“We went on a girly holiday just after we left college,” I say to her. “Nina and I arranged it and Camilla decided that she wanted to be a part of it, too. My boyfriend joined us near the end and Camilla stole him.”

Camilla looks mortified.

Good.

We are interrupted by the waiter placing down our main courses. I chose risotto, but regret it the moment the steam wafts my face. I look over at Camilla’s salad and wish I could swap.

“You can’t steal someone,” Camilla says. “Besides, Charlie wasn’t yours.”

“Charlie?” Tamsin says.

“Yes,” I say.

“Wasn’t he the guy Nina told me died on holiday?”

Buried emotions threaten to choke me. Charlie was easily led, but he could also be a gentle soul, so alive, and that made his horrible death so much harder to stomach.

Twenty

Our wedding night is as subdued as the end of the meal turned out to be. I did a brilliant job of acting fine, but the paranoid part of my brain wonders if Tamsin and Camilla planned to dampen the mood somehow. I don’t like thinking about Charlie.

“It’s partly my fault Charlie died,” I say to Stuart when we’re back in the blessed privacy of home.

“In what way?”

“I should’ve tried harder to make things work between us.”

“You were young.”

“Yes, twenty.”

“Well, there you go.”

It’s easy for someone to tell you it’s not your fault, all very nice and well-meaning of them, but it doesn’t erase guilt. Nothing ever does.

“I’d rather talk about something a bit more cheerful,” says Stuart as he selects a bottle of wine.

He opens a drawer and takes out a corkscrew. He refuses to buy screw tops, as he refers to them, no matter what anyone tells him.

“Just one small glass?” he says to me.

“No, thanks. I don’t want to take even the slightest risk. I had a sip of champagne earlier.”

“Nina had the odd few sips here and there. Felix and Emily are fine.”

“I’m not Nina.”

“True, I’m sorry. You’re right.”

He puts the bottle down, unopened, and pulls me in for a hug.

I feel like I should say “I love you,” or he to me.

“Thank you,” I whisper instead, into his chest.

Weird as it is, I don’t know what else to say. And I genuinely feel like I should thank him because his characteristic compliancy has given me a baby, the thing I want the most.

Stuart pulls away first. Behind him, two bouquets of guilt flowers (presumably from people who made up flimsy excuses as to why they couldn’t join us, but still wish us well) lie on the side. Several wrapped gifts rest beside them. Some were handed to us today, others have been sent from Stuart’s family in Australia. For something to do, I grab a pair of scissors and snip away at the cellophane covering the flowers. I stop. Their smell is cloying. I put them to one side.