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Four Hours After I Didn’t
‘Time’s up, Fred. You’ve been monopolising my wife-to-be long enough,’ Josh said, leaning into their conversation.
‘Sorry,’ Fred said, a red flush rising up his neck.
‘I’m joking, monopolise away.’ Josh reached out around Audrey to slap Fred on the back again. ‘I’m going to say a few words. I know you hate being the centre of attention, Auds, so I’ll keep it short.’ He stood up and tapped his glass.
Audrey’s palms began to sweat, and her ears began to ring; she suddenly had a pounding, fierce headache. She looked down at the wedding menu in front of her and felt it was an exam paper she didn’t know the answers to. Time distorted, phrases danced into her consciousness like a wind-whipped storm of words.
‘I was planning to start my speech with the traditional “My wife and I...” which usually gets a round of applause, but that might not be applicable just yet, so I’m going to start with, my Audrey and I...’
You don’t have to go through with this just because you said yes.
‘...When we’re together, I feel like the windows of the world have been thrown open and all the stale air let out...’
When you fall in love, you’ll understand.
Quod severis metes – As you sow, so shall you reap.
‘You fill my life with colour, and I can’t wait to be married to you, however long it takes for us to say “I do”.’
Sometimes you just need to jump off the wheel.
Audrey was drowning in the sea of words. As she looked around the room at jubilant faces, she felt as though she was in some surreal hall of mirrors; people’s features appeared stretched and distorted and it made her feel woozy and off balance. She could feel the heat of Josh’s body on one side of her, smell the oaky aftershave Fred was wearing on the other. As soon as she sensed Josh’s speech was over, she leant in to hug him, held steady through the applause, and then excused herself from the table, lurching out of her seat.
She walked up to the cake at the far side of the room, blocking people’s view with her body as she removed the bride figurine from the top and buried it in her palm. Out in the corridor, beyond the loos, she found a quiet space to inspect the figurine. She held it up to her face and asked the bride, ‘Did you jump, earlier, when you fell off the cake?’ The bride refused to answer, her mouth painted stubbornly closed. ‘You jumped, didn’t you. Why? What is wrong with you?’
Still the bride refused to answer, and in anger, Audrey used a nail to pick off the paint on the figurine’s face, so now she had no expression at all. She then popped the faceless bride on top of a doorframe, alone, punishment for being so uncooperative.
As she stood glaring at the faceless bride, she heard the band strike up a tune back in the Grand Suite. It was not the song they’d planned for their first dance, it was ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, the song she and Fred had danced to at the bandstand. ‘You’re kidding me,’ Audrey said to the fig-urine. She could feel her sanity teetering on some edge. ‘No, I am not going to answer you, call of the void, not today.’
She picked up the bride, walked further down the corridor and entered the Grand Suite through a narrow conservatory at the far end of the dance floor. It was separated from the main room by a wall of dark blue glass. In the conservatory stood the photo booth. It was just like the one in Baker Street all those years before, hired from the same company, perhaps even the very same one. Was it disloyal that she had wanted one at their wedding? She told herself it was not just something she associated with Fred, the photo booth was where her love of photography had begun, it had shaped her whole career path, her ambition to become a photographer.
In the relative quiet of the conservatory, with the band still playing, she stroked the illuminated panel of the booth. She sat down on the stool inside; the money slot now asked for tokens rather than pounds, and there was a pile on the ledge, waiting to be used by wedding guests. She pressed one into the narrow slot and saw her face in the booth’s mirror. She thought she looked terrible. Unhinged.
Then the curtain drew back, and there was Fred, of course.
‘You’re here,’ he said, with a huge grin.
‘I am here,’ she said, looking up at him. His piercing green eyes focused on hers, full of questions, full of hope. His head tilted to one side, his wild blond hair nudging the doorway of the booth. She didn’t get up from the stool. She wanted to stay here, in the place synonymous with good things, with innocence, with the time before she’d felt wretched and guilty and directionless. Fred dropped to his knees, so he was looking up at her. He reached out and took her hand.
‘The band is playing our song, and here you are in our booth.’
She sat, blinking down at him.
‘I think everything that’s happened today is a cosmic red thread, leading me to you. I’m not going to pressure you at all. I just need you to know, I still feel it too.’
Audrey stood up, suddenly claustrophobic in the booth with him blocking her exit. Fred must have read her standing up as an acceptance, as her running into his arms, because he stood too and pulled her towards him, pressing his lips firmly to hers.
With her head swimming, the shock of his firm kiss and confident arms, Audrey found herself momentarily a passenger in his embrace, her mind not quick enough to register what was happening, not quick enough to stop it.
‘Audrey?’
Audrey pulled her lips away, but Fred’s arms stayed where they were as they both turned their heads to see Josh standing in the doorway of the conservatory, a horrified expression on his face.
