Читать книгу Do You Remember the First Time? - Jenny Colgan - Страница 7

It was a lovely day for a wedding, if you like that sort of thing. This was about the eighteenth I’d been to this year, but it was still very nice. I suppose it was a bit different, being Tashy’s. I was very glad Tashy hadn’t pushed me about being the bridesmaid. When we were sixteen it was all we talked about, but brides over thirty have enough problems looking young and innocent as it is, without an Ancient Mariner hanging grimly by her side, trying to make light conversation with the ushers and ignore the whispers (‘Such a shame she’s not gone yet …’; ‘They do leave it so late, the lassies these days …’) and Tashy’s young niece, Kathleen, would do a perfect job of looking fresh and sixteen and completely overexcited, though trying to be too cool to show it – not entirely unlike we had been, it had to be said.

The church was cool and pretty as we slipped into seats near the front row, nodding and waving to everyone. No sign of him, and my parents weren’t coming till later. There is something incredibly evocative about a traditional English wedding ceremony, and this one was done beautifully; so much so that when they started up the Wedding March, I choked back a tear. Olly gave me a meaningful look.

Tashy looked wondrous, of course. She has excellent taste, and that eat-nothing-that-doesn’t-taste-of-poo diet had certainly worked. Her ivory sheath was incredibly tasteful, with gorgeous embroidered shoes just peeping out the bottom, matching the long lilies she held. I wondered briefly if she was going to burst out of her dress later after going into a crazed frenzy at the vol-au-vents table, then remembered that the point of a wedding is that you watch everyone else consume vast screeds of booze and nosh you’ve paid for but can’t partake in, in case you do something rash, like enjoy yourself. But here, in the peace and stillness of the old church, I couldn’t be cynical.

The vows were very traditional, and Max looked all right too, gruffly uming and erring over the responses – not that anyone was looking at him, of course. Even when we were kids, grooms always had something of an interchangeable quality to them. It was Barbie who was important. Ken was neither here nor there.

My eyes had kept scanning the pews for Clelland, just in case, but I couldn’t see him. Maybe he was that bald geezer over there … or that enormously fat chap wearing the colourful waistcoat …

‘God, how long is this going to go on for?’ whispered Oliver with a wink, although he had just been singing ‘Jerusalem’ loudly and off key, and was clearly having a sensational time. I swallowed, guiltily.

‘I hope there aren’t too many prawns,’ Olly was saying as we walked into the large marquee, which was bedecked with flowers and ruffled decorations. The sun was glinting off lots of very clean silverware and shiny glasses, waiting to be replenished on into the night. One billion photographs later and I still hadn’t seen Clelland.

‘Or anything with nuts. Or salad cream.’

‘I’m sure the Blythes are far too posh for salad cream,’ I said, and squeezed his hand chummily.

Olly was the pickiest eater I’d ever met in my life. I thought they thrashed that out of you thoroughly at boarding school, but I was obviously wrong, because he refused to eat most things that weren’t cheese or fish fingers, on various spurious grounds.

‘Well, you know viscous things upset my stomach.’

‘All fluids upset your stomach.’

‘Glooky ones most of all.’

I took a quick look at the hors-d’oeuvres coming over. Excellent – sausages on sticks, with a slightly pretentious veneer of sesame seeds over the top. He’d be able to cope with those, once he’d picked off the seeds. And I guessed I’d better make my way over to the bride as well, once I got half a—

My heart stopped in my throat. There he was, about ten feet away from me. Clelland. Looking exactly the same. In fact, if anything, he looked even younger. Then he turned his head away and disappeared into the crowd.

‘Oh my God!’ I said.

‘I know. Sesame seeds,’ said Oliver unhappily.

‘No, no. It’s just, I’ve seen an old friend. I have to go and say hello to … them.’

‘OK. I’m off to pat Max hard on the back as a kind of non-gay way of saying well done,’ said Oliver.

I walked over to where Clelland had been. But even as I got there, I felt something was wrong. Was my mind playing tricks on me? How could that be such an exact replica of someone I hadn’t seen for sixteen years? I mean, people change in sixteen years, don’t they? It would be completely impossible for it to be otherwise. I mean, of course, I’d hardly changed, thanks to the miracles of modern cosmetics … well, maybe I had a bit. Suddenly I gulped and smoothed down my hair. Did he have a picture rotting away in his attic?

