim supposed he had always let his grandad’s final piece of advice guide him. How could he not? It seemed pretty significant that he should tell his grandson all of this the day before he passed away. As if the words had come from his soul.
The pub crowd roared, snapping Tim back to his current coordinates. Tim’s friends joined in, jumping to their feet since Manchester United had scored the equaliser in their away game. Tim belatedly and half-heartedly joined them, putting on his own facade of happiness. Nath could piss off with his path of least resistance snub and his agony uncle advice. Tim’s friend had never made it as far down the relationship path as him. What the hell did he know anyway? In fact, Tim had never met anybody quite so choosy when it came to the opposite sex.
At the end of the day, Tim’s friends, and Jacqui the know-it-all counsellor, could think what they liked. Because Tim had done some thinking of his own and his mind was made up. He and Piper would work it out. They had to. Not because he was living in denial, believing she loved him unconditionally and would stay faithful to him until the end of time. He knew the score on that front. Maybe he was doomed from the start and it ran in the blood? Obviously it had skipped a generation with his parents but Brittany and Andy, to the best of his knowledge, had experienced little luck in love. And so it probably was true that Tim’s fiancée would constantly be on the lookout for better. But he accepted that. Like his granddad said, you had to know what you were dealing with. That way life couldn’t deliver any surprises. His friends were right about one thing: he’d spent his late teens and early twenties in a constant flux of upheaval, waiting for dreaded phone calls about his mam’s deteriorating condition in those first few weeks after the fall, frantically trying to get hold of Brittany so he could offload, fruitlessly trying to track down the errant Andy. Everything merging into one. The anxiety had been unbearable at times. But how must his parents have felt?
“You’re the only one keeping me going,” his mam and his dad had told him over and over – on separate occasions, each oblivious to the other’s words.
And that was the reason Tim had to go through with the wedding; to spare his parents the humiliation, to give them something to be proud of, something to look forward to. They’d already lived through two sets of disappointment with Brittany and Andy. Tim couldn’t face putting them through it a third time after all their bad luck. They deserved better. His mam deserved better.
So yes, fine. Call him a people pleaser, accuse him of being a pushover, tell him he couldn’t handle disapproval. But none of this was for Piper’s benefit. His parents had pinned everything on him and they needed him. He had to stay on the straight and narrow, do the honourable thing and commit to this woman ‘for better or worse’. And that was that.
