The Birds and the Bees by Milly Johnson Page B

scar could have looked remotely soft. ‘Less hideous’, was the assessment she preferred.
    Jo and Matthew were at opposite ends of the room. She was talking to some other women, poised and elegant and not spilling her sherry. Matthew was chatting to the best man. Stevie tried really hard not to look over but her eyes kept gravitating towards him. She noticed that he was trying equally hard not to let his eyes wander over to Jo, but, like herself, he was failing.
    ‘Hi there!’ Pam burst in and kissed them all. She had a champagne glass in one hand and a long menthol cigarette in the other.
    ‘Congratulations,’ said Stevie. ‘You look fab.’
    ‘So do you actually, Stevie. Have you lost weight?’
    ‘A bit,’ said Stevie.
    ‘Sorry to hear about you, hon, hope it all works out for you.’
    ‘Oh er, yes. Don’t worry,’ said Stevie, plastering on a smile and manipulating a change in subject. ‘So, where do we put your presents? I hope you like this.’
    ‘God knows, me mam’s got that bit organized. Course I’ll like it. I’d like it even more if it were a pair of slippers. I tell you, my pissing feet are killing me in these shoes. Don’t know how I’m going to manage to dance.’
    Pam, the less than traditional bride, then swanned off with a ‘see ya later’ on her massive satin heels and left them standing in a quiet triangle.
    ‘Sorry, but I had to tell her about you and Matthew,’ said Catherine with a little apologetic smile. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to be sitting next to him if he turned up, so I asked my Auntie Madge to alter the seating plan.’
    ‘I would never have thought of that,’ said Stevie. Sitting next to Matthew would have been torture. She squeezed Catherine’s hand gratefully. ‘Thanks.’ It was so typical of her thoughtfulness; no wonder they’d been friends for so long. You would always want to hang onto someone like her.
    ‘You need to sort this wedding thing out with him, quick,’ Catherine went on. ‘I don’t want to upset you andso I won’t say anything else, but in the next few days you have to find out where you stand.’
    ‘I know,’ said Stevie.
    ‘I’d chuffing cancel it if I were you,’ said Eddie, taking a big glug of the Barnsley Bitter he’d had to buy because Catherine had nicked his sherry to give to Stevie. ‘He’s definitely not the bloke I thought he was at all.’
    No one answered him, but, yes, they were all thinking the same.
    ‘Laydeees and gelmen, would ye kindly make yer way tae the dinen arearrr,’ came Adam MacLean’s cannon of a voice.
    ‘If he’s doing a speech after, no one will understand a flaming word,’ said Catherine, giving Stevie a little tension-busting giggle.
    They looked at the seating plan and Stevie found that she was sandwiched between Eddie and Oh no–A. MacLean! Luckily, her mind was playing tricks on her and it was actually A. MacLeod, who was a young spaghetti-string of a teenage boy who kept pulling at his collar as if it was strangling him.
    Matthew was somewhere further down the table on her side and out of spying sight and Jo was halfway down an adjacent table, between two middle-aged men in kilts who seemed more than happy with the seating arrangements. She certainly didn’t look very victimy, considering she was sitting five people away from her psychotic soon-to-be ex-husband, who was behaving with remarkable dignity in the circumstances, Stevie thought. He actually seemed very jocular. She didn’t notice him glance over at Jo once, and by crikey, she was watching for it.
    ‘Stop looking at them,’ hissed Catherine. ‘I would kick you but I’d snag your tights.’
    ‘Sorry,’ said Stevie, and tucked into her turkey main course. It was a full-blown Christmas dinner. Pam had wanted a Christmas wedding, hence the fur cape, but she didn’t want to risk the weather, so she had the best of both worlds–sunshine and turkey, except for the lone vegetarian kid to her right, pushing a nut roast