The Loneliness of Distant Beings

Chapter Twenty-Two

I guess on the morning of the wedding I fall asleep for maybe an hour on the bench in the galley, my face against Dom's neck, and when I open my eyes he turns his face to me, puts his lips on mine, whispers, 'Good morning,' and I realise that I have been dreaming, dreaming about flying, flying along over water, over water that is as flat as glass and bouncing sky back up at me. And in the dream I am scared, but breathless with possibility.

I know he is about to leave when he carefully smooths my hair before kissing me, resting his nose against mine and looking straight into my eyes. He asks me whether I know what I have to do and I don't have to answer because we both know I do, but all the same I don't let go of his hand, can't, even when he is standing by the door with his other hand on the button that opens it. I am holding his hand still and looking at it and just thinking about how beautiful it is, how it is literally the most beautiful hand I have ever seen, how much I want it on me, always, and I feel my eyes fill with tears, and so I make him go then, even push him a little because getting like this will only make me more afraid. The stakes are suddenly so high, you see, higher than they've ever been in my life. I am about to have to lose him again, and I'm not sure I can bear it.

Cultural have sent someone to do my hair and she plaits it first, plaits it before wrapping it round my head like a rope and all the time I am shaking, shaking so hard that in the end Pan tells me I'm more nervous than she was. My dress arrives and it is white and heavy and looks like all the others but, regardless, when I put it on Pan cries and then my dad appears in his full-dress uniform. Tucking one of the orchids he has brought from Production into my hair and handing me the other one for his lapel he acts like, I don't know what, like this is the best – or maybe worst – day of his life. Whichever it is, he has actual tears in his eyes, which just makes it worse.

We walk there, to the drill hall, a cameraman from Cultural following us and Pan trailing in her blue dress on bridesmaid duty while Cain carries Deborah behind. And it's OK, I can do it, I can keep walking, I can keep putting one foot in front of the other until I get to the door and I see Dom, the back of him as he stands next to Mariana in the last row, turning only slightly as I come in, but it is that split second of eye contact we make that makes me falter, makes me freeze, makes me turn back to Pan and say, 'I just need a minute,' because even though I asked him to be there, even though I told him I couldn't go through with it without him, suddenly the idea of standing there in front of him and telling our whole world that I love someone else seems impossible. And now I'm here and there is the music and bile rising in my throat and this cramp gripping me and suddenly Mariana is next to me, holding my arm in her cold hand, tiny but strong.

'Are you OK?

'No.'

I can tell from the way she looks at me that she knows and she says to Pan, 'Let me talk to her, OK?' and it is only because Deborah is just starting to cry that we are able to walk away without her saying much.

Ten metres away from the drill hall door, Mariana eases me against the wall for support and peers into my eyes like there might be something written there. 'What's wrong?'

And all I can do is shake my head and say, 'I can't do this.'

Even though it looks like she knew what I was going to say before I did, she grips my arms, looks around, shifts position and sighs. Then she says, 'What are you thinking? You know you're not the only one who ever felt this way, you know that, but you also know that trying to fight the way things are will only bring trouble to you, and to the people you love. Amiga, I have been where you are, I've loved someone for real, and I paid for it, and I don't want that to happen to you. Or to my cousin. Please do what you have to do, Seren, for all of us. We're stuck here, you know, whether we like it or not. We have nowhere else to go.'