They had bombed my hat shop. I’d left it until the last minute to collect my hat for the wedding. I arrived there later that morning, and found the entire interior gutted and black with soot. My little lemon pillbox with its equally lemony wisp of a veil, the prettiest thing I’d ever bought, was no more. I went home and found a cream felt cloche I’d bought in a hurry from Hannaux. It was the only thing in my wardrobe that went with my outfit. I felt like an off-duty nurse from the Queen Alexandra, and told Célia so. “But I’m ever mindful of my calling,” I added. “I will be taking your blood pressure hourly.”

She stood by the mirror in her wedding dress. It was a column of starch-white silk with a furled neckline. She might have been rising head and shoulders out of an arum lily.

—

Papa drove us to St. Mark’s. I sat in the back with Célia. All this waiting and now time was rolling up so smoothly, leading us to the church, through the doors, and up the aisle. There was Peter, solemn with joy, at the altar. Standing to one side, James. Dark, serious, wiry compared to Peter, not as tall. My father, crying rivers of tears, led Célia up the aisle.

The ceremony unfolded, the priest asked for the rings. James put his hand in his pocket and held out the two rings in a steady open palm, nothing showy, no theatrical proffering, and when Peter’s fingers fumbled the smaller ring, James’s other hand closed on Peter’s for a second, just a second, to stop the ring falling. I heard a brief English whispering in the happiness-charged sunlight, perhaps something like “Steady,” and a small quiet laugh, and Peter put the ring on Célia’s finger. There was no clumsiness with her, rather a satisfied ripple from the congregation as she plucked Peter’s ring deftly from James’s palm and claimed Peter in a trice. But I didn’t laugh or murmur with the others because the brotherliness of that gesture, of James’s hand on Peter’s, had moved me so much.

—

Peter and Célia were borne around the lounge at the Metropole, a bridal couple sucked into whirlpools of family and friends, and James and I were towed behind on the current. James looked at his watch: he had to go, he had a train to catch. “Please,” I said, “let’s say goodbye together, all of us,” so we managed to gather in relative space and solitude, Célia and Peter and James and me. We wished James bon voyage.

Célia was shining like a lighthouse, a very elegant lighthouse, showering love and joy.

“Oh, Célia,” I said, “I wish Alastair could see you!”

“Peter and I will bore him stiff with the photos,” she said. “Won’t we, Peter?”