13

Evelyn loved a wedding. Weddings were just like a stage performance, with everyone knowing their role, their lines and their cues. Never having starred in one herself, Evelyn was happy to sit with the other extras, looking lovely and reacting as required as the main players acted out their parts at the front. It was, she felt, a lovely way to pass an afternoon.

This ceremony was taking place at Camden Register Office. Evelyn much preferred a church wedding and that was definitely what she would have chosen if she were getting married, but Brenda and Jim were only doing this to appease their parents, and so long white dresses and bloom-adorned pews were not on their wish list.

It was, at least, a bright March day. The perishing cold of winter was slowly being replaced by something less bone-numbing but Evelyn, taking no chances, was wearing a maxi dress. It was an old favourite – she didn’t have the budget for anything else just yet – but she didn’t think she had ever worn it with Brenda. It had felt a little tight when she’d struggled into it this morning, however. She would need to keep an eye on that. Everyone knew that the small screen added at least ten pounds.

Evelyn reached the building and skipped up the steps. It was a challenge, being at a wedding without a plus one, but she was pretty sure she could pull it off. She just had to smile and look confident, and wasn’t that just what she had been born to do?

She followed the signs through the building until she found the right place. Guests in hats with flowers attached to their outfits mingled with others in bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes, making it clear which were friends of the parents and which of the bride and groom. Evelyn decided that her dress placed her in the no man’s land between the two, which was no bad place to be.

A minute or two later the doors opened and the guests filed into the official room. As a friend of the bride, Evelyn made her way to a chair on the left-hand side of the room and chose a seat about ten rows back. The dark wooden panelling was imposing and, she was prepared to concede, added a certain solemnity to the proceedings, but it wasn’t a patch on a church. Jim was standing at the front with a man Evelyn thought she recognised from a night out with Brenda. He was shuffling from one foot to another as if the floor were hot, and kept turning around to peer at the door.

The conversation around her began to drop and then hushed completely. Brenda must have arrived. Evelyn spun in her seat to try and get a glimpse of her. As she did so, a man in a brown pinstripe suit sneaked into her row and took the seat next to her.

He grinned wildly. ‘That was close,’ he whispered, one eyebrow raised. His eyes were a warm toffee colour that seemed to match his hair exactly, as if the same paintbrush had tinted them both.