"Pwwwwwwwhhhhhh!"
Cheryl didn't even notice the faces turn towards her thunderous nose-blowing. She patted the bright pink hanky at her tear-stained cheeks. Through her watery eyes she watched the earnest, innocent face of Ste Hay as he listened to his husband commit to him forever, watched his own mouth trying to suppress an impish grin as he stumbled over his own lines. Finally, he was happy.
A little flutter of sadness crossed her as she thought of Brendan sitting at home, watching the seconds tick by on the Marilyn Monroe clock on the mantelpiece, wondering with every second if Ste was married yet. She loved her brother, in spite of everything. His round fearful eyes had silently begged her to tell him that it wasn't true, that Ste and Doug wouldn't be married today, that he hadn't realised who he wanted and who he wanted to be too late.
But Ste's eyes were burned into her memory too, swimming with tears and hurt and humiliation, time and time again. So many times he had asked Cheryl why. Why, when he lay his vulnerable heart open in front of her brother, did he finger it and then stamp on it and then drag it through the streets to see it bleed? She never had an answer. She, Cheryl Brady, who could talk for Ireland. She, who had defended her brother against countless accusations, most of them true. Somehow, when that wee lad looked at her with his bruised face all she could feel was sorry.
Ste deserved this. Every inch of his face was shining with joy, a different face to the crippled sorrow she had seen on it before. Again, she filled the hall with the deafening sound of her nose-blowing.
Suddenly, her phone jangled in her pocket. Annalise. Again. This must be the four-hundredth call she'd had this morning from her.
"Sorry, sorry," she apologised in a stage whisper as she clambered out over Frankie and Jack. "Duty calls, you know!"
"Annalise, what is it?" she answered once safely outside. "They're in the middle of the ceremony for crying out loud!"
"It's… oh, Cheryl, it's so awful! What are we going to do? It's ruined, the whole thing is ruined!"
"Annalise, you're scaring me?" Cheryl said sharply. "What is it? Is it the food? If that catering mongrel is after messing up the order I swear I'm going to use my Boxercise moves on him!"
"Place-names, Cheryl! They're not here!" Annalise's voice was quivering dangerously.
"Of course they are!" Cheryl reassured her. "I saw them this morning, they're in a box right under–"
Right under her kitchen table. She could see them in her mind. Exactly where she had left them the night before so she wouldn't forget them the next day.
"They're not here, Cheryl!" Annalise was wailing. "It's going to be carnage! Everybody running around trying to figure out where to sit… What if they start moving the chairs around? What if–"
"It's ok, Annalise, I'll sort it!" Cheryl barked over the almost inaudible squeaks that were coming across the phone line. She hung up, her mind racing. Somehow, without Annalise's voice shrieking horrific possibilities in her ear her own brain started to do it instead. What if the vegetarians were served meat?
There was only one person who could save this disaster.
"Brendan!" she bellowed as soon as the phone was answered. "I need your help!"
"What is it Chez?" his voice came tiredly over the line.
"The place-names, under the kitchen table!" she shouted. "I need you to bring them to the reception venue!"
"Chez, I… I can't be around that place now," Brendan protested. "I helped with the set up, you know I did. I spent all morning driving back and forth with whatever you told me to. But I can't, not now."
"Pleeeeeeeeeeease Brendan!" she begged him, batting away the wisps of guilt. "It's a matter of life and death!"
"Seriously, Chez? Life and death? Who's gonna die coz they don't have a piece of paper with their name on it?"
"Annalise!" Cheryl cried. "I'm worried about her Brendan, she's about to crack. She doesn't have my calmness, poor love."
"Yeah, well few are blessed with that gift, Chez."
"Look, just jump in the van and spin over, it'll take all of five minutes!" Cheryl cajoled. "I'll leave now and meet you there, and you'll be gone before anyone even arrives. Sure they're still in the middle of the ceremony, the boys are just saying their vows now!"
She winced as she said it, not hearing the words until she'd spoken them out loud and they couldn't be taken back.
"Their vows, yeah," Brendan said, and Cheryl could almost see his eyes flitting about the place as he spoke, focusing on nothing. "Right. Ok Chez. Place-names. Consider it done."
"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," she sang down the phone, but she was already listening to the engaged tone.
With a final glance at the hall she had transformed into a garden of blue delphiniums and white roses, she took off clacking across the gravel, one hand rammed into her head to keep her purple fascinator in place. The reception venue was only a ten minute walk away, a beautiful construction of glass and timber looking down onto the grassy slopes of a hill to where they met with a small stream. Perfect for photos, she had told the two happy couples as she sold the idea to them. Stand on the hill, sunset behind ye's, stream in the background. It looked less beautiful when approached at a hasty jog in six inch heels and a pencil skirt, though.
"Annalise!" she shouted, waving an arm at the distraught girl who was standing outside the door. Cheryl felt her fascinator wobble dangerously.
Annalise clacked her way over to Cheryl with her own hasty heel-clad jog.
"Cheryl, what are we going to do?" she wailed, her pretty pink lips trembling uncontrollably.
"It's… s'ok…" Cheryl panted, patting her reassuringly on the arm. "I called… Brendan… bringing them… now…"
"Brendan is bringing them over?" Annalise shrieked happily.
"I need… water…" Cheryl answered.
"This is fantastic! The day is saved! It's a miracle, Cheryl, a real live miracle!"
"There he is now…" Cheryl panted, pointing at the rickety van speeding towards them down the drive.
Again, she lifted up the hand steadying her fascinator to wave at Brendan whose figure she could make out in the driver's seat. He had come through. She owed him big.
The van continued to speed towards them, racing up. He really was desperate to come and go as fast as he could, wasn't he? She and Annalise stood expectantly in the middle of the road. The van was hurtling towards them. She was starting to make out his face now and her heart began to quicken again. Why wasn't he slowing down? His face, there was something wrong with it. Panic. She saw him glance down, fearfully. The van rocketed on. The brakes, she remembered.
"Annalise!" she screamed, pushing the girl to the ground, flinging both of them off the road. Her face was buried in the gravel when the crash filled her ears. Her head hummed with noise. Struggling, she was on her feet. Her shoes were kicked off and she was running, barefoot. She didn't feel the broken glass on her skin as she sprinted through gaping hole carved through the wedding venue. The van was in the middle of the sloping hill, lying on its side, brakeless wheels spinning in the air. She smelled the fire before she saw the flames licking at its metalwork.
"Brendaaaaaaaan!" the scream erupted from somewhere deep inside her. She flung herself down the hill, towards the flaming vehicle. No, no, no, no!
"Cheryl, it's going to explode!" Annalise shrieked behind her, but Cheryl couldn't hear. Her eyes had just fixed on a crumpled lump lying on the ground twenty feet in front of the van. Half his head was in the river. The water was red.