Page 46 of Mad About You

‘You’re sure? Even in smaller weddings it’s often such a nice part of the storytelling of the day. I don’t want you to regret not having them later?’ Harriet had said, when she met them for the planning session over pints and charcuterie board at Friends of Ham.

‘First of all, don’t you usually photograph the bride?’ Danny said, ‘The bride here is me, so Fergus will sulk.’

‘Actually, I agree, you’re the bride,’ Fergus said.

‘To me, the whole point is us looking incredible at the ceremony,’ Danny continued. ‘The magic is ruined once you know how the sausage is made.’

‘I hope you’re writing all this down, Harriet,’ said Fergus, in his gentle, refined Aberdeenshire brogue, which somehow made his dryness funnier, ‘Gay wedding, but sausage magic must stay secret.’

‘Totally,’ Harriet said, ‘Obviously it’s never a warts-and-allprep session. The wet shave angles as if you’re in an aftershave ad, adjusting your bow tie. But the customers are always right. You know your own minds.’

‘Danny knows our own minds,’ Fergus said.

Therefore, on Friday afternoon, Harriet arrived at the town hall at the same time as the guests, three p.m., under instructions that they pretty much only wanted candids, mingling and ‘general atmosphere’ captured.

The grand Victorian building with its handsome colonnades was an old friend, Harriet must’ve done scores of weddings here. She ran off frames of the clock tower, smoky stone against the overcast sky, testing the exposure. The forecast said they were in for a balmy evening, which was just as well given the reception venue had an outdoor terrace.

The car pulled up and Harriet caught the moment that the couple emerged and walked up the steep steps, to cheers. They each had bespoke, three-piece suits: Fergus in Harris tweed, Danny in sand-coloured wool, and succulents as buttonholes. The cake later was a giant pork pie.

She weaved and bobbed among the throng to get the shots of the grooms greeting their guests. It really helped in her line of work to be a not-centre-of-attention kind of person. She naturally moved around in a way that avoided notice. One of her local rivals, Bryn, was a lovely Welsh guy and a very good photographer, but six foot two and with a voice that could blow the froth off coffee, two tables away. She’d personally not want someone who turned your wedding into a football match where he was the Brian Clough-style manager. You are recording the event, not directing it, you were adocumentary maker, not a creator of fictions. (Unless the bride and groom asked for comic photos of her pulling him along by his tie like a dog with a lead, or double taking at cupcakes bearing photos of their faces in their wedding breakfast, which Harriet had occasionally been asked to do. She had to summon a lot of ‘customer is always right’ zen to go through with it.)

‘Harriet! This is my best woman,’ Fergus said, snagging her arm as she ducked past. ‘Isla.’

Harriet shook the hand of a large-bosomed woman in her fifties in a vermillion fascinator.

‘Let me get Danny’s best man …’ Fergus said, standing on the balls of his feet to get a bird’s-eye view of the hairstyles and hats. ‘There he is!’ He made an arm waving and pointing gesture. ‘This is Scott.’

Harriet heard the name, turned, and made eye contact with the thirty-something man who’d been pushed to the fore of the melee to greet her.

Time slowed and then stopped completely, in the way that the seconds before a car crash were supposed to elongate into a small eternity. The collision was in her consciousness: the thought, as she heard the name, that it might be him barely had time to form before it flew smack bang into the visual evidence that itwashim.

Harriet blinked, stunned.

It had always been a risk, living in the same city, doing her job, but a bullet she’d dodged for so long she’d forgot to worry about it anymore. Ifshedidn’t know the marrying couple, thenhewouldn’t, went the shaky logic, as if they stillshared an era. Harriet had started to indulge herself with the belief that he’d moved away. Or better still, gone to prison.

And yet.

‘Harriet, the photographer today!’ Fergus was exclaiming, somewhere at the other end of a tunnel.

Scott didn’t look surprised, which meant he’d seen her from afar already and had the jump on her being here. Scott being a few steps ahead, plus ça fucking change. His expression was a mixture of amused contempt and unspoken challenge.Go on. I dare ya.

He looked a little older, in the pin-sharp HD of daylight – more fine pencil sketch lines around his eyes and on his forehead, but otherwise unchanged. It was like exhuming an old photograph, one where you regretted not holding a lighter to its corner. He reminded her of a previous version of herself, one she hated.

‘Hiya, Harriet,’ he said, in that cocky rock star drawl which, once upon a time, made the hair on the back of Harriet’s neck prickle. Turned out it still did, but in a very different way. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Likewise,’ she said, with a dry mouth. She’d have liked to include his name, but she couldn’t manage it. With trembling hands, she raised her camera again, as a combination of mask and weapon.

‘Picture of the four of you?’ she said briskly yet sweetly, to reassert herself, to drown out the raging storm inside her.

‘Yes! C’mon, Daniel!’ Fergus said.

The quartet assembled in a line on the steps, Harriet slightly below them, steadying her weight on her back leg.

As she looked through the viewfinder, she saw the malevolent thrill on Scott’s face.

Harriet fiercely recanted ever thinking fondly of modest, compact weddings. How she longed for this one to be in a marquee so huge that half the attendees were obscured by the curvature of the Earth. She wished Danny and Fergus had known so many people, the wedding would have been like marshalling the cast of an old Hollywood epic, complete with spear carriers.

Instead, here they were in a Japanese restaurant, sound echoing off a hard floor and industrial fittings, with nowhere to hide unless you ducked behind a decorative plum blossom tree. There were only forty-nine people available, minus the staff, to distract from the fiftieth one; her ex-boyfriend, Scott Dyer.

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