The Stranger at the Wedding, page 4
Oh, God.
K tries to pull Mother back down to her seat, but she bats her arm away.
‘If I could have your attention, please,’ she says, her voice wavering, her hand gesticulating wildly.
Two of Mark’s colleagues continue to whisper at the back.
‘Kind sirs. If you wouldn’t mind.’
They don’t seem to have heard her.
‘Oh, will you both just shut the fuck up.’
That did it.
‘Thank you. Now, I have a very, very important announcement to make.’ She pauses for a moment to drink in the quiet and takes a large sip of her champagne. ‘Would the owner of a 1995 green Ford Mondeo parked outside please move your car immediately; it’s hideous.’
Mother sits back down triumphantly. Nobody knows quite what to say, and the room falls into a stunned silence. A few awkward coughs ring out before Mark clambers to his feet. I’m mortified.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ he says, ‘and for … helping to make today so memorable.’ The awkward coughs become awkward laughs. Mark gives Mother a look – long enough to carry weight. ‘Now if you’d all like to make your way through to the dance floor, we have a little surprise for you: some truly awful dancing.’
As the guests start to disperse, I grab Mother, barely containing my anger. Karen looks sheepish. ‘What was all that about?’ I say.
‘I thought you could do with a little colour. It was all so frightfully drab. Dare say we had more fun at your father’s funeral.’
There it was: after nearly two decades, she finally acknowledged it, acknowledged that he was gone. Her timing has always been impeccable.
‘Mother—’
‘Oh, what. Let me have my fun.’
‘Stop it,’ I say. ‘This is my day. For once, this is not about you.’
‘Oh, Annie darling, it’s never about me. When has it ever been about me. You couldn’t even be bothered to tell your own mother that your husband has been married before.’
She is testing me, feeling her way to my limit. I take a deep breath, feel the air balloon in my chest.
‘If you can’t control yourself, I don’t want you—’
And then I see him, the man from the church, the dark stranger, strolling across the floor towards me. He’s so comfortable in himself, with himself. His gait says he owns the floor, the roof, the building; he owns the space between us. He exudes surety, certainty. He could put a million pounds on black and never even blink an eye.
‘Annie?’ Despite his severe features, he’s charming, disarming even. Up close, he’s older than I first suspected, but there’s a softness in his voice that belies his age.
‘Yes …’
‘I just wanted to offer my congratulations. Mark’s a wonderful guy, and you two make for an excellent couple. Just the other day, Frank was—’
‘Sorry … Don’t think me rude, but who are you exactly?’
A body of water forms between us. K hastily guides Mother away.
‘Where are my manners. Cameron. I’m a friend of your father-in-law.’ He extends a hand in greeting that goes unanswered. The hand drops slowly back to his side.
‘From the army?’
‘Not exactly.’
The water freezes, and there’s nothing but ice around for miles.
‘From where, then?’
Cameron’s head tilts to one side as if he is considering his next move. He’s looking for a checkmate or else an escape route. But he doesn’t seem the running type.
‘It’s a long story,’ he says charily.
‘And one that I should love to hear.’
‘It can wait. Besides, I get the feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more of one another. Congratulations again.’ With that he disappears into the sea of guests abandoning their tables in a fog of wine.
Laura rushes up beside me. ‘Who was that?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I say, bewildered. ‘He said he was a friend of Mark’s father.’
She fakes a full-body shiver. ‘Gives me the right creeps.’
‘Do you think he—?’
‘Forget about him. Seriously. Right,’ says Laura as she hooks her arm through mine, ‘let’s get you to the dance floor.’
I groan.
‘You’ll be fine. Just don’t do that starting-a-lawnmower dance you tried at your hen. No one wants to see that.’
*
Mark and I stand silently in the middle of the hall, waiting for the music to start for our first dance as husband and wife. The guests stand around us too, watching our every move, trying to catch a glimpse of our love.
