The second wave, the mid-twenties weddings, still retained a little of that tongue-in-cheek, home-made quality. The receptions took place in community centres and parents' gardens, vows were self-composed and rigorously secular, and someone always seemed to read that poem about the rain having such small hands. But a cold, hard edge of professionalism had started to creep in. The idea of the "wedding list" had begun to rear its head.

This wasn't the first wave of weddings. Some of their contemporaries had even got married at University, but in that self-consciously wacky, rag-week way, a let's-pretend parody of a wedding, like the jokey student "dinner parties" where everyone wore evening dress to eat tuna pasta bake. Student wedding receptions were picnics in the local park, the guests in Oxfam suits and secondhand ballgowns, then onto the pub. In the wedding photos the bride and groom might be seen raising pint glasses to the camera, a fag dangling from the bride's rouged mouth, and wedding gifts were modest: a really cool compilation tape; a clip-framed photo-montage; a box of candles. Getting married at University was an amusing stunt, an act of benign rebellion, like a tiny tattoo that no-one ever sees or shaving your head for charity.

They have started to arrive. An endless cascade of luxuriously quilted envelopes, thumping onto the doormat. The wedding invitations.

Somerset

The third wave is unstoppable. Every week seems to bring another luxuriantly creamy envelope, the thickness of a letter-bomb, containing a complex invitation -- a triumph of paper engineering -- and a comprehensive dossier of phone numbers, email addresses, websites, how to get there, what to wear, where to buy the gifts. Country house hotels are being block-booked, great schools of salmon are being poached, vast marquees are appearing overnight like Bedouin tent cities. Silky grey morning suits and top hats are being hired and worn with an absolutely straight face, and the times are heady and golden for florists and caterers, string quartets and Ceilidh callers, ice sculptors and the makers of disposable cameras. Decent Motown cover-bands are limp with exhaustion. Churches are back in fashion, and these days the happy couple are travelling the short distance from the place of worship to the reception on open-topped London buses, in hot-air balloons, on the backs of matching white stallions, in micro-lite planes. A wedding requires immense reserves of love and commitment and time off work, not least from the guests. Confetti costs eight pounds a box. A bag of rice from the corner shop just won't cut it anymore.

At some point in the future a fourth wave is expected -- the Second Marriages: bittersweet, faintly apologetic affairs that are over by 9.30 on account of all the kids. "It's not a big deal," they will say "just an excuse for a party." But for the moment this year is the year of the third wave, and it is the third wave that is proving the most powerful, the most spectacular, the most devastating. These are the weddings of people in their early-to-mid-thirties, and no-one is laughing anymore.

"Emma Morley and partner."

Emma was a shocking driver, simultaneously sloppy and petrified, and for the first fifty miles had been absent-mindedly driving with her spectacles on top of her contact lenses so that other traffic loomed menacingly out of nowhere like alien space cruisers. Frequent rest stops were required to stabilise her blood pressure and dab the perspiration from her top lip, and she reached for her handbag and checked her make-up in the mirror, trying to sneak up on herself to gauge the effect. The lipstick was redder and more sultry than she felt she could carry off, and the small amount of powder she had applied to her cheeks now looked garish and absurd, like something from a Restoration comedy. Why, she wondered, do I always look like a kid trying on her mother's make-up? She had also made the elementary mistake of getting her hair cut, no, styled, just the day before, and it was still falling into an artful arrangement of layers and flicks; what her mum would have called a "do".

Mr and Mrs Anthony Killick invite Emma Morley and partner to the wedding of their daughter Tilly Killick and Malcolm Tidewell.

Her road atlas was an ancient edition, with several major conurbations missing. She turned it through one hundred and eighty degrees, then back ninety, but it was like trying to navigate with a copy of the Domesday Book and she slapped it onto the empty passenger seat where her imaginary partner should have been sitting.

In the motorway services Emma sat in her new car, her very first car, a fourth-hand Fiat Panda, and stared at the invite, knowing with absolute certainty that there would be men with cigars and someone English in a kilt.

In frustration she tugged hard at the hem of her dress, a Chinese-style affair of rich blue silk, or some silk substitute, which made her look like the plump unhappy waitress in the Golden Dragon Take-away. Sitting down it bulged and stretched, and the combination of something in the "silk" and motorway jitters was making her perspire. The car's air-conditioning had two settings, wind-tunnel and sauna, and all elegance had evaporated somewhere outside Maidenhead, to be replaced by two dark crescents of sweat beneath her arms. She raised her elbows to her head, and peered down at the patches and wondered if she should turn around, go home and change? Or just turn around. Go home, stay home, do some work on the book. After all, it's not as if she and Tilly Killick were still the best of pals. The dark days when Tilly had been her landlady in the tiny flat in Clapton had cast a long shadow, and they'd never quite settled the dispute over the non-return of the returnable deposit. It was hard to wish the newly-weds well when the bride still owed you five hundred quid.

"Not a fling, just an old, old friend."

And it was at this exact moment, as she sat pointing her armpits at the air-conditioning vents and wondering what to do, that Dexter drove by unseen in his Mazda sports car, Sylvie Cope by his side.

"So who'll be there?" asked Sylvie, turning down the stereo. Travis -- her choice for a change. Sylvie didn't much care for music, but made an exception for Travis.

"Another ex?"

"… Mari with the Big Hair, Bob. God, people I haven't seen for years. My old friend Emma."

"English teacher?"

"No, not an ex…"

"Used to be an English teacher, writer now. You talked to her at Bob and Mari's wedding, remember? In Cheshire."

"Just a whole lot of people from University. Paul and Sam and Steve O'D, Peter and Sarah, the Watsons. And Callum."

On the other hand, old friends would be there. Sarah C, Carol, Sita, the Watson twins, Bob, Mari with the Big Hair, Stephanie Shaw from her publishers, Callum O'Neill the sandwich millionaire. Dexter would be there. Dexter and his girlfriend.

"A fling."

"Callum. Good, I like Callum."

"No I did not have a thing with her."

"They all melt into one." She turned to the window. "So did you have a thing with her?"

"Vaguely. Quite attractive."

"It is true."

