I floated upright in my shell pink satin wedding gown until I was just above the street lamps of south Morningside. IS gazed up at me in wonder.
I had no idea of how or why I was able to fly unaided with such ease, but felt terribly sorry for those who didn’t share my gift.
While I was recovering from the sight of R’s bronzed buttocks hanging out of the tightest pair of denim shorts imaginable, K pulled me outside to show me the evidence of the affair. “Just look at all those uneaten packed lunches” she said, pointing to piles and piles of tiny sandwiches, all wrapped in cellophane and strewn across the lawn.
This supposedly proved that K and P had been sharing romantic lunchtime trysts. I very much doubted this given that neither party liked the other very much. And why would K be gossiping about herself in this way anyway? If what she was revealing to me were true, this was a shameful admission and certainly not something to boast about.
Keen that the sandwiches didn’t go to waste, I took them out of their wrappers and set about feeding them to the seagulls.
None of our business colleagues seated at the conference dinner in Darlington had any idea of our secret: no longer divorced, TPR and I had remarried in secret. Instead all eyes were fixed on Tim Atkinson, showing off as usual at his end of the table. He became even more annoying when it was announced that he had won the top industry award of the night.
There was snow on the ground when we left the venue. Not paying due attention to the state of the ground, I slipped off the pavement into the path of a double decker bus. My secret husband, his mother, and three sisters jumped forward as the bus hurtled towards me. I was only saved by the combined super-human strength of my secret family members. They managed to stop the vehicle just in time by catching it in their outstretched arms.
This was the most peculiar of university reunions.
First the woman across the table congratulated me on another successful event. “I didn’t organise this!” I responded. (I secretly added “Had I been in charge this would have amounted to far more than a drab tea party for ten people. Where is everyone? For goodness sake, they haven’t even managed to summon up JS. It’s a disgrace!”)
Later I was told that SB was not attending because of “domestic difficulties” – by SB herself who was sitting next to me. She didn’t appreciate the lack of logic in her claim.
Then there were the impostors who had no right to be there at all: CM and MSB from my running club (the latter showing an unusual interest in dentistry), and SF from my primary school, who couldn’t help admitting how much he admired the firework themed mittens that I wore to class when I was eleven.
This was all too much for me to cope with so TPR and I battled our way through a crowd of Manchester United fans to catch the bus from Leith back into central Birmingham.
I joined the parade for SB’s wedding in the 9-inch nude stilettos chosen for me by WB. All around were upright marching bands, soldiers proud in bearskin hats, and pretty dancing ponies. My nephew P and niece A brought up the rear, each commandeering their own open horse and carriage.
Most splendid of all, however, was the mother of the bride. She wore a massive gown of layered mauve silk, her outfit topped by a head-dress of matching mauve feathers. Not even a royal princess in the court of Louis XVI could compete with the majesty of my mother-in-law on her daughter’s wedding day.
My parents were very relieved to hear that TPR and I had overcome our differences and decided to remarry. Our divorce in the mid-1990s had been pretty low-key (he’d simply “gone off” me) and since then we had been spending more and more time together. Indeed some of our newer friends hadn’t even registered that we were actually a “divorced couple”.
The day of the wedding finally arrived. We gathered at the White House, where all was chaos and my mother feared that we would refuse to go through with the ceremony. My sister S in super-pale make-up, and surrounded by cronies who looked like they had stepped straight off the set of the Thriller video, was enough to frighten anyone off.
