This has been sitting on my computer for months, waiting for me to get round to editing it. Seeing as how the new series of Ghosts is just around the corner, I thought I'd do it now.

This is set just after the Christmas special.

Enjoy!


Father of the Bride

This is a bad idea. Rachel knows that.

This is a very bad idea.

For a moment she stops the car and considers what she is doing. The long driveway – more like a track really – beyond the gates is empty and not a little muddy. The low-hanging grey clouds predict more mud before the day is out. She can't see the house from here.

This is a very bad idea.


It's as ordinary a morning as it ever gets to be at Button House. The ghostly pigeon functioned as an alarm, Alison's helped the resident ghosts through their morning routines while Mike's cooked breakfast. By Alison's new standards, it's all predictably normal.

'Anything in the post?' Mike asks.

She scans the envelops. 'Three bills. A late Christmas card from your Aunt Sue and, oh, another couple who want to look at the house for their wedding.'

Kitty sighs happily. 'Oh, I do love weddings.'

As if Alison was in any danger of forgetting.

'They want to come and look at it next week.' Just after New Year's, which suits her fine. They really do need more of an income.

Mike is midway through his promise to get a look at the new leak in the roof when a clamour of voices announces their pack of ghosts. It's a bit hard to understand what they're yammering on about when they're all shouting over each other, but the general gist seems to be that there's a car coming up the driveway and it's not the postman.

'Visitors,' she tells Mike as she gets up to see what the fuss is all about.

It's testimony to how well he's dealing with all of this that he doesn't ask anymore how she knows something like that.

'Who needs security cameras when we've got ghosts, eh?' he asks to the shock and horror of said ghosts, who loudly take offence to being called security cameras in what really is their home, you know.


Rachel drives slowly. She doesn't want to get the car all dirty and she certainly doesn't want to get stuck in the mud here. It has absolutely nothing to do with the bout of apprehension that is making her feel ever so slightly nauseous.

This is still a very bad idea.

If asked to choose, she would take the stress and chaos of elections over this anytime.

She isn't turning back, though. After all, she's come this far. And if she were to turn around and go home, she will always wonder about what if. Chances are she'd be back next week for the second attempt anyway.

It's a combination of some aspects that's led her here today and funny enough, one of them was that stupid ghost story that had been going around a couple of months ago. There's been an alleged sighting of a ghostly lady at Button House. The whole thing was a hoax, of course, but the name had stuck in her mind. She knew she'd heard it before, but couldn't place it until she'd visited her mum last month and it all clicked.

He'd died there.

It's his picture that sits on the dashboard, old and worn. It's one of the few that she has that has both him and her in it. Her dad wasn't home much when she was little. If not for the pictures, she wouldn't remember what he looked like.

She knows more about his death than she's ever known about his life, Rachel reflects wryly, which honestly isn't that surprising. The nasty little bitch Lily in her class had enlightened her and all their classmates when she was barely nine as to the manner of his passing. Crimson with embarrassment and humiliation Rachel had run all the way home to her mother, who couldn't deny any of it.

For years the topic of Julian Fawcett had been ignored. He hadn't warranted a mention when Rachel's mother remarried or indeed ever since. His picture's still there, in an old frame on the mantlepiece, a silent witness to the fact that life has gone on without him. And yet recently she'd begun to wonder about him.

He wasn't a nice man. He probably wasn't a good man. He is however the only real father she'll ever have. She's visited his grave a few times, but it's not helped her feel any closer to him at all.

Maybe this will.

Oh, Rachel Fawcett doesn't believe in ghosts. You wouldn't catch her believing in that kind of nonsense. That's not why she is now driving down this ridiculously long driveway. She's not even sure exactly what she is doing here. She'd like to understand… well, anything really. And there is that feeling deep down that she has to do this, that this is important.

Especially now.

Button House is a bit of a disappointment when it at last comes into view. It's a gigantic, ramshackle monstrosity of a building. It shows signs of recent repair, but especially in this sombre winter light it looks like the ideal setting for a ghost story.

You know, if she'd believed in that kind of thing.

But this is not an abandoned house with a ghost. There's a very real life woman waiting on the doorstep. Rachel's not aware of passing any security cameras – although it seems likely there are some along the track – but she's obviously expected.

'Hi,' the woman greets when Rachel's exited her car. 'Can I help you?'

Suddenly a bit tongue-tied – and that doesn't happen often – she scrambles for the right words. 'I hope so.' She smiles, because that always goes over well, doesn't it? 'It's… ehm… it's a bit of a strange request actually.'

