Page 34

Chapter Thirty-two

Leon

The camera swings around, showing a club.

Dark, with flashing lights in shades of purple and pink.

There’s Kay’s group of mates squashed into leather armchairs and sofas, arranged around a couple of low tables that are covered in drinks.

There’s a fishbowl with straws sticking out of it – the straws are pink, the ends shaped like penises.

The girls are all in their party get-up, black dresses and high heels, with pink sashes that say things like ‘brIDESMAID’ or ‘HEN PARTY’.

They’re shrieking – a mix of laughter and excitement and some singing along to the music that’s blaring.

It’s something slow and dramatic with crude lyrics.

The view shifts. This time, it shows a stage with two obscenely buff men – all muscle, all over, and I know it’s all over because one of them is wearing nothing but a waistcoat with a plastic sheriff’s badge and some tiny gold underwear so tight there’s nothing left to the imagination, and the other is in the process of ripping off some assless chaps as he gyrates and holds a cowboy hat to cover his dick.

Next to me, Francesca gives a little squeak. Out of the corner of my eye I see her turning bright red and bring a hand up to her face. I’m not totally sure if the reaction is embarrassment at watching the footage of a strip club or …

Well, the alternative makes me feel weirdly insecure, despite the fact that manscaping to this extreme degree has never been me.

Gemma bites her thumbnail, watching us rather than the video.

The camera moves again, all the way around to the other side now, and there’s a noisy whoop. The girls are shouting things like, ‘Yaaas!’ and ‘Get in there, Kayleigh!’ and, ‘Last night of freedom, whooo!’

In the chair next to the person filming is something I would very much like to never have to see , and I cringe away, pulling a face at Gemma.

‘Seriously?’ I say, but she shakes her head.

‘Just watch.’

In the video, Kay is wearing a white dress and white heels, and a white sash that reads in bright pink ‘brIDE TO BE’. There’s a cheap veil and a plastic tiara in her hair, and a drink in her hand with yet another penis straw sticking out of it.

She’s getting a lap dance from one of the strippers.

He’s all rippling, glistening muscles with a scanty little silver waistcoat for decoration and tiny, tight silver shorts that, again, leave nothing to the imagination.

We can’t see his face well, but he throws a silver cowboy-booted foot up onto the table next to Kay to thrust into her face and the whole entourage of the hen party screams in delight at that.

He’s covered in glitter and holds his cowboy hat above his head, whirling his arm around in time with his hips like he’s at the rodeo.

‘Oh, my,’ Francesca whispers, both hands pressed over her mouth now.

Is this where I’m going wrong in my dating life? Is this really what girls like? I have to wonder. The veiny outline of a dick in their face and all those muscles and—

And that is absolutely beside the point.

Because in the video, Kayleigh grabs the stripper’s waistcoat and uses it as leverage to haul herself up, and kisses him.

With tongue, which I also absolutely could’ve gone without seeing, thanks Gemma.

It’s one of those sloppy, drunk snogs given with absolutely no regard for how public it is.

The stripper drops his hat in favour of grabbing Kay to pick her up.

She grins, cupping his cheek, still holding her drink in her other hand.

There’s got to be an explanation, though, right? Kay’s not the kind of girl who goes around snogging strippers at her own hen party, a mere three weeks before she gets married.

Is she?

I look at the phone again, a sinking feeling in my stomach, because all evidence would suggest, yet again, that I am wrong, and do not know my sister at all. She is not the person we thought.

There’s a sharp, stern male voice that’s drowned out by squealing laughter. The stripper moves off-camera sharpish, and the bouncer is kicking the girls out of the club to loud, whiny protests. The camera judders, moves, swings around, keeps recording.

Gemma reaches to turn it off, but then in the video, someone says, ‘Oh, boo, total spoilsport! That’s not what your boring family are going to be like at the wedding is it, Kayleigh?’

Kayleigh laughs. It’s too sharp to be written off as drunk rubbish. ‘Bloody hope not. God , they’re so drab. It’s embarrassing. They wouldn’t know a party if it bit them in the arse! Myleene’s alright sometimes, obvs, but—’

A couple of girls groan. ‘Nooo, all she does is follow us around like a puppy!’