I spotted his dark jacket again. He was talking to one of the waitresses with his back to me. I took a deep breath and walked up to him.

‘Erm … hey there!’

The man turned round. And at once I realised my mistake. The likeness, though, was absolutely extraordinary. The figure stared at me. This wasn’t a man at all, hardly more than a boy.

‘Sorry, but … oh, you look familiar.’

‘I’m Flora Scurrison,’ I said warily.

His face was furrowed in concentration for another minute, then he broke into an enormous smile. ‘Oh my God! Don’t you remember me?’

Something was ringing at the back of my mind.

‘It’s Justin!’

Justin, Justin …

Suddenly it hit me.

‘Oh my God.’

‘Yeah!’

‘You’re Clelland’s little brother.’

The one with the baby monitor.

‘Yes! I recognise you from the photos.’

‘I am SO OLD,’ I said, almost without realising it.

‘Everyone keeps coming up and telling me how much I’ve grown. I am nearly seventeen, actually. Quite grown up.’ He looked petulant all of a sudden and I was reminded overwhelmingly of Clelland.

‘You look a lot like your brother.’

‘I do not.’

‘He does not,’ said a deep voice.

I looked up.

‘Hello, Flora. Justin, scram.’

‘You always treat me like a kid,’ scowled Justin.

‘That’s because you sulk and whine all the time.’

Justin sulked off, whining.

‘He’ll be OK. He needs to eat about nine times a day, so the buffet’s probably the best place for him.’

Clelland was … well, it was impossible I’d have mistaken him for anyone other than himself.

He had filled out, of course; he couldn’t possibly be as absurdly skinny as he had been; that would have been David Bowie and nobody else. But his black, unruly hair was just the same as ever.

‘I thought he was you,’ I said, not trusting myself beyond a short sentence.

‘God, really?’ He glanced behind him at his brother, mooching off. ‘Was I such a slouching runt at that age?’

‘Worse!’ I gave a very peculiar slightly strangulated laugh. ‘At least he’s not wearing a Morrissey T-shirt. Every day!’

‘I loved that T-shirt.’

‘I know.’

I held out my hand. ‘Clelland, it’s good to see you.’

‘Oh God, it’s John. Please. Nobody calls me that any more.’

‘No, really? I thought you swore you’d never get tied down into “bourgeois tying-down name fascism”.’

‘Yeah? And do you still spell your name P-f-l-o-w?’

‘No,’ I said, going scarlet.

‘So … what have you been up to?’ He looked … he looked great. And wryly amused to see me.

‘Oh, lots of things,’ I said, as he easily lifted two glasses of champagne off a passing waiter.

‘Yeah?’

‘No!’ I said. ‘Well, I went to university then got a job and moved back to London.’

‘That’s three things.’

‘Over quite a long period.’

We stood for a moment.

‘What have you been doing then?’ I asked awkwardly.

Oddly, I could see over my shoulder, Justin had bumped into Olly at the buffet and was pointing out foodstuffs to him.

Clelland – John, but I really couldn’t think of him any other way – shrugged.

‘Well, I went to Aberdeen.’

‘I remember that,’ I said quietly.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, looking slightly awkward for a second, which came as a big relief to me. From the way our conversation had been going, I was beginning to wonder if I’d made up the whole romance in a psychotic episode and we were distant acquaintances greeting each other at a Rotary Club dance.

‘Then I joined VSO for a couple of years – get out and see the world, you know.’

‘Oh yes. Where did you end up?’

‘Africa.’

‘Wow, that’s amazing!’

‘Complete and utter shithole. I hated every second of it. I wanted to catch malaria so they’d have to send me home.’

‘God, I haven’t wanted you to die for ages,’ I said, before my brain had properly engaged. It was not a good moment. Olly stumbled over.

‘Jesus, Flo, I can’t eat a damn thing. Do you know they have almonds in the salad? You’d think they’d put on a few fish fingers just in case. This is going to be even worse than the Stricklands’ wedding, and that made me sick.’

‘You were drunk.’

‘God, yeah.’

Clelland raised his eyebrows.

‘This is Oliver,’ I introduced him. ‘My, er, boyfriend.’

Why the ‘er’? I was conscious that perhaps I wasn’t sounding as thrilled as I could.

Clelland put his hand out. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ said Olly, holding out his hand.