'Hit me,' says the woman. 'I'm used to strange requests.'

Words really shouldn't be so hard. Would it be too late to turn around and run? 'It's… ehm….' She takes a deep breath and starts again: 'If it's not too much trouble, I'd like to see the house, please. My… my father died here.'

She waits for a comment about morbidity that never comes. If anything, there's a little too much understanding on the face of the lady of the house. 'Ah. And you are…?'

'Rachel Fawcett,' she replies.

The first hints of realisation blossom into full-blown understanding. She knows that name. It'll be too much to hope that she knows it because Rachel's an MP. 'Julian's your father,' she says. 'Julian Fawcett,' she adds as though Rachel's forgotten her own family name. 'Oh my, I never knew he had a daughter!'

Rachel frowns. 'Why would you?'

The response is a little odd. The woman looks at a point to her right and says 'Why would I indeed,' in a very pointed manner that makes Rachel feel as though she's missing the point. She doesn't get the chance to ask, because the woman recovers and holds out her hand for Rachel to shake: 'Alison Cooper,' she announces. 'Welcome to Button House. Do come in.'


Julian has a daughter. A living daughter at that. Well, of course she's still alive. Julian only died in the nineties. Of course, he doesn't look old enough to have an adult daughter, but Pat doesn't look old enough to be a grandfather either and she's never had any trouble wrapping her head around that. It's because Julian's never been exactly the fatherly type. He's the once-politician with the decadent lifestyle that did for him in the end. Somehow she hadn't envisioned him having a family.

And Julian himself is being no help whatsoever. Normally it's a trial just shutting him up, but today he looks as though he's been clobbered around the head with a sledgehammer, if ghosts could actually still get hit by sledgehammers and all that. He trails behind, as do the other ghosts, but unlike them he isn't yapping on about everything.

He's staring.

And it's really making her uncomfortable.

Fortunately she has distraction ready to hand. Of course Kitty is fawning over the new visitor, desperately wishing she could make friends with Rachel. Pat's offering to do the tour of the house and the captain comments on her posture, which apparently is excellent and he'd seen much worse in even seasoned officers.

'Would you like some tea?' asks Alison, who thinks that Rachel really does look nervous, but not as nervous as she would be if she knew that the ghost of her dead father was standing right behind her.

'Yes, please,' Rachel replies gratefully.

Alison guides her to the kitchen and reaches for the teapot. It's still hot, so it'll do. Mike of course has disappeared. She remembers that he was going to do something about that new leak that's sprung up overnight, so that would keep him busy for a while. With the invaluable help of YouTube tutorials, they're both becoming rather good at DIY.

'I haven't got any cups, so is a mug okay?' she asks over Fanny's indignant 'A lady would not offer her guest a refreshment in a mug!'

'Fine,' Rachel replies. If anything, she's looking more nervous than she had when she arrived. The fact that Humphrey's head is lying scant inches away from where she rests her hands on the table isn't doing much for Alison's composure either.

'So,' Alison says when she sits down with a fresh mug herself. 'Do you want me to show you the house or…?' She trails off. There really isn't much else that she can do, short of telling her that her dead father is here in the room with her. Not that she'd believe it.

Fortunately Rachel makes it easy for her. 'Yes, please.' She considers her tea for a few moments. 'Do you know where…?'

'I don't really….' is as far as Alison gets before the ghosts shout out the answer and she changes her sentence halfway through, '… know which room, but it was on the first floor in the east wing. There's no plaque in a hallway or anything.'

In vain she waits for Julian's comment that there should be one. It's getting a little scary how quiet he is. If he doesn't make an inappropriate comment in the next five minutes or so, she might have to do something drastic.

Rachel winces.

So does Alison. The ghosts' lack of tact must be rubbing off on her.

'So,' she carries on, drawing out the vowel, 'why come now?'

Rachel shrugs. 'I don't know,' she says, before she catches herself. 'Well, I do know, but you'll think it sounds mad.'

'It'll take a lot to shock me,' Alison assures her. Not even Robin hiding in the fridge gets a rise out of her these days, even if it is really annoying. She is, after all sharing a house with a ghost who proclaims to be madly in love with her, another whose mind is still stuck in World War Two and yet another who accuses everyone who crosses her path of witchcraft. And then she isn't even considering the plague victims in the basement and the singing girl in the pantry.

'I'm getting married in four months,' Rachel says. 'And I know my father's not really here…'

'Well, actually,' Pat starts before the others hush him.

