The Vintage Summer Wedding by Jenny Oliver

stick up all on its own, and she noticed the rugged roughness of his hands, the scratches and scars and general army wear and tear. ‘I think about you sometimes, when I’m out there. I look up at the stars.’ He laughed again. ‘Do you know how many goddamn stars there are in the desert? More stars than sky. It can make a man think about his life.’ He unfolded the Wayfarers he had hooked onto the neck of his T-shirt and slipped them on, covering his eyes. ‘I have to admit that I think about you, quite a lot.’
    The unexpected confession startled her. He’d always been adamant about leaving and that he wanted to do it unencumbered. ‘I would imagine that’s just the effect of the stars,’ she laughed, trying to brush it off. ‘Running about the place with guns and all that macho-bonding, I doubt you give a second thought to what you gave up.’ She glanced over her shoulder after she said it, suddenly aware that someone might spot her, like Hilary and Roger popping up after a day’s sightseeing.
    ‘I do, Anna. I look at the guys getting their letters and Skyping their wives and kids and I think, Christ, we could have had some good-looking kids.’
    She snorted into her coffee. ‘Steady on.’
    ‘No, I mean it,’ he said, his face serious for a second. ‘It’s not often a bloke can admit he was wrong.’ As he looked her way, she could see herself reflected in the dark lenses of his shades.
    She felt annoyingly uncomfortably and it wasn’t just the heat. It wasn’t the worry of being caught. It was the feeling of someone taking her life that was already a muddle and giving it a good hard shake. Like she was in her own personal snow globe.
    The tightness of his lips brought back the memory of lying next to him in the single bed in the crummy flatshare she had taken in London. When everything had ended and her mum had left in a fury to go back to Seville. When she had nothing. When she was working in a bar to pay her rent. Luke had said that life wasn’t fun any more. He wasn’t enjoying himself, and had decided that the army was the career for him. She had said that she could be more fun. But he had rolled towards her and said he’d applied and been accepted to Sandhurst. He had never asked her once about herself, about what had happened, and she had never felt more alone in her life. She pitied her old self now when she remembered sitting up in bed and looking down at him, with his hands behind his head, and saying, pleadingly, ‘What can I do to make you stay?’ And he had looked up at her with that same expression he was using now, and said, ‘Nothing.’
    Looking at him now, she suddenly realised that there was the same degree of something not quite right about his look now as there was then. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Like it was the expression of an actor acting serious rather than a look of genuine emotion.
    As if the atmosphere had got too intense for him, Luke’s face shifted back to its relaxed, mischievous grin, leaving Anna feeling one step behind, still caught in a memory. He whipped off his sunglasses and said, ‘So, tell me about Pleb, how’s he getting on? Tell me everything, I can’t bloody believe the two of you ended up together. No wonder you’re on bloody Tinder.’
    ‘Don’t call him that,’ she said, catching up to her present. ‘It’s Seb, as you know.’
    Luke crossed his arms in front of his chest and snorted a laugh, tipping his head back in delight. She shifted in her seat and altered the direction of the conversation towards his career and army life, which touched the right nerve and he proceeded to rhapsodise about the helicopters he’d jumped out of, the rapids he’d canoed, the sandstorms he’d battled, the times his parachute hadn’t opened or his rifle had jammed.
    Anna carried on with the conversation, but she was only half there. The other half of her had stood up and was wondering round the table observing, thinking, golly I was envious of