Tales From a Hen Weekend by Olivia Ryan

dear! If only you knew!’
    ‘Margie,’ warns Joyce again. ‘Let’s not get started on all that, just now.’
    ‘Why not? Don’t you want to hear all about it, Katie? Hm? Your mother’s hen night? It’s quite a story. ’
    ‘I think we’ve already heard it, Mum.’ Bloody hell, not Southend again, surely!
    ‘I don’t really think this is the time, do you?’ repeats Joyce, gripping Mum’s arm and looking at her very pointedly.
    ‘No time like the present,’ she responds heartily, looking with disappointment at her empty wine glass. ‘Why shouldn’t I tell my daughter about my wedding, eh, Joyce? Kind of fitting, don’t you think – make her realise how lucky she is not to be marrying a pig like her father?’
     
    Oh, God.
    The only thing I’m grateful for is that no one else can hear. They’re all too busy singing along with Whisky In the Jar .

 
MARGIE’S STORY
     
    It’s the hen party, you see. It’s brought back all these memories.
    I was only twenty when I got married. Even so, I wasn’t the first of my group of friends to tie the knot , as we used to call it in those days. It was fairly normal to marry young, because as I tried to explain to Katie, it still wasn’t quite the done thing to live together before you were married. Not in our part of suburbia, anyway, whatever might have been going on up in Swinging London.
    Terry was twenty-five, and a fireman. He was drop-dead gorgeous. I couldn’t believe my luck when he asked me out – never mind when he asked me to marry him. One of my friends said afterwards that I couldn’t get him up the aisle fast enough; I suppose she had a point. I reckoned if I hung on too long he might get fed up and find someone else.
    As it was, I was always worried about him going off with other girls. Birds , he called them. Men don’t use that term nowadays – it’s considered insulting, isn’t it.
    ‘Margie,’ he used to say; ‘Margie, why would I be thinking of running off with some other bird, eh, when I’ve got my little princess?’
    But there was no getting away from the fact that he used to eye up all the other birds , even if he wasn’t thinking of running off with them. You couldn’t really blame him. He was so good-looking, the girls would turn their heads in the street to look at him, even when I was with him. They’d giggle and toss their hair and wiggle their bums, and he’d just smile and pretend he wasn’t interested, but what man wouldn’t be? I was anxious to get that wedding ring on his finger pretty smartly, I can tell you.
     
    I wasn’t supposed to be seeing Terry on the night of my hen party. It was meant to be unlucky for the couple to see each other the day before the wedding. He was having his stag do at his local pub in Brentwood, and he phoned me before he went out.
    ‘You be careful tonight,’ he told me. ‘Don’t go drinking too much and getting yourself into trouble!’
    I didn’t normally drink much more than a couple of Bacardi-and-Cokes. That was everybody’s favourite drink in those days.
    ‘Don’t be silly!’ I said. ‘Shirley’s looking after me. And anyway, I don’t drink too much. It’s you that has to be careful!’
    ‘Don’t you worry about me, darlin’. I can handle it! See you in church tomorrow, eh?’
    Less than twenty-four hours till I’d be Mrs Terry Halliday. I thought I was the happiest girl in the world.
    My friends were the other student nurses I worked with at the hospital: Angela, Linda and Shirley. Shirley was my best mate; she was two years older than me, already married and very sensible, so I wasn’t worried. She’d make sure I got home all right even if I did have a few drinks. It was Shirley’s idea to go to Southend.
    ‘It’ll be much more fun than sitting in the local pub,’ she said. ‘We can have a drink, get a Chinese, maybe go bowling on the pier.’
    See what I mean? We didn’t expect so much, in those days. Just a nice evening out with our friends. None of