In the gaping pause as the DJ rushes to find the right track, Mark runs a reassuring hand through my hair and tucks a stray strand behind my ear. I smile at the warmth of his palm.
‘I love you,’ I mouth.
‘I love you too.’
He must sense in me a disquiet, a nervousness.
‘Are you OK?’ he says tenderly.
‘Really wishing I’d taken those dance lessons now,’ I reply.
He laughs. ‘Two minutes and it’s over.’
I pout playfully, my lower lip hanging out. ‘Two minutes and everyone will know I can’t dance.’
‘What makes you think they don’t know that already?’
I hit him lightly on his arm as the music starts at last.
‘Follow my lead,’ he says, as he steps forward and places his head next to mine. I can smell the cologne I bought him for his birthday. Rich, mellow, oud. That scent takes me back to our first date, to the day it all began. ‘And try not to get your heel caught,’ he whispers in my ear. A little in-joke, ours. No one else’s. The spectacle is theirs, but this moment is ours.
7
The guests dance on in a tableau of interlocking arms, contorted bodies and stolen kisses, as I slip outside for some fresh air. Today has been glorious, and yet at times it has all felt a little much. You can spend your life craving the spotlight, and then the moment you get it, you realise the space beneath is too hot and the glare too bright. I needed a moment to myself again.
So here I sit in the early autumn air, thinking not of Mark, not of the man now careening around the dance floor with all the grace of a built-in wardrobe, but of the men who have come before. The ones who didn’t quite make it, but were it for a change of timings or circumstances, could be through those glass doors instead.
First there was Lucas, my primary school boyfriend. Short, pug-nosed, with milk-bottle glasses, a mop of matted blond hair, a face full of freckles and a head devoid of ideas. And then there was Josh. Father was a banker, mother was a diplomat. Huge sense of entitlement that would often manifest itself in what Laura affectionately termed ‘bitch fits’ when he didn’t get his way. Then came Andrew, and Luke, and Connor. A string of distractions in my early twenties; none of them lasted much more than two months. I was young, I was naïve, and I was selfish. I was adamant that I had to learn to be happy alone before I could be happy with someone else.
And then, finally, there was Edward. Ed is the one that got away, the close-but-no-cigar. To think of Ed now, my heart stops and a cold chill runs the length of my forearm. I adored him, but it wasn’t to be. I’m not entirely sure what happened – I’m not sure if it even matters – but I think, as time wore on and we stripped away layer upon layer, we came to see each other, to really see each other. And I don’t think he liked what he saw. He broke up with me, and then he left, my heart in a million little pieces on the kitchen floor of my sister’s flat.
On the face of it, I could have married any of these men. For we could end up with any number of people; we can love any number of people. The difference between them and Mark? Timing. Mark came into my life at a time when I was ready to give myself fully, and were you to ask him the same, I’m sure he’d agree. Timing is everything. Had we started dating when I first saw him on that train, we might not be together now; he might be with someone else entirely, and I might still be sat on my sofa, alone, swiping my way through a swamp of potential digital soulmates.
‘Here you are,’ says Laura, closing the door to the pit of noise behind her. ‘Fag?’
I take a stick from the pack, run a match the length of the coarse strip and feel my whole body rage with adrenaline. I’m a naughty schoolgirl again.
‘Pete’s looking cute tonight.’
I look at her as if to say this is new.
‘Do you think he’s up for it?’
I laugh. ‘How should I know?’
‘Well, he is Mark’s best mate. He hasn’t said anything to you?’
I think for a moment. ‘No.’
‘But he’s single?’
My eyes are drawn to two shadowed figures in the distance; one has the other pushed up against a tree, his hand riding the hem of her gown, her hand in his hair.
‘Annie?’
‘Pete might be a little preoccupied.’ I gesture to the tree.
‘Fuck.’
‘Fuck indeed.’
‘Back to the drawing board, then.’ She takes a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Couldn’t even scare up a date to my best friend’s wedding. How sad is that.’
‘Laura, come on—’
‘Oh, no, you don’t! Stop that. Stop those pity eyes.’
