PART 1 — THE WALL
We had four rooms at the Sandgrove at Tarn Bay for the Friday night.
I could not sleep. The dress was hanging on the wardrobe door in its bag, the vow cards were on the nightstand, and I had read Jory’s last message about nine times.
See you at the altar, you.
I had just put the lamp off when I heard laughing through the wall.
I did not pay any attention to it for about thirty seconds. Four women in a hotel room the night before a wedding are going to laugh.
Then I heard Nadia properly.
She said: “Wine on the dress, lose the rings, whatever. She doesn’t deserve him.”
And Dilly said: “You’re awful.”
And Nadia laughed and said: “I’ve been trying to get him for months.”
I sat up on the edge of that bed and did not move.
There is a thing that happens where your head will not accept what your ears have just done, and I sat there for a few seconds genuinely trying to construct a version where that was about somebody else.
Then one of them — Sorcha, I think, and I have never been completely sure — said: “Do you actually think he’d pick you?”
And Nadia said: “He nearly did. Men like Jory don’t marry girls like Freya unless they’re after something safe. I’m just helping him sort it out.”
Girls like Freya.
My maid of honour. My bridesmaids. Thirteen hours before.
And everything from the previous six months came back at once with the meaning swapped over.
Nadia insisting on running every single thing. Nadia taking the rings. Nadia saying, in the April, that I was lucky Jory liked sweet girls more than interesting ones, and me laughing at it.
Nadia at the engagement party with her hand on his arm.
And then Dilly said: “What if she finds out?”
And Nadia said: “She won’t. She never notices anything till it’s too late.”
And something came up under the shock that was not panic and was not tears.
See Continuation On Next Page 👇