'But he died when I was very young and I never really knew him.' Rachel stares at her mug with singular intent. 'I don't have any memories of him, really, just a few pictures.' She takes a deep breath. 'I know he wasn't a particularly good man, but he was my father and lately I can't help but think… I'd want him at my wedding.'

Oh.

Oh.

Alison bites her lip. Well, she can relate to that. Her own parents died in a car crash a year before she married and throughout the day she had looked for faces in the crowd that were no longer there. She now wonders if perhaps, if she had been able to see ghosts back then, if she might have found them there.

On instinct she reaches out and takes Rachel's hand in hers. 'I don't think it's mad at all.' She looks at Julian, whose face is blank with shock. The others are unusually subdued too, although she doesn't expect that to last very long. So before any of them come up with some ghastly idea, she takes the lead. 'Come on, I'll show you the house.'


There's nothing special about the house. Well, there's a rich history that Alison seems to know inside out, but there's nothing here that makes her feel any closer to her father. There are no ghosts – and of course she isn't actually looking for them, because she doesn't believe in all of that – and all the physical traces of Julian Fawcett's presence have long since been removed. She should know that; her mother's got all the things he brought here that day in a box in the attic. Everything except his trousers. No one's been able to find those.

It's always the telling detail of that story. As if she's going to be allowed to forget how he died just for a moment.

'Thank you,' she tells Alison at the end of the tour. It has been interesting, even if it's also disappointing at the same time. 'I didn't…'

'Sense him?' Alison suggests when Rachel is still looking for the right words. She sounds disappointed too, although why, Rachel can't say.

'I didn't think I would. I mean, there was that story about a Grey Lady, but that all turned out to be a hoax…' Too late she realises that this may be a little insensitive and indeed Alison winces. 'Anyway, I don't believe in ghosts or haunted houses.'

But she has come here at least partly because of that ghost story and she knows it.

'Anyway, I've taken up quite enough of your time.' Coming here has been a mistake. 'I won't keep you any longer. Thank you.'

Of course she's set barely one foot over the threshold when the clouds make good on their earlier promise and open the floodgates of heaven.


'It's still raining,' Pat reports some eight hours later.

Alison suspected as much and it's the Captain who confirms her other suspicion: 'The road has entirely flooded, Alison. She cannot possibly leave.'

'I know.'

It's why she's offered Rachel a room for the night. In the west wing, despite numerous protests from the ghosts, who seem to have decided that it is their solemn duty to reunite father and daughter before Rachel leaves. It's just as well that Alison knows that they can't tamper with the weather or she would have suspected foul play.

'That reminds me,' she continues. 'No scaring the guest.' It'll take them some effort, but this lot are definitely capable if they put their minds to it.

The ghosts affect looks of wounded innocence with varying rates of success before they drift off to do their own thing. It's Music Club tonight, something which Alison is very keen to give a miss.

Apparently so is Julian, because he sticks around. Not that he says anything much, because he's still tongue-tied. He's not like Pat, who looks forward to his death day now, so that he can see how much his grandson's grown and will you believe that his Daley's a married man now?

With the way Julian is behaving, it's definitely up to Alison to open the batting. 'I didn't put her in your room.'

'It's your house. You can do what you like.'

Oh, it's going to be like that. She should have become a therapist. At least she would have ample experience in navigating the waters of emotional trauma and unnecessary drama. Then again, she's learning on the job. And there must be a YouTube video out there somewhere that could help her.

In the meantime, improvisation will do. 'And she's your daughter.' She crosses her arms over her chest. 'Your daughter who's come here to feel closer to you.' She wonders if Rachel is really so sceptical of ghosts as she made out to be. She did come here at least partly because of the ghost story after all.

He has nothing to say to that.

Really, this quiet from him of all people is not making her feel more at ease.

'Right.' She takes a deep breath. 'My parents died a year before I married.' She hasn't told this to any of the ghosts before and she never thought that Julian would be the first to know. Life's funny that way sometimes. 'And I really, really would have loved to see them at my wedding.' To her complete embarrassment her voice is doing funny things and her eyes feel a bit teary. 'I'm not saying that you have to go and show yourself, or do your ghostly powers thing, but it might be the only chance you have.' She manages to shrug as if the outcome doesn't really matter to her – although secretly she's rooting for a happy ending here as much as the ghosts are – and that it's really all up to him. 'Reach out or not. It's your choice.'