‘What pity eyes?’
‘Those pity eyes. I’ve seen them before … When Jason dumped me last June, a week before my birthday … Incompatible, my fucking arse. He just much preferred his dick in someone else.’ Laura checks herself mid-rant, turns to me and grins. A false grin. ‘Having a lovely day?’
I laugh. ‘Oh, shut up.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Laura begins to fidget with a loose thread on her dress. She wraps it around her index finger, then unwraps it again. ‘Still, there’s always that handsome older man.’
‘What handsome older man?’
‘Dark, brooding, slightly creepy in a sexy way,’ she says playfully, but I’m not laughing. ‘Asking an awful lot of questions.’
‘Laura, what questions.’
She looks startled, eyes wide, pupils swimming in wine. ‘I don’t know—’
I lean forward and grab her wrist a little more forcefully than I intend. ‘Listen to me. I need you to tell me exactly what he said.’
‘OK, calm down. Let me think … He said he knew Frank, and Mark; that he was a joiner by trade …’
‘A joiner?’
Laura seems irritated by my interruption. ‘Yes, a joiner. Like a carpenter, I guess.’
‘And what did he ask you?’
‘All pretty innocuous stuff: how we met, where you went to school, about Karen, Jessica …’
A dull panic rushes through me and places its ugly hand around my throat. How on earth could he know about Jessica?
‘Where is he now?’
Laura reaches for her wine and takes a sip. Her lips are stained red.
‘Last I saw: with your mother.’
8
‘Just who the hell are you?’
I find Cameron and Mother sitting together in the corner of the banquet hall. They’re startled by my interruption.
‘Darling, what is this?’ Mother waves an arm through the air dismissively.
The stranger sits there, unyielding. He crosses one leg over the other and a perfectly manicured hand – a detail that belies his advanced years – rests, insouciant, on the walnut arm of his chair. A platinum wedding ring encircles his fourth finger.
‘I could ask you the same thing.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly.’
‘Then who is he?’
‘How should I know. We just met.’ She turns to Cameron, who is rising from his chair. ‘What did you say your name was?’
He opens his mouth to speak, to defend himself, but I won’t give him the chance.
‘Look, I don’t know who you are, who invited you, or what on earth you think you’re doing here, but you are not welcome. I’d like you to leave.’
‘Annie—’ Cameron goes to place his hand on my arm.
‘Don’t.’
‘I didn’t mean—’ Cameron takes a step back. He looks at me, regards me coolly. I think I see his mouth curl up into a smirk.
‘Stop it. Stop it now. You are not welcome. You were never welcome. So take your little notepad, take your little pen and please leave.’
Mother rises to her feet, wobbles slightly and takes another sip from her martini.
‘Darling, you’re being hysterical.’
‘Mother?’
‘Yes?’
‘Zip it.’ And to my amazement, she does.
‘Well …’ Cameron appears lost for words. A man seemingly so used to being in control, has found himself out of it. ‘I was invited by Frank, and Mark … Please forgive me if my presence here has caused you any distress; that was certainly not my intention. I don’t wish to intrude further, so I shall, as you suggest, be on my way.’
Cameron pauses. He clearly doesn’t know whether to go on, whether there’s anything else to be said. He bows his head ever so slightly, his steel gaze fixed firmly on me, and then leaves, prompting all the oxygen in the world to abandon my body in one giant exhale.
‘What’s going on?’ Mark has heard the commotion and arrives to take me into those big wide arms of his; my head finds its natural place on his chest and I can breathe again, so I breathe him. He smells like home.
‘Annie took against your friend Cameron,’ says Mother.
‘Cameron?’
‘Yes, he said he was a friend of you and your father.’
‘He’s no friend of mine. Dad!’
Frank waves from the corridor and Mark gestures for him to join us.
‘Something the matter?’ Frank looks at me, and there’s concern there, genuine concern.
‘Do you know a Cameron?’ asks Mark.
