Chapter 12
I know the moment the photo is taken that it’s going to be perfect. In fact, that all four of them are going to be perfect.
All of us – Ella, me, Priya and Katie – are together outside the marquee on the village green. Nathan, Sam’s boyfriend, has brought an old-fashioned Polaroid camera to the wedding, and has been capturing instant magic for the whole afternoon. There is a “real” photographer as well, but Nathan’s shots have been a huge hit – something about watching the picture develop before your very eyes is way more fun than it should be.
Ella is about to go and get changed out of her beautiful dress and put on something more suited to the ceilidh band that is currently in full flow now the initial burst of eating and drinking and speech-making is done with.
She has been, understandably, very much in demand today, and we haven’t managed to have a lot of time with her. This impromptu photo shoot has made up for it all – Nathan has had us arranged in slightly different poses for each of the shots, but all of them have essentially been the same: four friends, laughing and full of joy.
He passes them over one by one as they develop and dry, and we all oooh and aaah in a small huddle, shouting our thanks to him as he heads off with Sam to take a picture of Larry, who has just legged it out of the tent with a mini pork pie in his mouth. Dogs and buffets are often a volatile mix, and I know Ella made sure potentially doggie-dangerous items – chicken drumsticks, anything with too much dark chocolate, garlic or onion – was served from a specially fenced-off area. There are loads of dogs here, in addition to Ella’s Larry and George’s Lottie, so it was probably an excellent idea – one black lab literally hasn’t stopped staring at it all day. I’m sure he’s devising a plan to reach the treats, but probably needs a cat to come up with a strategy.
“Well,” says Ella, smiling at her photo, “all I can say is that we’ve improved with age, girls!”
Recently we’ve shared our own copies of the pictures from our European holiday together all those years ago, back in the days before everyone had smart phones. There were a lot of low-rise jeans and big plastic sunglasses and giant hoop earrings. Katie’s curly hair was the size of a house, Ella was obsessed with matching crop tops and over-sized hoodie jackets, and I seemed to live entirely in paisley-print sundresses and Converse sneakers. Priya, darn her, looks almost exactly the same as she did back then – give or take an especially awful hot pink blazer that she even used to wear at the beach.
“You do, for sure – you look amazing,” I say, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. Her up-do, courtesy of the ever-useful Cally, is extremely classy and pretty, and started the day sprayed to within an inch of its life. But the intervening eight hours have taken their toll, and a few blonde tendrils are starting to make a break for freedom.
“This old thing?” she says, gesturing down at her gorgeous frock. “It was just something I threw on… and, to be honest, I’ll be quite glad to get out of it. I’m sorry I haven’t seen much of you today, it’s been insane.”
“Good insane, I hope?” asks Priya, who looks amazing in a strapless deep blue dress with a matching wrap draped around her shoulders.
“As a psychiatrist, you know that’s not a valid question – but yeah, definitely good insane! Have you all enjoyed yourselves?”
We assure her that we have, and I know that we’ll all be looking back on this day and smiling for a long time to come. The little church where they held the ceremony was picture perfect, tucked away in the next village, all medieval stone and stained glass and surrounded by yew and oak and ancient headstones. When she walked down the aisle, with Lilly and Meg as her bridesmaids and Larry trotting at her side, I tried very hard not to cry – and failed miserably.
Luckily Katie was doing exactly the same, and further down the row, with her husband, Martin, and her girls, Priya was dabbing her eyes as well.
“Hayfever,” Katie had whispered as she sniffled, pointing at the luscious flowers that Archie had draped around the church – wreaths and ribbons made of pale purple sweet-peas, fragrant lilac, peach-coloured peonies and pure white gardenias. Ella’s bouquet was simple and elegant, a clutch of pink and ivory magnolias, and his own little girls had beautiful daisy chain flower crowns perched on their mermaid plaits – a gorgeous blend of both his and Cally’s skills.
Jake had, of course, looked wonderful too – and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought the same about his best man, Josh – but really, it was all about Ella. All about our friend getting the happy ending that she deserved.
After the service, there had been photos at the church, and photos down at the beach, and photos on the green. The weather has so far remained kind, even though rain is forecast for later – it’s been one of those balmy spring days that fool you into thinking that summer has arrived early, which means that people are gathered both inside and outside the marquee. The tables have been moved to the sides, and the ceilidh band caller is in full swing, getting everybody up to walk, circle, skip and clap to the sound of frenetic fiddles.
