God forbid it rain on their special day: a thin sun was rising, warming our skin and shooting light at us from the water as we walked in a line like some dysfunctional Fab Four (or perhaps The Usual Suspects). As we approached the doors of the pub, Clare said to Melia, ‘Will you let us buy the champagne as a wedding present?’

I couldn’t bear to look at Melia’s traitorous face as she accepted, so kept my eyes on Clare’s. She was beaming, wholehearted in her goodwill, and I saw that it was not so much the act of marriage itself that had stirred her as the rock ’n’ roll spontaneity of the occasion. I also saw the emotion that would succeed it, if not later today then soon: disappointment in herself for having eschewed tradition when she could simply have subverted it like Melia had.

‘Nice of you to pick up the bill for the champagne,’ I said, when we were on our own.

‘I just thought, you know, we need to remember how lucky we are,’ she said, which I knew from previous declarations was code for, We need to remember how talented and hardworking we are – because people who’ve been helped never accept that their success is a simple consequence of that. They think they’d have been just as successful without it.

Also, since I was being pedantic, she meant I, not we. She hadn’t consulted me about the champagne because she had no need to. Conversely, I couldn’t have made the gesture without consulting her. The truth was that by leaving my white-collar career I’d rendered myself as economically helpless as the Ropers themselves, and in the year since, I’d failed to take advantage of careers counselling and turned down a direct leg-up from Richard. Instead, I’d focused my energies on a secret extra-curricular opportunity that was about to be withdrawn, regardless of what Melia had appeared to claim at the register office.

Same as usual . . .

Not possible, my love, not possible.

I tipped my glass to my lips and swallowed Clare’s champagne in one.

*

Over the course of the next couple of hours, as the temperature rose and the rain held off, the Ropers’ friends arrived at the river. Clare met Steve and Gretchen and I met various colleagues from Melia’s division at Hayter Armstrong. Her director and Clare’s business partner, Richard, was away on holiday in his cottage in Brittany, the very one Clare and I would be occupying the following week. How did he feel about Melia, I wondered? Was he as charmed as everyone else, as compelled to possess that slippery beauty as I was? Had she considered him for her affair? (I need a man without all this debt!) Or did his three kids present an obstruction that was helpfully missing in my case?

But this was bitterness talking. Anguish. Melia had not cynically chosen me any more than I had her. We liked each other – loved, if only briefly. And Richard, had he been here, would probably simply have offered the cash-strapped couple his holiday home for a few days’ honeymoon, thrown in flights as a wedding present.

‘Well, this is completely nuts,’ Gretchen said to me, not exactly through gritted teeth, but with an edge to her enthusiasm. In this realm of actors and deceivers, she was real. It was clear she’d mobilized quickly for the event, her hair flat and in need of a wash, lacy dress a little crumpled, toenail polish chipped. I remembered Melia’s accusations that she and Kit were involved and I had the sudden thought that this was both humanity’s curse and saving grace: our biological need to know who liked who. To keep the whole thing going, generation after generation. The same negotiations, the same vows, the same ratio of winners to losers. A zero-sum game.

‘What’s nuts?’ I said. I was grateful for the brightening sky; with sunglasses on, I was less fearful of exposing emotions inappropriate for the occasion. ‘You mean Kit getting married so suddenly?’

‘I mean at all. I would have thought he was the last person to spend money on something like this and, to be honest, the only time I ever hear him talk about her he’s complaining.’

‘And vice versa,’ I admitted.

‘Well, you would know, Jamie.’

‘How do you mean?’

There was a long moment. Did Gretchen know? If she did, how? The only possible means was Kit himself. I remembered my first thought when I’d heard the news of the wedding was he wanted to formalize his claim to Melia, to warn me off. But instinct told me that Clare was right: Melia had driven this. Had she found out about his infidelity and this was the result?

Trust me, Jamie. I need you.

The thought made me shiver.

Finally, Gretchen answered. ‘I just meant you’re the only one of us who knows them both. Steve and I have never met her before. Or Clare.’

‘Right.’ I felt a sudden lurch of disorientation. A year ago, I didn’t know a single one of these people. Even the Hayter Armstrong employees present were from the lettings arm and therefore under my radar. The only constant was Clare and I was aware that I was avoiding her as discreetly as I could, terrified my mood would give me away.

I excused myself to use the loo. Returning, I could hear Kit and Steve talking at the bar, indiscreet enough to be discussing the very question on their guests’ lips.

Steve’s normally indistinct voice was helpfully amplified by drink. ‘So whose idea was this, mate?’

‘Melia’s, of course.’

My scalp prickled.

‘It was either this or split up,’ Kit added.

‘Seriously. Wow.’ Steve whistled. ‘Classic ultimatum. You’d think after Me Too and all that, women wouldn’t want to get married, but they do, don’t they? There’s hope for me yet. Speaking of which, I like the look of—’ He broke off, his tone altering to one of amusement: ‘What’re you doing loitering there, Jamie? Earwigging on us, were you?’

‘I was.’ I stepped forward to join them. ‘If you want my two cents, fear of turning thirty can be a powerful motivator. My colleague Regan thinks she’s ancient at twenty-four.’

‘Yeah? Or maybe Me wants kids?’ Steve suggested, with the disgusted resignation of someone discovering he’d got a parking ticket.

Kit, however, looked genuinely shocked. Shocked at the thought of having a child or shocked that Steve had guessed the truth, I wondered? I had an image then, of Melia being pregnant, of the baby possibly being mine but the paternity never challenged. My mind burned through the catastrophized consequences: an email from a teenager who’d been alerted to a DNA match; Clare urging me to investigate, to welcome the youngster into our lives.

A few minutes later, back outdoors, when Melia and I were next alone and out of earshot of the others, I asked her. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you? Is that why you’ve done this?’

‘Uh, this is 2019, Jamie, not 1950.’ She laughed, raising her glass to my face. ‘And I’d hardly be drinking like this, would I?’

On cue, Kit came tripping over with a champagne bottle to top us up. Over his shoulder, I saw Clare and Steve standing together, her head tipped to listen, smile broad. The weather had turned quite beautiful by then; just two or three careless blotches of cloud remained, as if sponged onto the blue by infants. Our group had colonized a stretch of river path and someone played music on their phone, tinny as a music box. Melia began dancing with a friend, a girl with a solemn, angular face and tanned lean legs. The song was Lana Del Rey’s version of ‘Doin’ Time’ and the women moved as if unaware of anyone but each other. Tourists, identifying the centre of the afternoon’s energy, formed a loose ring around the party, taking pictures, watching the girls dance. I’d like to hold her . . . I mouthed, trying to remember the lyrics from listening to the original track years ago, when I’d been young myself.