Something Borrowed

The front door comes open at half past ten and three women in matching lilac come through it in a wave, wet at the hems, one of them carrying a cardboard box and one of them carrying a cake.

Tess is in front. Her hair is half out of its pins, there is a wine stain down the sash of her dress, and she is holding a bouquet of white roses that has clearly been through a flood. She looks at you and then at the sofa and then back at you.

"Right. Don't say anything. Mum and Dad are in Portugal, so this is a reception now." She kicks her heels off one at a time, into the hall, and they hit the skirting with two separate thuds. "The band's van died on the ring road. The marquee came down at nine. Kevin's uncle did a speech about the cost of the beef, and the bride's been crying since eight."

She drops the bouquet on the coffee table, and a petal comes off it, and she pulls the napkin bundle out of the box and slaps it down next to it.

"We had games. We had a whole list. Nobody got to do any of them." She straightens up. "So we're doing them here, and every loser does what the winner says, and you're the only man in the house so you're in all of them."

Ines comes in behind her, drags a chair out from the table with her foot and sits down in it backwards, and sets her camera bag on the floor with the care of somebody putting down a baby. The hem of her dress is pinned up with a bulldog clip. She has no shoes on and has not had for a while.

"He's not in all of them," she says. "The shoe game doesn't need him."

"Ines, work with me."

Bo comes in last, having apparently found the kitchen on the way past, and sets a stack of paper plates on the counter. "Sweetheart, have you eaten? Nobody's eaten. Tess, the cake's going on the table, the icing's half melted."

Tess is already writing on the back of a napkin in eyeliner pencil, and she looks up and grins at you, and it is a grin with a lot of teeth in it and not much mercy.

"First forfeit's going to be for you, by the way," she says. "I caught the bouquet. That makes me the authority."

Eleven o'clock and the box is open on the coffee table, and the games are exactly as bad as drunk bridesmaids at eight in the evening made them.

Ines reads them out flat, one after another, holding each napkin up like a menu. "'Swap something with the person on your left.'" She turns it over, checks the back. "That's it. That's the whole forfeit."

"It's a good one," Tess says. "It's classic."

"It's a suggestion. It's not a forfeit, Tess, a forfeit has to sting." Ines drops it on the pile and picks up the next. "'Kiss the loser. Properly.'"

Tess's eyebrows go up and she looks at you and then away, quickly, and takes a drink. "Right. Well. That's more like it." She claps her hands once. "Shoe game first, though. Both shoes off, everyone in a line, and whoever gets the most right about the bride and groom doesn't have to do anything."

Bo, from the sofa with a plate on her knee, says, "Tess, none of us know anything about the bride and groom."

"Then it's anybody's game, isn't it." Tess drops her shoes in the middle of the rug and looks at you, and she is already enjoying herself. "Come on, dork. Both of them."

Half past midnight and Tess has decided that the dresses are the forfeit.

She stands in front of the mirror in the hall with her hands on her hips and her chin up, and the strap of her dress is already down off one shoulder.

"Right. New forfeit. Winner swaps one item of clothing with the loser and it stays swapped for three games." She turns round. "Ines, you're winning, so pick."

Ines looks at her over the top of her glass for a long second, then at you, and then says, "Dress."

"You can't pick dress, we've all got the same dress."

"Then it's easy, isn't it." Ines sets the glass down. "You get his shirt. He gets the dress."

Bo puts her plate aside and sits forward, delighted. "Oh, that's good. That's actually good." She pats the sofa beside her. "Come on, sweetheart, over here, I'll help you with the buttons before Tess changes her mind."

Tess is already reaching behind herself for her zip and then stops, and looks at you, and her mouth goes a bit dry. "...Fine. Fine! But it's three games and then it's mine back."

One o'clock and the music is off the phone speaker and the phone is on the arm of the sofa and it is not a good song, and Tess does not care.

She has her hand out, palm up, and she is waiting.

"Forfeit. Dance with the winner." A beat. "For one whole song. And you're not allowed to just stand there doing the shuffle, you have to actually dance, or it doesn't count and it starts again."

Ines has her camera up already, held at her chest, not yet lifted to her eye. Bo has her feet tucked up under her and a plate balanced on her knee and she says, quietly, "Go on, sweetheart," and it is not a joke.

Tess's hand stays out. The wine stain on her sash is dry now. Her hair is fully down and there is a pin still in it, and the song on the phone has a slow bit coming.

"Come on, dork," *she says, and it comes out softer than she meant it to, so she adds, "or I'll add a second forfeit and you won't like it."

Half past one and the cake is out on the coffee table with the lid off and one paper plate already in use, and Tess has decided that the knife is a formality.

"Forfeit, and I'm being generous, so nobody argue." She pushes the cake towards you. "You eat a slice with no hands. Straight off the plate. If you get icing on your nose, it's another forfeit."

Bo makes an interested noise. "It's going everywhere. Sweetheart, do it over the plate, not over the rug."

"He's not a dog, Bo."

"He's about to be." Bo sits forward. "It's a fair forfeit, though. Good choice." She catches your eye and her smile is warmer than the joke deserves. "Do you want a hand? Because I'll give you a hand. Hold your hair back, or something."

Ines, from the chair, lifts the camera to her eye and says, "Nobody talk while he does it," and the shutter goes off before the sentence is finished.

Two in the morning and there is one game left in the box and everyone knows what it is.

Ines is holding it up between two fingers: a lace garter, thin and cheap and white, with a little satin bow on the front. It has been in the box all night and nobody has mentioned it once.

"Right," Tess says, and her voice has gone slightly careful. "Garter toss. That's the last one. You can't toss a garter at a man, so." She swallows. "So it's not a toss, it's a forfeit. And the forfeit is you put it on. And it has to be on the leg."

Bo, curled into the arm of the sofa, says, "Tess, it's on the leg either way."

"It has to be the thigh, Bo." Tess holds her hand out for the garter without looking away from you. "Give it here. I'll do it. You'll do it wrong."

She comes over and crouches down in front of the sofa and holds it up, and her hair falls forward, and she says, quieter than anything else she has said all night: "...Leg out, dork. And don't laugh."

Three in the morning, the last of the prosecco, and all three of them have gone quiet in the way that means the night is turning over.

Ines is on the floor with her back against the sofa, camera on her stomach, eyes closed but not asleep. Bo is under the blanket at the other end with her feet on the arm of it, and she has stopped bothering to sit up. Tess is in the middle of the rug, cross-legged, still in the lilac dress, with the napkin score sheet in her hand and the eyeliner pencil on the floor beside her.

She looks at the napkin for a while and then folds it in half.

"So, tally," she says. "You lost nine. I lost four. Ines cheated and Bo's been feeding you all night so she doesn't count."

"I lost four," Ines says, without opening her eyes.

"You lost four." Tess puts the napkin down. She has gone pink to the ears and she is doing that thing where she talks faster to cover it. "Anyway. The thing about a reception is it ends. And a reception that ends has to end somewhere. And Bo's already asleep, so." She looks up. "Where are you sleeping, dork? Because I'm not getting a taxi back to the venue for one night, and neither's anybody else."