"Hey, you're the only one for me now." With one hand on the steering wheel, he reached across and placed the other on Sylvie's stomach, still flat beneath the peach shot-satin of her short dress, then rested it on the top of her bare thigh.

"It seems like every week we go to some wedding with a coach-load of people you've slept with --"

"Did you ever have sex with the bride?"

"Don't leave me talking to strangers, will you?" said Sylvie, and turned up the stereo.

December 1992, that horrible flat in Clapton that always smelt of fried onions. A foot massage that had spun wildly out of control while Emma was at Woolworths.

"Not true, not true --"

"Tilly? What about her?"

"I suppose so." Dexter shrugged hard. "We fell out for a while. I told you about it. Remember?"

"-- a marquee-full. Like a conference."

"What about the bride?"

"That's not true."

"Of course not. What do you think I am?"

In sight of the chapel, a man dressed in the powdered wig and frock coat of a footman lunged in front of her, waving her down with frilly cuffs and leaning in at the window.

It was mid-afternoon before Emma found herself, late and exhausted, at the security gates of the stately home, wondering if they would let her in. A vast estate in Somerset, shrewd investors had turned Morton Manor Park into a sort of all-in-one marriage compound, complete with its own chapel, banqueting hall, a privet maze, a spa, a selection of guest bedrooms with walk-through showers, all surrounded by a high wall topped with razor wire: a wedding camp. With follies and grottoes, ha-has and gazebos, a castle and a bouncy castle it was an upmarket marital Disneyland, available for whole weekends at breathtaking expense. It seemed an unusual venue for the wedding of a former member of the Socialist Workers' Party, and Emma drove along the sweeping gravel drive, bemused and disconcerted by it all.

"Is there a problem?" she asked. She wanted to say "officer".

"To park the car."

"I need the keys, ma'am."

"The keys?"

She had been driving barefoot and now found that she had to stamp her swollen feet into her shoes, like an ugly stepsister. The ceremony had already started. From the chapel she could hear "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" played by four, possibly five, gloved hands. She hobbled across the gravel towards the chapel, her arms raised to evaporate some of the perspiration, like a child pretending to be a plane, then with one last tug on the hem of her dress she slid discreetly through the large oak door and stood at the back of the packed congregation. An acapella group was performing now, clicking their fingers maniacally, singing "I'm into Something Good" as the happy couple grinned toothily at each other, wet-eyed. This was Emma's first sighting of the groom: a rugby player type, handsome in pale grey morning suit and razor burn, he moved his big face at Tilly, working though different variations on "my happiest moment". Unusually, Emma noted, the bride had opted for a Marie-Antoinette theme -- pink silk and lace, a hooped skirt, hair piled high, a beauty spot -- causing Emma to wonder if Tilly's degree in History and French had perhaps fallen short of its mark. She looked very happy though, and he looked very happy, and the whole congregation looked very, very happy.

"Oh God, really?" she said, embarrassed by the moss growing round the window seals, the mulch of disintegrated A to Zs and empty plastic bottles that littered the floor. "Okay, well, the doors don't lock, you've got to use this screwdriver to hold it closed and there's no hand brake, so park it on the level or edged up against a tree or just leave it in gear, alright?" The footman took the keys between his finger and thumb as if he'd been handed a dead mouse.

Song followed sketch followed song until the wedding began to resemble a Royal Variety Performance, and Dexter found his mind beginning to drift. Tilly's ruddy-cheeked niece was reading a sonnet now, something about the marriage of two minds not admitting impediment, whatever the hell that meant. He tried hard to concentrate on the poem's line of argument and to apply its romantic sentiment to his own feelings for Sylvie, then turned his attention back to how many of the congregation he had slept with. Not in a gloating way, not entirely, but with a sort of nostalgia. "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks…" read the bride's niece, as Dexter made it five. Five ex-lovers in one small chapel. Was this some kind of record? Should there be extra points for the bride? No sign of Emma Morley yet. With Emma, five-and-a-half.

From the back of the church Emma watched Dexter counting off on his fingers, and wondered what he was doing. He wore a black suit with a skinny black tie; like all the boys these days, trying to look like a gangster. In profile, there was the beginning of a slight sagging under his jaw, but he still looked handsome. Stupidly handsome actually, and far less pasty and bloated than before he had met Sylvie. Since their falling out Emma had seen him three times, always at weddings. Each time he had thrown his arms around her and kissed her as if nothing had changed, and said "we must talk, we must talk", but it had never happened, not really. He had always been with Sylvie, the pair of them busy looking beautiful. There she was now, a proprietary hand on his knee, her head and neck like some long-stemmed flower, craning to take it all in.

"Don't I know you?"

"Well," he said.

The cabaret ended. There was just time for an uncertain rendition of "All You Need is Love," the congregation struggling to sing along in 7/4, before the guests followed the happy couple outside and the reunion began in earnest. Through the crowd of people, hugging, whooping and shaking hands, Dexter and Emma sought each other out and suddenly there they were.

"Well."

The vows now. Emma glanced across in time to see Sylvie reach for Dexter's hand and squeeze the five fingers as if in solidarity with the happy couple. She whispered in his ear, and Dexter looked up at Sylvie, smiling broadly and a little dopily, so Emma thought. He mouthed something back, and though not a practiced lip-reader Emma thought that there was a good chance it was "I love you too." Self-consciously, he glanced around and caught Emma's eye, grinning as if he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't.

"Yours too. You look different though."

"Your face certainly rings a bell."

"Yes, I'm the only woman here who's drenched in sweat," said Emma, plucking at the fabric beneath her arms.

"Actually, no, this is sweat. I look like I've been dragged from a lake. Natural silk my eye!"

"Sort of an oriental theme, isn't it?"

"You mean 'perspiration'."

"That's okay. I really like the dress. In fact me love it long time."

"I call it my Fall of Saigon look. Chinese technically. Of course the trouble with one of these dresses is forty minutes later you want another one!" she said, and had that feeling, halfway through the sentence that she would have been better off not starting it. Did she imagine it, or did he roll his eyes a little? "Sorry."

She rolled her eyes. "There you go; now we're quits."

"What?"

"Is that what they call a Rachel?"

