Prologue
‘Hi, you’re the best man? Is it Sam? I’m Harriet, I’m the photographer today.’ She raised the Nikon D850, round her neck on a strap, by way of unnecessary corroboration. ‘Is the groom around?’
The best man looked at her with an expression of taut desperation. He was coated in a pastry glaze of sweat, like he’d been brushed with an egg wash and would form a golden crust at 180 degrees.
A very awkward pause ensued, where Harriet wondered if he could speak.
‘He’s gone, Harriet,’ Sam croaked, eventually, with wild eyes. He uttered it with the kind of brokenness and weight people usually reserved for when they meant: passed to the other side.
‘Who’s gone?’
‘The groom!’ The best man gestured with both arms outstretched at the empty space next to him.
Harriet checked her watch. Ten minutes to the official kick-off.
‘Get him back, pronto, or she’ll arrive without him here,’ she whispered urgently.
‘That’s the idea,’ said Sam, who looked as if he was having an anaesthesia-free foot amputation aboard a haunted boat in a storm. ‘He’s gone-gone. For good.’
‘What? Gone? As in …?’
‘As in has departed the premises, is declining to get married,’ Sam said under his breath, eyes bulging.
‘What the fuck!’ Harriet hissed. ‘Did he … say why?’
‘I told him he didn’t have to do this if he wasn’t sure, sort of as a JOKE, and he said seriously do you mean that and I said why? He said because I don’t want to do this, and I said is this nerves? and he said no, did you mean it when you said I didn’t have to do it? And I had to say well yeah I guess so? and he said OK I’m going then please say I’m sorry.’
Sam said this all in one galloping breath and had to pause to suck in air. He put a steadying palm on his chest, on his pristine white shirt, and when he moved it there was a tragicomic sweaty handprint on the cotton.
‘I’m going to have to tell Kit he’s jilted her. Oh my fucking life!’
‘He’s definitely not coming back?’ Harriet said.
Sam said, closing his eyes, clearly wishing himself able to teleport from this church in the Gothic revival style, on the outskirts of Leeds: ‘Nope.’
Harriet had no protocols for this whatsoever. She was hired to take pictures, from the soup to nuts of bridal prep through to the first dance. It didn’t always go to plan – best men got so drunk they slurred the speech, DJs played the uncensored version of the track and a chocolate fountain once broke and appeared to be pumping out a mixture of kibble and raw sewage. But the knot always got tied. A runaway prospective husband-to-be was off the map, as far as crises went.
‘Did he tell the vicar?’ Harriet said in hushed tones, through a placeholder gritted smile, in case they were under observation.
‘Yes. He told him at least,’ Sam said.
‘Where’s the vicar now?’
‘Round the back, having a cigarette.’
‘What? Are vicars even allowed to smoke?’
‘I don’t know, but under the circumstances, I didn’t feel I could tell him not to.’
Harriet nodded. One for God to judge.
‘Did I cause this? With my stupid line about how he didn’t have to do it?’
Sam genuinely looked like he might cry.
‘No!’ Harriet said, in an emphatic whisper. ‘This isn’t exactly something you’d do purely through the power of suggestion.’
‘I should walk out to meet her, shouldn’t I?’ Sam said. ‘It’ll be worse if she gets to the door?’
‘Oh God – definitely,’ Harriet said. The public humiliation would surely be unbearable if everyone saw her in her finery. If they realised at the same time she realised. The Kristina who’d hired Harriet didn’t seem the type to take any disappointment well, let alone catastrophe. She was doll-tiny, with jet-black hair and a self-assured, borderline haughty demeanour. The groom had been too busy to meet Harriet during the standard planning stages, and now she was wondering if that was significant.
‘If he’s definitely, definitely not coming back?’
Sam’s face was panic and agony. ‘He’s not.’
‘I can’t believe he’s done this to you. And to her,’ Harriet said, aware that it was a slightly odd statement given she didn’t know the tosser. I can’t believe [a total stranger] would behave this way!
She glanced at the good-natured, expectant hubbub behind them, feeling crushed on their behalf.
‘I’ll walk out with you,’ she said, and Sam nodded thank you in gratitude.
Heads down, they strode purposefully down the aisle, out into the churchyard and down the path, among the mossy gravestones. As they neared the road, Harriet saw a beribboned white Rolls-Royce slide up alongside the pavement and felt physically sick. Poor, poor Kristina.
And poor Sam. He blew his cheeks out and exhaled, windily, stuck his fingers into his wild mop of curly hair, then seemed to remember it was tamped down with gel.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Harriet said, and Sam nodded, no longer able to communicate.
‘Wish me luck,’ he said eventually, in a pinched voice, as he left Harriet’s side.
‘Good luck,’ Harriet said, quietly, though as the words hung in the air they sounded violently tasteless.
She realised she couldn’t bear to even look, to see the moment the bride crumpled, and it was clear Harriet’s contribution to the day was over. She strode briskly in the opposite direction, staring down at her cherry red Doc Marten shoes in the fallen cherry blossom on the pavement, silently counting the steps to busy her mind, one – two – three – four – five – si—
Harriet heard a scream rip through the air and stopped dead in her tracks, her heart pounding.
She turned to see Sam being punched square in the face by a five-foot-four-inch woman in an exquisite mermaid gown of ivory satin.
Sam reeled back, clutching a bleeding nose. The father of the bride exited the car like a gorilla escaping a safari park, and the shouting began.