Page 68 of The Layover
Kayleigh laughs. It’s too sharp to be written off as drunk rubbish. ‘Bloody hope not.God, they’re so drab. It’sembarrassing.They wouldn’t know a party if it bit them in the arse! Myleene’s alright sometimes, obvs, but—’
A couple of girls groan. ‘Nooo, all she does is follow us around like a puppy!’
The camera swings around again, and this time it captures Kayleigh pouting, but there’s a glint in her eyes – bitter, angry, resentful. ‘I really thought having the wedding abroad meantthey wouldn’t come.Soannoying.’ She clicks her tongue, and the others laugh.
The video cuts off and my blood runs cold.
Gemma gasps, a hand flying to the base of her throat before she leans all the way across the table to grip my hand. ‘Fuck, Leon, I – I didn’t even … I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I forgot she …’
Forgot she said she didn’t want her family at her wedding, because as far as Gemma’s concerned, that’s an everyday kind of comment from Kayleigh.
I blink a few times. ‘Is that why she said she didn’t want Dad walking her down the aisle? Was she … trying to get us not to come?’
‘No! No, she …’ Gemma cringes, but admits, ‘She said she didn’t want everyone looking athim, worrying abouthim, and … and he walks too slow with his cane that it’d ruin the aesthetics in the wedding video.’
‘She … doesn’t want us there. It’s supposed to be the happiest day of her life, and she doesn’t want us there.’
Are we really that ‘boring’, that ‘embarrassing’? Do we really not fit into Kayleigh’s shiny new life so badly that she wantsnothingto do with us?
The shamed, sorry look on Gemma’s face tells me all I need to know.
Quietly, Francesca says, ‘Why did you want to show us that video? Not just to prove a point about Kayleigh?’
‘I …’ Gemma pulls her gaze from mine, gives my hand another squeeze before pulling away. ‘No.’
She swipes on the phone, and another video starts playing. This one has soft, romantic violin music playing and is a compilation of Kay at brunch, at home, prepping for a dinner party, shopping for her wedding dress, at the cake tasting, with her girls, with Marcus, by herself …
‘You know how I’m doing a speech, as maid of honour?’ Gemma is saying, as the other video continues. Even though I raise my head to look at her, she is staring fixedly at the phone, a frown bunching between her eyebrows. ‘Kayleigh wanted me to have a video presentation to go with it. Something she could put on her Instagram afterwards. I had to capture all this footage since the engagement, pull it all together, so it can play in the background while I do my speech.
‘And then I got that call before the flight earlier, about howshegot the job over me, and I just … snapped, I guess. It’s not fair. She’s got everything, this perfect life, and – and why? She doesn’t deserve any of it. And I just thought … wouldn’t it reallysuck, if the presentation videos got mixed up? Like, we’re all sat there, enjoying the five-course meal, and I get up to do my speech between courses and everyone’s happy and she’s glowing, and it’s the most absolutely beautiful day, and thenthatvideo from the hen do plays instead, and everyone sees who she really is? And OMG, what a horrible mistake, how totally tragic, the tech guy must’ve really messed up, this is a total disaster … But everyone’s seen it. It’s too late. Good luck salvaging your perfect wedding now, you know?’
I stare at Gemma, and Francesca pauses the compilation video.
‘And obviously I’ll be totally outraged and defend Kayleigh and actsuperupset on her behalf, so she’ll neveractuallybe able to blame me, and nobody would ever think I did it onpurpose– but I’ll know. And everyone else will know what she’s really like. And I just … need that. I need, foronce, for everyone else to see it, too.’
She sure does paint a vivid picture. I can imagine her own pretend horror at the ‘mix-up’, Kay bursting into floods of tears and fleeing the top table, the horrified murmur that would rush through the room.
How bad we’d feel – for poor, humiliated Kay, who made an honest mistake, who just got a bit carried away after one too many drinks on her hen do, egged on by the girls. Mum would go running after her to make sure she was okay, to comfort her. Myleene would probably say something like how Kay’s just acting out because she knows, deep down, Marcus isn’t the right guy for her, and she was subconsciously self-sabotaging – and we’d all agree, even though Dad sure as hell wouldn’t know what that meant.
Except it’snotjust her snogging a stripper, is it? It’s what she said about us.
I say, ‘You’d probably be doing her a favour, in the end. If there’s a sure-fire way to cut us out of Kay’s perfect new life, it’s showing us all that video. Mum and Dad would be gutted. It’d kill them.’
Gemma squirms in her seat. ‘I’m so sorry, Leon. I completely forgot she even said that stuff. I’d never have shown it to you if I’d realised. I was just so caught up on the kiss …’
I wave off the apology; it’s not Gemma who has anything to be sorry for. Her eyes water, and her lip wobbles.
Finally, she pins Francesca with a glare and bursts out in a sharp, biting tone, ‘So, see? Iama bad person. I’m notloyal. I’m not going after the man I love or trying to repair my family before it’s too broken, I just want to destroy the happiest day of my best friend’s life because I’m a jealous bitch.That’swho I am. That’s why I wasn’t going to stop either of you from trying to fuck up the wedding, because I’d still get to watch her life fall apart but wouldn’t even need to get my hands dirty. I wasusingyou guys.’
Francesca turns the phone screen-down. Her hand trembles. Gemma, meanwhile, clenches both her hands into fists, her elbows balanced on the edge of the table as she leans low over it.
‘Did she really snog a stripper on her hen do?’ Francesca asks.
Gemma sniffs. ‘Yeah. The guys – the performers – they were milling around a bit at the start of the night, and Kayleigh was flirting with them just for kicks, and this one guyreallytook a shine to her. We weren’t supposed to be taking videos or anything either, but the bouncer was too pissed off about this guy coming down from the stage and Kayleigh’s behaviour to notice. He tried to slide into her DMs after. The cowboy dude, I mean, not the bouncer. She’d tagged the club on her Insta story, so …’
‘Did she reply?’
Gemma shrugs. ‘She said she wasn’t going to. But shedidjust evict her maid of honour from the group chat and make a new fake one for me instead, so … Who knows? Maybe I didn’t know her as well as I thought, either,’ she adds, with a sorrowful look my way.
