Before I’d even opened my eyes that morning I’d know it was going to be sunny, and when I threw open the curtains, I immediately felt the rays of heat on my face.
Perfect.
The phone rang and I picked it up to hear Annie’s cackling laugh. ‘Just a quickie. I’ve got nothing to wear today. Okay to come in my dressing gown?’
‘As long as it matches your shoes,’ I answered, giggling.
‘Great! As you were then.’ She hung up, still chuckling, leaving me thinking that there were no words to explain how much I loved that woman.
‘Hey, gorgeous, happy wedding day.’ Colm’s voice was still thick with sleep, so I padded back over to the bed and climbed back in, wanting to feel his body curled back into mine. If we didn’t have a ceremony to go to, wild horses wouldn’t have been able to drag me away from the heaven of my bed and Colm.
‘Happy wedding day. You know there’s still time to change your mind?’ I murmured, reaching for him under the duvet.
He laughed. ‘Not while you’re doing that.’
Suddenly awake, he flipped over, moving above me, guiding himself inside me.
‘I thought it was unlucky to see your bride on her wedding day,’ he teased, sending delicious waves of pure bliss coursing through me as his hips began slow-dancing with mine. ‘I believe there’s a law that states love and incredible sex trumps superstition every time.’
An hour later, we were still in bed, eating croissants from a tray. How had I got this lucky? Even if I’d planned every detail of the last three months, instead of just going with the flow and hoping for the best, we couldn’t have had a better outcome. My lovely flatmate, Zoe, had announced a couple of weeks before that she was going off to Australia to live and work, solving Colm and I’s dilemma over where to live. He’d moved in here and we’d turned Zoe’s room into a bedroom for the kids.
It was perfect. Our own place. Just for us. At least, it was until the door burst open and Lulu and Rosie stormed in the door, both in full-length pale cream dresses. They were both so gorgeous I decided not to remind them that I’d given them a key for emergency purposes, not for bursting in like a SWAT team. Lulu had a band of flowers around her wild mane of red curls, while Rosie’s dark hair was sculpted in a gorgeous retro style that suggested she’d just joined the Wrens in 1942.
‘Er, hello?’ Lulu’s horror was obvious. ‘Have I got the date wrong? Only I was pretty sure you were getting married in…’ she checked her watch. ‘Less than three hours.’
‘Oh bugger, is that today?’ I shot back, and watched her face turn an exasperated shade of red and beside me, Colm struggled to contain his laughter.
‘Get out of your bed!’ she screeched, the fact that no one was taking her seriously sending her even higher up the pole of infuriation.
‘I’ll put the kettle on. Colm, if I were you I’d get out of the line of fire there.’ Rosie, always one to avoid confrontation, bustled out of the room, a scratching sound coming from the bridesmaid’s dress that rustled when she moved. I’d been delighted when we’d found both outfits in a little boutique that Lulu knew about in Kensington. They were both the same shade of cream, but that’s where the similarity ended. Lulu’s was off the shoulder, clung to her every curve, before flaring softly at the waist and falling to the floor. Rosie’s was very much in her style, with a sweetheart neckline, cinched bodice and then a skirt that was about three feet deep courtesy of the three layers of tulle underneath. They both looked spectacular.
Realizing that Lulu was close to dragging me out of bed by my ankles, I lifted a shirt from the floor beside me and pulled it over my vest top, then got up.
Colm pushed off the blanket, about to do the same, causing Lulu to throw her hand across her face, screeching, ‘My eyes, my eyes!’
‘It’s okay, he has boxer shorts on,’ I told her through cackles of laughter. She was unreliable. Reckless. Crazy. But she made me laugh like no one else except Colm, and I wouldn’t have her any other way. Except possibly slightly quieter.
‘Move!’ she wailed, her hands off her face now and directing me to the bathroom.
I was in and out of the shower in ten minutes, leaving it on for Colm to jump in after me.
