A small boy suddenly appeared in front of us clutching a camera in his chubby hands and pointing it vaguely towards Ferg and me. The flash went off and the boy scuttled away giggling. There had been a few blue-white flashes in other parts of the room over the last minute or so, most emanating from below table height.
‘Is there a knee-level identity parade later or what?’ Ferg asked, mystified.
‘I’d get used to it,’ I told him, dark spots dancing in front of my eyes. ‘Drew’s dad thought it would be a hoot to give all the small children cheap digi cameras, to keep the little scamps amused.’
Ferg appeared confused. ‘Drew? Who’s Drew?’
I looked at him. ‘The groom, Ferg?’
‘Oh.’ Ferg nodded, finished his second whisky. ‘That’s nice. So we’re going to have hip-high Toun bairns spatting about the place, letting off camera flashes all evening?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Cripes. Could be a long night.’
‘Wait till they show the results on the big screen,’ I said, nodding at the stage.
‘Dear Christ, have they no pity?’
‘Prepare yourself for a lot of photos of floor tiles and table legs. Oh, and corners.’
‘Corners?’
‘Kids love corners. Find them terribly photogenic. No idea why.’
‘Fuck.’ Ferg looked suitably appalled. ‘It’s the new slide carousel. Inhuman.’ He shook dramatically and sucked the last dregs of whisky from his glass. ‘This calls for a pint. Where’s the bar?’ He glanced round. ‘It is free, isn’t it?’
‘Hey, Stewart.’
I’d just finished my coffee after the meal. Ellie’s cup of tea lay where it had been left, untouched, just like her main course had been; she’d spent most of the meal dashing off to see people and was currently nowhere to be found. I’d done a little room-working myself, and Mike Mac had stopped by, sat and had a fairly phatic natter a few minutes earlier.
I turned round as a hand rested on my shoulder. ‘Jolie! Good to see you!’ I stood up and we hugged, only slightly awkwardly, given she was holding a wee girl in one arm. ‘And who’s this?’
‘This is Hannah,’ Jolie told me, smiling broadly.
‘Hello, Hannah,’ I said, though the bairn was shy and turned away, burying her face in Jolie’s shoulder-length brown hair.
‘Two next month,’ Jolie said.
I stroked the back of one of Hannah’s hands with a finger. The wee fist took an even tighter grip of her mum’s hair. ‘She’s gorgeous,’ I said. Hannah pressed her face deeper in towards Jolie’s neck. ‘Third one?’ I asked. ‘Or have there been more?’
‘Third,’ Jolie said, ‘and I think we’ll stop there. Three’s quite enough.’
Jolie McColl was my first girlfriend, the first girl I took on proper dates and had any sort of extended relationship with. Medium height and build, glossy, thickly heavy hair and a face that looked nice enough but plain only until she smiled, when rooms lit up.
I have to keep reminding myself ours was a relatively innocent relationship because although we never did have full-on sex there was a lot of everything else just short of it. Not for the want of me trying, begging and wheedling, mind, but Jolie was not to be moved; hands-down-pants and up-skirt mutual pleasuring was fine, and she was perfectly happy to go down on me, but her knickers might as well have been held on with superglue.
I suppose now it wouldn’t seem so terrible — we had a lot of fun together and a
Jolie’s attitude was that what we had was close enough to sex for it not really to matter. She wanted to stay a virgin, maybe until she was married and/or settled down and had kids. Only maybe, though; possibly she’d change her mind, so this restriction wasn’t necessarily for ever. What she wasn’t going to be was pressured or bullied into sex, by me or some of her so-called girlfriends.
I admired and respected her resolution absolutely, I just wished it didn’t affect me personally and drive me to bouts of such wild, so-near-and-yet-so-far frustration.
In the end my metaphorical cherry was popped when I had my one-night stand with Kat Naughton, on what had started out as just a lads-only drinking night. Arguably that would have relaxed me and I’d have been happy to give Jolie as long as she wanted to come round to the idea of us being proper lovers; however, somebody told her about me and Kat, and we had this big argument and split up.
We didn’t talk for about a year, then we did, then we became friends again. Not good friends, but more than just civil. She’d settled down a couple of years ago with a nice guy called Mark who worked on the rig-supply boats; last I’d heard they’d had two children, both boys. Now, there was Hannah as well. Jolie was a friend of Lauren, and Ellie and I had invited her and Mark to our wedding too.
‘How’s Mark?’ I asked.
