Perhaps I’d put too much stock in Alex’s promise to me that he’d not let me down at the wedding itself, not like he had when he’d thrust Julian against the hallway wall, barely dissuaded from throttling my ex-husband into submission. Perhaps I thought Julian would tamp down into the damp Sussex earth any impulse to badger Alex into the sort of roiling rage that would expose him for the unstable, drunken, unreliable loser Jules wanted us to judge him to be. Perhaps I believed that Jenn had been wrong, and the presence of an open bar and years of fizzing enmity wouldn’t result in some catastrophe.

Perhaps I was completely wrong. No, I was completely wrong.

By the time the OMAMAs had piled into two Ubers, in a flurry of faux fur and chiffon and crepe and crotch-high dress slits and velvet, and five utterly ridiculous hats between us, we were all at least mildly toasted. (Minty was perhaps a darker shade of toasty drunk.) “We deserve it,” Amanda had announced before pulling the seatbelt next to me across her generous bosom and taking a quick tot from her flask. In the front seat of a Corolla that ponged of Versace Pour Homme (overplayed), Sasha checked her lipstick in the mirrored visor. “This weekend has been utterly exhausting already and it’s only Saturday afternoon.”

She wasn’t wrong. We’d already lived through a rainstorm, sloshed parents, excessive cleavage highlighter, a possible revelation that Will had been jilted by a heretofore unknown Miss K, Tom Gregory not being a wankstain, the creation of the OMAMAs, way too much brandy, me breezing around in my underwear like it was no biggie, Minty losing her cool (at last) and beef paste. Oh, and Julian and Alex on the verge of beating the crap out of each other, that too.

We’d been sent ahead when back in the house, the whisky had hit Minty a little harder than the rest of us. As part of last minute preparations, Miranda had refilled carefully each flask she’d handed out earlier and reminded us all that we were responsible for ourselves first and each other a close second. “The men are tossers, all of them. Useless. That even includes Charlie, who made a monumentally bad call in bringing Julian to the house today, simply unneeded. And Will for being a selfish prick who all of a sudden got coy about who he’s been banging.”

“That’s not right,” I corrected, reaching over to straighten the sprig of red berries on her dark blue cloche. “Will was pretty clear he wasn’t sleeping with Miss K, and I think that was part of his problem.”

It had been years since Miranda had treated me to the frosty, brown-eyed glare that pierced me as I picked a strand of hair from the shoulder of the black watch capelet she’d fastened over her party dress. “I’ll let you know if I want to talk about it.”

Through the windowpane the crush of wheels on the forecourt gravel stole her attention from any further dressing down. “Right, second car shouldn’t be too far behind,” Miranda cried out, slipping her phone in the pocket of her capelet. “Everyone have her bag? Phone? Min’s got both sets of keys. Where is Min, anyway?”

From the kitchen there echoed a muffled wail, then another, followed by a long sniff and the resonant honk of a nose being blown. “I CAN’T!” Minty bawled.

Sasha scowled and rolled her grey eyes with a cluck of the tongue for good measure. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Her entire life making it never about herself and now she’s a trainwreck. Nice one, Min.”

“Go, go,” Miranda urged as she stormed down the hall towards a now whimpering Minty. “You three go, I’ll take care of Sarah fucking Bernhardt in there.”

I was the first out of the vicarage door — I wanted to be away from Minty, away from any display of her lingering love for Alex. I didn’t want to feel the pinch of memory, that if he hadn’t fallen hard for me again, they might have made it back together. Or not, I reminded myself.

Through the window of the car I could see Amanda and Sasha holding hands as they gingerly picked their heels through the hazards of the small stones of the forecourt. “I’m NOT sitting up front,” Amanda announced as she threw open the door across from me.

“Ignore that one,” Sasha sighed, stepping into the front seat. “St. Denys’ Rotherfield, please.”

By the time our driver Farouk had dropped us at the church, he’d learned enough about Minty’s kitchen nightmare to drop some science on us. (Fitting, as he’d been a physicist back in Egypt.) “Your friend is selfish,” he exclaimed with a flourish of his right hand. “She had a husband who loved her and she gave him up because her brother said to? When she had a baby? Now she is a single mother and she blames him when it is her family who caused this. And today she cannot go to a wedding because it makes her realize how stupid she was. Bah! Selfish.”