Back in my bedroom, I blasted my hair with the dryer and then pulled it back and fastened it with a long diamanté clasp, so that it was swept off my face, but the waves trailed down past my shoulder blades.
‘I don’t know why I keep you as a friend,’ Lulu said, from her position, lying prone, next to Rosie, both in full bridal party wear, on top of the bed. It was one of those picture-perfect scenes I’d always remember. Why did I never have a camera when I needed one? She let out a dramatic sigh. ‘No one should be able to look that good so quickly. I had to get up at dawn to do my hair.’
We both knew she was kidding.
As I applied my make-up, just a light, natural look, Colm came back into the room, shaved, dressed in smart black trousers and a white shirt.
‘Come here and I’ll help,’ said Lulu, who saw that he was struggling as he tried to secure his cufflinks. Colm did as she said, and she had them fixed in seconds. ‘Colm, are you okay?’ she asked.
‘Yep, fine. Champion. Why?’
‘Because you don’t seem to be able to look me in the eye.’ She was amused rather than annoyed.
I understood the problem straight away.
‘He’s still mortified because he saw your mum with my dad at their anniversary party.’
‘Ah,’ Lulu retorted, getting it too.
Colm found his voice, but it squirmed with discomfort. ‘I just think that must be really hard for you guys. I mean, the whole swapping thing is just… different.’
I’d tried to explain, but – like many things in my family – I realized it didn’t make much sense to anyone else. It didn’t even make sense to Lulu and I, and we’d lived with it for most of our lives. My dad and her mum had been having an affair for as long as I could remember. Her father, Charlie, responded by shagging anything that took his fancy, my mother pretended not to know, valuing her friendship with Gwen over her need for fidelity, and the four of them just got on with it, went on holiday together, spent weekends together, lived their lives together, all of them getting exactly what they needed from the relationships. I didn’t pretend to understand why it worked, but I just knew that it did. It was a four-way, convoluted, complicated dynamic that was wrong on every level, but one that appeared to suit them all.
‘You’re so sweet,’ Lulu told him sincerely, ‘but I promise, we’re fine. We got over it a long time ago.’ And we had. Somewhere around the middle of our teenage years, we’d decided to stop being horrified and accept it. However, what was odd was the difference in how it had affected our personalities. As a result of our backgrounds, Lulu treated sex as a currency, needed a constant stream of affection and put no value on monogamy. I differed on all counts.
‘Anyway, if it helps, I think there’s been a shift in relationships back at the ranch,’ I added. ‘My mother has gone off on an artist’s retreat. I’m fairly sure that means she’s now shagging someone who’s a dab hand with a paintbrush.’
At my side of the room, Rosie, the hopeless romantic sighed. ‘I just think that maybe none of them has met the right person. I mean, perhaps they all settled, found a way to trundle along, and it’ll only be when one of them finds real love that they’ll all make a change. I think that could happen, I really do.’
Lu immediately countered, ‘But let’s face it, who’d want them? Hi, we’re Jeff, Debbie, Charlie and Gwen, available for new relationships just as long as you don’t mind the fact that we’ve been having an inter-couple sexual relationship for decades. Not exactly a tempting personal ad, is it?’
Rosie stood up, her argument defeated, ready to get back to the love and romance of the day, even if we weren’t sticking to pre-wedding traditions.
‘You know, this is all highly unorthodox,’ Rosie pointed out as she helped me into my dress.
‘I know, honey. Colm, can you throw over my shoes?’
Unorthodox it may be, but it was exactly how I wanted it. No stress. No fuss. As little formality as possible. I honestly couldn’t give a damn about photographs, and favours, and big fancy cars. All I cared about was marrying Colm, in front of people I loved. Nothing else mattered.
I froze as I noticed that everyone else was staring at me. ‘What? What is it?’
Nobody spoke. Crap, my dress must be ripped. Or stained. Sod it, I could wear something else. I could…
‘You look beautiful,’ Colm said, perhaps the first time I’d ever seen him being completely serious.
