Behind her, Savannah felt the tears course down her face. She couldn’t quite believe what was happening.
The celebrant was continuing: ‘As you hold each other’s hands, you know that these hands will love you through your lifetime. These hands will comfort you, cook when you are ill, feed you when you cannot move, wipe away your tears of sorrow, stroke your face at tears of joy.’
The family watched Stu and Meg looking lovingly into each other’s eyes.
‘As your love endures, remember that love exists in the sky, in the clouds, in the rain. When it rains, we know that the water will give rise to crops that will feed us. We know that the sun will come out. We know that the great cycle of life will continue. That you will be there for each other during the struggle of life and during the great joys of life too.’
Eden thought she might cry.
It had all seemed such a wild proposition at the start and yet now, here, on a day when so many things were happening, this handfasting was the perfect wedding.
She wiped away her own tears of joy.
‘Will you, Stuart Robicheaux, pledge yourself, handfast yourself, to this woman for the rest of your life?’
‘I will,’ said Stu gravely.
‘Protect her with your body and your mind and your soul, never raise a hand to harm her but protect her from all comers?’
‘I will,’ said Stu and he leaned forward and kissed Meg gently on the cheek.
‘Will you, Margaret Eleanor Robicheaux, pledge yourself, handfast yourself, to this man for the rest of your life?’
‘I shall,’ said Meg.
‘Will you promise to protect him with your body, mind and soul, never raise a hand to harm him and protect him from all comers?’
‘I shall,’ said Meg and she leaned forward and kissed him.
‘You are handfasted before your family and friends, those gathered here who love you, joined together until the Great Mother takes you away from each other and you get to live in the eternity of her joy.’
Vonnie was ready with the rose petals, and she threw them into the air.
The string quartet started to play something very lively, and Meg and Stu embraced.
‘Yeuch,’ said some small boy who had broken off playing with his mother’s phone for a moment. ‘Nobody said there would be kissing.’
‘I don’t know why we didn’t get married that way,’ said Ralphie, leaning over so that he was speaking gently into his wife’s ear. ‘It’s much nicer.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Eden. ‘Completely lovely.’ She leaned against him. He really was a darling, darling man.
16
One Month Later
The first week of August was around the corner and the countryside was golden. As Meg drove, fields of hay shimmered around, golden in the sun, waiting for the moment when the harvesters could shear the field. She was aware that, sitting beside her in the passenger seat, Stu wasn’t shimmering with any sort of joy. He’d been silent for the first half-hour of the journey and Meg had let him sit there quietly. But now she was beginning to feel irritated. This was not the way this was supposed to go.
Stu was behaving as if he were going to the guillotine. Meg did not have the bandwidth for his backing out of this. It had been enough to find out about Savannah – oh God, her poor darling girl and what she and Clary had gone through – and try to cope with the anxiety and guilt over not seeing what was wrong in her daughter’s life.
‘None of us knew, Mum,’ Eden had told her. ‘That’s how people like Calum get away with it. They divide their prey from the herd. Cut them off from everyone.’
Meg had spent a lot of time with Savannah and Clary, walking on the beach, talking in low voices when Clary couldn’t hear, about what had happened.
Meg didn’t know if she’d ever recover from hearing her daughter’s stories.
‘I should have stopped it, I should have known: I’m your mother!’
Savannah had smiled gently: she was smiling more these days. Just a little but it was noticeable.