“But she’s so nice, Farouk.” Quite surprisingly, Amanda had taken a shine to our driver — normally staff barely register as sentient beings to her in my experience, but Farouk was quite possibly the most handsome fortysomething Uber driver I’d ever seen, so I didn’t exactly blame her. “She’s a good mum, she always picks up the phone when I need to talk, and has such good advice. Like with that ex-boyfriend I was telling you about, the one who used to be married to Melissa here.”

In the rearview mirror, Farouk caught my eye briefly before looking back at the road. “You should not date your friend’s ex-husband. He does not sound like a trustworthy man.” (I’d given a 30,000 foot high view of my marriage to Julian early in the conversation, enough to establish him as a singularly noxious cad. Even Amanda couldn’t deny Jules could be “a bit of a hard slog.”)

“That’s what she said, too,” Amanda sighed, taking another slug from her flask. “You really think she’s selfish? I know I couldn’t have beared it if I’d had to go to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding.”

“You weren’t invited to Julian’s wedding,” Sasha snapped, whipping her head around to face us in the back seat. “And it’s not Alex’s wedding she’s going to. And it’s not ‘beared it,’ it’s ‘borne it.'”

“What do you know,” Amanda grumbled.

“She’s right,” Farouk and I chimed in unison.

“Hmph. Well, Min has it harder than the rest of us. Her daughter’s a little hooligan, just like her father. It’s so taxing.” Amanda leaned forward between the front seats, and would have afforded Farouk a good view of her chest had he not the tact to ignore her.

“Please stay in the back seat.” (Amanda sat back sheepishly and folded her hands in her lap.) “Just because your friend is a good person doesn’t mean she can’t be selfish. My wife is British, and I am here because of her.” Farouk took advantage of a tractor crossing the country lane we were bouncing down to bring up on his phone a picture of a woman not much older than we were, sporting bright red cheeks, mousy brown hair and a pair of Ray-Bans. “She is my life,” he continued as the Corolla revved back from its idle. “Dara is the very best person I know, loving and indulgent of me, brilliant and strong. And selfish. She refused to live in my country, even though I had a career, and a beautiful flat, plenty of money. She could have lived like a princess, never had to lift a finger.

“But Dara said she couldn’t handle the stress of living in a big city, or being away from her family. She never even wanted to try. It doesn’t make her a bad person, just one who could not handle life in a different culture. I gave up my easy life and do this now” — he beat his palms on the steering wheel briefly “while I am back at university, trying to get back on track. I would do it again for her, every day. Every day.” In the rearview mirror, I could see a sly grin light up his face. “I would leave it all again for my very good, very selfish wife.”

“She’s very lucky to have you, you know.” Sasha’s voice caught as she rubbed her nose with one of Miss K’s discarded hankies. (How many of those had Will left lying around?)

Farouk barked out a laugh. “She knows. So ladies, your friend is being selfish. This is a beautiful day!” He pointed out the windscreen, past the slow beat of the intermittent wipers, to the sodden but still green land outside. “Weddings are for joy, not sorrow. Be part of the joy, take part in the joy, and remind your friend that while her feelings are real, today is not the day to lose herself inside of them. Be kind to her, but firm with her.

“And you!” He caught my eye again. “You are marrying her former husband. She cannot help but feel the sting of what might have been. Whatever you do, do not use that as a weapon. Make her your ally. You never know when you might need her help.”

“That’s what my mom said!” I cried, bouncing in my seat. (The whisky was hitting me now, too.)

“We all need as many allies as we can get,” Amanda said quietly as the car pulled up in front of the church. Through its lychgate I spotted clusters of wedding guests trying to avoid puddles and the slow drizzle of the grey afternoon on their way inside. Their sheltering black umbrellas made them look like beetles scurrying to escape a threat, and we picked our way down the churchyard’s asphalt path to the main door. Yellow lichen-covered gravestones listed and leaned at alarming angles, pitching forward and back like rotten, snaggly teeth in some loathsome ghoul’s mouth.

Sasha and I joined the slow-moving line behind what were clearly two members of the bride’s contingent — not to be a snob, but from behind their dresses stuck to their tights with the kind of static cling only bad polyester is capable of. Amanda sidled up on the other side of Sasha and started pecking away at her phone. “Texting Jules to see if he can help us queue-jump,” she added, though neither of us had asked. “What’s the point of dating an usher if he can’t get you in first?”

“Why here?” I asked Sasha, whose honey-gold waves were already starting to droop in the mist, even under her very broad-brimmed violet picture hat. “Why this church?”

