We were about to be married, and second marriages are weird. Sorry, weird is the wrong word. What I mean is skint: I didn’t have any money, because I’d just got divorced. So, a lot of the things you associate with getting married – photographers, flowers, sit-down meals, bridesmaids, maids of honour, really everything apart from alcohol – were ditched. Also, I was a bit older than I was the first time, so I didn’t miss any of that, least of all the photographer. A hen night hadn’t even crossed my mind.
It was 2018, five days before the event, which was on a Wednesday, to avail ourselves of Southwark council’s midweek register-office special. Mr Z was, as it turned out, only pretending to make a romantic candlelit dinner, to mark one of our last evenings living in sin. My friend called and asked if he could see me in the pub, quick smart, as he had something urgent to discuss. Awks, as there was a dinner to eat, but of course I said yes and rushed out of the house to the sound of: “If you’re not back in an hour, everything will be ruined, ruined!”– failing to process how peculiar that was.
The friend in question, whom I have worked with for my entire professional life, never has anything urgent to discuss. I will call him if there is a funny smell near my toaster; he will call me if his mum accidentally pulls out two eyelashes at once. The idea that anything big could happen, without 17 stages of warning, was preposterous.
So, there were only two possible scenarios in my head: either he had a terminal illness, or I was about to get fired. I walked to the pub, with the dog, thinking: this would be a really bad time to get fired, but also I would definitely prefer for my very dear friend not to be ill.
When we walked in, the dog went berserk, which with a regular dog would have alerted me to the strange crowd: 20 people, all wearing Theresa May masks. The dog always goes nuts, though, as he loves pubs, so I was just frantically looking around, thinking, where the hell is my friend with his terrible, terrible news?
One of the Theresa Mays was wearing a coat just like my sister’s. Another one had the same hair as a different friend. A neighbour was sitting at the bar and said mildly: “Do you think you might know all those Theresa Mays?” Suddenly, I realised that they were all staring at me and had an expectant vibe. Yes, these were my 20 dearest associates, and all it took was one ply of cardboard for me not to recognise any of them. The dog, of course, could pick them all out by scent, probably from about 200 yards away.
Someone unhelpful videoed my face at exactly that moment; it did not look good. I was still thinking: “That’s a sweet coincidence that they’re all here, but I really don’t have time for this – I’ve only got 47 minutes to find Tim, hear his bad news and get back home.” Mr Z walked in, triumphant; his beautiful plan had come together. It was 10 times as surprising as he had hoped – and there was video evidence to prove it. I was still baffled; if he was here, who was making dinner?
Anyway, did I need quite this level of alarm in order to be caught unawares? Did Theresa May need to play quite such a prominent role in the chronicles of our wedding? These are open questions. It was romantic, not in its observance of marital conventions, but because he had observed a great truth: you don’t see your friends properly at your wedding, because you’re busy getting married. The hen night may look ceremonial, but it’s there for a reason.
