She was just adding a few more spiral curls to her Cher wig when the phone rang. The number wasn’t one she recognized – but that wasn’t surprising. It was probably a new club wanting to book her. She answered the call in her best, smooth and silky, Cher sound-alike voice. ‘Hi, honey pie! What’s up?’

‘Lana?’

There was a hint of familiarity in the way the caller said her name, but she couldn’t quite place it. She cleared her throat and tried talking normally.

‘Yes, speaking?’

There was a moment’s silence, then, ‘It’s Judith. Metcalf.’

Fuck!

‘Oh. Hi.’

A beat, then, ‘Look, I’m sorry to call you like this out of the blue, and I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate, but I am. I need a big, big favour.’

60

Patricia

The setting was certainly not romantic. Nor majestic nor impressive on any level. Had it been in a town hall, the location would at least have offered some grandeur and solemnity – a few stone pillars on which to tie a ribbon, a bit of 1930s wood panelling maybe, or a stained-glass window here and there. But there was no town hall in Coed Celyn. Its unremarkable register office was housed in a bland brick municipal building, designed and constructed during a particularly unimaginative period at the end of the 1960s. It had absolutely nothing going for it other than the fact that it was clean and boasted good wheelchair access. In every other regard it was not only ugly but falling apart – the walls were actually crumbling in places. It should really have been put out of its misery several decades earlier.

The smallest of two purpose-built ceremony rooms had been incongruously named the Richard Burton Suite. This had been done in a jocular attempt to capitalize on the town’s tenuous link with the movie world: the English translation of Coed Celyn was, after all, Holly Wood. The room was functional, sparse and distinctly lacking in personality. Stark neon ceiling strips ensured participants could see clearly when it came to signing the register, but the modest high windows offered little in the way of natural daylight or a pretty vista to accompany the joy of getting married. It was more akin to a mortuary viewing room than a wedding venue. A desk, a pen and five people: Steven the best man, Tina the maid of honour, Alison the registrar, and of course the happy couple.

Patricia wore white and held a demure bouquet of lilies of the valley in her lap – fake, of course. She wouldn’t have real flowers: she couldn’t risk her sinuses. Not on a day like today. Adrian wore the corduroys she’d bought him and a smart navy jacket – no tie, but Patricia didn’t mind. She wanted him to be comfortable and he wasn’t a dresser-upper, as he often reminded her.

Admittedly, Patricia would have preferred a little chapel wedding, or even a trip to Vegas. She’d have paid! They could’ve got one of those Elvises to do the service – by God, they’d have had some fun with that! But Adrian had pointed out, gently of course, and sensibly as ever – because I only ever have your best interests at heart, Patricia – that the flight would’ve been too much for her. And even a chapel wedding down the road in Capel Bethesda would have attracted too much attention. You know what they’re like in Coed Celyn, Pat – gobby bitches, the lot of them. They just wouldn’t understand. And, of course, if Judith found out she’d have stuck her oar in too and scuppered the whole thing.