Sasha poked around in her clutch and pulled out a hot pink disposable lighter and a cigarette. “Bex’s nan was in service here after the War, and she married her husband in the church. Can’t think of why they’d leave somewhere as lovely as this for the East End, but it takes all types, I suppose.” Despite several attempts to get the lighter to spit forth a flame, she gave up and shoved it back in her bag. “Shouldn’t even be smoking anyway.”

“You really shouldn’t, terrible for your health,” Amanda chimed in, passing Sasha a box of matches she’d drawn out of the inside of her faux fur coat. (Truly, that coat holds multitudes. I must get one.) “Thought you quit last year.”

“Cheers, Man.” The acrid sulfur of the match striking the box stung my nose a little before Sasha lit her Dunhill and took a long pull. “I had. Picked it up towards the middle of the year again while I was in Paris with my Baba. You know she still smokes those disgusting Russian Belomorkanals. Too many afternoons in her apartment drinking tea and watching Italian soap operas while she chain smoked. ‘Have a cigarette, Zaichenya. They’re good for your figure.'”

“At least you have your Baba,” Amanda mumbled. She rarely spoke of what was left of her family — her father, who had rarely shown up for much of anything in her life except her conception, and one older and emotionally distant brother. Her parents had both been the only child of an older couple in their respective and prosperous families, and had intended to fill their Belgravia home with a passel of Harringtons after their wedding. There had been four imperious gingery Harrington children before a single-car car wreck on the A254 just outside of Rye. Her mum had been driving late at night with two of her children unbuckled in the backseat when something — a deer? exhaustion? — caused her to lose control. “A sad accident,” everyone said. Amanda had been 15. Life went on at Roedean for her much as it had before, she said, the only difference being that there was no one left in that grand Belgravia flat during mid-terms and holidays to tend to Amanda. Her father far preferred staying with his mistress in West Hampstead. (“Horrible woman. Smells of White Diamonds and potting soil and just won’t die, no matter how many times I’ve prayed for her death to come about.”)

We’d edged forward enough that I could see into the church now — even with the exterior gloom, the Burne-Jones glass sang its brilliant colors in pure joy in scarlet, cerulean, daffodil yellow. I’d been wrong about the age of the place; not 15th century, but mainly 13th and in some parts 12th, an age my New World mind could not help but revere reflexively. So very many new lives and old lives and lovers had been celebrated and mourned within in its stones, and here, two more to add. Two more names and hearts entwined. Cream and blush-orange roses clustered at the end of each pew, studded with chocolate cosmos and crimson astilbe. Ruth Fairleigh’s assertion that Bex was too common for good taste was snobbery — this was autumn distilled into a sweet, lulling liquor spilling down the aisles, all red oak leaves and apple cider and the snappy metallic chill of a bright blue-sky day.

Beside me Sasha continued to puff on her Dunhill. “Why Jamie thought he could manage getting 100 guests in here with three ushers in under 15 minutes is utterly impossible to comprehend. I thought you straights love matched sets of seventeen attendants these days.” Under her hat’s brim her lips sagged in something like frustration. “He let her dictate everything when it’s his day, too.”

“It is kind of the bride’s day,” I reminded her as we shuffled forward another few feet. Through the great oak door I caught a glimpse of Alex and Julian exchanging a brief word and a cordial nod before leading in two more groups of guests. Something like hope sizzled in me: maybe we can be normal oh please oh please. “Did you see that?”

“Hmmm,” Amanda mumbled, peering into the interior of her coat for her OMAMA flask, which I highly suspected wasn’t the only one on her person after yesterday’s rehearsal. “Don’t know why you can’t trust Jules around Al. Seems like one of them’s the tinder but the other’s the spark. Easier to control the spark, of course.”

Behind us a slight commotion as we reached the topmost of the four granite steps leading inside: “Sorry, terribly sorry! Oh, Ran, we’re being so rude.”

“You know what’s rude? Having a fucking meltdown because you can’t get over your ex-husband all of a sudden after, what, three years?”

“About bloody time,” Sasha gritted out, reaching forward to stub out the orange glow of her cigarette on the damp stone of the church wall.

I smelled her Jean Patou Joy before Miranda even slotted her gloved hand into mine with a small shimmy of a shiver. “What did we miss?” she said from the corner of her mouth.

“Not much. How’s she holding up?” I’d quit smoking for good just before my own wedding almost a decade earlier but I couldn’t stop thinking about the burgundy red packet of Dunhills in Sasha’s cream cashmere coat.

