The Invitation_The perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy
The Invitation
The perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy
Keris Stainton
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
If You Could See Me Now
Hear more from Keris
Also by Keris Stainton
A Letter from Keris
It Had To Be You
Acknowledgements
For Jenni Nock, hope I did him justice
Chapter One
Piper held her phone at arms’ length and about a foot above her head to get the best angle and include as much of her outfit as possible. She was wearing a red and white striped long-sleeved T-shirt and black dungarees with gold glitter ankle boots and she was totally feeling herself. Apart from one thing.
Sweaty with nerves/excitement she typed. Catch me on Hey, UK! at 9.30 talking about body positivity
She posted the photo to her Instagram, waited a second for a couple of likes and then shut her phone down before shoving it in the internal pocket of her satchel. She glanced around the room. The TV chef who’d been on earlier demonstrating from his new book of pies ‘for real men’ was still sitting in the corner, talking quietly on his phone. Piper had wanted to try the bacon and black pudding pie he’d made, but a) she was too nervous to eat, and b) she wasn’t a real man.
She sipped at her water and glanced at the large flat-screen TV. 9.10. Only twenty minutes until she was going to be on national TV. She hoped her friends were watching. She knew her friends would be watching. And quite a lot of her IG followers – she’d been getting messages steadily since she’d first mentioned it a couple of days earlier. She doubted any family would be tuning in since a) her parents were dead, b) her aunt didn’t tend to get up before ten and c) her sister hadn’t seemed at all interested when she’d told her about it.
She took her phone out and switched it on again, chewing her mouth a little before remembering the bold lip the make-up artist had given her earlier. Once her phone had powered up, she checked her face in the front camera. All good. Well, she looked nervous – eyes wide and too bright – but her lippie looked great. She opened Twitter and typed On in fifteen. Want to do the Power Pose, but I think it would freak out Pie Guy.
Pie Guy glanced up briefly – his bright blue eyes meeting Piper’s. He was quite hot, she thought. She’d noticed he had really nice hands when she’d watched him baking on the big screen. But she couldn’t go out with anyone who thought pies were just for men. And she’d seen his girlfriend on the sidebar of shame and she was about the size of one of Piper’s thighs. She shut her phone down again – she was absolutely going to leave it this time – and anxiously wiped her sweaty hands on her dungarees.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ the man said.
Piper laughed. ‘Easy for you to say. This is my first time.’
He looked up then, one eyebrow curving. ‘Virgin, eh?’
‘Ugh,’ Piper said, before she could stop herself.
He laughed. ‘Sorry. But seriously. You’ll be fine. Susannah’s lovely. I’ve done this show loads.’
Piper nodded. She’d been briefly introduced to Susannah when she’d arrived and she was definitely lovely. Warm, friendly, with glossy chocolate brown hair flowing over her narrow shoulders and a pair of black-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose. It wasn’t Susannah Piper was worried about: it was the woman she’d been invited on to debate with. Naomi Jones. Piper had seen her byline photo – a short blonde bob, bright pink lipstick, over-plucked eyebrows. She looked friendly with a hint of intimidating, like a primary school head teacher. The researcher Piper had spoken to on the phone had insisted Naomi was lovely and not interested in an argument, but Piper wasn’t sure, mostly because a) Naomi hadn’t sounded at all lovely in the article she’d written, and b) Piper had watched this show before and they always seemed to be interested in an argument.
She shuffled forward on the squashy sofa and poured herself another glass of water from the jug on the coffee table. Her mouth was so dry that when she’d tried to introduce herself to the researcher, she’d actually blown a spit bubble. So that had been an excellent start. The researcher had either not noticed or pretended not to notice to be kind. Piper gulped the water down and then took a few what she hoped were relaxing breaths. In, two, three. Out, two, three. She couldn’t believe she’d actually agreed to do this.
‘All okay in here?’ the researcher – Piper thought her name was Julia? Or Julianne? –said, popping her head round the door. ‘Need anything?’
‘Thanks,’ Piper said. ‘I’m good.’ She needed the loo, but she knew she probably didn’t really. It was just nervous wee. And she was wearing dungarees so she wasn’t going to chance it anyway.
The door closed and opened again and Naomi Jones walked in. She was dressed a lot more smartly than Piper in a navy blue shirt dress with a string of red beads around her neck and bright red ballerina flats. She looked a bit like a Tory wife. Or the presenter of a homes show on Channel 5.
‘Hello!’ she said, crossing the room directly towards Piper, her hand already outstretched. ‘I’m Naomi.’
