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they drove up the hill.

FOUR
    I n the door mirror of the limo she could see herself although there was no comfort in that view. The puppy’s blood was not only over the wedding dress, it had sprayed on to her face and hands and was even splattered in her hair. If there had been anybody in the Square they would have been staring, their attention first caught by the reappearance of the bridal car and then the sound of her scampering feet. She pretended to herself that she could make herself invisible, as she had done in moments of embarrassment ever since her childhood, though as far as she knew it had never worked yet.
    The limo made short work of the steep hill. Alistair had longed for somebody to ask him to hurry and now was his chance. The fat tyres produced a squeal as he turned off into the byroad. The rest of the trip back to Whinmount passed in a flash. As soon as she leapt out of the car – as fast as the corseted wedding dress would allow – Jane gave instructions to Alistair to go and fetch Deborah, her Maid of Honour. The first thing that Jane saw on darting inside the front door was the light flashing on the recently installed telephone, insisting that there were messages. There was, in fact, a string of messages and they were all from Deborah, desperate to know why she had not been collected yet. Was she forgotten? While trying not to look at herself in the hall mirror, Jane called her maid of honour and assured her that the limo was on the way. She told her to sit beside the driver so as not to run the risk of staining whatever gorgeous dress she was no doubt wearing. Rather than be trapped in the hall answering a thousand questions, Jane disconnected.
    She collected a big jar of salt and dashed upstairs. The bath was quickly part-filled with water and salt and she left the wedding dress to soak in it, while knowing that it was already far too late. Hoping against hope, she scanned her wardrobe but no miracle had produced a long white dress since the last time that she looked in it. There was nothing all-white except a tennis frock, but that was so short that it would barely have covered her underwear. Then memory threw up an inspiration. She closed the wardrobe and went to the airing cupboard and there she found a white nightdress of some silky material, a present from Roland on a recent birthday and never worn because it was far too sexy even for a fiancée. Perhaps for a husband it might have been just within the bounds of the permissible. As a wedding dress it would be outrageous but of the various choices open to her it seemed the least unacceptable and in fact the only one possible.
    In washing the blood off her face Jane had necessarily removed the make-up that she had patiently applied two hours earlier. The return of Alistair brought relief in the form of Deborah, the maid of honour, who absorbed the sorry tale and, although her hand was shaking – with laughter Jane hoped – at the thought of the microchipped robber, managed to remove the more obvious bloodstains from Jane’s hair and to make a better job of the make-up than Jane herself had managed. With the veil pinned over her hair, Deborah said nobody would ever know that anything was amiss. The fact that the veil would be removed during the ceremony was not mentioned. Deborah directed Alistair’s attention to the view over the town while Jane whipped a sheet of polythene out of the house and flipped it over the back seat.
    They were still tidying the veil during the short journey to Kempfield, whilst Jane was filling Deborah in on the eventful day so far. Deborah was still firing off a million questions to Jane when Alistair indicated that they were arriving at Kempfield. Jane was mentally unprepared as they swept into the outer courtyard and stopped at the big doors. It was hardly the serene kind of preparation appropriate for a bride just as she’s about to make the most important union of her life, but it was