She and Bella wore tea dresses in a delicate shade of rose pink, with pin-tuck fronts, sheer blouson sleeves and three-quarter-length pleated skirts. They had tortoiseshell combs in their hair, and ivory T-bar shoes that were perfect for dancing in later.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Miguel whispered in her ear, his words enough to partly fill the gaps of doubt inside her with the dust of confidence. Her heart felt like it rattled in her ribs as she fought to suppress the image of walking out of the cottage with her dad and her first sight of the cart in all its floral glory. It had been . . . perfect. And her girls waiting to escort her to the church, the photographer clicking away and her gran about as proud as she could be . . .

She hated that tears now gathered at the back of her throat; it was way too early in the day to give in to tears. This was the first taster of her sister’s wedding day and Merrin knew she was going to have to fight hard to keep her high emotions tamped down. Her plan was to think only about the moment, nothing further ahead, and to remember that this time yesterday felt only a blink away, as it would this time tomorrow . . . She was grateful that her trembling hand sat inside Miguel’s.

Her dad and Robin were in smart, navy pinstripe suits with large pink carnations on their lapels. She thought they looked like Port Charles’s answer to Al Capone, but kept this to herself. Jarvis’s dad stood awkwardly on the periphery, smoking, as if not quite sure of his place. Merrin watched him taking in the view and wondered if he mourned it as much as she did. For this alone she felt a pang of empathy for the man. Nancy Cardy looked so happy, beaming in her finery, her arms linked with her sister’s. It was lovely for the Kellows and the Cardys, as the two were officially becoming family. She couldn’t help but think briefly of Digby’s mother, who had kept her and her loved ones at such a distance, which hadn’t made any sense to her, until it did.

Encountering the woman in the village shop had unnerved her. How Merrin wished she’d had the guts to stand up to her directly, to question her meanness and the calculated way she had gone about destroying a young couple. She cursed the naivety with which she had waltzed into the whole affair. It sat like a thorn in her shoe, a noise in her brain, the legacy of which she still hadn’t fully processed, even after all this time.

Her thoughts were interrupted when, without fanfare, Ruby appeared at the doorway of the cottage with her mum fussing over her short veil.