"Don't push your luck, Dex," she said, immediately scrubbing at her hair with her fingertips. She glanced across to where Tilly and her brand new husband were posing for photographs, Tilly fluttering a fan coquettishly in front of her face. "Unfortunately I didn't realise there was a French Revolutionary theme."

"What I meant was that you look good." He was peering at the top of her head now. "Is that a…?"

They looked at each other. "You haven't changed, have you?" she said.

"Want to go and try your chances, Em?"

"The Marie-Antoinette thing?" said Dexter. "Well at least we know there'll be cake."

Dexter kicked at the gravel. "Well I have. A bit."

"I'll tell you later. Look --"

"Apparently she's travelling to the reception in a tumbril."

"That sounds intriguing."

"Can't catch," she said, placing her hands behind her back just as the bouquet was lobbed into the crowd and caught by a frail and elderly aunt, which seemed to anger the crowd somehow, as if someone's last chance for future happiness had been squandered. Emma nodded towards the embarrassed aunt, the bouquet dangling forlornly from her hand. "There's me in forty years' time," said Emma.

Tilly was standing on the running board of the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost that would take them the hundred yards to the reception, the bouquet held low in both hands, ready to be tossed like a caber.

"What's a tumbril?"

"Really? Forty?" said Dexter, and Emma pressed her heel down on his toe. Over her shoulder he could see Sylvie nearby, looking round for him. "Better go. Sylvie doesn't really know anyone. I'm on strict orders never to leave her side. Come and say hi, will you?"

"Ask her about that deposit she owes you."

"Later. I'd better go and talk to the happy bride."

'D'you think? Today?"

The overcast morning had settled into a beautiful afternoon, high clouds rolling across the huge blue sky as the guests followed the Silver Ghost in procession to the Great Lawn for champagne and canapés. There, with a great whoop, Tilly finally saw Emma, and they hugged each other as best they could across the bride's vast hooped skirt.

"See you later. Maybe we'll be sitting next to each other at the reception." He held up crossed fingers, and she crossed her fingers back.

"Me too, Tilly. You look extraordinary."

Tilly fluttered her fan. "You don't think it's too much?"

"Not at all. You look stunning," and her eye drifted once more to the beauty spot that made it look as if a fly had settled on her lip. "The service was lovely too."

"I'm so glad you could make it, Em!"

"Awwww, was it?" This was an old trait of Tilly's to precede each sentence with a sympathetic "aw", as if Emma were a kitten who had hurt her little paw. "Did you cry?"

The champagne flowed on and a sense of nostalgia spread across the Great Lawn as old friends met and conversation turned into how much people earned now, how much weight they had gained.

"Awww, don't you?"

"I think I'd notice, Tilly."

"Have you met his girlfriend? With the hairy forehead? Isn't she beautiful? Just like Audrey Hepburn. Or is it Katharine? I can never remember the difference."

"Like an orphan…"

"Awww! I'm so, so glad you could make it." Regally she tapped Emma's shoulder with her fan. "And I can't wait to meet your boyfriend."

"Awww! I'm sorry. Well get one! QUICK!!!! No seriously, boyfriends are great! Husbands are better! We must find you one!" she commanded. "Tonight! We'll fix you up!" and Emma felt her head being verbally patted. "Awwwww. So! Have you seen Dexter yet?"

"Briefly."

"Sandwiches. That's the future," said Callum O'Neill, who was both earning and weighing a great deal more these days. "High-quality, ethically-minded convenience food, that's where it's at my friend. Food is the new rock and roll!"

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Audrey. She's definitely an Audrey."

"Nope, not for some time now."

"Well me too, but unfortunately I don't have one."

"I thought that comedy was the new rock and roll."

"It was, then it was rock and roll, now it's food. Keep up, Dex!" Dexter's old flatmate had transformed almost beyond recognition in the last few years. Prosperous, large and dynamic, he had moved on from refurbished computers, selling the business at a vast profit to start up the "Natural Stuff" sandwich chain. Now, with his trim little goatee and close-cropped hair, he was the very model of the well-groomed, self-assured young entrepreneur. Callum tugged on the cuffs of an exquisite tailored suit and Dexter found himself wondering if this could really be the same skinny Irishman who wore the same trousers every day for three years.

"Everything's organic, everything's made fresh, we do juices and smoothies to order, we do fair-trade coffee. We've got four branches, and they're full all the time, seriously, constantly. We have to close at three o'clock, there's just no food left. I tell you, Dex, the food culture in this country, it's changing, people want things to be better. No-one wants a can of Tango and a packet of crisps anymore. They want hummus wraps, papaya juice, crayfish…"

"I can't believe a friend of mine is offering me a job."

"No, I'm just saying, come in and --"

"Like?"

"Crayfish?"

"About the business. I think there could be a lot of opportunities for you."

Dexter dug at the lawn with his heel. "Callum, are you offering me a job?"

"In flatbread, with rocket. Seriously, crayfish is the egg sandwich of our time, rocket's the iceberg lettuce. Crayfish are cheap to produce, they breed like you wouldn't believe, they're delicious, the poor man's lobster! Hey, you should come and have a talk to me about it sometime."

"-- come and have lunch! None of that crayfish crap either, a proper restaurant. My treat." He draped a large arm over Dexter's shoulder, and in a lowered voice said, "I haven't seen you much on TV these days."

"That's because you don't watch cable and satellite. I do a lot of work on cable and satellite."

"Well I'm doing this new show called Sport Xtreme. Xtreme with an X. Surfing footage, interviews with snow-boarders. You know. From all around the world."

"About crayfish."

"Alright then. You can buy me lunch. But I warn you, I know nothing about business."

"Long time ago now."

"Well, like I said, if you ever felt like a change in career. You know a bit about food and drink, you can get on with people if you put your mind to it. Business is people. I just think it might be for you. That's all."

"Not that busy."

"Hey, you could have called me too!"

"I just present the footage. The studio's in Morden. So yes, I do travel a lot, but only to Morden."

"Didn't I? Sorry. I had things on my mind."

"What can I say -- people change! So what do you think?"

"That's alright. It'll be nice to catch up anyway." Half admonishingly, he tapped Dexter's elbow. "You went very quiet on me for a while."

"For a whole term you ate nothing but tinned mince."

