Bridget Welles.”
We all stared at her. “Bridge,” said Jennifer, emerging from what I assumed was the en suite. “That’s already your name.”
“Yes, but I’ll be Ms. Bridget Welles who’s married.”
Liz pressed a mimosa into my hand anyway. “I think you’re going to need this,” she whispered.
I looked round for somewhere to sit and found nowhere that wasn’t a lap, and that was one step too gay best friend even for me.
Eventually, I propped my coccyx against the corner of a chest of drawers, which was very much a sidegrade from just standing.
“Sooo,” began Liz in a tone that seemed far too implication-laden for a woman of the cloth. “How was your evening? Was it lovely?”
For a moment I wasn’t sure what she meant. Then I glared at mirror-Bridge. “Oh, so you were in on it, then?”
She gave me a look of winsome triumph. “Oliver said he’d missed you. And you’d been so nice to me I thought you deserved a night off.”
“It was great,” I said, offering the PG/appropriate-for-relative-strangers version of events. “We watched old movies and got a relatively good night’s sleep.”
“That does sound great,” agreed Jennifer. “Perhaps it’s because I’m in my thirties now, but a good night’s sleep is one of my top-five bedroom fantasies.”
Bernadette looked around from where she was adjusting the line of her deep-blue bridesmaid’s dress. “What are the other four?”
“New bookshelves, a husband who knows how to share a duvet, one of those pillows that are good for your back, and Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson covered in lemon sorbet.”
“Lemon sorbet?” asked the hairdresser, who until that moment had been screening the bridal banter with consummate professionalism.
“I like lemon sorbet.”
Liz squinted like someone trying to solve a difficult maths puzzle.
“Wouldn’t it sting?”
“I don’t want him totally covered in lemon sorbet,” protested Jennifer.
“Oh, right.” Bridge’s mirror face was also trying to solve a difficult maths puzzle. “Because that would be strange.”
“Also,” I added, “wouldn’t it ruin your nice new pillow?”
Finding the room as seat-deprived as I had, Jennifer slumped against the wall. “Given that I’m married, he’s married, we live in different countries, and he’s the most electrifying man in all of entertainment, I don’t think sorbet logistics are the largest barrier to my having a night of steamy passion with the bloke from Jumanji.”
“Actually”—Bernadette poured herself another mimosa—“if you are going to use a dessert in a sexual context, sorbet is a really good choice. It’s mostly water and sugar so it doesn’t stain and it doesn’t curdle, and it’s not as sticky as you might imagine.”
Jennifer made a vindicated gesture. “See. I apparently have incredible sexual instincts. The rest of you would be covering Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson in completely the wrong kind of condiments.”
“Asking for a friend,” asked Liz. For a friend. “Bernadette, what other foods is it either good or bad to lick off somebody?”
Bridge’s mouth dropped open. “Are you allowed to lick things off people?”
“Not at the moment, no,” Liz admitted. “But within the confines of marriage, the Church has no policy for or against licking things off people.”
“I can’t tell”—that was the moment when Melanie rejoined us—“if I have the best or the worst timing. Who is licking what off whom?”
“Jennifer,” said Liz. “Lemon sorbet. The Rock.”
The look of confusion on Melanie’s face was, in context, understandable. “Johnson? Or Gibraltar?”
“I’m not even going to ask”—Jennifer slid slowly down the wall —“why you think I might want to lick the Rock of Gibraltar.”
Melanie shrugged. “I don’t know. White people shit?”
“If I had to lick a geographical feature,” said Bridge with the air of somebody who had drunk way too many mimosas and was giving this way too much thought, “I’d pick Arthur’s Seat.”
The ensuing discussion of which parts of the country we’d put which parts of our body on lasted long enough for the hairdresser to be replaced by a makeup artist. And I found myself wondering what the hell this ritual would look like if I was, say, marrying Oliver. Would I sit around in a new suit, drinking cocktails with Priya, Bridge, and the James Royce-Royces while a highly trained professional ran a comb through my hair exactly once? Of course, maybe that said more about my hair than the institution of marriage.