She pushes the lid back on its cardboard hinge. She gasps.

Nestled on the bed of tissue paper is a bridal bouquet.

White roses. Threaded with trailing ivy.

Friendship, fidelity and love.

There are few people in the church. Muriel is already seated in the front pew and nods at Jack with something akin to gratitude as he walks up, his steps echoing on the worn stone flags. He clasps his hands before him, his heart pounding. He has no best man. The ring, unboxed, weighs heavy in his jacket pocket. He slips his hand inside to reassure himself, careful to leave it pushed into the corner fold. He clasps his hands before him once again.

The silence is stifling. They have only paid for the organist to play the wedding march, but perhaps out of sympathy – or plain discomfort – the organ wheezes into life and an intricate weave of notes fills the awkward emptiness. Jack glances behind him as footsteps announce the arrival of more guests. Gwen’s best friend Lucy slides into the pew behind Muriel accompanied, Jack presumes, by her parents. She looks at him with blatant curiosity and he wonders if Gwen has confided in her. A vague smile passes across her face as she looks away. Jack is painfully aware there is no one to fill the rows behind him.

Muriel swivels in her seat, then levers herself up and sidesteps from the pew. The click of her heels bounces off the arched ceiling above them and Jack cannot resist his curiosity to see what she is up to. Ted has slipped into the back row. Muriel grips the polished pew in front of him as she leans down to speak, and though Jack cannot hear what she is saying, it is clear Ted is being chastised. He rises and demurely follows her forward, running the rim of his trilby through his fingers. Muriel edges her way back into the front pew and Ted sits down beside her. He does not once look at Jack.

The organist comes to an abrupt halt. A side door bangs and the vicar glides across the tiles of the transept, his gowns rustling faintly as he takes his position before Jack. He smiles as he opens the bible in his hands. The organist hammers out the opening chords of Mendelssohn’s wedding march and on cue those seated stand. Jack’s heart begins to beat faster; his palms are clammy. Unsure whether to look round, he instead focuses on the majestic stained-glass window towering before him.