Free Bad Company by PJ Adams Page B

best man was Charlie, the ex who could still wrap me around his posh little English finger after all this time.
    Under these circumstances a girl can surely be forgiven a lapse into cliché. No?
    §
    I’d driven for nearly four hours to reach this remote little Norfolk chapel. It had taken far too long to escape the tangle of London traffic, and even longer driving through the winding East Anglian lanes trying to find the place.
    Deep breath, Trudy . I was here. I’d made it on time.
    I stood outside the chapel and straightened my three-quarter length Anoushka G dress. Deep cornflower blue, with scooped neck-line and a lily fascinator pinned to my long auburn hair, even I’d admit that I felt good in my wedding outfit.
    I realized I was falling back on coping strategies I’d developed in my teens: a constant interior monologue of commentary and pep talks.
    You look good, Trude.
    That dress will make up for all sorts, and you can get away with those sucky-in Magic Knickers you bought in desperation, because you just know you’re the only one who’s ever going to see them.
    Nice shoes, by the way.
    Whatever it takes.
    I recognized a few of the faces of the guests milling around in the churchyard. They were Cambridge buddies of Ethan’s. When I’d first come over from New Haven, I’d hung out with him in his college halls for a few weeks before landing my temporary job at Ellison and Coles, a wonderfully quaint traditional publisher with offices just off Covent Garden, right in the heart of London.
    As we waited to enter the chapel, people smiled at me and nodded, but they were all in their own little groups and no one seemed particularly interested in me. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t in any mood for small talk, just yet. Instead, I checked my cell phone, only to find that there was no signal. I opened my mail just the same, and glanced through emails I’d already downloaded.
    “You’ve got signal? Or are you just bluffing so you look busy even though you’re here on your own and nobody’s talking to you?”
    I didn’t look round. I didn’t have to.
    “Bastard,” I said softly.
    “But a good-looking bastard, right? You always did say that I scrubbed up rather well.”
    I turned. Honey-blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and the way the tuxedo and neatly pressed pants hung on his lean body... I took a deep breath and tried not to find him attractive.
    Charlie didn’t look a day older than when I’d last seen him over a year before, ducking a flying ash tray as he backed out of the Islington apartment we’d shared back then.
    “Last time I saw you–”
    “You were a lousy shot. I only ducked to make you feel better about your aim. See? Even then I was looking out for you, babe.”
    “I only missed because I didn’t want blood on the carpet. It was deliberate.”
    “You preferred that dent in the door?” The ash tray had made a nasty gouge in the wood-panel door on impact. I’d never got round to fixing it: my little memento of the year with Charlie.
    “Okay, so I misjudged that one. I should have hit you with it.”
    “You look good, Trude.”
    “Too damned right I do. You think I’d come to my brother’s wedding and look like shit?”
    I was smiling by then. Our arguments went like that: they either got more and more intense or we’d end up laughing and wondering what we’d been fighting about.
    “It’s been a long time, Trude.”
    I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He smelt of Issey Miyake and cigarettes.
    “Shouldn’t you be inside with Ethan? I assume he’s turned up?”
    “Fresh air break,” said Charlie, tapping the cigarette-box-shaped bulge in the breast pocket of his tuxedo. “You know how it is.”
    “Haven’t you given that stuff up yet?”
    “Everyone’s got their vices, Trudy. Even you.”
    I raised one eyebrow and fixed him with a hard stare until he was forced to look away. If the occasional vodka and tonic too many and a tendency to over-stretch my credit cards on