Jim walks his daughter up the aisle with more speed than is perhaps customary, as if eager to get her off his hands. He reaches the front too soon and is forced to wait while the organist catches up. Jack is alert to Gwen’s presence. His whole body seems to tingle and finally he permits his eyes to skim across his bride’s face. Sensing his scrutiny, she meets his gaze. Her nervous smile fails to brighten her features.

The organist concludes with a triumphant chord and the vicar begins to speak.

Jack takes a deep breath and prepares to play his part.

Muriel has laid on a simple buffet of sandwiches and cake at the farm, for the vicar and the handful of guests. The atmosphere is strained, the celebration muted. Perhaps there is an underlying suspicion the wedding is a sham, or perhaps it is the talk of war, discussed discreetly in corners by those not wishing to bring doom and gloom to a supposedly happy day.

Jack catches Gwen’s eye across the room and offers her a smile. He is bolstered by her response: the shy lowering of her eyes, the hint of colour in her cheeks before her gaze lifts to his once more.

When the first of the guests leave, Jim takes him aside for a quiet word. ‘I’ve booked you a room at a hotel in Helvedon. People would have talked otherwise. I don’t know how you’ll manage it.’ He is unable to hide his embarrassment.

‘We’ll manage,’ Jack says. He catches sight of Gwen in the far corner talking to her friend, Lucy. She still carries her bouquet and, as Lucy appears to comment, she lifts it to savour its scent. Jack fights to maintain his impassive expression.

Later, when all of the guests have finally departed, they travel by bus to Helvedon, their things packed into the small suitcase at Jack’s feet. It had felt peculiar, to place his clothes upon Gwen’s – strangely intimate.

The hotel is a red brick establishment in the centre of the high street, an old coaching inn, Jack guesses. The names Mr and Mrs Ellison lodge in his throat as he stands at the reception desk, and the woman behind it regards them suspiciously until Gwen pipes up that they are newlyweds and flashes her thin gold band. The woman’s manner brightens at once. She laughs about a day of change and regales them with stories of her own wedding day thirty years previously, as she leads them up the rickety staircase to their room, reflecting on how quickly the time has passed.