All You Had To Do Was Stay

Chapter 1

For someone who didn’t believe in happy-ever-afters, Hannah Matthews attended an awful lot of weddings.

She hadn’t set out to organise the nuptials of the Peak District’s most stylish couples for a living, but it turned out they were big business. Three and a half years after the launch of her occasion planning firm, Eventurous, they brought in the lion’s share of her profits.

Today’s venue, Ashfield Farm Barns, was one of Hannah’s favourites: a lavishly converted complex of old red-brick buildings that, two hundred years ago, housed livestock, equipment and grain.

These days, the oak-framed vaulted ceiling of what had become the ceremony space twinkled with softly glowing fairy lights, while a wall of windows in the main reception room overlooked rolling green hills splotched with purple heather and the off-white coats of roaming sheep.

It was high summer, and daylight clung to the landscape even as today’s wedding transitioned from the formal sit-down dinner phase to its more raucous evening era.

‘This has been a lush day – good work,’ Charlie said as she emerged from the venue’s kitchen to stand beside Hannah.

She smiled and sighed, patently relieved that her own job was done.

Charlie was a highly trained chef who owned a private catering firm, and she and Hannah had often been thrown together on the regional events circuit.

Six months into their professional relationship, at a small but plush civil wedding in Matlock, Charlie’s latest hire – a petulant twenty-two-year-old named Felicity – had flounced off upon being asked to plate up the salmon crudo canapés.

Hannah had witnessed Felicity, who was apparently a newly converted vegan, declare: ‘I won’t handle any food that used to have a face!

’ Without hesitation, Hannah had stepped in to help a desperate Charlie arrange slivers of fish, daubs of crème fraiche and sprigs of microherbs on sixty silver spoons. They’d been firm friends ever since.

‘It’s definitely been a long day,’ Hannah said, trying to stifle a yawn. This was true: she’d been on the go for more than twelve hours, working to ensure that every aspect of this wedding – the no-expense-spared union of Pooja and Tim – went perfectly.

She scrunched her toes inside her trusty Dr Martens sandals: thick-soled, heavy flats that gave her an extra inch of height and (now they were fully broken in) fit her feet like kid gloves.

As always, she’d dressed simply and inconspicuously for today’s wedding in a black midi dress, her curtain of strawberry-blonde hair caught up in a long braid that hung over one shoulder.

She wore minimal makeup, first because less was always more when your job was to help another woman shine her brightest, and secondly because she was far too busy to maintain a look that required regular touch-ups.

In all honesty, Hannah was glad of the relentless pace of this wedding. If the couple stayed together, the 21st of June would always be a special day for them. But the date had a particular resonance for Hannah, too, and she’d been glad of all the good reasons not to dwell on it.

‘You sticking around for the music?’ Charlie asked, grinning and nodding in the direction of Marc – the man Hannah was casually seeing, who was setting up sound equipment on a small stage at the other end of the cavernous room.

The former frontman of a successful pop band, he’d achieved heart-throb status in the late noughties and, partly thanks to a thriving presence on TikTok and Instagram, remained a sought-after private performer.

His repertoire consisted of his own songs, plus what he termed ‘high-quality covers’.

‘No,’ Hannah said, ‘I’m way too tired. I’m off after the first dance.

’ It was her standard policy to see a wedding through to this point and no further, provided solid breakdown and clean-up plans were in place.

In Hannah’s experience, a couple’s inaugural turn around the room typically signalled the end of civilised proceedings – and so long as enough booze was available, and there were enough staff on hand to keep it flowing, she was no longer needed.

‘You’re not staying for his set? Not heading back to his swag palace after?’ Charlie said, referencing Marc’s stylishly refurbished Victorian villa in Buxton.

‘No,’ Hannah repeated. ‘It’s not like I haven’t heard it before. And truth be told, he’s become a bit . . . much, lately.’

‘Much?’

‘Yeah. A bit overbearing. He said something the other night about me moving in with him. We’ve only been seeing each other a couple of months! And I’m almost sure he’s booked the “surprise” holiday I told him I definitely wasn’t up for last week.’

‘Not a holiday,’ Charlie said, with mock outrage. ‘The absolute bastard!’

