I can’t believe quite how late we’re going to be. I guess it shouldn’t come as a real shock, I seem to spend my whole life living half-an-hour behind everyone else. But still, I wish that sometimes I could actually get my arse in gear a little quicker and make it somewhere at the exact I time I said I’d be there. And tonight, of all nights! It’s a very important night indeed.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ I ask, biting my nails in nervousness. I hope it won’t have happened before we arrive.
‘You sound like a kid, and yes, considering the hotel is ten minutes from our house, and we left five minutes ago, I guess we’re nearly there.’
I roll my eyes at my smart-alec husband. He carries the lateness gene too, only whilst it turns me into a red-faced, panicking mess, he breezes through life as if he grew up in the Caribbean, rather than a south London suburb.
‘I just wanted to get there on time, before Pen’s big moment.’
‘I’m sure that Mark will wait until we get there and we’re not that late.’
I look at my watch, twenty seven minutes and counting.
By the time we pull into the car park of the hotel I’m a jittering mess, and in desperate need of whatever alcohol they have in this place.
‘Wow, Mark’s gone all out on this, hasn’t he?’ whistles Russell through his teeth.
‘He certainly has,’ I say as we climb the Guggenheim-esque staircase into the hotel lobby.
‘It’s a bit of a change from the Stag and Hounds.’
It certainly is. We were supposed to be going for drinks in Penny and Mark’s local which – as local pubs go – is a pretty good night out. The beer’s cheap, the landlord’s not an arsehole and most importantly it’s escaped the gastro-pub makeover that’s attac. . .
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