Married at First Swipe

by Claire Frost

  Jess checked everyone was in place, signed to Melissa to check she had the rings and received a thumbs-up and a huge grin in return, and then hurried towards the small room off the entrance hall where the bridal party were waiting after their chat with the registrar. Hannah and her dad were standing close together having what looked like a deep and meaningful conversation that Jess wasn’t sure she should interrupt, so she waved at Seraphina, who was skipping around in front of them. She waited a couple of seconds to make sure Hannah got the message then trotted back into the main room as fast as her heels would allow her, nodded at the staff in charge of the music, and slid into her seat breathing heavily.

  The music volume increased and everyone stood up and turned in expectation. Seraphina came first, revelling in the oohs and ahhs from her audience and giving everyone a good sprinkle of glitter from her now-patchy wand. And then came John and Hannah. The top part of Hannah’s dress sparkled with sequins and showed off her toned arms, while the pretty white tulle skirt swished around her calves as she carefully picked her way down the aisle in her pointed heels, grasping her dad’s arm tightly. Jess watched as Hannah looked up and saw her Toby-to-be grinning at her like he couldn’t believe his luck. She met his gaze and smiled shyly back.

  ‘Okay?’ Tom asked, squeezing Jess’s hand. She nodded and squeezed back, grateful in that moment that whatever the future held for all of them, her husband was by her side.

  Chapter 15 Hannah

  Hannah felt her heels give way, and she began falling backwards towards the cold, dark floor. She tried to scream, but her throat had closed up completely. Instinctively, she knew that in just a few seconds she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all, as the shadowy shapes around her stretched out their hands to smother her. Then suddenly she snapped her eyes open and found her head was cocooned in a soft, feathery pillow nest. Disorientated, her heart hammering, she tried to slow her breathing and trigger the rational side of her brain to kick into action. Her chest began to feel less tight and everything started to come back to her. She swivelled her eyes to her left and a head of dark hair came into view. Hannah reached for her ring finger and felt the cold metal of her wedding band.

  Yep, it really had happened. She was a married woman!

  She sat upright in the bed and quickly realised that she was a married woman with a hangover. Her head throbbed and the room swam a little around her. She saw a glass of water on the bedside table and glugged half of it back in one go as she looked around her. Jess, or rather her company, had treated them to a room at The Midland, one of Manchester’s swankiest hotels, for their wedding night. Hannah’s heart quickened again.

  Their wedding night.

  She looked down and was glad to discover she was wearing her knickers and a vest top, which she vaguely recalled chucking into her overnight bag the previous morning in case she decided against the cute but revealing short pyjamas she’d also brought with her. So maybe she hadn’t been too drunk to make sensible decisions, she thought. However, her recall didn’t stretch as far as her actually remembering what had happened when they reached the hotel. She’d been dancing – everyone had been dancing – and she remembered taking off her heels to make the short walk to the hotel from the wedding venue and shoving on her white pumps instead, and she had some kind of vague memory of getting the lift up to their room. But beyond that, it was a bit of a blank. She reached for her glass again and drained it, before letting out a small burp and lying back against the fluffy pillows.

  ‘Hannah, you’re awake!’ a voice next to her murmured.

  She looked across and Toby smiled at her. ‘Happy first day of the rest of our lives!’

  For a second, Hannah didn’t know what to say. Her head swirled and she could feel another burp building painfully high up in her chest, but she tried to swallow it down.

  ‘Hi,’ she managed. ‘So yesterday really happened then?’

  ‘It seems so.’ He grinned. ‘It was a great day – and night – wasn’t it.’

  ‘Yes?’ Hannah replied, her heart still thumping. ‘Although the end of it is a bit hazy, I have to say.’

  ‘Yeah, people drank a lot,’ Toby agreed. ‘Although I have to say I’m feeling great this morning.’ He sat up and plumped up his pillows, revealing his bare chest, the smile never leaving his face.

  Hannah couldn’t shake the unease swooshing around along with the prosecco in her stomach. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Toby, I know this sounds weird… but when I say that the end of the night is hazy, I mean it’s really hazy. I can’t remember much about when we got back here. I just need to know if we, you know…’ She tailed off awkwardly.

