it bob in the gutter.
'I hadn't seen Holly for years. Not since we left school. But it was me she came to, when Elise didn't come home. It was me she came to, because we were friends. I made her a promise. Do you understand that?'
'Of course. Of course I do.'
'I won't let you hurt her.'
'I don't intend to.'
'If you're not on the level, I'll fucking have you. I'll cut your cock off 'But it's the last thing in the world--'
'It had better be. Is what I'm saying.'
He said, 'Trust me. Come on.'
Back inside, nobody seemed to notice how long they'd been gone.
Nathan drank two glasses of wine in quick succession. He and Jacki avoided eye contact, like guilty lovers.
The friends around the table had known each other for many years; the anecdotes were polished smooth with use, the language full of private references and arcane in-jokes. Early attempts to include Nathan fell away with the drink -- everybody, Holly included, grew weary of explaining everything to him.
He barely noticed. But when the evening ended and the bill was paid and the coffees were drunk and everyone was gathering their coats and bags and calling taxis, Jacki made a show of hugging him.
She planted a kiss on his cheek and told him -- perhaps too stridently -- how pleased she was for both of them, that she wished them every happiness in the world. That nobody deserved it more than Holly.
He thanked her. She tottered downstairs, to her waiting taxi.
Nathan and Holly sat alone at the table. Holly looked flushed and happy. Nathan was drunk. Acid spit in his gut. Holly asked him for a cigarette, her first since their aborted date.
'Are you sure?'
She moved her hand like somebody winding up a poor comedian.
He passed her a cigarette.
He said, 'Are you okay?'
Deep dimples at the corners of her mouth.
'I'm happy.'
'Good,' he said. 'That's all that matters.' And it was true.
They married in September, at the small Norman church in Sutton Down. Nathan invited a few guests, all of them colleagues.
They were mixed in with Holly's apparently vast network of friends, relations and neighbours. Holly wore white. As she progressed down the aisle in satin heels, there were some tears from her cousins, her aunties, her old primary school teacher.
At the reception, having raised a toast to his daughter, Graham remained standing. He rode out the guests' slight befuddlement, waiting for them to sit and grow still. Then he said, 'Now, this isn't the normal order of things. And - as many of you gathered here will know - usually I'm a stickler for order.'
He paused for laughter - a fond ripple of it.
'But June and I wanted to take this opportunity to say that a few months ago -- a very few months . . .'
More laughter.
'Nathan blew into our lives a bit like a whirlwind. And the truth is, as many of you will also know, perhaps we needed a little whirlwind in our lives.'
And now there was no laughter. Just silence.
'This young man didn't just win my daughter's heart, but my heart, and June's heart too - for the life he brought into our home.
And for that, we'd like to thank him. So: to Nathan.'
They drank a toast while Nathan sat proud and terrified at the top table.
When the time came to give his own speech, he paused to gather himself and for a while could not speak. There were more tears at that, and some laughter.
When Nathan sat, Holly gripped his hand and Jacki came round to hug him from behind. She crossed her arms across his chest and squeezed, hard.
Holly had insisted on one more toast. She stood, raising her glass, saying: 'We all know there's a guest missing today. Since we were tiny, Elise and I talked about this day. We talked about what we'd wear, which pop star we'd marry. She was pretty stuck on George Michael, I seem to remember. That is, when she agreed to marry a boy at all; she was mostly interested in the dress and walking down the aisle with her beloved dad. She thought having a boy there would spoil it.'
Graham was looking at the table, smiling.
'But Elise is here. I can tell she approves of the boy I decided to marry -- even though he's not a pop star.' She had to pause. 'And I can feel her, being all impatient for the disco to start. By now, she'd want to get her kitten heels off and her Doc Martens on. So I'd like you please to stand, and charge your glasses. Please join me in toasting my dear sister -- Elise.'
Two hundred people stood and raised their glasses. They said her name, and sounded like the ocean.
Their first dance was to Van Morrison - 'Brown Eyed Girl'.
Later, Nathan hoped that nobody heard him, sobbing in the toilets.
In a hotel room in Barbados, he undressed her for the first time.
Nathan had been celibate for five years. He and Holly had never slept in the same bed.
He woke in the tropical night to find her propped on an elbow, looking down at him in the darkness, her eyes unreadable.
He said,'What?'
'You know what.'
He kissed the softness of her belly.
'Me too.'
She twirled an index finger through his bed-addled hair.
He wrapped an arm around her warm and naked waist.
She closed her eyes and smiled, drifting to sleep.
They were away for fourteen days.
Naturally, it was Holly who found them a house.
She led him round a damp Victorian shell with leprous, floral wallpaper, telling him about its potential. He pretended he could imagine it -- but he was worried about the previous occupant. The old man who lived in this house had died in a nursing home, but before that he had succumbed to a lonely kind of dementia; his neighbours had found him billeted in the back room, half starved. Nathan winced to think of it, but Holly laughed and slipped her arm through his and told him not to be so stupid -- it was part of the reason the house was such a bargain.
He looked at the yellow ceiling and said, 'Are you sure?'
She was sure.
Holly employed the architect and Holly employed the builders and Holly employed the site manager. Nathan visited the unfinished house only two or three times. Each time, it seemed to be in worse condition, not better; full of ripped-up floorboards and skinny men in painty jeans, and cups of tea. He decided the house was way too much to worry about, and stopped going. Holly learned to tell him about setbacks and reversals only when they'd been put right.
Most of their furniture had gone into this house a week before the wedding. Nathan spent a strange, transitional week in the almost empty flat above the nursery, sitting in his one remaining chair, watching television.
He'd wondered if perhaps a wisp of Elise - the wisp he'd trailed with him - might be trapped here in this flat, like a moth in a jar. She'd be a flavour in the atmosphere, detected and dismissed by the next tenants - until she evaporated like a dab of scent on a human throat.
June had organized things such that, when they returned from honeymoon, the house was ready to be lived in; there were clothes in the wardrobes, cutlery in the drawers, washing powder in the cupboard and Fairy Liquid next to the sink. There were flowers on the dining table, next to a Welcome Home card. Nathan examined the back of the card to see which of Hermes' rivals had produced it.
