Page 2 of The Lucky Escape

‘Queen of the world.’ Dad smiled, and Adzo waved a tissue in front of my face in anticipation of what was to come.

‘Dab, don’t wipe,’ she instructed sternly. ‘Gently dab or you’ll smudge it all.’

I took a deep breath. My wedding day.

The dress was designer, Dad was walking me down the aisle, and I was taking Alexander’s last name in less than an hour.

Before I started wedding planning, if you’d have asked me how traditional I’d be on a scale of one to ten I’d have said a two or a three. Adzo and I had talked endlessly about how to be a Strong Independent Woman Who Just Happened To Be Committing Her Life To Someone. So much of what was expected of the bride was rooted in the notion that she was somebody’s property (i.e. being ‘given away’) and valuable because she was pure and untouched (hence, the virginal white dress). In our lunch break one day Adzo had wondered if Alexander would double-barrel our surnames, or even take mine, and I considered asking him. But, when it came down to it, I actually found huge comfort in the age-old traditions of a conventional wedding day and gave in to almost all of them without much of a fight. I wanted the ritual of it all, the history and the expectation.

My only outward feminist declaration was that I was going to give a speech at dinner before anyone else. At my friend Jo’s wedding she’d tapped the microphone and said, ‘Good evening. Thanks for coming today. My magnificent father and wonderful best man and handsome new husband are going to give their speeches in a minute—’ at which point everyone roared and cheered. ‘But I’ll be giving one first, because over my dead body am I letting a bunch of men speak for me—’ at which point everyone roared and cheered even louder.

I’d thought she was hilarious.

Mum thought it was crass for the bride to speak, but I wanted to do the same.

‘Right then, Mrs Mackenzie, are you ready?’ Dad said, his face suddenly falling. ‘Crikey.Mrs Mackenzie. You’re not going to be a Wiig anymore.’

He turned to Freddie and, in a mock-serious voice, insisted: ‘Don’t you ever get married, okay? You’re the next-generation Wiig. We need you to carry on the family name.’

Freddie playfully rolled her eyes. ‘Daaaaaad.’

‘I know, Fred, but you won’t understand how it feels until you have your own kids who grow up and stun you with the people they’ve become. It’s very affecting.’ His hand went up to his heart, as if he could massage his feelings away from the outside.

‘I’m still a Wiig right now,’ I soothed him, reaching out to his shoulder. ‘And even when I’m not, I’ll always be your daughter.’

‘With the added bonus of giving me a son-in-law.’

He smiled as he said it, but I had purposely never asked Dad if he liked Alexander because ever since the first time I’d brought him home for the weekend, I’d been on the edge of a suspicion that I wouldn’t like his answer. Now wasn’t the time to get into that, though. I loved Dad, but I was sure of my future.Don’t stick your hand down the rabbit hole,my grandmother used to say before she passed.You’ll only get bitten.

‘Exactly,’ I said, placating in tone. ‘You’re not losing anything – you’re gaining.’

Dad bent his arm at the elbow, inviting me to take it.

‘Let’s get a vodka shot on the way out,’ he suggested. ‘I need to steady my nerves. They should have some sort ofspecial guide for dads on their daughter’s wedding day. I feel all … jangled up. Nervous.’

‘Come on,’ I said, feeling the heat building in my cheeks and knowing it was a warning sign that I was about to sob if I didn’t change the subject. ‘Let’s do this!’

Adzo gathered up the last of the things she’d need to keep me looking fresh and bridal for the rest of the day, and Freddie did a final twirl in the mirror and picked up her bridesmaid flowers. Mum had already gone ahead to the church to play hostess. She loves an audience, and being the centre of attention, so chose to do that over staying with us in the hotel last night. She said she’d only get in the way, and she’d be better on the day if she slept in her own bed the night before. I was a bit relieved when she’d said that, to be honest. Our relationship is … complicated. I try not to dwell on it. Everyone has friction with their mother to some extent, don’t they?

I looked from my dad, to my sister, to my best friend. The people I loved most in the world were there for me, ecstatic for me. I was loved by Alexander – of course I was – but since we got engaged everyone had rallied around and fussed over my plans and ideas and it had been a slushy, cosy cocoon of magnificent romance and well-wishes. Thinking about it, and how when I returned to the suite later I’d be Mrs Mackenzie –married! Me! Finally!– made my breath catch in my throat. I couldn’t imagine anything making today any more special. It was like all my insides had been supercharged with electricity and even simply existing was amplified. Colours were brighter, emotions stronger.

Everything was just soright.

2

When Jo, my university friend who’d given the funny speech, got engaged, it had really made me question what Alexander and I had. I’d seen it written somewhere before that funerals aren’t about the dead, they’re about the living, and I think weddings often aren’t about the couple at the front of the aisle so much as the congregation. Has anyone ever been to a wedding and thought about anyone but themselves? I haven’t. I mean, obviously when Jo got married I was over the moon for her. She’d met Kwame on an app, swiping right on him one lonely Sunday evening, meeting him for the first time two days later, and within a month was calling him her boyfriend. It had surprised me, if only because the last person she was with was her girlfriend, and I just assumed she’d never date a man again for all she slagged them off. Humans exist to surprise us, I suppose, and who am I to write off a mate’s sexuality into a box just so that I can feel better about where they sit on the spectrum? It was wrong of me to assume anything. (Assuming makes an ass out of u-and-me,was another thing my grandmother used to say.)

Anyway.

Three months in Jo and Kwame were saying ‘I Love You’, and after six months they got a house together. I wanted to be a good friend, as did Bri and Kezza – the two others who, alongside Jo, make up our Core Four friendship group – and so tentatively we approached the idea that it was all moving quite quickly. What was the rush? Jo didn’t freak out or get mad when we raised it; she just smiled. I remember it really clearly. We were at Bridges in Stoke Newington one Saturday afternoon, eating quinoa and sausages, right as spring was starting. She’d shrugged and we’d all known it was the real deal when she dreamily said, ‘This one just feels different. We want the same things.’

We want the same things.

That stuck with me, because by that point I’d been with Alexander for nine years and we still had separate flats and separate social lives, and even though we had fun together on date nights or the weekends he wasn’t playing rugby, we couldn’t quite seem to align what we were working towards. I didn’t want to be a nag or That Girl. Everyone knows That Girl. The one issuing ultimatums about getting engaged or breaking up.I want all of you, or none of you!That sort of thing. I wanted to be cooler than that. And I was. For the whole of our twenties I was the cool girl, but then as my university friends got engaged, and then married, and then pregnant, bam-bam-bam, I went from being twenty-nine and happily ambling along to the other side of thirty, with everyone moving on without me.

In that time Bri had met her boyfriend, too, and because of immigration stuff got married for the paperwork and only told us afterwards. Kezza had already been approved to adoptas a single woman and was actively family-finding, having used us all as references in her committed support network. She refused to settle for a mediocre man to do the most important job of her life with, she said, declaring that she was happy to go it alone and meet somebody later because motherhood was more important to her than marriage. So that left me, then, out of the four of us, not really doing anything besides treading water. The Core Four broke off into different parts like a star hitting the earth’s atmosphere and cracking into pieces. It made me panic about my place in the world.

It’s a lie what they say about friends being the family you choose. Friends pair off and go on to make their own families, and it did make me wobble, standing beside Alexander in the church as one of my favourite people committed her life to somebody she’d known just over a year. That’s when I finally brought it up with him – that we needed to think about our own future. I think the wedding had moved him too, because the next week he brought over all these bits of paper for houses in Islington that his parents wanted to give him a deposit for. He wanted me to live with him, and I was thrilled – and relieved.

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