‘Clelland’s an old school friend.’

I’d never told Olly about Clelland. At first it was because I was obeying the ‘don’t tell new boyfriend about exes; they must think you’re a virgin’ type bullshit law. And then … well, some things are private. Also, I think if we knew all about how people behaved when they were teenagers, no one would ever go out with anyone.

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Olly gruffly.

Looking at them both, I felt very strange suddenly. I wasn’t comparing them. Definitely not. This was not a competitive thing. Clelland still had a chance to appear a complete prick.

‘Olly’s a lawyer,’ I said helpfully.

‘Really? And I shook your hand?’ said Clelland, and smiled.

I’d hardly ever seen his smile. Not something suburban rebels do very often, smile. They talk about suicide and Leonard Cohen quite a lot. It was lovely. His teeth were slightly crooked, and the incisors pointed in.

‘Oh gosh, yes, sorry about that. But we only really screw you if you’re a multinational, our lot,’ said Ol. ‘Just the sixth circle of hell really.’

‘So you’re not one of those chaps that advertises on telly for fat ladies who fall off their chairs at work?’

‘No. Although I help Flo, you know, when it happens at home,’ he said with a grin.

‘Yes,’ said Clelland in the way people have to when someone makes a slightly off-colour remark. I couldn’t tell if he thought it was funny either.

‘What line are you in then?’ said Olly, half eyeing a waitress carrying a bowl of prawn toast. He reached out a hand and took four.

‘How come you can eat sesame seeds on toast and not on sausages?’ I said without thinking. Both the boys looked at me.

‘Because it’s toast,’ said Olly, as if explaining to a four-year-old. ‘Anything can be done with toast.’

Clelland stuck his bottom lip out at me.

‘Um … I’m an ethical logistician.’

‘A what?’ I said.

‘Oh. Do you perform on stage a lot?’ said Ol. ‘Puppets and so on?’

‘No …’

‘OK, what is that then?’

‘Well, I try to direct aid through the best routes. Try to play down the possibility of it being hijacked by armies, that kind of thing.’

I admit it. My heart leaped. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d have dreamed he’d be doing. Well, that or some sort of tragic Moulin Rouge-style poet, obviously, but this – heroic, good for the world, manly – I had a vision of him standing on top of an elephant, for some reason. Then, I’m ashamed to say, one of me looking like Meryl Streep in Out of Africa-style linens, saying, ‘I hed a ferm in Efrica …’

‘I hate it,’ said Clelland. ‘It’s a pissy job.’

‘Really? It sounds interesting,’ said Olly.

‘Everyone says that.’ He ran his hand through his dark hair. ‘It’s bloody endless government bureaucracy, and as to how much good we even do at the end of the day I couldn’t tell you. Certainly doesn’t seem to make anything any better. God, I’m sorry. Am I being really depressing at a wedding? Was I always like this?’

He looked directly at me, and I couldn’t meet his eyes. Get a grip, I told myself fiercely. Any minute, surely, Olly was going to spot the hot vibes coming out of my head and give me serious trouble.

‘You were worse,’ I said.

At Heather’s wedding, just before my birthday, I had flirted madly with the best man, danced up and down with the ushers and ended up sharing a bottle of champagne down by the fountain with a grumpy-looking Clelland, who was talking about the bollocksy bourgeois imperative of forced enslavement. It was all rubbish, of course. It’s just coincidence it came true for Tashy’s sister.

‘I’m never getting married,’ he’d said, and my little teenage heart had dropped. What was I thinking? That we were going to run away to Gretna Green? Why did I think men two years older than me were grown up? Because I didn’t know anything else, I suppose.

‘Oh,’ I said, fingering the fading roses of my bouquet. I dabbled my hand in the fountain in what I hoped was an alluring manner.

‘Ritualised enslavement,’ he grumped, pulling me to him. ‘For men and women.’

His long thin hand brushed across the top of the lace on my dress. I shivered. We had done heavy, long-distance, serious snogging, but I still had a very heavy layer of being-a-non-slut, anti-aids parental-warnings, throw-it-all-away-pregnant-schoolgirl outright fear morality hanging over my head and hadn’t let him go any further than the waistband of my C&A knickers.

