It is a few moments before the waitress regains consciousness. She is, it appears, uninjured, but whatever she has seen out there has struck her nearly mute. The most they can get from her are low moans, wordless nonsense.
‘I sent her over to the Folly for a couple more bottles of champagne,’ the head waitress – only twenty or so herself – says helplessly.
There is a palpable hush in the marquee. The guests are looking among the throng of people for their loved ones, to check that they are safe and accounted for. But it is difficult to spot anyone among the seething crowd, all a little worse for wear after a day of carousing. It is difficult, too, because of the structure of this state-of-the-art marquee: the dance floor in one tent, the bar in another, the main dining section in the largest.
‘She could have had a scare,’ a man suggests. ‘She’s a teenage girl.
It’s pitch-black out there and it’s blowing a gale.’
‘But it sounds like someone needs help,’ another man says. ‘We should go and see—’
‘We can’t have everyone wandering all over the island.’ They listen to the wedding planner. She has an innate authority, though she looks as shocked as the rest of them, her face drawn and white. ‘It is blowing a gale,’ she says. ‘It’s dark. And there’s the bog, the cliffs. I don’t want someone else to … to injure themselves, if that is what has happened.’
‘Must be shitting herself about her insurance,’ a man mutters.
‘We should go and look,’ one of the ushers says. ‘Some of us blokes.
Safety in numbers and all that.’
