Chapter 8
GUY
Welcome to the Wedding of
Mr & Mrs Naisbett
It’s a freakishly hot Saturday afternoon in May for the bank holiday weekend.
I’m sitting on a stool to one side of the ceremony area that’s been constructed on the lawn outside Earl’s Castle, ready to sing Mrs Naisbett-to-be down the aisle.
Currently, all I’m doing is watching Lyra take pictures of the guests as they fill rows of chairs either side of an aisle and in front of an archway of white flowers.
I catch her looking across at me sometimes.
I can tell when she’s talking about me, as if a guest has asked if I’m him, the Guy who was.
I can tell because she continues to smile when she seeks me out.
Other times, I catch her eye and her smile dissolves into something much cooler. Irritation. Regret. Disdain. All three?
I get it, honestly. I can be a twat. A bookie would give its best odds ever on getting good humour out of me these days.
Not that I’ve ever had a disposition like Lyra’s.
I’ve seen too much. Lived through too many iterations of my mam’s boyfriends and husbands.
Seen, taken and given too many beatings.
Stared death in the eyes one too many times.
All of this is the reason why I never replied to Lyra’s message asking me how I was after I got punched by the groom at the Reilly wedding a couple of weeks ago.
Which, incidentally, may be another reason Lyra looks at me like she’s just drank four-month-old milk.
But I was annoyed with Dave for even giving her my number.
I don’t want to share friendly small-talk messages with her – I have enough friends.
Or, at least, I don’t want any new ones.
And I definitely don’t want to lead her on if there’s anything more than friendly to her reaching out.
She’s a nice girl and she doesn’t need to be mixed up with me.
Still, it hasn’t escaped me that I’m only aware that she looks my way sometimes because I’m so often looking at her.
The bride has chosen ‘What a Wonderful World’ as the song she wants to walk down the aisle to. My voice is really more Kelly Jones than Louis Armstrong but I’ve practised. Yup, me, I’ve practised being a wedding singer.
I tend not to rely on people in my life because people have a propensity to let each other down. But I can admit that I was disappointed when Dave helped me bring the gear here this morning, then left because he has stuff to do.
I guess I just want him to know that I am grateful for this job.
I know I’m a prick sometimes and I seem ungrateful.
But I’m not… Ungrateful, that is. He knows my performances well enough that he’d have noticed every missed beat and fumbled lyric, when I sang at the Reilly wedding, at Vicky Burton’s christening party, and at the twenty-first birthday bash for a Durham University student last week.
So I know, if he’d stayed today, he’d be able to tell that I’ve practised the entire playlist for right now and the wedding breakfast to follow.
Though I’m not the best with emotions, I could have shown him my thanks.
I think maybe that’s why I was, sort of, looking forward to coming here today. That and, unexplainably, seeing Lyra.
She takes one more picture of the tall, dark, extremely nervous-looking groom, standing next to his best man, then makes her way towards the back of the aisle.
She comes my way, her perfume that reminds me, unsurprisingly, of spring flowers – not that I know what they are beyond daffodils.
It’s more a feeling, a sense of brightness and light.
Like the perfume was chosen to match her personality exactly.
She has one of the sunniest dispositions I’ve known – with everyone except me.
She’s my polar opposite. Yet, she’s playing on my mind all the damn time.
Infiltrating my subconscious thoughts and my dreams. I seem to be dreaming or flashing back to That Night daily, but the edgy girl in the leather jacket, who didn’t seem to have a care in the world, is replaced by Lyra.
I’m watching her now as she brings her camera to her eye and I’m vaguely aware that in my peripheral vision, the bridal party has gathered at the stone steps of the castle, ready for the bride’s grand entrance.
And I have no idea why the thought comes into my mind that I hate every person who ever made Lyra feel like she isn’t good enough.
Lyra, who pulls her eyes back from her camera and coughs at me, gesturing towards the bridal party.
Oops.
I press play on the music and start to sing ‘What a Wonderful World,’ exactly as I’ve rehearsed. I only watch the bride when I follow Lyra’s gaze to look at her. I’m fixated on the prettiest woman at the wedding. And she isn’t the one wearing white.
All these mushy songs have gone to my head. I need to get a grip of myself. Maybe I need a shag. That’s it. I’m just pent up and my incarcerated testosterone and mind-messing dreams are sending me potty.
* * *
The ceremony was nice. Standard really. The bride and groom smiled in the right places, looked scared shitless in others. The bridesmaids fanned their eyes dramatically and the mothers genuinely cried at the vows, or the fact that they’re now family, who knows.
I sang the newlyweds back down the aisle as their friends and family gushed words of happiness – sure, they’re getting a five-course meal and free bar for turning up.
Now, I’m singing in the corner of the courtyard whilst the guests enjoy a Pimm’s reception with chocolate-covered strawberries being served on trays by waiters – the higher-brow, fully-clothed version.
It’s not that I don’t like weddings. I think the whole concept is fine, if that’s what you’re into.
But when you’ve seen your mother have as many failed marriages as I have, been passed through as many temporary fathers as I have, it makes a mockery of the institution.
I wouldn’t bother getting married unless I was sure it meant forever.
I’m singing Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ when I tune into a conversation nearby by a group of suited male guests.
‘How did they afford to get Guy Walker?’ one of them asks.
‘Do they know him?’ another adds.
‘Nikki’s parents are loaded,’ a third replies.
But it’s the fourth lad who hits the nail on the head. ‘Nah, he’s a has-been.’ Then he adds, ‘He hasn’t done anything since Scott killed himself.’
I try to ignore it but with his words, I miss the beat of the next lyric.
I get it back on track and cast an eye around the guests to see if they noticed.
The only person looking my way is Lyra. She’s off to my side, where she’s returning to the gathering from getting photographs of the bride and groom.
The way she stills, then looks between me and the group of lads, tells me she heard them.
She most likely heard the falter in my voice, too.
They found another chink in my armour. The biggest one.
For some reason, it brings heat to my neck, that she heard. The kind of flush that makes me look away from her. I need to anyway, since I need to check the iPad at my side for a prompt of the lyrics I’ve suddenly forgotten.
‘He didn’t top himself.’ I can still hear them above my own voice, as if their words are the loudest thing in the open space. ‘He crashed in a Lamborghini or Ferrari or something.’
It was a Porsche 911.
‘Out of his mind on crack, though, wasn’t he?’
That’s what the toxicology report said, too. The one that somehow became public knowledge in a trash tabloid. People make up their own minds as to whether they believe what’s printed in those papers but I know, in that case, it was true.
‘I heard there was a big fallout after he died, about who really wrote the band’s songs.’
That is news to me. People still manage to surprise me, despite all the bull I’ve heard about my brother and the band.
I close my eyes, pretending I’m into the song I’m singing, trying to block them out, keep my head calm.
Then I hear the tenderness of a female voice. ‘Guys, come on, that’s a real person you’re talking about and his brother is right there. If I can hear you, he can too. Imagine if it was your family.’
I open my eyes, thankful for the sunglasses covering them as I look their way and find the lads surreptitiously glancing at me.
‘Now, I just saw them replenish the cocktails over there and it isn’t an endless supply, so why don’t you head on over, grab yourselves a top-up and let me get a picture of you toasting the bride and groom.’
My jaw stiffens as I wait for the backing music of the next track to kick in.
People think that somehow my brother’s memory and my pain mean nothing because we were famous once.
I couldn’t give two shits about those idiots but her, Lyra, that she just defended my brother like she did. To her, I’m grateful.
As she looks my way, she smiles gently, apologetically, and I feel my lips twist up the smallest amount.