family thought that my marrying Tim was a mistake. So they were happy to celebrate my great escape even if none of them actually approved of the way I’d done things.
Oh, look, I don’t approve of it myself. It was a rotten thing to do. But it would have been more rotten to have married him for all the wrong reasons and to have the whole thing unravel messily a few months later in hot tears and stinging recriminations. I did the right thing. I just should have done it earlier.
There are, of course, drawbacks to running away in a long white dress and veil. I lost the veil on Howth Hill when I let the breeze catch it and carry it out to sea, but there wasn’t much I could do about the dress. When I got back to the car the chauffeur looked at me enquiringly and asked where I wanted to go next.
Home was the obvious answer, and so he dropped me back to our house in Sutton where I then realised that nobody was there and that you don’t bring your house keys to your wedding. So I went around the back and sat like an idiot in my long white dress in the garden (where only a few hours earlier Dad had taken photos of me in all my finery) while I waited for someone to turn up.
Alison and Peter eventually showed. Alison hugged me and said that she’d been trying my mobile but, of course, you don’t bring your mobile to your wedding either. At first they’d thought I would come to the hotel (although she had wondered whether I might make some kind of extravagant gesture like rush to the airport and go back to Spain), and then they decided that I’d probably prefer to be at home, so they’d volunteered to come looking for me. I informed her tartly that, along with not bringing your mobile phone, you also don’t bring money or your passport to your wedding and so I couldn’t have run away to Spain again. She laughed at me and then rang the hotel to let Mum know that I hadn’t thrown myself off Butt Bridge or anything equally dramatic and informed me that (after the initial fracas) everyone was being remarkably calm about it all.
And then she let me into the house, where I took off my lovely (second) wedding dress and changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
‘You are such a fool, Issy,’ said Alison kindly. ‘But you did a brave thing. Really.’
For the next few weeks that was pretty much what everyone said.
I got used to living with the tag of being the girl who’d run out of her wedding and with the whole flaky thing, and because my job at the college was going quite well, I was able to rise above it. Sort of. But I didn’t really settle back in Dublin. I’d come back because of Tim. Now, because of Tim, I didn’t really want to stay. All the same, I couldn’t run away again. There’s a time for running and a time for staying put, and besides, where could I run to this time?
The answer came about six months later. From Gabriella. She’d been at the non-wedding, along with some of my ex-colleagues from the Spanish training company. She hadn’t been crazy about the wedding to Tim either, although that was partly because she knew I’d been seeing a guy in Spain while I was there and she didn’t think I was properly over him. Gabriella believed that Nico and I had a real thing going. A part of me had thought that too, but when Tim and I got together again I decided that Nico and I were just a passing whim. (Well, passing whim isn’t fair. Nico meant a lot to me. But I had no future with him. Isabella querida . That’s what he used to say. As though he meant it. But he didn’t. Not really.) Anyway, Gabriella called me up one day and asked how I was doing, listened to me wittering on about how great my life was, and then offered me a job. As always with Gabriella, she pretty much got to the point straight away. Her company, the one I’d worked for, was based in Madrid but they’d bought another smaller training firm, in Alicante. They were looking for someone to head it up. She’d thought of me.
‘Oh,
Oh, look, I don’t approve of it myself. It was a rotten thing to do. But it would have been more rotten to have married him for all the wrong reasons and to have the whole thing unravel messily a few months later in hot tears and stinging recriminations. I did the right thing. I just should have done it earlier.
There are, of course, drawbacks to running away in a long white dress and veil. I lost the veil on Howth Hill when I let the breeze catch it and carry it out to sea, but there wasn’t much I could do about the dress. When I got back to the car the chauffeur looked at me enquiringly and asked where I wanted to go next.
Home was the obvious answer, and so he dropped me back to our house in Sutton where I then realised that nobody was there and that you don’t bring your house keys to your wedding. So I went around the back and sat like an idiot in my long white dress in the garden (where only a few hours earlier Dad had taken photos of me in all my finery) while I waited for someone to turn up.
Alison and Peter eventually showed. Alison hugged me and said that she’d been trying my mobile but, of course, you don’t bring your mobile to your wedding either. At first they’d thought I would come to the hotel (although she had wondered whether I might make some kind of extravagant gesture like rush to the airport and go back to Spain), and then they decided that I’d probably prefer to be at home, so they’d volunteered to come looking for me. I informed her tartly that, along with not bringing your mobile phone, you also don’t bring money or your passport to your wedding and so I couldn’t have run away to Spain again. She laughed at me and then rang the hotel to let Mum know that I hadn’t thrown myself off Butt Bridge or anything equally dramatic and informed me that (after the initial fracas) everyone was being remarkably calm about it all.
And then she let me into the house, where I took off my lovely (second) wedding dress and changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
‘You are such a fool, Issy,’ said Alison kindly. ‘But you did a brave thing. Really.’
For the next few weeks that was pretty much what everyone said.
I got used to living with the tag of being the girl who’d run out of her wedding and with the whole flaky thing, and because my job at the college was going quite well, I was able to rise above it. Sort of. But I didn’t really settle back in Dublin. I’d come back because of Tim. Now, because of Tim, I didn’t really want to stay. All the same, I couldn’t run away again. There’s a time for running and a time for staying put, and besides, where could I run to this time?
The answer came about six months later. From Gabriella. She’d been at the non-wedding, along with some of my ex-colleagues from the Spanish training company. She hadn’t been crazy about the wedding to Tim either, although that was partly because she knew I’d been seeing a guy in Spain while I was there and she didn’t think I was properly over him. Gabriella believed that Nico and I had a real thing going. A part of me had thought that too, but when Tim and I got together again I decided that Nico and I were just a passing whim. (Well, passing whim isn’t fair. Nico meant a lot to me. But I had no future with him. Isabella querida . That’s what he used to say. As though he meant it. But he didn’t. Not really.) Anyway, Gabriella called me up one day and asked how I was doing, listened to me wittering on about how great my life was, and then offered me a job. As always with Gabriella, she pretty much got to the point straight away. Her company, the one I’d worked for, was based in Madrid but they’d bought another smaller training firm, in Alicante. They were looking for someone to head it up. She’d thought of me.
‘Oh,
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