“She’ll be fine. Absolutely no idea why she suddenly is in the grip of this idée fixe that she and Alex would have been madly in love still had she not let Theo convince her to walk away and squeeze him for every penny he has. Complete madness.” Our heads turned to look to Minty, who was fussing with the long teal feather that swung low in a flourish from Amanda’s fascinator. “It was hardly domestic bliss chez Carr before all that wretched business.”

“That’s not what Alex told me,” I puzzled, unhooking my hand from hers. “They were happy. A wee team of three.”

“Pffffft. We all thought you and Jules were floating through life in a saccharine dream of love. People can be very good at hiding uncomfortable truths. I thought you’d know that better than most.”

She wasn’t wrong, an uncomfortable truth of its own.

***

In the end, it had been Alex who’d led the five of us to the fourth pew on the right after a young Fairleigh cousin had collected our coats. In his charcoal morning coat, dove grey waistcoat and striped trousers he looked like he’d escaped from graduation day at an extremely smart mortuary school. Crisp white Turnbull & Asser shirt — I knew it well, one of six I’d given him no lip about keeping hold of in the Great Purge of his wardrobe. (I’d only managed to donate three of the tattiest blue oxford cloth shirts in the end, despite my best efforts. “You never know when the washing machine might die and I can’t get to the laundrette,” he’d huffed, pulling the least worst from the pile.) I’d been pleased when Bex had moaned on Instagram about Jamie insisting that he’d not “truss himself up like a hogtied bridegroom” in a dress cravat; instead, he and the other attendants wore burgundy silk ties dotted with subtle cream dots. Below the divot of its Windsor knot was a moonstone stickpin, not his taste in the slightest. (Bex’s hand, probably.)

After placing me between Sasha and Miranda near the end of the pew, he leaned in to press a kiss to my lips. “You’ve been drinking,” he whispered as he drew away.

“Who hasn’t?” I mumbled. Up at the altar, Jamie and Felix were straightening each other’s ties, a brotherly gesture for the photographer. Tom Gregory was making his way down the aisle to collect the next batch of guests, surely the last few, given the time and how tightly packed we were in the ancient oak pews. Another 100 or so guests lower down the order of preference were due to meet us at the country barn space Bex had selected for the reception, another sour and discordant note that sounded between her and Ruth Fairleigh. “A barn? How gauche. I have quite enough of barns up in Cheshire, thank you. Flavia’s daughter was married at Longleat, quite lovely. A manor house is always appropriate. A barn is for… cows.”

Beside me, Miranda reached up to tug at Alex’s sleeve. “Al, you might have a word with Min at the end of this. She’s…” She shot a quick look at me. “She’s kind of having a hard time. Weddings, you know. This is the first one she’s been to since, well, you know.”

Traitor! I thought as I followed Alex’s glance down the pew to where his his ex-wife fretted with the order of service, flipping the card over and back repeatedly. Prodded by a nudge in her ribs from Amanda, she raised one gloved hand in a cautious wave. “Hi,” she mouthed, ending in a tiny moue I caught. None of this sat well with me; the old clench of anxiety gripped tight on my shoulders.

“Cow,” Sasha muttered to my right. “She’ll fit right in at the barn after this.”

Alex popped a quick kiss on the crown of my head, taking care to avoid the great black velvet bow that perched there, before trailing Tom Gregory to the church doors. “I’ll see you at the end of all of this, sweetest,” he called out over his shoulder. “Just enjoy it for what it is and trust me. Nothing bad’ll happen.”

Miranda rummaged in her handbag for her OMAMA flask and fiddled with the screwtop. “You’re not going to want to hear this,” she said cautiously. “But I have a theory about Min’s sudden volte-face.”

I was about to ask her to spill, when Amanda waved Julian over. “Jules! Jules!” I’d already caught sight of him schmoozing Jamie’s father in the front row, flattering a smile and chuckle out of Mr. Fairleigh like he was charming a snake. That was the Julian most still saw, a hail-fellow-well-met, stand-up sort of chap. If he wanted you to like him, needed something from you, getting you what you wanted first was his forte.

Before our very first date, Jules had casually stationed himself on the low wall outside the Wickham Theatre, waiting for Minty to emerge from a class on 18th century female performance (improbably, she was in the drama department, primarily for stage design). He’d been, she told me later that afternoon, almost ostentatiously reading a copy of Tamburlaine the Great.

“I had to laugh, Mel,” she’d confessed as she helped me curl my hair with the curling iron I’d bought earlier that afternoon at Boots in anticipation of the date. “Jules reading Marlowe? Too funny. Amanda took him to see Timon of Athens with us last year and at the end of it he said, ‘I thought Shakespeare was supposed to be moving. What was that even supposed to be? He gives away all his money to a bunch of twats and then we’re supposed to feel sorry for him? Utter shite.'”

