Page 54 of A Forever Home at Honey Bee Croft

Phil and I took a break from dancing to visit the photo booth. I’d never seen so many props and I took several selfies of us wearing hats, feather boas and colourful sunglasses. We were about to leave when Amber appeared, so Phil took a photo of the pair of us together in a heart-shaped frame. She soon enlisted the rest of the bridesmaids and it would have been so easy to feel like the odd one out but they all made me feel like part of their tribe, shuffling places so that they could each stand next to me at some point. Fizz rounded up Barney and the groomsmen too and I could hardly believe I was being included in such special photos as though I was a lifelong friend. The whole evening was completely surreal – first meeting Cole Crawford and now this!

We’d pretty much exhausted the props when the official photographer came over to take more photos of Amber and Barney. He asked if the wedding party could stick around so he could get fun ones of them too. I placed the feather boa, sparkly cowboy hat and heart-shaped sunglasses I’d been wearing for the last photo back in the correct boxes and stood back to watch.

A call came through for Phil and he excused himself, telling me he’d be back as soon as possible. I was enjoying watching so I stayed where I was. As the photographer snapped a photo of the newlyweds with the best man and chief bridesmaid, Imogen joined me.

‘Are you having fun?’ I asked her.

She nodded enthusiastically.

‘Have you been to a wedding before?’

‘I went to Mummy’s when she married Greg but I was only three and I don’t remember it. Mummy was going to marry Daddy, but she told him she didn’t want to marry him two weeks before their wedding and Grandma Ivy says that’ll have cost Daddy a lot of money and it was mean of her to leave it so late but better late than on the day. Grandma Ivy doesn’t like Mummy very much.’

‘Grandma Ivy is your daddy’s mum?’ I asked, thinking she’d be quite justified in thinking ill of Imogen’s mum if she really had left Joel a fortnight before their wedding.

‘No. She’s Mummy’s mum. They don’t like each other. Daddy’s mum is that lady in the blue flowery dress.’ She pointed to a woman in a pretty calf-length dress, dancing to ABBA’s ‘Super Trouper’ with a man in a light-coloured suit. ‘She’s my Grandma Audrey and she’s really nice but she can’t live in this country because the weather’s too cold and her Arthurs hurt her.’

I stifled a smile at the visual which popped into my head of several tiny Arthurian knights jabbing her with their swords. Presumably Imogen meant arthritis, but I wasn’t going to correct her.

‘She lives in Portugal with Granddad Trevor,’ Imogen continued. ‘He’s the man dancing with her and he’s nice too. Daddy wants to take me to visit them but Mummy won’t let him because she says it’s not fair on Leighton, Ezra and Delphine but Leighton’s mummy takes him on an aeroplane every summer so I don’t see why I can’t go on one but Daddy doesn’t like to make Mummy angry so I can only see Grandma Audrey and Granddad Trevor when they fly to this country.’

That was an enormous information dump, and I had no idea who Leighton, Ezra and Delphine were, but I nodded as though I understood and didn’t proffer any sort of opinion, not wishing for my ill-informed comments to be used as evidence in what sounded like a complicated family set-up. Thankfully Imogen changed the subject.

‘I like your dress. I don’t have any orange clothes. It’s a very happy colour.’

‘Thank you. Amber gave me it which was super kind of her. It’s the first orange clothing I’ve ever owned and I really like it, but do you know what my favourite colour is? Sage green like on your dress.’

She spun round, fanning out the skirt as Joel joined us.

‘Are you showing off your twirly dress again?’ he asked her.

‘Poppy says it’s her favourite colour. My favourite colour is yellow because it’s like the sunshine, but I like orange too like Poppy’s dress, and I like my dress.’

‘Imogen has declared she’s never going to take her dress off,’ Joel told me. ‘I said she might need to when she has a bath.’

‘I’ve never been a bridesmaid, but I once had a party dress I loved so much. It was pink and sparkly with lots of sequins on the top like yours, Imogen. I never wanted to take it off either so, when I went to bed that night, I kept it on. My mum came in to check on me, and she had to take it off and put me in a nightie. When she woke me up in the morning, I had my party dress on again so I must have got up in the night and changed. But it’s not a good idea to do that because I had little scratches all down my arms from where I’d been lying on the sequins. Best not to wear pretty dresses in bed.’

Imogen was called to join the other bridesmaids for some final photos, leaving Joel and me together.

‘Thanks for warning her about the sequins,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘I think I might have had to wrestle her out of it otherwise.’

‘You’re welcome. As soon as I started telling the story, I realised I might be encouraging some mischief, but at least it came with a warning.’

‘I hear you’re—’ he began but Phil returned at that point, apologising for abandoning me. He looked from me to Joel and back to me and I realised too late that he was looking for an introduction.

‘You must be the best man,’ he said, putting out his hand and smiling at Joel. ‘I’m Phil, Poppy’s friend.’

‘Joel. Good to meet you.’

There was an awkward pause, and I hoped Phil wouldn’t fill it with an attempt to matchmake because that would be too embarrassing, but he stuck to a safe subject.

‘You’re a friend of the groom’s or a relative?’

‘Best mate since secondary school. We bonded over a shared hatred of PE lessons.’

Phil laughed. ‘I can relate to that. I hated PE. You did too, didn’t you, Pops?’

I nodded. ‘The PE teacher was terrifying. Instilled a lifelong fear of sports in me.’

---