Free The Wedding Speech by Isabelle Broom Page A

threw her an obvious wink before continuing.
    ‘Well, us being lads and all that, of course we picked these knickers up and started throwing them to each other, ribbing him like crazy. Usually, Billy would have been laughing along with
us. Hell, he’d been the instigator most of the time. But this time, he got dead angry with all of us. He snatched those knickers right out of my hand and stormed out of the club like a proper
madam.’ Ed laughed as he pictured the scene. ‘There were other signs, too. I’d catch him smiling to himself like a wally when he thought nobody was looking. He’d get a
message on his phone and start grinning like he’d swallowed the Cheshire Cat and had the Laughing Policeman for dessert.’
    Ed was getting into his stride now. The room was rapt, every pair of eyes on him. He cleared his throat.
    ‘So anyway, six months after Billy and Ames met in the frozen aisle down Tesco – I know, right, you couldn’t make this stuff up – me and him were supposed to be going
travelling. We’d always said we’d go somewhere sunny for a few months when we’d finished Uni. Live the high life in Thailand, watch some ping pong . . .’ Ed waited for the
giggles and wasn’t disappointed.
    ‘But on the day we were meeting to finally book some flights, Billy turns up all weird. He was as white as a sheet and told me he needed to talk. Obviously, I thought the worst, but it
turns out that he hadn’t gotten Ames pregnant – sorry Sandra – he’d just gone and fallen so madly in love with her that he couldn’t bear to leave the country –
even for a place with year-round sunshine and zero morals.’
    It was clear to Ed that quite a few people sitting in the room were hearing this story for the first time. Amelia’s friends, in particular, were suddenly sitting up extra straight. The
Vicar, who was sitting to one side, smiled at him encouragingly.
    ‘Of course, I was all like, “Mate, what about the sunshine and the beaches and the beer and the birds in bikinis?” But do you know what he said? He turned to me, and I remember
it clearly even now, he turned to me, and he said, “Ed, mate, Ames has already brought more sunshine into my life than ten years on a Thai beach ever could.”’
    Billy’s mum, Patricia, and Amelia’s mum, Sandra, were both openly crying now. Ed thought he could even detect a little bit of moisture in Grandfather’s eyes, too.
    ‘That’s when I knew. He didn’t have to say anything else. I knew right at that moment, with absolute clarity, that my best mate, William Chambers, was in love with Amelia
Howard and that he would marry her one day. I suppose I even knew that I would be the one doing the wedding speech, although I probably didn’t dwell on that part, given my weak stomach and
all . . .’
    Nobody laughed this time, so Ed continued. ‘Over the past three years, I’ve spent more and more time with Ames – I’ve had to, the two of them have been joined together
like a pair of bloody limpets most of the time. I watched the way one always looked at the other, in that sickeningly cute way, when they were telling a joke or a story. I saw how they finished
each other’s sentences. It all sounds really clichéd now that I’m saying it out loud to all of you, but that’s just the way it was. It was like neither of them could quite
believe their luck in finding the other.
    ‘When my dad died . . .’ Ed threw a quick glance over to where his own mum was sitting, her hands folded in her lap and unashamed tears on her cheeks. ‘Ames was really there
for me. I was a complete mess, I admit it. Turning up at their flat at three in the morning, pissed out of my face, crying all over the two of them. I was a total liability, but Ames never said a
word. She just lay my head in her lap and told me that everything would be okay, that I would get through this, that she and Billy loved me . . .’
    Ed had to pause for a second before his voice betrayed him.