Julian’s unexpected — and unexpectedly hilarious — appearance had been a ruse that she’d seen through, but she accepted his offer of a pint at the White Bear anyway. “A pint’s a pint, and I’ve always thought Jules is good fun, you know,” she continued, adding a generous spray of Elnett to the curl she pinned to my head to cool. “Of course I knew it was about you, taking me to the pub, but I thought I might be useful in some way. Maybe help him know a little more about you. Careful!” she warned. “Don’t want to get this tong too close to your ear.”

“Sorry. What did he want to know about me?” In the three weeks since the party at Charlie and Will’s, he’d not moved as quickly as I’d expected. Maybe it was the campus culture I’d left at Brown, but I was more used to meeting someone at a party, sinking a few Solo cups of Natty Light and talking semiotics or Japanese ceramics or how emo was killing decent indie rock, and then within a half hour making out on a ratty old grey sofa in the living room. Sometimes (twice for me) it ended in sex, but more often than not it was just a lot of clumsy dry humping in a darkened room, the rancid and over-sugared notes of cheap beer passing from one tongue to another in sloppy but enthusiastic French kisses.

I hadn’t even been certain Julian was interested still in that dinner I’d dangled before him until two evenings before. It wasn’t like I didn’t see him frequently — Alex had extended an open invitation to come and hang out at their flat whenever I felt like it, which to be honest was pretty often. Three or four afternoons a week I’d play Street Fighter with Al or watch him play Grand Theft Auto, sometimes making tea with Minty if she’d tagged along, more frequently pouring helpings of Strongbow into Cora’s blue mugs or Alex’s sacred Mr. Toad cup. The rest of the crew passed in and out of the sunny first floor flat tucked behind the Sainsbury’s in the Queen’s Road, snaffling smokes from the thick-walled malachite box on the coffee table Julian kept stocked with Silk Cuts, sitting cross-legged on the ash-flecked Persian rugs, gossiping about whomever wasn’t in the room at the time. Julian might come and chat if it was just me and Al, tease me lightly about my subpar gaming skills or spread out his coursework on Thatcherism and pepper me with questions about Reagan. (Questions I could rarely answer.)

And then Alex and I had had a proper evening of it, quite by accident, even if I’d followed him willingly out from a living room darkening rapidly on a mid-October afternoon. Jules had been… I don’t know where Jules had been, to be honest. I wasn’t paying too much mind to him, no more than to Will or Jamie, just another affable, posh, intelligent man. The electric shock I’d felt when I’d first met Al hadn’t dampened over time, not that I was trying to snuff it out. When Alex was around, I felt like iron shavings drawn towards a great red magnet.

“I’ve an idea, Mel,” he announced, switching off the TV as his character onscreen was surrounded by police helicopters and subdued. “Fuck this game. Let’s go to the pub, sink a few.” On our way out, he grabbed a handful of Silk Cuts from the communal box and shoved them in the pocket of his shabby pea coat. We walked the half mile down the Queens Road, down the dark and muggy and mossy stairs to Frogmore Street, over to the Hatchet where once Blackbeard schemed his pirate raids. What we spoke of, I can’t quite recall — likely the recent drama between Miranda and Will, who were then (and continue to be) denying that there was some greater spark between them than mere friendship.

And wrapped in our warm (well, I know mine was warm) autumn jackets we sat in the courtyard, ploughing our way through pints and packets of cheese and onion crisps as the sun dipped below the rooflines and the pink skies turned a liquidy deep indigo. Alex chain smoked seven of the eight (I counted) cigarettes he’d lifted from home; I pestered him for one myself, and then bought him a pack from the machine inside. I didn’t even try keeping pace with Al when it came to pints — it wasn’t a contest, he’d warned me when he’d gotten up to buy another pint and I was still on my first. He told me for the first time a little of his wild childhood on the edge of the Highlands, how he’d always wanted to be a mathematician but felt a duty to his family. “I love my mum but she’s not made for hard work. I am,” he explained, tipping the crumbs of an almost-empty packet into his waiting mouth. We didn’t speak of Julian much.

“I meant what I said that night, you know,” he said halfway through his fifth, maybe sixth pint. A white tideline of beer cut across his upper lip. “You really are lovely, Mel.” I scoffed, but he pushed on. “And now I know you’re, well, you’re more than that. For one, you’re far brighter than I thought at first — oh god, I said that out loud.” He dropped his forehead to the slightly spongy wooden table in shame. “Oh god.” It came out in a muffled plea.