Piper stood up and clasped Naomi’s hand, making sure to make eye contact and keep smiling. ‘I’m Piper,’ she said. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘You too!’ Naomi said, sitting on the edge of the other sofa. ‘Thanks so much for doing this.’
‘No problem,’ Piper said, as if Naomi had arranged the whole thing and Piper was her reluctant guest. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Me too,’ Naomi replied. She poured herself a glass of water, but then held the glass on her knee without drinking any. ‘Have you been on before?’
Piper shook her head. ‘I haven’t done any TV before.’
Naomi’s eyes widened. ‘Wow. In at the deep end then!’
Piper nodded. ‘Feels that way, yeah.’
‘I think this is my…’ Naomi scrunched up her nose in thought. ‘Fifth time? Maybe? I sometimes get it confused with This Morning.’
Piper smiled. She refused to be intimidated. This Morning. Big whoop. She sipped more water and looked over Naomi’s head at the TV screen. They were due on in fifteen minutes. Her stomach swooped with nerves.
‘I’m just going to pop to the loo.’
She peed, even though she didn’t need to pee, and washed her hands while staring at herself in the mirror. She looked good. Her hair was behaving today – her fringe not doing that flicky-up thing that drove her mad. Her lipstick was really working for her. She grinned at herself, checking her teeth. And then she put her hands on her hips, pushed her
chest out, and did the Power Pose she’d seen online. She looked good. She felt good. She was going to rock the shit out of this debate.
Chapter Two
‘That went well, I thought,’ Naomi said, as the two of them were ushered back into the green room.
Piper felt a bit shell-shocked. It had all gone by in a bit of a blur. They’d been seated at a table in the mocked-up kitchen that was part of the show’s set. She’d been able to see the live feed on an enormous flat screen TV on the wall, which she’d found really distracting – she’d kept glancing at it and catching her own eye. The presenter had clasped their hands and introduced herself before scanning her notes and then launching into the interview with few preliminaries. Piper had expected a chat maybe? Or some sort of dry run. But no, it all just… happened. Live.
Piper wasn’t even sure what she’d said. She remembered waiting for Naomi to finish talking about people being responsible for their own health, mentally rehearsing her response that no one had the right to demand anyone’s health, that health wasn’t a moral imperative, that plenty of people did things that negatively impacted their own health and weren’t demonised for it like fat people were. But she wasn’t sure if she’d actually said any of that or if it had all stayed in her head.
Naomi picked up her bag, shrugged on her jacket and headed out, calling ‘Bye’ over her shoulder. Piper sat down on the sofa and poured herself a glass of water. The green room was empty now – she could see the chef on the flat-screen TV doing his next segment in the fake kitchen. She switched her phone back on and flinched as it started to chime and buzz in her hand. She felt absolutely exhausted, her neck and shoulders tight with stress.
‘Piper?’ One of the researchers was standing in the doorway. ‘Are you ready to go?’
‘Umm…’ Piper took another swig of water, checked that she had everything – phone, bag, jacket – and stood up. ‘I guess.’
‘Well done,’ the researcher said, as she showed Piper through the office and towards the main doors.
‘Thanks,’ Piper said. ‘I don’t really remember much about it.’
‘You did very well.’
She opened the door, smiled brightly at Piper and then closed it behind her, leaving Piper standing on a busy London street, at ten in the morning, feeling like she’d just woken up from a stress dream. She forced herself to take a few slow breaths before crossing the road and heading up towards the Tube. The smell of bacon drifted out of a nearby cafe and Piper’s stomach rumbled. Breakfast was a good idea. Breakfast and a coffee and then work. As soon as she was inside the cafe – a hipster-looking place with bare brick walls and industrial metal tables outside – all she wanted was to sit down and phone… well, she wanted to phone her mum, but that wasn’t an option.
Instead, she called her sister.
‘Did you watch?’ she asked before either of them had even said hello.
‘I saw it,’ Holly said.
Piper could tell immediately that her sister was at the gym, probably on a treadmill. She’d spoken to her sister at the gym often enough that she recognised the echo.
‘I’m at the gym and it was on the screen, but no sound. The subtitles were on, but they weren’t great. It looked good though. I like that lipstick on you.’
‘So I didn’t disgrace myself?’ Piper asked, against her better judgement.
‘Not as far as I could tell! But like I said, I didn’t watch it properly. It’ll be online by the time I get home, right?’
‘I would think so, yeah.’
‘Are you on your way to work now?’
‘Just getting breakfast. I’ve got the morning off.’
‘Cool. Talk later when I’ve watched it then.’
‘Great.’