The camera swings around again, and this time it captures Kayleigh pouting, but there’s a glint in her eyes – bitter, angry, resentful. ‘I really thought having the wedding abroad meant they wouldn’t come. So annoying.’ She clicks her tongue, and the others laugh.

The video cuts off and my blood runs cold.

Gemma gasps, a hand flying to the base of her throat before she leans all the way across the table to grip my hand. ‘Fuck, Leon, I – I didn’t even … I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I forgot she …’

Forgot she said she didn’t want her family at her wedding, because as far as Gemma’s concerned, that’s an everyday kind of comment from Kayleigh.

I blink a few times. ‘Is that why she said she didn’t want Dad walking her down the aisle? Was she … trying to get us not to come?’

‘No! No, she …’ Gemma cringes, but admits, ‘She said she didn’t want everyone looking at him , worrying about him , and … and he walks too slow with his cane that it’d ruin the aesthetics in the wedding video.’

‘She … doesn’t want us there. It’s supposed to be the happiest day of her life, and she doesn’t want us there.’

Are we really that ‘boring’, that ‘embarrassing’? Do we really not fit into Kayleigh’s shiny new life so badly that she wants nothing to do with us?

The shamed, sorry look on Gemma’s face tells me all I need to know.

Quietly, Francesca says, ‘Why did you want to show us that video? Not just to prove a point about Kayleigh?’

‘I …’ Gemma pulls her gaze from mine, gives my hand another squeeze before pulling away. ‘No.’

She swipes on the phone, and another video starts playing. This one has soft, romantic violin music playing and is a compilation of Kay at brunch, at home, prepping for a dinner party, shopping for her wedding dress, at the cake tasting, with her girls, with Marcus, by herself …

‘You know how I’m doing a speech, as maid of honour?

’ Gemma is saying, as the other video continues.

Even though I raise my head to look at her, she is staring fixedly at the phone, a frown bunching between her eyebrows.

‘Kayleigh wanted me to have a video presentation to go with it.

Something she could put on her Instagram afterwards.

I had to capture all this footage since the engagement, pull it all together, so it can play in the background while I do my speech.

‘And then I got that call before the flight earlier, about how she got the job over me, and I just … snapped, I guess. It’s not fair.

She’s got everything, this perfect life, and – and why?

She doesn’t deserve any of it. And I just thought …

wouldn’t it really suck , if the presentation videos got mixed up?

Like, we’re all sat there, enjoying the five-course meal, and I get up to do my speech between courses and everyone’s happy and she’s glowing, and it’s the most absolutely beautiful day, and then that video from the hen do plays instead, and everyone sees who she really is?

And OMG, what a horrible mistake, how totally tragic, the tech guy must’ve really messed up, this is a total disaster …

But everyone’s seen it. It’s too late. Good luck salvaging your perfect wedding now, you know? ’

I stare at Gemma, and Francesca pauses the compilation video.

‘And obviously I’ll be totally outraged and defend Kayleigh and act super upset on her behalf, so she’ll never actually be able to blame me, and nobody would ever think I did it on purpose – but I’ll know.

And everyone else will know what she’s really like.

And I just … need that. I need, for once , for everyone else to see it, too. ’

She sure does paint a vivid picture. I can imagine her own pretend horror at the ‘mix-up’, Kay bursting into floods of tears and fleeing the top table, the horrified murmur that would rush through the room.

How bad we’d feel – for poor, humiliated Kay, who made an honest mistake, who just got a bit carried away after one too many drinks on her hen do, egged on by the girls.

Mum would go running after her to make sure she was okay, to comfort her.

Myleene would probably say something like how Kay’s just acting out because she knows, deep down, Marcus isn’t the right guy for her, and she was subconsciously self-sabotaging – and we’d all agree, even though Dad sure as hell wouldn’t know what that meant.

Except it’s not just her snogging a stripper, is it? It’s what she said about us.

I say, ‘You’d probably be doing her a favour, in the end. If there’s a sure-fire way to cut us out of Kay’s perfect new life, it’s showing us all that video. Mum and Dad would be gutted. It’d kill them.’

Gemma squirms in her seat. ‘I’m so sorry, Leon. I completely forgot she even said that stuff. I’d never have shown it to you if I’d realised. I was just so caught up on the kiss …’

I wave off the apology; it’s not Gemma who has anything to be sorry for. Her eyes water, and her lip wobbles.