I patted his curls awkwardly, feeling lightheaded from the beer and the intimacy of my touch. “It’s fine, Al. I’ve heard worse.”

“You never should hear worse!” he cried, raising his head so abruptly my wrist knocked into my pint, sloshing some beer over the rim. Alex covered it with a beer mat, as if hiding it might mean the spill no longer existed. “You’re fucking perfect! I mean, aw fuck, Mel. I’m sure you’ve heard it before. You’re brilliant and lovely and I… I want. Hm.” He shifted a hand inside his peacoat for his wallet. “I want another pint. You?”

I pressed a ten pound note in his hand. “Yes, another of the same. My treat.”

While he was inside, a text from Minty flew in: Where u

Hatchet inn w/Alex getting drunk lol, sup

With Jules and Will and r all wondering where Alex and u r

Come to hatchet if you like, whatever. Btw I think Al is trying to hit on me but he is doing a terrible job and he’s still so cute

NOOOOOOOOOO *dying* luv u b good

Wish me luck!!!!!!!!

Luck Mel

When Al tottered back with the pints and a few quid in change to settle back down into the full clasp of night in the courtyard, he took the seat next to me, not across as before. We clipped glasses in an unsteady cheers, and as we relaxed into a companionable silence, puffing on our Silk Cuts between sips of Stella Artois, I thought, I knew, what would happen next: the inexorable march towards a soft graze of lip upon lip and hands in hair and chests clasped closer and closer, pawpawpaw. Pull back, eye regards eye, eye peers into eye to measure the plumb line of lust and then close again, mouth upon mouth unrestrained, deep and plush. I knew this, even if it had rarely ended in sex for me since Josh.

But there was no march. Instead a ping on his phone. “Oh, fuck. It’s Jules,” he slurred, his watery eyes illuminated by the small screen, scanning the incoming text. “He’s saying I need to come back, there’s a clog in my bathroom sink, he’s concerned it might flood. Cannae say why he’s checking the flow in my sink but fuck. Let’s tip these back then. Right? On three. One-two-THREE!”

He sucked his down faster than I could; I let him finish the half pint remaining in my own glass. And as we stumbled back out into Frogmore Street, and practically pushed and pulled each other up the stairs to the Queens Road above, suspended on its short bridge over the lane below, I tried. Oh, I tried to make those amiable pulls and tugs into an accidental clinch, one where he’d look down at me and say, “Fuck my sodding sink, I want you, Mel.” But it didn’t happen. The wheel of Alex’s drunkenness had spun and landed on him singing “I Predict a Riot” at the top of his lungs, my only consolation an arm pulling me close to his side until we practically fell up the stairs of his building and through the door to his flat. We tumbled into the room in a fit of giggles.

“Hi,” I breathed at the assembled crew. Through the haze of beer, I spotted Miranda, selecting a cigarette from the communal box and accepting a light from the blazing match Julian offered her. Minty chewed on the side of her hand. Will rushed forward to take my blazer and steer me away from propping up Al’s drooping body and into one of the cognac brown leather club chairs in the living room.

It was all of 7:30 pm.

“Sorry, I think we’re a little drunk,” Alex announced, catching my eye and shooting me a lopsided grin as he leaned against a tall bookcase. I held my breath for a second before we burst into giggles together.

“Quelle surprise,” Julian snarled, before schooling his features into a facsimile of warmth and concern. “That came out wrong. Will and I were… surprised that you both weren’t here. That’s all. Will called Min and she hadn’t seen you either.”

“I fixed the sink,” Min piped up. “Oddest thing, it was a wad of kitchen towel. Seemed like it had been shoved down there. Rather recently too. Just fished it out with a plumber’s snake.” (Of course Minty knew how to use a plumber’s snake.)

Miranda paced behind the sofa where Alex now stretched his body, extending one long arm behind him, arching his back. “Fantastic, Min. Owe you one. Grab me a bottle of Budvar from the fridge, will you? There’s an opener on the counter… somewhere.”

“You great drunk fool!” Miranda bellowed, leaning over the back of the red velvet sofa to jab a finger in his chest. Her long brown hair fell out of its topknot and surrounded both her face and Al’s as she angled her body to continue the tongue lashing. “You never know when to stop, do you? How many did you drink? How many did she drink?”

