at my delay, alongside his best man, Iffy, and my maid of honour, my oldest friend, Liz. My sisters were outside too: Esther watching Jack’s pacing with crossed arms and Ava standing with her arms around Kat, who was painting her nails, both of them huddled together in a tiny splash of winter sun, breath hanging in the air. The rest of the wedding party waited inside as the wedding before ours began filing out. As the car drew to a halt, Jack bounded over, reaching in to help me out of the car before it had even come to a full stop.
As soon as I saw him, I thought, Yeah. This’ll be ok. I watched Dad climb out behind me and give me a thumbs up, and thought again, harder, This will be ok. I’m sure it will.
Then Jack took my hand and smiled at me, and we headed inside.
‘You may kiss the bride!’
There was a moment’s silence while we leant into each other, then my sisters started whooping as one, and as we kissed the whole register office applauded, and it felt alright for a moment. We pulled away and Jack looked like he was glowing, happiness pouring out of his freckles, and I thought, I wonder if I look like that?
Then the registrar said a few more things, the music started up and we were back down the aisle, out into the sunshine and then … then we didn’t know where we were supposed to go. The car wasn’t there – Al wasn’t due back for a good while yet. He was probably sitting back in the pub he’d picked me and Dad up from, enjoying a quiet drink before the happy couple spilt prosecco all over the back of his car. We milled about for a while, doubling back on ourselves to watch everyone trooping out, then we had to walk back in and out again so the photographer could get some shots of everyone throwing confetti at us on the stone steps.
My shoes hurt and my eyes felt heavy from the fake eyelashes I’d let myself be talked into, despite my choice of natural hair, plain white jumpsuit and simple faux fur. I was happy enough at this precise moment – all these people! Jack’s face! – but I’d wanted us to just keep on walking when we got outside, just hit the road, no looking back until we’d had some time to talk about all of this. I squeezed Jack’s hand and he squeezed back.
‘Happy?’ he said.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing.’
We smiled at each other, but neither of us answered.
The photographer moved us around from car park to entrance steps to under the one tree in the vicinity not surrounded by cigarette butts and cider cans, in an attempt to get a satisfactory shot. I tried to avoid Dad’s eye, until our driver finally turned up again. I dragged Jack into the car, and we sat back with a sigh, his arm around my shoulders, and we stayed in comfortable, quiet stillness until we reached our reception venue twenty minutes later. Al didn’t attempt small talk either, just turned up the heaters in the back a little more.
As we pulled up the drive to our hired manor house, the first arrivals of our wedding party, Jack stroked my handbag with one finger. ‘This looks fancy, Zo.’
‘Gift from Mum and Dad last night. More Mum than Dad, I expect. In fact, probably more my sisters than either, but still …’
‘You’ve always wanted one of those.’ I shrugged, smiling, and Jack went on, ‘And if everything else goes wrong in life, at least we know we can flog this and live like kings.’
I clutched it to my chest. ‘You wouldn’t …’
‘Of course I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t dare, my dearest.’ He picked it up, and looked at it more closely. ‘It doesn’t matter how expensive it was – you deserve something this gorgeous.’
Jack pulled me in for another kiss and I wondered if we could tell Al to go back down the drive. No one’s seen us. We could still escape, just me and Jack. Then I remembered Dad’s words this morning – sometimes you just have to do what you think is right – and swallowed the feeling down.
‘Looks great, doesn’t it?’ I said, in an attempt to distract myself from the thoughts running through my head, as the car stopped at the manor house. The marquee beside it, spread out over the small lawns and laid with hard flooring for the dancing later, was swagged with winter wreaths; huge thermal jugs of hot mulled wine waited for our guests under a smaller, flower-laden gazebo near the main entrance to the manor house. I could see through the doors that the photobooth was set up in the entrance hall; the unseasonal ice cream van played its chimes softly by the outdoor heaters, accompanied by the gentle pop pop of the vintage popcorn stand in the marquee. I could hear our pianist already playing soft jazz inside the manor house, so the guests could hear her while they milled about with canapés and cocktails. It was a perfect wedding, copied dutifully from the wedding magazines and Pinterest boards everyone had sent me. Hadn’t I done it right?
Jack got out of the car and held the door open for me, then suddenly swooped me up in his arms and half ran with me towards the hot wine.
‘Quick! First toast. While everyone else is tagging along behind in the bus.’ He held out a glass to me before taking one for himself. A passing waitress smiled at us both – the happy couple. ‘It’s going to get busy any minute, and we’re probably not going to be able to talk until tomorrow. But I just wanted to say how amazing you look, how amazing this is, and how amazed I am that you’re now my wife.’
‘Don’t blow your whole speech.’
‘I mean it, Zoe. Sometimes I didn’t … I didn’t always know how we were going to end up, even though I always knew I wanted to be with you. And to look at us today, to look at all this …’ He was welling up.
I chinked my glass against his. ‘Happy wedding day.’
He smiled, and replied, ‘Happy wedding day, wife.’
I drank my wine in one gulp, burning my throat.
The rest of the reception was a blur. I noticed that Liz, my maid of honour, was there without her boyfriend. She hadn’t said that Adam couldn’t come, but she didn’t mention his notable absence, so neither did I, sensing it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. Instead she cooed over my bag, gasping as I explained that Mum and Dad had insisted the bride should have a special gift on her wedding day. Esther, my responsible, married eldest sister, who had our dad’s smaller stature and our mum’s gentle stubbornness, had been clapping her hands with glee when Dad handed me the box last night, having received a Céline bag (also second hand) when she’d got married four years ago – it had swiftly become her nappy bag when William was born a year later. Ava, taller and quieter, the next eldest, looked on with peaceful, happy excitement, while Kat, the youngest of us four by four years, bold and foot-stamping ever since Mum and Dad brought her home from the hospital, had stood with folded arms and bright purple pursed lips while I’d lifted the layers of tissue paper to find an old, impossibly soft, black Chanel 2.55 handbag.
‘Now, it’s not brand new,’ Dad had said, apologetically.
We’d all laughed. ‘Dad! It’s beautiful. Thanks, Mum. Thanks, Dad.’
I hadn’t expected it. My wedding to Jack seemed so different, somehow, to Esther and Ethan’s, that I’d had no idea I’d get any kind of present. Their wedding had been all any of us had talked about for months – a happy event which had been a given since they’d got together – but ours just seemed to have arrived, surprising even me. I didn’t think anyone would take it as seriously, somehow. And yet this bag! I’d slept with it on my bedside table, intending it to be the first thing I saw when I woke up that day, but in the end that
