Make or Break

‘So are they going to say “the bride may kiss the bride” or something?’ Pete said as we jumped in the back of Trust’s van the next day.

‘No, they’ll say “you may now kiss”.’

Trust eyed us from the rear-view mirror. Priya and Laurel were going to have some kind of equality-type ceremony that involved vows of mutual respect, lots of flowers (Priya was obsessed with colour, yellow being her favourite), a traditional Hindu walk around the fire pit and lots and lots of laughter. Pete nodded and processed the information. He loved Priya. Absolutely loved her. But he’d never been 100 per cent comfortable with her being a lesbian.

‘I just worry I’ll say the wrong thing,’ he’d stressed to me once when he was drunk in a taxi on the way home from one of Priya and Laurel’s infamous (and boozy) pot luck dinners.

‘What, like, “This is a lovely salad; are those pine nuts YOU BIG CARPET MUNCHER?” ’ I’d replied, and Pete had dissolved into embarrassed drunken giggles. And hadn’t been able to eat pine nuts with a straight face ever since.

I’d told Priya about it the next day. She’d thought it was hilarious and now every meal we had at her flat contained pine nuts. And that was why, sitting in Pete’s lap, was his wedding gift; a little jar of pine nuts tied up with a yellow ribbon.

The wedding was at a winery forty-five minutes out of Cape Town. We travelled through dry, open landscapes with jagged mountain ranges showing grey-blue in the distance. Heat pounded through the windows despite the van’s air-conditioning blowing a noisy gale. I smiled at Pete, the memory of the night before playing in my head. After we left the RSPCA/gallery/bar/restaurant, Pete had asked Trust to swing by a place he’d read about. It was a big restaurant on the edge of the water where tables, sofas and bar leaners sat on sand. Yachts moored close by, their occupants lounging on deck listening to music coming from the outdoor speakers. Pete had gotten me tipsy on an amazing South African red (not sure of variety, definitely don’t care) and then we’d gone home, shagged and Pete had fallen dead asleep. I’d gotten up to check my emails but there was nothing from Dad; it wasn’t unusual, he often took a few days to reply. So I’d started a Google search for things to do in Cape Town. Pete liked his Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor recommendations but I preferred to scour Instagram and do intensive Google searches. By the time I crawled in beside Pete, I had more places I couldn’t wait to visit than we had time to see. I’d snuggled next to him and felt a heat in the pit of my stomach when, in his sleep, his hand stroked my thigh. I would think about climbing Table Mountain. I really would. Pete wanted to climb it and I wanted to want to.

Trust swung the van off the main road and drove down a tree-lined drive towards a white building with round gables which, according to the Lonely Planet Pete was reading aloud from, was typical of Cape Dutch architecture and was about three hundred years old. Trust dropped us by a little chalkboard sign that directed guests to the picnic area and drove off to snooze in the van under the trees.

We followed a winding path through gorgeous gardens and when we reached the picnic grounds, stopped in our tracks. The vast lawn was emerald green, dense and short-clipped in a standard similar to a luxury golf course. Hammocks hung between grand old trees with drooping branches which gave dappled shade to the white and grey beanbags dotted about the lawn. Tables with linen tablecloths had been placed in various areas, each with jars of rustic bouquets of herbs and wildflowers. Yellow bunting hung between trees, marking out the wedding party area, and the expansive lawns stretched out towards the mountain ranges in the distance. The sky was blue, the air was warm and the only sounds were laughing, chatting and the tinkling of wine bottles on glasses. My favourite kinds of sounds.

‘Wow,’ I said, taking hold of Pete’s hand. I couldn’t believe I was actually there. About to watch my best friend get married in the most beautiful setting I’d ever seen. It was so romantic and joyful. ‘Let’s get some wine!’ I said, keen to get in the thick of the merriment.

With a rosé for me and a local craft beer for Pete, we walked over to a group of people who looked like they might be the most fun. Pete has the tendency to be shy whereas my philosophy is everybody is a potential new friend. Just walk up and find out if you like each other. And anyone who thinks I’m weird for introducing myself is not my kind of person anyway, so no loss.

‘Do you think most of the people here are gay?’ Pete whispered as we neared my chosen group of new best friends forever.

