Dave decides he will write a proper reply, a decent one, in which he will wish her well and tell her that he is all right, too, he really is—but he will need to think carefully before he does this. He is afraid that a stupid comment or question might upset the happiness that she seems to have found, even though she still sounds a little desperate. He will have to think a bit about what to say, and when he does think of it, he will write. But part of him suspects that in the end he will leave it too long and the moment will have passed and he will not write after all.

In the meantime, he marries Mayling in a small chapel in the Lake District. Afterwards they have a modest reception in the village hall. Scottish salmon and Cava champagne is served to their sixty guests, which consists of twenty-one people on Dave’s side and thirty-nine on Mayling’s, including her parents, who’ve flown in from the States and comment on how small everything is. There is dancing (Sade, Prince, Al Green, Barry White…) and a brief, humorous speech by Nathan, his best man. Five days later they have a banquet in Hong Kong. Four hundred and fifty guests pull up at round tables in the Marriott Hotel ballroom; each table has a different floral centerpiece and is named accordingly on the seating plan (Baby’s Breath, Daisy, Rose…). The guests drink Moet champagne and work through an eighteen-course dinner. Mayling and Dave visit each table and toast the guests, who toast them back and force them to drink tumblers of XO brandy (Mayling does Dave’s share of the drinking). Dave and Mayling give short, carefully rehearsed speeches from the stage, in which they thank God and everyone they know.

There are games. In one game, Dave and Mayling have to roll an orange back and forth between themselves three times without using their hands. In another game, Mayling ties a napkin around her eyes for a blindfold. Four male guests are invited up to the stage and stand in a line with Dave. In this game, the bride is led to each male guest, who kisses her on the cheek. Afterwards she must try to guess which of the five males is her husband. The first in line is a plump man in his fifties whom Dave recognizes as a distant uncle. As Mayling offers her cheek, Dave imagines the future children he will have with her: a boy and a girl, he decides, both of them absurdly bright and good-looking. He imagines family walks in the country, Mayling telling them about different trees and birds and flowers. It will be unbearably happy.