‘You’re lovely,’ he said. I beamed. He took this as an excuse to slide his hand up the sixteen layers of tulle I was wearing. Unsurprisingly, he got fatally lost on the way, and the whole romance of the fountain started to peter away as we kissed onwards, he groping desperately somewhere heavily hemmed only slightly north of my knees.

The more he pawed around, frantic, the more awkward and embarrassed I became. This wasn’t how they described it in our purloined copies of Cosmopolitan at all. And there certainly wasn’t much of this going on in Lace, or Sweet Valley High.

‘Oh God,’ said Clelland in lust and frustration.

I gulped, still at the stage of kissing when you’re very conscious of what to do with your saliva.

‘Erm …’ I said.

Then he found it.

‘Ooh!’ I said.

He looked at me, but with a misty expression in his eyes, like he couldn’t really see me.

I gulped again. ‘I can’t,’ I said firmly.

‘What – never?’ he said, focusing on me.

‘I don’t know …’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but you are m-my girlfriend, Flo, and I-I thought …’

He was so red-faced I thought his head might explode. This new stutter wasn’t helping either.

‘I … I don’t think so.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Everyone! Bridesmaids! Ushers!’ I heard Tashy’s mum calling from the house. ‘Come on! We’re cutting the cake!’

We looked at each other, two frightened deer.

Clelland went to withdraw his hand but before he could I had stood up quickly. I was as pink as my skirt as I ran to the house, leaving him there looking after me, confused.

Heather looked a picture, her hair as enormously rigid as it had been that morning, but now teetering unpredictably to the left.

She held her hand over Merrill’s. The cake was a ludicrous, six-storey pink and white nightmare, flowers curling crisply round every corner. I shut my eyes tight.

‘What are you doing?’ whispered Tashy, who I’d been relieved to find when I came in.

‘Making a wish when they cut the cake.’

‘You don’t make a wish when you cut a cake at a wedding. You’re thinking of blowing out candles at a birthday.’

‘You do too make a wish,’ I said, cross with her.

‘Even if you did, it wouldn’t be your wish, would it? It would be theirs, asking for lots of children or something. Yuk! Imagine Heather making babies!’

‘Yuk!’ I said, smiling and felt slightly better. They raised the knife. I shut my eyes anyway.

‘I wish … I wish I was grown up, and love was easy.’

Funnily enough, when the photos had been taken and the glasses raised, I did feel different, in a strange way. I put it down to that miraculous change that’s meant to happen to you when you’re coming of age, like getting your national insurance number, but which I’d never felt before.

Now, however, a boy had touched me. I was a woman. I had made a woman’s choice. I was going to behave like one. And also, of course, I was desperate not to lose him.

I walked straight up to Clelland, looking so out of place in the black shirt he’d insisted on wearing, dragged him on to the dance floor and kissed him like a woman should.

It wasn’t until years later it occurred to me how unbelievably childish and embarrassing this might have been for our respective families.

And, of course, families never let you forget. My dad had just arrived at Tashy’s wedding, late and a bit pissed. He came roaring up to Olly, Clelland and me.

‘Hello, young Clelland! Good to see you! Tell me, you promise not to smooch our girl here for the whole of the evening, will you? Like at some weddings I could mention.’ He slapped him on the back and snorted with laughter.

Olly’s ears pricked up.

‘Dad!’ I said in an agony of embarrassment. ‘That was years ago.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Clelland, looking amused.

‘Hello, Mr Scurrison,’ said Olly.

My dad is a bit rude to Olly. I don’t know why, but then my dad pretends not to dislike anyone, whilst holding deep personal convictions about people as varied as Jim Davidson and Tony Blair.

‘Ah yes, hello, Oliver. Didn’t see you there. Are you losing weight?’

This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t Olly’s fault he was getting perhaps a little more than a bit of a tum. We all worked long hours, and if you eat practically nothing and then have to fill up on sausage – well, things can get a bit out of hand. He looked fine in his three-piece suit, though.

‘Um, no. How are you doing?’

‘I’m fine, fine! Just keep me out of Flora’s mother’s way now.’

I grimaced. I realise it’s important to Dad to feel that the fact that they’ve split up is a bit of a jolly ‘Ooh, Vicar, where’s my knickers?’ farce, but I don’t have to like it. I was the one ringing home from my first term at university and listening to forty-five minutes of uninterrupted sobbing from my mother. I’m the one that has to be contactable every single night now, or she calls the police. Being an only child to a neurotic mum can be even less fun than it sounds. And it was his fault.