His father thinks for a moment and runs a finger across his lower lip. ‘I knew a Clinton once.’
‘But a Cameron?’
‘Never.’ Frank is emphatic. ‘Why?’
Mother interjects. ‘There was a man here – black hair, a little on the short side – said you invited him.’
‘I did no such thing. The guest list is perfectly none of my business.’
Mark raises my head from his chest and runs a tender finger around the sweep of my chin. A loose hair breaks from the nest for the second time today, so he tucks it behind my ear again.
‘Guys.’ Karen arrives out of breath. ‘They’re ready for you outside. The car’s here.’
‘It can wait,’ says Mark before turning to me again. ‘Whoever he was, he’s gone now. Are you OK?’
I nod.
‘What’s happened?’ asks K sheepishly.
Our mother drains the remainder of her drink. ‘Wedding crasher. And a bloody good one at that.’
Mark takes my arm and guides me to a bench in the corridor. The world disappears. We remain.
‘It’s been a long day,’ he says, rubbing his eyes with both palms, his tie loosened around his neck. As he sits beside me, the hems of his suit trousers rise up just enough to reveal grey socks with a tiny owl in silhouette. A gift from me in the early days of our romance.
‘Well, it’s not exactly how I’d pictured it.’
Mark looks at me, surprised. ‘You mean you didn’t want a heckling, pissed-as-a-fart mother, a photographer who seems more interested in Laura’s cleavage than capturing our day and a strange gatecrasher at your wedding?’
We laugh and I brighten – just enough to subdue the shaking. That man is with me still.
‘So we had a little hitch. OK, a few hitches,’ says Mark. ‘It really doesn’t matter. When we fly out tonight, on that plane—’
‘I’ll be sat beside my husband.’
Mark kisses me gently, tenderly. I can taste the whole story of our relationship on his lips.
‘No,’ I concede, ‘I don’t suppose it does – matter, that is.’
*
Mark and I stand poised, votive offerings, aware of a swelling beyond the door, where friends, family, well-wishers are gathered for our big send-off. It’s dark now, pitch-black, and the floodlights previously trained on the marquee have been switched off. Despite the glass door separating us from the crowd, us from them, the present from the future, the future from the past, I can only sense their existence from the frisson of excitement, the quiet chattering of lips; I can’t see a thing. I can barely see Mark, who has slipped his hand inside mine in an act of reassurance or solidarity – I can’t say which. Perhaps both.
‘I wonder what they have in store,’ he says, a new weariness in his voice. ‘Pete wouldn’t tell.’
I squeeze his hand in response. He squeezes back, tighter still. But there is a nervousness in the gesture, as though this time he is trying to reassure himself, not me. His hand shakes faintly and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Is he anxious or uncertain? Have his cold feet arrived too late?
‘Ready?’ he says.
I want to say Always, that I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life – the end of the beginning of me and the beginning of the start of us. But I don’t; my heart is beating too heavily, my mouth too dry, my legs too weak. So Mark opens the door and guides me on to the stone steps outside.
Everywhere is black, all black, as though the night has wrapped itself around us. There is a pause, followed by the dull beat of a single drum. A cello joins, a violin too. And then, in a flash, a hundred sparklers are thrust into the darkness and the sky is aflame. The light forms a tunnel either side of us, leading us down the drive to a vintage car that waits to speed us to our honeymoon, and the start of our next adventure, together.
Mark pulls me forward and we start running – running so fast I worry I might trip on the stones, so fast that my thoughts stumble over themselves, so fast that the broken tunnel of sparklers becomes a solid whole. There’s chanting and yelling and clapping and laughing. The light dances and my vision swims. Here and there I catch a shadowed face I think I recognise – a colleague, a friend perhaps, but I can’t be sure, for the light disappears just as quickly as it arrives. Everybody might as well be perfect strangers, but they’re my strangers, perfect or otherwise, holding aloft a hundred sparklers just for me, for us, in the name of new beginnings, and love, always love.
