The church was crowded, with people milling around in the gardens and paths out front, people from other weddings as well as ours. We had hardly arrived when Mum and Dot rushed me inside to the rectory to wait where Roy couldn’t see me.

He was efficient, that pastor, though I suppose he had a lot of weddings to get through. So many young men in uniform getting married. So many brides in dresses borrowed or altered or scavenged. At exactly three o’clock I heard the organ start up the bridal march. Dad came in to escort me down the aisle. He had shaved off his moustache for the day and looked older, greyer, but clear in the eyes too. He was saving himself for the reception. He didn’t look at me directly but he patted my arm as we began to walk.

‘I hope you’ll be happy, Sar.’

I wanted to ask him then what had made him unhappy in his marriage to Mum. Why he’d had to find someone else to make him feel alive. I wanted to ask what her name was, and where she came from, and what she said to make him laugh.

But I didn’t and I never would. We were in the church by then, walking behind Dot, and there were twenty or thirty people gathered, enough to fill the front few pews but not the entire church, and as we walked past them they turned with us, their faces following our passage like flowers following the sun. I saw Roy then, standing beside the pastor in his black dress uniform with brass buttons, white gloves, his hair combed severely. He smiled—I could see he was nervous by the way he showed his teeth. Dad kissed me on the cheek, and I took Roy’s arm. It was all so strange. I have no memory of what the pastor said to us; I only remember how fast he spoke and how my whole body felt light and not my own. Was it really me—Sarah—doing this? I longed suddenly to bury my face into the flank of a cow, to hear the sound of milk streaming into a bucket, to have Blackie’s warm muzzle in my lap. These past three years I had become unfamiliar to myself. I let Roy kiss me and pretended my tears were not for what I’d lost but for what I’d gained, and all of us were crying—all the women, at least: Dot and Mum, Aunt Joy and even Mrs Thompson.

Afterwards we stood on the steps of the church for a photograph, squinting into the sun.

‘That dress was worth every sixpence,’ Roy whispered in my ear. ‘You’re the prettiest bride here.’ I smiled. The flashbulb popped. My eyes watered.