As she sat in the studio later, picking up pins and Polaroids, Amy mulled over the weekend. It must have been the hat, she thought.
Cecil Beaton, yes, the hat sealed it, a still from the Beaton hall of fame alongside wasp-waisted, arched-eyebrowed beauties of the past. Amy stood back from the mirror and felt pleased with today’s look. Her black trouser suit fell around the lean lines of her body; her shoes, a wild black-and-white animal print, and her new black hat, wide brimmed and striking, invited that finishing touch, two fresh white roses.
Her pride in her outfit would have been frowned upon by her growing coterie of those “for her own gooders”: those friends who seemed rather cross that at the age of twenty-four she was beginning to blossom. Her artistic flair lent her appearance, already fine and aristocratic, a flicker of eccentricity which was at once endearing and glamorous. Her friends, Amy felt, preferred her as the long-limbed teenager, bending her knees beneath her billowing skirt to conceal her height, laughing tomboyishly with the lads. Now, they thought, her ego was a little out of control, she was way too involved in the one-too-many novels she’d read, and saw life a little too rose-hued for their liking.
She picked up her handbag, fraying at the seams, and shot downstairs to the waiting minicab. Miranda had been a friend for many years, always very beautiful, with luxuriant black locks and lips of such curvature and plumpness that only a handful of mathematicians in the world could have solved the equation of their rare shape and symmetry. Today, Miranda was getting married to Josh, a fitting match for such a sublime young woman.
As Amy stood in the church, her hat obscuring her eyes but her berry mouth duly responding to the emotion of the ceremony—a spectral smile at the gentle fluffing of the lines and a worried retraction of her lips at the prospect of “till death us do part”—she was only vaguely aware of the attention she attracted. Only vaguely aware in the way that all women are constantly a bit alert to the impression they are creating, the ticktock of self-perception taking up a little corner of their brain. So that as they cry hysterically they dab desperately with a tissue, hunting down wayward smudges of mascara; when pursued by a wailing police car they glance discreetly into the rearview mirror in order to assume the correct aspect of gravitas. It comes of being brought up to worry first about the cleanliness of your knickers before giving a thought to the fact that the ambulancemen are rushing to gather your limbs up off the road.
After the terrifying soul-searching part of the ceremony was over, the sermon, which always dwelled on love and made every couple present reach for one another’s hand as a gesture of remembrance, guilt, or fear, the part which made one tremble at the magnitude of the vows and wonder at the sanity of the marital pair, Amy glanced around the church and some rows behind recognized a face from her seventeen-year-old past. Luke Harding. A few years ago her younger, lankier self had felt little shame in pleading for invitations to parties where he’d be. She’d sit as alluringly as possible on a sofa somewhere, subtly gesturing to him with her eyelashes or toes, or some such part of her anatomy, discreet enough for her brazenness to have careered over his head. By eleven o’clock Luke was usually ensconced in a nearby armchair with a stouter, more peroxide version of Amy, his wandering hands cruelly drawing her attention to her own comparative lack of voluptuousness. The evenings had always ended thus.
The fact that she was currently receiving significantly more attention from Luke than he was bestowing upon the All things bright and beautiful being mouthed by the congregation was satisfying but slightly bewildering. Amy looked behind her to check that she wasn’t being shadowed by a Sun-In-haired lovely. No. She had his absolute attention, so she turned round and licked her lips seductively? No, she concentrated hard on her song sheet and mimed “the Lord God made them aaalllll” more convincingly than even the maiden aunts.
Miranda’s father had just finished his recounting of his daughter’s adolescent peccadilloes (funny how all brides had at least one suitor with a motorbike and indulged a passion for black nail polish at some stage of their journey into womanhood—just as well Dad never knew the quarter of it), when Amy, lolling slightly back in her chair and cradling an icy flute of champagne against her burning cheek, felt a brush of warm air behind her left ear. Her facial muscles set rigid as a man’s voice whispered his invitation to skip the speeches in favor of a walk in the grounds. Her hand taken hold of, she had little choice but to follow.
Luke Harding, she could hear them now, well, that’s what everyone’s after at a wedding, isn’t it? Who could blame him, they would say. Apparently his live-in girlfriend was away, probably just missing her. But Amy didn’t care; all those diary entries, the time she rescued his Lucozade bottle from the bin and kept it for two terms, all was vindicated, she thought, just for the soft breath on her neck. But then she would think that, couldn’t see the wood for the trees, he wanted a shag, couldn’t she see that? they said.
They stood shaded by the imposing gray stone and ivy of the house, drinks in hand, resting against the trunk of an ancient plane tree. Amy could hear occasional bursts of laughter from the open windows of the house as the speeches continued. She could feel her face getting pinker by the second; champagne always did this to her. And there he was, blond, disheveled in black tie, and looking straight at her.
“You broke my heart when I was seventeen, Luke Harding.”
He laughed low, not displeased with the nineteen-year-old self which could have appealed to the heavenly creature who stood beside him.
“No, really.” Amy smiled wanly. A beauty from birth would not have felt the need for such candor.
Luke took her glass out of her hand and kissed her. Just like that. No messing. It was nice, she thought, a warm residue of champagne on their lips, light fingers resting on her bottom, the glass wavering precariously somewhere in between. But it was nothing to how it would feel later, when she played the little details back to herself, rewound the conversation and filled in the bits (champagne glass’s whereabouts, envious onlookers, etc.) she had missed due to her participation.
The odyssey through the swirling red carpets of the hotel corridors in search of Luke’s room left Amy breathless. Finally, the elusive room 101. Oh hell, thought Amy, a portent if ever there was one. She tried to object but toppled against the door frame instead. The keys rattled the door open and they fell in, giggling as one of the roses dropped off her hat. She bent down to pick it up and he grasped her bottom so firmly she gasped and stumbled forward into the hotel room. Hotel rooms were absolutely her favorite thing, the anonymity which spelled illicit encounters and the joy of pinching little guest soaps, this was the life. Amy dropped backward onto a bed of such chintzy proportions that for a blurry, tipsy moment she feared herself in her grandparents’ bedroom. Luke shed his shoes with purposeful thuds and clambered on his elbows to her side. They held one another’s gaze for a few hazy seconds and then continued where they’d left off. He tugged gently at the buttons of her jacket until he could feel the lace edges of her bra and then his hands disappeared beneath the linen in a frenzy of exploration. That old chestnut, Amy half thought. She felt an ancient flutter of terror as he reached for her breasts, the moment she expected the interloper to sit up and yell that he’d been conned, but that was then—now she was as well endowed as, if not better than, the next goddess, so she focused on the pleasant lurching of Luke and felt for his zip.