  ‘If…? Oh, if we… No, don’t worry, nothing happened. Well, a bit of kissing happened.’ He grinned again. ‘But you got changed in the bathroom and told me you definitely didn’t think we should sleep together, other than in the same bed, obviously – you took great pains to say you weren’t expecting me to sleep on the sofa or anything, which was nice of you. But no, we didn’t… do anything, don’t worry.’

  ‘Okay, great,’ Hannah breathed. ‘I mean, I’m sure it would have been great if we had, you know, but…’

  ‘Hannah, it’s fine, it really is. Right, do you want the first shower or shall I jump in quickly? We don’t want to miss breakfast, do we? One of the best things about staying in a nice hotel is the cooked breakfast the next morning, I always think.’

  ‘You go first, that’s okay,’ she replied. She waited for the bathroom door to shut behind him, heard him whistling an indistinguishable tune, and threw herself back against the pillows. If there was one thing Hannah really wasn’t, it was a morning person. Unfortunately, it seemed that Toby was very much a lark. Although it also appeared he had drunk quite a bit less prosecco than she had, unless he was one of those annoying people who never got hangovers no matter how drunk they were the night before. She would take a lark over a non-hangover-sufferer any day, she mused.

  Her phone lit up on the table beside her and she saw she had a whole screenful of notifications, most of which appeared to be from Jess. She pressed call and before she’d even heard the ringing noise, Jess’s voice was in her ear.

  ‘Hannah? You’re alive then? So, how was your first night together? Tell me everything!’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s that much to tell,’ Hannah replied, her voice barely above a whisper in case Toby was a super-quick showerer and her conversation suddenly became less private. ‘To be honest, I can’t remember much after us screaming our way through “Livin’ On A Prayer” using a prosecco bottle as a microphone.’

  ‘God, yes, Lily kindly reminded me about that at six o’clock this morning. She even demonstrated exactly my level of out-of-tune singing and embarrassing dancing, which was kind of her. God, I’m glad the paracetamol has kicked in a bit. Tom promised to take the kids to the park for as long as possible to give me a bit of time to myself. Anyway, so you can’t remember much after that, fine. But, shit, Hannah, does that mean you can’t even remember whether you had sex with him?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s the first thing I asked him this morning,’ she replied, massaging her head and wishing she’d asked Toby to refill her glass before he got in the shower. ‘And, no, before you ask, we didn’t have sex, and yes, asking him was the most embarrassing start to an arranged marriage I can think of.’ She heard Jess cackling in her ear and found herself smiling despite herself. ‘God, the whole thing is ridiculous. Oh well, it’s done now. But the rest of the day was fun.’

  ‘It was so fun,’ her friend agreed. ‘You looked beautiful, Han, you really did. And Toby managed to charm the pants off Joan of Bark, which is quite the achievement.’

  ‘She didn’t stop singing his praises to me all day!’ Hannah laughed. ‘Poor Scott was well pissed off. It’s usually him or little Leo she’s showing off to everyone about. Although he seemed to have cheered up a bit by the time he hit the dance floor with some of Toby’s mates. Thanks for sorting everything
out yesterday, J, it was really amazing.’

  ‘It was totally my pleasure, you know that, and I’d do it again for you in a heartbeat. Although let’s hope it was the one and only wedding I organise for you now you have your happy-ever-after with Toby!’

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ Hannah said, glad Jess couldn’t see her oh-my-god-is-this-for-ever-I-barely-know-him face. ‘Right, I’d better go and get ready for breakfast.’

  ‘Okay, love you, Han. Call me later, all right?’

  ‘Will do. Love you, J.’ She ended the call just as Toby emerged from the bathroom, a large towel wrapped around his waist.

  ‘All yours. Take your time – I’ll see if I can work the coffee maker.’

  Hannah grabbed her bag and scuttled into the bathroom. The mirror was pretty steamed up and she was grateful she couldn’t see her bleary, smudged eyes and pillow-lined face, until she realised that was exactly what poor Toby had had to see staring back at him this morning.

