“Before I answer that,” she said, sounding for a moment almost exactly like her daughter, “I feel I should probably clarify what you’re asking. This dinner - is it a catch-up between friends, or are you intending that it should be something more…?”
She trailed off, seeming to lose her nerve.
You ain’t got time to sit around wringing your hands, Ruby had said. If you’re interested, then you best tell her so, and pronto.
“Romantic,” El replied - wishing, improbably, that Sophie were there to hear her say it. “Something more romantic.”
Allemore Castle, Loch Lomond
January 1998
The castle was cold and ugly: a Draculian ruin of a place, only slightly improved by the multi-coloured bunting someone - she assumed the mother of the bride - had strung haphazardly across the dark stone walls.
Her own wedding, she remembered, had been a far more inviting affair - a High Church orgy of light and gold and incense, the priest a veritable peacock of unnecessary colour. Nothing at all like the celebrant running the show today: a tall, shaven-headed boy barely into his twenties, his bare arms invisible under tattoo ink and an unnatural red glow emanating from the implants - implants, of all things - embedded in the skin around each of his knuckles.
The groom was unremarkable if comparatively inoffensive in a crushed velvet suit, but the bride, at least, had made an effort: her hair - longer now than it had been - expertly braided, her makeup subtle enough to augment rather than distract from her looks, her ivory gown more traditional than might have been expected of someone so unorthodox, but expensive and well-fitted; a choice she might have made herself.
They were there, of course - the whole lot of them.
Ruby and Sita, seated side by side in one of the middle rows: Ruby dressed for comfort above effect and Sita the diametric opposite, the feathers of her fascinator so tall they threatened to block the view of any guest unlucky enough to have been placed behind her.
Kat, her head wounds healed but the walking sticks that were her constant companion these days resting on the ground beneath her feet.
El, in a dark black suit more appropriate for a funeral than a wedding - and beside her Rose, one hand resting proprietorially on El’s leg and the other wrapped around the shoulders of her sullen-looking daughter. She, too, it appeared, had opted for maximalism above discretion, her body sheathed in an unpleasantly shimmering silver number better suited to a cartoon mermaid released onto the mainland than a middle-aged woman.
The car was a nice touch, though - she’d give them that. She was no expert, but she thought it might have been a Bugatti - a vintage, undeniably elegant monochrome panther of a vehicle, low-slung and open-top and as long as a limousine. She had doubts about the level of comfort it afforded its passengers, and how pleasurable Mr and Mrs Armstrong would find it when it conveyed them later from the castle to their honeymoon cabin on the other side of the loch. But it looked good, and perhaps that was what mattered.
The celebrant glanced down at the order of service in his glowing hands and, with a nod to the mother of the bride in the front row, declared the happy couple husband and wife, for as long as they both should live.
And Hannah, satisfied with what she’d seen, drew her own dark veil over her face and crept quietly out of the hall.
About the Author
Natalie Edwards is a cultural analyst and researcher with a long-standing interest in cons and con artists. A former lecturer, copywriter and semiotician (among other things), she lives in Leicestershire with her partner and two children.
Also by Natalie Edwards
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