Page 7 of Mad About You

They made it to a chocolate marquise in raspberry coulis with a quenelle of tonka bean ice cream without controversy, until Martin Junior said: ‘How’s thewedding photographygoing, Harriet?’

His tone put scare quotes around ‘wedding photography’, as if it was an implausible front for escorting. Perhaps it was all the nice red wine, but Harriet could feel her diplomacy waning by degrees: many of the times she’d thought she was at the end of her tether with her in-laws, she was actually somewhere in the middle of her tether.

Two years of being fastidiously polite to them all, and for what? She was as much a disliked outsider as ever. Whatever the code was to crack their safe and become accepted by the Barracloughs, the magic numbers stubbornly eluded Harriet.

‘Good, thank you,’ Harriet said.

‘Busy? Lots of bookings? Business booming?’

‘Yep. People are determined to keep marrying. The soaring divorce rate never puts anyone off.’

‘That’s a rather cynical observation,’ Martin said, pouncing.There it is, Harriet thought.

‘I was joking. I think it’s romantic that it doesn’t put anyone off.’

‘You never seem very keen on weddings, to say you’ve made your career out of them.’

‘You’d probably not love them either if you went to two a week.’

He swilled the wine in his glass, holding the stem between forefingers, as if he was considering the grape on a vineyard tasting tour.

‘Why do it, if you don’t have a passion for it?’

‘I don’t think that’s Harriet’s attitude, actually,’ Jon interjected limply, and was ignored.

‘I am passionate; I’m passionate about doing a good job for the couple.’ Harriet paused. ‘You’re in property, it doesn’t mean you want to move house every month.’

‘Tell them about the wedding last month, Hats,’ Jon said, slightly desperately. ‘The groom who legged it.’ He looked around the room. ‘Seriously. Everyone was there at the church, the bride pulls up in her Roller, only to be told he’s been and gone and done a Lord Lucan. Minus murdering a nanny. Dreadful! Can you imagine?’

Melissa gasped. Harriet squirmed at using someone else’s ordeal as a thrilling anecdote to dig herself out of an unpopularity hole.

‘That was it really, I don’t know much more,’ she said, carefully. ‘He got to the church, changed his mind, and left. The bride was told when she arrived. I’ve no idea what happened or why he went.’

‘What an absolutecreature,’ Jon said. (He never swore in front of his parents.) ‘Shattering a young woman’s life like that.’

‘Presumably they lost a lot of money on it too,’ said Jon’s dad. ‘You’d not get refunds, cancelling on the day.’

Everyone nodded, sadly, murmured: ‘Terrible.’

‘Why would you change your mind at that moment?’ Melissa said. ‘It’s so …’ She grasped for what Harriet thought might be insight – ‘…random?’

It was the very opposite of ‘random’, Harriet thought, it was an utterly intentional and conscious decision based on a specific prospect. Which is why it was so hurtful. Harriet couldn’t stop wondering about how ruthless you’d need to be, howheartless, to abandon someone you were supposed to love like that. To set them up for a fall from that height.

‘Perhaps it was like that film,’ Jacqueline said. ‘What’s it called, you know. The old one, with Dustin Hoffman?’

‘Rain Man?’ Martin Junior said.

‘No, the one where he runs in and stops the girl getting married …The Graduate, that’s it!’

‘I didn’t see anyone else,’ Harriet said. Although maybe the someone else wasn’t physically there, but the groom couldn’t stop thinking about her? Or him? No, don’t dignify a horrifying episode by giving the man some sort of high-concept romantic comedy motivation.

Had Kristina ceremonially burned her wedding dress, watched it go up like a white flag in the garden? You’d have to aggressively own an experience like that, in order to conquer it. Like incorporating a pirate scar.

The dessert dishes had been cleared away and she saw Jonathan making emphatic faces at someone in the doorway. He’d not told her of any cake presentation or similar, and shewondered if he and his brother would now be locked into escalating displays of devotion. They’d be frogmarched outside to watch a biplane fly past with a banner.

The room fell silent as a waiter strode up to Harriet and, with exaggerated ceremony, placed a plate in front of her, covered by a silver salver. Harriet glanced around. No one else had one?

He leaned down, whipped the cover away. On a large white plate sat a small, square, royal-blue velvet box.

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