Anna stood in front of the long mirror. She rarely wore dresses and – even though Tansy and Isadora had been with her to help her choose it and gone into raptures as soon as she’d tried it on – she felt oddly naked and vulnerable, under the antique, rose-coloured silk. Her hand went up to touch the perfect blush rose, which Tansy had carefully fastened in her hair. Lottie would have approved of her strapless, bias-cut dress, and she’d have loved the rose. Lottie was always putting flowers in her hair. Anna had a sudden vivid memory of helping her dad lift her soundly sleeping little sister into her bed, still wearing her wilting, daisy crown.
Downstairs in her kitchen, the caterers were chatting quietly to Anjali. Anna could hear Edie’s imperious little voice insisting, ‘Mama, mama!’ A soft buzz of talk came floating in from her garden and the first thrilling sounds of the string quartet tuning up.
Her home was a bustling hive of activity, yet this room felt perfectly still, as if it was holding its breath, as if, for just this moment, Anna stood in her own oasis of peace.
‘You look lovely!’ Tansy came in, did a graceful twirl, then said anxiously, ‘Will I do?’
Anna had already seen Tansy’s midi-length dress by Ghost, in what was described as Boudoir Pink, but seeing her now, poised and slender as a dancer, she caught her breath.
‘You look so perfect,’ Anna said, when she felt able to speak, ‘that it makes me want to cry!’
‘Don’t you dare!’ Tansy said sternly, ‘or we’ll have to redo your makeup!’ She fanned herself with her hand. ‘Gosh, I’m nervous! Are you nervous? I don’t know why I should be nervous, it’s not my big day! What’s that saying? Twice a bridesmaid never a bride? Three times a bridesmaid? And breathe, Tansy!’ she added laughing.
There was a discreet knock at the bedroom door.
‘Are you girls decent?’ Anna’s grandfather asked.
‘Yes, don’t worry, Grandpa, it’s quite safe to come in!’
‘Doesn’t Anna look breath-taking!’ Tansy said at once.
‘You both look exquisite, like two Botticelli nymphs,’ he said a little shyly. He held up his tie, dangling loosely from his hand. ‘I was wondering, could one of you help me with this? I seem to have lost the knack!’
‘Let me,’ Tansy said at once. ‘You look wonderful in your suit, Mr Ottaway.’
‘Thank you,’ he told her. ‘And your young man scrubs up well,’ he added to Anna.
‘You’ve seen Jake in his new suit?’ Anna had only seen it on the hanger.
‘Yes, I told him he looks very nearly as handsome as me.’ Her grandfather gave her a mischievous grin.
‘Oh, my God! Look at the time!’ Tansy said in dismay. ‘I’m supposed to be keeping everyone on schedule.’
‘I’ll see you out there, darling,’ Anna’s grandfather told her.
Tansy and Anna hurried next door to Anna’s bedroom, where their friend had been closeted for the past twenty minutes.
‘Hope she hasn’t done a runner,’ Tansy hissed. ‘She was looking worryingly jittery earlier.’
‘I thought she might do a runner last night,’ Anna said.
‘You and me both!’
In the end, she and Tansy had sat up with their friend, making endless cups of tea and sharing their more scurrilous life stories until first light.
‘Keeping vigil,’ Isadora had commented with a nervous laugh. ‘Like the knights of old.’
Tansy knocked on the closed door and they went in without waiting for an answer.
Isadora had been looking out of the window. She swung around when she heard them come in.
‘I look ridiculous!’ She glared at them over her half-empty champagne glass. ‘Mutton dressed up as lamb!’ She plucked agitatedly at her intricately beaded, vintage dress, as if she intended to rip it off.
Anna gently turned her to face the mirror. ‘Look, Isadora. Just look at yourself. You are going to be the most beautiful bride ever.’
Isadora flung up her hand, warding off the sight of her own reflection. ‘I’m too old to be beautiful!’
‘You look stunningly beautiful, also dangerously minxy,’ Tansy told her.
Anna shot her an impressed look. Isadora couldn’t fail to identify with ‘dangerously minxy’. For a moment, Isadora seemed reassured then she let out a despairing wail.
‘I don’t even know why I’m letting you girls put me through such an archaic and demeaning ritual!’
‘I’ll tell you why, Isadora Salzman,’ Tansy said in a threatening voice. ‘It’s because you and Valentin sneaked off to the registry office without telling us! And me and Anna weren’t going to let you cheat us out of a proper wedding!’
Isadora collapsed on to Anna’s bed making Anna fear for the fragile little beads on her dress.
‘Everything just happened so fast! I finally let Valentin wear me down and agree to meet him in London for a drink for old time’s sake and, a fortnight later, we’re engaged.’
‘It doesn’t matter if it was a fortnight or forty-eight hours,’ Anna told her quietly. ‘This marriage was decades in the making. You always knew Valentin was the one.’
Isadora suddenly calmed down.
‘Yes, I did. You’re right. I just – I suppose I’m still in shock. I’d just accepted that I’d have to go through the rest of my life alone. I was happy, perfectly happy, with my little dog and my friends, writing my book. But then I saw Valentin waiting at Paddington station and I felt – I didn’t feel like a dizzy teenager again. It was more like …’
‘Coming home,’ Anna said softly.
