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42 MEG

While everybody else was dancing, Meg led her parents back to the flower shop. Finally in the shop, months after they were meant to be there together. Her mum was looking around at the room, the chairs neatly stacked now and the majority of the plants outside or against the walls. It was the barest and most lifeless Meg had ever seen it.

‘So,’ she said. She didn’t want any awkwardness but she also wanted her parents to lead the conversation. She was so glad they came, but it needed to mean something. They had to understand why. Meg felt like she had said her piece, and said enough, for them to know what the situation was.

‘I noticed we weren’t in your speech,’ Ava began.

‘Well, I didn’t know for sure you were coming.’

Her dad was standing next to her mother, his arms crossed over his chest. ‘That’s fair.’

‘I know, Meg,’ her mum said. ‘We wouldn’t expect to be. It just made us sad, about how the last few months have been. I also know that it’s our own doing.’

Her dad reached out to her. ‘The first thing to say is we’re really sorry.’ He looked at Ava.

Without meaning to, Meg was aware she had taken a sharp, painful breath in, like her heart was caught in her throat.

‘We are really sorry, Meg,’ her mum said, and her lip started to wobble. She reached out a hand toward her. ‘We truly are and we really hope you can accept our apology.’

‘It might take time, and not be fixed today, but our intention is to fix this,’ her dad added.

Meg didn’t know what to say.

‘You look absolutely beautiful,’ her mum said, now dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I like what you’ve done with the dress … It was so heavy on my wedding day, I was worn out by eight o’clock.’

‘I wish we’d had late-night carbonara at our wedding too,’ her dad added.

Meg laughed.

‘Nothing is as important to us as your happiness,’ Ava said. ‘This side of your life, it makes you so happy. Hannah makes you so happy. We should have supported that—’

‘And not got caught up in … stupid stuff,’ George added. ‘Nonsense, really.’

‘It’s not a side of my life, Mum; it just is my life.’

‘Sorry, I know. That’s what I meant. We shouldn’t have taken this long to realize how right this is for you.’

‘But what took you so long?’ Meg asked. From the speakers outside, she heard the Spice Girls play, and she heard Benji on the microphone shouting to the crowd that this one was a big tune.

Her parents were looking at each other, unsure what to say.

‘We all need to be honest,’ Meg said.

‘I know, darling,’ Ava said. ‘We know Hannah and we really like her; it’s nothing to do with … It’s stuff … our own issues from our own era we should never have saddled you with. That’s what everyone talks about now, baggage, right? We didn’t understand and it shouldn’t have taken the kids from the school to show us how our views were the abnormal ones. The idea of missing your wedding, it killed us, Meg. We had to come.’

‘It’s like when you showed us the rings when you’d got engaged, I …’ Her mum’s voice trailed into nothing. ‘We’d just have liked to be involved.’

‘And we’re sorry,’ her dad said. ‘For showing up on Thursday and making everything more stressful.’

‘It’s not easy being a parent, you know,’ Ava said. ‘I don’t mean defensively, I mean, to be vulnerable. It’s … it’s not an easy time and as a child you just think your parents are perfect. We’re not, and none of our parents were. You expect all these things, and that your child is going to turn out in some sort of way you can control. It’s nothing to do with you, really, who your child is, though people like to claim the good bits for themselves.’

‘All your good bits are just from you, Meg,’ George said.

‘And those good bits are, well they’re brilliant,’ her mum said, starting to cry again. George put his hand on Ava’s shoulder.

‘Are you going to stay?’ Meg said. ‘Dance the night away?’

‘You know dancing was never really our thing,’ George said, and Meg smiled. ‘But we’ve got another drink in us, I think. Why don’t you pop round tomorrow? Or we can come to yours. A cup of tea, a debrief. We’d like to apologize to Hannah too but we don’t want her day to be about us.’

‘That sounds nice, Dad,’ Meg said. ‘We go on the honeymoon tomorrow, but when we’re back?’

‘Sounds perfect,’ George said.

‘We’ll have to get the good biscuits in, George,’ Ava said. ‘Or some of these cupcakes you have here, Meg. They’re delicious.’

‘Well,’ George mumbled. ‘Some of them. Not the vegetable ones.’

Each of them hugged her and for the first time in years, it didn’t feel like a formality but like the walls were down and she was being comforted by the parents who should always have been able to comfort her. They started to walk towards the doors of the shop, and to rejoin everybody. Meg felt several stone lighter.

‘Can I just say,’ George said, looking out at the festoon lights that were now slung across the street between the shops, and the disco ball Martha had rigged above the decks, ‘I’ve never been to a wedding like this in all my life.’