The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Silver Page 0,49

place we’ve chosen to hold our wedding, a rustic country inn with a converted barn. We’re standing on the threshold of that very barn right now. Pale winter sunlight streams in through the high windows, illuminating tiny dust motes in the air. My romantic heart sees glitter.

‘It’s dressed ready for a wedding tomorrow,’ Victoria says, referring to the thick red and gold garlands around the faded old rafters. ‘Winter theme, obviously. Next month it’ll be wall-to-wall Christmas weddings, but it’s best of all in the summer. We fill it with wild-flower arrangements and hundreds of white fairy lights, a real midsummer night’s dream.’

‘I love it,’ I breathe. I must have been here before in this life – I expect we’ll have looked at various venues before deciding on this as the perfect place for our wedding. I silently congratulate myself. I can’t imagine anywhere more us. ‘It honestly couldn’t be more perfect.’

Freddie squeezes my shoulders. ‘Is the ceremony itself in here too?’

‘Yes and no.’ Victoria strides off towards a door at the other end of the barn. ‘Your ceremony will take place in here.’

The smaller side room is built from pale-grey bricks that look as if they were hand hewn in days before machinery even existed. It’s been carefully restored to retain its tumbledown charm; straight away it reminds me of the chapel where Ross married Emily in Friends. Cast-iron candelabras hang from the lintels. They’re not lit today, but in my mind’s eye I can already see how spectacular it’s going to look, how it’s going to smell of trailing honeysuckle, how Freddie will wait for me right there at the front.

‘Still love it?’ Freddie says, squeezing my hand.

So much, I think. I turn to Victoria.

‘Would it be okay if we have a couple of minutes on our own?’

She puts her hands out to the sides. She knows perfectly well that I’m smitten. ‘It’s pretty special, isn’t it? Take as long as you need. I’ll be back in the bar when you’re ready.’

Freddie and I walk slowly along the aisle as the door clicks behind her.

‘Next time you walk down here you’ll be wearing your wedding dress,’ he says.

‘And you’ll be down there in your suit,’ I say. ‘Will you be nervous?’

He starts to laugh. ‘Er, no! Unless you’re getting cold feet and planning to leave me here on my Jack Jones?’

‘I promise I won’t,’ I say. I mean it more than he could ever realize, because I know all too well what it’s like to be the one left behind.

‘Will you be nervous?’ he asks.

I nod. ‘I’ll be nervous about a hundred things. Does my dress look okay? Will Elle try to tell Victoria how to do her job? Has Jonah forgotten the rings?’

We’ve reached the end of the aisle now, the place where countless other couples have stood and made their for-ever vows to each other.

‘Jonah won’t forget the rings, I won’t let him,’ he says. ‘And Elle will chill if she has a couple of glasses of champagne in the morning. She’ll be glad to be off-duty.’

He’s right, of course, they’re such minor worries in the grand scale of things. It’s so typical of him to not let all the small stuff worry him. He always insisted he’d take care of the honeymoon, but everything else was going to be my domain right from day one. And I never minded, as such, though it would have been nice for him to have at least faked an interest in wedding favours and table decorations. Dawn and I used to send each other links to things we spotted online, wedding readings and the like. There’s something about wedding planning that is just so pleasurably consuming; it’s joyful and full of hope, a state of delicious limbo. I wish I’d been able to experience it here – there’s so much about our upcoming wedding that I’ve no clue about. It’s strange thinking about Dawn’s wedding now, remembering that poignant last dance with Jonah as I stand here like this with Freddie.

He reels me in against him. ‘You’re going to be the most beautiful girl in the world in your wedding dress. I’d marry you right here, right now, in jeans, Lydia Bird. Except I’m not wearing my lucky pants.’

‘You’re an idiot,’ I laugh, not least because he doesn’t have any lucky pants.

‘Your idiot,’ he says.

‘Too right,’ I say, standing on my tiptoes to kiss him. My nose is cold, but every other piece of me is warm. Freddie’s hands