‘And you used to have this really strong Northern accent, but now you just talk like everybody else.’
‘Do I?’ Emma said, taken aback. ‘Well, that’s a shame. I didn’t lose it on purpose.’
‘To be honest, I always thought you were putting it on. You know — an affectation—’
‘ What?’
‘Your accent. You know — Ay oop! Miners-this, miners-that, Guat-e-mala Ra-ra-ra! I thought you were always rubbing it in everyone’s face a bit. But now you’re talking normally again!’
Emma had always envied those people who spoke their minds, who said what they felt without attention to social nicety. She had never been one of those people, but even so now felt an F-sound forming on her bottom lip.
‘. . and you were always so angryabout everything all the time.’
‘Oh, I still get angry, Miffy. .’
‘Oh my God, there’s Dexter Mayhew.’ Miffy was whispering in her ear now, one hand squeezing Emma’s shoulder. ‘Did you know we had a thing once?’
‘Yes, you told me. Many, many times.’
‘He still looks great? Doesn’t he look great?’ and she sighed swooningly. ‘How come you two never got together?’
‘I don’t know: my accent, the puppy-fat?. .’
‘You weren’t thatbad. Hey, have you seen his girlfriend? Isn’t she beautiful? Don’t you think she’s just exquisite?’ and Miffy turned round for a reply, but was surprised to see that Emma had already gone.
The guests were gathering at the marquee now, huddling eagerly around the seating plan as if getting their exam results. Dexter and Emma found each other in the crowd.
‘Table five,’ said Dexter.
‘I’m on table twenty-four,’ said Emma. ‘Table five’s quite near the bride. Twenty-four’s out near the chemical loos.’
‘You mustn’t take it personally.’
‘What’s the main course?’
‘The rumour-mill says salmon.’
‘Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.’
‘Come to table five. We’ll swap the name cards around.’
‘Tamper with the seating plan? They shoot people for less than that. There’s a guillotine out back.’
Dexter laughed. ‘We’ll talk afterwards, yeah?’
‘Come and find me.’
‘Or you can come and find me.’
‘Or you come find me.’
‘Or you find me.’
As punishment for some past slight, Emma had been placed between the groom’s elderly aunt and uncle from New Zealand, and the phrases ‘beautiful landscape’ and ‘wonderful quality of life’ were rotated for a good three hours. Occasionally she would be distracted by a great gale of laughter from the direction of table five, Dexter and Sylvie, Callum and his girlfriend Luiza; the glamorous table. Emma poured herself another glass of wine and asked once more about the landscape, the quality of life. Whales: had they ever seen real-life whales? she asked and glanced enviously at table five.
At table five, Dexter glanced enviously over at table twenty-four. Sylvie had devised a new game of quickly placing her hand over the top of Dexter’s wine glass whenever he picked up the bottle, turning the long meal into a stern test of his reflexes. ‘You will take it easy, won’t you?’ she whispered when he had scored a point, and he assured her that he would, but the result was mild boredom, and increasing envy at Callum’s maddening self-assurance. At table twenty-four, he could see Emma talking politely and earnestly to a tanned elderly couple, noting the attentive way she listened, her hand placed now on the old man’s arm, laughing at his joke, now taking their picture with the disposable camera, now leaning in to have her picture taken. Dexter noticed her blue dress, the kind of thing she never would have worn ten years ago, and noticed too that the zip had come undone by three inches or so at the back, that the hem had ridden up to halfway along her thigh, and there followed a fleeting but still vivid memory of Emma in an Edinburgh bedroom on Rankeillor Street. Dawn light through the curtains, a low single bed, her skirt around her waist, arms above her head. What had changed since then? Not that much. The same lines formed around her mouth when she laughed, they were etched just a little deeper now. She still had the same eyes, bright and shrewd, and she still laughed with her wide mouth tightly shut, as if holding in some secret. In many ways she was far more attractive than her twenty-two-year-old self. She was no longer cutting her own hair for one thing, and she had lost some of that library pallor, that shoe-gazing petulance and surliness. How would he feel, he wondered, if he were seeing that face for the first time now? If he had been allocated table twenty-four, had sat down and introduced himself. Of all the people here today, he thought, he would only want to talk to her. He picked up his drink and pushed back his chair.
But glasses were being tapped with knives. The speeches. As tradition demanded, the Father of the Bride was drunk and boorish, the Best Man was drunk and unfunny and also forgot to mention the Bride. With each glass of red wine Emma felt the energy leeching out of her, and she began to contemplate her hotel room up at the main house, the clean white dressing-gown, the reproduction four-poster. There’d be one of those walk-through showers that people go crazy for, and far too many towels for a single person. As if to make her mind up, the band were tuning up now, the bassist playing the riff from ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, and Emma decided that it was time to call it a day, take her slice of wedding cake in the special velvet drawstring bag, head up to her room and sleep the wedding off.
‘Excuse me, but don’t I know you from somewhere?’
A hand on her arm, a voice behind her. Dexter was crouching by her side, grinning woozily, a bottle of champagne in his hand.
Emma held out her glass.
‘It’s possible, I suppose.’
With a squeal of feedback, the band began to play and all attention turned to the dance floor, where Malcolm and Tilly were frugging to their special song, ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’, twisting rheumatically at the hips, four thumbs held aloft.
‘Good God. When did we all start dancing like old people?’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Dexter, perching on a chair.
‘Can you dance?’
‘You don’t remember?’
Emma shook her head. ‘I don’t mean on a podiumwith a whistle and your shirt off, I mean proper dancing.’
‘Course I can.’ He took her hand. ‘Want me to prove it?’
‘Maybe later.’ They were having to shout now. Dexter stood and tugged on her hand. ‘Let’s go somewhere. Just you and me.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Apparently, there’s a maze.’
‘A maze?’ A moment, then she stood. ‘Well why didn’t you say?’
They took two glasses and discreetly stepped out of the marquee and into the night. It was still warm, and bats were swooping overhead in the inky summer air as they walked arm in arm through the rose garden towards the maze.
‘So how does it feel?’ she asked. ‘Losing an old flame to the arms of another man.’
‘Tilly Killick’s not an old flame.’
‘Oh, Dexter. .’ Emma shook her head slowly. ‘When will you learn?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Must have been, let me see. . December 1992, that flat in Clapton. The one that smelt of fried onions.’
Dexter winced. ‘How do you know about these things?’
‘Well when I left to go to Woolworths you were massaging each other’s feet with my best olive oil and when I got backfrom Woolworths she was crying and there were olive oil footprints all over my best rug and the sofa and on the kitchen table and half way up the wall too, I remember. So I carefully examined the forensic evidence and came to that conclusion. Oh, also, you left your birth control device at the top of the kitchen bin, so that was nice.’
‘Did I? Sorry about that.’
