salvaged. She’d known for some time now he was a bad person, or at least a very weak one, and this behaviour only proved it.
But Jack was dangling the temptation of talking about things she’d wanted to talk about for so long.
‘Sometimes you don’t know what to do. You know?’ Jack shook his head and exhaled and scuffed the toe of a Paul Smith brogue on the grass.
‘Not really. Marrying is a pretty straightforward yes or no. They put it in the vows.’
‘I didn’t mean … that, exactly. Charlie’s great, obviously. I mean. All of this. Fuss. Oh, I don’t know.’
Edie sensed he was several degrees drunker than she’d first realised.
‘What do you want me to say?’ Edie said, with as little emotion as possible.
‘Edie. Stop being like this. I’m trying to tell you that you matter to me. I don’t think you know that.’
Edie had no reply to this and in the space where her answer should be, Jack murmured, ‘Oh, God,’ stepped forward, leaned down, and kissed her.
She almost reeled with the surprise, feeling the soft brush of his freshly shaven jaw against hers and the pressure of his warm, beer-wet lips on hers. The ‘Jack kissing her’ information was so huge, it didn’t get through to her central cortex in one go. Full comprehension had to be delivered in stages.
1 1. Jack is kissing you. On his wedding day. This does not seem possible?! Yet early reports are it is DEFINITELY HAPPENING.
2 2. Is this going to last longer than a peck? Was it a mistake? Was he aiming for your cheek and missed?
3 3. OK no, this is definitely a KISS-kiss, what the hell? What the hell is he doing?
4 4. What the hell are YOU doing? You now appear to be responding. Is this definitely something you want to do? Please advise.
5 5. ADVISE. Urgent.
Seconds lasted an age. They’d kissed. Edie finally had a grasp of the magnitude of the situation, and her part in it, and pulled back.
There was movement to her right and she saw Charlotte behind them, her white dress glowing like exposed bone in the encroaching darkness. Jack turned, and saw her too. They made a bizarre tableau, for a split second, looking at each other. Like seeing the lightning crack and only hearing the thunder roll a second later.
‘Charlotte …’ Jack said. He was interrupted by screaming or, more accurately, a kind of low howling, emanating from the new Mrs Marshall. ‘Oh, Charlotte, we’re not …’
‘You fucking bastard! You utter fucking bastard!’ Charlotte screamed at Jack. ‘How could you do this to me? How could you fucking do this to me?! I hate you! You fuck—’ Charlotte sprang at him and began hitting and slapping him, while Jack tried to grab her wrists and stop her.
Edie watched blankly with a sudden, intense desire to vomit.
Earlier in the day, Louis had described his abhorrence at brides involved in procedural admin of any kind on their big day. They should float on stardust, and anything like work was earthbound and tawdry. ‘You shouldn’t see the ballet dancer sweat.’ Edie had thought he sounded like he’d swallowed a copy of The Lady.
However, there was something particularly aberrant about seeing someone in such glamorous, feminine attire having a full-tilt barney. There was Charlotte, hair in French roll, shimmering collarbones, princess skirt rustling like tissue, lamping her new husband with manicured hands, one of them bearing the giant sparkling engagement ring and fresh white-gold wedding band.
‘It wasn’t what it looked like!’ Edie said, hearing her voice say those words, as if listening to a stranger. It looked like what it was.
Charlotte paused momentarily in her grappling with Jack and snarled, her subtly made-up, lovely face contorted with rage: ‘Go to fucking hell you fucking bitch.’ There was no comma or exclamation mark in that statement, only certainty.
Edie wasn’t sure she’d heard Charlotte swear before. Edie realised she’d not moved from her position because of a strange conviction it’d make her ‘look guilty’ and she should stay and explain.
Having realised the lunacy of this idea, Edie finally moved. As she charged back towards the hotel, the first few people were looking over in curiosity and confusion as the voices drifted across the lawn.
OK, first things first, Edie was definitely going to be sick. Not in the general toilets; too conspicuous. She’d have to get to her room.
Edie dug the hotel key with the metal fob out of her bag with shaking hands as she did a quick swerve towards the main entrance. Fewer people to pass, that way.
Her only object right now was making sure she boaked the chicken dinner that was on its way back into the world into an appropriate receptacle. She knew after that a horrible, terrible, bleak immediate future would open up. One thing at a time.
As she bolted up flights of stairs, and along the quiet hotel corridors, it seemed impossible to Edie that time was still stubbornly linear, and that this alternative universe was in fact implacable reality. That there was no breaking a magic stopwatch open, twirling the hands and stopping this whole lurid saga from unfolding.
That Edie couldn’t un-decide her choice to walk out into the gardens. She couldn’t scroll back, like rewinding old video tape, and say something different to Jack, stalking away as soon as he started uttering gnomic, meaningful things. Or simply have stood somewhere that she could see Charlotte walking toward them, wedding gown draped over one arm, wondering why Jack was gossiping with Edie, wanting to tell him it was time to cut the cake.
No. Edie was the woman who kissed the groom on his wedding day, and there was no way of changing history. Right at that moment, if she had a Tardis, there was no way that Hitler was getting assassinated as a first item of business.
She burst into her deserted hotel room, its disarray reminding her it was so recently the scene of innocuous hair-straightening and full-length-mirror-checking and tea-with-UHT-milk-making. She locked the door and pulled at the handle, rattling it to make sure she was safe, kicking off her shoes.
Edie made it to the loo, held her hair out of the way and retched, once, twice, three times, and sat back up, wiping her mouth. When she came face to face with her reflection, arms braced on the sink, and could barely stand looking at herself.
The bargaining began.
Charlotte knew Jack had followed her, though? That he’d kissed her? But she couldn’t make that case. It was up to Jack to explain.
Edie thought about what was going to be said. She had to leave. Now. She made herself steady and check her watch: 9.14 p.m. Too late to get a train? Could she get a taxi? To London? At no notice? That would be insane money. Still, she’d pay it. Only she considered she’d have to pass through reception with her luggage when it arrived, a walk of shame if ever there was one.
There was only one option left: going to ground. Staying