She stirs the milk into her tea without looking at him. When she looks up again, he's gone.


Say what you will about the old house, but at least the Wi-fi connection is quite good. It's gone midnight, but Rachel is still wide awake. She did try to sleep, but the knowledge that she's in the same house that her father's died in – even though she knows he died on the other side of the house – keeps her wide awake. After an hour of tossing and turning, she decided that she might as well get some work done.

Her eyelids are growing heavy though. Maybe she should try to give sleep another go. She gets up and stretches her cramped limbs. The only light in the room comes from her laptop and yes, she knows she should not work by that light alone, but in her sleep-deprived mindset she can't recall where the light switch is. She can't be bothered to look for it now.

It's still raining and, since there's barely any wind to speak of, there's small chance of it letting up anytime soon. Rachel doesn't like it much, but in the privacy of her own mind, she'll readily admit that it doesn't feel much like a haunted house. Haunted houses should come with howling winds and ominous thunder, not the bog-standard British downpour that is about as spooky as a fluffy kitten.

Which is a rubbish analogy and testimony to the fact that she should get into the bed to get some sleep.

Maybe it is because she is so tired that the sound doesn't register at first, not quite. There's a ticking sound in the room. The rain against the window, she thinks at first before it dawns on her that the sound is in the room itself. Even then she doesn't get it. Button House is an old house after all. It makes all kinds of noises at night. It's practically required for a house this age.

But this is not the house.

It's not until Rachel turns back to her laptop to shut it off for the night that she discovers that something is not as it should be. She left it open on a speech she was working on, but somehow her laptop has taken on a mind of its own, because there's a new document open now.

Hello

Rachel blinks, and in the time she does, some invisible force has added a comma behind the word. She blinks again and the cursor has moved one space.

She is frozen to the spot and she can't quite believe what she's seeing. Rachel has always prided herself on being a reasonable woman. She believes what her eyes can see. She believes that which she can see and hear and touch. She's never seen a ghost and no one who's ever claimed to see one has been able to prove it. Ergo, they do not exist.

Yet something is doing something to her computer and it isn't the wind.

For a moment she is even tempted to think that she fell asleep at the desk after all and that this is just her subconscious processing all the thoughts about this old house and the stories about it, but she pinches her own arm and that sadly fails to wake her up.

She does it a second and a third time just for good measure.

The results are not encouraging.

During the time she's been trying to wake herself up – and only manages to bruise her own left arm, so that's a great use of her time – the invisible force is still tapping away at the keyboard. It's slow-going, very slow-going, as though every time pressing a key takes immense effort and concentration, but by the time it's four letters into the next word, Rachel has seen enough to recognise her own name.

Someone is here with her and they know who she is.

It hits her all at once. The ghost stories are true and right now she is in a room in an old house, on her own, miles away from anything and with nowhere to escape, with at least one dead person who's leaving her a creepy message on her own laptop in the dead of night.

The room feels very cold all of a sudden.

If this were some horrible old film, she'd scream loud enough to wake the dead – ha! – but Rachel is no movie damsel in distress.

She faints instead.


Alison is having a wonderful dream. She is sitting in front of the hearth with Mike when Pat runs into the room, yelling, because of course even in her dreams she is to have no respite from the ghosts' constant demands for her attention.

She closes her eyes, but that is not the way one escapes an insistent ghost.

'Alison! Wake up!' And of course the captain is here as well. 'Alison!'

It's at this point it dawns on her that she is not in fact dreaming, because when she opens her eyes again it's to her own bedroom and four of the resident ghosts standing at her bedside, talking over each other, which muddies the waters considerably.

'Guys!' It's warning and whine all in one.

Since that fails to have the desired effect, she grabs her phone to check the time. It's not even one o'clock yet. Next to her Mike is sleeping. Sometimes she rather envies him his non-ghost seeing. This is one of those times.

'What is going on?' she demands in a quite impressive sounding hiss. She keeps her voice down for Mike's sake, but she really isn't happy. She'll forgive them if there's burglars in the house, but other than that…

'Miss Rachel has fainted,' the captain reports.

Oh, for heaven's sake! 'I told you not to scare her!' She might as well have saved her breath.

She swings her legs out of bed – because well, what else is she going to do? – and reaches out for the robe on the chair, because it is cold and damp beyond her warm cocoon of Mike and blankets. She's shivering even before she wraps it around herself.

Tomorrow morning there will be words.

