Do You Remember the First Time?

Heather pointed out later, in a rare wistful moment after the divorce, we’d had much, much more fun than she had. At the time, we wouldn’t havebelieved that to be possible. We thought she was the most beautiful and enviable living thing we’d ever seen.
    ‘Oh, yeah. Don’t. I asked her if she wanted to be my matron of honour, and she snorted and said, “Thanks, but if you want to get involved in all that garbage, please do it without me, Natasha,” and went back to doing yoga and eating muesli.’
    ‘It is a real shame he got the sense of humour in the divorce,’ I said, and Tashy nodded glumly.
    Then she popped her head up from the magazine. ‘Um.’
    ‘What?’
    She jumped up and got us another Baileys.
    ‘What?’ I said.
    ‘Well, you know when you were talking about us being stupid at sixteen?’
    ‘Mm?’
    ‘You’ll never guess who my mother ran into at the post office. Invited the whole family.’
    I rather love Jean, Tashy’s mother. She is giggly and dresses too young for her age and drinks too many gin and tonics – all the reasons she embarrasses the bits out of Tashy. It’s amazing how, even though we’re both in our thirties, we still turn into sulky teenagers when confronted with our mothers. It had been worse recently, with all the wedding arrangements for Tash, and there had been at least two occasions when Tashy had slammed out of the house shouting – and she was ashamed to relate this, even after a couple of glasses of wine – ‘Stop trying to control my life!’ She had also decided that since she and Tashy’s dad (they were divorced, and got on a lot better than my parents) were paying for most of this enormous bash, they got final say in justabout all of it, which included the guest list, the napkins, and those tortuously crap little sugared almond things. (‘Why am I crying over sugared almonds?’ Tashy had asked me. ‘I’m not going to talk to her for a week. Cow.’) She is so different from my mother, who does indeed have nightmares after Crimewatch .
    But this wasn’t solving the problem.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘We’re over it now, right?’
    And I knew straight away.
    ‘This is why you stashed all this Baileys up here, isn’t it? To soften me up?’
    She nodded shamefacedly.
    ‘You invited Clelland.’
    ‘His whole family,’ said Tashy, at least having the grace to look a bit embarrassed. ‘You know our parents were friends first, before any of us lot even went to school. All those seventies kaftan parties. Probably all throwing their keys in bowls.’
    ‘Let’s not think about that,’ I said. I might be an ancient grown-up, but I still didn’t like to think about my parents doing it. And also, my heart was pounding, and my ageing brain was trying to take this on board.
    ‘Anyway, they lost touch, but my mother ran into his mother at the post office – seriously, if she thinks she’s going to be thinner than me for this wedding then she’s got another think coming, upstaging bitch – so, anyway, they get talking and, of course, Mum can’t stop shooting her mouth off immediately and—’
    ‘Hang on,’ I said, interrupting her nervous chatter and sitting dramatically upright. ‘Clelland is coming?’
    ‘Um, yeah.’
    ‘OK, so can we forget the boring post office stuff …?’
    ‘Gee, gosh, you’re right, Flo. How selfish of me. It’s not like I’m busy or anything.’
    ‘It’s just … God, you know, I could have done with some warning.’
    ‘Me too,’ said Tashy. ‘I don’t think they’ll even all fit under the marquee.’
    Of course, even though she’d been through it, I couldn’t really expect Tash to take this as seriously as I did. And, of course, Clelland isn’t his real name. Nobody’s called that, except probably some American soap star. Our parents were friends, and his dad is John Clelland, so he is too. The grown-ups called him little John, which he hated with such a vibrant passion he refused to answer to anything except for his surname until we got used to it. Then we discovered that porn book Fanny Hill , author John Cleland, and it was even worse.
    That’s Clelland. Passionate about things. He had been my first crush. Tashy’s first crush had displayed her painstakingly homemade Valentine card all over the sixth-form common room to loud and lewd guffaws. Mine had been completely unaware of my existence for months. I’d really envied Tashy.
    He was tall for his age, dark-haired, with expressive eyebrows: he was