The Wedding Night is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Harriet Walker
Book club guide copyright © 2021 by Penguin Random House LLC
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Ballantine and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Random House Book Club and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Walker, Harriet, author.
Title: The wedding night: a novel / Harriet Walker.
Description: New York: Ballantine Books, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020046005 (print) | LCCN 2020046006 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984820020 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781984820013 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6123.A426 W43 2021 (print) | LCC PR6123.A426 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046005
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046006
Ebook ISBN 9781984820013
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Julianna Lee
Cover photograph: Getty Images/dancurko
ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Cast of Characters
The Week Before
Chapter 1: Effie
Chapter 2: Anna
A Week Later
Chapter 3: Effie
Chapter 4: Anna
Chapter 5: Effie
Chapter 6: Lizzie
Chapter 7: Anna
Chapter 8: Effie
Chapter 9: Anna
Chapter 10: Lizzie
The Morning After
Chapter 11: Effie
Chapter 12: Anna
Chapter 13: Effie
Chapter 14: Anna
Chapter 15: Effie
Chapter 16: Eighteen Months Earlier: Lizzie
Chapter 17: Effie
Chapter 18: Anna
Chapter 19: Effie
Chapter 20: Anna
Chapter 21: Eighteen Months Ago: Lizzie
Chapter 22: Effie
Two Days After
Chapter 23: Anna
Chapter 24: Effie
Chapter 25: Anna
Chapter 26: Six Months Earlier: Lizzie
Chapter 27: Effie
Chapter 28: Anna
Three Days After
Chapter 29: Effie
Chapter 30: Lizzie
Chapter 31: Anna
Chapter 32: The Wedding Night: Lizzie
Chapter 33: Effie
Chapter 34: Anna
Chapter 35: Effie
Chapter 36: Lizzie
Four Days After
Chapter 37: Effie
Chapter 38: The Wedding Night: Anna
Chapter 39: Six Months Earlier: Lizzie
Chapter 40: Effie
Chapter 41: Lizzie
Chapter 42: Effie
Chapter 43: Lizzie
Chapter 44: Effie
Chapter 45: Anna
Chapter 46: Lizzie
Chapter 47: Effie
Chapter 48: Lizzie
Chapter 49: Anna
Chapter 50: Effie
Chapter 51: Lizzie
Chapter 52: Anna
Chapter 53: Lizzie
Chapter 54: Effie
Chapter 55: Anna
Chapter 56: Effie
Chapter 57: Effie
Chapter 58: Anna
Chapter 59: Effie
Chapter 60: Anna
Chapter 61: Effie
Dedication
Acknowledgments
A Book Club Guide
By Harriet Walker
About the Author
At the still point of the turning world…there the dance is,
…Where past and future are gathered.
—T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”
Cast of Characters
The Bride, Lizzie
The Groom, Dan
Ben, Dan’s Best Man
The Bridal Party:
Effie and Anna, Lizzie’s Best Women
Steve
Charlie
Iso
Bertie
The Week Before
From: Lizzie & Dan <danandlizziegetmarried@gmail.com>
To: Effie Talbot, Anna & Steve Watson, Ben Holyoake, Charlie Bishop, <ajbr86@hotmail.com>
Subject: Some news
Hi guys,
There’s no easy way to say this, but the two of us have come to a decision that we think is best for us both.
We won’t be getting married next week. Or ever, in fact.
We’re so sorry, we know you all have your flights booked, but hopefully you can appreciate we haven’t taken this step lightly.
We’ll be in touch with you all soon. For now, we need a bit of space.
Love,
Lizzie and Dan
1. Effie
Effie read the email again and looked down at her fingertips on the computer keyboard in front of her. They were pale and chewed, nails as red-rimmed as her eyes.
Un-fucking-believable. She had been looking forward to that holiday for months.
When Lizzie—happy, carefree, in-love-with-love Lizzie, lit from within by the sort of glow that comes only from the joy of somebody having weighed you in the balance and decided that, yes, they would like to spend the rest of their existence by your side—had first mentioned her plan to get married abroad, Effie had made all the right impressed, positive noises.
In fact, she had never seen the point of marrying in another country neither of you were from when your own had more than enough venues and your guests all lived in it. Lizzie even came from the sort of commuter belt family for whom home is a village with a Norman church tucked away for the precise purpose of rendering its prodigal City-worker daughters Elizabeth Bennet for a day.
Supposing the couple didn’t fancy that option, there were plenty of municipal buildings near where they lived in London to choose from. Proud borough town halls built in civic red brick that would appear nice enough in the background of the photos as long as you positioned someone in front of the fire escape signs. Deliberately derelict warehouses and deconsecrated chapels gone just enough to rack and ruin to look good on Instagram but not to pose any real health and safety risks, beyond an enduring chill that storage heaters would never quite take the edge off. Wood-paneled rooms upstairs in pubs, where the groomsmen could nip down to catch the football highlights between the speeches.
Or conference suites in five-star hotels that rich tourists paid to stay in and Londoners only ever went to on somebody else’s money, full of regimented chairs with covers that slipped over them to guard against the worst of the stains. Were the covers, Effie wondered, lined with something waterproof? Otherwise, what was the point in providing two different layers of fabric for the inevitable nuptial spillages of red wine, gravy, and stomach acid to soak into?
Effie noted that nobody who got married abroad ever seemed to do it in a climate colder than their own. It was always in a château, a trullo, or a vineyard located in some hot-blooded country, in the hope that the terroir would imbue the pallid Celts who booked them with the same body and top notes—zest, even!—it did the grapes it nurtured.
No, when the time came, Effie had always presumed she would do what most people seemed to: book a registry office, where tidy men and women in bank manager suits presided over efficient, non-Latinate words exchanged between couples who filed in and out on the hour like cuckoos from a clock.
Of course, for this to be any sort of viable option, Effie needed somebody who was interested
