him. “Mate, he’s the groom, judging by his suit.”
He looks startled. “You’re marrying him? I thought you were getting hitched to Asa.”
“Getting hitched?” I snipe. “Have you gone back in time to the seventies and forgot to tell anyone?”
“Ahem.” Asa clears his throat. “Sorry as I am to interrupt this conversation, could we please get to the more serious matter?” He looks at Dean. “Where are the rings?”
Dean nods and points his finger at Asa in a kapow sort of fashion. “I’ve got them, mate. Got them safe.”
Silence falls, and Asa finally stirs. “Got them where?”
“It’s funny how inarticulate you are when you’re talking through gritted teeth,” I say cheerfully.
“Yes.” Dylan leans into me. “He must have been doing that when he spoke to me.”
“Dean,” Asa barks. “Where are the bloody rings?”
Dean jumps as if he’s been cattle prodded. “I’ve got them right here, mate.”
“Where?” Asa asks urgently.
Dean pats his pocket confidently. Then he pats the other side slightly less confidently. Then he starts to pat all his pockets in a somewhat frenzied fashion.
“Oh my God,” Asa sighs.
“I had them,” Dean hisses.
“Oh my fucking lord, you’ve lost my wedding rings.” Asa sounds slightly higher in tone than Aled Jones at his best. “How can we get married without rings?”
I notice Gabe detach himself from the group, but I turn back when Dean strips his jacket off, throwing the Paul Smith jacket on the ground quite cavalierly after rifling through the pockets.
Ivo crouches and starts to photograph him, kneeling on the steps and grinning. “This is fucking epic,” he says happily. “The Sun would pay me thousands for these photos. Male model strips on registry office steps to prevent former lover from marrying his brother.”
“Oh, Ivo,” Henry sighs. “Your suit trousers are going to be so creased.”
“Ivo’s composing a tell-all story, Dean’s lost my wedding rings, and you’re concerned about the knees on your fiancé’s suit?” Asa asks disbelievingly.
“Well, it is Armani,” Henry says primly. “We are not chimney sweeps, Asa, no matter what your hairstyle is appearing to suggest at the moment, so there’s no need to dress like one.”
Dean starts to unbutton his shirt, much to my mother’s amusement.
“What are you doing now?” Asa hisses.
“They’re somewhere on me, man, I know it. I just need some time.”
“What for? To do a rectal exam? We haven’t got time. We need the rings.”
“Will these do?” Gabe’s urbane voice comes from behind me, and we turn as a group to gape at the items in his hand.
“Babe,” Dylan says in an awed voice. “I’d have married you sooner if I’d known you possessed this level of elegance and taste.”
I blink at the rings in his hand. They’re plastic. One is bright yellow with a huge sunflower on it. Another is pink with a slightly scary-looking butterfly on it, and the third is a Mike the Knight ring.
“That’s for Billy,” Gabe mutters. “So don’t get too attached.”
“Alack and alas,” I whisper. “Where did you get these things from?”
“Well, unfortunately, Tiffany’s hasn’t set up shop outside Chelsea Registry Office yet,” Gabe says somewhat snippily. “So I had to work with what we had. Which was the corner shop.”
“Did you win them on a grabber machine?” Dylan asks, looking rather excited. “Can we go back when we get out of the wedding?”
“Of course I didn’t win them,” Gabe says in an offended tone. “I paid the shopkeeper two hundred pounds to open the back of the machine.”
“I love you,” Dylan says very seriously.
Gabe’s lips tick up at the corner. “I am pretty epic.”
Asa looks rather helplessly at me, and I start to laugh, watching his expression ease. “Bagsy the flower,” I say. “It’ll remind me of when you took my flower, Asa. What a very special moment that was.”
Dylan scoffs. “What flower? You lost that so long ago if you’d pressed it between the pages of a book it’d have been full of hieroglyphics.” He catches my mum’s eye and looks shifty. “What a very silly analogy,” he says in an overly bright voice. “I am, of course, talking about when Jude took up collecting flowers. He was such a quiet and studious boy,” he finishes rather uncertainly and my mum’s mouth quirks.
“Shall we go in?” Asa asks as Dean takes off his shirt, still looking for my wedding ring. “Before my stepbrother is arrested for public indecency on my wedding day.”
We enter the registry office a few minutes later. People turn to look. We’re a noisy group at the best of times, and one