Page 36 of Always Alchemy

‘But it was worth it,’ I continue, my eyes lingering on my husband for a moment. ‘It was worth every second, because I know that the struggles I had to convince him to give me a chance were absolutely nothing to the struggles he underwent at the beginning of his journey. He chose a path sodifferent from the one he always believed he was meant to want that all Darcy and I could do was support him and wait for him andlovehim.’

From the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Dex’s mother, Lauren, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. I’m aware that what I’m saying will sting, and I hope that my words will exalt Dex without shaming his mother, but I need nevertheless for him and everyone else at this celebration to hear them.

‘I will never stop being grateful that he took a chance on Darcy and me. And we’ll never stop proving to him that he made the right decision. I feel really confident about that, because every day that we’re together, the three of us bring each other such myriad experiences of happiness that I, personally, know I wouldn’t have found with just one person.

‘I’ve used the analogy of a three-legged stool ad nauseam, and for that I apologise, but it’s a bloody good one. The richness of the dynamics, the love, we all have for each other is one of the most marvellous things about this relationship. The way in which my wife and my husband love each other is selfless and joyous and beautiful. It’s a delight to behold, and it’s different from the love Darcy and I share, or the love Dex and I share, and so it should be. We’re three foundational pillars, and we simply don’t work without each other.

‘Which is why I’d like to ask you, before we go ahead with thanking all the wonderful people who’ve helped this wedding happen, to please be upstanding to toast the wonderful, wonderful Rule of Three.’

12

LOVING WITHOUT FEAR

LAUREN

Dex issucha good boy.

Just like his sister. She’ssucha good girl.

They’re both wonderful human beings, and they live these big, open-hearted lives full of things I never knew to want. Things I was always taught were sinful and unnatural and wrong.

Lord, do my beautiful children make them look natural.

They say our children teach us more than we teach them. I sit here at a table overflowing with food and wine and love and friendship, celebrating the wedding of a child of mine for the second time in the South of France, and I reflect on how true that is.

Neither Belle nor Dex had a ceremony that the Church would recognise as a sacrament, yet both my children married in rituals so overflowing with love and meaning, so unmistakably committing themselves to the people they loved, that it would be a stony heart indeed who didn’t accept their version of what it means to wed.

And now, my daughter is serenely content as she leans her body against Rafe’s, my perfect granddaughter sleeps upstairs, and my darling, darling son is at the centre of this wonderful party, radiantly alight with happiness.

I always worried more about Dex than Belle. Belle was always such a sweet, compliant teenager. She seemed to accept without question the belief system we’d handed down to her, having swallowed it whole ourselves in turn.

I now know that she had many questions, many resentments, that came to a head when she met Rafe. I know she always found her father’s particularly hardline approach a tough pill to swallow. But she subjugated herself and she toed the line—outwardly, at least. I wish I’d known to reach towards her more. I wish I’d known to tell her that it was fine,morethan fine, not to be the good girl all the time.

Dex has always been a model son by anyone’s standards. He’s never gone off the rails, never outwardly rebelled. But his move to New York as soon as he graduated, his insistence on putting serious space between him and us for years and years spoke volumes to me about his views on the lifestyle, the beliefs, his father and I upheld.

I wouldn’t have guessed he was queer—not with the false constraints of my Catholic blinkers, anyway—but he was certainly always a sensitive boy, withdrawn and intense. He was sporty and good-looking and good-natured enough to have plenty of friends, and I suspect that athleticism and popularity saved him from more introspection, more withdrawal, than might have been good for him during his teenage years.

The future I now see for him, streaming with colour and love and joy and authenticity, is absolutely not the future I would ever have imagined or wanted for him, and that knowledge makes me sick to my stomach.

Max has wrapped up his beautiful speech to great applause. He’s an extremely impressive man, confident and assured, but it’s clear his words just now came from the heart. I’m not the only one in the audience dabbing at their eyes, although I suspect my emotions are a tad more complex than most people here.

With that shot of pure joy comes guilt: guilt that Dex’s father isn’t here to witness this; that he’s chosen his faith over his family once again; that Dex (and Belle, for that matter) have found their place in the world despite, rather than because, of what we gave them.

I tell myself there was a time when an elite education and a devout faith were the greatest foundations a parent could give a child.

I tell myself that Ben and I lavished upon Dex and Belle the exact riches that our upbringing and our culture had taught us to value.

But I’ve also had to tell myself some harsh truths over the past couple of years, ever since that terrible, terrible row Ben had with Belle when he discovered she was dating Rafe. And those are essentially that what we saw as frameworks and moral codes were arguably more like constraints and skewed reference points.

We Catholics are terrified of false gods. We renounce them every chance we get when we renew our baptismal vows. But I can honestly say, after the upheaval and devastation and conflict of the past two or three years, I’m utterly at a loss to what’s false and what’s real anymore.

So yes, there’s guilt. A great, heavy weight that aches so much it feels like I’m winded, somewhat.

But somewhere between all that guilt on one hand and joy on the other sits a third emotion, and that is the most curious sense of liberation. It’s girlishly thrilling to havedefied Ben for asecondtime and found that the sky has not fallen. Of course, he’ll argue that I’ll get my comeuppance in the next life, a stance whose wonderful convenience lies in the impossibility of disproving it.

I’ll take my chances, just like I took my chances last time when I opted to come out to St Tropez and not only give my daughter away to the man of her dreams but host the wedding breakfast. Nowthatwas terrifying. Ben was so angry and purple I thought he might have an aneurysm.

But there are times to concede and fawn and pander, and there are times to stand the hell up for oneself, and the weddings of my beloved children are quite clearly two of those instances.

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