Rose was happily prancing around in a big circle with her new friends last time I saw her, her skater-style dress flapping as her best Doc Martens – the black ones decorated with red roses – stomped in time to the beat. She was in a little gang with Sophie and her brother, Dan, and at least some of the Funky Farmhands, everyone laughing as they got the steps wrong. I can only hope that they keep their clothes on.
Now, the sun is starting to set and the sky is darkening, though the air is still warm. It’s a perfect dusky evening for little girls in frilly dresses to chase dogs around the grass; for dancing, and lounging; for laughing with friends; for sipping Champagne as the light fades and the stars start to twinkle in the sky. For reflecting on a day filled with love and hope and happiness.
“So,” says Ella, laughing as Larry continues to circle the tent, Lilly and Meg in hot pursuit, plaits flying and daisy chains wonky, “this might be goodbye, for now. I’ll be back for a dance, but then Jake and I are going to sneak off early. I’m not drinking – for obvious reasons – and Jake has gone above and beyond on boyfriend duty and not had a drop himself, to show solidarity.”
“Husband duty,” I say, smiling at her. “He’s not your boyfriend anymore!”
Her face lights up at the thought, and her hand lingers on her belly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being look happier.
“I hope I never get used to that,” she replies, “I hope it always feels exciting!”
I see Katie open her mouth to comment, then wisely think better of it and bite her tongue. She’s not really in the right place to discuss the joys of matrimony.
Jake and Ella are driving down to Cornwall for their honeymoon. They had been planning a more spectacular break to the Seychelles, but when they found out she was pregnant decided to keep it a little more local. She’s feeling well, but given her history, I completely understand why she wants to stay closer to home, especially during this early stage.
“So,” she says, looking at us all and smiling. “Now the gang’s back together, we must promise never to let it fall apart again, all right? I know we’re all busy. I know we all live in different places. But really, would it be that hard to have a spa weekend once a year?”
“No,” replies Priya firmly. “It wouldn’t. And you’re right – we need to make sure we make the effort, make sure we don’t let ourselves drift again.”
“Well, I won’t be drifting anywhere,” Katie adds. “I’ll be a complete pain in all your backsides, Scout’s honour.”
They all look at me, and Ella raises her eyebrows. I am, of course, the biggest flight risk of all – I have form, and I live across a sea.
“I promise,” I reply, laughing. “Honest, I do. I can’t imagine my life without you guys in it now.”
Seemingly satisfied, Ella opens her arms to invite us in for a group hug. We briefly turn into an eight-legged creature, staggering around on the grass laughing and holding on to each other. It is silly and childish and perfect.
“Right,” she says, once we are done, “I may or may not see you later, so I’m going to make this my official goodbye, okay?”
After a quick round of individual hugs as well, she disappears off to the inn to get changed. Priya and Katie head back inside the marquee, and I lurk outside for a while longer. I love this time, when nature starts to turn the lights off, and for a few minutes there seems to be perfect indecision between day and night – it’s as though they are pausing to say hello and goodbye to each other. Or maybe I just have a fanciful imagination.
Either way, I am happy to stay here, in the fresh air, and the wide-open space. I do not enjoy feeling too enclosed, and although the tent was big, truth be told I had been yearning to get out of it for a while. I sit down on the grass, draw my knees up in front of me, and give myself a little hug as well. My own dress for the day is teal green silk with pretty embroidery around the neckline, cap sleeves and a bit of a fifties vibe in the full skirt. I’ve had it for years – since before Rose was born, in fact – and it is pretty much my only “posh do” dress. Luckily I don’t get invited to many masquerade balls or garden parties at Buckingham Palace.
It’s also very comfortable, seems resistant to all stains known to man, and makes me feel a tiny bit like Grace Kelly. It’s a super-dress.
I also like the way it swishes against my bare legs as I sit here alone, watching the world go by, smiling and waving at people who pass but happy enough as a solitary bee. As it gets darker, the fairy lights that are strung up around the village start to flicker on, sparkling in bright rows along fences and rooftops, swooping from one home to another. There’s a light breeze brushing my skin, and the scent of the sea in my nostrils, and the sound of people enjoying themselves in the background. All is well, all is peaceful, all is right – and I think I might simply sit here for the whole evening, letting everything unfold around me.
I lie down on my back and gaze up at the indigo sky, the very last glimmers of daylight now completely swallowed by night. The crescent moon hangs in a sliver of silver, and the stars seem to become more vivid with each passing second. I close my eyes, and let the image swirl around in my mind, saving it like a mental postcard to revisit later.
