We were about to be married, and second marriages are weird. Sorry, weird is the wrong word. What I mean is skint: I didn’t have any money, because I’d just got divorced. So, a lot of the things you associate with getting married – photographers, flowers, sit-down meals, bridesmaids, maids of honour, really everything apart from alcohol – were ditched. Also, I was a bit older than I was the first time, so I didn’t miss any of that, least of all the photographer. A hen night hadn’t even crossed my mind.
It was 2018, five days before the event, which was on a Wednesday, to avail ourselves of Southwark council’s midweek register-office special. Mr Z was, as it turned out, only pretending to make a romantic candlelit dinner, to mark one of our last evenings living in sin. My friend called and asked if he could see me in the pub, quick smart, as he had something urgent to discuss. Awks, as there was a dinner to eat, but of course I said yes and rushed out of the house to the sound of: “If you’re not back in an hour, everything will be ruined, ruined!”– failing to process how peculiar that was.