Why do so many people split up like that? ‘We’re just waiting for the kids to leave home.’ What does that even mean? ‘We’re waiting until our children take their first fluttering steps out into the world, forging their own personalities and identities and living alone for the first time, then we’re going to crack their worlds apart.’

I’ve forgiven my dad. You don’t, of course, have much of a choice, unless you want it to turn into a blood feud that cascades hatred down the generations. All I can say is, she was twenty-nine and it lasted six months and, of course, he wanted to come home afterwards. He told me it was his last chance; his last way to do something different and that I’d understand when I was older, and you know, sometimes, looking at my life, if I’m being honest, I probably can.

I was twisted when my mum wouldn’t take him back. Part of me just wanted everything to suddenly evaporate so that they would go back to the way things had been or, better, the way I’d have liked them to have been, more The Good Life than Butterflies. But I was glad she wasn’t doing it. I was glad she was standing up to him. Because, although I didn’t exactly have twenty years of marriage behind me, and I didn’t know much about life (though then I thought I knew pretty much everything), I would have liked to have been as firm as she was with the love of my life.

I could see her now, coming in, but decided to duck from her until I’d got rid of Dad. Watching her in silhouette I was struck by how old she looked; my dad just looked like a jolly, chubby, balding, middle-aged man, of which there are approximately ten million in Britain; good yeoman stock. My mother was painfully thin for her age – I was always trying to get her into milkshakes because of that brittle bone thing – and walked as if she was in pain. If you looked closely she was beginning to get a hunchback. Once your world is cracked open, you can’t go back, I think. She never could. I can barely remember the carefree, normal way me and my mother used to relate when I was a teenager – normally, with sulks and huffs and slamming doors. I didn’t behave very well either. But now, she was more like a housebound grandmother, and she trusted nothing.

God, Tashy was brilliant back then. I couldn’t decide which was worse: losing my dad or losing Clell. In fact, I was so wrapped up in my own misery, I was hardly there for my mum at all, something I will never forgive myself for. Tash and I had a grand tearing-up of Clelland’s letters (which I still read anyway; he was having a great time. I only ever got three, ’cos I couldn’t reply to any of them. What with? ‘Dear Clelland. My life is shit. Love Flora?). I got my head down and got out as quickly as I could, and I’d been trying my best to have fun ever since. Looking at Ol, I wasn’t sure it was working.

It was a bad age for me. I thought it was because nobody could ever love me that I would always be alone. After all, if you love only two men, and they both leave at the same time, it doesn’t bode well.

There’s a reason we never forget our first loves, as Tashy has patiently pointed out to me many, many times. Our young little hormone-seething bodies have never felt anything like this before. Your brain doesn’t know what’s happening to it. After the first one, at least you’ve got some forewarning of the triple whammy that’s going to happen to your head, your heart and your groin. You understand what is going on, even if that doesn’t give you much more power over it than you have at sixteen.

And, as has also been noted, if your first love kisses you hard on the lips then disappears (or goes to Aberdeen – technically the same thing), and travels all over the place in the holidays, and then you go to Bristol, it’s hard to get a proper handle on the whole deal. You haven’t watched them grow fat or old, or watched them mess things up or, heaven forbid, stayed with them and watched the infatuation curdle. And as you grow up and learn the inevitable compromises of real love, it’s hard not to remember the unlined face and innocent excitement, especially if you think the other person might feel the same.

Or, of course, even remember you that well.

We were standing to watch the speeches. Oh God, Max, no, please.

‘Why is a woman like a computer?’ he began ponderously, and there was a palpable shift in the audience as everyone prepared themselves to laugh at something that wouldn’t be in the slightest bit funny.

‘You can turn it on whenever you like …’

Clelland kept sneaking glances at me standing beside him, and – I couldn’t help it – I was curious too.

‘Three-and-a-half-inch floppies …’ droned Max.

‘I thought it was you!’ said my mother, loud and too bright. She appeared from nowhere, with too much powder on, looking nervous.

‘I’m your daughter,’ I said rather sharply. ‘Who could you mistake me for?’

‘Goodness, I don’t mean that. I just meant … where were you? I was worried.’

She looked around anxiously. I did too, instinctively checking where Dad was. She started to quiver if he got too close.