After a few more minutes, I notice that the temperature is falling, and I start to consider getting up and heading back into the marquee. I don’t particularly want to – I am more than happy with my own company – but I am getting chilly, and I probably need to make sure Rose hasn’t eloped with a stripper.
As I’m about to climb back to my feet, I hear the sound of someone approaching, footsteps on the grass nearby. I snap my eyes wide open and sit abruptly upright. My usual balanced response kicks in – accelerated heartbeat, fists clenched, scanning the environment for weapons – until I see that it is Josh. That doesn’t slow down my heartbeat a huge deal, but at least it’s for a less unpleasant reason.
“You okay?” he asks, gazing down at me. “You look like you’re about to leg it. Or stab me. Not sure which.”
“Yeah… don’t take it personally. How’s the shindig going? Is Rose still in there?”
He sits down beside me and stretches his legs out in front of him. He’s wearing a simple black suit and white shirt, just as Jake had – no fancy waistcoat or top hat for them. When you’re as good looking as these boys, you basically don’t need to embellish. Now I know his mum was Italian, I can see her in him – the dark hair and eyes, the golden skin tone. His dad is tall and broad-shouldered, but other than that seems to have shared none of his genetics with his sons.
He has shed his jacket, and the plain black tie has been tugged down a few inches, the top button of his shirt open. I find a man with a messy tie almost unbearably attractive. I blame it all on Daniel Craig – that scene where Bond sat in the shower with Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale melts me every single time.
“Yep. Rose is dancing up a storm. And the shindig is going… well? Depends on your definition. I think the free bar is starting to kick in, and this lot don’t have many inhibitions to start with. A woman I’ve never met before just pinched my arse at the end of a dance called Strip the Willow. She was eighty if she was a day, and all hands, I can tell you… I feel violated!”
I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it is impossible not to, and I see from his answering grin that he feels more amused than abused.
“I needed a breather, basically,” he adds, “and I saw you’d already escaped the chaos. Or are you out here because you’re so hammered that you can’t stand up?”
“Not at all. I’ve had… ummm… some fizz.”
“Some? Is that an official measurement?”
“Yep – it falls between a small glass and a Nebuchadnezzar.”
“Okay, you’ve got me – what’s a Nebuchadnezzar?”
“It’s the largest size of Champagne bottle. Fifteen litres, I think.”
He raises his eyebrows and says: “How the hell do you know that?”
“Well, I could tell you a story about how I used to be a wine buyer for Harrods or something, but that would be veering towards Amelia territory… to be honest I think I saw it on a quiz show and it stuck in my mind. I’ve actually had about four glasses, and I always reckon if you can still remember how many glasses you’ve drunk, you’re doing okay. You seem… completely sober?”
“Yeah,” he replies, frowning slightly. “Always feel a bit tense at these family dos. I wanted Jake and Ella to be able to relax, so I’ve been on Dad duty, making sure he doesn’t start any fights or make anyone cry or end up on an assassin’s hit list.”
“Right. Well, having met your dad now, I can see how all of those things could be possible.”
“Oh no… what did he do?” says Josh, groaning and holding his head in his hands.
“Nothing terrible. But when he found out where I lived, he started his next sentence with the words ‘Well, the trouble with Northern Ireland is…’, which is never a good sign. Especially from someone who’s probably never even been there.”
“Sounds about right. What did you say?”
“Nothing. I just smiled and said goodbye and walked away before he could finish his theory. I’m… well, I’m not good with conflict. I could never argue it out with him. But at the same time, I don’t like bullies… so the only option for me, really, the only strategy I’ve developed, is to simply walk away.”
He laughs, and replies: “You know what, that’s probably exactly the right tactic – that would have driven him nuts, depriving him of an audience! Congratulations, you’ve probably topped his Most Hated list for the night. And I’m not kidding – he will have a list.”
“Well, I’m glad to be a winner. I think I might go back in for a bit actually; it’s starting to get cold.”
“I’ve missed a chance to be dashing here, haven’t I? If I still had my jacket on, I could place it around your shoulders like a romantic hero.”
I smile at him, and shake my head. “It would be wasted on me. I’ve told you, I’m impossible to flirt with.”
He stands up, and holds out his hands to me, saying: “Now, that sounds like a challenge.”
I cannot see a way to avoid accepting his help and, truth be told, perhaps I don’t want to. I live a quiet life, rarely socialise, and have become unused to casual touch. I cuddle my daughter when she lets me, and shake hands in work meetings, and that is about it. Being in Starshine has been quite the experience, with the constant new people and underlying threat of hugs – I don’t mind it with my friends, with people I have known for decades, but here everyone seems to want to shower you with affection. It’s weird.