‘I don’t know. Why? Will you talk differently to them?’ I affected a serious expression. ‘Will you put on a lesbian accent?’

Pete, trying to look irritated, chuckled. ‘You are so annoying.’

I was delighted to find that South Africans are super-friendly. The wedding wasn’t big, maybe about fifty people; only a handful of Priya and Laurel’s friends and family could make it out at such short notice, and the rest were people they’d met while working on the show. The local guests were a good-looking bunch; hot guys with man buns, beardy chins, blocky sunglasses, big smiles and big personalities. The girls were beautiful, friendly and funny with smooth skin and long manes of blonde or caramel hair. Everyone looked like they had just been on holiday: tanned, thin and happy. In London people only looked like that for the week following a Spanish mini break where they’d starved themselves beforehand then worked intensively on cultivating an ‘I’ve-been-on-holiday’ tan.

Within an hour I’d met nearly all the people I didn’t already know, and the chime of a bell told us the ceremony was about to begin. We sat on linen-covered hay bales in the shade, watching as Priya and Laurel danced down the aisle to the sound of Stevie Wonder. They stopped under a pagoda heavily adorned with flowers of every colour imaginable. Priya beamed in her floaty yellow dress, her make-up natural and her hair like liquid chocolate flowing over her shoulders; Laurel, with her blonde angular bob and her pixie nose, wore an ivory playsuit with lace panels, which had a sort of cape that flowed from her capped sleeves. It was awesome. And sort of Bowie-as-a-hot-female-spaceship-captain, which isn’t a recognised clothing style but SO should be. If anyone could pull it off it was tall, slender, grinning, ‘fuck it let’s do it’ Laurel. She worked in the writer’s room on Priya’s show and they’d been inseparable since the day they met three years previously.

‘They look so happy,’ Pete whispered, as the celebrant said something that made Laurel and Priya turn to each other and grin.

I grabbed his hand, intertwining my fingers with his. ‘Don’t they?’ I dabbed under my eyes with a scented tissue that a cute flower girl had handed out earlier. All I could ever ask for the people I loved was for them to feel joy. And my best friend was quivering with it. I couldn’t have been happier if I’d been given a basket of puppies and a bikini line that never needed waxing.

Priya and Laurel’s vows incited hilarity and emotion, and after a hysterical walk around the fire pit, where traditionally the groom leads the bride but with two brides and not enough planning meant Priya and Laurel had attempted the circuit side by sid, resulting in Laurel on the inside going half-pace and Priya on the outside skipping double time and tripping on her hem, Priya’s honking laugh signalled it was time to party.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Pete asked as I arrived next to him at the bar a few hours later, hot and a bit sweaty from all the dancing with all the friendly people.

I stretched onto my tippy toes and kissed his cheek. ‘Dancing.’

‘Well, do you want to know where I’ve been?’

‘Where?’ I said, slipping my phone out of my bag and checking for emails and texts from Dad. Nothing.

‘Talking to an American actor from Priya’s show about himself.’ He took an icy-cold beer from a lady behind the bar with a twinkly ‘thank you’ and turned back to me. ‘For an hour.’

I slid my phone back in my bag and gave Pete a sympathetic look while asking the bar-lady for a rosé with extra ice cubes.

‘I pretty much know his jock strap size, the glucose levels of his last blood test and the thread count of the sheets at his mother’s house, and I one hundred per cent guarantee he won’t even remember my name.’

‘Aw, poor baby,’ I said, curling an arm round his waist and giving him a squeeze. ‘How do you always manage to find the one twat at an event that is almost ninety-nine per cent twat-free?’

‘It’s a gift,’ Pete said, mock grimly.

I laughed then stopped as ‘You’re the One That I Want’ from the Grease soundtrack came on. ‘Oooh, let’s go dance!’

Pete’s eyes widened in horror. He used to be way more fun, but as he’s gotten older he’s become more serious. Like now that he is thirty it isn’t cool to replicate Sandy and Danny’s synchronised 1970s strutting. Which was exactly what Priya and Laurel were doing, and I wanted in!