I grinned and moved over to check myself out in the wardrobe mirror. He was right about the dress being beautiful, but it was also absolutely simple. Just a white crepe sheath, off the shoulder, straight down to my ankles, with a split at the back so that I could take steps of more than eight inches. I loved it.
‘You don’t look too shabby either Mr O’Flynn.’ I replied, my jaws hurting because I couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Ready?’
We all piled in to my flash wedding car, otherwise known as Rosie’s rickety old camper van, and we set off, detouring via Teddington to collect the boys, as arranged, from Jess’s parents’ house. They both looked utterly adorable in their matching suits and I was grateful to Jess for making the effort with them.
A hundred verses of ‘The Wheels On The Bus’ later, we made it to Wimbledon and I could see my parents standing waiting outside the church. At least they’d turned up then. We poured out of the van, to the surprise of my dad and the wide-eyed horror of my mother. She didn’t do informal. She didn’t do relaxed. And she definitely didn’t do bloody old camper vans.
Kissing me again, Colm headed on into the church with the boys, stopping to greet an elderly lady and a young guy who looked vaguely like him at the door. I guessed that must be his mum and brother. They’d flown in that morning from Dublin and Dan had collected them and brought them straight here.
Yes, it was bizarre that I was meeting my husband’s family for the first time at our wedding, but between work, the boys, and the fact that we’d only been together for what seemed like five minutes, there just hadn’t been the opportunity to get over to Ireland.
My mother waited until everyone else was inside and then went off to make her entrance, guaranteeing the whole congregation would get a great view of how fabulous she was looking. She was welcome to her moment. Right now, every nerve in my body, every piece of my heart was bursting with happiness and excitement.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ a panicked voice from behind me, beside me, in front of me, ended with a quick kiss and a ‘God, you scrub up well, gorgeous’ before my old catering college chum, Vincent flew on in, a very pretty redhead teetering behind him.
And then there was perfect peace.
‘You’re getting married,’ Rosie cooed, her eyes filling up as she and Lu came in for a group hug.
My dad waited until we were done, and then held out his arm.
‘Good to go, Shauna?’
No, ‘you look beautiful’. No teary sobs of emotion. No obvious unbridled pride. Just time to go.
Yes, it was.
I took his arm and we walked up the steps to the door, Lulu and Rosie behind us. Dan was waiting there to greet us, holding the door open to let us through, his handsome smile directed first at me, and then at Lulu. Despite their wild, volatile relationship, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long until they were following us up the aisle.
Annie had chosen the songs for the service, persuading the vicar that ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ was the perfect start to married life. She was the first person I saw when we got inside, standing next to Vincent, the redhead girlfriend having been dispatched to the row behind. I’d no idea how Annie had managed that but it didn’t surprise me – she’s always had a soft spot for tall, dark and handsome. She winked at me, setting off an irrepressible fit of the giggles that lasted the whole way up the aisle.
There, with Davie on one side and Joe on the other, was Colm. Waiting. Every pore of him matching my happiness. I’d never been surer of anything in my life. I loved this man. We belonged together. We were going to have the most incredible lives. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could touch us or take this away.
The vicar made the introductions and moved straight on with the ceremony.
He lifted my hand and placed it on top of Colm’s.
‘Colm, repeat after me…’
The vicar’s words faded into the background, as Colm and I’s eyes locked, saying so much more than just the words that we were repeating.
‘I, Colm O’Flynn, take you Shauna Williams to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’
The vicar spoke up again. And now Shauna, could you repeat the same words.
‘I, Shauna Williams, take you Colm O’Flynn to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’
Davie and Joe burst into an excited round of applause, sending a ripple of hilarity through the gathering. It was perfect.
Colm scooped up Joe and I lifted Davie, just as the vicar announced, ‘I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss your bride.’
‘Yuk!’ Joe exclaimed. The boy definitely had a gift for comic timing.
Colm leaned over and kissed me. ‘I love you, Mrs O’Flynn.’
‘I love you back,’ I whispered.
So, so much.
And I had no doubt I always would.
Until death do us part.