to have to cancel your wedding plans that are scheduled for tomorrow. Please schedule your wedding at another facility. Thank you. Good bye.”
“Thank you. Good bye.” I repeat on auto pilot and shut off my phone.
I’m in the sitting room, phone in hand. One after the next call after call comes in informing me of cancellations for my wedding tomorrow that is no more.
It’s all over. Everyone has cancelled. Even some guests who are invited have phoned to say they can’t make it to my wedding or the reception.
I stare at the dancer pole just like I’d done after flipping myself off it. When my eyes become dry from so much staring, I blink. I’m now staring at the blank wall.
I’ve been meaning to get some photos or prints up onto that wall. Why haven’t I done so yet? Why do anything? Why does anything matter now? My wedding is off. I’m never going to marry the man of my dreams…
“Callum!” I scream a wretched scream the likes of which I never thought possible of my own vocal chords. Rapidly, I dial his mobile only to find it goes straight to voice mail.
I stand and throw my own phone against the stark blank wall. It collides with the white paint and makes a visible dent.
There. At least the wall isn’t completely blank any longer.
I’d forgotten Callum had said he wouldn’t be contactable by phone for the entirety of his barge stag-do.
This is beyond disastrous. Everyone in my life has more than let me down. What did I do to them all to deserve this? How could they end it all like this? Because that’s surely what they’ve done. Each and every person who has failed me today must have known that I’d end our friendship.
I guess none of them care.
They must all hate me to treat me this badly.
I wrack my brains trying to remember what I could have possibly done to upset everyone into cancelling on me like this, because there has to be a reason. A collective group of people do not all cancel on one wedding at random. It can’t be mere coincidence that everyone I know —and some who I love— would cancel so suddenly. Can it? Could I be the world’s unluckiest piece of crap on the planet?
Judging by the day’s occurrences, it would seem so.
The fact that I can’t even warn Callum not to show up at the wedding venue tomorrow actually destroys me inside. I can picture the look on his face when he arrives there tomorrow dressed in his wedding finery.
“Oh, Cal. I’m so sorry.”
And now the tears begin to flow. When my phone bleeps an incoming message I can barely manage the energy to crawl over to the device. I’m bawling like a crushed child who’s just had her favourite toy ripped from her embrace and squashed under the mean heels of her cruel older brother. I am a woman who only knows sadness.
The sorrow is heightened tenfold when I read the text message on my phone’s screen…
My parents’ flight from Spain has been cancelled and they won’t be flying over for my now non-existent wedding.
***
To be honest, I’m surprised my parents didn’t ring to say they weren’t coming of their own choice. After the day I’ve had it wouldn’t shock me at all to discover that my own parents no longer loved me.
Scrape, file, buff, saw.
I’m filing the hell out of my acrylic nails in frustration. At this rate I might just file them down completely. I might even file them off so much that my nail-beds will become exposed.
File. File. File.
Maybe if I file down past my nail-beds my fingertips will start bleeding and it will really hurt. Then I will no longer have to endure the pain that’s gripping my heart right now.
Cry. File. Sob. File. Scrape.
I’m lying in bed. Tears flow from my eyes and over my temples wetting my hair. The acrylic from my nails turns back into powder as I file away. My neck and chest are covered in acrylic powder, but I don’t care. I just continue to file off every trace of that wedding-cancelling-hairstylist Tina.
Oh yes. Even she had cancelled on me by phone.
What’s odd is that everyone who’d cancelled had done so by calling. My parents, however, had merely sent a text message. I’m not even going to question their reasons for not phoning and speaking to me properly. If I call them now and discover their flight really was avoided, rather