Effie had heard about Bertie for years but never met him. Lizzie’s bright, slightly fusty, but unwaveringly loyal cousin was the only other person who knew about what had happened at university. He had done as much for Lizzie over the holidays that summer as Effie had in the turbulent weeks that led up to it. Meeting him finally was like finding a missing bookend of a pair: together they had held up the bride before, and they could do so again.
She noticed the effect that fresh masculinity in the group had had on Ben. He seemed stirred by Bertie’s presence in a way that smacked of jealousy. Effie doubted her instincts at first, but then he shifted closer to her on the bench, laid a hand over hers on the tabletop, then draped an arm around her shoulders as though they were high school boyfriend and girlfriend. He was marking his territory, and the realization made Effie pathetically grateful. The attention made her feel more alive than she had since James had left.
Not that Ben had anything to worry about: Bertie was dressed much like Effie’s dad did on holidays. Chinos!
Effie reached one hand up to her hair, wiry and straggling where she had dragged it into a ponytail without washing it that morning, and from there traced the dry skin of her nose, the flakes of last night’s makeup still on her cheeks. Of course Bertie seemed sympathetic: she looked like a vagrant.
“I should shower,” she said, to nobody in particular.
“We all should,” Anna replied. “We’ll feel a bit more human after that. Then we can figure out what to do with all this…stuff.” She gestured around the hall at the trestles and stacked flatware.
“Before we do, has anybody seen the rings?” Lizzie’s voice piped urgently. “Only they cost an absolute bomb. They were on the”—here, she swallowed thickly and grimaced—“altar yesterday, right? I really need that refund.”
“They were,” Effie said. “I saw them there. But not this morning.”
“I’m sure they’ll turn up,” Anna said quickly, reassuringly. “They have to be in the house somewhere.”
“Well, look, I can help with all that,” Bertie offered. “Fresh pair of eyes and all that. Fresher than some.” He met Charlie’s bloodshot gaze and took in his burgeoning five o’clock shadow. “But I’ll need some food first. Is there anything here, or do we need to go to the shops?”
The prospect of facing the platters once more was too much for Iso, who groaned and heaved her light frame from the bench, then skipped through the doorway behind the table, into the utility room and lavatory behind it—from where the delicate sounds of the wedding breakfast’s third reappearance echoed through to them.
Bertie directed a mock grimace in Effie’s direction; she sensed again in him a kindness and human interest her life had been sorely lacking. Ben had brought the heat back into her life, but Bertie reminded her of the importance of warmth. They were different things, she realized with a start.
Given the tremulous state she had woken up in, and the blur and rising dread of what she might have done the previous night, Effie needed another friend—a friend less mired in their own problems—almost as much as she felt a pressing urgency to be away from the house and the various men she’d arrived with.
Lizzie shook her head in answer to Bertie’s question. “No proper food here,” she muttered. “If only the hog roast had turned up. Though I suppose we should be grateful that it didn’t—one less thing to try and get rid of.”
“And we’ll need more than party bits to see us through the week,” Effie conceded. “Le supermarché it is.”
“You’re a saint,” Ben said before she could suggest that he accompany them. “I can’t face it, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you don’t need me tagging along.”
It wasn’t quite the perfect boyfriend reaction she had hoped for, but she smiled the niggle away; as intoxicating an effect as he had on her, Effie needed some space.
“Come on,” she said to Bertie. “I’ll drive.”
—
Effie worried, as she stepped out into the sunshine on foal-like legs, that the offer to shop had been an act of hubris she wouldn’t actually be able to carry out. That the alcohol still coursing round her body would bring her out in a cold sweat, persuade the digestive juices back into her mouth once more, and frustrate her goal of getting out of the beautiful holiday home that had begun to feel a bit like a tomb.
The warm, golden air slapped her like a heavy-duty duvet being thrown over her head, cozy but stifling, and she was glad when the car’s efficient air-conditioning kicked in to temper it. Effie found that the act of driving—something she hated and habitually avoided wherever possible—distracted her from the tides of nausea deep within and the ebb and flow of remorse crashing away on top. As they left the château and the bars of reception ticked up on her phone screen, she wondered briefly whether James might have been in touch again.
“So,” Bertie said, stretching his khaki-clad legs out in front of him once Effie had found her way off the tracks and winding narrow lanes near the house to what constituted the closest main road into the neighboring town. “Heavy night, was it?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she replied neatly, nudging the car up a gear as the road flattened out in front of them. She had so far avoided mentioning to anybody where she had woken up, or the suggestion that—for some of the night, at least—there had been somebody lying beside her.
It wasn’t just Charlie’s request to her in the kitchen that had persuaded her not to air the general outline of what she suspected had taken place between them; it was the disappointed, judgmental look she knew she’d receive from Anna if she did. Anna, who couldn’t remember what being single felt like. Who had forgotten how
