Chapter 16: The Winter Gala

On Saturday night I walked into the Wrenfield Winter Gala on Margaret's arm, and four hundred people turned around.

The ballroom was gold and white, with a screen the width of a wall behind the stage.

Gethin stood at the back by the doors, in the only suit he owned, with his hands clasped in front of him.

"Don't look at him," Margaret murmured. "Look at the room."

Bryony sat at a front table in green velvet, with a glass of champagne and her ankles crossed.

She raised the glass to me, very slightly.

At eight o'clock Alistair went up to the podium and the lights dropped.

"Before the speeches," he said into the microphone, and his voice cracked on it, "there's a short film."

It was her film, and he let it run.

It opened on my wedding photograph, and then the clip played, my voice shouting in the dark, with the captions on.

Then came stills of me at three different parties, each one cropped so that I looked furious.

A line of white type came up over them: What does a husband owe a wife who cannot be reasoned with?

A woman near me whispered, "That poor man."

When the screen went black, Alistair did not give a speech.

He took the microphone from its stand and held it out to me across the length of the room.

I walked the whole way up the aisle with my mother's pearl earrings in, and I took it.

"Good evening," I said. "I'm Verity Penhallow. Until a month ago I was Mrs Wrenfield."

Nobody in the room moved.

"You've just watched a piece of it. Here's the rest."

At the back, the events manager who had phoned Margaret raised a hand to a man at a desk.

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