Part one

I had written my speech eleven times.

The first version was four pages long and talked about the playground at Saint-Joseph school in Ciney, where Sarah and I met when we were six, the day she lent me her strawberry-shaped rubber and I never gave it back. The eleventh version fitted on a single index card. It was perfect. It made people laugh in the right place and cry in the right place, and it ended with “To Sarah and Antoine”.

I had that card in my hand at the castle in Namur, on Saturday 12 September, at quarter past ten in the evening, standing in front of a hundred and twenty guests, with a microphone that whistled a little.

I was the maid of honour. Twenty-eight years of friendship. She was the sister I never had. I knew everything about her: her fear of pigeons, her meatball recipe, the name of her first love and the scar she hides under her watch.

The only problem was that the groom had spent six months trying to get me into bed.

It had started in March, with a message at eleven at night.

“You asleep?”

Antoine. My best friend’s fiancé. A tall, charming man, a salesman at a car dealership in Wépion, who laughed loudly and always remembered your name. I liked him. I thought he made Sarah happy.

I had replied: “Almost. Something wrong?” I thought he wanted to plan a surprise for her.

“No. I was just thinking about you.”

I didn’t answer. The next day he wrote that it was a joke, that he’d had one drink too many with colleagues. I wanted to believe him.

Then there were other messages. Compliments on a holiday photo. A “you looked stunning on Saturday” after a barbecue. One evening in April, a “Sarah’s at her mum’s, come for a drink”. Then more direct things, which I won’t repeat.

Each time I gave the same answer, in drier and drier words. “No.” “Stop.” “She’s my best friend.” “Never, Antoine. Never.”

And I took screenshots of everything. I don’t know why. A reflex.

In May, I decided to tell Sarah everything. I rehearsed my sentence in the car for a week. And then one evening Antoine was waiting for me outside my building in Jambes.

He was smiling. He was calm.

“I know you’ve kept my messages,” he said. “Do what you like. But think carefully. If you talk, I’ll say it was you. That you’ve been all over me for months, that I finally replied to get you off my back. Who do you think she’ll believe? The man she’s marrying in four months, or the single friend who’s always been a bit jealous?”

“I have never been jealous of Sarah.”

“I know that. She doesn’t.”

He got back into his demo car, a big grey German one, and drove off.

I cried all night. The worst part was that he might be right. Sarah loved him. She had already bought the dress, booked the castle, chosen the sugared almonds. If I spoke up, I risked losing her. Not him.

I tried once. Just once. At the end of May, on a Wednesday, at the café on the Place d’Armes where Sarah and I always had the same hot chocolate, even in summer.

“Sarah,” I began. “Antoine… Are you sure about him?”

She looked up from her phone. She was smiling.

“Surer than ever. Why?”

“No reason. I… Getting married is a big thing. I just wanted to know if you were happy.”

“So happy, Léa. So happy. Do you know what he told me last night? That you’re the only one of my friends he finds truly genuine. He adores you, you know.”

I drank my hot chocolate to the bottom so I wouldn’t have to answer. It was too sweet. It tasted of lies.

So I kept quiet. June. July. August. I tried on bridesmaid dresses with her. I organised the hen weekend in Durbuy. I smiled in every photo. And every time I caught Antoine’s eye, he gave me a little wink.

For the hen weekend in Durbuy, we had rented a cottage with a hot tub and bedrooms named after flowers. At one in the morning, while the girls were singing Céline Dion in the living room, my phone buzzed.

“Did she tell you what she’s wearing under the dress? It’s you I’m picturing.”

I went out into the garden. I was sick behind a hydrangea bush. Sarah found me there a quarter of an hour later and held my hair back, laughing: “Too many mojitos, Léa!” She took me back inside, wrapped me in a blanket, made me drink water. She looked after me all night.

And I said nothing to her.

In the last few weeks, Sarah changed. She was quieter. She frowned at her phone. Twice she cancelled our Wednesday coffees. Once I caught her looking at me strangely, for a long time, as if she were searching my face for something.

I was frightened. I thought Antoine had already told her his version. That it was too late.

The night before the wedding, she hugged me after the last fitting. Very tightly. She said into my neck:

“Tomorrow you give your speech, all right? Whatever happens. Promise.”

“Promise.”

“And you tell the truth. Always the truth. Like when we were six.”

I didn’t understand. I think I thought she was talking about the strawberry rubber.

On the Saturday, everything was perfect. The sun on the Citadel. The arches of white flowers. The humanist ceremony in the park, where a friend of Antoine’s read a text about love that lasts. The champagne, the canapés, the DJ playing Stromae. Sarah was beautiful in her lace dress, and she kept laughing, a little too loudly, a little too often.

Antoine, in a midnight-blue suit, was going round the tables. When he reached mine, he leaned towards me as if to kiss my cheek, and whispered:

“A nice speech, eh. Nice and tame.”

At quarter past ten, the DJ turned the music down. Antoine’s best man gave his: jokes about football and a drinking story from Louvain-la-Neuve. Everyone laughed. Then he said:

“And now, the maid of honour!”

I took the microphone. I unfolded my index card. I looked at Sarah, sitting in the middle of the long table, with her crown of flowers. She was staring at me. She wasn’t smiling.

I read the first sentence. The one about the strawberry rubber. The guests smiled.

Then I stopped.

“You tell the truth. Always the truth.”

I folded the card. I took my phone out of my clutch bag. At the end of the table, Antoine stopped smiling.

“Sarah,” I said, and my voice shook through the speakers. “Before we raise our glasses, there’s something you need to know.”