The captain leads the way, while Kitty, Fanny and Pat follow behind Alison. Kitty expresses worry for poor Rachel, Pat wonders if they should call for a doctor, whilst Fanny's face is a study in disapproval; it wouldn't surprise Alison at all if fainting was considered a mental defect in a lady.

She doesn't ask what in the world is going on again, but only because it becomes blaringly obvious the moment she steps foot into Rachel's room. The guest herself lies on the ground, stirring faintly while on the desk the open document on the laptop displays the message Hello, Rachel. Julian is standing next to said laptop, shifting his ghostly weight – do ghosts even still have that? – from one foot to the other.

A little too late it occurs to Alison that she may have brought this on herself with all her talk of dead parents and reaching out. And, since it is her mess, she should probably clean it up.

Sleep is probably not going to happen for her tonight.

'Right,' she said, cutting off both Kitty and Pat mid-sentence. 'Everyone out. Not you, Julian,' she adds hastily when it seems he's just about ready to disappear through the wall into the next room and from there probably to the outermost edge of the estate.

He stops.

Rachel is waking up now, so Alison helps her sit up and lean against the foot of the bed. It's not her best decision, because now the laptop sits in Rachel's direct line of sight, still showing Julian's best attempt at communication with his daughter.

I should be paid to do this, Alison reflects.

'Are you all right?' she asks for lack of anything better to say.

Rachel points a very shaky finger at the screen. 'Can you see that?'

If only she couldn't.

Alison nods. 'Can you stand up? I think we had better go to the kitchen.'

'The kitchen?'

'We'll need tea for this.' She helps her befuddled guest to her feet and then, before she leaves the room, closes the laptop and takes it with her.


She must be sleeping, Rachel thinks, because that's how dreams are. They never make any sense, but its occupants always think that they behave perfectly logically. Then again, if this were a dream, she should think that everything is perfectly logical and Rachel most assuredly does not.

Of course, she doesn't have a rational explanation for why her hostess is shooing thin air out of the kitchen and snaps at another piece of thin air she calls Robin when the lights flicker for a moment. It doesn't get any clearer when Alison instructs someone called Thomas to take Humphrey's head with him when he leaves.

She does not have long to ponder any of it, because Alison plonks both a very big mug of tea and her own laptop on the kitchen table in front of her. She manages to look both sympathetic, nervous and business-like at the same time, but it's the last one of those three that dominates when she tells Rachel: 'The ghost story was not a hoax.'

It doesn't sink in. Not right away at least.

Alison probably suspects that, because she sits down opposite Rachel, clutching her own mug of tea and speaks again: 'We have ghosts.'

Nope, it's still not landing.

'And one of them is your father.'

Rachel blinks, wonders if she had heard that right, then realises that she probably has. 'My father?' she asks, just for the purposes of clarification.

Alison nods.

Every last bit of Rachel's rational mind is arguing against this. She doesn't believe in ghosts. Ghosts are for stories and gullible idiots. She is not a gullible idiot. She only believes what her eyes can see. And what her eyes have seen tonight should not be possible.

She pulls the laptop towards her and opens it back up again. The message is still there. Rachel knows she didn't type it. She was nowhere near and neither was anybody else. Yes, the room had been dark, but not dark enough to hide someone. Either someone had gained the ability to turn themselves invisible – and Rachel doesn't believe in the existence of Harry Potter any more than she does the tooth fairy – or there really had been a ghost.

Her father's, to be precise.

It's quite a lot to wrap her head around, but she can't think of any other explanation and in the absence of a rational one, she must therefore consider the somewhat irrational one. There are ghosts.

Her father is a ghost.

'It was him?' she asks in a voice that is as shaky as her hands, which she can see as she indicates the laptop.

Alison nods, not without sympathy.

Rachel recalls the astonishment with which Alison had exclaimed that she never knew Julian Fawcett had a daughter, almost like an accusation, as if someone should have told her long ago and they hadn't.

'He's never mentioned me, has he?' she asks.

Alison winces, then shakes her head. 'No, not to me anyway.' She cocks her head, as if she's listening. 'Apparently it wouldn't have helped me to know. Oh, and I could have Googled you myself if I was interested.'

It's clear that Alison can see and hear Rachel's father, who, judging by where Alison is looking, is situated somewhere on Rachel's right. She glances over that way, but there is no one there, no one visible anyway. 'You can see him,' Rachel concludes. 'How?'

'Near death experience, as far as we can say. I fell out of a window.' In the brief silence that follows, her expression changes from wry to almost outraged surprise. 'That was you?' Another silence, then: 'No, of course I didn't know. You could have said, or was I supposed to Google that as well?'