“I had three and a half,” I blurted, accepting a lukewarm bottle of Volvic from Julian, who’d helpfully loosened the cap for me. “I think he had…” I counted his pints off on my fingers. “Six. Seven? Hm. Oh, and half of my last one. Six and a half. Maybe seven and a half.”

“Nice one, Mel,” Will laughed. “Three and a half isn’t half bad for a girl your size. Kebabs all ’round then, I think. Soak it all up. Come on Ran, grab your coat, let’s take care of these lushes.” Miranda let herself be bundled out of the flat by Will after she’d tamed her hair back into a severe knot, though not without a last glare in my direction. Minty followed them after Julian insisted he could handle Al and me on his own, and she’d be more useful carrying doners and shawarma back.

Alex had turned on EastEnders and kept shushing Julian, who by this time was fussing over me, pressing aspirin in my palm, offering to whip up a quick yakisoba (“not terribly authentic, but quite acceptable I am told”). Jules reeked of assurance, competence, and some worry that I would think poorly of Alex, think poorly of himself for what had happened. “He gets like this sometimes,” he explained quietly as I turned down the offer of a Trebor Mint. “Something gets in his head, he calls it his little black cloud. He says the only thing for it is alcohol, but I think he’s wrong, you know.”

I’d lain my head against Julian’s thigh where he perched on the side of the club chair, and let him stroke my hair without thinking more of it than I feel calm and safe here with this brother of Alex. “We really did have a good time, didn’t we?” I called out to Al, to no response. “Alex?”

“He’s asleep,” Julian murmured. “It’s for the best.”

“Probably.” I was feeling still slippery and smooth from the drink, a fresh bloom open to the world, and I did not stop Jules when he stroked my neck with the back of his hand.

“You need to be more careful around Al,” Julian warned, his fingers trailing behind my ear with each caress. “He’s a terrible flirt, even if he’s not aware he’s leading girls on half the time.”

“Really?” I asked, raising my head to look up at Julian’s gentle smile. Safe safe safe.

“There’s no malice in it, if that’s what you’re thinking. But it really will only ever be Miranda for him. She’s the only one who can make him come when called. No pun intended.”

It was a terrible joke, but I laughed along anyway. By the end of the evening, soberish and discreetly belching from the garlicky doner, I’d accepted Julian’s offer of a Friday night date at Brown’s, just two days away.

“I wouldn’t come by for a bit, if I were you,” Julian mentioned as he helped me into my corduroy blazer and watched me pull on my gloves. “I suspect Al will be terribly embarrassed, let alone hungover. And then,” he said with an uncleish eye-waggle, “you and I can keep up some mystery between now and Friday night.”

Which is why I was now letting Minty play the part of lady’s maid, helping me select my outfit (Wedgwood blue silk camisole, black wool cardigan, plum velvet mini, black tights and black riding boots) and fuss with my hair like I was an overgrown Bratz doll.

“Anyway, Jules wanted to know if I thought you were more of a silver girl or a gold girl.”

“Silver girl or gold girl,” I repeated, rolling them in my head like I might hazelnuts in my hand at Christmas time. “What does that even mean?”

Minty pinned the last curl to my head and walked around the living room ottoman to face me. “You’re not that daft, Mel. He’s got you some trinket.” With a pat on the hand, she bent over the green marble coffee table to nab the oversized teapot she’d been slowly doling out servings of scrumpy from all afternoon. “He’s absolutely loaded, you know.”

“A gift?” I asked, accepting the salmony pink cup and saucer she offered. The cloudy cider had quite a punch — in the six weeks we’d been living together, I’d developed almost as much of a taste for it as Minty had herself. “But he doesn’t even know me. We haven’t even had a date. We haven’t even kissed!”

She shooshed me to the far edge of the ottoman with a wave of her hand and plunked down beside me, taking a long and sibilant sip from her cup. “I told him gold.”

“What else did he want to know?” I’d never thought of myself of an anything-girl, but Minty sounded certain.

“Oh, do you prefer red or white, wine, that is, that sort of thing. Did I think you’d object to some flowers or would that be overegging the pudding. I told him to get you tiger lilies, by the way. Told him him to not crowd you, give you some space, and not to skimp on spending on you.” Her cup clinked against mine in a click of goodwill. “I think he wants to make it perfect for you.”