Piper put her phone down on the table, ignoring all her notifications. Coffee. She needed coffee. She ordered a latte with an extra shot and eggs Benedict, and only then looked at her texts. Silver from work had sent her a series of thumbs up and smiley face emojis. Matt, her BFF, had sent a picture of himself watching the TV with ‘proud of you’ scrawled across it. All of the texts were positive, which Piper had pretty much expected. Her friend Alice wrote, ‘You are an inspiration’. She kept scrolling back until she got to one from Matt that she’d missed just before she show. It just said ‘Wreck her.’ Piper laughed. Her friends were so great. But she felt sort of… hollow. Breakfast would help.
‘You were good,’ the waiter said as he put her eggs Benedict down on the table.
‘What?’ Piper blinked up at him. He was hot too – black beard speckled with silver, bedhead that she knew he probably spent at least twenty minutes and a tenner’s worth of product creating in the morning, bright blue eyes.
‘On the breakfast show.’ He pointed at a screen on the wall behind the counter. Piper hadn’t noticed.
‘Oh shit,’ she breathed.
He grinned. ‘No. You were great. Held your own against that snotty cow.’
Piper looked down at her breakfast and then back up at him, smiling. ‘Thank you. She was okay really. Not exactly friendly.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘And you were right anyway. As long as you’re healthy, eh?’
‘Um,’ Piper said. ‘Yeah. Kind of.’
‘I’ll leave you to get on with it. Let me know if you need anything.’ He stared at Piper for a second too long and she wondered if he was flirting.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and picked up her knife and fork.
She watched him walk back behind the counter and wondered if someone else – Silver or Matt – would have asked him out. Or not even asked him out, just done something with an eyebrow that meant ‘meet me in the bathroom’. Piper had never been good at that sort of thing, never really believed someone was into her until they actually told her in so many words. She felt a pang of embarrassment, remembering a photographer at the work Christmas party, one hand down the front of her dress, mouth attached to her neck, and a voice in her head saying ‘Does he like me though?’ She’d laughed at the time, it had been so ridiculous, and he’d murmured, ‘You like that, baby?’ directly into her ear, which had only made her laugh more. And he’d kissed her to shut her up.
* * *
Piper didn’t look at the rest of her social media until lunch. The couple of people at work who had seen the show had been complimentary and her boss, John, had watched it online in his office mid-morning and then popped his head round the door to tell her she’d done really well. No one so far had mentioned the subject that she’d been on to discuss, which she thought was kind of interesting. But she also suspected Twitter would have that aspect covered, which was why she’d waited so long to have a look. She blinked when she saw her notifications. The first few she read were positive. Then there were a few along the lines of she’d done great and that she was sexier and clearly healthier than the ‘skinny bitch’ she’d been debating. Piper rolled her eyes – these people literally thought they were criticising fat shaming by body shaming someone else. How could they not get that? There were a couple from men telling her they still found her attractive even though she was fat and some asking her to follow them – so they could grace her DMs with dick pics, no doubt. She blocked a couple of them, muted some more, but all in all – and to her surprise – the positive definitely outweighed the negative.
Her Instagram was the usual mix of lovely, supportive comments, and people who seemed to assume she didn’t know she was fat. Someone literally posted ‘Fat’ on every single picture she ever put up. She’d wondered if they did it all over the internet, commenting ‘Food’ on recipes and ‘Tweet’ on Twitter. What an odd way to behave.
Facebook was better since her account was locked down and the comments from friends were all positive. She ignored the Messenger tab where she suspected some strangers’ opinions – and, most likely, penises – lingered. They could wait for later.
She spent the afternoon amending a contract for a new girl band the company was hoping to sign. She hadn’t seen them yet �
�� or heard their music – but the A&R department was very excited and John had told her to ignore everything else in her in-tray and focus on getting this done. They were called Feminine Hygiene and an email had gone round asking everyone to try to come up with a new ‘less confrontational’ name. Piper’s boss had suggested Feminine Hijinks, which had made Piper cry laughing, but none of the other suggestions were much better: The Muffin Tops; The Manicures; Dolly.
Piper was desperate to come up with something that wasn’t actively offensive, but she hadn’t managed it so far.
Chapter Three
‘Hey, sexy lady!’ Matt called out as Piper walked out of the main gates of the building.
She grinned at him. ‘Damn, they’re meant to remove pervs from the premises. Don’t know why they made us all chip in for that water cannon if they’re not going to use it.’
As soon as she reached him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed.
‘You okay?’ he said into the top of her head.
‘Tired.’
‘You were brilliant this morning, babe.’
He’d already texted to tell her this, but she was happy to hear it again.
‘Thanks.’
‘Had any shitty comments?’
‘Couple.’ She let him go so they could start walking up to the pub. ‘Few pervs. Some people telling me I’m fat.’