Possession by Katie Lowe

Author:Katie Lowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Episode Four

31

WORCESTERSHIRE, 1999

I am dressed all in white, and I am beautiful.

It’s a privilege I’ve never known before, and today, it’s hard-won.

My hair, tamed by tongs that steam and sting as they brush my scalp.

My skin, stiff with a mask of foundation, of shades brushed into the hollows of my cheeks.

My lips drawn plump and pillow-soft, brows plucked in a smooth feather’s arch.

I am alone, for a moment, with my new and better self: the one who, today, will be married to the man I love. I raise a finger to my new, smoothed-out curls, and find them brittle, stiff, barely like hair at all. I touch my bottom lip, and find it sticky. I taste ammonia on my freshly painted nail.

The rest of the day plays out in my mind, rehearsed and reviewed so often that it feels like a memory, already like something I can touch.

The ancient house, closed to everyone but us; the landscaped lawns, the Lovers sculpture in the fountain, in front of which we’ll kiss in photos with our guests.

The string quartet, whose hollow ring I hear, rehearsing, somewhere far below: the song that’s ours, that they’re playing just for us.

The infinite, meticulous details that no one will notice but his mother and me: the way the chairs’ velvet sashes chime with my bouquet and the flower girls’ nails; the poem he will read carved in keepsakes on the tables: compacts for the female guests and snuffboxes for the men.

It’s like something from a dream, though one I’m not entirely sure is mine: I’ve been swept along, throughout, on the kindness and enthusiasm of Graham’s parents, waving away impossible sums of money as though they’re nothing, always suggesting better, more luxurious, more “appropriate” things.

I imagine what Sarah would’ve said, if she’d been here: jokes about Barbie dolls and mail-order brides. It would’ve been a relief to hear them—a reminder that it’s all for show. That this isn’t really me.

But she isn’t here. She couldn’t get the time off work.

And so, I’ll walk the aisle without family, or bridesmaids. His mother has quietly filled my side of the aisle with her friends without a word, though I know she disapproves. For once, I’m grateful for the old-fashioned British stiff upper lip.

It’ll be over before you know it, everyone tells me. It’ll all go by so fast.

I can only hope so. All I want is to be with him. Alone.

The door creaks, and I think I’ve got my wish. His cologne drifts into the room, and I think of jinxes; of things doomed from the start.

“Don’t look!” I say, hands covering the folds of my dress, as though I’m naked, exposed.

But the door opens, a little more. For a split second, I think I’m meeting my future. The man looking back at me is my husband, thirty years from now. A man whose skin cracks at the curve of his smile; whose eyes scatter wrinkles like a cat-o’-nine-tails.

“Only a proud father-in-law.” He closes the door behind him. “I don’t think there’s any bad luck in that.

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