‘Just chatting to people,’ I said. I didn’t want to reintroduce Clelland to her. I’d spent enough emotional time with my mother; I didn’t like her getting upset over me.

‘All right. Well, don’t go too far, will you, darling? I hardly know anybody here. I can’t think why Tashy invited me. All these young people!’

‘Don’t be silly, Mum. You know Tashy’s mum and dad!’ In fact, Jean chose that moment to put her hand up and wave. ‘There you go!’

‘But they’re the parents,’ my mother said as if talking to an idiot. ‘They’re very busy at weddings. Well, so I hear. Who knows, eh?’

I’d been waiting for the first one of these. I was amazed it had taken so long. I realised Clelland was close enough to hear every word of this.

‘Erm, yeah, Mum.’

‘You and that lovely chap. So good together. And you’ve been together so long! You must be next. Oh yes, there’ll be a wedding soon for us, I think. Darling, think about it! It’ll be such fun! We can do it all together.’ And she tapped my arm in what she clearly thought was a reassuring manner. I saw Clelland raise his eyebrows.

‘Ah! There you are, Olly! Hello, darling! It’s Mummy!’

Unlike my father, my mother adores Olly and, it has to be said, he’s very good to her. I think he does know that because I don’t have any brothers he’s the only man in my mother’s life at all apart from the postman, and so he treats her well. She is a bit – well, very – clingy.

This ‘call me Mummy’ stuff has to stop, though. It really has to stop.

‘Hello, Mummy,’ said Ol, bending down and giving her a hug. I think perhaps what annoys me most is that sometimes I think Olly gets on with my mother probably better than I do. And vice versa. I often think they’d probably do better on their own.

My mother turned round. ‘I won’t say a word, dear!’ she mouthed to me.

Clelland leaned over. ‘Aren’t you going to reintroduce me to “Mummy”?’ he said, with a glint in his eye.

‘She probably didn’t recognise you,’ I said. ‘What with all the disappearing and everything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You. Disappearing. To Aberdeen. Remember?’

He started. ‘I remember you not replying to any of my letters.’

‘It was a busy summer.’

‘Damn right,’ he said, and looked annoyed.

‘… goes down on you,’ said Max.

‘So you’re getting married?’

I shrugged. ‘God, no … I mean, I might, I haven’t decided …’

‘Hasn’t he asked you?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Are you going to force him into it against his will?’ he smiled.

‘Only if I really, really have to. And just with guns and dogs and things, nothing major.’

‘I’m sure you won’t have to. You should get married.’

‘And what makes you the great authority?’ I asked, panicking suddenly.

Why was I panicking? This was ridiculous. And anyway, he wasn’t wearing a ring: I’d checked.

‘I’m thinking about it.’

‘Oh, yes? Who’s the lucky girl? Haggis McBaggis, famous fisher lady of Aberdeen?’

‘Hello,’ said a beautiful dark-haired girl, suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Well, she fishes,’ Clelland says, ‘but only for compliments. This is Madeleine.’

‘What are you saying about me?’ the girl said. ‘Ignore him, he’s unbelievably rude.’

‘See?’ said Clelland.

‘You are going to be in serious trouble later.’ And she tickled him on the nose.

‘Fantastic,’ he said.

Who’s this tart, I have to admit I was thinking.

‘Are the first four years of all relationships the worst?’ said the girl. ‘Tell me they are. I don’t think I could stand it any more.’

And Clelland put a strong arm around her and squeezed her to him.

‘Well, it won’t be like this when we get back to Africa,’ she said.

Is it my fate, I wonder, to always end up at the fountain at parties? I had slipped out the door as soon as I decently could, even though I could hear my mother asking people for me in the querulous tone she gets when she’s feeling upset. The twice-daily phonecalls were enough at the moment. I took my glass of champagne and wandered down the path. All wedding-focused country hotels have fountains. It comes with the brief.

I dallied my hand in the water again, and tried to think. Why – why did I feel like this? I was practically shivering. I felt suddenly as if my head was full of shame and fear, and just misery, and I didn’t know why. What was the matter with me? I was having a near-violent reaction to something that happened every day. So I’d met someone who used to be special to me – it was sixteen years ago, for goodness’ sake. It was as long a time since I’d last seen him as it was from when I was born and the time we first went out. God, that was grim. That whole summer was a period of my life I tried not to think about.

