After the End(110)

And yet, if Pip and I were still together, I wouldn’t be marrying Blair. I wouldn’t wake every day with hope in my heart and a mass of corkscrew curls on the pillow beside me. I wouldn’t be running a business I love, in a city I love, with trainees who have made me see the world a different way.

I can’t have both lives, I can only live this one.





fifty-two





Pip


   2019


Weddings are different, second time around. Quieter, more cautious.

No less exciting, no less nerve-wracking.

Butterflies swoop in my stomach as Mum walks around me with a critical eye, picking invisible bits of lint from my dress, and stroking a stray hair into place.

“Perfect.” There are tears in her eyes. “You look perfect, Pip.”

I’m wearing a wedding dress. I was hesitant, but everyone encouraged me. Mum, Jada, even Lars.

“You’re the one everyone will be looking at,” he said. “You should buy the biggest, most beautiful dress you can find.”

It isn’t big, but it is beautiful. A satin sheath skims my hips and narrows to my knees, before kicking out into the hint of a train. The top is strapless, but antique lace covers my arms, and ties in a loose bow in the small of my back, before trailing down the back of the dress. Even Jada, who had been trying to persuade me into a Vivienne Westwood number three sizes too small, was convinced.

“That’s the one!” She clasped her hands together, pressing her thumbs to her lips.

I twisted round to see the label. “It’s horribly expensive.”

“You only get married—” Jada bit off her sentence, and I finished it for her with a wry smile.

“Twice?” I looked in the mirror. The lace was pale gold, and even without makeup, it made my skin glow. This was indeed the one.

“Pretty Mummy!” Grace reaches for me, and I pick her up and twirl her around.

“Pretty Grace.” She’s wearing a white dress dotted with buttercups, with a net petticoat she has so far showed to everyone at the registry office, and several people in the car park. I have a sudden memory of Dylan at eighteen months, and the time he became obsessed with tutus, wearing a pink one from breakfast till bedtime. I squeeze Grace until she wriggles free, then kiss her on the nose. She is three—older now than Dylan was when he died. We are in uncharted territory, no longer drawing comparisons. Grace is her own little person, different in so many ways to her big brother, and finding her way in the world with energy and confidence.

“Careful of Mummy’s dress.” My mother holds Grace’s shoes—white Converse with yellow ribbon laces—away from my side.

“It’s fine.” I rearrange her on my hip, remembering how precious I was about my first wedding dress, how Mum brought an iron to the church for last-minute pressing in the vestry. The door opens, and Dad appears.

“Ready?”

I feel a sudden swell of nerves. Mum kisses me and goes to take her seat, and Jada, who chose a simple shift dress as her bridesmaid’s outfit, takes one last check in the mirror before taking Grace from me.

“Come on, princess, let’s help Mummy get married, shall we?” She gives Grace her posy of yellow flowers, and picks up her own, and they wait by the door of the anteroom we were given, in which to get ready. Dad stands next to me, and I tuck my arm in his.

“Well, I never thought I’d be doing this again,” he says.

“You don’t think I’m doing the wrong thing, do you?” I search his face for what he’s really thinking. Last time he took me to one side as the guests were sliding into pews and picking up hymn sheets, and said that if I changed my mind—even if we’re halfway down the aisle, even if you’re standing at the blooming altar, Pip—I only had to say. It didn’t matter, no one would think less of me.

“Didn’t you like Max?” I asked him, years later.

“Of course I did,” came the response. “But I liked you more.”

Now, I wait for him to tell me I’m making a mistake, and I wonder what I’ll do if he does. But he just smiles, and pulls my arm close to his.

“None of us knows what’s going to happen in the future, love. The only thing we can do is make our choices on the way we feel right here, right now.”

“I love him,” I say simply, and my dad nods.

“Well, then.”

A fresh start, I think. For me, and for Grace.

She steals the show instantly, an aah travelling across the room like a Mexican wave. There’s a shuffling of feet as everyone stands to watch my little girl walk slowly down the aisle, the way Jada showed her, her chin held high like a three-foot catwalk model. I can’t see her face, but I know she’ll be looking serious, her brow furrowed as it always is when she’s concentrating.

There’s nothing serious, nothing stately about my own face, which sports a smile that makes my cheeks ache. Dad’s keeping the pace, but I want to run, because I’m suddenly so desperate to be married, to feel by my side the other half that makes me whole again. I see Tom and Alistair, and seven-year-old Darcy, and then, from the front of the room, Lars turns to look at me. I feel a skip in my heart. He dips his head in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly bow, taking in my dress and nodding in silent admiration. You’re the one everyone will be looking at.