Page 11 of The Impossible Fortune
Then Joanna asked if, whenever I look at her, I see Gerry, and I said that I did. And she said that, well, she also sees him every time she looks at me, so she wanted me walking down the aisle with her. So she could see her dad.
And then I started crying. It’s always been a roller coaster with Joanna. To be fair I suppose it’s often a roller coaster with me too. When it’s your own roller coaster, you don’t notice so much.
I did worry that people would find me walking Joanna down the aisle non-traditional, but actually nobody seemed to mind, although I couldn’t really see through my tears. And also we walked down the aisle to ‘Backstreet’s Back’, and everybody seemed to like that too. I was worried that they might not save me a seat at the front, but they did.
There were no hymns, as I said, and, do you know what, you don’t miss them. One of Paul’s friends read a poem, which I didn’t know, but Ron and I both remarked that it rhymed, which is not a given these days, and before you knew it Paul was kissing the bride, and I was a mother-in-law.
Talking of in-laws, there was nothing doing with Paul’s dad, try as I might. They had an item onThis Morningthe other day about ‘asexuality’, people who really weren’t at all interested in sex, you could see that Alison Hammond couldn’t believe her ears. Anyway, I had started to write off Archie as asexual, until Elizabeth walked back into the wedding as they were cutting the cake and he made a beeline for her. I’ve seen it before with her. Show a certain type of man a pair of bosoms like Elizabeth’s and theircompass goes haywire. You can’t win them all. One of Paul’s uncles did slip me his phone number, but Paul says this uncle is still very happily married to his auntie, who had just gone outside to vape, and there would be hell to pay if she found out. Clearly Paul’s uncle won’t be discussing asexuality onThis Morningany time soon.
A funny old family, then, but what a wonderful man Paul is. I realize I haven’t really taken to many of Joanna’s boyfriends over the years. There was a nice landscape gardener when she was twenty, but university put paid to that, and there was an unshaven archaeologist I’d seen on television, so that was exciting for a few months. But really Paul is the only man she’s brought home where I just instantly knew. I tried to hide my enthusiasm when I first met him, because I know what Joanna is like, but the first time he popped to the loo I started crying, and Joanna just looked over and said, ‘I know, Mum, me too.’
When Paul came back in, he could see my tears, and so Joanna and I both pretended I have glaucoma. The next time he came over he brought a leaflet on new glaucoma treatments with him, and talked it through with me so patiently that ever since Joanna and I have had to keep up the lie. I shall have to get a miracle cure one of these days.
He has a gentleness, Paul, which worried me at first, because Joanna has never really gone for that. She’s always liked ambitious and ruthless, you know the type? Driven. Even the archaeologist eventually got the sack from Channel Five because he stole an urn from a church. And also sent a picture of his genitals to a camerawoman.
But the more you get to know Paul, the more you seethat heisambitious, just not for money. He is ambitious for happiness. For himself and others. You could tell with some of Joanna’s boyfriends that they resented her success, didn’t like her working longer hours than them or earning more money. But you can see that Paul is proud of her. He has a bit of money invested in his friend Nick’s company (something to do with fridge-freezers) but otherwise is very happy on a university salary.
So Paul may not be the chairman of a football club, and he may lack the killer instinct, and he may have very strange taste in best men. But at the wedding he was talking to Ron about darts (or snooker, something like that); he was talking to Ibrahim about a programme they’d both heard on Radio 4; he sat quietly with Elizabeth for a bit, asking her to guess which members of his family had been to prison; and, when I was in full flow, which was most of the day, he was very good at just nodding a lot and saying ‘Ooh, I bet’ or ‘And what happened then, Joyce?’ or ‘Shall I top you up?’ every now and then.
So he’ll do, don’t you think? Alan likes him very much. Then again I’ve had gunmen in the flat trying to kill me who Alan liked, so you can’t always trust him.
The gang seemed to have had a fine old time today too. Ibrahim was the star of the show, dancing with all and sundry. At one point Patrice tried to have two dances in a row with him, until one of Paul’s aunties got her in a headlock.
Joanna and Paul aren’t going on a honeymoon as such – ‘People don’t go on honeymoons any more, Mum,’ says Joanna. I would have argued, but it was her weddingday, but really peopledostill go on honeymoon, I am certain of it. In fact, all around the world there are long queues of people doing things that Joanna tells me nobody does any more. Having honeymoons, drinking normal milk, watching television. I once told her that more people live the way I do than live the way she does, and she just pointed at my sandwich toaster and said, ‘I don’t think so.’
Anyway, they’re having a couple of days away at a hotel somewhere. There’s a spa, and everyone gets driven around in golf carts. If I had her money, I’d be off to the Caribbean. Which I am certain that people do still go to, because the new woman who has moved into Wordsworth Court has just got back from there and isn’t shy about telling everyone. She had us all around for piña coladas, and Ron woke up in a hedge at two in the morning. One of the fox cubs was curled up on his tummy.
Okay, I should be absolutely honest with you and tell you that I just ate that slice of wedding cake. I shouldn’t have, but I did. To be fair Alan had a bit of it too.
I’m looking forward to seeing Joanna and Paul when they’re back, as I can’t wait to go into lunch with them and say to someone, ‘And this is my son-in-law.’ I’m nearly eighty and I’ve never been able to say that before.
When you think about my past few years I’ve really managed a lot of firsts. I solved my first murder, I met Mike Waghorn, I’ve had diamonds in my microwave, and now I have a son-in-law. I even watched a French film recently (Ibrahim). It’s never too late. That said, I didn’t enjoy the film, even when Ibrahim explained why I should, and Mike Waghorn seems to have changed his email address.
Now I know today was all about the wedding, but, before I go to bed and dream about the day all over again, I do have to announce something else. Another reason I’m writing.
Elizabeth is being mysterious.
It’s something of a relief, of course, because it has been some while since she’s been mysterious. She tells me we are taking the minibus to Fairhaven tomorrow morning, and it’s also been a while since we’ve done that. What are we to do there? Information has yet to be forthcoming. ‘A nice stroll along the front’ is what Elizabeth said, and if you believe that you’ll believe anything.
Love and trouble. You can’t beat it.
And, on that note, Alan has just thrown up some royal icing.
7
Danny Lloyd has had guns pointed at him before, but never by a woman. It makes, he notes to himself now, very little difference. The gun is the thing. Well, the bullets inside the gun are theactualthing, aren’t they?
Keep the bullets inside the gun, that’s the trick.
It’s his gun, of course – where else on earth would Suzi have got a gun from? Her book club? There’s a loose brick in the changing room of the pool house, and she had obviously found it. There are four or five others scattered around, but he recognizes this one. A Beretta.
Will Suzi kill him? You couldn’t blame her if she did, but at the same time it would be overdramatic. Which would be just like her. It’s a toss-up. Perhaps she’ll kill him. Perhaps she’ll look away for a split-second, and he’ll grab the gun and make her pay.
Either way Danny recognizes their marriage is probably over this time.
‘I told you,’ Suzi says.
She had told him. Plenty of times. But women say a lot of things they don’t mean. He can already see the swelling beginning to form around her left eye. That’s going to be a nasty one. Most times she’d go and have a little cry, stay in the house for a couple of days, maybe put on a pair of sunglasses to take the boy to school. But not today. Who knows why?
