Evelyn reached the building and skipped up the steps. It was a challenge, being at a wedding without a plus one, but she was pretty sure she could pull it off. She just had to smile and look confident, and wasn’t that just what she had been born to do?
She followed the signs through the building until she found the right place. Guests in hats with flowers attached to their outfits mingled with others in bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes, making it clear which were friends of the parents and which of the bride and groom. Evelyn decided that her dress placed her in the no man’s land between the two, which was no bad place to be.
A minute or two later the doors opened and the guests filed into the official room. As a friend of the bride, Evelyn made her way to a chair on the left-hand side of the room and chose a seat about ten rows back. The dark wooden panelling was imposing and, she was prepared to concede, added a certain solemnity to the proceedings, but it wasn’t a patch on a church. Jim was standing at the front with a man Evelyn thought she recognised from a night out with Brenda. He was shuffling from one foot to another as if the floor were hot, and kept turning around to peer at the door.
The conversation around her began to drop and then hushed completely. Brenda must have arrived. Evelyn spun in her seat to try and get a glimpse of her. As she did so, a man in a brown pinstripe suit sneaked into her row and took the seat next to her.
He grinned wildly. ‘That was close,’ he whispered, one eyebrow raised. His eyes were a warm toffee colour that seemed to match his hair exactly, as if the same paintbrush had tinted them both.
‘Talk about cutting it fine,’ Evelyn whispered back. ‘Any later and you’d have been following her down the aisle, or whatever it’s called here.’
She smiled at him to show that she wasn’t being critical, and then turned her attention back to Brenda. She could see her now, waiting by the door with a round man who had what was left of his mousey hair combed over the top of his pate. He must be Brenda’s father, Evelyn decided, although she couldn’t see any family resemblance. He nodded to Brenda reassuringly and she nodded back, and then they set off towards Jim. The pulsing rhythm of Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel （Mighty Real）’ filled the room, and half the guests jumped visibly whilst the rest looked at one another and grinned. Evelyn wasn’t sure what she thought. It made a change from Mendelsohn, but she could sense a general feeling of disquiet in those around her.
‘Brave choice,’ whispered the man with the toffee-coloured eyes. ‘I like it.’
Evelyn smiled and nodded back. She wished he would stop talking to her. It wasn’t appropriate, but she was too polite to just ignore him.
Brenda looked lovely, dressed in a halter-neck jumpsuit in a delicate primrose yellow. Again, it lacked that weddingy feel that Evelyn might have preferred, but Brenda, whose smile was enough to light up the room on its own, was clearly delighted. Evelyn was thrilled for her. Jim looked as if all his Christmases had come at once as he watched his bride make her procession towards him, a bounce in her step as if she were actually crossing a dance floor. The man next to her was tapping along to the song with his feet, a hand beating out the offbeat on his brown stripy trouser leg. The wedding was starting to have a positive party vibe about it and Evelyn could see that the registrar looked anxious, as if the ceremony was running out of his control.
After Brenda finally reached Jim, the tape was turned off, and the older guests visibly relaxed as the service then followed more traditional lines until the final vows were taken and the deed was done. Evelyn stood and applauded the happy couple as they made their way out of the room. The man next to her pushed his fingers between his lips and gave an ear-splitting wolf whistle that almost deafened her. Automatically she put her hands to her ears to protect them.
‘Sorry. Bit loud,’ he said with a sheepish grin. ‘Name’s Ted, by the way. Ted Bannister.’
He held a slightly grubby hand out for her to shake. Evelyn took it, hoping that her reluctance wasn’t written all over her face.
‘Evelyn Mountcastle,’ she said.
‘Are you going to the bash at the pub?’ he asked her.
She nodded and he looked around with extravagant enthusiasm, his head turning comically from left to right.
‘No Mr Mountcastle?’ he asked. ‘No beau waiting to take your arm?’
He had what Evelyn considered to be a real London accent, all ‘born within the sound of Bow Bells’-ish.
She shook her head. ‘No. Just me, I’m afraid,’ she said in her best RP. She had managed to lose her East Anglian burr and was now proud to be unplaceable, by her voice at least.