Isadora’s expression was suddenly soft. ‘Yes. That’s exactly what it was like.’
Tansy clapped her hands. ‘Come on, you two! As the official maid of honour, I’m officially telling you guys it’s time to get this show on the road!’
‘You know, I’d heard of Bridezilla,’ Isadora said laughing. ‘But no-one warned me of her equally scary sister, Bridesmaidzilla!’
In Anna’s garden, Isadora’s bridegroom was waiting under a billowing, white canopy, the chuppah. Anna saw the woman rabbi – a friend of Isadora’s, who had agreed to perform the blessing – lay a reassuring hand on Valentin’s wrist, as though she feared that he too might decide to bolt. If possible, he looked more nervous than Isadora. But as the musicians began to play and he saw his old lover walking smilingly towards him, white gardenias woven into her hair, his face lit up with love and relief.
Anna had seen a faded photo of Isadora’s lost love several months before she’d met him in person. But this was an older, wiser Valentin: grizzled yet distinguished, funny, kind and every bit as complicated and passionate as his bride.
The air smelled of sun-warmed roses. Anna felt herself relax as Isadora and Valentin finally came face-to-face under the canopy, which she and Tansy had decorated with roses, delphiniums and gerberas from her garden. The simple ceremony began; the unfamiliar, Hebrew words seemed to pierce right through Anna, rhythmic and compelling as a song. Looking along the rows of guests, she picked out familiar faces: Isadora’s few close friends, her son Gabriel, his wife Nicky and her unofficial granddaughter, Sabina, who had Isadora’s little dog sitting, surprisingly docilely, on her knee.
Anna’s grandfather was seated between Tim and Anjali and Chris and Jane, holding fifteen-month old Edie on his knee. He whispered something to her and the little girl gazed at him, round-eyed. Anna had finally risked telling him about her mother’s affair with Tim’s father and discovered what she should perhaps have guessed; that he’d suspected all along that Anna was not Julian’s child.
‘Secrets are so stupid!’ she’d said. ‘And criminally time-wasting. Let’s promise we won’t have any more secrets between us ever!’
Liam caught her eye and winked. He’d left Thames Valley Police a few weeks after arresting Alice Jinks and recovering the stolen Vermeer. After the wedding, he and Tansy were going on holiday to Vietnam, after which they planned to spend several months working their way around the world.
‘We’ve got a lot of adventuring to fit in before we hit thirty,’ he’d told Anna.
Jake was sitting at the end of a row. He looked like some aloof, handsome stranger in his Hugo Boss morning suit, until he gave her his sweet here-and-gone again smile and she felt herself irresistibly smiling back. And there, sitting alertly at Jake’s feet, was the fairy-tale wolf, who had begun it all. In honour of Isadora’s wedding, Jake had given Bonnie a bath and her white coat was almost too dazzling in the sun.
Though Jake was in the process of setting up on his own, as a security consultant; he’d stayed in touch with the ex-soldier who had founded a charity to rescue dogs from war zones and hoped to eventually work for them part time. In a similar spirit, Anna had begun to work as a volunteer for Dominic and Ghislaine’s women’s refuge, until she finally figured out what she wanted to do. The important thing was that the three of them, Anna, Jake and Bonnie, were together.
The ceremony ended with the rabbi placing the ritual glass, in its blue, cloth wrapping, on the ground, so that Valentin could crush it dramatically under his heel, which he did with great enthusiasm and satisfyingly audible, splintering sounds.
There were cries of ‘Mazel tov!’ Everybody clapped and cheered.
‘May you both always be even happier than you are at this moment!’ someone called out.
‘Impossible!’ Isadora called back, laughing, as Valentin pulled her into his embrace.
They were quickly surrounded by their friends and, for a few moments, Anna could hear the couple being warmly congratulated in several different languages.
But then somehow, as if these were steps in a practiced dance, Anna, Isadora and Tansy found themselves holding each other’s hands as everyone else milled around them.
Isadora gazed into her friends’ faces with immense affection.
‘Thank you, my darling girls, for bullying me into keeping my nerve. This has been the best day, probably, of my whole life.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And, as you know, I’ve had quite a few best days!’
‘Does Valentin know about Mick Jagger?’ Tansy whispered.
‘Hush!’ Isadora gave one of her wicked hoots of laughter. ‘I’m a married woman now, remember!’
At that moment, Sabina released Hero, who came rushing towards Isadora, barking excitedly, then Bonnie too came bounding up, but for some reason both dogs stopped before they reached their owners and, it seemed to Anna, exchanged glances as if arriving at some mutual decision.
The three women watched as the, normally impeccably behaved, White Shepherd and Isadora’s famously grumpy, little, black dog, took off running, ears and tails flying, pink tongues lolling, racing in exuberant circles round the chuppah, between the chairs, to the bottom of the garden and back, and finally looping back around their humans in a mad figure of eight, like the physical embodiment of joy.