‘I don’t like being strong-armed into things,’ Hannah retorted. ‘And you know I don’t like to fly.’ This wasn’t strictly accurate, but it was easily the best explanation for why she hadn’t set foot in an airport for four years.

Moments after Marc and his band finished setting up, he threw a thumbs up in Hannah’s direction.

Reading the signal, she made her way over to Tim and Pooja.

She sincerely thanked them for putting their faith in her today, and then – in her final official duty – gestured for them to take their place at the centre of the dance floor.

The opening bars of ‘Baby I’m Yours’ poured through the barn’s speakers.

Men in their shirtsleeves and weepy women whose fancy hats had long since been discarded formed a wide circle around them, cooing as spotlights lit up the newly married couple.

They swayed in a loose embrace, the diaphanous layers of Pooja’s flouncy tulle gown shining bright white as her new husband twirled and dipped her at the song’s conclusion.

Hannah hadn’t meant to watch them but found herself transfixed, an unfamiliar, unwelcome feeling threatening to unfurl in her chest as she took in the adoring expressions on their faces.

Was it envy she was experiencing? A longing for someone to look at her like that?

Whatever it was, she needed to squash it.

She tore her eyes away from the dancing couple, then turned and made her way towards Charlie, who’d retreated to the bar at the far end of the room.

‘Aww, those two are so adorable!’ Livi exclaimed a moment later, speaking directly into Hannah’s ear. She’d crept up on her older sister unnoticed, and Hannah yelped in surprise.

‘Jesus, Liv! I just aged about five years,’ she hissed at the youngest of her three siblings – fresh out of university and working part-time for Eventurous while she considered what to do with her newly acquired first-class business degree.

Hannah’s cheeks heated as she realised she’d been staring in the direction of the dance floor again, watching Pooja and Tim laugh and jump around together as Marc’s band struck up a jauntier number.

‘Sorry,’ Livi answered, raising a single, perfectly laminated eyebrow. ‘But in my defence, it’s not like you to get so engrossed in a tender moment.’

This was true – or at least, it reflected the ‘sensible, not sentimental’ persona Hannah had cultivated over the last few years.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, though, that the veil between present and past was at its thinnest today.

Oddly, the day that marked midsummer always felt more like Halloween to Hannah: it was the one day of the year when, if they chose, ghosts could visit her.

‘I wasn’t engrossed,’ Hannah lied, waving a dismissive hand as people began to flood the dance floor and the band segued into a cover of ‘Johnny B. Goode’. ‘I’m just knackered, that’s all.’

‘Your sister has no romance in her soul,’ Charlie said to Livi. ‘Which, given what she does for a living, shows impressive commitment to cynicism.’ The words were flippant, but not entirely empty.

Hannah scoffed. ‘I prefer to describe myself as a realist who enjoys her independence. It isn’t that I don’t believe in love – I just don’t think it conquers all.

Sometimes life happens. Events intervene and people can’t make it work.

So, building your whole world around one supposedly irreplaceable person seems a pretty bad bet to me.

Surely you can see where I’m coming from? ’

She directed this at Charlie, realising as she did so that the conversation had genuinely rattled her. It was rare for Hannah to raise the spectre of Charlie’s ex-husband, even though her friend was well rid of him, and well over the divorce by now.

‘My person is still out there,’ Charlie argued.

‘Neil was an aberration, not my destination.’ In fact, he was a criminal prosecution lawyer she’d spent two years married to.

During a particularly arduous case that involved a string of long nights at the office, Charlie had decided to deliver a surprise dinner for him and his team – only to discover him in flagrante with Mona, his paralegal.

‘He’s a uniquely awful person,’ Charlie said easily, ‘and the demise of our marriage was a him problem, not a me problem. My handsome prince – or randy duke, I’m not fussy so long as he can handle me – will appear at some point, I’ve no doubt. ’

This philosophy neatly summed up Charlie’s approach to living, Hannah thought: work hard, stay positive, don’t take shit – and don’t take shit personally.

It was hard to find fault with, and had enabled Charlie to throw herself into post-divorce dating without a backward glance.

That said, the apps she was on had so far failed to yield her perfect match.