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‘Yes, I’m ready,’ replied Polly. ‘But I think I have your flowers.’
‘No, I can’t carry those, they’d get in the way,’ said Camay, grabbing her arm and pulling her. ‘Come on, the room’s just down here.’
‘Camay,’ said Polly, stopping dead at the door, because she felt the need to say this, for afterwards. ‘I hope you have a lovely day. I really do. I genuinely wish that for you, so I want you to remember—’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Camay, too giddy for anything verging on the intense and serious. She opened the huge wooden door. ‘Get a move on, in you go.’
‘Shouldn’t I follow you?’
‘No, you’re leading the way,’ said Camay, giving Polly a non-too-gentle push in her back.
The opening salvo of ‘Here Comes the Bride’ started up from a string quartet in the left corner of the room. Very Camay. Michael Ball would probably start piping up at any moment. Polly walked down the centre of the two rows of chairs, Camay behind her. Heads swivelled towards her, lots of heads, lots of eyes.
Surely I should be behind the bride.
She saw Shauna give her the slow once-over as she held up her phone to snap photos or film the event. She recognisedsome of the lads who worked in Chris’s garage and thoughtwhat are they doing here for Camay’s wedding?
Something wasn’t right. The key pieces were in the wrong place.
Ward was sitting on a chair to her left, Chris was standing up at the front and looking smart in a black three-piece suit, plum-coloured rose in his lapel, his son standing next to him. And then with sudden and terrible clarity, the answer dawned on her, and with it, why she was in the off-white frock carrying the bigger bouquet.
THE TRUMP FAMILY
TheDaily Trumpetwould like to apologise to Mr and Mrs Trump for the misprint which appeared in the Birthday column last Friday in which their son Ethan was inadvertently called Methane. We hope the large sack of toys delivered to five-year-old Ethanol will soothe any hurt feelings.
Chapter 13
Polly drew level with Chris and her feet halted. She was never meant to drift off to the side and let Camay have centre stage, because that place was hers today and always had been from the start, and that’s why Camay had shackled her to this date. From the corner of her eye, she saw Camay take her seat next to Ward, then heard the creak of many chairs as everyone else sat too. The registrar in front of her was blasting out a wide and welcoming smile, ready to unite two happy souls in holy matrimony, and someone somewhere tipped a cold bucket of water over Polly’s head – at least that’s what it felt like. She stood there dumbstruck, frozen, icy fingers of dread squeezing her temples like a vice. She had too many thoughts for her brain, they were zapping wildly around the inner wall of her skull as if riding bikes on a wall of death. She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, feel the prickle of pins and needles in the extremities of her limbs as her blood deserted them and rushed to her middle on an emergency defence mission. The wonder of it all was that she was still upright.
Chris was grinning and, as handsome a man as he was, for the tiniest of split seconds, his face looked like the scarecrow’sin the field at the side of the crash site with its inane, disingenuous smile.
‘Surprise,’ he said and she heard it in slow motion like a vinyl record played at the wrong speed. Someone behind her tittered and repeated the word.
It wasn’t a surprise. A surprise was something that made you shriek in delight. This was ashock, one which pinned her to the spot, stunned as a baby deer in the headlights of an oncoming juggernaut, who knew that if it didn’t shift soon, it was going to end up as a venison pancake.
‘Dearly beloved…’ began the registrar. She sounded as if her voice was coming from underwater. The room seemed to shift as if it was getting ready to spin. Polly inhaled a deep breath to stop herself passing out as she listened to her words. Words she’d heard so many times over the years at other people’s weddings, on TV dramas, but never applied to herself.
‘Christopher, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife? To live together always…’
Chris was holding her hand. It felt as if he was imprisoning it.
‘I do.’
A stray clap.
‘Polly, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband…?’
She could feel every eye in the room on her but it felt like every eye in the world, burning her with their intensity. She heard a rustle, Camay’s dress probably, but it sounded like straw scratching against itself, full of field bugs. The words blurred into each other though some stood out from the rest:faithful, worse, death.
The registrar was waiting for her answer. Chris was waiting for her answer. Everyone was.
She had to sayI dofor now and sort out this mess afterwards. The fallout would be astronomical if she said anything else. But her bags were packed, her new life was waiting for her. She couldn’t say it and she couldn’tnotsay it.
‘Polly.’ Chris prompted her by squeezing her fingers.
Her mouth opened but nothing came out.
She felt sick. Saying yes would be so much easier.Tread the easy path.