‘Right,’ I said as I took my giant glass of rosé from the lovely wine-supplying lady with a big thank you. ‘You’re coming with me and we will find you a non-twat to talk to, OK?’

With our drinks condensating (it’s a new word) I led Pete into the crowd of non-dancers, got him talking to some friendly folk then kissed his cheek and raced back to the dance floor to join the John Travolta pelvic pumping that had now morphed into everyone dancing like backpack kid.

As the sun dipped, I left the dance floor (a grassy patch marked out with pink and silver bunting) to call the RSPCA bar and ask to speak to Frankie. I was having so much fun with Priya and Laurel and all their friends, but the nag of my father’s whereabouts and why-abouts was at the back of my mind, pulling me back from complete abandon.

‘The Baroness, Jimmy speaking.’

‘Oh hi,’ I said. ‘You again.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s me. The girl from last night.’

Uncomfortable stammers came down the phone line.

‘Not that kind of girl!’ I laughed. ‘It’s Jess. I came in with my boyfriend and was asking about an exhibition?’

Jimmy laughed. ‘Oh yeah! So what’s up?’

‘I was wondering if I could speak to that guy Frankie you were talking about.’

‘Well firstly, Frankie is a girl. And secondly, we’re not open yet so she’s not here.’

I looked at the time on my phone. It was only 5.23 p.m. but felt much later. I guess that’s what afternoon drinking did to your perception of time.

‘Are you ever open?’

‘Yes. At eight p.m.’

‘That’s late for a restaurant.’

‘We’re more of a nightclub-type restaurant.’

‘Right.’

‘Why don’t you pop by later and you can talk to Frankie and I’ll make you guys that margarita?’

‘I can’t, I’m at a wedding.’

‘Then why are you calling here?! Go back and have more free champagne and dance to the Bruno Mars medley that’s bound to come on at some point.’

After I’d worked up a South African sweat leaping about to said Bruno Mars medley, Pete called me over, his cheeks flushed with alcohol and excitement.

‘Jess! Come meet Goat!’

I wobbled towards a man who had the physical stature of a London bus on its end. He was literally rectangle-shaped and, from the looks of his strained dress shirt, all muscle. His meaty hand made the beer bottle he was holding seem like a prop for a Ken doll.

‘Hi, I’m Jess.’

‘Goat,’ he said, shaking my extended hand. ‘How’re you liking South Africa so far?’

‘It’s hot,’ I said, and although it wasn’t funny Goat laughed, loud and chesty.

‘Goat says he can take us up Table Mountain tomorrow,’ Pete said, a hopeful look on his face.

Goat had a proud one. I’d realised that mentioning Table Mountain to a Capetonian made them flush with pride. It was like you’d paid a compliment to their favourite child.

‘Is Goat your real name?’ I asked, avoiding any climbing commitment just yet. I was planning on having a hangover tomorrow. And wanted to eat that hangover away at a steam-punk café I’d seen on Instagram.

‘No, it’s Adrian.’ Goat adjusted his considerable weight from one wide spread foot to the other. ‘But only my mum calls me that. I’ve been Goat since I started climbing as a boy.’

Another tanned man in a button-down peach shirt and giant aviators arrived beside Goat. ‘Goat is called Goat because he can climb anything,’ the new man said.

‘Then wouldn’t you be better being called Monkey?’ I giggled. ‘Aren’t they better climbers?’

‘Goats climb mountains,’ Pete said, worried I was going to embarrass him in front of these ever so manly men. He lowered his voice. ‘Mountain Goat?’

‘I reckon a monkey could climb a mountain better that a goat, they’re more limber.’ I mimed a monkey mountain-climbing, stumbled, then under Pete’s alarmed gaze, stopped and took a swig of my warm wine.

‘He’s a beast! ’ the new man said. ‘He looks as unlikely as a goat does at being able to climb mountains. But despite their “un-limberness”,’ the new man winked at me, ‘goats are very good climbers. Like my bru here.’ He clapped a hand on Goat’s meaty shoulder.

‘All right,’ Goat blushed under his surfer’s/climber’s/general-outdoorsy tan.