I certainly wasn’t thinking like an adult now, a sorted, happy person. I sipped my champagne and felt that dull ache you get at the bottom of your heart like when you’re a kid and you do something terribly, terribly wrong and you’re going to be in for it later. It’s hard to ignore your conscience. Sitting by that fountain, I knew. If I wasn’t going to end up like my father: dissatisfied, always looking for the main chance; if I wasn’t going to stultify myself, but, more importantly, if I wasn’t going to harm a good, decent kind man, who loved me, then—

‘Ah, there you are,’ said Olly. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. I’m starving.’

He sat down, brushing sesame seeds off his waistcoat, bought to cover up his creeping paunch.

‘Hi, there,’ I said, nervousness bubbling up in my throat. I could taste it. Oh God. How could this have happened so quickly? We’d gone from happy couple, living together, and now I was on the brink of …

Well, we weren’t that happy, were we? Or rather, me, with my selfish, adolescent mind, and my desire to see the grass as always greener, and my dreaming my life away: Olly hadn’t a chance. God, I was a bitch.

Olly unsteadily started to bend down.

‘What are you doing?’ I said awkwardly.

It looked like – it couldn’t be. Tell me he wasn’t getting on one knee. TELL ME.

I stared at him in shock for a moment, and he picked up my shock in his own eyes, which suddenly looked a bit panicked.

‘Look, I know we don’t always get on so well …’ he started (badly, I thought).

‘FLORA!’ screamed another voice.

It is a witness testament to my immaturity and stupidity that for a second I thought it might be Clelland arriving, having realised as soon as he’d seen me that he’d been stupid, finally doing his last-minute dash to save me, save me from this life I had asked for but didn’t want.

It wasn’t, of course. It was my mother. They don’t sound at all similar, but I was in a very highly strung emotional mood. Nevertheless, at that moment, I was glad to see her. She came down the hill, looking frail and confused. I wondered sometimes if she was getting early-onset Alzheimer’s.

‘Flora darling, where are you? We need you!’ Her tone was querulous. ‘They’re cutting the cake.’

Olly stood up and pasted a big fake smile on his face.

‘Hi there, Mummy!’

‘Oh, hello, you two lovebirds. Wouldn’t think you’d want to miss this bit. Also, darling, you want to see the cake. I’m sure Tashy could tell you where she got it. You never know, could be useful …’

And she linked her arm into both of ours as we exchanged glances – his rueful; mine, I suspect, terrified – and we marched back up the hill to the house.

The cake was indeed a teetering, rose-encrusted thing of wonder. Tashy was grinning in that slightly terrified way again, and Max looked like he was getting quite frustrated with her as he was trying to get her to put her hand underneath his, rather than on top.

I glanced over where Clelland and his lovely girlfriend were deep in smiling conversation. Of course they were. Probably planning the same thing. And only a spiteful person wouldn’t wish them well. Everyone looking so happy.

I gulped. I was thirty-two years old. Suddenly it was as if I saw all round me people who were caught in a bubble of affection and love. And outside, unseen, there was me. My mother. My father. The spectres at the feast. The people who made the wrong choices. Who stuck with someone they didn’t really love out of age. Or fear. No, it was worse – my mum and dad had at least loved each other once. It was only me, with a good man I couldn’t love. I’d forgotten to sit down when the music stopped. Booby prize for me. I blinked back tears of utter, revolting, all encompassing self-pity.

‘For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with you?’ said Olly. ‘Are you trying to draw attention to yourself?’

Tashy and Max were lifting the knife.

‘Darling? Darling, what is it?’ My mother was tugging on my sleeve. ‘Do you want one of my pills? I’ve got some in my bag. Shall we go outside?’

The tears were streaming now.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Olly, hissing sharply. ‘Pull yourself together. People are looking.’

I caught Clelland’s eye. Well, maybe I was staring at him, wild-eyed and tearful. He opened his hands.

‘What?’ he mouthed. ‘What is it?’

He didn’t look pleased that I was on the brink of causing a scene. His girlfriend looked annoyed, as well she might. The happy couple were too far away to notice yet, but I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my Karen Millen and I was definitely causing a scene. But the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.

They brought the knife down.

‘I wish,’ I whispered, louder than I’d intended.

‘What?’ said Olly. ‘This is not the time, Flora.’

I gulped.

‘I wish I was sixteen again.’