Page 4 of The Lucky Escape

Happy unlocked her iPhone and pulled up a text thread. My hand was shaking as I took it, my mouth as dry as gin. I focused.

Happy, you’ve been amazing in sorting out today but I’m not coming. I can’t do it. Please tell Annie I’m sorry. I’ll be sure to settle your invoice in full by the end of next week. Thanks for everything. I trust you can handle the guests. Alexander.

People insist that they feel like they’ve been slapped when they find out something shocking and it’s such an overused, clichéd saying. But as I read the text again, and a third time, a fourth – desperate to find the hidden meaning in it, the bit Happy had misinterpreted or got wrong – I was clammy and bilious. I thought of Alexander’s grinning, handsome features. How could he do this to me? What the hell had happened since I’d seen him yesterday afternoon? Was there somebody else? Was it a joke? My brain couldn’t do the complicated maths to understand it. The text was so brief. I read it again: I was an afterthought, my name appearing in between a compliment and a fiscal promise to a woman we’d known eight months.Alexander had known me since uni. None of this made any sense.

My eyes filled and a tear fell to my hand. Just one. Not a steady stream of them, no big wailing or crying or sobbing. I absent-mindedly passed my flowers to Freddie and then, swallowing hard, handed the phone back to Happy. With both trembling hands free I could press my fingertips under my eyes, forcing myself to think.

How do I fix this?

I didn’t have my own phone with me, what with planning to spend the day with every single person I knew who could possibly call me anyway. I couldn’t call him using my own phone, or see if he’d called me.

He’d better have bloody called me.

I needed to hear his voice.Hecould fix this. He could explain, and then laugh at this terrible misunderstanding, and Adzo could touch up my face and we’d joke that I’d ever got my new and blue knickers in such a twist.

Right?

RIGHT?

‘Dad, can you ring him? This can’t be happening.’

‘It can’t be, love,’ he agreed, setting his mouth into a thin straight line. ‘Let’s talk to him.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ Adzo said, softly. ‘I promise.’

Dad fished about in his jacket pocket to retrieve his mobile, then scrolled to Alexander’s name and hit the call button. I could hear the voicemail prompt playing immediately – there wasn’t even a dialling tone. His phone must have been switched off.

Hi there, you’ve reached Alexander Mackenzie. If I’ve not picked up I’m either in the lab or training for rugby. Either way, leave a message and I’ll get back to you. Cheers.

He sounded so normal. So ordinary. I’d heard his outgoing voicemail so many times that I knew it by heart. How could a man who had left his bride waiting be somebody who could also sound normal and ordinary? Where the hell was he?

‘I’ll kill him,’ Dad said, finally. ‘This is unbelievable. I’m going to absolutely throttle him.’

In a wobbly voice and with her brown eyes wide Freddie said, ‘Annie?’

And then that was it. I could be strong if everyone else was being strong. I could hold it together for as long as everyone else acted as if this could all be resolved. But the anger in Dad’s voice and the fear in Freddie’s made it real: Alexander wasn’t coming, and everybody knew it.

‘Right,’ Adzo prompted. ‘Everyone back in the car. Come on. Quickly. Quickly!’

‘I’ll let everyone inside know,’ the wedding planner whispered to Dad. And then to me: ‘I really am sorry, Annie.’

I pushed into the back of the car – thank goodness it was still there, and that the driver hadn’t headed off for a smoke break around the corner or kept the engine running by circling the block. Dad waited behind me on the kerb and then helpfully lifted up the trail of my dress so it wouldn’t drag or get dirty. As if that even mattered now.

‘What will you say?’ I croaked from inside the car. Freddie clung to my arm tightly. This was the worst thing to ever happen to me.

Happy gave a gloomy grimace. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve had to do this before. Unfortunately.’

She closed the car door and Dad wound down the window.

‘Thank you,’ he said to her, woefully.

‘Look after yourself,’ she directed at me.

I let Freddie sneak in under the crook of my arm and stared out the window. Adzo tapped her foot but didn’t speak. Even she didn’t know what to say. The car inched away from the kerb, and within seconds the church was a speck in the rear-view mirror.

We drove in silence. Things kept coming into my mind – questions, mostly – leaving as quickly as they arrived because then a barrage of other thoughts elbowed their way in, and then some more for good measure.

Was this really happening?

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