And he did that night at Brown’s. He’d found out what I wanted, beyond the tiger lilies and the space to talk and keep it light between us, farther than knowing that I preferred sauvignon blanc to chardonnay or that I thought Warhol was overrated and adored Barbara Kruger (still do). Julian wanted me for himself, so he intuited what kind of man I needed and made himself that person — cautious, gentle, deferential. He made me feel safe, he made me feel seen, two things I’d desperately craved for years. It was a little dramatic confection he’d constructed, of course, as much as whatever Jules was saying to Mr. Fairleigh was a tempting piece of spun sugar built up to flatter Jamie’s dad into dropping his guard.

I’d looked up as Amanda called out to him in the church, and it was my eye he’d caught before hers. Force of habit, perhaps; Jules had spent years staying aware of where I was. But it was Amanda’s call he answered, striding the short distance down the aisle, his cocksure grin irritating me enough that Sasha had to yank the order of service out my hand to keep me from crumpling it.

“Well, well.” Julian’s voice was slick and smarmy, though Amanda preened as he leaned over Miranda into our pew. “Pretty maids all in a row.”

Miranda barely concealed a shudder. If she’d once doubted Julian’s role in the detonation of my bomb of a marriage, she’d come to Jesus in the past couple of days in the vicarage. “Ew. Don’t be creepy, Jules. Aren’t you needed elsewhere? Like the eighth circle of hell?” She inched closer to me, close enough that I nearly got a mouthful of her hat.

“Hell’s more your thing, Ran.” Julian straightened his spine and pulled on his cuffs, briefly exposing the monogrammed gold cufflinks I’d bought him for Christmas years ago. A simple cursive “J” and “C.” He’d adored them at the time for the brushed surface, the satisfying clunk as he snapped the bar into place through the buttonhole to secure each cuff. “My savior shall deliver me.”

To my right, Sasha clicked her tongue. “Oh good god. Shove off, Jules.”

“Shhh, Sash,” Amanda chided from Sasha’s right flank. “Hello, sweetums. I’ve been very good today so far. Haven’t I, Min? Not drunk at all.” Amanda tipped her chin up and dipped her false lashes in a show of what I guess must have been an accomplishment for her.

“Oh yes, not at all,” Minty echoed with a touch to the forest green disc of a hat perched delicately on the side of her head. “She’s quite compos mentis. As I promised.”

As I promised? Miranda had caught this and glared down the line at Minty, who shrugged with a tip of her head to her shoulder. I looked around for Alex and could not find him — I felt the iron thud of premonition in my gut. Something was not right here; I’d known Jules long enough to recognize the bristle of some coming ill wind.

“Excellent, Min. I’m counting on all of you girls to be ship shape and Bristol fashion at the reception.” He flourished a tanned finger at us, as if we were a gaggle of untamed, restless ten-year-olds. And not untamed, restless thirty-four-year-olds.

“Double creepy, Jules,” Sasha drawled. “What are you doing these days, taking finishing lessons with Colonel Blimp?”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Sash. By the way, must introduce you to this cousin of the Fairleighs, Susan someone. She’s seen your pics and is dying to meet you. Just your type as well.”

“Breathing?” Miranda teased from the corner of her mouth, earning her a rare slap on the arm from Amanda (“ow!”).

“No, funny and well-mannered. And single.” The last word was probably pointed obliquely at me, but I did not look at him. I stared ahead at the lacy Victorian reredos behind the altar, quite aware that of the five of us, he had not spoken directly to me. After years of his words — words of praise and derision and desire and dismissal — I needed no more. I would not seek them.

From a door to the right of the reredos, I spotted Alex’s head ducking below a very low stone lintel, the rest of his tall body in its morning suit remaining out of sight. I started to raise my hand in greeting, but Miranda pulled at the crepe of my dress’s sleeve. “No,” she whispered. “Let’s get him out of here first.”

But circumstances prevented Ran uttering whatever bon mot she was cooking up to hasten Julian’s departure. Tom Gregory had shuffled up the aisle to collect Jules; he’d had word that it was time to close the church doors and join Jamie up at the altar. In a way, I was disappointed — had Jules stuck around even a few minutes more, he might have figured out precisely how hammered Amanda was, even if Minty had promised she wasn’t. What would Minty know anyway — it’s not like she hadn’t been weeping through a mugful of calvados herself at the kitchen table only an hour before, proclaiming her still-smouldering love for my (almost) fiance.

“Showtime!” Sasha cracked, with a muted display of jazzhands, as Julian blew a kiss to Amanda. As soon as Jules’ back was turned, Amanda deftly slid her flask from her handbag and nudged Minty to do the same.

Yes, I thought, clicking my own flask against Miranda’s. I took a long draw of the Glenlivet, gasped when the alcohol’s burn glided down my throat. On with the show.