‘Has Serena put the bouquet down somewhere? Has she run off with another (frankly more suitable) man?’ I whisper out loud, brain racing, and as the long moments pass, I find I am crying again. I wipe eyes and nose on my sleeve, and am glad – for lots of reasons – when Ralph takes my warm, damp hand in his dry one.

‘You OK?’ he whispers.

‘Mmm,’ I whisper back. ‘Bit hot, though.’

‘It’s global warming,’ Ralph mutters, for the first time that day. He’s taken to saying this after anyone makes any remark about the temperature (either hot or cold), or the weather (wet or dry, or in any way unseasonal ‘for the time of year’).

‘Mum,’ Posy whispers, clawing at my arm in a sudden fit of anxiety, as if she’d suddenly remembered something.

‘Yes, darling?’ I answer.

‘What happens to dogs in global warming? Do dogs die?’

I don’t respond to this awful question. Ralph is looking at the straight back of Colin Watts, the groom, a sight that conveys the hangdog, surrendered appearance of all men in his position. Occasionally, Ralph mutters ‘lamb to the slaughter’ and ‘head in the noose’. Posy pulls at his sleeve and tells him to shush because we’re in Church, at which point Ralph starts humming, ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ under his breath instead, which I decide, after a moment’s thought, is not disloyal.

Pierre and Rose and Ceci are sitting a few rows in front of us. I feel a rush of affection for them. As I look at her, I find Rose perfect in every way – she’s beautiful, boho, talented, creative, with astonishing taste and a wonderful eye, and she can make an Easter garden or a Christmas wreath or assembles a gourmet picnic complete with sweet potato and goat’s cheese tortilla and marinated char-grilled fillet of beef in fresh herbs and homemade bread faster than it takes me to make a round of buttered toast and a shambles of my own kitchen. And Ceci, Ceci’s glorious too – a woodland creature with tumbling, copper curls – and spirited.

Pierre is deliberately dropping his order of service on the floor and picking it up again, and chewing Nicorette with a maddening clacking sound, which tells me that, though his ship may have come in, his main aim in life remains irritating his wife.

Rose

As the bells peal and the organist, Dotty Smallpiece, belts out ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’, everyone is filling the seats in church amid excited chatter and elevated expectation.