“So, you can’t just run away,” he added, his eyebrows knitted together. “You have to talk to them and stuff.”
“Not all night,” I pointed out.
“Quite a lot of it, though.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that will be a good thing for me and Mum. We’ll be somewhere where we can’t make a scene or lose our temper. We’ll be forced to enjoy each other’s company.”
Of course, now that I’m here, I can see Leo’s point. It’s only been a couple of minutes and I’m already looking for exit routes. As long as she steers clear of poetry then maybe I’ll make it through this wedding alive.
She suddenly reaches over, takes my hand in hers, and inhales deeply, closing her eyes.
“‘Touch has a memory,’” she says, dreamily.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Keats.”
Bloody hell.
Andy and Roshni are getting married at a castle looking over St. Ives Bay, and after suffering what feels like a much-too-long car journey from the hotel during which my mum filled me in on the St. Ives school of artists in the early twentieth century—“What artist could not be inspired by this dramatic scenery, Freya? I have a mind to start painting myself just looking at these landscapes!”—we arrive at the venue as the sunshine breaks through the clouds. I know Roshni was concerned at how rainy it had been this week, so I smile for her as I climb out of the taxi.
“Aha!” Mum exclaims, inhaling deeply and closing her eyes in the sun. “I imagine someone thought to bury a sausage yesterday!”
“What?”
“It’s a tradition, darling! To get rid of rain on your wedding day, you bury a raw sausage the night before.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“I’ve buried many sausages in my time,” Mum announces loudly, just as she passes an elderly couple going into the venue, receiving appalled looks from both of them. “It works a treat.”
“Mum, please keep your voice down when talking about burying sausages,” I hiss, my cheeks flushing red.
“Not that rain is bad on a wedding day, of course,” Mum continues happily, taking an order of service from one of the ushers before we find our seats for the ceremony. “In fact, it makes some of the most memorable pictures! Brides in wellies, holding umbrellas, smiling through the rain. Gorgeous, if you ask me.”
“All right, thanks, Mum,” I say in a hushed tone, gesturing for her to take a seat near the back.
“Isn’t this decoration stunning?” She sighs dreamily, taking in the marigold flowers adorning the room. I give a sharp nod, hoping my lack of conversation will discourage hers.
“You worked with Roshni, is that correct?”
“A long time ago.”
“But you remained friends! How lovely. It’s so easy to lose contact with people, but you have to make an effort. It’s always rewarded!”
I purse my lips. She doesn’t notice.
“I’m so excited to be here,” she rambles on, her eyes wide with excitement as they scan the other guests. “We’ll have so much fun, Freya! I wonder what readings they’ve chosen.”
She eagerly flicks through the order of service, while I take some deep breaths and try to remember what Dad had told me before the weekend. He’d wisely noted that Mum would probably be overwhelmed with both joy and nerves at receiving my invitation, so it was important for me to forgive her perhaps talking too much or being a little overenthusiastic about the day.
I’m surprised she showed up, to be honest. It’s a long trip for her to St. Ives, and after the Peak District incident there’s a part of me that always expects a no-show from my mother with an accompanying long-winded excuse. So, the fact that she’s here at all is something.
When the ceremony begins and Roshni enters on the arm of her dad, I hear Mum inhale sharply and whisper, “Wow,” under her breath. Roshni is wearing a stunning ivorylehngadetailed with rose-gold embroidery, and has intricatemehndipainted on her hands. Andy, in a navy-blue suit, looks like the breath has been knocked out of him at her entrance.
Theirs is a true love story with a meet-cute so ridiculously adorable, even us cynics have to acknowledge its charm. Roshni went to a secondhand bookshop in Brixton. She picked out a book calledThe Eye of the World,the first in the Wheel of Time fantasy series, by Robert Jordan. She was about to pay when she noticed the resident dog lounging on the sofa at the back of the shop. Naturally, she had to go pet him. After giving him a good fuss for a while, she straightened just as a young man appeared next to her, leaning down to give the dog a belly rub. She noticed the book in his hand. It wasThe Fires of Heaven,the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. The man noticed her looking and then saw the book in her hand. His eyes lit up.
They got chatting about Robert Jordan and other fantasy writers they liked, decided to go for coffee to chat more about books, arranged to meet up for a date later that week, and that was that. They’d magically found the person they were going to spend the rest of their life with on a random Sunday afternoon in a poky bookshop in South London.