  After a restorative ten minutes under the hot-enough-to-make-her-skin-red shower, she felt infinitely better and almost ready to munch her way through bacon and eggs. But first she decided she needed a layer of make-up between her and her new husband – she didn’t want to put him off his breakfast.

  * * *

  ‘God, can you imagine a world without toast and jam?’ she said through a mouthful of just that half an hour later. ‘I think I’d rather die than not have a thick layer of strawberry jam on a thick slice of white bread ever again.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve thought about it before!’ Toby laughed. ‘Although if someone put a gun to my head, I think I’d have to choose peanut butter on toast over jam. Except with a fry-up, though, that would just be too much. But surely damson is the king of jams, not boring old strawberry?’

  ‘Excuse me, “boring old strawberry”? Damson jam is tasty, I grant you, but the pure Englishness of strawberry means it wins the top trumps of jam prize every time.’

  ‘I’m still unconvinced. But the real question when it comes to strawberry jam is whether you spread it on a scone before or after cream. And choose wisely because this could make or break our marriage, Hannah!’

  ‘It is definitely an important question, you’re right. But everyone knows the only way to do it is to put the jam on first, followed by as much clotted cream as you can get your hands on.’

  ‘Phew! We don’t have to get divorced after all,’ Toby laughed. ‘That is, indeed, the correct answer. Although even the thought of scones is making me feel a bit queasy after all that food.’

  ‘Well, as you say, breakfast is a big part of any hotel stay, and it was our duty to make sure we got value for Save The Date’s money. Jess would never forgive me if I told her I had a bowl of yoghurt and granola, followed by an apple to really push the boat out. Not that she’d believe me – she knows I can’t resist a posh fry-up. Or any fry-up really.’

  ‘I still can’t believe Jess is your best friend and she didn’t tell me until yesterday,’ Toby said, shaking his head.

  ‘But if she had, you’d have been able to find me on the internet super-easily – I’m pretty much the only person who likes every single picture she puts on social media. And I had no way of finding out anything about you, so it wouldn’t have been fair if you’d had some intel on me, would it? And all those things you might have found out about me might have made you think twice about going through with the wedding.’

  ‘Of course they wouldn’t,’ he protested. ‘And we do know a little bit about each other from our letters. I know how much you like chip shop sausages and you know how much I like chip shop chips, for instance.’

  ‘That is true,’ she agreed. ‘But if you think of all the things we do know about each other compared to all the things we don’t know, it’s a tiny number.’

  ‘But you can’t know what you don’t know, if you know what I mean?’ Toby said, and they both burst out laughing.

  ‘No, I definitely don’t know what you mean!’ Hannah giggled. ‘I’m not sure my poor little brain can cope with too many negatives today, to be honest.’

  ‘I agree, so let’s make today all about the positives instead. Oh god, does that sound cheesy? Oh well, I’ve said it now! I was thinking that we could take a walk around town this morning, maybe go to the art gallery and have a wander round the Northern Quarter and then the marina. What do you think? And remember we’re all about the positives.’

  ‘So I have to say yes, you mean? Well, it just so happens that I think that sounds like a great idea.’

  ‘Excellent! Let’s go and walk off some of this black pudding then.’

  * * *

  A couple of hours later, they’d checked out several Lowry paintings, marvelled at an intricate Victorian dress made entirely out of lace, pretended to be impressed by some unintelligible modern art and were having fun deciding what jobs all the hip millennials out for brunch in the Northern Quarter did during the week.

  ‘I bet you that guy with the huge beard is a graphic designer and brews unique IPAs in his spare time,’ Toby said.

  ‘Good guess – that or he’s a barista in a coffee shop and plays banjo in a band at gigs that only his friends go to. Whereas it’s clear that the girl with blonde hair he’s talking to is a social media influencer. Or at least thinks she is. I’ve watched her take about twenty photos of her breakfast but not even one forkful of avocado has reached her mouth.’

