The vicar looked at the wedding couple. When he first heard their ages, he’d thought this all might be a quaint story he could use in a sermon, but this had turned out to be the strangest wedding he’d ever had to officiate at, what with the groom in his red shirt and the bride winking at everyone, that tango music and all those ghastly relatives. Plus they’d requested the whole service. The bride had insisted even on the begetting bit; they could still have some fun trying, apparently. Although he doubted, surely not, what with their joint ages nearing two hundred. ‘A marriage,’ he began, ‘is a sacred thing. Not to be entered into lightly.’
George and Florence nodded fiercely at him.
‘Get on with it then,’ demanded Mrs. Oliver. ‘We haven’t got all that long left and we want to enjoy ourselves in what little time we have. Don’t we, George?’ She nudged her husband-to-be painfully in the ribs.
He tried not to wince, and that’s when he got it. His sign. It didn’t come in the form of broken windows, or shafts of light, or even blue flowers. And that’s how he knew it came from Maureen. Because big gestures had never been her style. No, the sign she had sent could all too easily have been overlooked. It was Florence’s elbow in his side, and all those faces in the front rows laughing along with them both. And how no one was looking over their shoulder anymore. George felt a sense of peace, one he hadn’t felt for a long time.
‘We do,’ he told the shocked vicar, who had never in his life been interrupted quite so much. ‘For bloody infinity, however long that may last.’
THE END
Acknowledgements
Grateful thanks are due to the many people who kept me going in different ways, both large and small, while I wrote this book including Mary Atkinson, Christopher Barker, Nicholas Bate, Gillie Bolton, the Clink Street group, Alice Elliott Dark, Sue Davis, Alison Grant, Deborah Heath, Rupert Heath, Celia Hunt, James Friel, Alex Johnson, Anne Kelly, Dorothy Ledsham, Shaun Levin, Michelle Lovric, Mo McAuley, Cheryl Moskowitz, Scott Pack, Henry Peplow, Stephen Peplow, Lynne Rees, Ann Salway, Francis Salway, Hugh Salway, Rachael Salway, Catherine Smith, and everyone at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
About The Author
Sarah Salway is the author of three novels, Something Beginning With, Tell Me Everything and Getting The Picture, in addition to volumes of short stories, poetry and non-fiction.
Sarah teaches creative writing regularly across Britain, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a previous Canterbury Laureate and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work has appeared in publications including the Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, Financial Times, Psychologies magazine, PEN International, The Virago Book of the Joy of Shopping, Poetry London, The Poetry of Sex, and has been commissioned for BBC Radio 4.
www.sarahsalway.net
Also by Sarah Salway
Something Beginning With
Tell Me Everything
Leading The Dance
You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book
Digging Up Paradise
Messages (with Lynne Rees)
Published by Dean Street Press 2015
Copyright © 2010 Sarah Salway
All Rights Reserved
The right of Sarah Salway to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2010 by Ballantine Books
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 910570 10 4
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
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