"Did I? I was busy."

"I did, often. You never returned my calls."

"So you're travelling a lot then?"

Dexter sighed through his nose, looked up at his old friend and tried to dislike him. "Cal, you wore the same pair of trousers every day for three years."

"Eleven years since we left." Dexter shook his head, incredulous. "Eleven years. How the fuck did that happen?"

"S'alright. Long time ago now."

"Some things don't change then." A pretty waitress, self-conscious in a mobcap, arrived to top up their glasses. They both grinned at her, caught each other grinning, and tapped their glasses together.

"I heard about your mum." He looked into his glass. "Sorry about that. Lovely lady, your mum."

There was a moment's silence, comfortable and affectionate, as they looked around the lawn at old friends talking and laughing in the late afternoon sun. Nearby, Callum's latest girlfriend, a tiny, striking Spanish girl, a dancer in hip-hop videos, was speaking to Sylvie who stooped down to hear her.

"It'll be nice to talk to Luiza again," said Dexter.

"I shouldn't get too attached." Callum shrugged. "I think Luiza's on the way out."

"I see Emma Morley's here," said Callum, out of nowhere.

"I know." They glanced over and saw that she was talking to Miffy Buchanan, an old arch-enemy. Even at a distance, they could tell Emma's teeth were gritted.

"But you're alright now?"

"Nearly?" sniffs Callum. "What does that mean?"

Dexter changed the subject. "But you're alright, yeah?"

And partly from wounded pride, partly from a revived sense of competition, Dexter decided to tell him. "So -- do you want to hear something funny?"

"Did you ever…?"

"She is."

"I'd heard you and Em fell out."

"No. Nearly. Once or twice."

Emma heard Callum O'Neill whoop from the other side of the Great Lawn and glanced across in time to see him holding Dexter in a head-lock, rubbing his knuckles on Dexter's scalp. She smiled then turned her full attention back to hating Miffy Buchanan.

"We did."

"Not sure. We'll see."

"Quite a beauty these days."

Callum took a sip of champagne. "Dex, I'm thirty-four. I've got a beautiful girlfriend, my own house, my own business, I work hard at something I enjoy, I make enough money." He placed his hand on Dexter's shoulder. "And you, you've got a show on late-night TV! Life's been good for all of us."

"She is, she is."

"Great girl, Emma."

"Anyone on the horizon?"

"Even so, you look much better than you did." Miffy looked her up and down appraisingly, as if contemplating buying her at auction. "You're actually one of the few people here who's actually lost some weight! I mean you were never massively fat or anything, just puppy-fat, but it's fallen off you!"

"Nope --"

"Nope --"

"Nope --"

"Aren't they? So have you had any kids yet?" said Miffy, as if it was an either/or situation, novels or kids.

"Yes, I've been made aware of that. Several times."

"Well I prefer to think of myself as self-employed."

"Have you seen my two?" Nearby two immense toddlers in three-piece suits were rubbing canapés into each other's faces. "IVAN. NO BITING."

"No-one?"

"They're lovely boys."

"Just for a year or two, a Sabbatical."

"But you haven't actually had anything published?"

"Nope --"

"So I heard you were unemployed," she was saying.

"Hm," said Miffy, sceptically. "Harriet Bowen has had three novels published now."

"Seeing anyone?"

"And she's got three kids."

"As a writer?"

"Well. There you go."

"Not as yet. Though I have actually been paid a small advance to --"

"Do I?" Emma said, taken aback. "Well, that's a shame. I didn't lose it on purpose."

"And you used to have this really strong Northern accent, but now you just talk like everybody else."

Emma felt her hand tighten around the champagne glass. "Well it's good to know the last eleven years haven't been wasted."

"… and you were always so angry about everything all the time."

"Your accent. You know -- Ay oop! Miners-this, miners-that, Guat-e-mala Ra-ra-ra! I thought you were always rubbing it in everyone's face a bit. But now you're talking normally again!"

"Oh my God, there's Dexter Mayhew." Miffy was whispering in her ear now, one hand squeezing Emma's shoulder. "Did you know we had a thing once?"

"To be honest, I always thought you were putting it on. You know -- an affectation --"

"What?"

Emma had always envied those people who spoke their minds, who said what they felt without attention to social nicety. She had never been one of those people, but even so now felt an F-sound forming on her bottom lip.

"Oh, I still get angry, Miffy…"

"Yes, you told me. Many, many times."

"I don't know: my accent, the puppy-fat?…"

"You weren't that bad. Hey, have you seen his girlfriend? Isn't she beautiful? Don't you think she's just exquisite?" and Miffy turned round for a reply, but was surprised to see that Emma had already gone.

"Come to table five. We'll swap the name cards around."

"Tamper with the seating plan? They shoot people for less than that. There's a guillotine out back."

"Table five," said Dexter.

"You mustn't take it personally."

"What's the main course?"

"He still looks great? Doesn't he look great?" and she sighed swooningly. "How come you two never got together?"

"I'm on table twenty-four," said Emma. "Table five's quite near the bride. Twenty-four's out near the chemical loos."

"The rumour-mill says salmon."

The guests were gathering at the marquee now, huddling eagerly around the seating plan as if getting their exam results. Dexter and Emma found each other in the crowd.

"Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream."

Dexter laughed. "We'll talk afterwards, yeah?"

"Come and find me."

At table five, Dexter glanced enviously over at table twenty-four. Sylvie had devised a new game of quickly placing her hand over the top of Dexter's wine glass whenever he picked up the bottle, turning the long meal into a stern test of his reflexes. "You will take it easy, won't you?" she whispered when he had scored a point, and he assured her that he would, but the result was mild boredom, and increasing envy at Callum's maddening self-assurance. At table twenty-four, he could see Emma talking politely and earnestly to a tanned elderly couple, noting the attentive way she listened, her hand placed now on the old man's arm, laughing at his joke, now taking their picture with the disposable camera, now leaning in to have her picture taken. Dexter noticed her blue dress, the kind of thing she never would have worn ten years ago, and noticed too that the zip had come undone by three inches or so at the back, that the hem had ridden up to halfway along her thigh, and there followed a fleeting but still vivid memory of Emma in an Edinburgh bedroom on Rankeillor Street. Dawn light through the curtains, a low single bed, her skirt around her waist, arms above her head. What had changed since then? Not that much. The same lines formed around her mouth when she laughed, they were etched just a little deeper now. She still had the same eyes, bright and shrewd, and she still laughed with her wide mouth tightly shut, as if holding in some secret. In many ways she was far more attractive than her twenty-two-year-old self. She was no longer cutting her own hair for one thing, and she had lost some of that library pallor, that shoe-gazing petulance and surliness. How would he feel, he wondered, if he were seeing that face for the first time now? If he had been allocated table twenty-four, had sat down and introduced himself. Of all the people here today, he thought, he would only want to talk to her. He picked up his drink and pushed back his chair.

