Effie’s keen sense of tragedy focused on the fact that they looked so at ease as a pair. She wondered whether Ben would carry her bag up the stairs for her later without her asking him to; currently he was taking in the view of the valley below them, and she was glad to see that he seemed as enchanted by the place as she was. Effie worried sometimes that he seemed more worldly than her, more used to the sort of luxury they were now surrounded by and therefore less easily impressed than she was.
Lizzie turned to greet Charlie and Iso where she stood, a few yards away from the doorway and still out of range to survey the scene inside the Hall.
“Not bad, huh?” She smiled, hamming up with a tragic expression the sadness Effie knew she was feeling, as Charlie reached her side and Iso stepped along neatly behind him. The younger woman had one hand securing a knowingly picture-perfect straw sun hat atop her dark waves as she turned to look at the vista, and the valley, behind her.
“You can say that again.” Charlie set down the bags and put a friendly arm around Lizzie. “Have you fought over who gets the best bedroom yet?”
“Not exactly,” Anna said. “You see, there’s been a—”
But as she spoke, Lizzie pivoted, walked over to a small window in the thick wall, framed by a pair of cornflower blue wooden shutters, and peered in. Effie and Anna saw her suddenly grow rigid and still as she took in the Hall. “No—”
The exclamation came quickly: a sharply exhaled breath, as though she were winded by the sight of what was inside. Of the decorations, the sparkle, the promised conviviality. Of the setup, a carefully stage-managed scene, waiting for a troupe of players to arrive. The cast had returned from their coffee breaks, but they had suddenly been assigned different roles. Now none of them knew their lines, nor where they were supposed to be standing at curtain up.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Lizzie cried as she crossed to where the others had gathered at the doors and jostled them aside. “How could this happen?”
She stood in the center of the archway, her shadow long across the cool flagstones she might have danced on.
Lizzie’s wedding breakfast had been laid out in scrupulous, immaculate, tasteful—so tasteful—detail. The former bride was silent for a moment before the tears came, and when they did, they were the ugly, guttural sobs Effie knew so well. Yet when Effie stepped forward to offer some comfort, Lizzie shrugged her off. Her sadness was tinged with what looked like a sort of fury, her blindsided shock a wellspring of emotion.
“We canceled this!” she shrieked, sobbing even harder. As she lifted her hands to her face, as if to veil herself from the view, Effie noticed that Lizzie was still wearing her engagement ring. “We canceled all of it!”
She looked hard at Ben, and Effie shifted uneasily on her feet next to him with the thought that, between them—distracted by each other as they had been—they might have left some crucial element of the day un-revoked, un-refunded. Un-canceled.
Stemming tears and providing a soft cushion for spiky indignation was now as much a habit for Anna as arguing a case in court; she offered her embrace to Lizzie so instinctively that the tear-smudged woman accepted it before her temper could get the better of her.
“Go and get her stuff from the car, Steve,” Anna asked her husband softly, her earlier flintiness with him worn down by the damp emotion seeping into her cheesecloth blouse.
Charlie had the good grace to back off and take Iso with him, giving Lizzie the space to cry it out and calm down. Together the two of them wandered to the edge of the bank that led down to the pool.
Effie and Anna helped their friend inside. Sniffing now, and juddering softly with the hiccuping coughs of pain’s aftermath, Lizzie cast her eyes over the unwanted splendor as they passed through it on the way to the stone staircase that led to the bedrooms.
“I canceled this,” she whispered again, Effie and Anna on either side of her, as they wove through the choreography of a party as yet un-thrown.
The centuries-old stairs were worn smooth and bowed in the middle. In another life, Lizzie would have appeared at the top of them alongside Dan before dinner, one hand looped through his arm, a posy of meadow flowers in the other, wearing her ivory gown and a serene smile.
As salt from Lizzie’s cheeks dripped onto the treads as they climbed, Effie reflected that she did not have much advice to give. What had she learned in the past six months to keep the sadness at bay, other than to ensure that any wine bottle in the vicinity was as empty as she felt?
It gets easier? It doesn’t.
Time is the best healer? But the most bitter medicine.
You’ll meet someone else? But also, maybe not?
Effie wondered guiltily whether Ben would manage downstairs in her absence, then caught herself: he would be fine; he was a confident, well-mannered grown-up—the very opposite of James.
At the top of the stairs, the three women emerged into a long, terra-cotta-tiled corridor of bedrooms with whitewashed walls and small mullioned windows. Pushing at the first wooden door they came to, they were greeted by a scene worthy of a brochure: all soft white drapes and Carrara marble, complete with four-poster bed and a scattered welcoming of red rose petals across the pristine coverlet. Effie had unwittingly led them into the bridal suite, fully prepped for the happy couple’s first night as husband and wife.
“Oh Christ,” muttered Anna, and Lizzie breathed raggedly out, jaw set, her neck tense and veined, her body rigid, like that of an animal sensing the crosshairs trained on it. Anna redoubled the support around Lizzie’s waist and continued their progress along the hallway.
On the bride’s other side, Effie