  ‘If I weren’t still so full from my own breakfast I’d go in there and offer to eat it for her. I hate seeing food go to waste and I love avocado on toast, even though I’m probably too old to be a millennial.’

  ‘You’re definitely not too old,’ Hannah said, shaking her head. ‘Because if you are, then I am too, and I refuse to admit that. Although the media seem to have got bored and moved on to Generation Z now anyway, so perhaps I shouldn’t care so much. Shall we walk over to this marina you’ve promised me? I can’t believe I grew up in Manchester and have never even heard of it, never mind been to it!’

  They began walking past a row of large red-brick buildings, some of which were covered with huge murals. Toby took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. He smiled at her and Hannah smiled back a little shyly.

  She was surprised how relaxed she felt in the company of a man she had only met twenty-four hours before, though as soon as she started consciously thinking about their relationship, her heart began thumping more heavily in her chest again and she could feel her hand turn clammy in Toby’s grip. Despite having travelled all around the world on her own and done everything from sky-diving to jet-skiing, this was by far the scariest thing she’d ever done.

  She wished Jess was by her side, holding her other hand to steady her.

  Instead she tried to use some of the CBT techniques she’d learned over the years. Her friend Dee had taught them all when they’d lived together in Argentina. Dee had struggled with mental health issues when she was younger, and so was a huge proponent of therapy and counselling and decided to pass on some of what she had learned. It had been no surprise to Hannah when Dee had messaged her on Facebook to tell her she was training to be a counsellor herself while she was out in Australia.

  Hannah tried her best to block out her racing heart and instead concentrate on the here and now. She really looked around her and noticed they’d reached a truly pretty stretch of the river full of colourful canal boats. There were groups of people soaking up the sunshine on the grass, and a few couples strolling along the walkways with dogs on leads. There was a family of swans on the water who every so often ducked underneath the surface to retrieve a piece of bread or plant. The sun glinted off the water and the sides of the canal boats. She felt her heart rate slow again and a feeling of calm seemed to wash over her as she turned her face up to the sun and felt its heat on her cheeks.

  ‘You’re very quiet – are you okay?’ Toby asked, shattering her visualisation.

  Hannah blinked and smiled. ‘I’m fine, thanks, I was just thinking how I
don’t really know this part of the city at all. It’s beautiful here.’

  ‘Yes, it’s one of my favourite spots, especially when the sun is shining. There are loads of new flats round here and I even thought of buying one last year, but I ended up going further out to West Didsbury.’

  ‘Very nice! I don’t even really know what you do for a job. All you said is that you work with figures on a computer screen?’

  ‘I’m not sure you really want to know that much more about it, to be honest! I work for a big accountancy firm and look after the software for a couple of large clients.’

  ‘Sounds, erm, techy! Do you like it?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Yes, I do. I know it doesn’t sound that interesting, but I spend a lot of time trying to think of ways round problems and how to improve apps and software tools and make them work even better. It definitely is quite techy – and geeky – but I work with a good bunch of people. There were only a couple of them there yesterday as it’s a bit of a weird thing to say to your colleagues: “Do you want come to my blind-date wedding next weekend?” But I think you met Eva and Marie, as well as Mike and his partner?’

  ‘Yes, I did, and they seemed nice. I think it might have been Mike my brother was chatting to later on, poor guy!’

  ‘I’m sure he coped, he’s a real good’un. Anyway, do you enjoy working with Jess at Save The Date?’

  ‘I actually enjoy it more than I thought I would,’ she said. ‘At first I think Jess felt sorry for me. I’d just come over for Scott’s wedding and had used the last of my savings to buy the flights, so she got me to do little bits of work for her and paid me over the odds for them. Then when I flew back after Leo was born and said I was going to stay in Manchester, she offered me a full-time job that meant I could afford a flat on my own. It’s not the nicest place in the world, but it’s mine. Well, it’s my landlord’s, but you know what I mean. And working with Jess has been really cool. I think we were both a bit worried about her being the boss and me being the employee, but she tends to let me just get on with things, and I like to do stuff properly, so we’re both happy. Well, I am – you’d better ask her for her side of things!’