"Or you come find me."

"Or you can come and find me."

"Or you find me."

As punishment for some past slight, Emma had been placed between the groom's elderly aunt and uncle from New Zealand, and the phrases "beautiful landscape" and "wonderful quality of life" were rotated for a good three hours. Occasionally she would be distracted by a great gale of laughter from the direction of table five, Dexter and Sylvie, Callum and his girlfriend Luiza; the glamorous table. Emma poured herself another glass of wine and asked once more about the landscape, the quality of life. Whales: had they ever seen real-life whales? she asked and glanced enviously at table five.

A hand on her arm, a voice behind her. Dexter was crouching by her side, grinning woozily, a bottle of champagne in his hand.

Emma held out her glass.

But glasses were being tapped with knives. The speeches. As tradition demanded, the Father of the Bride was drunk and boorish, the Best Man was drunk and unfunny and also forgot to mention the Bride. With each glass of red wine Emma felt the energy leeching out of her, and she began to contemplate her hotel room up at the main house, the clean white dressing-gown, the reproduction four-poster. There'd be one of those walk-through showers that people go crazy for, and far too many towels for a single person. As if to make her mind up, the band were tuning up now, the bassist playing the riff from "Another One Bites the Dust", and Emma decided that it was time to call it a day, take her slice of wedding cake in the special velvet drawstring bag, head up to her room and sleep the wedding off.

"Excuse me, but don't I know you from somewhere?"

"It's possible, I suppose."

They took two glasses and discreetly stepped out of the marquee and into the night. It was still warm, and bats were swooping overhead in the inky summer air as they walked arm in arm through the rose garden towards the maze.

"Maybe later." They were having to shout now. Dexter stood and tugged on her hand. "Let's go somewhere. Just you and me."

"You don't remember?"

"Can you dance?"

"Good God. When did we all start dancing like old people?"

With a squeal of feedback, the band began to play and all attention turned to the dance floor, where Malcolm and Tilly were frugging to their special song, "Brown-Eyed Girl", twisting rheumatically at the hips, four thumbs held aloft.

"Speak for yourself," said Dexter, perching on a chair.

Emma shook her head. "I don't mean on a podium with a whistle and your shirt off, I mean proper dancing."

"Course I can." He took her hand. "Want me to prove it?"

"I don't know. Apparently, there's a maze."

"A maze?" A moment, then she stood. "Well why didn't you say?"

"Where?"

"Well when I left to go to Woolworths you were massaging each other's feet with my best olive oil and when I got back from Woolworths she was crying and there were olive oil footprints all over my best rug and the sofa and on the kitchen table and half way up the wall too, I remember. So I carefully examined the forensic evidence and came to that conclusion. Oh, also, you left your birth control device at the top of the kitchen bin, so that was nice."

"Oh, Dexter…" Emma shook her head slowly. "When will you learn?"

"Did I? Sorry about that."

"So how does it feel?" she asked. "Losing an old flame to the arms of another man."

"Must have been, let me see… December 1992, that flat in Clapton. The one that smelt of fried onions."

"Did she?" He shook his head, betrayed. "That was meant to be our secret!"

"Women talk about these things you know. It's no use swearing them to secrecy, it all comes out in the end."

"Plus the fact that she told me."

"Tilly Killick's not an old flame."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Dexter winced. "How do you know about these things?"

"Don't know yet. He wants to talk to me about 'opportunities'. Business is people he said, whatever that means."

"How hard can it be?"

"We'll use the stars or something." The door creaked open. "Right or left?"

"Right," said Emma, and they stepped into the maze. The high hedges were lit at ground level with different coloured lights, and the air had that summer smell, thick and heady, almost oily from the warm leaves. "Where's Sylvie?"

"Crayfish wrangler?"

Now they had arrived at the entrance to the maze, a neatly trimmed privet hedge affair, a good ten feet high, its entrance marked by a heavy wooden door. Emma paused, her hand on the iron handle. "Is this a good idea?"

"He's doing very well, you know."

"So everyone tells me."

"I'll remember that in future."

"And if we got lost?"

"I know. He just offered me a job."

"Sylvie's okay, she's being Callumed. He's being the life and soul, the charming Oirish millionaire. I thought I'd leave them to it. I can't compete with him anymore. Too tiring."

"Crayfish, apparently."

"They make me say that stuff."

"It's about me, isn't it?"

"Left, I think." They walked a little way in silence, listening to the muffled thump of the band playing "Superstition". "How's the writing going?"

"Not always, pal. Left or right?"

"Not sure yet."

"Ah," Dexter laughed and rubbed his hair with one hand. "You've seen it then?"

"And what's it about? This book."

"Stephanie Shaw says they gave you an advance."

"Oh, it's okay, when I do it. Most of the time I just sit around eating biscuits."

"Just a bit of money, enough to last "til Christmas. Then we'll see. Back to teaching full-time probably."

"But what about Sport Xtreme?

"I think I get away with it."

"'Rad' and 'sweet'. 'Check out these sweet, old skool moves --'"

"Yes, Dexter, it's a whole thick book entirely about you. It's called 'Dexter Dexter Dexter Dexter Dexter'. Right or left?"

"Never missed an episode. You know me, there's nothing I like more in the early hours of the morning than stuff about BMX. My favourite bit is when you say that things are 'rad'--"

"Do they? I haven't. Hey, I hope you've stopped wearing that annoying flat cap too."

"Well you do. Left?"

"Thank you. Want me to say you look better too?"

