When a colleague asked me to her wedding, I’d scarcely settled into life at the publishing housescarcely over four months there. Lucy and I had taken to each other straightaway, right from my first bewildering Monday among coffee rings and thick proofs. I hadn’t yet met her intended. Still, I said yes. I was eager to show off my new dress, a gauzy thing the colour of late afternoon, and the idea of a party sounded surreal after weeks of routine. Lucy invited a knot of us from work, and together we idled outside before slipping, tardy and breathless, into the crimson-carpeted hall.
Over a hundred guests drifted like gentle ghosts among velvet chairs, the chandeliers sparkling like bewitched pearls above us. White roses curled along the table, which strained under pies, roast beef, and glazed hams. But none of this quite reached me. I was lifted out of myself by the oddest sensation: the moment I saw Lucys fiancéOliverI felt my soul leap and flutter. I was woolly-headed, warm-cheeked, my pulse an orchestra. Stranger still, in this uncanny haze, I could feel that he was as thunderstruck as I. I nibbled nothing, sipped only water. It was as if I was floating on the ceiling, watching another woman stumble through the motions of party cheer.
I left early, unable to stand the gentle torture much longer. That night, I drew the curtains, turned off the lights, and let myself smoulder in that feverish longing. The next evening, as I hurried out past the marble lion at our office entrance, he was there. Oliver, leaning against a silver Jaguar, the twilight curling around him like a film. His wife was away, Lucy had saidsomewhere by the coast with her sister, perhaps.
He didnt speak. He simply took my hand as if we’d been holding hands for years, and led me to his car. Without preamble or pretence, he kissed me, rain flickering on the windshield overhead. I didn’t have the willor perhaps the desireto resist. The boundaries of time blurred; we exchanged daft stories, laughter, silences, all chased with kisses. Eventually we tumbled back to mine, and the world shifted for both of us.
He promised me hed leave her and marry meand in that dreamlike logic, that was precisely what happened. He drove home, talked to Lucy (though what passed between them, Ill never know), then returned, a battered suitcase bumping behind him, to my door.
In the weeks that followed, we married quietly and, not long after, bought a little maisonette togethernot far from the river. I handed in my resignation immediately, though I can only imagine the curses that flew my way in the staff kitchen. Lucy had been the soul of the office for years, and I was little more than a shadow. Sympathy drifted to her, naturally. But I never learned how she fared; Oliver never spoke of her, and I never asked.
We agreed to start anewa blank page. Even now, three years later, contentment sits in our hallway like a well-fed tabby, purring softly. The old aunts and distant cousins muttered we’d never last, but each day is quietly miraculous. After all the strangeness and upheaval, I know now: happiness is something worth defending, even if you stumble into it, as if in a dream.