The two mates began talking about a seven-day hike they had coming up. They were sleeping under the stars and aiming to get to an especially high, especially dangerous peak and it was evidently ‘brutal’. Pete’s excitement ignited at the words ‘high’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘brutal’. Mine powered down. I made polite excuses and wandered off to cuddle Priya and request the ‘Mahna-Mahna’ song from The Muppets that Priya, Laurel and I had a whole routine to.

‘Goat is picking us up at five a.m.,’ Pete said, as we climbed into the back of Trust’s van at the end of an extremely fun, love-filled wedding.

I wondered when Trust ever had time off. He seemed to be in the van day and night, at our beck and call and it was not something I was a) used to or b) comfortable with.

I checked the time on my phone. 11.29 p.m. ‘Babe, I’d rather climb it when I’ve had a proper sleep. And haven’t been drinking. And when I’ve done some kind of training. I can barely walk up the apartment steps!’

‘But Goat only has tomorrow morning free.’

‘Why do we have to go with Goat?’

‘He knows the way.’

‘So do I,’ I said, trying to defeat a hiccup. ‘Up.’ I pealed in to giggles, which made Trust chuckle twelve octaves lower. ‘And we have the post-wedding BBQ at Priya’s.’

I opened Alice and began to eat some liberated wedding food.

Pete frowned. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

‘I was talking to a girl at the wedding who said her parents had this snake called a Cape Cobra in their garden,’ I said, my mouth full of grapes. ‘And then another girl said one came into their kitchen. And another said they see them all the time on their lawn.’

Pete gave a weary shake of his head.

‘It’s true! They all have snake stories! And do you know where all these people live?’

Pete shrugged.

‘Around Table Mountain. And do you know what they call that snake?’

Pete, again, shook his head.

‘The two-step snake. As in, it bites you and two steps later you die. And I bet it’s a lot more than two steps from the middle of that mountain to a syringe full of anti-venom.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Pete said with a small smile.

‘And this other girl’s dog, a Cape Cobra bit it and it died. Immediately. And it was a Rottweiler. One of those big ones that look like Mike Tyson in a flea collar.

‘They disappear when they hear humans,’ Pete said, and admirably he was maintaining his patience. ‘Just stamp as you walk.’

‘So not only do you want me to climb that massive mountain, but you’d like me to do it stamping like a North Korean soldier?’

‘It takes Goat and his mates fifty minutes to climb. So we’ll probably do it in an hour and a quarter.’

‘You want me to stamp upwards for an hour and a quarter?’ I hiccuped and dropped grapes all over the floor of the van.

Pete looked at the state of me. ‘Maybe an hour and a half.’

As I bent to pick up the grapes I was suddenly struck by a brilliant idea. ‘I’ve been suddenly struck by a brilliant idea,’ I said, righting myself. ‘Why don’t you go without me?’

Pete opened his mouth to protest and I held up a palm, perhaps a little too close to his nose but my depth of field was shaky.

‘Just listen. You go without me this time, and for the rest of the holiday I’ll practise stamping up the apartment steps and just before we leave we can climb it together.’

Pete could see the merit of my proposal. Especially since it had been delivered interspersed with hiccups. Trust dropped us off and we security-swiped ourselves into the foyer at the bottom of our apartment block. Pete pressed the lift button.

‘Uh-ah,’ I said, shaking my index finger. ‘Up.’ I pointed at the stairs. ‘Training starts now.’

Pete laughed. ‘Really? Now?’

‘Come on.’ I stamped my first step. ‘All hail Kim Jong Ju-Ju!’ I said, doing an attempt at a North Korean salute, which looked more like the beginning to Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ dance. ‘What is his name anyway . . .?’

It took us at least twenty-five minutes to drunkenly climb all six flights of stairs. During which I sang the bits I knew to Yazz’s ‘The Only Way is Up’, Wham’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ (and had a brief moment of sadness about George), ‘Moving on Up’ by M People, ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ by Bob Marley, ‘Start Me Up’ by the Stones, ‘Straight Up’ by Paula Abdul, ‘Uptown Girl’ by Billy Joel and ‘Up Where We Belong’ by some old people. By the time we got inside we were breathless with giggles and stamping and had upset two sets of neighbours. We fell into bed, shagged once and fell asleep.