"Were you?"

"Do I?"

"If you think you can pull it off."

"We all were."

"Absolutely. Some people look better, some people look worse. You are definitely looking better."

"Better than during your rock and roll years anyway. When you were giving-it-large or whatever it was you were doing." They walked a little way in silence, until Emma spoke again. "I was worried about you."

"Left."

"Pleased to hear it. We were thinking about staging an intervention."

"Miffy Buchanan tells me I've finally lost my puppy-fat."

"Well you look very well on it."

"She's just jealous. You look great."

"Actually it's just a book for kids. Teenagers. Boys, relationships, that kind of thing. It's about a school play, that production of Oliver! I did all those years ago. A comedy."

"I haven't worn a hat for years."

"Let's try a left."

"Just a phase. Everybody's got to have a phase like that, haven't they? Go a bit wild."

"No idea."

They peered in either direction. "Amazing, isn't it, how quickly this stopped being fun."

"No thank you. Haven't touched one for years."

"Let's sit down shall we? Over there."

Another junction. "Right or left?" she said.

A small marble bench had been set into the hedge walls, lit from beneath by a blue fluorescent light, and they sat on the cool stone, filled their glasses, tapped them together and bumped shoulders.

"You know how it is, you start with the soft hats, just for kicks, then before you know it, you're into flat caps, trilbies, bowlers…"

"From Cal," he whispered, awed. "Want one?"

"Well done you. I've stopped too, officially. But I feel safe here…" He lit the contraband, his hand shaking stagily. "She can't find me here…" Emma laughed. The champagne and the solitude had lifted their mood, and both were now feeling sentimental, nostalgic, exactly as they should feel at a wedding, and they smiled at each other through the smoke. "Callum says that we're the 'Marlboro-Light-Generation'."

"God, I almost forgot…" Dexter reached into his trouser pocket, and very carefully removed a folded napkin, held it in his palm like a conjurer and unfolded it, a corner at a time. Nestling in the napkin like birds" eggs, were two crumpled cigarettes.

"And what's the answer, Dex?" she asked, solemnly.

"Because of true love?"

He laughed and examined the tip of the cigarette. "I just had to get something out of my system, that's all."

"Partly. Also I'm thirty-four now. At thirty-four you start to run out of excuses."

"Think so, most of it."

"God, that's depressing." Emma sniffed. "A whole generation defined by a brand of fag. I'd sort of hoped for more." She smiled, and turned to Dexter. "So. How are you these days?"

"Excuses?"

"And is it out now?"

"The answer is no, you can't. Once you've worked that out, it all gets a bit simpler."

"I'm fine. Bit more sensible."

"Well, if you're twenty-two and you're fucking up, you can say, it's okay I'm only twenty-two. I'm only twenty-five, I'm only twenty-eight. But 'I'm only thirty-four'?" He sipped from his glass, and leant back into the hedge. "It's like everyone has a central dilemma in their life, and mine was can you be in a committed, mature, loving adult relationship and still get invited to threesomes?"

"Sex in toilet cubicles lose its bittersweet charm?"

"Very beautiful. Serene."

"-- screwed up all my friendships." For emphasis, Dexter leant against her arm, and she leant back against his. "I just thought it was time to do things properly for once. And now I've met Sylvie, and she's great, she really is, and she keeps me on the straight and narrow."

"She is. She is."

"Of course she's got absolutely no sense of humour."

"Well she's a lovely girl."

"A little bit scary sometimes."

"An orgy won't care for you when you're old." He took another sip. "Anyway, it's not even as if I was getting invited to any in the first place, just making a fool of myself, screwing things up. Screwed up my career, screwed up with Mum --"

"Lenny who?"

"It's true; an orgy won't keep you warm at night."

"She's got a lovely, warm sort of Leni Riefenstahl quality to her."

"Doesn't matter."

"Well that's a relief. I think a sense of humour's over-rated," said Emma. "Goofing it up all the time, it's boring. Like Ian. 'Cept Ian wasn't funny. No, much better to have somebody you really fancy, someone who'll rub your feet."

"-- well that's not true --"

"Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine." As a distraction, she stood. "Let's keep walking, shall we? Left or right?"

"Sympathy for the spinster. I'm perfectly content, thank you. And I refuse to be defined by my boyfriend. Or lack of." She was starting to speak with real zeal now. "Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it's like you're free to get on with real life. And I've got my work, and I love that. I've got I reckon one more year to really make a go of it. The money's tiny, but I'm free. I go to the movies in the afternoon." She paused momentarily. "Swimming! I swim a lot. I swim and I swim and I swim, mile after mile. God, I fucking hate swimming. Turn left, I think."

"So true love found you in the end."

Emma gave a low chuckle. "Wow" was all she could say. "Wow. But you love her, right?"

"She is."

"And she's really turned things around for me too. I'm off the drugs and booze and not smoking." She glanced at the bottle in his hand, the cigarette in his mouth. He smiled. "Special occasion."

He tried and failed to imagine Sylvie touching his feet. "She told me once that she never laughs because she doesn't like what it does to her face."

"I adore her."

"Adore. Well 'adore' is even better."

"Not for years now."

"Right." With a sigh, he hauled himself to his feet. "Do you still see Ian?"

"Don't you start, Dexter."

"She's sensational."

"Nobody else on the horizon?"

"What?"

"Something like that." He filled her glass. "How about you?"

"You know, I feel the same. Not about swimming, I mean about not having to date anymore. Since I've been with Sylvie, it's like I've freed up this vast amount of time and energy and mental space."

"What happened to Chris?"

"Play Tomb Raider mostly."

"And what do you do with it all, this mental space?"

Emma laughed, and walked a little further in silence, worrying that she was coming across as less self-contained and empowered than she had intended. "And anyway, it's not like I'm completely, you know, boring and, and loveless. I have my moments. I had this thing with a guy called Chris. Called himself a dentist but he was really just a hygienist."

"Just fizzled out. Just as well. I was convinced that he was always staring at my teeth. Kept nagging me to floss, Emma, floss. Going on a date was like going for a check-up. Too much pressure. And before that there was Mr Godalming." She shuddered. "Mr Godalming. What a disaster."

"Who was Mr Godalming?"

