A Bad Bride's Tale by Polly Williams Page B

year, nature had overridden Crème de la Mer. And as she got older, more lined around the eyes, slacker around the jaw, she was aware that she didn’t cause such a devastating impact when she walked into a room (despite the fact that she compensated for the loss of youth’s flush with particularly attentive and expensive grooming). This re- ally upset her. Inside, she was the same Katy, right?
    Or not? This year, a seedling of a notion had begun to push up through the sunblock creams and anti-aging peptides on her skin: could it possibly be that the responses she once imagined were re- sponses to the inner “Katy”—fascinating, charismatic woman about town—were really just responses to her youthful beauty? It was a terrifying prospect.
    Thirty seconds to go. Katy took a sip of Fiji water. The timing was unfortunate. If only the whirlwind of her relationship hadn’t subsided to a gentle breeze—the shag-fest was over—at exactly the same time she’d started to hurtle toward her forties. In her twen- ties, early thirties, even, she’d have blown the closing-time whistle by now and moved on to the next handsome, amusing man with a full head of hair and a large bank account. She had been ambivalent about children then: Why sacrifice a lifestyle? Her priorities had only begun to change in her thirties. And, at times, it filled her with a horrible neediness, a vulnerability buoyed up by a sense of entitlement, which turned to resentment when Seb didn’t express a desire for the same thing. Their relationship balance of power shifted. He now held all the aces. In her blackest moments, in the early hours of the morning after a few lines of Colombia’s best the night before (it wasn’t so pretty doing drugs in your mid-thirties, but she carried on anyway as compensation for not being married or
    having children), she reeled at the unfairness of it all. She hated the fact that she needed Seb to secure her future. She hated being the unrequited lover rather than the beloved.
    Seb was no longer the gawky, slightly square guy who wore em- barrassing colorful socks beneath his Saville Row suits. He’d grown into his looks, his job, and, yes, quite definitely, his money. If they were to split, or, as was more likely, drift apart on different sides of the Atlantic, Seb would have no difficulty in procuring another woman. A wife. Probably a younger one. As a woman, even a beau- tiful one, her hand was weaker. She had a finite amount of time left. He didn’t. Period. As every month went by without a diamond ring or even a nuptial conversation, she felt a little more panicked, a little more needy. And she resented this. Hugely. She had never been needy. She’d always been the one who dumped men. She’d had more admirers than any woman she knew and yet, and yet, here she damn well was.
    Katy leaned farther back on the cushions and admired the trian- gular gap between her thighs, so sculptural in her skinny dark denim. She pulled a cigarette out of a packet, failed to light it off the joss stick, lit a match, inhaled, and exhaled, holding her arm above her, admiring the sinewy form that was the prize for all that ashtanga yoga. God knows, she tried to preserve herself.
    If Katy wanted this relationship to continue—and she really couldn’t face starting a new one now—she needed a strategy. She must make Seb desire her again. She must make him jealous. He needed to see other men desired her. Wasn’t that what desire was about anyhow, for men at any rate? Acquiring something that their peers desired, being on the winning team. Simple souls.
    Shit, it was time. With one hand over her mouth, Katy peeped at
    the test. No line. No damn line. She tossed the stick into the silver retro wastebasket and it clattered against the bottom. Shit. Pulling herself out of the valley of cushions, she hunted down her sexiest look-at-me acid green Miu Miu heels, and, rather than mess up the kitchen by tackling the coffee maker, went out of the