The band have begun to play. Will – who returned to the marquee looking slightly unkempt – takes my hand as we step on to the laminate floor. I realise I’m holding his hand hard enough to hurt, probably – and I tell myself to loosen my grip. But I’m incensed by the interruption to the evening caused by the ushers and their stupid prank. The guests surround us, whooping, hollering. Their faces are flushed and sweaty, their teeth bared, their eyes wide. They’re drunk – and more. They press forward, leaning in, and the space suddenly feels too small. They’re so close that I can smell them: perfume and cologne, the sour, yeasty smell of Guinness and champagne, body odour, booze-soured breath. I smile at them all because that is what I am meant to do. I smile so much that there is a dull ache somewhere beneath my ears and my whole jaw feels like an overstretched piece of elastic.
I hope I’m giving an impression of having a good time. I’ve drunk a lot, but it hasn’t had any discernible effect other than making me more wary, more jittery. Since that speech I’ve been feeling a mounting unease. I look around me. Everyone else is having a great time: their inhibitions truly thrown off now. To them the train wreck of a speech is probably a mere footnote to the day – an amusing anecdote.
Will and I turn one way, then the other. He spins me away from him and back again. The guests shout their appreciation of these modest moves. We didn’t go to dance lessons, because that would be unspeakably naff, but Will is a naturally good dancer. Except that a couple of times he treads on the train of my dress; I have to yank it away from under his feet before I trip. It’s unlike him, to be so graceless. He seems distracted.
‘What on earth was all of that?’ I ask, when I’m drawn to his chest. I whisper it as though I am whispering a sweet nothing into his ear.
‘Oh, it was stupid,’ Will says. ‘Boys being boys. Messing around, you know. A little leftover from the stag, maybe.’ He smiles, but he doesn’t
look quite himself. He downed two large glasses of wine when he returned to the marquee: one after the other. He shrugs. ‘Johnno’s idea of a joke.’
‘The seaweed was supposedly a little joke last night,’ I say. ‘And that wasn’t very bloody funny. And now this? And that speech – what did he mean by all of that? What was all that about the past? About keeping secrets from each other … what secrets did he mean?’
‘Oh,’ Will says, ‘I don’t know, Jules. It’s only Johnno messing around.
It’s nothing.’
We turn a slow circle about the floor. I have an impression of beaming faces, hands clapping.
‘But it didn’t sound like nothing,’ I say. ‘It sounded very much like something. Will, what sort of hold does he have over you?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Jules,’ he says sharply. ‘I said: it’s nothing. Drop
it. Please.’
I stare at him. It’s not the words themselves so much as the way he said them – that and the way he has tightened his hold on my arm. It feels like as strong a corroboration as one could ask for that whatever it is it’s very much not nothing.
‘You’re hurting me,’ I say, pulling my arm out of his grip.
He is immediately contrite. ‘Jules – look, I’m sorry.’ His voice is totally different now – any hint of hostility immediately gone. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you. Look, it’s been a long day. A wonderful day, of course, but a long one. Forgive me?’ And he gives me a smile, the same smile I haven’t been able to resist since I saw it that night at the V&A museum. And yet it doesn’t have the same effect it normally does. If anything, it makes me feel more uneasy, because of the speed of the change. It’s as though he’s pulled on a mask.
‘We’re a married couple, now,’ I say. ‘We are meant to be able to share things with one another. To confide in each other.’
Will spins me away under his arm, and towards him again. The crowd cheer this flourish.
Then, when we’re facing one another once more, he takes a deep breath. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘Johnno has got this bee in his bonnet about this thing that he says happened in the past, when we were young. He’s obsessed by it. But he’s a fantasist. I’ve felt sorry for him, all these years. That’s where I went wrong. Feeling I should pander to him, because my life has worked out, and his hasn’t. Now he’s envious: of everything I have, we have. He thinks that I owe him.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ I say. ‘What could you possibly owe him? He’s the one that’s clearly been hanging on your coattails for too long.’
He doesn’t answer this. Instead he pulls me close, as the song comes to its crescendo. A cheer goes up from the crowd. But they sound suddenly far away. ‘After tonight, that’s it,’ Will says firmly, into my hair. ‘I’ll cut him from my life – our life. I promise. I’m done with him. Trust me. I’ll sort it out.’