"Another time. Left, right?"

"Anyway, if I ever get really desperate, there's always your offer to fall back on."

"Left."

"Engaged to what?"

A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck. "Oh, Dexter. That's amazing! Congratulations!" and she went to kiss his cheek just as he turned his head, their mouths glancing for a moment so that they tasted the champagne on each other's lips.

"Did I say that?" He winced. "Bit patronising."

"I thought so at the time. But don't worry, I don't think it's legally binding or anything, I'm not going to hold you to it. Besides, there's still seven years to go. Plenty of time…" She began walking again, but Dexter stood still behind her, rubbing his head like a boy who is about to reveal that he's broken the best vase.

She stopped and turned.

"I'm engaged."

"Do you remember you used to say if I was still single when I got to forty you'd marry me?"

Emma blinked once, very slowly.

Dexter stopped walking. "What offer?"

"I'm afraid I'm sort of going to have to withdraw the offer anyway."

"To be married. To Sylvie."

"Oh really? Why's that?" she said, but a part of her knew already.

"No, Dex -- it's money. It smells of money." Carefully, she opened the card, and he watched her as she read, remembering the way she used her fingertips to brush her fringe across her forehead. "'Mr and Mrs Lionel Cope invite you to the marriage of their daughter Sylvie to Mr Dexter Mayhew --' I can't believe I'm actually seeing this in print. Saturday, September 14th. Hang on, that's only…"

"You're pleased?"

"Eight quid each."

"Smell it?" Warily, she held it to her nose. "It's scented! Your wedding invitations are scented?"

A thick envelope of heavy lilac paper. Emma took it gingerly, and peered inside. The envelope was quilted with tissue paper and the invitation itself had hand-torn edges and seemed to be made of some sort of papyrus or parchment. "Now that --" Emma balanced it like a table on her upturned fingertips "-- that is what I call a wedding invitation."

"Pleased? I'm destroyed! But really, seriously, that's fantastic news."

"Isn't it?"

"That is some elaborate stationery."

"You think so?"

He stepped back from her and searched inside his jacket. "In fact, that's why I dragged you in here. I wanted to give you this in person --"

"More than fantastic, it's, it's… rad! It's rad and sweet. It's old skool!"

"Smell it, go on…"

"That's more than my car."

"It's meant to be lavender."

"Don't suppose you've still got that cigarette, have you?" He reached into his pocket for her. "How's Sylvie about it?"

Emma frowned, not quite there yet.

"Apparently."

"You mean?…"

"Oh, Dexter!" Once again, her face was against his. "Do you know the father? I'm kidding! Congratulations, Dex. God, aren't you meant to space your bombshells out a bit, not just drop them all at once?" She held his face in both hands, looked at it. "You're getting married?--"

"Sylvie's sort of pregnant. Well not sort of. She is. Pregnant. Actually pregnant. With a baby."

"I know! Fuck me -- a father!"

"-- and you're going to be a father?"

"She's delighted! I mean she's worried that it'll make her look fat."

"Is that allowed? I mean will they let you?"

"Seven weeks? I thought these things were years in the making?"

"Well they are usually, but I think this is what they call a shotgun wedding…"

"Yes!"

"For three hundred and fifty guests. With Ceilidh."

"Seven weeks away…" and he kept watching her face, that fantastic face to see how it might change when he told her.

"Well I suppose that is a possibility…"

He lit her cigarette. "… but she wants to get on with it, get married, have kids, make a start. She doesn't want to end up mid-thirties and all alone --"

"Like ME!!!"

"I know. I'm kidding. Dexter, congratulations."

"See -- that's its spine."

"Exactly, she doesn't want to end up like you!" He took her hand. "That's not what I meant, of course."

"Thank you. Thank you." A momentary pause. "Let me have a go on that, will you?" he said as he took the last cigarette from her mouth, placing it between his own lips. "Here, look at this…" From his wallet, he unfolded a square of smudgy paper, and held it down to the sodium light. "It's the twelve-week scan. Isn't that incredible?"

Emma took the scrap of paper and peered at it dutifully. The beauty of the ultrasound scan is something that only parents can appreciate, but Emma had seen these things before and knew what was required of her. "Beautiful," she sighed, though in truth it could have been a Polaroid of the inside of his pocket.

"Girl, I hope. Or boy. Don't care. But you think it's a good thing?"

"Awww. Boy or girl?"

"Great spine."

"Absolutely. I think it's wonderful. Fucking hell, Dexter, I turn my back for one minute…!"

She hugged him once again, her arms high round his neck. She felt drunk, full of affection and a certain sadness too, as if something was coming to an end. She wanted to say something along these lines, but thought it best to do this through a joke. "Of course you've just destroyed any chance I had of future happiness, but I'm delighted for you, really."

He twisted his head to look at her, and suddenly something was moving between them, something alive and vibrating in his chest.

"You can even make out the tiny little fingers."

Emma placed her hand there. "Is that your heart?"

"It's my mobile."

She stepped back and allowed him to retrieve his phone from his inside pocket. Glancing at the display, he gave his head a little sobering shake, and guiltily handed Emma the cigarette, as if it were a smoking gun. Quickly he recited, "Don't sound drunk don't sound drunk," assumed a tele-sales smile and answered. "Hello, my love!"

"Well, I'm in a maze, so --"

"Lost? How can you get lost?"

"Just… you know… hanging out. We thought it would be fun."

"I know, and I've been trying to get out for ages, it's just, well you know -- it's like a maze in here!" He giggled, but there was silence from the phone. "Hello? Are you still there? Can you hear me?"

"Are you with anyone, Dexter?" said Sylvie, her voice low.

Emma could hear Sylvie through the receiver. "Where are you?"

"Well as long as you're having fun, Dex. I'm stuck here listening to some old dear bang on about New Zealand…"

"I've sort of got lost."

"A maze? What are you doing in a maze?"

He glanced at Emma, still pretending to be captivated by the ultrasound scan. He thought for a moment, then turned his back to her and lied. "Actually there's a whole gang of us in here. We're going to give it another fifteen minutes, then we're going to dig a tunnel, and if that doesn't work we're going to eat someone."

