دانلود رمان انگلیسی “بازی عروسی”

‘Get off with the groom?’ I squeak the words in shock as I read out the dare my best friend Scarlet has set me. ‘Sorry. No. That’s meant to say best man.’ She chuckles at her own mistake while we take our seats at the wedding breakfast. ‘Get off with the best man. Don’t get off with the groom, for God’s sake.’ She leans over, crosses out groom and replaces the word with best man. I murmur ‘hello’ and nod a greeting to those already seated at our table, who are attempting polite conversation with those next to them. We’d been stuck at the back of the church because we’d arrived late, as per usual, so I have no idea what the best man actually looks like. ‘What if he has a girlfriend?’ I ask quietly as we sit. ‘Don’t do it then,’ Scarlet mutters. ‘Obviously.’ Obviously. My instruction to get off with the best man is less of a dare and more part of what Scarlet and I have dubbed wedding bingo – a game we’ve developed for a bit of fun to pass the time at the many weddings we’ve been invited to over the past two to three years. I compile a bingo grid for myself, Scarlet writes one for herself and then we give each other one ‘out there’ instruction that’s meant to scupper either of us from getting a full house. It’s usually just a giggle, but as we sit here in the ornate Georgian country-house banqueting hall at our table full of eight other strangers tucking into their starters, I scan my wedding-bingo sheet to see what I can tick off so far. With the instruction to get off with the best man, I’m now a bit concerned we’re venturing out of my comfort zone. Although, in fairness, I’ve given Scarlet an almost equally disarming instruction to get a waiter’s telephone number. Now that I compare our bingo grids, I think she’s been unfair with my instruction. Or perhaps I’ve been too light with hers. This is the last one: the final wedding of the summer and so we’ve upped the ante. There are prizes to be won. This is Georgia’s wedding – Scarlet’s friend from university, who I’ve met once or twice over the years, although Scarlet’s not seen her in ages. Georgia’s wedding, with its big country-house setting and elegantly sober but soon-to-be-drunk earlythirty- somethings, carries all the hallmarks of almost every wedding that’s come before it, for us anyway. Because weddings are all the same, aren’t they? And they really need not be. A cut-out-and-keep version of one wedding can so easily be transferred over to the next bride and then the next, and the next. I suppose that’s why, when the bouquet is caught, we all acknowledge that it heralds the turn of the next woman to go through the same motions as the girl who’s just thrown the flowers in her direction. That bouquet might as well be a relay baton. But maybe this wedding will be different. Perhaps it heralds the start of something, either for Scarlet or for me. Or, even better, for both of us.