Do You Remember the First Time?

think?’
    I was surprised at this. ‘What do you mean, where you expected to be?’
    ‘You know – by this stage in my life.’
    ‘You mean, when you were younger, you thought about how close to a corporate law partnership you’d be in your thirties?’
    He shrugged. ‘Well, I took the A levels to get on to a law degree course, so I suppose I must have done.’
    ‘You didn’t just take your A levels because your parents wanted you to, but secretly you were going to be a rockstar or a footballer?’
    ‘No! I think I knew by the time I was sixteen I wasn’t going to make it as a footballer.’
    ‘Really? I didn’t give up on being a gymnast until last year.’
    ‘The only gymnastics I’ve ever seen you do is accidentally falling out of bed.’
    ‘That’s not the point, is it? Don’t you ever wonder about how we ended up just here?’
    Olly was slowing to a junction, and as he stopped he turned to me and took my face in his hands.
    ‘And what’s so wrong with right here?’
    The lights of the country hotel were twinkling ahead. Inside were old friends and good company. Here at my side was a decent man. Nothing was wrong at all.
    ‘Flo! Ol!’
    Tash had that massive, slightly manic grin people get when they’ve been welcoming people for hours. She looked splendid, as well she should, given the draconian diet she’dbeen on for the past six months ‘so my bingo wings don’t flap all through the service’.
    I gave her a huge hug.
    ‘Elle Macpherson or Martine McCutcheon?’ she asked, turning round 360 degrees.
    ‘What, are you kidding? Kate Moss,’ I declared.
    She beamed even wider. ‘Excellent.’
    We’d been spending quite a lot of time, in the last few months, going through celebrity magazines and slagging off people getting married. We particularly liked those who go rather – ahem – over the top, like Posh Spice and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Max thought we were being incredibly childish. Oliver didn’t know about it, in case he thought I was trying to give him hints, which I wasn’t, in a way, although I was also getting to the point where I thought it might be a bit embarrassing if he didn’t ask, which I know isn’t very romantic.
    Tashy is small, occasionally a bit chunky, but thanks to the no-fat, no-bread, no-booze, crying-oneself-to-sleep-with-hunger-pains regime she’s been on lately, there was not a pick on her. Her hair was currently extremely glossy and straight, though was, once upon a time, very wild and curly, and her sparkly green eyes betray her past when she went through a career a week and was constantly getting into scrapes. Now she’d settled into being a software designer, which sounded more glamorous than it was (and doesn’t sound very glamorous at all, really), and was marrying Max, who also worked in computers and who was tall, bald, and very, very dull, but a much better bet, on the whole, I suppose, than the good-looking unruly-haired rogues Tashy had spent most of her twenties waiting to call her,then get off with somebody else. And her boho look had gone too. Feather earrings and deep plum clothes had given way to a slightly more appropriate look for a nice middle-class North London girl. In fact, Good God, was she wearing Boden?
    She grabbed me by the arm. ‘Come on! Come on! They can’t mix a Martini, but I’m getting married so we’re starting on the champagne we towed back from France.’
    ‘Yes, but you’re getting married tomorrow. Isn’t not having a full-on death hangover meant to be part of the whole big idea?’
    ‘Oh, sod that. One, I’m not going to get any sleep anyway, and two, someone’s coming in with that full body foundation spray thing Sarah Jessica Parker uses. Believe me, you won’t be able to tell if I’m alive or dead underneath it. You won’t believe the work that goes into making all us haggard over-thirties brides look like freshly awakened virginal teenagers.’
    ‘You want me to take the bags up then?’ said Olly, standing grumpy in the chintzy hall, which was filled with copper kettles and random suits of armour.
    ‘Well, do you mind?’ I said guiltily.
    ‘Then what am I supposed to do whilst you two go off and cackle like witches for three hours?’
    I stared at him. I looked into his big likeable face. Why was everything he said tonight really irritating me?
    ‘Can’t you go and talk to Max?’
    Olly dislikes Max in the way that you’re always a little chippy about people in whom you recognise a bit of