‘Here, I’ll zip you up. My brother should have been here. He’d have been my best man. That’s something I’ll have to fix a bit later. Couldn’t get to it in time for the wedding. Not the right time to feel sorry for ourselves though, is it? This is the first day of us spending the rest of our lives together.’

His clothing was a perfect match for her dress in terms of age and state. The sleeves of his jacket ended inches up his arms, but the rest was far too bulky for his frame. The blue-and-green kilt hung off him, no socks, and too high over the knee. It had been made for someone short and round, whereas he might not have eaten for months, every bone digging at his skin from the inside. He had to be dying. The thought warmed her.

Moving to face her, he took hold of both of her hands. Elspeth swayed slightly. On a different day, at a different venue, that sway had been taken as a sign of delirious happiness. She’d been a bride overcome by the emotion of the moment, the watching crowds and the promise of a lifetime of love and devotion. Her parents had clutched one another joyfully, so certain of her choice of partner. A string quartet had played classical music, and her bridesmaids were her sister’s twin girls dressed in tea rose pink with daisies in their hair. Elspeth imagined her husband’s face and wondered if she would ever touch it again.

The man opposite her now coughed into her face with no thought for whether or not he should cover his mouth. Elspeth looked sideways at the bizarre painting on the wall and sang a song in her head. The words were a jumble in her mind, and she couldn’t remember all of them. Her mother had sung it to her as a girl, something about cambric shirts and a sickle of leather. There was a tune and she wanted to hum it, but now the man holding her hands was raising his head grandly and puffing out his chest, and oh sweet God, he began speaking as loudly as if they were in a cathedral with a thousand people watching their nuptials. Elspeth knew her mouth was hanging open as she stared, but there wasn’t a threat he could issue that could wipe the horror and incredulity from her face.

‘Is there any person here present who knows of any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined in holy matrimony?’

There was a pause. Elspeth had been alone with him in that room for what had seemed like forever, and still she felt the need to look around. There was no one. He was talking to absolutely no one. Still he paused, waiting the proper amount of time, in case of an interjection.