Page 60 of A Wedding in a Week

I make a start by digging through the kitchen cupboards. Stock is low, so I check the bread bin. There’s a similar dearth inside it, the heel of bread left only good for toasting. I look in the freezer next, which usually holds an emergency loaf or two. Again I’m disappointed, but if running low on food is the price of sharing farm meals lately, I’ll take it. What I can’t take is going to meet Marc empty-handed. I also can’t drive to the petrol station while wearing a sling. Changing gear and steering at the same time is another accident waiting to happen.

I check the fridge one more time, and maybe all isn’t lost—bread is in short supply but there are plenty of ingredients. The canister still holds flour left over from my pasty-making, and there’s plenty of butter. I’m tempted to fist pump like Marc because, yes, my mother lives to tease me, but she also taught me a recipe that only takes ten minutes to bake. I’ve watched her make scones enough time to believe that, so I get busy. I also curse under my breath when she arrives, laundry basket in hand, to find me wafting smoke away from a batch of burnt offerings.

“Oh, Stef. You training for Britain’s Worst Baker again?” She opens the windows. “That’s what happens when you try to bake in the roasting oven.” She fans herself. “Like me without HRT, it’s way too hot, love.” Here’s a sign of how well she knows me: she doesn’t take over, she only offers advice and backs off. “Try again, only use the baking oven this time.”

She disappears upstairs, reappearing with my suit on its hanger, pointing out a loose hem I hadn’t noticed before digging through a dresser drawer for a thread and needle. She also digs in that chipped bowl, tools clinking against china as she offers more than advice to me. Mum makes me laugh first by guessing what kind of woman finally snared my mile-a-minute brother.

“One with vision issues,” I offer, and she tuts before smothering a cackle.

Our conversation unspools like the thread she uses Dad’s multi-tool to snip through. Her needle flies too, one I’d never have managed to thread one-handed. “You could run through what you’re going to say tomorrow, if you want.” She doesn’t look at me, focussed on her stitches. “Dad used to.”

I remember then, my gaze drifting to a bowl on the dresser not only holding twine or pliers. It’s full of memories as well—good ones of him unloading more than his pockets, quietly and without fanfare, around their day-to-day tasks.

Like I have with Marc.

Now I do the same with Mum, listing all the ways this farm could flourish, and it settles nerves that still buzz when I’m finished, but not quite so loudly, when she tells me, “I can’t wait for our first wedding,” like she’s invested. That makes it easy to agree when she asks me to try my suit on for size. She doesn’t call me a vision in beige once she finishes helping with my shirt buttons. She only murmurs, “So like Richard.”

That makes asking for her help easier when my second batch of scones are as flat as pancakes.

She whips up a third batch that come out of the oven ten minutes later as golden as the ring that swings from her necklace.

I huff, and flour rises. “Why do yours look so much better than mine?”

“Because I’ve had plenty of practice. And because baking is a lot like dancing,” She sets them to cool by the open window before pulling me into what’s more of a clumsy shuffle than a smooth waltz around the table. I’m the opposite of nimble—a carthorse, remember? Mum’s a leggy thoroughbred like my brother.

We pause next to a photo of him with Marc, high up in the cab of a new and shiny tractor. Dad’s with them, and it feels as if he’s with me too. I recall long-forgotten lease-or-buy discussions around this kitchen table, my parents weighing the financial pros and cons like we’ve done this afternoon weighing flour and butter.

How many times has this photo caught my eye this week?

Mum touches Marc’s and my brother’s smiling faces before Dad’s. She dusts them all with flour—with love—then waltzes us in a new direction. “Dancing like this gets easier the more you practice. A bit like any working relationship or recipe, I suppose—you do it over and over until you’ve got it. The trick is not to let following the same steps bore either of you. There are plenty of other dances to try. Like this, see?”

I die a little at her attempt at twerking, that band of gold on her necklace spinning like the man who used to wear it must do in his grave.

I also choke on laughter. Then I ask a question that hasn’t crossed my mind until this moment. “You were bored with Dad?”

“Bored? I didn’t get a chance. Not when he kept changing direction.” She lists farming adjustments that passed me by in childhood, small change after small change proving he was more agile than I ever noticed. She opens her arms. “Now you lead.”

I do, taking a turn to steer while she talks and I try not to tread on her toes.

“Not saying that all of those new directions worked, but it made dancing with him interesting, and I wouldn’t ever change that.” We make another circuit of the kitchen, and she’s right—my steps are smoother. “Getting plenty of time to practice with the right partner is what I’d wish for any marriage.”

We spin past that buttonhole in its teacup. Mum tuts over its bruised petals, but I don’t pay attention to her fussing. I can’t when my phone alarm pings, and maybe I’d be embarrassed at timing Marc’s give-me-an-hour instruction to the minute if Mum didn’t help me hurry to pack my cool bag. She doesn’t tease me about my sudden rush to get going. She only asks, “Don’t you want to change out of your suit first?”

“No time.”

There is time.

I could take longer if I wanted. The truth is I don’t want to, and not because I’m reluctant to leave Marc with Hayden for more time than I have to. I can’t pinpoint when that green haze passed—when Jess showed Hayden her belly, maybe? Or when he left Marc and me to have a private moment? All I know for sure is that waltzing around my kitchen with Mum didn’t feel new. I’ve done it all week here with my right person. We’re still learning but we’re already in step, and I might wobble in the mudroom while pulling on my boots one-handed, but inside, I’m rock steady.

And ready.

So ready.

That’s down to Marc, and perhaps Mum guesses he’s my reason. She lifts the cool bag over my shoulder, threading the strap securely under my sling. She also stands on tiptoe. “Give him my love.”

“I will.”

“And good luck for tomorrow. For both of you. But remember, there’s more than one way to dance, won’t you?” Her kiss is quick.

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