Or, I correct myself, maybe I’m weird. I have been too long away from a community, from normality, from human contact. I look up at Josh, see his mischievous grin, the sparkle in his gold-brown eyes, the outstretched hands. I reach up and place my fingers in his.
He hoists me up so effortlessly that it leaves me breathless, and I have to try very hard not to simply fall into his arms. I steady myself by placing my hands on his shoulders, and he holds on to my waist, and it is suddenly all a bit too close. It is intimate, and exciting, and it is also making part of my brain scream. I try not to stiffen beneath his touch, to recoil – because none of this is his fault, and I don’t want to damage this truce we have built together.
“We could try out the line dancing?” he says, cocking his ear to listen to the instructions coming from the marquee.
“I don’t think so!”
“Why not? Come on, give it a go – the Beastie Boys fought for your right to party, don’t disrespect their sacrifice!”
I laugh, and against my better judgement find myself listening in to the dance calls, and holding Josh’s hands. There’s something about three steps to the right, and stamping our feet, and taking two steps back, and more stamping, and I laugh as Josh leads me around the grass, all of the tension of a few moments ago drained away by the silliness of what we are doing. It no longer feels awkward, or dangerous – it just feels like fun.
I accidentally stamp on his foot, and he trips over my ankle, and we are both pretty hopeless. I think it’s supposed to be a kind of waltz, but we’re definitely not going to be invited onto Strictly any time soon.
As we stumble around in the moonlight, I start to feel a few drops of rain land on my upturned face. It begins gently, just a few scattered drops, as though it feels pretty non-committal about the whole thing – certainly not heavy enough to send anybody scurrying back inside the marquee for cover.
Within a minute, though, that changes – it’s as though someone has turned the taps on full, and the shower becomes a deluge. There are screams and laughter around us as people are suddenly caught out, and from the corner of my eye I see Priya chasing her daughters back inside, their long dark hair trailing behind them.
Personally, I love rain. I love the freshness of it against my skin, the cool touch of renewal. I love the sound of it, the smell of it, the glimmer of it as it gathers on petals and cobwebs. I love the sensation of being at one with something wild, standing outside in a squall, looking up at the sky and letting the raindrops bounce off my face.
Josh and I come to a standstill, my fingers still on his shoulders, his hands holding my sides. The rain is sudden and shocking and savage, and I smile as he too turns his face skywards, grinning as the water flows over him. It slicks back his thick hair, and runs down the side of his face, and gathers on his shoulders. Within moments his shirt is sodden, clinging to his skin, almost transparent. I have a flashback to seeing him fresh out of the shower the day before, and choke back a sigh.
I might be impossible to flirt with, but that doesn’t mean I’m dead – and standing here like this, in this man’s arms, both of us laughing into the downpour, feels… new. It feels as fresh as the rain, as sweet as spring, as warm as early morning sunlight touching my skin. It feels like a beginning, when I have felt for so long that, emotionally, I was at the end.
He reaches out, strokes rain away from my cheek. I lean into his hand, feeling the distance between us close, the firm pressure of his thighs against mine. I see those gold-flecked eyes, and the strong nose, and the lips that I want to kiss. I have not wanted to kiss a man for so many years, I didn’t think it was even possible.
I feel his arms slip around me, his hands on the small of my back pulling me even closer. We stand together, in the torrential rain, moulded so close we are almost one. I remind myself to breathe, and feel a rush of warmth and need as I let my fingers twine into his thick hair. I close my eyes as he leans closer, knowing that I couldn’t stop myself now even if I wanted to. And I don’t – I really don’t. I want to touch him, and to be touched, and to allow myself to give in to the madness of the moment.
“Mum!” a familiar voice yells from a million miles away. “Mum, what are you doing?”
I jerk away from Josh’s face, and stare into his eyes. Feel an instinctive kick of disappointment, of regret as that moment passes. I follow the voice back across all those miles, and it takes approximately three seconds for me to transform from brazen hussy on the verge of the best kiss of her life – I feel confident in this prediction – into slightly embarrassed mother of a teenaged daughter.
A daughter who is staring at me, hands on hips, frowning in confusion.
“Umm… we were dancing,” I reply, stepping away from Josh. I won’t be able to think straight if I’m too close to him – tonight, his proximity seems to be over-riding all my sensible instincts.
“In the rain?” she says, eyebrows raised.
“Yes. That’s a thing. They’ve even written songs about it. Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Lyssa,” she replies urgently. “She’s been trying us for ages, but you know what the signal’s like here… they need our help, Mum.”