They tumbled out, Leesa smiling blindingly at Rob as she stepped into his arms and the bubble of happiness they shared. Tears pricked Hannah’s eyes. She was never sure about big weddings because of the costs but she suddenly understood Leesa and Rob wanting to invite half the world to witness the pledging of their lives to one another. It arose from pure joy.

Cool, blonde Amanda Louise brushed kisses on cheeks and said to the gathering at large, ‘I’m worried sick something will go wrong.’

Hannah masked her irritation with a grin. ‘You only have to get dressed and turn up, don’t you? Leesa and Jemima have planned everything else.’ Then the celebrants arrived for the rehearsal, two well-upholstered ladies in a well-upholstered car, and the events manager came to guide everybody inside Port Manor Hotel, a restored manor house with all the pomp and glory that implied. Hannah offered her arm to Nan to negotiate the steps up to the baronial polished wood doors. The party quietened as they formed a procession across the marble floor beneath crystal chandeliers, Rob and Leesa walking hand in hand at the head.

Hannah was very, very glad to be part of this wedding.

Friday passed in a blur of checking things that had been checked ten times already and welcoming family. Some were staying at Port Manor Hotel, others with Mo and Jeremy in Middledip. Rob was occupying his childhood room in time-honoured before-the-wedding tradition so Hannah was happy to bunk in Nan’s narrow cottage in Rotten Row, a terrace of cottages edging one side of the three-legged junction named The Cross, hat-like dormer windows snuggled into tiled roofs.

‘It’s great to be back!’ Hannah kept declaring, and was happy to be asked to run errands because it gave her an excuse to tour the village. When sent to buy extra pins because Mo was sure the florist wouldn’t bring enough for the buttonhole flowers she took a long way round to the shop, Booze & News, marking off the familiar landmarks: Angel Café, the school, the playing fields and village hall, The Three Fishes pub – already lit up for Christmas and a sleigh and reindeer galloping over the roof. The red-brick terraces and stone cottages were comfortingly familiar with garden walls and picket fences. Roadside trees had shaken off their leaves as if to make room for the Christmas lights that would soon appear.

At the shop, she listened to Melanie behind the counter earning her nickname of Village Updates. When she finally got away, she collected Nan and they ambled arm in arm to Mo and Jeremy’s detached pebbledash house up Main Road, opposite the Bankside Estate, for the gathering of the clan.

By evening the house was bursting with friends and relatives scoffing Mo’s sandwiches and Jeremy’s home-brewed beer. Hannah caught up with aunties, uncles, cousins and friends and everyone talked endlessly about the wedding.