It's a bit like listening to one end of a telephone conversation and it makes her feel strangely left out. Rachel doesn't like that. Actually, it would be fair to say that nothing about this situation is anywhere near to what she would like, but here she is and there is nothing she can do about it now.

She takes a deep breath.

Alison has been having a discussion with the invisible ghost, while Rachel had her little freak-out moment, but apparently an agreement has been reached. 'Could you hold out your right hand?' she asks.

She is already obeying even as she asks why.

'Julian… your father, he… ehm… he can touch things – and people – when he tries.' Alison indicates the laptop. 'The others, well, some of them can do something else, but this is what your father can do.'

Ghosts with abilities, because why not? It's not like this night can get any stranger. Even as she thinks this, Rachel remembers that Alison told a person called Robin off for messing with the lights.

Somehow this is the world she lives in.

And then her thoughts screech to a halt, because she can feel… something. It's not a handshake and it's not even quite a touch. It's more like a bit of wind ghosting over the skin of her hands, but it's definitely something. But it's more than just draught, because the skin on top of her hand is moving like it would if someone did take her hand and somehow she can feel that too.

It's real, she thinks, watching the invisible hand of a ghost clasping hers. It's really real. Her heart skips a beat and her breathing is all over the place. For a moment she doesn't know what to do with that, but all of a sudden she is very close to tears. 'Hello, dad. It's… it's so nice to meet you.'

'He's happy to meet you too,' Alison translates, smiling like she's watching something wonderful unfold.

Rachel looks at her hand and privately agrees that it must be.

Alison rises to her feet. 'Well, I'll just leave you to it, then.'

'What?' Rachel demands.

Alison laughs and then shoves the laptop towards the empty spot at the table. 'You can use the laptop,' she reminds both father and daughter. 'I'm going back to bed.'

Right. Chatting with a ghost with a laptop as a translation device. If someone had told Rachel twelve hours ago that this was what her life had come to, she would have laughed them out of town and then some. Right now however it just new and ever so slightly daunting.

But she looks at her right hand again and at the same time would forfeit every election she could ever stand for if this moment could stretch out for even a minute longer. She's come here to feel closer to her father and somehow, miraculously, that's exactly what has happened. If she could laugh and cry at the same time, she probably would.

'So, what now?' she asks.

Alison lingers near the stove and leans against it. 'Well,' she says, eyes gleaming with the spark of a new idea, 'would it help at all to know that we host weddings at Button House?'


Actually, that does help, just not right this moment when Rachel is trying to tuck a wayward lock of hair back to where the hairdresser put it just two hours ago. She sneaks a look around the door where the room is filling up with guests. Her eyes stray to her mother, the biggest nay-sayer to this new plan. She looks ill at ease.

'Your father is taking stock of his replacement,' Alison announces, disappearing out of nowhere as well as any of her ghosts.

'Oh, dear,' says Rachel, wondering if she should perhaps go over there and clue her mother in after all.

'They'll be fine,' Alison reassures her. 'He's promised to be on his best behaviour today.'

Rachel nods.

'Are you all right?'

She nods again. 'Yes, I think.' She wants to do this, even if she is the only one who understands why. Well, not the only one. She did tell her fiancé. Truth be told, Owen took that a lot better than she would have done if the shoe was on the other foot. Having said that, she's not entirely sure he believes it all, but he believes that she believes it's real and that's good enough for him. 'Just nervous.'

Alison pats her arm. 'It'll be fine, Rachel,' she promises.

'You'll tell me all about it?'

'All of it,' Alison swears. 'Now go and get married.'

So she does, go and get married, that is. It's just that she is one of the few who knows what's really happening. Later she'll hear some of her guest whispering that it was a bit odd that the bride went down the aisle, not just on her own but also just off-centre, as if there was someone walking next to her. And didn't Auntie Mary think that her arms were just a smidgeon too far from her body? Rachel of course knows better. She can't see what Alison sees, and she can't see someone walking next to her any more than any of the others, but she feels the touch on her arm when she walks down the aisle and she sees the big thumbs-up Alison gives her and she knows that she is not walking down the aisle alone and that, against all the odds, it's her own father who gives her away on her wedding day.

Rachel couldn't have stopped smiling if she tried.


I hope you enjoyed this little piece. I'd like to know what you think, so feel free to leave a review if you have a moment.

Thanks for reading!