Sophy is there, wearing a patchwork skirt and a velvet bustier, and looks rather luminous and beautiful. Her Titian hair tumbles over her milk-white shoulders, and Henry Pike occasionally throws her a stormy look, which Biddy ignores. When I see Sophy, I remember with a slight sinking feeling that someone had warned me that she was to declaim a long poem in celebration of the nuptials. ‘It’s a census, a sound map of the Lar river, from the headwaters in the moors, to Larmouth,’ Sophy had said, as if she didn’t want to give away too much of some very special surprise, a rare treat that would enchant us all. ‘An epithalamium.’ And then, as if adding the cherry on to the cake, she said, ‘Although I did read the poem about the Dart river, of course, I wrote “Lar” myself.’

And Biddy is in Boden, or more precisely, Biddy is in the Hotchpotch Printed Skirt teamed with the Ruffle Silk-Trim Cardigan.

I’d never wear Boden, but Biddy in Boden is absolutely right.

Mimi

As the minutes tick by, and everyone has checked out each other’s outfits and hats quite enough already, we begin to wonder what on earth’s going on.

‘Mum, I’m hot,’ Posy whispers, as if I can turn down the temperature in the church if she complains. She is wearing a Young England tweed princess coat, a hand-me-down from Ceci’s extensive archive of designer children’s clothes but still the best thing my darling Posy has. I lay a comforting hand on Posy’s arm, reaching across Ralph.

And then someone scuttles importantly down the aisle to whisper in the ear of the Revd Wyldbore-Smith, whose beatific smile is becoming somewhat strained as the long minutes pass and the organist plays ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ from the beginning for the fourth time. He looks startled. Whispers and shuffling and craning of necks flutter through the congregation, which is feathered and primped and prinked as birds of paradise in Philip Treacy and Cozmo Jenks and Stephen Jones millinery.

At last Serena manifests at the back of the church. Everyone gasps, and turns.

And she does look, as all brides do on their wedding day, incandescently beautiful and supernaturally refulgent. Plus, there’s something glittering and twiggy twinkling in her hair, which causes a professional murmur of appreciation, as might be emitted by the editors of Vogue from the front row at a mould-breaking catwalk moment during Paris fashion week.