On my wedding night I hid under the bed to surprise my husband. His mother came in instead, sat down on the mattress above me, and put a call

I did not notice. I noticed that things were calmer.

Her name is Saoirse. She is twenty-eight.

She was not at the  wedding.

Somebody told me in the September that she had said she was away, and I accepted that without one second of thought, because it made the seating plan easier.

There was an empty chair at the brunch the next morning with her name

card still on it, because the hotel sets to the original list and nobody had told them.

Lorna saw it before I did. I watched her see it.

She picked the card up, read it, and put it face down on the tablecloth, and then carried on with her conversation.

Four seconds. She did not look round to see whether anybody had noticed.