Read Amanda's Wedding for Free Online Page B

up to him and explain that, yes, I did have a home; no, I wasn’t a terrorist (though I’d be strangely flattered if he thought so), but really I was choosing to be here to make some friendly phone calls, shop for consumer goods and WAIT FOR SOMEONE WHO LOVED ME, DAMN IT! So I grinned ingratiatingly. I checked the ongoing ladder in my tights. Shit. Where on earth was I going to find a pair of tights in an airport shopping mall?
    Another three hours and I’d thought ‘stuff it’ and done the whole credit-card thing. I was top-to-toe coiffed: hair, Clinique lipstick, new top, poncey pants, hold-ups (the nineties girl’s compromise, as far as I was concerned) and, sadly, the same old flat shoes, as even I couldn’t bring myself to go that far. Unfortunately, the perfume ladies didn’t see the shoes in time, checked out the posh togs and did a mass ambush on me, so I smelled like a tarts’ annual general meeting.’
    Another two hours and I had managed to spend more than the clothes’ total on coffee and nasty Danishes, and I was sitting uncomfortably, staring out of the window and reading ‘What your man really means when he shags all your mates and has started to look at the dog – is this how the new soft new lad has to express himself?’ I was ready to a) kill myself; b) go play in the arcades; c) buy the damned shoes. I’d been tempted to try and make friends with the cleaner, buthe’d wandered off shift, still staring at me and shaking his head.
    So I bought the shoes. Then I went and played in the arcades.
    Five hundred years later, it seemed a reasonable time to start going to meet planes. I bought a toothbrush and toothpaste, and prepared myself.
    Four New York planes later, and my fixed smile was starting to look a bit desperate. How did travel reps do it? Must be the drugs.
    I started to think that maybe I’d missed him. Maybe he’d disembarked already and was on his way somewhere – he’d phoned one of his mates and been whooshed off in a taxi to some expensive postcode. Maybe he’d walked past while I was looking at the girl carrying the enormous stuffed elephant. Maybe when all that bloody coffee made me go to the loo again. Oh Christ. More than a whole day in an airport for absolutely nothing.
    My anxiety levels were reaching their peak and I was about to put a call out for him over the intercom so I could at least attempt to head him off, when, at last, at last, at last, he loped out of the by now extremely familiar automatic doors.
    My stomach hit the floor. He looked gorgeous. I arranged my face into a suitably affectionate, wry look and pointed myself in his general direction. He didn’t see me (it must have been the hairdo), so I ended up having to run after him in my new super-sexyhigh-heeled shoes and attack him from behind like a mugger.
    He jumped round as if he was about to kung-fu me, then gradually took it in.
    â€˜Mel!’
    I was out of breath from running and out of breath from seeing him.
    â€˜Heh … heh … Alex!’
    He gathered me up in his strong arms and gave me a huge movie-star bear hug. I wished the cleaner was still around to see.
    â€˜You … you complete and utter fuckhead,’ I choked.
    He buried his face in my hair.
    â€˜God, I missed you.’

Three
    All the way back on the tube we yabbered and yabbered, genuinely thrilled to see each other again. He told me about his trip across America: the larks he got up to in New York; the English pop-star he bumped into in a deserted part of Montana and what great mates they became; his awful jobs and the amazing characters he’d met. His voice had taken on a new American tinge. I didn’t mention the fact that I hadn’t changed jobs, or flats, or, despite appearances, got it together at all since he went away, instead embroidering wildly the love lives of several mutual acquaintances, some boring parties and a hilarious