Free The Stag and Hen Weekend by Mike Gayle

him.
    Phil had been about to turn the page when Helen had pointed to the picture of one of the three DJs vying for the job, a ridiculously good-looking stubbly chinned type who he recognised from TV. ‘That’s my ex,’ she said succinctly.
    Phil was momentarily speechless. ‘The one you were going to marry?’
    Helen nodded and Phil stared at the paper. ‘Your ex is Aiden Reid? Why didn’t I know this before?’
    ‘Why would you?’ replied Helen. ‘It’s not like I know the names of all your exes, do I? I just thought I ought to say, that’s all. Chances are, he’s going to get that job, and if he does it’s a guarantee that the tabloids will come sniffing around looking for a story on him. If they do, say nothing, not a single word. Not even in my defence.’
    Helen was right. Not only about Aiden getting the BBC Radio breakfast job but also the tabloid hacks making contact, looking for a story about ‘Aiden Reid’s first love.’ They called Helen constantly both at home and at work and when that failed to give them what they wanted they concentrated their efforts on Phil. ‘How does it feel to be dating the ex of one of the country’s most famous celebs, Mr Hudson? Anything you’d like to tell us about the way he went about wrecking your partner’s life when they were engaged? We’ve got someone on record claiming that Aidan was the love of her life and that she’s never got over him: would you care to comment?’ Just as Helen had told him, Phil made no comment, but it was difficult, especially the lies about her never having got over him.
    Running parallel to these events was Phil and Helen’s relationship, which in a short space of time progressed from its tentative initial stages into something neither party had expected at all. Phil had never before experienced anything close to what he felt for Helen with anyone else and on the day that this had first dawned on him (a Sunday evening a year or so after the Aiden Reid furore) as she was loading her car in order to drive back to Liverpool.
    ‘We should get married,’ said Phil as the thought occurred to him. Confused, Helen had stared at him blankly. ‘I mean it,’ he continued. ‘I think we should get hitched.’
    Helen didn’t drive back to Liverpool that night. Instead she and Phil had stayed up until late with her explaining why although she felt as strongly for him as he did for her it was too soon to talk of marriage. Despite his enthusiasm Phil eventually came around to Helen’s point of view, which is why he waited another year (by which time they were living together in Nottingham) to ask her for a second time as they celebrated their third anniversary of their first official date.
    ‘I want you to marry me,’ he said as they stood underneath the awning outside their favourite Italian restaurant on Weekday Cross sheltering from the rain as they waited for a cab home. ‘I mean it, Helen, I’m absolutely convinced you’re the one.’
    Again Helen turned him down, citing a million and one reasons, from the fact that they were both very busy at work right through to the fact that they were looking to move to a bigger house soon and could do without the stress. Though clearly disappointed not to have received the yes he had been hoping for, Phil had eventually agreed, and so, having put the idea on the proverbial back burner, they both got on with the business of carving out a life for themselves.
    But when Phil popped the question once again some two years later only to be met once again by the most logical of excuses, he made the decision that his days of proposing marriage were over for good. After all, enough was enough wasn’t it? But then a few years later, a date to the cinema and the finding of a child’s toy plastic ring, not only was he back to proposing but after all these years and all these rejections he finally said out loud the one thing he hadn’t dared to say all these years: that the reason Helen wouldn’t marry