"Thank God, here's Callum. I'm going to talk to Callum. Hurry up, will you?"

"Not in the least."

"Okay. I'm on my way. Bye, darling, bye!" He hung up. "Did I sound drunk then?"

"Fine by me." She looked in both directions, hopeless. "We should have left a trail of breadcrumbs." As if in answer, there was a hum, a click, and each of the lights that illuminated the maze clicked off one by one, plunging them into darkness.

"We should get back," said Emma. "Before it starts raining men."

"We've got to get out of here right now."

"Then let's do it!" He poured the last two glasses from the champagne bottle and placed the empty bottle on the grass. Emma removed her heels, placed her fingertips on the hedge and, a little gingerly at first, they began to walk along the dim corridor of leaves.

"That's handy," said Dexter. They stood still for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the gloom. The band were playing "It's Raining Men", and they listened hard to the muffled sound as if it held a clue to their whereabouts.

"Good idea."

"There's a trick, isn't there?" said Emma. "As I remember it, you put your left hand on the wall, and as long as you don't let go, you get out eventually."

"We've definitely been here before."

"So you'll come? To my wedding."

"No!" laughed Emma.

"Anyway, I don't want you to write the whole thing, just give it a polish…"

"Trust me."

"I just think it'll carry less emotional weight if it's written by me. Just write what you honestly feel."

"Well I don't know if that's such a good idea. 'I'd like to thank the caterers, and by the way I'm scared shitless.'" He squinted into the darkness. "Are you sure this is working? It feels like we're going further in."

"It's not that, it's just I've been trying to write a speech for ages now, and I was wondering if you might give me a hand?"

"Why not?"

"As a matter of fact, I was going to ask you a favour."

"Please, please, don't ask me to be the Best Man, Dex."

"Of course I will. I can't promise not to disrupt the service, mind."

"Sorry, you're on your own there." They came to a halt at a three-way junction.

"It should have been me!" They both smiled in the darkness and walked a little further.

"Just trust me. We keep going."

"It's the most we can hope for." The fingertips of her left hand passed across the surface of a statute that seemed familiar, and now Emma knew exactly where they were. Turning right, and then left would bring them out into the rose garden again, back into the party, back to his fiancée and their friends, and there would be no more time to talk. She suddenly felt a startling sadness, so stopped for a moment, turned and took both of Dexter's hands in her own.

"But you're happy?"

"S'okay. I'm going to learn to love staying in."

"You can't take babies to cocktail bars, you know. They get funny about that kind of thing."

""Cept I'm a family man now."

"Sometimes. But then you look at some of the idiots who manage to raise kids. I keep telling myself, if Miffy Buchanan can do it, how hard can it be?"

"Yeah? I think I am. Are you?"

"A family man. Good God, aren't you scared?"

"Happier. Happyish."

"Happyish. Well, happyish isn't so bad."

They walked on in silence. Nearby the band had segued into Prince's "1999", to cheers from the guests. "When I first heard this song," said Emma, "I thought it was science-fiction. 1999. Hover cars and food in pill form and holidays on the moon. Now it's here and I'm still driving a Fiat bloody Panda. Nothing's changed."

"But still, I should have tried harder to get in touch. You're meant to stick by your friends aren't you? Take the blow."

"I've still got that letter you wrote. It's a very beautiful letter, I appreciated it."

"But even so. I should have stuck it out a bit, what with your mum and everything --"

"More than a little, you were bloody awful --"

"I'm a little drunk."

"Selfish, and stuck-up and boring actually --"

"Just… I missed you, you know."

"Can I say something? Before we go back to the party?"

"I know --"

"Go on."

"Same here."

"I don't blame you --"

"But so, so much, Dexter. There were so many things I wanted to talk to you about, and you weren't there --"

"I missed you too."

"Me too. That's okay."

"But even so." To her embarrassment, she found that there were tears in her eyes.

"That's no excuse though."

"Well, no, but it was bound to give you a knock."

"And I feel a little guilty, sort of running away like that."

"Yes, you've made that point --"

"Did you? I didn't blame you. There were times when I was being a little… obnoxious."

"Hey, hey, what's up, Em?"

"I'm sorry, drunk too much is all…"

"Come here." He put his arms around her, his face against the bare skin of her neck, smelling shampoo and damp silk, and she breathed into his neck, his aftershave and sweat and alcohol, the smell of his suit, and they stood like this for a while until she caught her breath and spoke. "I tell you what it is. It's… when I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean every day in some way or another --"

"Same here --"

"-- even if it was just 'I wish Dexter could see this' or 'where's Dexter now?' or 'Christ, that Dexter, what an idiot', you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought I'd got you back -- my best friend. And now all this, the wedding, the baby -- I'm so, so happy for you, Dex. But it feels like I've lost you again."

"Lost -- how?"

"You know what happens, you have a family, your responsibilities change, you lose touch with people --"

"Not necessarily --"

"No really, it happens all the time, I know it. You'll have different priorities, and all these new friends, nice young couples that you met at ante-natal classes who'll have babies too and understand, or you'll be too tired because you've been up all night --"

"What's the time?" said Emma, twisting her face away in panic.

"Friends again." She let go of his hand. "Now, let's go and find your fiancée. I want to congratulate her."

"Absolutely."

"I won't if you won't."

Their lips touched now, mouths pursed tight, their eyes open, both of them stock still. The moment held, a kind of glorious confusion.

"Do you?"

"Dex?"

He wanted to take hold of her hand and walk back into the maze. He would turn his phone off, and they would just stay in there until the party was over, get lost and talk about all that had happened.

"Actually, we're going to have one of those babies that aren't too much trouble. Just leave them in a room apparently. With a tin opener, a little gas stove." He could feel her laughter against his chest, and at that moment he thought that there was no better feeling than making Emma Morley laugh. "It won't be like that, I promise."

She pulled away to look at him. "You swear? No more disappearing?"

They walked on in silence, unsure about what had happened and what would happen next. Two more turnings brought them once again to the exit of the maze, and back to the party. Emma was about to open the heavy oak door when he took her hand.

"Em?"

"Well! We should go."

"Friends again?" he said eventually.

Dexter tugged his sleeve and looked at his watch. "Just coming up to midnight."